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#i did this because two days ago i found out it was red's birthday due to seeing beautiful fanarts as usual only a few hours before it ended
aquanutart · 2 years
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BG3 Tav Backstory Bash by Kelandrin
This is a challenge to help people flesh out their Tav's backstory by exploring their past. It is organized into four sections with seven prompts. You can treat this as a monthly challenge or a general project. You can write headcanons, fics, or share art based on the prompts! You can interpret the prompts however you want. If you want to share use the tag #bg3backstorybash
thank you for the tags @rolansrighthorn @charmedcleric @jessfromouterspace @lolthslover @auspex-author ‼️
I asked you guys who I should feature in this post and my girl Mythrae got the most votes! She is my first durge so she's a bit special to me and I'm very glad she was chosen :) some of these questions might have slightly alternate answers bc they don’t exactly fit in her timeline but I’m excited to participate either way! there are a couple triggering sections that have been labeled, so please read with caution!
(I’m too scared to tag anyone in this lol)
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Part One: Baby
Parent(s):
Being the child of Bhaal’s own flesh and blood, she is a Bhaalspawn. But as far as who raised her? Well, that would be none other than Lua’nna Helvitlar, a Seldarine drow wizard who fled from Menzoberranzen many years ago.
She fled the city and Lolth due to her brother’s wrongful death, and she found employment with Ramazith Firesinger in Baldur’s Gate.
Birth:
Not much is known about Mythrae’s birth, but in the year 1353, Lua’nna found her as an infant in the sewers of Baldur’s Gate with a piece of paper with just her name (yeah I did this with Salome too I’m unoriginal). Not wanting a drow child to get in the wrong hands and become a servant of Lolth, she rescued the infant and brought her home.
First Word/Tantrum/When They First Walked/First Sickness
Her first word was “mama,” which Lua’nna was overjoyed with. Definitely cried happy tears for hours on end.
She was a well-behaved toddler, who was also very inquisitive and ask a lot of questions. The tantrums she would have would usually be because she got an answer she didn’t like (ex. “Mummy, why can’t the sun stay up all day?” “Why does it get cold outside?”).
Mythrae took her first steps after living with Lu’anna for 10 months, while they were playing together. Lua’nna most definitely cried the rest of the day over it.
She got a cold when she was a toddler, and her mother was worried sick she would pass from her virus. She was sick for two weeks, but with Lua’nna’s thorough care, she made a full recovery.
Part Two: Childhood
Friends:
Mythrae was born with heterochromia (one grey eye and one red eye) and was bullied for it (also for being a drow — they have a bad rep on the surface after all), so it was hard to make friends in school. There was one other drow boy in her class, Kalandrin, who would defend her from these bullies. They became fast friends and stayed close even into their teenage years. (Kalandrin would become her dream visitor later down the line)
Siblings:
Mythrae did not have any other siblings, the only family she had was her adopted mother (and Bhaal plus his spawn ofc but it’s not like she knew that at the time)
Getting Into Trouble:
For the most part, Mythrae was a very well behaved child. But as she began to discover her affinity for magic, especially storm sorcery, she would sometimes pull pranks on Lua’nna that would result in her being punished (ex. putting a cloud over mom’s head and causing it to rain while she was in the garden, using a lightning bolt to help speed up cooking, etc). Sometimes she tried to do these out of a genuine desire to help around the house, but other times… not so much
Birthday:
Though Lua’nna doesn’t know Mythrae’s actual birthday, they celebrate her “gotcha” day on the 7th of Eleasis (equivalent of August in Earth months)
Games/Learning Something New:
Mythrae wasn’t huge on games (unless it was something thought-provoking like chess lol)
Being an inquisitive child, she enjoyed school and learning. Lua’nna, being a studious wizard, helped Mythrae with her schoolwork and also taught her about the many intricacies of magic. She also taught her about the history of drow, which was left out of schoolbooks, because she did not want her child to fall down the wrong path and become a servant of Lolth.
Trauma:
In her dreams (or night terrors?), a large skeleton head or ghastly creature would visit her and tell her to kill everyone she knows and anyone that gets in her way, for her father’s sake. These visions scared her greatly, and made it hard for her to want to fall asleep. Usually, Lua’nna would have to sleep in the same bed as her so that Mythrae felt safe.
Part Three: Teenager
⚠️ TW - mentions of canon-relevant violence and suicidal thoughts ⚠️
First Love:
Over the years, Mythrae developed deep feelings for Kalandrin. Looking back, she suspected he may have felt similar feelings for her, but they never acted on them and thus were never romantically involved. But they were very close, and they even got matching tattoos on their face and neck.
Rebellion/Running Away:
Not long after her thirteenth birthday, the nightmares consuming her were all too powerful, affecting her mood and thought process. She became very anxious that these urges would soon take over, and she would hole herself in her room, away from others. Sometimes she would find herself arguing with Lua’nna, too afraid to confide in her about the visions she was having. This did drive a wedge in their mother/daughter relationship, and Lua’nna tried to chalk it up to typical teenaged hormones.
Otherwise, there wasn’t any specific rebellion or running away that she would do.
Reckless Behavior:
One fateful night, the urges finally took over and she had her first killing spree. First, she stabbed Lua’nna to death while she was sleeping in her bed. She then left their house in the Upper City, electrocuting any passerby that crossed her path. She snuck into Kalandrin’s house by climbing into his bedroom window. She had planned to stab him as well, yet he was awake in his room, reading a book. He thought that she was finally confessing her love for him, but instead, she cut his head off, keeping it as a prize for herself.
Her urge faded as she held Kalandrin’s head in her hands. Appalled by the grotesque scene, she quickly dropped his head, fleeing his bedroom as fast as she could. She didn’t stop running until she was at the docks of the Grey Harbor, debating whether or not she should let herself drown for her crime.
Peer Pressure:
While she was debating whether she should jump into the harbor, Sceleritas Fel arrived, telling Mythrae that everything would be fine, that she was destined to become a cold-blooded killer for her father, Bhaal. He pressured her away from committing suicide, and instead, starting her life anew in the Temple of Bhaal. Knowing that her reputation would be tarnished come morning if she didn’t go with him, she accepted, following him back into the sewers where her mother found her so many years ago.
Taking Responsibility:
In a way, Mythrae never publicly took responsibility for the lives she took that night. If anything, she was encouraged to continue her slaughtering, which she did to please Bhaal. But internally, she knew that she had wronged them — and so many people after — and she hated herself for it. She secretly wished for her old life back, and that her urges could fade away into nothing.
Part Four: Adulthood
⚠️ TW - mentions of rape/sexual assault ⚠️
BEFORE THE NAUTILOUD…
Serious Relationships:
Her first and only serious relationship was with Lord Enver Gortash, who had approached her about hatching a plan between the Chosen of the Dead Three. He had a charm about him that immediately drew her in, and they fell for each other quite quickly while working together to enslave the Elder Brain. He had even proposed to her with a ring she wore throughout most of the game events.
Their “First Time”:
Mythrae has pledged herself to celibacy until Bhaal instructed her to sire a new Bhaalspawn, originally planned to be with Gortash. However, Orin had disguised herself as the Chosen of Bane and attacked Mythrae, taking her virginity in the Temple of Bhaal before knocking her unconscious with her blade.
Work:
Up until Orin had attacked her, Mythrae was the leader of the Church of Bhaal, acting as the High Priestess over the congregation, preaching her father's word and leading various rituals.
Leaving Home:
A bit unique for Mythrae, considering it wasn’t her choice to leave home in the first place. She had no intention of ever leaving Baldur’s Gate or the Temple of Bhaal. So, when she woke up on the Nautiloud flying through the Hells, she knew something wasn’t right and that (at bare minimum) she was not meant to be here.
Aging:
Mythrae never really gave much of a thought to her age. She was young for an elf (around 139), and since elves can live for hundreds of years past that, she knew she had plenty of time to live a full life (devoted to Bhaal).
Finding Your Place
Mythrae was made to believe that the Temple of Bhaal was her place. That she would spend the rest of her days here, following every command her father gave to her. Thought she thought that maybe, just maybe, she was destined to do more with her life.
Starting A Family (Found or Otherwise)
She found family with the other Bhaalspawn in the Temple, however, her relationship with her siblings was very strained. They all wanted to be their father's favorite, especially Orin, who did not think Mythrae was worthy of her title.
Of course, she had planned to have Gortash as her husband when he became Archduke of Baldur's Gate so they could rule together, and also produce as many Bhaalspawn as father desired. Then, Mythrae was to kill Gortash, and become the rightful ruler of the city.
DURING GAME/AFTER THE ELDER BRAIN…
Serious Relationships:
After she escaped the Nautiloud, Mythrae didn't even give any thought to a potential serious relationship, as she was just trying to survive. However, she and Astarion grew very close, sharing similar traumas and feelings about the world. She didn't judge him for being a vampire, and he didn't judge her for the murderous urges, even after she tried to kill him. Their relationship further blossomed into a deep bond and they helped each other become better throughout their journey.
Their “First Time”:
Her first time (that wasn’t part of a planned attack) didn’t even happen until Act 3 with Astarion, after they had defeated Cazador for good. He had tried to seduce her before (Act 1 romance scene), but the trauma of her previous attack prevented her from moving forward, which the memory of it was explicitly shown to Astarion via tadpole connection.
But by the time Cazador was defeated, both of them felt comfortable and ready to share their first time with each other at his gravestone (and it was great. might write about it someday)!
Work:
After she rejected Bhaal, Mythrae found herself with nowhere to go. So, she and Astarion begin life in the Underdark together as mercenaries for hire. With her powerful spells and his sharpshooter skills, they become infamous throughout the land, with some Lolth-sworn drow ending up on the hunt after them. But as long as they have each other, they’ll be more than happy.
Leaving Home:
It wasn’t the easiest decision, but Mythrae's biggest concern is Astarion living somewhere where he did not have to worry about the sun scorching his skin, so she told him that she would be willing to leave Baldur's Gate to be with him in the Underdark, where he would be safe.
Aging:
Nowadays, the thought of her aging comes up a bit more often. She knows that she can still live for hundreds of years with Astarion by her side, but at the same time, one day she will die, and he will live on without her. But she doesn't want him to think about it yet, so she tells herself it's a conversation they'll have further down the line.
Finding Your Place:
At first, Mythrae was cautious to move to the Underdark with Astarion, truth be told. Lua’nna had never taken her there, though she shared her stories of her adventures down there. The only time she had gone were with her other companions on the way to Baldur’s Gate, and it was… a bit much, truth be told. But with her love by her side, they are able to find a home to make their own, getting into the routine of mercenary work and traveling through the lands to find any vampires that might need their help.
Starting A Family (Found or Otherwise):
To her, the party members she’d grown so close to over so little time had become her found family. Sure, she and Astarion may not be able to see them as often as they’d like, but they continue to gather every six months so they can catch up on their lives and remember the good (and bad) times. Mythrae also kept correspondence with Gale often, as he is researching the cure for vampirism at Blackstaff Academy.
Mythrae and Astarion know the risks that having a dhampir child could bring and the potential of bringing about another Bhaalspawn to the world, so they decide to not have children. They do have a sphinx cat, named Fluffington, that they treat like their own child, though. They’re the kind of cat parents to dress their pet up in cute little outfits for holidays and festivals!
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bloodred-quills · 2 years
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You have a mark that looks like a hickey
Characters: Yoimiya, Sara, Xinyan, Lumine (separate)
Reader: gender-neutral (no pronouns)
Wordcount: 777
Warnings: none
My notes: this was all made due to me finding an old little prompt I've written a year ago. Enjoy and thank me from the past for this.
~♤~
Yoimiya
You came to help out in her workshop since the summer festival was coming soon, as usual, her family's work was throughly requested.
Because of how hot it was outside you wore a more lose fit shirt that day which permitted her to spot it.
As soon as she got the chance she marched up to you and pulled down on your collar to reveal the red-ish mark at the base of your neck. "What's this?" She asked in a teasing tone, thinking she's caught you red handed.
"A birthmark." You responded seemingly unfazed, you've had this exact conversation with a lot of people by now.
"Uh huh, and since when did you have this birthmark?" She questioned with a smirk.
"Since birth." You tried to look her dead in the eyes to get the message across. Your red face was not helping, just why did she have to get so close and personal?
"Alright alright, I believe you." She definitely didn't, but backed away nonetheless.
Sara
Having grew up in the environment she did, I don't think she really knows what a hickey is. When she sees it she genuinely thinks it's a bruise.
She's a bit of a worry walter when it comes to important matters, amongst which you lay at the very top alongside her duties towards Inazuma and the Shogun. She's shy to admit to it but it's quite obvious.
Once she spots it she rushes to you brows furrowed "how did this happen?" She questions while hovering her hand over the side of your neck.
You've given her exactly one second of silence, while you processed what she was referring to, before she has taken your wrist in her firm grip heading for the closest medical supplies.
She sat you down and went for what she needed to patch you up and it clicked inside your head. "Oooh, you don't need to Sara." You said catching her wrists as she was reaching for your neck. "It's just a birthmark" you completed.
"Oh." She let out surprised, how did she not see it before?
"I know it looks like a hickey but, I can confidently say it's been there since I was a baby."
"Excuse me but, what's a ... hickey?" Boy oh boy, you never thought you'd ever have this conversation.
Xinyan
Totally chill about it, if not a little excited.
You two just returned from the market and were sorting the groceries out in the kitchen.
"Hey Xinyan," she turned her head to see you rising a jar up pointing towards its label "let's jam." You barely manage to get out through your giggles.
"You're such a dork." She chuckled watching you almost drop the jar from laughter. Your shuffling made your shirt tug down reveling the purple-ish spot on your neck.
Legit gasped.
"Rockstar, you never told me you found someone! You should totally bring them over sometime." You two have been flatmates for quite a while and you've never shown interest in dating so you can imagine.
Following her gaze you almost started laughing again. "Chill girl, that's just a birthmark. If I was dating you'd know everything by now."
Her smile broadened for a moment before her eyebrows furrowed. "But how haven't I seen it before?"
"No idea, it's not like I ever tried to hide it." Maybe it was the fact your closet was full with button up shirts and turtlenecks. But who was she to judge, she's made one for your birthday after all.
Lumine
She didn't wanna say anything about it in the beginning.
You two were out in the sun doing commisions like usual and she happened to see it, a knowing smirk graced her face for a moment before she returned to what she was doing.
Unfortunately her pixie friend was observant and quite obnoxious. "Hey S/O! What's that red spot on your neck?"
Shaking her head and internally sighing Lumine turned, ready to scold her friend from being noisy and not minding her business.
Yet her eyes were glued to you, just as curios for your answer thought trying not to show.
"It's a birthmark Paimon, I've got a bunch of those all across." You've explained, putting down what you were carring to turn fully to the duo.
So that was it, huh? Lumine tought it quite the anticlimactic end, ignoring the relief weaving through her body at her assumption being proven wrong.
"Whoa! Can you show Paimon your other marks?" The pixie inquired with innocent curiosity in her eyes.
"Paimon, no." Lumine interjected before you had the chance to lift your shirt.
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tonyandzivauk · 11 months
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Health update.
I know I keep vanishing and then coming back randomly but trust me it's not because I don't want to be here, it's because of everything I have going on right now. Finding the time or energy is really fucking hard right now. I do lurk in the back ground and I am still working on finishing the pic spams...but again...I have so much going on now that it's unreal.
I work two jobs. Me and my partner bought our first home a year ago. We are a couple months closer to move in but its just been such a long and stressful journey to get this far. I'm working two jobs so we can afford to do the things we want now in terms of fixing it up so we don't have to ever do it again. I am a high school teacher during the week and a worker in an Autisic Centre of the weekends and school holidays.
As some of you may know, 8 years ago I suddenly was unable to walk properly due to pain in my hips. After xrays, they found I have Dysplasia in both my hips which caused arthritis in both. So I was thrown into the world of being disabled as I couldn't walk properly and I was in so much pain. 2 years later, after many attempts to save both hips, I had total hip replacement of the right hip. 6 months later I had a total hip replacement of the left hip. Recovery was awful. Months later I started suffering with pain in multiple joints. My knees would give way. My ankles would swell. My left sholder was very painful when moving it and would lock quite a bit. Going to the doctors to speak about this would result in me being told that it's just pain from the hips travelling down to my joints and up my back.
So I carried on. I had to. I didn't have another choice. Couple of months later, couple of ER/A&E trips, I got sent to a rheumatology consultant. He did a blood draw and said that I had no sign of an autoimmune problem so it must be Fybromyalgia. Now. I do believe I have Fybromyalgia. I have the emotional trauma from growing up with an abusive, alcoholic & gambling addict dad. Developed eating disorder from the age of 18...and I've had the physical trauma of the back to back surgery's. So it's fits. All the symptoms fit.
However, with my family's history of arthritis at very young ages (my mum needed them at 20, my auntie needed them at 23, my nan needed them in her 20s and I needed them at 21). Most of those woman have arthritis in a lot of other joints to. So I needed to push for further investigation.
My left hip replacement hasn't felt good at all since it was done. It is that bad that I actively call it my "bad hip". And tell people we don't celebrate that hips birthday. The pain has gotten much much MUCH worse. If I stand for more than 30 seconds on that hip, I get stuck. I can be taken out of action for days if I do too much activity because of the pain. I take 80mg of slow release morphine every day and other pain killers. That doesn't help much at all.
So, I asked my rheumatologist to please xray the hip replacements and please xray my sholder as it was getting worse. Its hard when you get a diagnosis of fibromyalgia because doctors like to see that and not look any further then you are complaining of joint pain. It's very hard.
I got the xrays.
Sholder: he rang me with the results. His statement was that I have Dysplasia in my sholder. The joints don't fit properly which is what is causing the pain. He also stated that this hasn't changed since the last xray I had done when it was originally flagged....excuse me? I was so confused. Eventually I remembered that during my second hip replacement, the hospital suspected a post op blood clot in my lungs, so they did a chest xray. When this xray was done, there was a red flag on it that said I had Dysplasia of the sholder. That was 5 years ago. No one said a word to me. It wasn't in my notes. When I say I was so angry, I was soooooo angry. But at least I had an answer other than "oh you have fibro, that's what's causing the pain." Since then, no one has been in touch about a treatment plan etc. That will be my next issue to fight for I guess.
The Hip: the replacements looked fine. They were not loose. Which is brilliant! However, I had extreme pain from it. So I was referred to a hip specialist. This guy was the guy who did all of mu family hip replacements so it was nice to be under him if there was a problem with my replacement. I went to see him 2 weeks ago. He sent me for a CT on my pelvis. He agreed that there was no issue with the hip other than nerve pain which isn't really worth opening back up again due to the risk of infection and the fact that I will need new hips in 10 years anyway. So, Great. Nothing wrong with the hips. I'll just have to get on with the nerve pain. He told me he had bad news though. He pulled up my CT scan and showed me that I had arthritis in sacratic joint on the left side. That is what is causing me the intense pain. That is what is causing me to get stuck in certain positions. All he can offer me for that first is injections into the joint and physical therapy. He told me that it's going to be a long journey with a lot of work.
When I say I sobbed. I sobbed. Another fucking thing that is wrong with my body. I feel like I am just broken. I find it hard to put into words how all this makes me feel but tbh nothing was as bad as it was when I got a letter through the door from the same doctor.
He mentioned everything he said in the appointment about the joint issue on the left side. But he also had taken another look at my scans and he said there is degenerative changes in my lumbar spine. Arthritis in the bottom half of my spine. What do I do with that? I was in work when I read that and honestly I did my best to keep it together but I couldn't do it. I just cried my eyes out. I think reading his words, "Elisha knows that this is something she will have to deal with for many years and it is not going to go away." I am honestly broken. I don't know why this is happening. I don't get how I've gone from where I was before I turned 21, perfectly healthy other than the eating disorder, to being 30 with arthritis in the bottom half of my spine, arthritis in my joint that connects the pelvis to the spine, 2 hip replacements & a Dysplastic sholder. I honestly feel like I should ask for a whole body scan just to get it out of the way. Just find out everything.
What also has freaked me out is that he said I have myelitis in my spine. If you do your research you will understand why this has freaked me the fucked out.
I do my best to keep it together because I know there are people with a much worse medical history but I am just broken. I am always in pain. But I'm trying to keep going. I worked to hard to give up and become bed bound, but I know there will come a time when this won't be something I can stop.
I had to get this off my chest as I am sure my partner is sick of hearing it as he's living with it daily while being with me. And I know it upsets my mum, she feels guilty for some reason.
But yeah, that's the update. This is why I go missing but school holidays is when I can come back more often
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soldierswar · 2 years
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Broken Mirrors - Chapter II
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Bucky Barnes x Assassin!Reader
Angst/fluff/eventual smut/enemies to lovers
Chapter warnings: Swearing
Reader POV/ Some Bucky POV
Masterlist
Series Plot: You are an agent of a secret organization called UNITY that you had been training with your entire life. After your first successful assassination, just as you think that you had gotten away with it you are suddenly visited by none other than Bucky Barnes that will bring you on a journey that will lead to you learning about hidden parts of your life that will have you questioning your past, present, and future.
.........................................................
Fuck. 
Fuck. 
Fuck. 
Fuck. 
Fuck.
Part of you wondered if you would have preferred the SWAT team. 
You decided to try to play it cool…As cool as someone could play being a new assassin and The Winter fucking Soldier showing up at their house.
“What are you doing here?”
Why you decided to ask that question as if you two were familiar with each other was kind of beyond you.
He sighed.
“I think you know exactly why I’m here, Y/N.” 
You tried to pretend like you didn’t almost start choking on your own breath. How did he know your name? Regardless of the shock, you weren’t going to make this easy for him.
“Who?” you replied innocently. 
He rolled his eyes. 
“Y/N…” 
“I don’t know who that person is. I think you’re in the wrong apartment.” 
He let out a dark amused chuckle.
“Sweetheart, I invented that line.”
You narrowed your eyes. 
“Well if you’re so sure of who I am, prove it,” you challenged even though you were 99% sure that the only person that you were fooling was yourself. 
He raised an eyebrow and shrugged. 
“Y/N, Y/L/N. 26 years old. 5’7, approximately 145lbs. Daughter of Edgar Forbes, and Penelope Y/L/N. Your father at the age of 36 died from a suspicious car accident three months before your newly widowed mother at the age of 24 found out that she was four months pregnant. After she died days after you were born, your maternal uncle Charles, and Anya Y/L/N took you in and raised you as the daughter that they never thought that they could have. On the outside you had what seemed to be a normal childhood…well… as normal as someone who was homeschooled could be. But on the inside, you began training at the age of 8 years old to be a part of UNITY, the organization that your uncle is one of the founders of. Through them, you learned combat skills through martial arts, learned how to use a multitude of weapons, and mastered 3 languages. By the age of 17 you were finally able to begin working on missions, and by 26 executed your first assassination. Am I wrong?” 
You had to bite your tongue. Your first assignment was on your 16th birthday. You remembered that because your uncle thought that you might have been ready by the time you were 14, but 16 was “better than 20”. And it was four languages…But he was close enough.
You stared at him blankly attempting to mask your shock.
“Again,” you scoffed. 
“Who you’re referring to sounds pretty cool, but you’re going to have to look somewhere else to find–” 
Before you could finish he pulled out his phone and revealed a grainy photo of you working on a mission that you did about a month ago. There was no mistaking that it was you either with your long curly dark hair, brown skin, and tall slender frame. 
You remembered that day clearly. You were wearing a long black silk dress with a v-neckline that nearly reached your belly button, accompanied by a nice pair of black red bottoms. That day you accompanied your uncle to a big fancy event at a hotel ballroom. Your job was to sneak into the hotel room of a new weapons developer to steal his blueprints for one of his newest projects. It was a difficult mission, especially since the blueprints were in a tiny jumpdrive that was locked away in a heavy-duty safe. But that accomplished mission granted you the clearance to graduate to the rank of assassin due to the levels of stealth needed.
Your head began to pound. You were glad that he wasn’t talking because all you could hear at that moment was the blood pumping in your head.
You were officially busted.
“You here to turn me in?” 
And he said something that surprised you. 
“No.” 
Now you were extra confused. 
“Then what do you want? To help us?” 
He snorted, shooting a ‘you’re joking, right?’ look. 
You tilted your head and narrowed your eyes.
“Then what the hell do you want?” 
“I need,” he started, but paused as if he was realizing that he needed to choose his next words carefully. 
“I need you to come with me.” 
Bucky’s POV
For over an hour all she would do was keep her eyes glued to the tv. She watched the screen show the same semi-censored versions of that politician talking and then falling to the ground from different angles on repeat. She watched the family of the politician give their testimony of events with a look of horror in her eyes. Bucky could tell that the event made her anxious by the way that she was chewing on her knuckle. 
He couldn’t figure out why she seemed nervous. Was she anxious about the idea of being caught? Was she analyzing the many angles of footage that could accidentally link her to what happened? Did she maybe have regrets?
No, her expression didn’t seem to emote those specific thoughts. She just seemed…shocked. 
Bucky spent a few hours sporadically checking in on her through binoculars through the window deciding on when it would be a good time to make his entrance. 
Whoever Y/N was, she had very important links to very dangerous people and was proving to be a very important asset. And who better to corner than someone who was raised by one of the big bosses? 
For a moment she disappeared and seemed to go into the bathroom bringing in a towel with her. 
This was when he decided to make his move. 
He made his way over to the alleyway and climbed his way up the side of the building on the ladder. She really needed to be a little more careful with her security. Her bedroom window was wide open making it way too easy for him to get in. Her guard was way too low for someone who should at this time be laying low. 
Regardless, when he made his way up he scanned the entrance for any kind of traps with his device that looked like a regular iPhone. When it was clear that everything about the window entrance and bedroom was good, he made his way in. 
It was a large room with clothes everywhere. It seemed like a room for someone who wasn’t at home much at all and just threw clothes around when leaving in a rush, or too tired to put clothes away after a long day. Considering what Y/N did for a living, it wasn’t difficult to deduce that that was exactly what her life was like. 
As for the rest of the apartment, it was a really nice and modern place, and it was clear that whoever was paying for it had a lot of money. 
Bucky could hear Y/N was taking a long hot shower, and he wondered how long it would take for her to get out. He had time…He just didn’t have patience.
He decided to use the time to examine the premises a little more thoroughly. Did she have weapons? Papers lying around? Anything that could tell him a little bit more about what he was dealing with? Because the guy that called him and gave him the tip on whatever was going on was pretty vague. For all that he knew, this could be a trap. He just knew that once he had you cornered he was going to learn a little bit more whether it was from her, or from someone else. 
The only thing that he could find was a Beretta handgun that was in a hidden drawer in the kitchen. He wondered how many of them were in the house. Someone like her had to be on high alert all of the time, and ready for the need to use them at any time …Of course, she did carelessly keep her bedroom window wide open so he was really questioning her judgment at this point. 
Finally, the bathroom door opened. 
She wore a giant sweatshirt and sweatpants with a towel on her head. At first, she didn’t notice anything. She just nonchalantly turned the tv off and then began to make her way to her bedroom. 
When she passed by the kitchen and finally saw him, her eyes widened and she looked like she was about to scream. But she seemed so scared that she couldn’t let it out. She just froze. 
“What the hell are you doing here?” she gasped. 
The rest of her questions didn’t come out of her mouth, but it was written all over her face. 
‘Who are you? Why are you here? What’s going on?’ 
“Y/N, Y/L/N?” he asked. 
She frowned in confusion. 
“Who?” 
He sighed looking directly into her eyes.
“We don’t need to make this harder than it has to be.” 
Her eyes widened and her brow furrowed even more, and he could see her ever so slightly turn her gaze over to the drawer that held her gun. But he was standing too close to it for her to get to it fast enough. 
“Then what the fuck do you want?” her voice shook, and she was on the verge of tears. 
He held his hands up nonchalantly. 
“I’m not here to hurt you.” 
She seemed to not be so sure about that statement. 
“I’m not here to turn you in either…At least not yet.” 
She seemed even more horrified. 
“Turn me in?” she croaked.
“For what?”
“Must I spell it out?” he answered.
She shook her head.
“I don’t know who you think you’re looking for…But I’m not this…What’s her name? I’m not who you think I am.” 
She was kind of good at pouring the drama on thick.
Suddenly her cell phone rang, making her jump. He could tell that she wanted to answer it. And when he thought about it, he figured that it might be best that she did. She probably wasn’t going to tell them who was in her kitchen just yet. She might want to give whoever was calling them the illusion that everything was fine. 
He gestured to let her know that it was okay to answer the phone. With her trembling hands, she grabbed the phone from the kitchen counter. He could see that the name on the phone said, ‘Dad’.  
“Hello?” she answered, her voice sounding a little too shaky for his comfort. 
“Mia?” he could hear the voice answer with intent. He recognized it as the guy who contacted him the night before.
“Mia, give him the phone. It’s gonna be okay.” 
Mia? Who the hell was Mia? 
“Dad…What’s going on?” 
“Mia, it’s going to be okay. Just hand the phone over to him. You’re safe,” 
“But dad,” she fussed.
“Mia!” he snapped. 
“Give him the fucking phone.” 
She listened and passed it over to him. 
“Hello?” Bucky answered. 
“Sargent Barnes?” he replied. 
“Just call me Bucky. Now the hell am I here in front of?”
Mia had her knuckle in her mouth to soothe her panic. 
“Dad, who fuck is Y/N?” she called out frantically. 
He ignored the question. 
“Y/N is out there,” he answered. 
“I just needed you to get to Mia first to take her to safety.” 
Bucky frowned.
“I didn’t sign up to be a bodyguard,” he stated. 
“I know,” the man replied. 
“But if we want to make sure we take these people down correctly, I need to ensure that my daughter will be safe.” 
“And how am I supposed to do that?” 
The phone suddenly buzzed from a text message. 
“Here are the coordinates to a safe house we have about an hour away from here. I need you to take her there. And when you find Y/N…Bring her there too.” 
Bucky tilted his head.
“And how exactly is putting Y/N the assassin and Mia in the same house safe?” 
Mia’s eyes widened. 
“Please, just…trust me,” he said.
“When you get to her, do whatever it takes to get Y/N to go with you without anyone following you. They both need your help.”  
Both? 
“Again. I didn’t sign up to be a bodyguard,” Bucky pointed out.
“And for the most part, you won’t be. Especially with Y/N around. We just need them as far away from UNITY as possible at the moment.” 
Before handing the phone back to Mia he ensured that he would be filled in on everything that he could as soon as Mia was at the safe house where everything would be secure, and there was no chance of anybody following them or listening to their conversations. When Mia got the phone back he could hear the father reassuring his daughter that it was going to be okay and that this wasn’t going to be like last time. 
He wondered what happened in the past that made it so dire for her protection now, and what happened in the past. But it was clear to him then that he was about to find out, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.
Y/N’s POV
You couldn’t believe that you let yourself follow along with this guy. You wanted to lie to yourself and say that you decided to ‘trust him’ because you were just intrigued…But the truth was you were a little too scared to admit to your superiors so early on in your ranking that you had been caught. But also…you figured that you could at some point get yourself out of this situation once you were able to find out what he knew. Your uncle probably wouldn’t be as angry if you were able to shut down anything and anyone who could expose you guys. You decided to turn it around into being a sort of…investigative experience.
“Can I take this stupid disguise off now?” you protested in the back of the car with tinted windows. 
To get you out of the building without suspicion, the soldier had you put on a mask that through some form of cyber nanotechnology gave you a completely different face. The face of someone who just so happened to live in the same building as you. Unfortunately, the technology wasn’t advanced enough to not be itchy. 
When you agreed to go with him he swiftly sat you down in the back seat of a black Lexus with tinted windows and ordered you to keep the stupid mask on. 
“I didn’t stutter the first four times. Not until we get there.” 
You let out an exaggerated groan. 
“Didn’t you learn how to not act like a 16-year-old?” he snapped. 
“Depends. Will you send me back if I continue?” 
He huffed and rolled his eyes. You just shrugged. 
“Is it wrong for me to ask where we’re going?” you asked with a charming tone. 
“You’ll find out when we get there,” he growled.
“And thank God it’s only 5 more minutes away.”
Through your discomfort, you enjoyed getting on his nerves. You enjoyed getting on his nerves almost as much as you enjoyed the sightseeing that came with the drive. You were headed to the countryside of New York. You loved seeing the countryside in its summer glory with its vast amounts of green trees, grass, and its array of stylized houses. It kind of reminded you of your childhood when the family would go up to the summer house in Connecticut. Those were moments in your life that were actually a little bit normal. There would be huge picnics thrown in the backyard, and you’d get to play with the other kids without focusing so hard on all of your responsibilities that were thrust upon you at such an early age…
Not that you were complaining. 
You were doing good work. And one day, it would all be worth it…As long as you got through these next few days in one piece and/or out of a maximum-security penitentiary. 
Finally, the car came to a complete stop. 
Your destination was a small house at the end of a small road in the woods.
“You know if you wanted to take me out on a date to your summer cottage you could have just asked.” 
He shot you another long glare. 
“Granted I would have definitely said no.” 
He didn’t even acknowledge that last part before parking. 
You had to wait for him to come out and open the door for you because of the activated child-lock on backseat doors so that you wouldn’t try to roll out mid-drive. When he came around and did you pretended to curtsy like a princess arriving at a ball.
“Such a gentleman.” 
 He just stared at you before giving you the okay to take the mask off. Thank goodness.
When you had first arrived you were very confused about what you were doing at a small but cute little cottage in the middle of nowhere. But when you walked in, it was clear that there was a lot more to this house than you thought. When he opened the front door just a few feet away stood a heavy-duty safe-lock of a door that was only accessible via handprint. This was either a safe house or something a lot darker than that.
Maybe this was a big mistake. Was this an actual hostage situation? Maybe you didn’t actually trust your skills to get out of this mess. But unfortunately, it was too late to back down, and there was no way to call for help. 
“Come on,” he said. 
“I’m here to lock you in a basement.” 
You still felt too anxious to move. 
“You can choose to trust me, or I can carry you in.” 
You flared your nostrils and soothingly wrapped one arm around your torso, and bit back the urge to bring your hand anywhere near your mouth.
The house was exponentially larger on the inside than it looked from the outside. 
From the outside, you could only see the upstairs portion that looked like a standard small cottage. The real house was down a flight of stairs which consisted of a large living room, multiple bedrooms, and all of the amenities that would make hiding out quite comfortable. Hell, it made going on a little staycation look extra comfy.
As you walked down the stairs you could hear a little bit of movement in one of the corners of the living room.
“Hey, is that you?” you heard an eerily familiar and anxious female voice call out. 
“Yeah,” he replied, sounding way less annoyed with her than he was with you. 
The familiarity of her voice was eerie, and it unsettled you. You knew you had reason to feel that way, but you couldn’t quite figure out why yet. That was until you came face to face with the source. 
The voice sounded familiar because it was your voice. 
And the face staring back…was yours.
Note: I'd like to thank my new readers so much for liking this so much. I'm so excited about what's to come in the upcoming chapters. I hope you like reading it almost as much as I love writing it. <3
Tagged readers: @lethallyprotected @ryunniez
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queennicoleinboots · 3 months
Text
Patches' Nightmare, part 1
A/N: Thanksgiving holiday drama at its finest for the fourth year in a row
The Rock Fish in the English Channel was a complete self-centered, self-important, self-righteous asshole with no concept of how to be thankful for anything. He was 58 years old and 10 feet long and still hadn't grown up or learned much of anything. That's where being a Neanderthal who takes testosterone and eats 30,000 calories a day gets you. He isn't any different from the rest of his Neanderthal family, really. In fact, he's worse because he had plenty of time to know better.
Sure I felt bad for his head being a rock, but Kings Chocolate-covered Gummy Bears, Queen Nicole, the two Lindsays, the two Patches, King Bruce Ace, Queen Megen Ace, and I have been cooking Thanksgiving dinner for him for six days now. He could focus on what we are doing for him instead of his own self-centered, self-important, self-righteous giant head. It's his own fault anyway. "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is a dumb way to live. How about taking a few herbs, drinking carp and red, red wine, and actually sleeping?! And I can't believe he needed to manifest a doctor to tell him the same thing I just did! I told him in more detail than the doctor/death dealer did. The Rock Fish became a complete idiot.
I am so sick of dumbass people and dumbass holidays around me. So naturally I flipped the fuck out. I told people six years ago that I was sick of this damn shit. I have cussed my mom the fuck out for six and a half years in a row, too. It turns out she was a spy for the French Intelligence Agency. So if this dumbass rock fish thinks I'm not about to blow, he is truly out of his fucking mind.
The cats named Patches hissed in stereo.
This is what the fuck I gotta say:
"Well, I'm dropping off the food in YOUR REALITY. I don't have room in my reality for your stupid dumb fucking bullshit! AND I TOLD YOU THE SAME SHIT THAT DAMN DOCTOR/DEATH DEALER TOLD YOU BUT IN MORE DETAIL. YOU ARE REALLY PISSING ME OFF TODAY!
You are the most self-centered, self-important POS asshole I've ever fucking met in my fucking life!!!!!!!
I am going out of my way to make a nice holiday for you, and you COMPLETELY ruined mine over your stupid fuckass head!
Get it together and learn to actually be thankful!!!! You're 58 years old and you're still clueless about what being THANKFUL is or what the word fucking means!"
This is what the fuck the Rock Fish had to say:
"Wait a cotton-picking minute! When I woke up this morning, I found one of my quills in a stream of four miles of piss. I swam in it! That's what sent me into a different reality. Calm the fuck down; I'm back to this reality.
These holidays gave me a headache, stressed me the fuck out. Calm the fuck down.
I couldn't tell you how many times I've been called self-centered, self-important, and self-righteous. You forgot to mention self-absorbed, lol."
The Kings Chocolate-covered Gummy Bears growled. "Please eat and shut the fuck up both of you. This is what the fuck I gotta say: Fuck these pointless scruffles, number 1. Now that we got that out of the way. Number 2, I hate these God-forsaken holidays. Nine years ago, there was an epic battle with over-cooked flaxseed brownies. I hated those evil brownies, Mama Bear's malfunctioning oven, and my degenerate family. Every year, something fucked up happens. In 713 A.D., Mama Bear growled loud and walked the fuck out of the forest. We didn't see her until a month later, around Saint Nicholas's birthday. Number 3, All I want is for everyone to be thankful and shut the shut the shut the fuck up."
"GIVE ME A BREAK! GIVE ME A BREAK! BREAK ME OFF A PIECE OF SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!" I sang loudly.
"Thanksgiving is fucked without people being thankful," the past Queen Lindsay said as she sat at the table with her royal maroon dress. "Speaking of fucked up, Patches is due for a veterinarian examination."
The two cats named Patches meowed in slow motion. Their eyes were wide, and their mouths were open for a minute/minute and a half. They meowed until my ears bled.
King Angry Chocolate-covered Gummy Bear growled. "I'm never doing this again! Stressed me out! Drove to the grocery store, took 20 separate trips for everyone, spent 3000 gold for you assholes to start squawking bullshit. Don't ask me to do anything again!" he screamed before he bleated.
Cody howled loudly to Swahili singing. The Hatari (762 A.D.) world joined us for Thanksgiving.
"Oh fuck not this bad theatrical performance!" Peter growled as he drank a shot of his Evan Williams and tried to manifest the Little Safari World from Toto's 'Africa'. "These holidays are too much. They are back to back at the end of the year. SEPARATE THEM A LITTLE!!!"
Then the song 'Africa' by Toto played in the background:
youtube
"Arga, where's Missy?" Kurt asked as he jumped off his horse.
"In her room," Arga, the Swahili houseboy, answered.
"Thank you. Get me some coffee, will you?" Kurt asked as he went to Patches' room. The two calico cats shared a room.
Chef Vanilla Mac was swimming in the stream while I was on the other side laying down.
My happy King Chocolate-Covered Gummy Bear was howling fiercely at Kurt and Patches singing, "Whiskey, leave me alone! I just want to go home!!" Kurt, our Patches, and the angry King Chocolate-Covered Gummy Bear disappeared out of that reality.
Peter turned into a giraffe and bleated loudly.
I laughed and turned into a jaguar who looked like Patches. I started eating herb and garlic goat cheese.
Count Vanilla Manilla rested.
Queen Megen Ace was taking a bath, so naturally, I went to check on her.
"Ohhhh!!! Mamma Mia!" Queen Megen Ace screamed and stood up while covering herself with a wool towel.
I walked over and licked her right leg.
"HELLPP!!!!" Queen Megen Ace screamed.
King Bruce Ace rushed in and chased me with a chair. "Don't move! Stand back!" he yelled.
I laughed and walked away playfully.
Kurt returned to this reality. He and John Wayne walked over.
"What's going on here?" Kurt asked. "Patches, why is he poking you with a chair? Come on, let's get out of here. You don't belong here!" He pet me as he ushered me outside.
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falcqns · 3 years
Text
my little flower
pairing: dad!bucky barnes x mom!reader
summary: bucky’s daughter turns one.
warnings: angst, and fluff. probably canon errors but i don’t have the comics on hand sorryyyyy
a/n: just me expressing emotion through mr boobky boobernoobs. also the little letter the reader has written is what i have written for my daughters birthday. LASTLY i know i have a story for Henry Cavill and his daughters name is lavender and i was gonna change it but then it wouldn’t make sense so i just kept it yk. anyways, hope you enjoy.
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Bucky glanced at the clock for what felt like the hundredth time that night.
he was alternating between looking at the clock, his phone, and his sleeping daughter.
she turned one tomorrow, and he had no clue what to write. there were so many things he wanted to say, but he knew he had limited space on instagram captions to do so.
he wasn’t into instagram too much, but some how Sam and Wanda had convinced him to post for his daughters birthday. he had a few other pictures of you and her, and one or two of him on there already.
posting those seemed so easy for him. he took the picture, thought of a caption pre war Bucky would use, and hit post.
but when it came to his daughters birthday? the 106 year old was clueless.
he had asked you for advice, and you had just told him to remember what it felt the first time he held her, which was not helpful, because the first thing he felt was fear.
then, an overwhelming and crushing sense of love. like everything made sense. everything was clearer, because of the tiny little baby in his arms. he was terrified. more scared than he was when he was hanging on to that train for dear life, hoping he could just reach Steve’s hand. more scared than when he knew his memories of Steve and Rebecca and everyone in his past was fading due to Zola and Hydra.
a million times more scared than when he watched himself dust away in that beautiful Wakandan forest.
he was scared, but at the same time, he felt so safe. it was the same kind of safe he felt with you, but more intense. he knew that the little girl he was holding would never judge him for his past. all she would do is love him, love her Tătic.
Tătic. he had heard a Romanian child say it when he was seeking refuge in Bucharest, and he knew that’s what he wanted to be called. not dad, daddy, dada, papa, or any other versions of father. he wanted Tătic.
he felt safe, at home even, in Bucharest. yes, his apartment was rather shitty, but it was his. he had something materialistic and tangible that was fully his, after not having anything, not even his own body, to himself for over 50 years.
Bucky refocused his eyes on his phone, and decided to glance at what you had posted. he sighed as he realized that it was absolutely beautiful, and that nothing he could do would top it.
it was a video of all the firsts that Bucky had insisted on recording. he remembered sitting in his bed, in Bucharest, a few weeks after getting there. he had been thinking about Rebecca, and suddenly, a memory of her first steps came to him. he saw her little chubby body wobble before she took her first steps into their mother’s waiting arms. Bucky knew he couldn’t have been too old, but immediately started sobbing when he realized he’d never get to relive that moment. he didn’t stop sobbing for a good few hours. out of happiness, sadness, regret, he didn’t know. he had scrambled to grab a journal and wrote down every detail of that moment, before stuffing it in his go bag.
reliving it wasn’t something he’d ever thought about before, in 1945. there weren’t affordable video cameras, and there was no way to store them forever. so when Lavender came along, he insisted that every little first be recorded so he could relive it over and over again.
he watched as she took her first breath, rolled for the first time, crawled for the first time, said her first word (it was ‘plum’) and walked for the first time.
his eyes drifted down to the paragraph, and focused on reading the words.
‘lavender.
your name represents purity, silence, devotion, calmness, serenity, and grace. i gave you this name because i know you will represent all of those things. i named you after Lavender Brown from Harry Potter. Lavender was a beautiful, strong, and amazing character. she showered Ron with love, and adoration, which is all i have felt this past year of being your mama. you remind me of Lavender in so many ways. from the smiles i get to see in the morning, to the cuddles i get at night, to the way you, just this week, saw another child crying in daycare and went and offered your toy up without a second thought. you then hobbled away, and found a new toy. you never came to me to show you what you did, you never took another child’s toy now that yours was gone, you just did it. that is something Lavender did. Lavender gave everything to Ron without a second thought. she may not have been appreciated, but i will appreciate you and all of the little things that you do to help others, even at just a year old. you bring light and love to whoever is near you. you love with your whole being, which i adore. you’re only one, but you put your hands in the air and sing (babble, really) along to every single praise song, you dance, you sit quietly during prayer, and most importantly you love God with everything in your tiny little body. from the moment the nurses laid your even tinier body on my chest, it was just you, me, and your father. i had dreamed of that moment for years, but nothing compared to it. one year ago today, you were placed on my chest, a screaming red little bundle, and you instantly calmed down. i remember looking down at you and being so happy that i finally had my little girl. i remember thinking “God really sent me an angel in the form of a baby,” which is EXACTLY what he did. you are my sweet baby girl, and always will be. i will love and. adore you for the rest of my life. my sweetie pie, my Laffy Taffy, my love. my little flower, Lavender. happy birthday.’
how could he follow that?
he took another glance at the crib that sat at the end of the bed, and watched as his daughter sighed, and pushed her diapered butt up in the air before continuing to snooze.
he looked down at his phone, and decided to just follow his heart. let the words flow. it didn’t matter if it made sense, but he wanted the world to know just how much he loved her.
he took a deep breath, and began to type.
‘lavender rebecca barnes.
there are so many words that i could use to describe how wonderful, sweet, kind, adorable, and gracious you are, but even all of those could never fully express how much i love you, and how much you mean to me.
when your mom told me about you, i was terrified. i have done so many bad things in my life, why was God rewarding me with a tiny little human? i spent so many nights praying to God that i would never hurt you. that you would never see me as the world does. that you would never judge me for the things that i did.
but i didn’t have to worry. the second i saw your little face, all of those stresses and anxieties melted away. as i held you, i realized that you were mine. fully mine. having something of my own is something that i was deprived of for many years, and one day you will learn about that.
when i held you for the first time, i was petrified. you were tiny. the smallest, but most real thing i had ever held. you didn’t cry, you just gazed up at me. almost as if you knew i was your Tătic. that you knew i was your father.
your mother tells me that when babies are born, they don’t understand the grasp of ‘mother and father’, they more recognize who is a safe caregiver and who isn’t.
you, without a hesitation, recognized me as a safe caregiver, and have stood by that every one of these last 365 you have graced me, your mother, and everyone around you with your presence.
it has been a pleasure to watch you grow, and as much as it makes me sad knowing that one day you’ll know the truth about me, i know you won’t judge me. i know you will love me for me. the man who created you, who helped give you life.
you are such a special little girl, and i can only hope to show you just how special you are for the rest of my life.
i love you, lavender rebecca barnes.’
his thumb shook as it hovered over the post button, but he pressed it anyways. the screen brought up a loading symbol for less than a second, and then the post was there.
he shut off his phone, and placed it on the charger next to him, before getting up and walking to the crib.
he lifted her out, and laid her on his chest, before walking back to the bed and sitting down carefully. he gazed down at his daughter, a fact that still blew his mind, as she slept so soundly, even with the coolness of the metal arm probably seeping through the fabric of her white kitty cat onesie.
he glanced over at the clock, and didn’t stop the tear that rolled down his face when it hit 12:00.
“happy birthday, my little flower.”
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Note
Heya! Thank you for answering my request! Now, can I get yandere big bro. Not an incest obviously l. teru, kou and tsukasa and hanako with little sis/bro gn s/o?
Now the thing is s/o usually got a mistreat at school due to people jealous of them (kou,teru) on tsukasa & hanako case (a yokai seems to wanting tsukasa & hanako beloved dead)
However s/o seems to not mind it at all. Btw, s/o is student at the school. And seems to be reincarnated after they die, and seems to believed hanako & tsukasa after they said they were s/o ghost brother and s/o reincarnated.
Now what would be the scenario when they find s/o is sitting on the floor. Wet around their hair and their clothes seems to be been damaged. When they Ask what happen s/o said.
"oh, big brother, I'm sorry...i'm really is...today is your birthday...but..." S/o keep cry and then said this while sobbing so hard "today, there's a girl who want me to introduce her to you. But I want to give you the gift and reject her, the girl obviously didn't take it well and...she make her group do this" "i-i...keep...trying to saving money to buy you this caused i want it to be secret...but-i..guess..there's nothing to give to you" while showing a blue (blue sky) (blue light) kou.
Tsukasa & Hanako Case
"big brother...since this is your both birthday I thought it would be better to get you both a gift. But there's a girl who hate me. I didn't even knew why?" And then s/o just said while sobbing "I..know big brother hanako love donut, and and I'm sure big brother tsukasa loves it too...so I baked a homemade donut, but that girl destroy it...she...she said my cook is the worst and people who eat it will puked and not even a ghost want it" "also she steal the necklace that I buy for you two since she say I did not deserved that"
Green (hanako) red (tsukasa)
Headcannon and oneshot again please!
The Minamoto brothers and the Yugi twins with a bullied younger sibling❣︎
Warings: Hinting to murder?, bullying, abuse, slight cursing
A/n: Hey! Of course of course, I try to answer requests to the best of my ability!
I did this with the siblings combined so hope you don’t mind shshjsh
Heehee hope you enjoy, my love~
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Teru was your older brother and he made that known to the school
You loved the fact that you were known as Teru’s younger sibling
You loved your brother
But you knew you would be used for it
People would fake being your friend just to get close to Teru
Then once they got rejected, they always blamed you
You didn’t mind, you still wanted to be Teru’s younger sibling
Teru slowly picked up on this
He knew something was up so he told Kou
Those two tried to keep a close eye on you
But while they were there, it look like you had lots of friends
But when they left the bullying begun again
But sooner or later, the other girls true colors will start to show
Teru and Kou are protective brothers
The girls in your class should have known to not get on your brothers bad side
“Teru-nii! Looks like you got a lot of presents!” Kou called out, running to his older brother who was standing at the entrance of the school. Teru chuckled and looked back at his backpack which was full with presents from fangirls.
“Well, I guess I do...” Teru patted his younger brother on the head, making him smile brightly. “Where’s Y/n? Aren’t they supposed to be with you after cleaning the bathroom?”
“They are…” Kou's expression turned into a slightly worried one “but they said they had to go early. They told me something about wanting to get something prepared to give to you for your birthday…”
Teru sighed, he was worried. He already had suspicions that you were getting mistreated in your class but he didn’t know for sure so he never confronted you about it. He has confronted Kou about this and he had the same suspictions as well.
“Well let's go get them!” Teru clapped his hands and made his way towards the building.
“Do you think it's…” Kou didn’t want to finish the sentence.
“Let's hope not.” Teru’s carefree expression lowered at the thought. “Do you know where they went?”
Kou thought for a moment.
“No, but I know they aren’t in the old school building…”
Teru and Kou walked around the school for a while, looking for you in no avail. Kou pointed out little droplets of water that slowly got bigger reaching to the school's lockers. The boys froze when they heard sounds of sobbing. They turned the corner to see you facing your lockers drenched in water. You leaned onto your locker, closing it.
“Y/n..!” Kou called out, making you turn to him. “What happened?!”
“Who the hell did this to you…?” Teru asked, examining your ripped close and abused appearance. You looked at him and only cried more.
“I’m sorry big brother Teru…”
“Y/n, you don't need to be sorry, this isn’t your fault..!” Teru hugged you “What happened..?”
“I-its your birthday today… but there was this girl who wanted me to introduce you to her... but I said no, she didn’t take it too well and did this…” You sobbed into his shoulder. Teru’s grip on you tightened thinking about how this only happened while he was outside with Kou.
“I-I saved my money… to buy you a nice sky blue necklace… and I even got big brother Kou light blue one as well… b-but she destroyed it and I don’t have anything to g-give you…”
“Y/n that’s so sweet! We are extremely thankful!” Kou tried to lighten the mood a bit, giving you a gracious smile. You could see tears pricking the corner of his eyes. Teru was still angry that his suspicions were true, he was praying they weren’t.
“Who did this?” Teru sternly asked.
“I-it’s fine Teru…” You kneeled to the ground picking up pieces from the necklace she destroyed “She already left… there is nothing I can do now…”
“Y/n… please…” Kou kneeled down next to you and put his hand on yours.
“Guys, what would make me feel better is if we got home… can we please go home?” Your voice was begging. You just wanted to be in a warm blanket watching T.V. with your siblings.
That's all you wanted right now.
“Okay… I’m sorry Y/n, let's go home okay!” Teru gave you his jacket which you happily accepted.
“Even though I couldn’t get the gift, it meant the world to me!”
----
You sighed walking to your classroom. It was early and you were tired. You were happy your brothers didn’t ask you about it for the rest of the night, you didn’t want them to worry. You thought you would get a load from the girls who did this to you yesterday but you were shocked when she bowed in front of you instead.
“Y/n! I am so sorry! Please forgive me for what I did to you yesterday! It was very rude of me and I am very sorry!” She was shaking.
“Oh, uh, it’s alright..! No need to bow, I forgive you…” You put your hands in front of your chest, genuinely confused. Once she stood straight up you saw a big red mark on her cheek. She had tears in her eyes but ran to her desk before you could get a better look at her. You looked to Tsuchigomori who only nodded with an apologetic look on his face.
‘What happened this morning…?’
----
“Teru? You still look down?” Kou faced his brother as they both walked to class.
“Sorry Kou… just a little upset by the person who did this to Y/n…” Teru apologetically smiled.
“Well you slapped her, that taught her a lesson!” Kou encouraged.
“Trust me Kou,” Teru’s smile turned into a frown
“If a teacher wasn’t there, I would have kicked her ass.”
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Amane found it unforunate you were caught in the crossfire of him and his brothers conflic causing you too kill yourself as well
Tsukasa thought it was great that his younger sibling was now dead too
Gosh Tsukasa-
But what they didn’t expect was for you to get resurrected
You were able to see supernaturals yourself and you couldn’t age from the day you died but you weren’t a ghost like your brothers
Tsuchigamori helped you establish a somewhat normal school life
It was all good for the most part, you were back in school, Hanako was the leader of the 7 mysteries, and Tsukasa was just crazy happy
The fact you are getting mistreated is mostly Tsukasa’s fault
Like he can make a lot of enemies so when the fish yokai (that he killed) saw how close you and Tsukasa were, of course they wanted to kill you
It was also a perk that you were Hanako’s sibling since they wanted to get back at him as well for stealing their princess Yashiro away from them
You were weak and had a human body, you were perfect
Amane had no idea about this, Tsukasa didn’t know you were being abused but he did know he pissed off those fish AND HE PISSED EM OFF GOOD-
You figured you would be a target for yokai since your older brothers are powerful
Of course, you didn’t mind this
You knew this would happen so it’s alright!
But the thing was, it wasn’t so alright with your older brothers
Hanako watched the cherry blossoms fall from the tree that he sat under. It was November 25, his birthday, and you said you wanted to have a talk with the two boys. Normally you would talk to them separately because you knew how Amane felt towards his twin brother, but today you wanted to talk to them together. Hanako cancelled his normal cleaning duty and waited where you said to meet up.
“Amane!!” He heard a scream from behind him but before he could turn around he felt someone hug him, wrapping their legs around his waist.
“Oh, Tsukasa…” Hanako said softly, personally finding this kind of awkward.
“Where’s Y/n?? It’s been so long since I’ve seen them!” Tsukasa removed his head from Amane’s neck looking around for you.
“Oh, they aren’t here yet, and I remember them saying they saw you two days ago…”
“So long ago!” Tsukasa whined and Amane sighed at his childish behavior. It went silent but thankfully Tsukasa quickly broke it.
“Didn’t Y/n say to meet them here 15 minutes ago??”
“Yeah they did…” Amane started to get worried.
“They're late!” Tsukasa pouted.
“You’re late as well Tsukasa… And we should go look for them.”
“I’ll lead the way! I know where their last class is!” He stood up and started marching, Hanako closely behind him.
They walked around the school for a while, watching students run across the halls to their clubs, laughing and gossiping with one another. Tsukasa continued to march, not losing the bounce in his step. They came closer to the sound of someone crying, sobs getting louder as they approached a classroom. The twins looked at each other before Tsukasa opened the door.
You jumped slightly, removing your head from between your legs to look at who came in. You only began to cry more realizing it was your two brothers.
“Y/n…?” Tsukasa slightly whispered to himself, staying at the door's entrance.
“Y/n! What happened?!” Amane ran to you, fearing you were hurt in any way. He put his arm on your wet shoulder, looking around to see if there were any visible bloody wounds. He looked at your uniform which was damaged and had a few cuts in it. Your hair was also wet like if someone poured water on you. Tsukasa slowly made his way over to you, examining you up and down. You couldn’t make out the expression on his face but you knew anger was there.
“I-I’m sorry…” You said a little above a whisper.
“You’re sorry for what..?” Amane asked, moving the wet hair out of your face to get a better look at your soaked, tear-stained face.
“Big brothers...since this is both your birthdays... I thought it would be better to get you both a gift. But there are these fish yokai who don’t like me..!” You picked up a couple red and green gems from the floor. Hanako’s eyes widened.
“I... know big brother Amane liked donuts and I assume big brother Tsukasa likes them as well… but they took the donuts I made you saying my cooking was t-the worst and you wouldn’t want it..!” You continued “And they took the necklace I bought for you guys saying I don’t deserve it…”
“Were they talking fish..?” Tsukasa's voice was cold, eyes wide with rage. You only nodded your head.
“Amane, will you stay with y/n? I have something I need to do.” Tsukasa turned to Amane. Hanako already knew what he was going to do.
He was going to go after the mermaid and her fish. There was nothing he could say to stop him.
“O-okay… do what you have to do…” Amane nodded and Tsukasa left the room.
“W-wait… where is he going..?” You started to get up but Amane sat you back down.
“Hey, don’t worry Y/n… older brother Tsukasa is going to take care of this okay?” Amane hugged you.
“But I don’t mind the fish… it’s fine-”
“No. It’s not.” Amane’s aura grew darker before his loving brotherly smile appeared again.
“And hopefully by tomorrow, you won’t have to deal with those disgusting fish!”
----
“Y/n! Amane!” Tsukasa called out as he walked down the halls. When he approached the door he opened it revealing you and Amane laughing. You were somewhat dry and you stopped crying.
“Tsukasa!” You got up and gave him a hug.
“What happened to those fish…?” Worryness in your voice.
“Don’t worry about it Y/n! You don’t need to worry about them anymore!” He childishly smiled, bringing ease to you.
“Amane approached you two, smiling. He looked to see Tsukasa’s hand that was behind his back covered in blood. Hanako's smile dropped and he went silent. He quickly regained his composure and turned to you.
“Yeah, Y/n you don’t need to worry about those fish. Your big brothers will kill any other supernatural that dares hurt you!”
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doyouknowbtsswag · 3 years
Text
Discs|Tommyinnit|
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(Takes place as actual Minecraft)
Tommy adored listening to Music since he was younger because of his older brother, Wilbur. Tommy's childhood was something special to him. He had a loving family which consisted of a father and two older twins. His father better known as Philza Minecraft was the perfect father, he was protective of his children and made sure they weren't hurt. His older twins were almost like different people. Technoblade always had his guard up and never really shown his emotional side except when he needed to, which never really happened. Techno also loved Greek Mythology and could quote almost every story by heart. Wilbur was more into making songs and singing he never really enjoyed violence, so he would play on his guitar while Techno trained.
Aside from his family life he had two best friends which were just as important. Tubbo was his right-hand man and was the first person to talk to him. His other best friend, Y/n was the person who he could always lean on and wasn't afraid to show his raw emotions. Sure he wanted to show his tuff side but the day you saw him cry was the time Tommy realized he could rely on you the most. Don't get me wrong he could rely on Tubbo as well but he made sure to put on a tough act for the boy because of his family life.
Tubbo's family was not the best, his father would always yell and neglect him, let's not leave out the fact that he's a drunk. His father always likes that but after his mom died his dad was heartbroken and it affected him he didn't pay attention to how his son felt. Being 6 years old and his mother passing away Tubbo didn't have the best childhood. So Tommy made sure Tubbo could lean on him.
Tommy was certainly the ring leader of the gang. He always suggested pranks and decided on games to play. Tommy wasn't happy he was younger than Tubbo but was happy he was older than Y/n. He always felt the need to protect you with every strength he could muster. His favorite game showed that. They played a game many kids played, the Knight, Princess, and the villain. Of course, Tommy was the knight and you were the princess tubbo would be the villain but sometimes Wilbur would play with them. Wilbur being 11 towered over them and was much stronger than the little kids which would make it 10 times more fun.
On his 7th birthday, he had a small party nothing too big, just his family, you and Tubbo. Tubbo couldn't get him much so he made Tommy a bandana. Even though Tubbo felt bad he couldn't give Tommy anything grand Tommy appreciated the bandana and put it around his neck showing Tubbo he liked it. Wilbur, Techno, and Phil gave him a copy of the family photo. It was rare to be able to take a photo so getting a copy of one made it just as great of a gift. Then the final gift was from you. You knew he loved music so you tried to get at least one rare Disc, but you managed to get two.
He stared at the Discs in amazement quickly running to the old jukebox his father owned. He put in the disc Cat. He smiled at the sound of the music, let's just say it was his favorite birthday gift he ever got. He hugged you which made you blush but you hugged back smiling. The others were awed at the sight. Wilbur managed to take a quick picture and made a mental note to get it printed out. It cost a lot but the now 12-year-old would do anything for his little brother.
A few months later Tommy woke up to arguing between his brothers and father. He silently stepped down the stairs making sure to go as slow as possible.
"What is up with you lately dad! All you do is stay in your room! You left us to take care of Tommy ever since you got that stupid letter a few months ago! Tommy hasn't noticed because of us!" Techno whisper yelled trying not to wake up Tommy which was a little too late.
"Not only that but you try to redeem yourself by giving us small gifts! Sure I appreciate it but I know why you're doing it! You don't want anyone noticing you've been acting suspicious lately" Wilbur crossed his arms.
"Keep it down you're gonna wake your brother" Phil whispered trying to stall the sudden outburst by the twins.
Tommy ran upstairs quietly putting clothes on to run to your house. He climbed out his window carefully. He would occasionally climb out his window if he was grounded to walk to Tubbo's house or your house. Right now he was on the way to yours.
It took him 10 minutes to get to your house. He grabbed a small pebble and threw it at your window. He threw 2 more before you opened the window looking down at the boy.
"Tommy what are doing here," I said watching the boy climb up to my window. He looked upset. Sitting in my bed.
"They're fighting again..."
"Whos fighting?" I asked sitting next to him.
Tommy was looking down tears streaming his face.
"My brothers and dad" He whispered. "It happened last week too but it wasn't that bad but they've been fighting more recently and I don't like it" The 7-year-old sniffled.
"Do you know what they were arguing about?" I asked placing my hands gently on his.
"My dad has been acting differently apparently" He sighed wiping his tears " I didn't notice but apparently it's so obvious to Techno and Wilbur"
"Maybe your dad is working on something really important," I said not knowing how to fully answer.
"Probably" He muttered
"Hey, I know how to cheer you up!" I said running over to one of my chests.
I looked through a few chests trying to find a music disc to play for Tommy. When I finally found it I ran to the Jukebox and put it in the slot. The disc played Chirp throughout the room. I look over and saw Tommy smiling just a bit.
"How do you have so many Discs," Tommy asked standing up walking to the Jukebox.
"My grandpa had a bunch before he died, he gave them all to me because when I was younger all we did was listen to the discs" I smiled at the memory.
"So why did you give Cat and Mellohi to me?" He asked
"Because your my favorite person in the world" I looked at him smiling I could see his face turn red which made me giggle.
"You're my favorite person in the world too," Tommy said pulling me into a hug to which I hugged him back.
"Thank you..."
"Your welcome Toms"
He pulled away from the hug and looked out the window seeing the sun slowly rise.
"Oh crap, I have to go before I get caught" He panicked running to the window.
"wait!" I ran and grabbed Chirp from the Jukebox running to the window hanging me the disc. "Take it"
"But I thought-"
"Let that disc remind you of me if you ever need to let out your feelings"
"Thank you" He smiled kissing my cheek then climbing down the house.
"Thomas!" I shouted but still smiling.
"Bye" He grinned waving
"Be safe" I whispered watching him run off to his house.
Tommy ran as fast as he could to his house before the sun could rise any longer. He climbed up to his window jumping into his room. He was holding the disc carefully when he was climbing so he didn't scratch it. He laid in bed out of breath from running but thank god he made it back before anyone noticed.
A few weeks later you suddenly stopped coming over to play with him and Tubbo. Tommy just thought you had something to do with your family as you did every so often. Days turned into weeks. He sat every night looking at the picture Wilbur took on his birthday of you guys hugging. It didn't sit right that you hadn't shown up or even sent a message that you were away. It confused him.
The next day he begged his family to take him to your house. Yes, he knew how to get to your house but he still wanted one of his brothers to go with I'm knowing his father was still busy. Tommy asked Wilbur in the morning but Wilbur said he was busy today and maybe tomorrow. Tommy had to go today no matter what so he ran to Technoblade's room knocking on the door. Only for Techno to say he was busy and not to bother him.
He sighed knowing he would have to go himself. He put his jacket on and shoes. He walked out of the house and made his way over to your house. Tommy ran to your house concerned, he had a bad feeling and wanted to make sure you were okay.
He saw your house and sprinted faster when he arrived he walked to the door seeing it partially opened. He opened the door all the way seeing the inside of the house destroyed. He walked inside looking around.
"Y/n?" He said seeing shattered glasses on the ground.
"Y/n?!" He saw blood on the ground which made his breath hitch.
"Y/N!" He ran up to your room panicked only to be faced with a pool of blood on the floor.
"No no no no no no," He said his body giving out on him making him fall to the ground blood getting on his clothes and shoes.
He didn't bother to get up and leave. He physically couldn't get up his body was in a paralyzed state so he was forced to lay where you possibly died. his breath was heavy and it was like he had no oxygen in his lungs. he wanted to cry for help but the way he was breathing, it was useless to try. He eventually passed out due to a lack of oxygen.
When he woke up it was night. He still laid in your bedroom but this time he could actually breathe. He then realized he had been gone all day and didn't know what time of night it was. Tommy slowly got up looking at his bloodied clothes. His tears silently fell as he made himself walk back to his house. He wasn't bothered by the noises of the creatures around the area. He couldn't care less if he got hurt because he had a bigger wound that no one would ever be able to fix.
The house lights were on and he saw people sitting outside. He walked closer and saw his family with worried looks on their faces. When they heard footsteps they looked to see Tommy slowly making his way to the door. Wilbur immediately ran up to the little boy pulling him into a hug.
"You had us all fucking worried!" He pulled away from the hug only then noticing the blood. "Holy shit your hurt"
Tommy just stood there no words came out of his mouth as his brother brought him inside to check his "wounds". He was sat on the kitchen counter as Phil raced to grab the first aid kit. when Wilbur went to take Tommy's shirt off to clean the "wound" He says nothing but dried blood.
"Tommy?..."
"She's gone....."
"What?"
"Y/N IS GONE!" His sudden outburst made the 14-year-old jump.
"She's dead Wilby" He sobbed Wilbur pulled the boy into a hug and tried calming down the younger boy. Tommy eventually fell asleep and Wilbur changed him into his pajamas taking the bloody clothes to the washer.
10 years later he sat in exile he lost his precious Discs and was now sent out of the land that he built with Wilbur and Tubbo when Phil went missing and Technoblade left. Wil eventually died by his own father. It was the first time he had seen Phil in 10 years only to see him kill one of the only people who stuck by him.
He then lost Tubbo who exiled him for a stupid prank he did on George's house with Ranboo. Tommy wasn't the type to snitch on someone so he took the blow for Ranboo. He had officially lost everything he ever cared about, the only thing he had left was a picture of you and him hugging when he was 7 years old.
"Tommy?...."
"Y/n?!"
------------------------------------------------------- Just thought of this randomly. ✨YOU ARE AMAZING AND PERFECT THE WAY YOU ARE! YOU ARE WORTH IT ON SO MANY LEVELS✨
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lyssahlyssah · 3 years
Text
Obey Me! The Present
a/n: not suitable for work
Well, this took a week of my life, but it's ok! It's obviously something I needed to get off my chest (ahem). I hope you enjoy. 🟣🔵⚫
pairing: F!MC x Belphegor, category: (very) not suitable for work, warnings: some angst, virgin sex, penetration, oral sex, teasing, man-eating petunias. description: Belphie give F!MC the present she's always wanted. wordcount: 2.1k
"Is there anything else I can do for you for your birthday? Being your present and all. "
In your room, Belphie stands in front of you with his usual coy smile. Tall and gorgeous, he cocks his head to one side causing hair to fall into his violet eyes. He confidently holds your gaze.  As the gaze lingers, his smile deepens, playfully suggestive.
Today is your birthday and you've spent it on a date with Belphie. Feeling guilty after forgetting to buy you anything, he had cleverly volunteered to be your present, granting you any wishes you wanted.
Excited by his creativity (and the prospect of time with him alone), you had taken full advantage, first visiting the planetarium and then the botanical gardens. You'd laughed together, played around, took naps under a tree with his head in your lap. At the botanical gardens, he'd even rescued you from man-eating petunias after you took a wrong turn, and had shamelessly teased you about it since. Everything was effortless and fun when you were together.
And now, looking at his smiling face, you reflected on how far the two of you'd come. This wasn't Belphie from long ago in the attic; the angry and vengeful demon that once tried to kill you, heart twisted with hate from the loss of his beloved sister. No, he had changed. As time had gone on, he had warmed to the whole world, even to his older brother Lucifer, whom he had once admitted hating to the point of murder. He was now letting people to get close to him again. And especially you. He had opened the door to his heart and was inviting you in.
Because of the complicated history you shared, a special bond grew between you. His aloofness drew your open and loving nature like a moth to a flame, and you clicked like magnets due to your differences. Over any of the other brothers, he made you feel comfortable. Facing him now, you realized you've fallen hard for the infamous sloth demon. It was for those reasons, a response to his question immediately floated to your lips.
"Kiss me", you say, giving him a smile of your own.
"Sure", he agrees, a blush on his cheeks. Your lips meet. It's soft and sweet. Somehow, even though you aren't sure where he found the time between naps to become this way, Belphie is an incredible kisser.
His lips push down on yours with a little more force, then abruptly pull back, leaving you breathless. "Is that all?" he asks. "In that case, I'll give myself to you every day" his eyes crinkle in a smile, ever teasing.
You wet your lips, heart pattering in your chest. You did want more from him...a lot more.  Now or never. you think. You catch his hand and hold it. "Ah...Belphie...actually, what I want instead, is to give m-myself....to you." you stammer a little in getting it out. His eyes widen as he realizes what you're insinuating. Silence.
"MC...you sure? With me?" Belphie stares back at you, no longer joking. He pauses. "Why me? Why not Lucifer...or...or...The Great Mammon?" he says, with a sarcastic flourish.
When he sees your face drop, he immediately apologizes and runs a hand through his thick hair, ruffling it. His voice softens. "I'm sorry...I've been angry for so long, you know? Sometimes it just comes out when I don't mean it to."
He takes your hand again and pulls you to the bed where you sit down together. Color rises in his cheeks. "Really though...I've lied to you, I've manipulated you. Not that long ago...I even tried to kill you. Why am I the one you want for this?" He searches your face for an answer. 
"You're my master, I can't refuse you, and I'd be crazy to anyway, but...why me?" Standing up, he paces a few feet in a circle, then sits down again. You've rarely seen him this worked up; it's obvious he still hasn't totally forgiven himself for hurting you.
"I love you Belphie", the words fall out of your mouth. Your eyes widen. You search your feelings and know it isn't a lie. His eyes are wide too. "Do...do you mean that?" he questions, leaning back.
You nod, "I need you, Belphie. I feel safe with you; I know you'd never hurt me now. And...I know you need me too". You continue, your voice low. "I want you. More than anyone else".
The words visibly shake him. He drops his head, staring into his lap, then slowly brings his head back up and gazes at you. You're taken aback by the open desire you see there. It's as if a mask has fallen off and you're seeing the real him for the first time.
When he speaks, it's slowly, deliberately.
"I want to know you that way, MC...More intimately than anyone ever has." His eyes start to glow a fierce purple. "You're mine, and I want to be your first. I want to give you something to remember me by when you go back to the human world." You swallow hard, your heart starting to race and nod.
He leans forward, takes your face between his hands, and kisses you. And again. Deeply, tongue reaching hungrily into your mouth. You whimper against his lips, full of want.
You give yourself over completely to his touch. His hands are on your face, guiding the movement of your heads. It feels so good, all the strength leaves you, and you fully let him hold you up. Between kisses, he makes small sounds of passion.
"You drive me crazy" he murmurs, looking into your eyes. A thrill runs up your spine. He's here, fully here - with you. No distance. Not a trace of sleepiness. In this moment of closeness, Belphie has completely overcome his sin.
You gasp as his fingers effortlessly snap off the button to your jeans with an audible pop. "Oops", he says, not sounding sorry in the slightest.
He leans you back onto the covers. Continuing to kiss you, he slides his hand into your jeans and caresses your lower stomach, playing with the hollow of your hip bone. Ticklish, you sharply draw in a breath, causing him to smile at you. "Don't be nervous" he says reassuringly. "I'll take care of you".
He sides your pants down, and then completely takes them off. You shiver, all at once feeling vulnerable.
"Mmmm..." He murmurs, looking over your body. "You're so beautiful. I've dreamed about getting to touch you like this". He reverently slides his hands up and down your thighs, your hips, your waist. Goosebumps raise up at his touch.
Holding your gaze, he leans down and pulls your shirt over your head then sits upright and does the same for himself. His hair is even more disheveled afterward and the thought of it being that way because you're in bed together turns you on.
Even though you've napped together endlessly, you've never seen this much of his body, and you sigh with pleasure drinking in the width of his shoulders, his flat stomach. He watches you just as avidly and the small smile returns as he sees the effect he has on you.
Leaning in, Belphie captures your lips once more in a steamy kiss. Running his hands up your shoulders, he cups your cheeks, then traces down your back and unhooks your bra. You respond by thrusting your own hands into his hair and pulling him to you.
He kisses his way down your chest and your stomach, where his lips leave little trails of fire on your skin. You try but can't remember ever feeling more aroused. He playfully nips your belly button as it goes by, and smiles when you jump and protest, eyes glinting.
Belphie stops between your legs, breathing out slowly, and kisses up one of your thighs. At the top he hugs it to his face, cheek pressing into the flesh. Pausing, he looks at you sideways and says, "I've wanted to do this since we met".
Taking his time, he hooks your panties with one finger and pulls them down. Admiring the view, he runs a finger down your core, lightly teasing your clit. You sigh, then jump when he gives a jerk. "You're so fucking wet down here" he utters in awed tones.
Seeing you so excited for him seems to unhinge him a little. Looking at your soaked slit with total attention, he raises his finger to his lips and lightly sucks off your excitement. His eyes flutter close and a low groan of desire escapes him. Leaning in, he buries his face in your folds. His soft tongue pushes roughly against your swollen clit and it's your turn to gasp.
He continues to work on you for a few minutes. The pleasure overwhelms you, but still, you want him deeper. Parts of yourself you aren't familiar with are showing up and demanding to be satisfied. You try to stretch your legs further and wider apart so his tongue can reach every needy part of you. More than happy to help, he greedily tongues your tight hole. "B-Belphie!" Your voice rises as you near your climax. He reaches one hand up and laces your fingers through his. "Go ahead, MC...I've got you, you're safe. I want to taste you when you cum." Soothed, you let yourself go fully, shuddering, waves of euphoria threatening to drown you. "Mmmm..." Belphie says contentedly. You can feel his lips as he captures every last drop on his tongue.
You collapse into the pillows as the pleasure ebbs away, but he doesn't give you time to rest. You feel manicured fingers slide into your slippery hole. At first, it's a gentle in-and-out getting you used to the sensation. You squirm, your flesh still sensitive from his earlier attentions. After a few moments, he picks up the pace and starts pushing into you faster and deeper, turning and curling the digits. Mewling with every thrust, you blush bright red, still a little self-conscious  From his place cradled between your legs, he watches your face possessively. "I love your sounds", he says.
Pleasure begins to fill your abdomen once again as you near climax, and you involuntarily start to grind against his hand, desperate to increase the tempo. Loving your impatience, he dips his head down and bites you on the inside of your thigh, near your core. Surprised by the unexpected sensation, you're pushed over the edge, launching into oblivion for the second time. This time he can't help himself and covers your mouth in a passionate kiss, jealously swallowing your cries of pleasure.
Thoroughly ravaged, you look up at him through half-lidded eyes. Belphie looks back at you, spellbound by the state you're in. "B...Belphie", you manage to get out. "What, MC?" he softly answers. "I need you inside me", you pleadingly say to his violet eyes. He shudders and pulls back from you.
"Okay", he says, unfastening his pants button. He pulls them down and his length springs out, large, strong, and perfect. Dazzled, your mouth drops open slightly. He smiles confidently at you and crawls back up your body. Once there, he turns your hips so you're lying on your back with your hips to one side, lined up to your exposed slit on his knees. He runs his hands over your ass, squeezing it, testing its softness, before bringing his hands back to grip your hip with both hands. "Tell me if I hurt you", he says with unexpected tenderness and starts to push inside you.
Due to the position of your hips and your overall tightness, his first thrust is shallow, but the friction makes you both groan. Pulling out slowly, drawing out the pleasure, he pushes inside again, going slightly deeper. Your eyes roll back in your head. He feels blissful, way past anything you had imagined.
Using your hip to pull your ass against his lap, he starts to move more quickly. With abandon, you throw your arms against the covers above your head, your face falling to one side and breasts jiggling as the snap of his thrusts push you up and down. Also lost in pleasure, his eyes are closed and low groans rumble from his throat.
It doesn't take long for you to climax again, and then again. Your walls clenching tightly around him, each climax earns you a growl, but Belphie shows no signs of giving you mercy. Finally, even though you wish it could last forever, he thrusts deeply within you and you feel his warmth spread into your abdomen.
Completely spent, you lay together in the candlelight, your head on his chest, legs intertwined. Your core aches sweetly. He holds you close. Happier than you've felt in your entire life, you both start to drop off. As you do, you raise your head to look at him, and you see he's already asleep. Full of affection, your chin on his chest, you breathe, "Thank you for granting my wish". Seconds later, fading into darkness you hear him whisper, "I love you, too".
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nanamisflowerfield · 3 years
Text
︵✿︵︵✿︵︵✿︵︵✿︵︵✿︵︵✿︵︵✿︵
It was a big day, well at least for Idia. After all it was his crush’s birthday! Scared and excited, he tried to prepare a gift for his beloved crush in secret.
︶✿︶︶✿︶︶✿︶︶✿︶︶✿︶︶✿︶︶✿︶
@teashopwritingzz I know I don’t have to do it, but I really really really wanted to give at least one small present to you! Because you totally deserve it!🥺❤️ Happy belated Birthday! I know that yesterday was your birthday, but I wasn‘t online yesterday due the post+ demonstration! D: I still hope that you had a wonderful day yesterday and today and the whole week! Stay safe and healthy too!!
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Idia took a deep breath, staring at the list of gift ideas that you might like, but a small voice back in his head kept telling him, that you would never like any of those gifts. “I’m sure that (Y/N) (L/N) will like it!” His younger brother always said, but the tall dorm leader of Ignihyde was still pouting at his thoughts. If you would reject any of those, you would also reject his feelings. It would be like a critical hit, getting it from the most greatest SSR character ever. “If you are still unsure, you can watch them. Maybe you will figure out what (Y/N) (L/N) will like.” Ortho advised his big bro, who glanced over his shoulder to the only person he might listen to at this very important situation. “Maybe you are right…” Idia’s gaze wandered from his brother to the list he had on his phone. Headphones, phonecases, games, books and more were listed on it, but would you liked them?
“Owww! My paw!” Grim cursed the ground, after he fell down from the bed, being accidentally pushed down by you. “Sorry, Grim.” Apologizing by petting him on the head and promising to give him a can of tuna later, he halfheartly accepted your apology, walking with you to school for another mayhap exciting school day. “I will only accept it, because it’s your birthday.” The cat-like friend of yours, fummed, watching the Heartslabyul duo walk into your direction to greet you and wish you a happy birthday. “Trey-senpai even baked a cake.” Deuce told you, getting elbowed by Ace, who groaned at him that the birthday party should be a surprise, only to spoil it himself. “A surprise party…? I’m probably not invited…” Idia watched the screen, his eyes never leaving you, hopeful to get any informations of what you might wish for, while his fingers tipped on his keyboard, coding something he always had on mind.
As you wrote on paper everything important professor Crewel told the class, Ace drummed with his finger on the table, while Grim was half sleeping next to you and Deuce tried his best to be a perfect student. “Hey, can you read the list of invited students later on? Did we invite every friend of yours?” Deuce whispered to you, getting harsh words of the professor for interrupting the lesson. But every time Crewel watched away, you read all names of your friends on it, only noticing that one name was missing. The person you wanted to see not only through screen. Idia Shroud. But maybe he couldn’t come over or doesn’t want to for being such a shy and yet adorable being.
Surprisingly the day went on like every other day. You laughed, had fun, talked to your friends and went to the Heartslabyul garden, while wearing shiny bright white clothes to show the whole school that it was indeed your birthday, like many other students had to wear on theirs. It was a bit embarrassing to talk with plenty of students about your birthday, but it still made you happy nonetheless, even when you still hoped to talk on specific student of NRC on this very day. But he didn’t came, so maybe you should get your little present from him by visiting Idia. “That’s a great party, guys. Thank you all so much, but I will be gone for a short time.” You smiled at your friends, watching them having fun, eating delicious food and talking to each other.
Idia yelped as he heard a knock on the door. Wasn’t everyone gone and having fun right now? Who was knocking on the door? Arguing with Ortho with mere stares, the younger Shroud walked to the door, opening it to your delight and Idia’s dismay, as he stared at the door opening more and more and then- oh no, by the great seven, was it truly you?! You were supposed to be at your party, having the time of your life with your dear friends and not be here! Why were you here?!
Like a good child, Ortho greeted you, standing next to the door to give you some space to walk through the door to Idia’s room. While you were smiling at the Shroud brothers, Idia was sitting on his chair, turning around to hide his blushing face that got warmer by every second you stood there and talked to Ortho. The tips of his hair and ears were dusted cheek and he was sure, that some might compare to him to fresh cherries!
“Sorry to disturb you-“ You started, getting interrupted by Ortho, who dragged you into the room, telling you that you would never disturb any of those two. “Oh… Uhm… Alright.” With the same smile that Idia fell for, your eyes stared at his back. Oh, how much you had wishes to hold the introverted boy in your embrace, pat him and give him the love and affection he deserved. “I-I-It’s… alright…” Idia sputtered and stuttered, trying to avoid your gaze in fear that you might tease him for having a crush on you. He just couldn’t help himself. You were such a lovely person. So nice, helpful and that smile. He could babble around, what a great person you were in his boring shut-in life. That you were like the light in his dark life. A total ultra super duper rare card in the gacha games he keeps playing, being frustrated that he couldn’t get those cards, but at least could look at them on photos. “Am I creepy…?” Idia mumbled to himself, forgetting your presence for a second until you asked him to repeat it, after not able to hear it. “N-Nothing!”
Fortunately or mayhap even unfortunately, Ortho knew of Idia’s feelings and how much he had took a liking towards you, which is why he had asked you, why you were in the Ignihyde dorm. “Oh… I wanted to get my present.” The blue-haired tall student turned around, nearly shrieking in fear that you figured out, that he wanted to give you a gift as well like plenty of your friends, who unfortunately had gifted you many presents he had listed a couple weeks ago. “My present would be… to spend more time with you, Idia.” Your gaze wandered to the ground as your cheeks got warmer by your mere words and wish you had, not realizing that Idia’s face was mirroring yours at the same time your words had left your mouth.
That was a gift that he would love to give you every day as long as you wanted to have him by his side. His mouth opened slightly, wanting to talk, before you had asked him what he was programming right now as you took a look at the codes, ignoring the fact that a humming Ortho left the room, so he might not disturb you two love birds. “A g-game… I’m trying to make a small game I had in mind for quite some time.” He answered, staring at it once again.
“Have you finished it already?“ The bluehead nodded. “May I play it?” Mumbling a few words here and there, Idia hoped that his hair hide his flustered face, but he nonetheless let you sit next to him and play his selfmade game, even though he feared that you would reach the end of it and find out about his big secret he never wanted to reveal to you.
“Another level up. Great!~” You cheered, playing the rpg of Idia’s even though your friends might miss you during your birthday party. You should get back, but you couldn’t stop playing the game, after all you has nearly reach the endboss! “Is that a giant cat? He reminds me of Grim.” You chuckled, trying to defeat the endboss with the spells of the protagonist named Hadia. It was a cute game.
The plot of it was like plenty of other rpgs. The protagonist Hadia, a royal guy fell in love with Readi, a sweet princess who got kidnapped by the evil cat-monster Grimopy. Grimopy tried to be the strongest wizard and king and had plenty of henchmen like Dice and Acepo, which were quite strong enemies. Hadia had to train a lot and even gained the help of different wizards like Lio, a sleepy lion, Otto, a cute robot. Then there were Ralice, Tri, Phone-Addicted Rabbit, who still had no name, because Idia couldn’t find a good fitting name for the character. Marteus, Kala, Azure and many other characters and all of them reminded you of your friends. That meant that Hadis was probably Idia and the lovely princess Readi was… you. “Cute game.” You whispered to yourself, using the last spell to defeat the boss, watching the end scene of the rpg.
Hadis was rushing through the castle until he found his beloved princess. When he leaned down to kiss her awake with the kiss of true love, she woke up and they confessed their loves, swearing to each other to be together forever until they lives will end.
“I think I have a new ship.” You giggled, pointing at the protagonists, while you looked at Idia, the blushing mess. “I’m really glad that they are together. They are perfect and cute together. So sweet. I hope that my Hadis likes me as much as he does…” You commented, shutting his computer down, while Idia clenched his fists, knowing that you finally know about his feelings. “Come. We have to go to a party, Idia.” You smiled at the marveled dorm leader. “P-Party?!” Faster than he could expect it, you grabbed his hand in yours, pulling him away from his room towards the garden of the Heartslabyul dorm. “Oh, I like you too, my Hadis.” - “I-I like you too… my Readi.” With the other hand of his, he tried to hide his red face as you chuckled at him, happy that you finally can call him yours.
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bonky-n-steeb · 3 years
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𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐵𝐸𝑆𝑇 𝐷𝐴𝑌
𝘽𝙐𝘾𝙆𝙔 𝘽𝘼𝙍𝙉𝙀𝙎 𝙭 𝙍𝙀𝘼𝘿𝙀𝙍
𝗥𝗘𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗦𝗧: doctor!reader has no clue that Bucky is a secret agent and she soon finds out.
𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦: Fluff, minor angst.
ᴛʜɪs ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ʙᴇᴛᴀ ʀᴇᴀᴅ, sᴏ ᴀʟʟ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇs ᴀʀᴇ ᴍʏ ᴏᴡɴ
MASTERLIST
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Bucky was finally back from his business trip. He had been gone for two whole weeks and you both had missed each other terribly.
Today he had decided to make it up to you, and had taken a day off from his work, and so had you. Instead of a simple date, you both had decided to spend the entire day idly roaming around the city. It was a nice reprieve from all the stress that came with being a surgeon.
While walking, you stopped in front of your favorite boutique. The dresses there were expensive but chic and you were friends with the owner and designer, Maria. Whenever you wore one, you used to turn all the heads in the room. Currently there was no special occasion coming up, and you already had enough of the dresses so you decided to window shop.
“Why don’t we go inside?” Bucky asked. “Buck, I already have so many of the dresses and I don’t need another one as there is no special event coming up anytime soon.”
“My doll doesn’t need a special occasion to look good.” He said kissing your temple. “Buck...” you tried to protest but he nevertheless dragged you in.
“Welcome! And congratulations you are our lucky customers.” You looked at her dumbstruck, Maria wasn’t a person to give any discounts. “Lucky customers?” You asked.
“Yes, today is the 7-year anniversary. And we had agreed that the first person to walk in the boutique would get 75% off on any dress of their choice.” She said with an infectious smile.
“75% off? On any dress?” You squealed. You looked up at Bucky and he gave you his signature smirk. You were a sucker for sales. As you looked around, your eyes were captivated by a dress. It was maroon, with long bell-shaped sleeves. It had a V-shaped neckline and was a flowing gown.
“You like that one doll?” Bucky asked as he saw you staring at the gown. He knew you would like that one. “Yes. I love it.” You said excitedly. “Alright then, pack it.” In your excitement you failed to notice the understanding nod shared between Bucky and Maria.
You were super excited and were talking nonstop. That was one of your traits when you got excited. You couldn’t believe you walked in at the right time, and the credit was Buck’s, he was the one who dragged you in. You couldn’t believe your luck.
The next you decided to visit the bookstore you usually frequented. The moment you entered, the book store clerk, Simone happily waved at you as if she was waiting just for you.
“I have something for you.” She said as she bent down and produced a book. It was your favorite one. “Open it. It’s a signed copy.” You couldn’t believe your eyes. Your favorite author had signed that book along with a sweet message scribbled just for you. “Oh my goddddd!!”
You couldn’t believe that this day was even real. “Bucky, I don’t know what is happening today, but it’s already the best day of my life.” You squealed and he pulled you closer to him, “It’s definitely the best day of our lives.” He pressed a chaste kiss to your lips.
After around an hour later, your beauty salon lady called up and informed you about her latest offer. And so, you decided to give her a visit while Bucky went home. Once you were done, you were looking exquisite.
You were too euphoric to notice all the coincidences. Everything was perfect until you went home. Bucky face was worried. “What happened? You look worried.”
“It’s Nat’s birthday today. We both forgot. Don’t worry, Steve has arranged a party. So now let’s get dressed and go.” Nat and Steve were Bucky’s colleagues and best friends.
You knew this universe was giving you signs. After all the shopping you did, it was worth it. You decided to wear the new elegant dress.
When Bucky saw you and his jaw dropped. He himself was wearing an expensive navy-blue suit. “I swear to god, if it weren’t so important, we would’ve never left this house.”
Once you reached the location, you were surprised to find no one was there and it was completely dark. But then a sudden focus of light was out on where you stood with Bucky.
Just then Bucky got down on his knees and produced a velvet box. “Will you make me the luckiest man alive by marrying me?” He looked flustered and scared. Without thinking twice, you squealed “YES!”
Apparently, Bucky had already bought that dress for you, there was no offer at Maria’s. Also, he had arranged for the signed copy and the salon well. He just wanted it to be the best day of your life in all sense.
———
Maybe you had been wrong. It had been a week since your engagement, but today was the best day of your life.
After learning the news, you had been euphoric. You wanted to tell Bucky as soon as possible, but he was too busy today and you knew better than to disturb him.
Before going home, you decided to celebrate a little and went to the nearby cafe. You ordered your favorite pastry and sat at one of the tables.
Suddenly there was a small pat on your shoulder. You turned around and saw the last person you expected in this cafe. “Tony?”
Tony Stark was a billionaire. Despite having all the money in the world, his heart wasn’t as healthy. And that’s when you came in. When he had first come in due to an emergency, you had treated him and ever since then he had become your patient.
“What are you even doing here?” You asked as he took the seat in front of you. “Having some coffee, I guess.” He said shrugging. And then his eyes fell on your ring.
“Woah! I see someone is engaged. Didn’t think you’d break my heart so ruthlessly.” He said pretending to be hurt. You excitedly nodded, “Just a week before.”
“Well, so who is the lucky man?” He asked. “Bucky Barnes.” You said smiling giddily. “I’m sure he must not be more handsome than me.” Tony quipped.
“You’ll be disappointed!” You took your phone out and showed him a picture of Bucky. Tony squinted his eyes and took your phone into his hands. “This is Bucky?” He asked skeptically.
“Yeah. Why?” Tony seemed confused and then pulled out his own phone. “As long as I remember, his name is Andrew and he is already married.” Your eyes widened at that.
“What? You just be mistaken. Are you sure it’s him?” Tony nodded. “Yeah, see this. I met him around a week ago, that’s why I remember. Not gonna lie his wife, Sonya was impressionable.”
He said giving you his phone. There was a picture of Tony and a couple. You couldn’t believe your eyes. It was indeed Bucky, and the worst part was, his ‘wife’ was none other than Nat.
~~~
You were sitting on your couch and crying when Bucky came home. “What happened?” He quickly kneeled on the floor besides you.
“I’m gonna only ask once, because I can’t emotionally afford to ask twice; what is going on between you and Natasha?” You ask, your eyes were blood red and puffy from all the crying.
“What?” Bucky took your hands in his and pressed kisses. “Don’t lie, I know everything. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“I don’t get what you are saying, doll.” You took out your phone and showed him the pictures Tony had sent you. At that Bucky scoffed, “Oh this!”
“Oh yes Andrew! What the fuck is even your name you liar!” At that Bucky’s demeanor grew serious. “Listen, it’s not what you think. Wait right here.” He pressed a kiss to your forehead and went upstairs.
“See this.” He said running downstairs and giving you a file. “And what is this? Your marriage certificate?” You asked incredulously. “Just read it once please.”
You took it and started reading. First it didn’t make sense but after some time it did. Bucky was an agent working for a secret government organization called ‘Avengers’.
“What is this Bucky?” He slowly started wiping your tears. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long now. But I always thought that I’ll tell you tomorrow; but turns out tomorrow never came.
I know you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so this is the proof. My own file. I’ve worked as an Avenger for years. That day at Tony’s party we were undercover. And we pretended to be married. The ‘two weeks business trip’ was actually an undercover mission.”
You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. “Bucky seriously! You couldn’t tell this to me before? Do you know what I’ve felt in the past two hours? I literally found out in the worst way possible, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did.” He pulled you closer to him and pecked you on your cheek. “This was some True Lies level shit.” You said laughing.
“So... now that you know this, I might as well confess something more.” You raised your eyebrows and wondered what all news today’s day was going to bring.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” You nodded, you remembered that day very clearly.
It had been an excellent day. Your surgeries had gone perfectly but you were tired. So, you decided to do what you did every time you had a good day; go and eat a pastry.
As you entered the cafe, you could see the pastry section to be completely empty. You pouted and were sad to break the tradition. You inquired but they weren’t going to make any more pastries for the day.
As you were about to turn around and leave, you came face to face with the most handsome man you had ever met, his eyes were so captivating, you feared you’d get lost in them.
“I saw you wanted a pastry, well, I guess I have one and you can have it.” His voice was smooth and you swooned. “Uh, no it’s fine.”
“Oh, I insist.” You looked up at him and gave him a pleasant smile, “Why don’t we share?” You asked shyly. You spent the entire evening chatting and decided to meet the next day for a proper date. And that is how you had met.
“It wasn’t actually my first time. I had seen you before that at the hospital but I was undercover and so I couldn’t approach you.
But then I just got too shy to ask you out so I used to follow you around. I didn’t mean to creep or stalk. I just... God! This is embarrassing. But I kind of learnt your routine and habits.
I knew when you had a good day you would go and have a pastry at the cafe. That day before you went in, I bought all of the pastries. So, when I asked you whether you wanted to have mine; I actually had at least 23 pastries with me.”
You giggled at that. “Wait you are not mad?” You shook your head. “Actually, I would’ve been, but now that I know how you are, and that I love you so much, this is actually pretty cute.”
You stopped laughing and said, “Well, now that you’ve shared your secrets. I’d like to share something too. I fear I won’t be able to love you in the future as much as I do now.”
Bucky tensed up. His eyebrows furrowed and he looked adorable. “Because when a mini version of you will be running across the house, I swear to god I won’t be getting any reprieve.” You said snuggling him.
“I... what? Are you? Wait, is it what I’m thinking it is? Are we pregnant?”
“YES! You’re gonna become a daddy, James!”
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simluvbot · 3 years
Text
Enhypen’s reaction to when you punch a guy (hyung line)
a/n: this was a request ! I said I could upload this a few days ago but due to it being my birthday and it currently being exam week I didn’t have the time to edit this so that’s why I uploaded without proofreading at first TT // ok I finished editing 😁 Jake and sunghoon’s one is so bad don’t read it pls sorry
Although as this fic includes violence I only wrote for hyung like members and not maknae line, I hope you understand
Warnings: descriptions of physical violence (punching), mentions of being in a crowd, mentions of wanting to harm others (thoughts)
+ note: this is a work of fiction and in no way am I encouraging violence ! I wrote this in a way that I thought would match the member’s personalities although this is definitely not a true depiction of the enhypen members ^^
Lee heeseung
You and heeseung had been in the library studying together for your exams, and although you both had luckily reserved a secluded spot in the library that was both quiet and spacious for your revision, it wasn’t soon before some inconsiderate assholes had decided to occupy your desk too.
There were only two of them, yet they still managed to take up over half of the table whereas you and heeseung only had one small portion to yourselves
Plus they were very noisy, and the only librarian being on the seconf floor didnt help either  😐
You and your boyfriend had both made several attempts to sheepishly ask them if they could please quieten down before the librarian came back and kicked them out and more importantly so you mad heeseung could focus ??
But they simply ignored you, paying attention to the… online games ?? They had came to the library to play???
You were starting to get very annoyed, but decided to bite your tongue and instead have you and heeseung focus on your work
But it was when one of them spilt their coffee on heeseung’s expensive   textbook and even laugh afterwards which is what you decided that you finally had it
You don’t know how it happened, but soon you were standing up and landed a solid punch on the guy’s face
Heeseung was really shocked, just as much as you at your brash movements
And he would be even more concerned for you when he sees the person you punched egret aggressive to you and start getting close in your face.
“Hey man, that’s enough.” Despite heeseung’s shock, it didn’t take him longer than second before he stood up and grabbed at the man’s arm easily after he got up close you you intimidatingly, heeseung’s strong grip preventing the stranger from hitting you back and you swear you’ve never heard heeseung’s voice so deep and authoritative before as he told the man to sit down and focus on his stupid game
Due to your own surprise at your actions, you barely payed attention to what was going on as heeseung had a polite (on his end..) whisper-argument with the two guys, packing his things up as well as yours before grabbing your hand and safely leading you out of the library
You two ended up going home where he cleaned at your busted knuckles gently, sad at the fact that you got hurt and overall bummed out at two guys who got you so worked up and that his go-to textbook got ruined ):
“Baby, why did you do that, Hm? We could have just left to another place. You could have gotten hurt if they fought back!”
More than anything, your boyfriend was upset at the idea of you potentially getting more than just a few cuts and bruises on your knuckles, and so you promised heeseung right then and there that you wouldn’t do it again
After both of you got changed into your pyjamas, you and heeseung had set up your own study area in the dining room table, where you both continued with your study session for the rest of the day, with lots of cuddles afterwards as a reward!
Park Jongseong
You and jay were walking back home and it was already dark outside as you were both walking through the streets.
Approaching a heavily crowded place outside a club which included several people under the influences, it was pretty hard for you both to squeeze through the crowd as you were walking past.
They literally were spilling onto the road.. :/
“Jay.” You gasped when you lost hold of his hand on yours, leaving you in the idle of the crowd alone. There were so many bodies around you and as you got quickly pushed to against a wall from the movements of the people you found it hard to make your way through the people who were much taller than you.
You were starting to get anxious and when someone came directly in front of you, literally ignoring you asking for them to move and plainly blocking you for no reason you started to get frustrated, adrenaline in your veins as you lost your boyfriend and wanted to get out asap before you started fo panic.
You had asked the person to please move out of the way so you could pass through and they even had the audacity to look at you and make eye contact — only to simply ignore you when you asked for the nth time for them to scoot.
So, with your anxiety peaking and frustration soaring, you punched them hard on their face as soon as they turned around, and when they went stumbling backwards you finally had enough space to escape from your trapped position against the wall.
Jay had finally found you and was right there a few steps in front of you, and you were almost reaching him when a hand pulled you back suddenly, slamming you against the wall aggressively and leading you to hit your head hard.
Jay saw the whole thing. and he was livid
He shouted at the guy and grabbed his hands in his, pushing him so he was off of you once again. Jay was so angry he literally thought he could see red. How dare a man not just refuse to let someone obviously distressed through, but to touch you and hurt you?
You had to calm him down and urged hin for you both to leave before the stranger started getting aggressive because he was already shouting at you both and some heads were turning 😟
He eventually listened to you when he saw your glossed eyes and you clutching at your aching knuckles, so gently grabbing your unhurt hand in his he swiftly led you both away from the crowd in less than a minute, face fallen and heart aching ah ):
“Hey, let me look at you. are you okay? Did that bastard hurt you a lot?”
You could tell he was still so agitated with what happened, checking at your bruised knuckles and looking a the back of your head that was starting to form a lump from the force of being pushed against the wall earlier.
“I’m so sorry, I should have held tighter. I should have brought some security guards with us today.”
You had to tell him it was okay and you defended yourself and the guy was just a jerk and can’t hurt you anymore.
Jay was still so sad at the fact that you got hurt all because he let you go accidentally for one second ): seeing you so anxious and literally in pain made him feel so bad.
He showered you in many kisses once you both got home and you had a relaxing bath together, as well as helping treat your bruise , promising for this to never happen again 🥺
Sim jaeyun
You were hanging out with your old classmates as a reunion and it was getting close to the time where Jake had said he would pick you up to take you home.
Your classmates had asked you if you had a partner and when you told them that you did, they all got instantly curious.
You of course got so excited and was ecstatic to flaunt off your talented and handsome boyfriend to them :D
So you showed them a picture of Jake, however the reaction that you were met with was not what you were expecting.
Your classmates were silent for a few moments as they looked at the photo, before one of them eventually asked,
“Oh, so that’s the guy you’re dating?”
You could see two of them exchange glances for a reason you could not possibly fathom and your heart fell to your stomach when you saw them stifing their laughter.
“What?” You asked, frowning as you looked at the photo you showed them on your phone. What was wrong with the photo?
“Oh.. nothing it’s just.. well.. he just doesn’t look like the best option..”
“It’s pretty cute actually. Of course you would end up with a guy that looks like he matches you in social level.. he’s probably a loser.”
You were so confused and the comments kept coming as they talked amongst themselves, openly criticising Jake for no reason.
You gotta admit, you never were the closest my with your classmates in the first place but still decided to agree to the meet-up for old times’ sake.
You could put up with their side glances towards you ever since you arrived because you barely cared, but when they dared talk about your boyfriend like that??
You were so angry you felt yourself almost shaking.
“Hey.” You said, standing up abruptly from your seat on the picnic table at the park you guys were hanging out at.
“Why are you insulting my boyfriend like that. What is wrong with you?”
Once again, they simply laughed in your face, seeming to think of your reaction as hilarious.
You were gonna start crying soon because the rage boiling up inside of you was reaching to the point that you were finding it hard to contain it and breathe deeply to keep calm and not cause a scene.
But they kept insulting Jake, liking watching you get angry under their gazes.
One of your classmates in particular kept offering comments, too many and you had enough - you snapped.
You punched them square in the face.
And you had done so just when you noticed Jake exiting his car right outside of the park, when it was obvious that he saw you.
You didn’t care, and in fact you started laughing almost hysterically in front of your classmates at their shocked expressions.
You were in tears because the person you punched started having a nosebleed… to you it was hilarious and you were in your own world trying to catch your breath from laughing so much until you heard your name being called.
“Y/n.” Jake said worriedly, finally reaching yoy and placing a hand on your shoulder.
He led you to his car, and after you both left and as you sat silently in the passenger seat having calmed down, you were staring to feel awkward with all the little glances Jake threw towards you ever so often.
He didn’t ask or push, instead just remaining silent and gripping at your hand you had punched your classmate with, thumb swirling over your red knuckles as he stared down at them with a bothered expression.
“Sorry.” You finally said, giving him a sheepish smile. “They just kept talking so badly about you when they found out I had a boyfriend.. I couldn’t resist.”
Jake if anything was a bit disappointed that you had reacted violently, and he was silent for a few seconds as he sat unknowing of what to say, frowning and licking his lips like a confused puppy trying to work out a solution.
“Please just don’t do it again. Violence is never okay, you should have just left. I don’t want my y/nnie getting hurt or getting into fights because of me, okay?”
You both drove back and cuddled a lot on the sofa, and Jake made sure to give your knuckles several kisses, his heart aching with the memory of what happened );
Park Sunghoon
“Ha, if it isn’t the ugly y/n.”
You bit your lip as you heard the familiar laugh of the rink bullies behind you, plainly mocking you.
“Still friends with that weirdo, park sunghoon?”
Ever since the members in the same extracurricular figure skating club had found out you were friends with sunghoon, the ice boy that they liked to torment for reasons forever unknown to you, you had soon too fallen victim to their evil teasing.
“I told you to stop making fun of sunghoon like that.” You said plainly, sighing as you sat down on a bench to undo your skates.
The group members laughed and would just not leave you alone, even going as far as sitting next to you and entering your personal space by constantly poking at your sides sharply.
And you swear to god the temptation of slashing open their faces with the bottom of your skates was very tempting—
But no, you had told sunghoon that you would meet him at the entrance of the rink to walk home together after your individual practices; and you were already running late.
“Where you going? To go see sunghoon? Huh? Go tell him that we messed with his skates so he fails in the competition.”
Your hands froze as you were tying your converses. You looked up, meeting the leader’s gaze.
“What?” You had enough. You could never understand why they had sunghoon as their punching bag. Sunghoon was used to it, not one to start arguments and the type to only keep to himself when things like this happen.
You just went along with it and followed his lead in ignoring your other club members, but them going this far to try to sabotage the performance sunghoon had been training months for? You had enough of simply doing nothing in retaliation to their bullying.
Standing up abruptly, they stood back at youe sudden movement, but not quick enough for being able to dodge the punch you swung directly on the nose of the nearest one in front of you.
“Y/n?”
Looking over to the doorframe of the changing room — there was park sunghoon.
“Sunghoon.” You said in shock, glancing over towards the group in front of you as they started guffawing at the sides of the person you punched
“Sorry, I got caught up with-“
You were just making your way speedily over towards hoon when you were pulled back by the wrist painfully.
You gasped when the force that you were let go of led you to be flung over to one side and practically topple onto the sticky matte floor.
Wincing as you landed on your wrist, you hissed at the fresh pain and the loud crack that came with it.
It was silent as everyone paused, having heard your wrist snapping as much as you had felt the pain of it.
“Y/n!” Sunghoon was at your side in an instant, pushing his way cut though the others standing around you in shock.
His pretty face was frowned with worry, eyes wide as he came in front of you, assessing your wrist without touching it.
“Let’s get out of here.” He scooped you up, and if you weren’t busy trying to breathe in and out deeply to calm yourself down after your injury, you would have been surprised at the skate bullies making space for a clear path Sunghoon to carry you through.
From all your time of knowing the talented ice boy, your skating partner and friend — you had never really seen him show much emotion apart from the small smiles and laughs he gave only to you. His long legs were able to stride quickly to a bench outside as he called an ambulance for you, a distressed expression as he meticulously cared towards you.
And gee if you breaking your wrist didn’t hurt like hell, but after all, did you regret that day? No. You finally were able to stand up to the bullies for the first time, and even more importantly — that moment had started the beginning of a new chapter for you and Sunghoon.
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outofsstyles · 3 years
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a/n: This is by far THE MOST requested fic I’ve ever had and (a year later) it’s finally here!! First of all, sorry that it took me so long but when I first wrote Wildest Dreams I never intended on it having a follow up, but the amount of love I got from it was so overwhelming that I decided to put this together for you all :) I’m not gonna lie, I’m a bit nervous about it, considering the amount of requests I’ve had the past year, I know there’s gonna be a lot of expectations and I wanted to do something a bit different so it’s not too predictable lol. So yeah, as always, feedback is very much welcomed!! If you enjoy please reblog it to support my writing, it would mean the world to me <3
word count: 13.7k
warnings: none!
concept: It’s Evan’s birthday and he decides to do something a bit different.
Wildest Dreams: read part 1 here :)
                                               ~*~ ~*~  ~*~
In the last two steps, you have to use your leg to support the box as it starts to slowly slip down your fingers. This serves as a reminder to start exercising again now that the midterm is over — meaning that you should finally give in to Nia’s pleas to join her in the free week of Pilates classes she got when signing in at the gym, “Exercising is one of the best ways to relieve stress!” She would argue, to which you’d simply reply with something along the lines of: “So does binging another trashy reality tv show!”
Thankfully, no one seems to notice your struggle, sparing you the embarrassment of listening to their teases due to your difficulty in carrying one of the smallest boxes of the bunch. Nate barely glances at you once you finally reach the car to hand him the box, only shooting the longest smile you’ve ever seen coming from him—which somehow still manages to be probably the quickest when compared to any other regular person. His girlfriend, who stands with hands on her hips, entirely held his attention. Nia’s purple strands of hair poke out of her half-bun in every direction and her bottom lip has found its permanent spot between her teeth as her eyes fixate on the vehicle in front of her, barely blinking.
“Everything alright, Ni?” You prompt, trying to even your breathing. “Forgot something? There’s still time to check.”
“It’s not that.” She mumbles, shaking her head to break out of her thoughts. “My keyboard doesn’t fit.” Nia nods at the instrument lying on top of the car’s ceiling.
“Oh,” You say, frowning your lips as you take in her stressed figure. Clearing your throat, you attempt to blurt out a joke, “Maybe it’s a sign you shouldn’t move it and stay right here in our little flat with creaky doors.”
She breathes out a sharp laugh, finally looking at you as she drops her arms. “Don’t start.” She warns, “You promised; no crying today.”
“Don’t worry, I’m good at holding back the tears.” You give her a soft smile, pulling her smaller frame into a hug. The sudden reality of your best friend and roommate leaving you hitting you at once. “Gonna miss you, Ni.”
You feel her sigh into your shoulder, arms circling around your middle. “I’ll be ten minutes away.”
“Not the same.”
“I know.”
The two of you sway in silence for a moment, and you watch from over her shoulder as Nate attempts to awkwardly pick up the keyboard, almost dropping it on the sidewalk in the process. He grunts, the instrument tilting in his arms, and you giggle as you hear Nia sigh once more. Tightening your arms around her, you release each other as she turns to check on her boyfriend who holds the instrument as you would a newborn — except this one is half his size and hard as a wood plank.
He glances between the both of you, helpless. “Uh, where does this go?”
“You can put it with the other big boxes upstairs, babe. We’ll take them Sunday.” Nia says, moving to close the trunk. She looks back at him, calling back in a sing-like voice before he disappears inside, “Thank you!”
You lean back against the car, a playful pout plumping your bottom lip. “Am I only seeing you again on Sunday, then?”
“Nope, I’ll pick you up for Evan’s birthday — did you forget about it already?”
You have. “Of course not. It’s on — tomorrow.”
“Is it tomorrow?” Nia gasps, eyes widening. “Holy shit, tomorrow’s Friday.”
You nod slowly, just as shocked as she is about how quickly the past couple of weeks have flown by. Between piles of book reports and stress-tear-stained essays during midterms week, you also had to find some time to help Nia with packing boxes while searching for a new roommate for yourself. If you managed a five-hour sleep on these past days, that would have been a well-rested night. So you can’t really blame yourself for forgetting about Evan’s birthday when Nia herself had it slipping through her mind.
“This is an emergency,” Nia says, eyes focusing on a point beyond you and, you feel like, if you listen close enough, you can hear the engines inside her head working. “I’ll have come here earlier so you can help me with my outfit.”
You chuckle. “What even is the theme this year?”
“He didn’t tell me,” Nia says in a huff. “But, on the bright side, I don’t think this year he’ll do anything too crazy — he was too busy these last couple months with that short film I told you about, remember?”
“Evan doing something low key? That’s a first.” You raise your eyebrows, skeptical.
“I mean, I don’t know. I’m just guessing.” Nia shrugs, picking at her nails. “I’m only saying because he mentioned once he was only inviting, like, twenty people.”
Now, this is a surprise. “I’m glad I made the cut, then.”
It’s not a secret to anyone who’s ever had any kind of interaction with Evan that he’s fond of the dramatics of life — his bright-colored outfits with mismatching patterns being the first example that comes to mind — and that reflects as well in his events. Especially when it comes to his birthday.
To be fair, you’ve only actually been to two birthday parties of his so far — considering the invitation usually finds you because he’s close to Nia and sees you as some sort of extension of her. Nevertheless, they were both impactful enough that left a clear impression of how much he enjoys celebrating himself. Last year in particular you remember quite well. It was what he called “Evaney” themed; being a mix of himself and his favorite artist: Britney Spears. And, while you and Nia showed up as one of at least fifteen different variations of the Baby One More Time schoolgirl outfit, Evan pulled a perfect match of the Oops! I Did It Again red bodysuit that he got one of his fashion student friends to tailor for him, as well as freshly dyed beach blonde hair to suit it. He even went as far as photoshopping pictures of himself on Britney’s body and had them printed on posters hung on every single room of the house. There were even custom-made cups and napkins with them — two of them that Nia stole at the end of the party still sit somewhere in your kitchen to this day.
Another particular thing you remember quite clearly was that there were enough people crowded in his living room to fill up your entire apartment, as you recall. And that’s about how a typical event at his home is like — even on his friendsmas dinner there were much more than just twenty people eating turkey out of disposable hot pink plates. So, Nia’s information leaves you wondering what he could have in mind for tomorrow with such a limited list of people.
Before you can voice your wonders to her, though, Nate pushes through the entrance door again. You can tell he, much like you minutes ago, is trying to cover his heavy breathing. “I left it on top of those big boxes with a bunch of books in ‘em.”
“Brilliant! Thank you, baby.” Nia grins, wrapping an arm around his middle. “By the way, we just remembered Evan’s birthday’s tomorrow.”
“Is it tomorrow already?” Nate asks, and you hold back a giggle at the way his face scrunches in discontent. He hates going to Evan’s to a point that’s nearly comical. “Fuck’s sake.”
“And I think I’ll come here early so we can get ready together.” Nia nods towards you.
Nate grunts. “Do I have to go this time?” 
“Of course, darling.” She rises to her tiptoes to pinch his cheek, to which he brushes it off.
Nate looks at you, and you only send him a tight smile in solidarity. The two of you share similar experiences with Evan, considering the only reason either of you even gets invited is that because you’re close to Nia, and she’s close to Evan. Although you like Evan, even if you’re not that close with him, you can still put on your social mask for a couple of hours and have fun at his parties. Nate, on the other hand, is likely the least sociable person you’ve ever met, and it’s obvious how uncomfortable he gets every time. 
Nia seems to sense how tense he gets as well, because she steps in front of her boyfriend, finding his eyes with her doe-like ones. “I mean, if you don’t want to, then you don’t have to.”
He sighs, “Of course I’ll go with you.” He looks up at you. “Maybe this time we can actually count how many faces of his we can see from the couch.”
This time you don’t hold back a giggle. “I have a feeling we’ll have an easier time this year.”
“Hope so.” Nate taps on Nia’s back. "Let's go, then? Is everything you need in the trunk?”
“Yup.” She answers, circling the car and opening the door to the passenger’s side. Before entering, she gives you one last look. “Do you want me to bring anything for you tomorrow?”
“I’m good.”
“‘kay!” She enters, closing the door behind her in a click and leaning over Nate to wave at you from his window. “See you tomorrow! Don’t cry too hard tonight!”
“I won’t!” You wave back.
Watching as the car pulls back, before driving away and disappearing around the corner, there’s a light breeze that raises goosebumps on the exposed skin of your arms. You cross them under your chest, leaning back into the wall of your building, not quite ready to go back to your empty home yet. The seconds blend into minutes and you stand there The promise you made to Nia not even a minute ago already pooling in your eye, knowing you wouldn’t be able to keep it anyway, you let it tickle its way down your cheek.
A rougher gust of wind hits you and, this time, you turn to go inside.
                                              ~*~ ~*~  ~*~
The days are still not long enough so that the sun can shine proudly at seven in the afternoon, but as spring just about rounds the corner there’s still a golden glow as the rays provide one last warmth before disappearing on the horizon. And that’s how the sky greets you once you step out of your building to make your way towards Evan’s house for his birthday.
As planned, Nia arrived at yours with plenty of time so the two of you could help each other get ready, a bag filled with clothes she’s just taken to Nate’s yesterday under her arm for you to help her choose. “I’m thinking something monochromatic tonight.” She said as she walked in, making you jump in your spot on the couch as you didn’t hear her using the spare key. “I’m just not sure what color.” 
She ended up choosing red. There was an old box of red hair dye you found lost inside the bathroom cabinet after Nia left — along with two different brands of shaving cream, although those belonging to Nate — and, after presenting it to her, she decided to go all for it, taking it as a sign. Nate showed up just about an hour after his girlfriend, still in his work attire and barely batting an eye at Nia’s new hair color as she blew dried it. The only comment leaving his mouth being, “You look like a tomato,” before kissing her forehead and excusing himself for a nap while the two of you finished getting ready.
What neither of you realized was that Nia’s last-minute decision took more time than you predicted, giving you barely enough time to get dressed. To her, that wasn’t exactly an inconvenience considering she had an outfit ready to match any color she wanted — in this case, was a red-dyed denim two-piece. and a matching jacket that ended up discarded after she noticed it covered her newest shoulder tattoo (though you tried to argue she could just have Nate carry it so she could wear it considering she eventually would get cold at some point). To you, however, was more of a stressful task, seeing you hadn’t taken in mind to think of an outfit beforehand. So you ended up just going with the safest option that didn’t give you a lot of room to overthink, choosing to finish your makeup on the way so Evan wouldn’t have any of your heads on a plate for being late.
You’ve found that applying mascara on a moving vehicle is not the easiest task, as Nia holds your elbow to help you keep steady while talking nonstop with the driver about a topic you stopped paying any mind to about ten minutes ago.
“I’m loving our black and red moment, by the way.” She turns to you, loosening her hold as you finish the last coat. “You look like one of those hot businesswomen with your teenage daughter who likes to dress like an animated character.”
You laugh at her comparison, only now noticing the discrepancy between both your outfits. Without even realizing it, you also ended up going for the monochromatic look. Except unlike Nia’s, yours completely lacks any color. “That’s actually the best comparison you could make.”
“I know — You can take a left right here — Here, I have lip gloss.” Nia fetches a small tube from her jacket (that she ended up taking, after all), presenting it to you.
“Do you not have lipstick?”
“Are you not planning on smudging it later?” Nia wiggles her eyebrows, teasing. The hint behind her words makes you roll your eyes, snatching the lip gloss from her hand without bothering to give her an answer. There was about a month or so, just before winter rolled around, that Nia felt as if she had a mission to get you with someone. You suspect, knowing too well how her mind works, that she must’ve felt some sort of guilt for what happened during her film project last year. It was clear that her attempts came from a place of good heart, but this doesn’t mean that it made them any less annoying. However, after her plans to move in with Nate became more concrete, her cupid persona seemed to have disappeared, or so you’d thought. But now that there’s nothing else filling her mind anymore, it looks like she’s back at it, and you can’t help but snort. “What? I’m just saying-”
“You say a lot of things, most of them are incorrect.” You say, “I’m not smudging anything tonight. Not on a party with twenty people, for fuck’s sake.”
“Don’t say that before — right there! The big house on the corner!” Nia leans over the console, signaling to the driver where to park. It’s so sudden that you notice how he jumps just slightly from his seat, chuckling to yourself at how Nate snaps his eyes at her. 
The front of Evan’s Victorian home is unusually quiet once you step out onto the sidewalk. So much so that, if it weren’t for the lined cars parked along the street and filling his driveway, you would’ve thought you’d typed in the wrong address. 
The discrepancy is clear to you when compared to other gatherings Evan hosts in his house, but especially for his birthday. Last year, you could hear Toxic blasting from his place from the moment you turned on his street, and a small crowd gathered on his front yard — most of which you recall being comprised of people plastered out of their minds, particularly one semi-naked man who was using one lamppost as a strip pole while swinging a stuffed snake
That’s more or less the standard one could expect when invited to a party at Evan’s. So, to find the street as silent as any regular day is, to an understanding, odd. 
“Are you sure it’s the right date?” You ask as the metal creak of the front gate mends with gushes of wind whistling through the air.
“Yup,” Nia says simply, walking in front of you. “You can hear the music inside, shush.”
You come quiet, listening in, and, surely, you can hear the faint keys of a piano coming from the other side of the stone walls, but it only brings up more questions to your head than answers. Evan seems like the last person on Earth who would listen to classical music. Deciding not to voice your question this time, you follow short behind Nia, kicking some loose stones on the gravel path leading to the front door.
There’s no need for more than a single knock for it to open almost immediately, revealing a lace-clad Evan downing the last bits of his wine. Without the barrier you can hear the music more clearly, the keys of the piano meshing in a peculiar way, not like anything you’ve ever heard in a classical song— at least not ten years ago when you tried to learn piano for a year before giving up.
“Look at my favorite people!” Evan says with his purple-stained lips, pulling Nia for a hug with the arm that’s not holding the door open while pointing at a spot behind her. “Did you greet Jonathan when you passed him? It’s his birthday as well.”
He points to a spot where a gnome statue sits in the dry grass, face painted in clown makeup. Nate’s voice comes from behind you, “Christ.” 
“Nate!” Evan chirps, going straight for the man standing with a sharp smile and throwing his arms around him. “You know you’re my favorite grumpy, right?”
Nate only taps on the shorter man’s back, quickly moving to Nia’s side as soon as he’s free from the embrace. With that, Evan turns to you, hands finding your elbows as he takes you in, “And what have you been up to, bug? It's been ages.”
“You know… Books and… Stuff.” You chuckle, brushing it off. “Happy birthday, E.”
“Thank you!” He claps his hands together. “Now, c’mon, let’s get all of you started.”
Following him inside, you’re met with a glittery box standing right next to the entrance; rolls of tape seal it shut, and a hand-sized hole has been cut on top of the lid. You try to peek at what could be inside, but strings of colorful crepe paper are stuck to the hole, making it harder to know its contents.
Evan picks up the box, holding it to his side. “So, I need each of you to grab a piece of paper inside the box. There will be a number in it but for now just hold on, drink, and chat while waiting for further instructions.” His voice lowers at the end to give his words more of a mystery behind them.
Nate tenses in front of you and you have to keep yourself from chuckling at his desperate gaze moving from the box to his girlfriend as he moves uncomfortably on his feet. Nia, however, only gives him a pat on his back, barely looking at her boyfriend as she does a little dance in excitement. “Oh, this feels fun.” She says, quickly reaching her hand inside the box and retrieving a piece of paper. “Mysterious, but fun. What do you have in mind, sir?”
“Nothing too crazy this year, darling, you can relax — We’re all too tired.” He moves the box towards Nate, who reluctantly reaches inside. “Just something to mesh people together that won’t give me too much of a headache to clean tomorrow.”
“Smart.” You say, peeking at the box as it’s presented to you before reaching for a paper inside, quickly reading the number eight written on it before folding the piece between your fingers.
“Nice! As always, drinks in the kitchen. We’re starting in ten minutes!” Evan claps, hushing the three of you further inside.
Surprisingly, this time around there are no posters of his face in sight as you follow Nia and Nate to the kitchen. There’s a mild mash of voices coming from the living room — where the sound of the piano is the loudest, and you wonder if he got an actual piano or if it’s just a Bluetooth speaker —, but it’s not nearly as loud as you’re used to from past times. The lighting has been lowered to a buttery yellow; you realize once you enter the kitchen that feels too bright to your eyes in contrast to the hallway.
“Is there any alcohol?” You wonder out loud, and Nia glances at you with her eyebrows shot towards her hairline. “What? I’m just asking ‘cause everyone is unusually quiet.”
“There’s wine and — what are these guys right here?” She picks up one out of four plastic jars sitting on the kitchen island, reading the label stuck to it out loud, “Strawberry Mary — ooh, this looks fun.”
You reach for the other three to check their contents, but all have names similar to the one Nia now fills her cup with — fruity, yet mysterious: Lana Banana, Jenny Berry Mix, and Pineapple Suzan. “Did he come up with these?” You chuckle, reaching for the berry mix.
“It was probably Adam,” Nia says, and you frown. “That bartender guy? The one with the pet snakes.”
“Oh, yeah. I know him.”
The room comes quiet as you serve yourself, and only after you glance up you realize a tension lingering in the air. Nate stands awkwardly in a corner, eyes fixed on Nia as he moves his head around subtly. Glancing between the two of them, you notice how their expressions change as they keep their eyes locked, not a single word being uttered out loud. To you, it almost feels as if they are reading each other’s minds, and the heat of their silent argument becoming clear once Nate huffs, shaking his head. 
Nia clears her throat, seemingly uncomfortable, shooting you a knowing look. It’s only when she gives you a toothless smile that you realize the silent question behind it. “Uhm, I’m going to check if there are any sweets outside.”
Beelining towards the doorway, you quickly make your way out of the room. The hallway is empty and, from where you stand awkwardly in the middle of it, you can tell Evan’s left his spot by the front door, meaning he’s likely gone to the living room where the rest of the guests are. You can hear them chatting, although like you previously pointed, the voices are much more controlled than what you’re used to, and that makes you oddly flustered by the thought of walking in alone. 
Considering the limited amount of invitations this year, the chances of you knowing anyone are slim and, to add to your sudden nervousness, most of the people from Evan’s closest circle of friends are — like himself — inexplicably intimidating. This is mostly because it feels like this unspoken competition that everyone has settled with each other, to subtly brag about your success whilst simultaneously pretending to be impressed about the other’s accomplishments. And for you specifically, considering you’re not part of this artist clique that they lock themselves into, it feels particularly tiresome to be part of those interactions. 
So, you opt to wait for Nia, pretending to admire one peculiar painting hanging on a wall opposite to where the doorway leading to the living room stands. Every so often, you catch yourself glancing over your shoulder one way or the other, either towards the kitchen to check if your friends are joining you, or to the doorway where the rest of the guests are in. At one point, the voices get louder, joining in a laugh before tangling together in a mess of noise you can’t make sense of. It’s after a minute that you hear footsteps coming from the living room, making you freeze on your spot, carefully turning your back to whoever’s about to catch you avoiding the party, and focusing on the piece you’ve been staring at for the past five minutes.
The painting you first thought was just random strokes of earth tones abstractly put together you now realize it’s a man and it doesn’t take you more than a second or two to recognize Evan’s side profile in a peach shade. Your hand claps on top of your mouth as you fight the urge to laugh. The sound comes out muffled, but it stops as you hear the footsteps falter as they turn into the hallway. Keeping you back to them, you listen as the wooden floor creaks as whoever was approaching makes their way back. You peek to catch sight of who it might be, but all you make out is the shadow of mustard corduroys turning the corner.
As if on cue, Nia and Nate finally appear from the kitchen, thankfully neither appearing to be sour after the talk in the kitchen. 
“Finally.” You say, still feeling giggly from your finding. “Nate, you have to check this-”
“Okay! Let’s start, then. Do we have everyone in the living room?” Evan’s voice interrupts you as he calls out. Nia guides you along with her to the living room. And, as soon as the three of you enter, Evan nods at you, before continuing, “Now that all the bunnies are trapped, we shall begin!” He laughs, clapping his hands together before motioning vaguely to everyone. “Before I explain what I have planned, I want to pair you all. So, I’ll call out the numbers that each of you picked when you arrived, so everyone can find their pair.”
You frown, confuse yet curious about what Evan’s up to as he calls out the numbers. Now that you stop to glance around the room, you note how there are more people than you’d expected. It’s still not nearly as many as previous parties of his, but it still feels like the room is nicely filled, maybe just a dozen people above twenty. And amongst them, there’s quite a few you recognize as they pair up together — like Georgia, the first one to be called, whom you spent a good half of the New Year’s party with, or Taylor, who gets paired with Nia (you remember him particularly from a film festival that Nia had been part of — he produced and directed a short film comparing the second wave of feminism to the wildlife in the Amazon Rainforest, and Nia couldn’t stop complaining about how bad it was for the entire week after). 
It’s when Evan jokes with someone on the other side of the room, however, that you see him.
He’s tucked in a corner, right next to the bookshelves, arms crossed under his chest in a way that makes his tattoos pop out of his biceps, something you notice even standing on the opposite end of the room. His smile is subtle as he watches the scene in front of him, but it’s still enough for a dimple to poke at one side of his face -- it’s barely there, but you’ve seen it up close enough times that you notice those details. His hand holds a drink, but you pay no mind to it because what calls your attention is the mustard corduroy hugging his hips, the same one you watched run from you not only five minutes ago.
He laughs, and you avert your eyes, mouth still hung open. You wonder if anyone will notice if you leave.
But, as though he could read your mind, Evan calls the number written on that sits crumbled inside the pocket of your jacket. “Where are my number eights?”
You step forward and, like a magnet, your eyes glue on Harry as he raises his hand. 
Shaking your head in disbelief, you have to fight against an urge to shut your eyes tightly as the regret of having left your room at all tonight becomes almost overwhelming. All you expected for the night was to forget about book reports and endless essays piled up on your computer, to relax, maybe drink a bit more than you should while watching Evan’s friends dancing with a taxidermy beaver or something of sorts (that was on his friendsmas party two years ago). Instead, here you are on what feels like the first day of class dynamic your teacher has imposed to make everyone interact with each other. And, suddenly, the long pages of (insert boring book) don’t seem that bad right now.
And to make matters worse (because the universe just likes to add a little more spice to your tragedies) of all people standing in this living room you just had to be paired with the one with whom you had a fling-like relationship six months ago.
It’s awkward before he even approaches you, the tension making you fidget in your spot anxiously, barely being able to shoot a tight smile his way. 
The last time you saw Harry was through the rearview mirror of a car, standing on the sidewalk like an abandoned puppy with his tail between his legs. Though you admit you let your dramatics take away when you turned away from him to leave, the feeling behind it was genuine. You were upset. He had led you on, after all, made you think he wanted to have something more just to ignore you for months and, later, appear with a redhead under his arms and call her his girlfriend. So, yes, it wasn’t the best note to leave on.
But despite how you left the last encounter, the spark of nervousness that shoots through your stomachs right now doesn’t come exactly because of his presence, but more so for the awkward nature of this encounter. At the time it happened, you avoided any activity that had the slight possibility of seeing him again like the plague. You were hurt, and you were mad — though the second part was more directed at yourself than at him. But that was six months ago. After all, as much as you felt enchanted by him and as much as those two weeks you spent together were nice, that’s all that it was: two weeks. Yes, you were sad and, yes, maybe you shed a tear or two while watching Love, Rosie with Nia afterward, but that passed as quickly as it came.
That is, until now.
“Your hair is shorter” This Is all you blurt out when he stands in front of you again.
“It is, yeah.” Harry runs his hand through his hair. The strands that last time you saw him, curled around his jawline, now peek just under his earlobe. “Did it myself, actually.”
“Really?” You take a big gulp from your drink, gaze going anywhere but meeting his own. “Found yourself another talent.”
“Another?” You can hear the smirk in his voice.
“I mean, besides acting.” You grin, holding the cup to your lips and sparing him a glance. “Suppose after your debut you’ve gotten yourself busy with casting calls”
“Of course” Harry laughs. Now that you’re closer you have a better look at his dimples as they pop out, as well as the constellation of freckles hugging his nose, and the mole right under his lips. You avert your eyes again. “I’m set to be the next Bond, in fact”
“Oh, wow.” You raise your brows, grinning at the brim of your cup. “I can see it.”
He turns to you, “Can you?” You peek at him. "Why is that?”
This is exactly what you were afraid of all those months ago after last seeing him. The entire reason you ran from any possibility of seeing him again afterward. You can still remember clearly how much of a flirt he is, even when he doesn’t mean to be. It’s not a secret that Harry’s a charming man. His words are like honey, and when he uses them just right, you know is enough to have you melting. And it doesn’t help how well you seem to click together. Even now, you still feel it by your impulse to flirt back, to look him in the eye, and get just close enough to feel the scent of his cologne. Do all that just to turn away in the last second. Tease him the same way he did you. But you don’t do any of that, of course, because you’re as petty as you are bitter. So, instead, you click your tongue. “Don’t get too comfortable, Harry, bet your girlfriend wouldn’t be happy about that.”
He chuckles. “What girlfriend?”
This time you turn fully at him, brows shooting up not in defiance, but surprise. “Yikes.” You say before you’re able to hold back.
“Yikes.” Harry still holds a smile when he repeats it, head falling as he lets out a — nervous? — laugh.
A question pops into your head. One that lingered in your mind for a good while now, but comes back a bit louder now that you have the information that his relationship was short-lasted after all. It’s a short one, but one that requires a long answer, you suppose. What happened? You think. But you don’t dare to voice it, you don’t want to have this conversation with him. Whatever the explanation is, it’s not going to change anything. So you just avert your gaze back to Evan, who now calls for everyone’s attention again.
“I know you’re all dying to know what this is all about. So, I’m going to explain it all.” And with that introduction, Evan dives into a monologue you only pay half mind to. It’s hard for you to focus on the words rapidly leaving his mouth as you can feel Harry glancing at you every so often from the corner of your eye. You listen in to Evan describing himself as a feisty kid and mention his love for drama, and then you feel the ghost of Harry’s arm bumping against yours as he sways on his feet. You try to pay attention to the story being told of the events leading up to this birthday party, and then you have to hold yourself back from meeting Harry’s eyes once you feel them at the side of your face once again. He makes a comment under his breath that you don’t quite catch, and you’re about to question him before Evan’s voice comes in an even higher pitch. “I wanted tonight to be exactly that: chaotic. I didn’t want anything to quite make sense, and I didn’t want to think much, if I’m honest, last year of film school is taking a big chunk of my functioning neurons and m’dad’s whiskey collection is taking the rest of them.”
There’s a collective laugh that takes place and, once again, Harry’s eyes peeking at you. “Everyone can relax, it’s not one of those murder mystery parties, as I’ve heard some people guess — for fuck’s sake as if I have the time and patience to plan something like that.” He says with a sip directly from a wine bottle you just now realize he’s been holding. “It’s a scavenger hunt, you have a partner and an envelope with clues. Each pair will find something related to moi and after it’s all done, we’ll eat burgers and talk about me for the rest of the night.” 
“Sounds easy enough.” Harry mumbles.
Evan claps his free hand on his wrist, hushing everyone. “So off you go, c’mon! I’ll be hungry in an hour.”
“This is gonna be…” You start. “Interesting.”
“Interesting is a great word to describe it.”
“Well, let’s try to do this as quickly as possible, then.” 
 The side of his lips quirks up. “On a rush?”
“This is not exactly a comfortable position to be. I think you get it.” You say, fidgeting on your feet. You wait for a second for him to say something so you can start the activity, but he doesn’t and you realize there’s a piece missing. “Do you have an envelope?”
Harry nods, reaching for his pocket where the envelope sits folded in half. He swiftly opens it, taking out a card.
 “Well?” You prompt, “Read us the first clue, Bond.”
There’s a smile that Harry fights against at the nickname and you’re not sure due to the dim light, but you think there’s a hint of a rosy tone on the apple of his cheeks. “An activity that grows lives and ruins manicures.” He reads out loud, pausing for a moment before laughing to himself. “I know this one.”
“Grows lives?” You frown. “As in, a pregnancy?”
Harry shakes his head, leading the way towards the corridor. “As in, gardening.”
“That’s a very weird way to put it.” You say, following him. “Does he garden?”
He walks into the kitchen, greeting two people you don’t recognize who are searching for something — their clue, you assume — inside the cabinets. “No, but his sister does. There’s a greenhouse in the back.”
You simply hum in response, muttering a quick thank you as he opens the door for you that leads to the back garden. The greenhouse is not unfamiliar to you from the outside, there have been a good amount of summer gatherings in his back garden for you to know of its existence. But you’ve thought nothing more about it. If you’re honest, you never really paid much attention to it. If anything, you assumed he used it as storage at most, never taking Evan as someone who enjoyed gardening. Though now you know you were right, you've also learned that his sister lives with him and you wonder why he’s never mentioned it before.
The curiosity inside of you wants to question Harry about it, to ask him what else he knows you don’t. When you think about it, there’s a lot you want to ask him about. Not just regarding Evan, but also regarding him. You wonder what he’s been up in the past six months if he ended up adopting the kitten he’d told you about back when you were still filming or if he read any of the book recommendations you wrote on his notes app one particular night the two of you chatted for longer than the moon could hold itself up in the sky. The part of you that begs for you to say something on the short walk is so strong you have to physically bite your tongue to be able to hold back.
You don’t have to hold for long, however, as Harry takes it upon himself to say, “So,” He starts, clearing his throat, “How- uh- how are you doing?”
Somehow, his words click something inside of your mind. They remind you of why you shouldn’t let that curious part of you win. The sole purpose of it not falling for his charm. You shake your head, “We’re not doing this.”
“Doing what?” He frowns, his steps faltering for a second.
“Small talk.” You answer, focused on your goal. “We’ll just solve this thing as quickly as possible so I can go back home and finish my Euphoria marathon.”
“Right.” Harry nods once, and you can’t help but notice the way his lips quirk down, the frown not leaving his face. You can’t lie and say it doesn’t make your stomach drop the slightest bit to see you’ve upset him, but you have to remind yourself how much he’s upset you, too. 
It’s protecting yourself, you think. After tonight, you don’t have to see him ever again.
Inside the greenhouse, you’re greeted with a mix of scents you’re not prepared for before stepping in. The space is compact, with a single corridor narrowed with garden beds on each side. Dozens of branches and leaves tickle you as you walk in, most of them belonging to different flowers that, despite the chilly weather that still lingers outside, are already blooming. It’s a blend of colors, bright reds, and ocean blues, soft purple petals kissing pink and yellow ones. 
“We should look for gloves.” Harry’s voice startles you, chuckling as you jump a bit.
“Huh?” 
“Gloves.” He says. “I think whatever we’re looking for has to do with the gloves, ‘cause he mentioned manicure.”
“That makes sense.” You look around. Many gardening tools are piling under the tables that hold the garden beds; watering cans and empty pots. You look between bags of fertilizer and drawers filled with shovels. There’s so much stuff to look through that, at one point, you sit back on your calves, glancing around, lost.
You hear Harry leafing through as you’re doing, feeling his legs brushing against your back as he passes by and you stop, watching him from your spot on the floor. He’s got a concentrated look on his face, bottom lip worried between his teeth as he scans through the walls before he opens another drawer. That’s when his gaze falls, catching yours. You quickly turn away, pretending to go through another pile of empty pots and blocking the sound of a chuckle coming from his spot.
For a moment, the only sound in the room is the clicking of ceramics and the opening and closing of wooden drawers. That is until you hear from Harry, “A-ha!”
You look up again, seeing him move to the back where few pairs of gloves hang on the wall — so obvious yet still hidden between raincoats and summer hats. “Right under our noses.” You say, getting up.
Harry searches inside the gloves, tongue trapped between his teeth. “Bingo!” He says, pulling out two tiny bottles from inside one pair.
“What is it?”
“Liquor.” He grins, peeking at you from under his lashes before ripping a piece of paper attached to it. “It says ‘one for each, now get to clue number two.’” He holds up one bottle, offering it to you, to which you take it. “It’s chocolate flavored.”
“Of course it would be a drinking game.” You open it, feeling the artificial chocolate scent braid with the alcohol. “Christ.”
“Don’t smell it, or it’ll be worse,” Harry says, downing his with one quick tilt of his head. “‘S not that bad, actually.”
You mimic his action, letting the drink swiftly burn its way down your throat. Unlike Harry, you can’t help but scrunch your nose at the taste. “You’re a fucking liar.”
Harry only giggles in response, taking the empty bottle from you and placing it back inside the gloves, along with his own. 
And then again, silence. You turn to the flowers to find some comfort.
A family of tulips glances back at you, their petals in a full red, it’s the kind of beauty you’re scared to ruin if you touch, so you just rest your hand on the wood. “They’re beautiful.” You only notice you say it out loud when Harry hums back in agreement.
“They are.” He says quietly but somehow feels loud by how close he is. “Tulips are my favorites.”
You stop, brows raising incredulously at him. “No, they’re not.”
“What?”
Cursing the universe for playing with you like this, you can’t help but laugh at the situation. “It’s just- they’re my favorites, too.” You look at him. “My nan used to plant them when I was little.”
“That’s sweet.” He says, smiling and you nod. “The red ones represent true love.” He points. “And the purple ones represent royalty.”
You blink at him. “Do you just look up tulip facts in your free time?”
Harry laughs. “Yeah, basically.” He looks down at you, and you can’t help but notice how the greenery around brings out the shade of his eyes. “I worked at a flower shop for a tick.”
“Really?”
He nods. “For eight months. My favorite part was writing on the store board every morning.” His face lights up as he recalls his experience. “I used to write silly stuff like, ‘one day I’d like to meet tulips.’ The old ladies loved it.”
You shake your head, breathing out a laugh. “You’re dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Why’s that?”
Because you’re sweet, you want to answer, because when I think I won’t get charmed by you again, you hit me with tulip puns. Your lip finds its spot between your teeth, you’d be damned to give him the satisfaction of hearing you tell him that, so, instead, you shrug. “Because.” You can tell he wants to dig more by the way his lip twitch up, teasing a smile, but you just nod towards the door before turning away from him and heading out. 
There’s a distinct change of temperature when you step outside, and it’s only when you do that you notice the greenhouse was heated. Thankfully, the night is not too windy as it would get a week or two ago when winter was still insisting on making itself present, but it’s still chilly so that it makes you hug your jacket closer to your body. Harry also notices the difference, as you hear him wince as he steps out from behind you — unlike you, he’s not wearing anything to protect his arms from the cold, which only makes it harder for you to not ogle the tattoos hugging his skin.
“So, what’s next?” You prompt.
Harry reaches for the card again, taking it from its spot on his pocket before reading the second clue. “‘Not feeling too creative to write this one, it’s on the third tree on oak.’”
“I mean, at least we don’t have to think too much on this one.” You say, “Oak Street is the one to the left, right?”
“Yeah.” Harry sighs. “Can’t believe he’s making us go out on the streets.”
You start to make your way back towards the house. “Too tired for a stroll?”
“‘S cold,” Harry says, scrunching his nose. “Here, there’s a side gate.”
He guides you through a gravel path to where the black gate stands, hidden between bushes and branches. Strings of fern hug the bricked fence and the surrounding grass is high enough that it tickles your calves through your tights, making you believe this path has probably been left unused for at least a couple of months now. This information brings out an extra worry for you, as you take a better look at it, noticing how the gate is closed shut to the fence.“Is it open?” You wonder out loud.
“Shit, I don’t think it is.” Harry huffs under his breath. “But, I mean, we could easily jump it.”
You stop, turning to glance at him as the suggestion leaves his lips. He stands there, hands on his hips, examining the gate, tongue poking out as he frowns. After a second, he meets your eyes. “What? It’s not that tall.”
“I suppose.” You say, looking back at the fence that ends just below your shoulder length. It would be easy enough for you to climb it with a boost, however, “I’m wearing a dress.”
“Oh,” Harry scratches the back of his neck. “Let’s just go inside-” He turns back.
“Wait,” You stop him, not sure if it’s the slight amount of alcohol in your system already making you more adventurous, you train your gaze at the gate, analyzing it again, before looking back at him. Squinting your eyes, “You have to close your eyes.”
He laughs, “Are you sure?”
“It’s not that high.” You shrug. “But I need your help.”
“Of course.” He moves next to the brick wall, kneeling before it and nodding towards you. “C’mon, step up.”
Hesitantly, you glance at his thigh stretching his trousers, a sudden wave of insecurity hitting you. “Are you sure you can lift me?”
Harry simply puts his hand out in a silent request for you to hold. “Of course.”
“No peeking.”
He shuts his eyes tightly, chin meeting his chest as he looks down. And then you take his hand, feeling his fingers lock in a firm hold as he helps you use him for support. You hesitate again before using his thigh as a step, “Wait, I’m gonna ruin your trousers.” You worry, but Harry only shakes his head, still keeping it facing the ground, the strands of his hair falling above his eyes in a makeshift blindfold. When he doesn't feel you stepping in still, he encourages you with a squeeze in your hand. 
You attempt to do as quickly as possible with your dress clinging to your legs, tightening your hold to Harry’s hand to step on his thigh. Once you let it go, you can still feel it lingering behind your back as you use your arms to boost yourself up the wall, sitting on it for a moment before jumping to the other side with a huff.
“Can I open them?” You hear Harry’s voice calls from the other side, and you smile, nodding even though he can’t see it.
“Yes!”
And then his face appears as he stands up in a jump, grinning at you. “See? Easy Peasy.”
“I feel like a teen sneaking out.” You say, and you instantly give another meaning to your words as Harry boosts himself up. This time, you certainly don’t hold yourself back from staring at the way his muscles flex at the movement, the tattoos on his arms stretching, and his shirt rolling up. He makes it look so easy, so effortless, barely taking five seconds until he’s jumping in front of you.
“That was fun.” He puffs, patting his trousers lightly.
“So, how are we finding the tree?” You ask, taking a quick glance to where his hands brush on the fabric of his trousers. “Should we read the clue again?”
“I know which one he’s talking about,” Harry says, nodding to the left before beginning his stride in that direction. You follow him, trusting his words as the two of you turn the corner where Evan’s house is located. 
The street in question is much calmer than the one you were just in, with no cars coming or going from the residences — that stand much closer to one another, you notice, giving the whole street more of a narrow feeling to it --, which is not exactly odd, but certainly is a contrast with the main street that Evan’s home faces, that one being more lively with people either coming home or leaving it to enjoy their Friday night. The sudden lack of background noise makes the walk to your destination a tad awkward, as none of you make an effort to strike a conversation. Instead, you resort to silently observing the surrounding area as you walk alongside Harry, noticing how the trees here bend over the sidewalk, their naked branches slowly but surely growing back the leaves they lost months ago — it makes you wonder how beautiful this must look during the peak of springtime, their full branches blending together, making a ceiling of flowers.
“Here.” Harry stops abruptly, making you almost bump into his shoulder, as you were too busy with the scenery you’ve made in your own head. “‘S this one.”
“I thought it said the third one.” You frown, looking back and noticing the way you’ve passed way more than just three.
“This one is the third.” He says, motioning to a small birdhouse stuck to its trunk with a number ‘3’ painted to the front in blue. “It’s a bit of an inside joke,” Harry chuckles to himself. “Now I get why the bastard wanted me to have this card.”
You look closer at the tree, trying to see if there’s something attached to it besides the birdhouse, but there’s nothing. Before you can question it, Harry opens the front of the tiny house, retrieving two tiny bottles from inside of it, similar to the ones you found in the greenhouse.  “Oh, no.” You say, laughing. “Did he just put liquor inside a stranger’s birdhouse?”
Harry shakes his head, “This is not a stranger’s birdhouse.”
“Huh?” You frown, glancing back to the house where you stand in front of, its front completely dark, showing that no one must be at home. You point to it over your shoulder. “Do you know who lives here?”
“Yeah,” He starts, offering you one bottle. “I do.”
Your brows shoot up in surprise, glancing back and forth from the house to the man standing in front of you, an amusing grin growing on his face. “You live here?” You ask, “This is your birdhouse?”
“It is, yeah. In fact, I was the one who built it.” He gives the birdhouse a small pat.
You can’t help but let your mouth hang open for a second. “That’s-” You pause, not sure which word to use. Impressive? Amazing? Hot? “That’s nice.”
Harry smiles, and the two of you stand there for a moment, admiring his work in silence. You suck your bottom lip in, keeping yourself from inquiring further. 
Being presented with how little you know about Harry only peaks at your curiosity at what had happened last year in your brief experience with him. When you were with him it felt as if you’d known him for months rather than weeks, but looking back at it now, you wonder if your infatuation fooled you into thinking the two of you were close. Maybe that’s why you were so upset at the premiere after all because all that did was prove to you how much you didn’t know him at all. No matter how many sleepless nights you spent together sharing bits of your lives, it wasn’t enough for you to get to know him.
It’s only when a car turns into the street that you break away from your thoughts, looking up at him and clearing your throat. “We should take this back to Evan’s.” You say. “I’m not sure how it would look from an outsider’s point of view to see us downing these tiny bottles in the middle of the street.”
“You’re right,” Harry says. “Should we read the last clue while we’re at it?”
“Sure, yeah.”
He reaches for the card inside his pocket, presenting it to you. “You do the honors this time.”
You take the card, brushing your thumb over the words before stopping for a second to read them out loud, “You’ll find your prize behind the words of buried legends.” You snort. “That’s so corny.”
“Words of buried legends,” Harry repeats, letting out a hum. “Bet he was feeling quite poetic when he wrote this one.”
“Maybe because it has to do with poems.” You peek at him, a slight raise to your eyebrow. “‘Words of buried legends’? like dead poets and stuff?” Upon reading it again to make sure, you mumble, “He really made this card especially for you, huh?”
“Makes sense.” Harry agrees before nudging you playfully with his arm. “Look at you with your literary mind!”
“Could’ve used some better wording but I’ll let it pass.” You giggle, shrugging as you hand him back the card. As you do so, you notice there’s something written on the other side. “What’s in the back?”
Harry’s brows meet. “Huh?”
“In the back of the card, something’s written on it.” You nod towards his hand as he’s about to pocket the card again. 
Harry turns it around, reading it with a chuckle. “Ice breakers.”
“You gotta be fucking kidding me.” Your mouth drops open in amusement. “Well? Go on, then. Break the ice.”
Harry makes a show of clearing his throat before reading the question as an announcement, “What celebrity do you think you could pull on your best day?”
“Is this the actual question?” You squint your eyes at him and he turns the card to allow you to read it as well. Surely, the same question reads right on top of it and, as you take a glance at the ones below it, they’re not that much better. You shake your head, “God, I have no idea.”
“I know mine.”
“You didn’t give a single thought on that one.” You say. “This should be good.”
“Jennifer Aniston.”
“Jennifer Aniston?” You stop on your tracks, raising your brows at him. “You know she was married to Brad Pitt, right?”
“Ouch.” Harry makes the theatrics of putting a hand on his heart, head falling dramatically to the side. “Right where it hurts.”
“I’m not saying you’re bad-looking, but he’s Brad Pitt.” You emphasize with a laugh, pushing him playfully as you keep walking. “Like he is the male beauty standard. Personified.”
The front of Evan’s feels more vivid than it was when you first walked in hours ago, the lights inside seeming lighter and the curtains having been pulled back, showing people wandering around on the inside. You walk past another pair crouched in front of the bushes that line next to the front gate that creaks as you open it.
Harry rolls his eyes. “Sure, let’s hear yours, then, sweetheart.”
“Ew, don’t ever call me that again.” Your nose scrunches and your face grows hot, but you attempt to shake it off, stopping to think of the question. “Huh, on my best day? I think… I don’t know, maybe Drake?”
“Oh, no!” Harry’s hands cover his face as he shakes his head into them. “I feel like that’s the most basic answer anyone could ever give to this question.”
You gasp. “Did you just call me basic?”
Harry holds the front door open for you and, before he’s able to give you an answer, you bump right into Nia. She instantly blurts out your name, as if she’s been expecting you to appear. “I’ve been looking for you!” She says, sparing Harry a glance over your shoulder before pulling you slightly to the side. “Do you think we could talk for a second?”
“Sure.” You hold out the word, looking at Harry before focusing on your friend again. “Did something happen?”
“No, no, nothing happened. Just—” Nia starts, locking your arms as she guides you back outside, pulling you to a corner a few steps away from the front door. “How are you? How's it going?”
“I’m fine. Why?” Your brows knit together at her interference and you wonder if it has anything to do with her conversation with Nate.
“I’m talking about-” She looks over her shoulder, clearly checking if anyone is listening in. Even after making sure that there’s no one there, she still lowers her voice. “When I saw he was your pair, I wanted to rescue you right away, but fucking Taylor pulled me with him and I didn’t get the chance.”
Oh. “Oh.”
“Is it too awkward?” She keeps her inquiry, holding your hand close to her chest. “We could ask them to switch so we can do the rest together, I’m sure Evan’s too plastered to notice.”
“Nia, I-” You smile as you come to realize that she pulled you aside just to check if you’re uncomfortable, having witnessed first-hand your whines and cries over Harry last year. “It’s okay, really. It’s not that bad, surprisingly.”
“Really?” Nia blinks, taken aback. “I- What happened?”
“Nothing.” You reassure her with a squeeze on her hand. “We’re just chatting, it’s not that awkward.”
“Okay.” She nods and nods, before falling serious again. “But if anything happens you just have to scream for me and I’ll be right there, okay?”
“Okay.” You say, pulling her for a brief hug. “Thanks, Ni.”
The two of you return inside just as Taylor brings up his brother’s hair sculpture collection that’s being exhibited at a local gallery — a subject you already have been the victim of hearing for about an hour during New Year’s and, by Harry’s face, he seems as helpless as you did back then. Nia doesn’t waste a second before pulling her pair away, “Let’s go, pal, those clues won’t solve themselves,” she shoots you a look over her shoulder, pushing Taylor towards the living room and you chuckle.
“He really is one of a kind, that man,” Harry says with a sigh before meeting your gaze. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, just lady talk.” You brush aside. “Let’s find those poets, shall we?”
“We shall.” Harry smiles, looking around for a second before guiding you down the hallway, turning just before entering the kitchen where a staircase. This is a way that — like the greenhouse — you’ve never been to. Still, Harry navigates so casually as if it were his own home and, to some degree, you suppose it is. You follow him up the first flight of steps, stopping just before turning into the next one where a door you never really noticed before stands. Harry rests his hand on the handle, turning to you before saying, “There’s an office hidden right here.”
You watch as he opens it, motioning for you to walk in first. And, indeed, the inside of it is an office, just a bit smaller than the living room on the opposite side of the house. Two bookcases that go from the floor to the ceiling mostly covered the wall, only leaving a single space in the middle for a dark wooden cabinet. In front of it, an L-shaped desk takes up the middle of the room, most of it is filled with files and paper stacks, as well as two computers lying asleep. For a moment, you just stand by the doorway, admiring this room you’ve never known of its existence, your eyes quickly sweeping through the bookshelves completely packed with dark cover books of all sorts. “Do you think this is where it could be?”
“Probably, yeah.” Harry nods, turning on the lights. “I don’t know where else he could have any poetry hidden.”
You move towards one bookshelf, the one closest to the door, reaching to brush your finger through the spines perfectly lined. “But look at the size of these, we’ll take forever to find anything in here.”
“Those big ones are mostly law books, I think,” Harry says, opening cabinets at the other side of the room, right next to where a white couch stands. He turns to look at you, “His sister’s a lawyer, this is her office.” Harry says, “But Evan’s got a corner right here where he keeps some of his stuff— like books of sorts. It’s the only place I could think of.”
You hum, not knowing exactly what to respond to this information.
“You can go through the ones on that side, it could be there as well.” Harry nods towards a cabinet right next to the door where you came from, and you nod.
The first two cabinets are of no luck, both being mostly filled with boxes full of children’s books and old toys — some of them mixed with more stacks of paper, but those, instead of having long texts, have drawings of all kinds from what you could gather in a glance, from child-like scribbles to actual sketches. You can hear Harry going through drawers on the other side of the room and, upon closing another empty cabinet, you peek at him, watching his broad back flexing under his shirt as he moves around. Averting your eyes as swiftly as you looked, it’s still enough to bring warmth to your cheeks.
Finally, you open the cabinet at the very bottom of the shelf. On the top, there are piles of DVDs, most being different variations of Barbie movies, but, right at the bottom, you find books. You don’t stop to check their genre at first, simply moving them away until you stumble upon a small box, the top of it marked with the word ‘prize’. “Found it!” You call back, taking the box away from the pile before setting the books back in place again. “Under Rupi Kaur? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure she’s very alive.”
“Don’t tell Evan that,” Harry says as he crouches next to you, taking the box from your hands. Inside, there are, as expected, two tiny bottles like the ones you found before but, what calls both your attention, is a small bag of sweets lying in the middle. Harry takes it, “Oh, those are nice.”
He hands it to you and you open it, quickly shoving a jelly candy into your mouth before nodding. “Yeah.”
“So…” Harry starts, peeking over his shoulder, “Do you want to go back there?”
You glance at him, his eyes hovering above yours, lips twitching up just barely. “Uh… Maybe not right now.” You answer, “Unless you feel like sharing our Jellies with other people.”
Harry only laughs, shaking his head as he sits back and you do so too, right next to him. He reaches for his pocket, presenting another tiny bottle, the one you found inside his birdhouse, “We still got these.” 
“Right!” You fetch your own out of the pocket of your jacket.
Harry opens his, holding it up towards you. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” You say, mimicking him.
Both of you down your drinks, the liquid tasting bitter, like medicine on your tongue, the only reminder of alcohol being the burn as it slides down your throat. You rest your head back on the cabinet behind you as the two of you fall into silence once more. A part of your mind is already beginning to swim around the space inside your head, and you decide to not take the last drink just yet, laying it next to your leg. Though you’ve only had the equivalent of two shots, you realize the long break you’ve had from drinking for the past couple of months -- which wasn’t exactly an intentional choice, but more like the result of your lack of free time -- is showing itself to have been enough to make you more of a lightweight. 
And even though the night so far has been strikingly surprising in terms of how comfortable you felt being around Harry again, it doesn’t mean the questions you’ve been carrying since last year have gotten any quieter. They’ve only gotten louder. More persistent, even. The curiosity you feel to know what happened is almost suffocating now. And you’d be damned if you let a drunken mind stop you from having this conversation.
You glance at him from the corner of your eyes, only watching the back of his head bobbing along with the music -- still the piano -- that comes faintly from behind the closed door. Your lips part, feeling the question form right at the tip of your tongue, but not knowing how to voice the words. Will it be awkward? You think so, but what if it ruins the night? Tonight, that’s been so oddly refreshing. A night that only served to remind you how you became so infatuated with him in the first place.
But you know you won’t be able to let go of this ich inside your head unless you bring it up. And you want to, you do, but as you take too long to think of the right way to do so, Harry decides to break the silence, murmuring next to you, “That’s a good one.”
Your brows knit together, trying to make out any trace of familiarity within the song that’s playing, but you don't find any, which only leaves you even more confused.  “Do you like classical?”
“Love,” Harry says simply, his eyes closed as he moves his head with the piano keys. “Especially this one. One of the greatest works from one of the greatest contemporary composers: Billie Eilish.”
Your lips fall open, “Shut up. Is she playing this?”
Harry laughs, a full one, that brings a grin to poke at your lips. “I mean, as far as I’m aware, no. It’s a version of her song — listen in.” He points to his ear, nodding with the melody as he sings along, “So you’re a tough guy, like it really rough guy.”
You shake your head incredulously, “Of course he’s playing classical versions of pop songs!” 
“Did you really think Evan had a taste for Chopin or Debussy?” Harry asks both dimples poking on his cheeks.
“I think at this point I’d believe anything you tell me about him.”
Both of you laugh, the air surrounding you light and warm, before falling quiet again. This time, however, you simply stare at each other for a beat. You watch his eyes, with their almost hypnotizing jade shade, glancing between your own. He rolls his lip between his teeth, nibbling at it. This is the closest you’ve been to him all night, and the details on his face only feel like a reminder of your doubts. Like the nostalgia you feel with a bittersweet memory.
“Should we-“ You stop, the words falling from your lips before you can think about them. “Should we talk about the elephant in the room?”
You half expect Harry to frown, to play dumb, and question you the meaning behind your words. For a second, you even expect him to shake his head, to get up and leave the room. And, for some reason, you kinda want him to do so. To finally break the mask of the nice, sweet guy he’s been putting on all night and allow himself to play the role of cold prick you put him on for the past months. 
But he doesn’t do it. He only gives you a short smile. “I was thinking about how to bring it up.” Harry’s gaze falls to his lap for a beat as he scratches his nose. “We should, yeah.”
You nod, more to yourself than to him. This is it. The moment to ask what you’ve been waiting for for six months now. You decide not to think much anymore, allowing the question to roll freely, “I don’t really know how to word this better but- pardon my French- what the fuck happened?”
Harry chuckles, but not an amused one. It’s more of a dry, nervous laugh. “How cliche is it if I tell you I was really fucking stupid?”
“Pretty cliche.” You say, “But also pretty true, I suppose.”
“I’m sorry for that.” He looks up, eyes meeting yours again, his own softening upon seeing you. “I really am.”
“Thank you for apologizing.” You smile a little, “But I think I deserve an explanation.”
“You do.” He speaks quietly before clearing his throat. For a second, he doesn’t say anything else, just takes a sharp breath, focusing on his fingers that play with the hem of his trousers. “I- Uhm- I know this might come as a surprise, but I’m not very good at letting people down.”
“A bit, I guess.” You try to humor, but your tone doesn’t show it. You sound quiet, hurt.
He peeks up at you, and continues, “Jess- the girl you met at the premiere- she’s lovely and all, but- how do I say this- we were never really supposed to be together.” Harry sighs, “I didn’t like her like that.”
You frown, “Then, why did you?”
“A couple of months before we met- before Evan even mentioned the film project to me, one of my mates kept insisting that I should meet his sister.” He pauses, “That was Jess.”
“I figured.”
Harry nods, “As I said, she’s a lovely girl, really nice, but we just- didn’t click like that, you know?” You hum in agreement, ignoring a small twist in your stomach when he repeats the endearment term. “But I guess she really wanted to try it, and, for months, I just kept pushing and pushing, cause I thought maybe with time I could bring myself to feel the same way.” And then again, another humorless laugh, “But- spoiler alert- I couldn’t and I should’ve just told her that.”
Your mouth hangs open for a beat before you decide against saying anything. It’s clear as you watch him explain that the entire situation for him felt more complicated than you’d ever considered. Not once did you think about the possibility of him being caught in a twist of his own decisions, and not once did you regard his feelings with the whole situation. In your bubble of gloominess, all you could think of was how he played you and used you for a bit before moving on to the next girl that fell for his sweet talk. 
Looking at him now, however, his head low and brows set on a permanent crease, lips frowning down, you can feel the internal conflict pooling out of his pores. You’re not sure if it’s exactly a look of remorse that he gives you, but it sure seems close to it.
Harry huffs in what feels like frustration as he keeps recalling the events, “But all my mates kept taking the piss, pushing me to ask her out and then, in the middle of it, I met you.” He finally smiles a bit, and you have to look down to hide the warmth that spreads on your cheeks, “And we-uh-” He shrugs, “I mean, we clicked, didn’t we?”
“I think so.” You say, just above a whisper.
“I think so, too,” Harry says, holding your gaze with his own. “And when I was with you I let myself forget about that, forget about the pressure to be with someone else, I guess.” His lips fall again, eyes meeting his lap, “But when we came back, there wasn’t much running away from it anymore. The night we got back I met that friend of mine and, I’m not sure if he said anything to Jess, but she asked me out.”
“And you said yes.”
“I said yes.” He repeats, shaking his head, “I shouldn’t have, but I said yes.”
“So you just dated her? Even if you didn’t like her like that?” You say, trying to understand his thought process. Even if his words tug at your heartstrings -- which you try to not think about right now -- you still can’t help but feel a bit for the other girl.
“I thought I could- I don’t know, I thought with time maybe I could-” He stumbles around with his speech, before finally letting out a sigh, “I don’t know what was going through my head, to be honest. I was a prick.”
“At least you can admit to it.”
“I was a prick to both of you.” 
You fall quiet, hoping he takes your silence as an agreement. When he doesn’t offer anything else, you speak up again, “Did it work, though?” He frowns, and you clarify, “Letting time force feelings into you?”
“I found very quickly how hard it is to develop feelings for someone when there’s someone else on your mind.” He says, and you bite back a smile that wants to spread on your lips.
“It’s very easy to say that now.”
“I know.” He agrees, “And I wish I could’ve realized that earlier, before even bringing you into this mess.” Harry reaches for your wrist, which lies on top of your lap, giving it a gentle squeeze. “For that I really am sorry.”
“I know you are.” You reassure, turning your hand to find his, squeezing it back. “And what happened to Jess?”
“She was rightfully upset when I told her.” His thumb brushes against your knuckles, moving the rings on your fingers around just slightly, and it’s almost enough to distract you from his voice. “We broke up a day after the premiere.”
“Ouch.”
“But it’s fine now, she’s got a boyfriend now who actually cares for her the way she deserves,” Harry says.
“That’s nice to hear, at least.”
“It is, yeah.”
You look down at your hands locked in your lap, squeezing his one more time before letting it go with a sigh.  “You really made a big mess, huh?”
He chuckles, a guilty smile poking on his face, “I did.”
You nod, finally reaching for the tiny bottle left forgotten next to you, opening it. This time you only take a sip, but it’s still enough to end half of the liquid inside. You click your tongue, “I’m glad we talked, though.” You look up at Harry again, who’s already watching you, giving a small tap on his thigh. “It’s nice to have closure, you know? To give it a conclusion and wrap with a nice little bow.”
Harry rolls his lip inside his mouth, “Is this a conclusion, then?”
You raise your brows, “Is it not?”
“I guess it could be.” He shrugs one shoulder, leaning closer to you just barely, eyes trained in yours. “But I’m hoping that, after today, maybe we could start over?”
You laugh, scrunching your nose at him as you shake your head. “Not a start over, no.” You poke his side, “You’re not getting away that easy.”
“You’re right.” He says, still not budging as he frowns his lips. “But I wish it didn’t have to be an ending as well.”
“Is that so?”
Harry nods, you can tell his eyes hold a shyness that wasn’t here a minute ago, but at the same time -- as paradoxically as it seems -- there’s a boldness as well, one you’re more familiar with. “Maybe we could chat again. This time with fewer ice breaker cards and more bags of sweets.”
You smile, rubbing your chin as you pretend to ponder about his suggestion. “That does sound very promising.”
“I really do think we clicked.” He drops his playful tone as if wanting to make sure you feel the sincerity behind his words. “Wasn’t just saying it.”
“I know.” You say, “And I think so, too.”
His smirk grows, and he doesn’t offer anything else to say, but you can tell he’s holding something back. With the silence, you suddenly become too aware of the way your arms brush together, and how his knee bumps against yours. You notice how his eyes fall a bit from yours, so quickly you could’ve imagined it, but you choose to not think so. If you lean forward, you know he will too, but you don’t want to give him the satisfaction. You’re not letting yourself make the first move.
Surely, you’re aware these thoughts are a direct result of the alcohol sweeping through your mind, testing how much of your pride you’re willing to ignore. There’s no questioning of the wall that you built all those months ago after walking out of this very house with this very man on your tail blurring out apologies. It still stands, tall and strong, and you're not letting sweet words mixed with a drink or two pull it down. Not that easily. But at this moment, looking at his stupidly beautiful face with his stupidly beautiful eyes so close to you, you feel like maybe you could peek through a window, or open up a door — just a creek, just to have a sample of what it would feel like if you were to pull it down.
“Do you want to go back?” Harry asks again, this time more quietly, this time his question has a different implication than it did before.
You're quick to shake your head, voice quiet, “Not yet.”
The corner of his lips quirk up and you raise your brows, silently daring him to ask what he’s been holding. You see his hand moving from the corner of your eyes, but you don’t break your gaze from his, not even when you feel his fingertips moving so gently against your cheekbone, brushing your hair away from your face. Harry leans closer, again just barely, and again, you stay still, only smiling softly in encouragement. Now, you’re stuck in your own silent conversation; both seeking the same thing but not making the move to achieve it -- either for pride or apprehension. 
“I’d really like to kiss you right now,” Harry whispers finally, eyes moving down again, this time slowly, making sure that his intentions are clear.
“Do it, then.” You tease.
Harry breathes out a laugh, his hand caressing its way down to your jaw. He rubs his thumb against your cheek, a feathery touch, taking another second to look at you before pulling you in. Your eyes fall closed, as you focus on your senses, and allow yourself to peek from that window, or creek that door open just a bit, to have just this moment to remember when you first got lost in his touch. 
First, it’s the warmth of his breath tickling your cupid bow, making your hold your own breath in anticipation. Then, the tip of his nose, gentle against your own, and you can’t help but lean in a bit more when you feel the ghost of his lips on yours. But he pulls back, just so slightly, hoping to have you reach for him again. Except you don’t, knowing what he’s trying to do.
“Uh-uh,” you shake your head, pulling back just a bit to look him in the eye. “You don’t get to tease me.”
Harry huffs out a laugh, “That’s fair.”
This time, there’s no teasing. Still, he goes in just as slowly as he did the first time around, curving his lips around your bottom one so softly it almost makes you lean in again. His kiss is cloud-like in a way that makes you a bit dizzy and when he presses his lips harder, you have to refrain from letting out a dreamy sigh -- still too stubborn to give him the satisfaction. It’s when you feel the tip of his tongue poking out to lick at your bottom lip in a silent request, that you pull away completely.
It’s your turn to smirk now, licking your lips before announcing, “I think we should go back now.”
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meliorist-midoriya · 3 years
Text
chasing the sun
synopsis: there’s something screaming in familiarity—in mourning—deep in his soul at the sight of you, a complete stranger. this is the price you pay for resurrection, the sun whispers as it rises.
pairing: takami keigo x fem!reader
genre: angst with a happy ending, reincarnation au
warnings: mentions and depictions of death, major character deaths, mentions of war (+ description of a battlefield scene), injuries, blood.
word count: 11.7k
a/n: happy (extremely belated) birthday, bird boy. and aaaa my baby’s here, she’s finally here! i’ve been working on this fic for a little over two months now, and i’m so happy to see it fully fleshed out! thank you to @dimplesum​ for beta reading, and the tumblr chaos server for listening to me yell all the time abt this fic :’) disclaimer, i did as much research as i could, but any historical depictions are not 100% historically accurate and i have taken some creative liberty, so please take the historical scenes with a grain of salt! 
important: there will be songs linked throughout the fic to be played in accordance with the scene, i do hope you listen to them for the full experience! it is okay if the ost ends before the scene as that is also on purpose. the beginning of the song will start with 【 ☀︎ 】 with a link to the song. with that said, i hope you enjoy, and happy reading!
crossposted on Ao3
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【 ☀︎ 】
Dawn finds Keigo, the youngest government official in the empire, stumbling upon a lone concubine in the eastern lotus garden. 
He’d been searching for solitude, away from the viper’s nest of samurai-turned-aristocrats, strutting around the castle with their now-useless weapons strapped to their hips, discussing poetry and politics instead of battle and war tactics.
It’d been disgustingly easy for them to make the switch from warrior to bureaucrat, taking the status boost in stride. Those who couldn’t, they stayed with their lords if they were lucky. The warriors who weren’t… Keigo would need an abacus to count the ones who weren’t so lucky, the countless rumors and reports of wandering rōnin with familiar names never failing to reach over the palace walls to get to him.
(Oh, what he would give to join them.)
Of course, he’d been intending to brood ponder over this in the seclusion of the garden he’d discovered a few days ago, staring at the green buds of the young lotuses in the water until his head spun. The sight of the concubine sitting in his spot (that he was certain was too secluded to be found) told him fate had other plans, however.
He cleared his throat and forced down the grimace once he saw the concubine jump, startled, before trying her best to smoothly turn and bow without looking too flustered.
“Good morning, madam.”
“Good morning—”
He smiled through the static in his brain at the mention of his surname, messily tacked to the honorific that he would never get used to. 
That name… it’s not mine. Don’t call me that.
A discordant mess of jumbled kanji that sounded nothing like the powerfully elegant names in the court. The ill-fitting characters standing out like an eyesore on his documents, the syllables falling awkwardly off the tongue in conversation.
Wholly fitting for an outsider like him, really.
The mention of that name grated something terrible in him, and he settled for keeping his teeth grit into a smile. A sheltered concubine wouldn’t know, of course she wouldn’t know. Practically no one did, so he had no one to fault but his own cursed sensitivity to a name he wanted to burn.
“Do you mind if I join you?” The slight twitch in her demure smile was answer enough, but he’d set aside time for this escape, and damn if he was going to let it go to waste.
“Of course not. Please, don’t mind me, my lord.”
He dipped his head in thanks and you bowed in return, the silence hanging in the air settling into something stiff and awkward. 
A minute passed… 
Then another… 
Then five… 
Keigo was going to go mad at this rate. Neither of you had any intention of leaving the rare pocket of seclusion, and the competitive whisper in the corner of his mind told him that leaving first meant conceding, meant losing.
(In his world, losing meant death.)
Keigo’s had enough of losing in life despite his dumb luck, thank you very much.
So, he did what he knew he did best. He talked. Shattering the awkward silence in an effort to coax the tranquil silence he was searching for back into the little gazebo by the pond. Maybe if he ran his mouth long enough, you’d get tired and leave.
“You’re a new face in the palace.”
With an expectant gaze, he watched the telltale shift from awkward to apprehensive, the rigidness of your stature sharply contrasting the flowing brocade of your kimono as you looked back at him with a too-sharp gaze before casting your eyes away to the green buds in the water. Had he been any slower, Keigo would’ve thought that the conflicted expression you quickly smoothed over was solemn (it was anything but). 
“I would say the same to you, my lord, but every face in this castle is a new face to me.” You tilted your head with a thin-lipped smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes. “Although… I’m sure an official who just arrived at the castle for his yearly residence would be an especially new face. Please excuse my rudeness.”
Keigo blinked. Once, twice, his jaw relaxing into a disbelieving smile at the sight of your steely gaze bright with a challenge and a smile sharper than the blades at his waist, the unsaid words ringing clearly. 
Two could play at this game.
Well, now, this was new. 
Perhaps it was your defiance that remained steadfast in this castle, or the blissful ignorance that made you one of the few to look at him straight on instead of down your nose. A little voice whispered that this would change in due time, the politics and power struggles confined within the castle never failing to break down even the most resilient. Those that didn’t know how to play the game correctly simply… vanished.
“Someone’s well-informed, I see.” He folded his hands behind his back, his wish for tranquility long forgotten. “I heard a new concubine has just entered the castle as well. A consolation prize, of sorts, from the farthest reaches of the country. Of course, as I’ve been gone for a year and have only been here for four, I’m not too sure.” He flicks his gaze to you, accepting your challenge with a knife-sharp smile of his own.
“I am curious as to what this concubine’s name is, however.”
You arched a brow, the thin-lipped smile widening into something sweet (that looked better on a fox rather than a beautiful concubine), and you bowed. Any trace of that stiff apprehensiveness dissolved into a graceful fluidity that seemed to disappear within the rippling silk of your kimono.
“Lady Y/N. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
To this day, he’ll never admit how surprised he was at your reverence, nor how his heart did a funny little flip in his chest when you giggled at his flustered response. What kind of fool gave respect to a commoner picked up from the slums?
You. Except you were no fool, and maybe that’s why he kept coming back like a moth to flame.
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Time passed, and he found himself in that little garden day after day, morning after morning. Listening to the concubine who told vivid stories of lands he could only dream of, foods he found himself craving, and tales of warriors past. 
The conversations at dawn soon turned into stories of the past, the laments of the present, and dreams of a bleak future. With delicate hands and gently prying words, you two unlocked every bar and lock you’d put over your souls and allowed yourselves to lay them bare for each other, the intimacy of a bond forged in secrets and solidarity far stronger than any alliance or contract.
You two confided in each other in that garden, staring at the dew on the lilypads as you two whispered how you didn’t belong in the palace. How the confines of grand walls with ears and eyes were no place for the adopted commoner and a concubine far from home. Two people in this big world who were just lucky enough, fortunate enough to end up within this lavish palace, your lives guaranteed splendor and comfort. 
Then again—you two would share a conspiratorial laugh—maybe you two were unfortunate instead. What was splendor and comfort when you had to constantly watch for a knife in your back or poison in your cup? When a single misstep could cost you your life? 
Conversations shared with you, the concubine with a sharp tongue and even sharper wit, were the most fulfilling he’s had in ages. Maybe it was the sense of formality that the intimacy of the waterside gazebo stripped away, or the unraveling realization that he hasn’t breathed this freely in ages, that he was looking forward to these moments in the morning. The intimacy shared in the garden he selfishly liked to call his own little world.
Keigo catches the smile you hide behind your sleeve when he steps into the gazebo, and he realizes you’re being selfish, too.
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He didn’t know how the conversation got here, he didn’t know why he had a hairpin meant for you tucked into his sleeve. All he knew was that when it came to you, he was helpless to the whims of rambling and buying a pretty hairpin made of red jade because it reminded him of a sharp wit with a pretty smile.
“I live for this country and I die for this country. Well, not that there’s anything much to die for anyway.” Keigo’s laugh is empty, and your melancholic gaze even emptier. A fog had blown in that morning, covering the pond in a soft cover of white, and your soft voice and softer touch on his arm (careful, almost) silenced his dry laughter and left his throat even drier. 
“What you would die for is also an excellent reason to live, is it not?”
Your words, whispered into the stillness of the moment, resonated so loudly within his soul and forced a shaky breath out of his lungs as he gazed in awe at you. At the soft, ethereal glow in the fog cast by the rising sun breaking through the clouds, the scent of bloomed lotuses wafting in on the breeze that rustles the dangling pieces of your hair ornaments. He is weak to whims when it comes to you, so he pulls out the hairpin burning a hole in his sleeve to slip into your hair with shaking hands unbefitting a swordsman. Keigo watches your eyes sparkle like the gem in your hair, and his heart lifts with hope as he whispers his devotion into the warm morning, carried by the wind into a sea of blooms.
“I’ll live for you, then.”
And with a smile, you fall in love.
(Keigo falls even harder.)
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【 ☀︎ 】
He should have known.
“I don’t know what I was expecting from the son of a criminal.”
He really should have known.
“What was that fool thinking, taking a street rat like you in all those years ago?”
Honestly, he’d like an answer to that, too. Too bad the old man was dead and left him to inherit a position he didn’t even want. To think he’d agree with the emperor for once in his short life.
“Tsk, a son will follow in his father’s footsteps, after all. A grave in Kozukappara should suit him well.”
Keigo should be concerned that he couldn’t feel how the coarse dirt dug into his knees anymore, his cheek still aching from where the guard had punched him. 
(Okay, yes, he deserved it, but he could’ve done without tasting iron.)
The sadistic glee in the guard’s face after he landed that “disciplinary strike” told him otherwise. With a bitter grimace, he spat red into the dirt.
How long has he been kneeling here? Minutes? Hours? The words echoing over and over in his head pulled him away from his present reality, bringing him back to the blur that was the past two days.
(Three? He couldn’t be sure, time passes oddly in a prison cell.)
The servants whispering about a concubine being expelled from the harem, the handmaid being promoted to concubine suspiciously quickly, and sudden memories of too-loud rustling coming from the treeline that he’d foolishly brushed off. All of it culminated in the form of palace guards dragging him from his study all the way to the harem to throw him at the emperor’s feet.
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“Could the street rat not keep his hands off the women of the court? Plenty to pick back where you came from.” 
Keigo wanted to vomit at the cloying stench of sake, unpleasant memories rushing to the forefront of his mind and forcing his limbs to lock from age-old fear. Not like he could use them anyway, with heavy hands on each shoulder pinning his knees to the tatami and his blades having long been tossed away in the struggle to drag him here.
“Oh, my lord, haven’t you heard?” A sickeningly saccharine voice pulled the man’s attention away to coo at the woman curled into his side, cradling a bottle of warmed sake. “Apparently the small-time nobleman who adopted him, did it knowing he was the son of that criminal you were having trouble with all that time ago.”
The grip forcing his head down loosened from the resounding laughter that rippled around the room, just enough to allow Keigo to glare at the loose-lipped concubine. Your opportunistic maidservant who’d been all too willing to take your place in the harem, having taken her chance and fleeing with it. Her tittering giggles and power-drunk grin grated his ears, and he kept glaring. Daring her to look back, to look him in the eye without feeling an ounce of guilt for what she had done.
Almost as if she heard his furious challenge, she took a glance at the man pinned to the floor (trying to look down her nose like she had been looked down on. Pathetic fool.)  only to jump at the righteous fury burning in his gaze, fear clouding her conscience for a precious moment. 
More, Keigo urged, rage bitter on his tongue, Guilt, shame, despair, all of it.
I hope you regret this for the rest of your life. Lament, as punishment for ruining hers—
“Don’t assume what I have and haven’t heard, woman,” The drunkard grunted, holding his cup out for her to pour with shaking hands and a meek surrender, “But, the man was losing his mind from age. What was that fool thinking, taking a dirty brat like this in all those years ago? Too useless to bear a son nor keep a wife, so he had to stoop low enough to take in a criminal’s son from the slums.”
Righteous fury welled up in his chest, and his body moved before his brain could catch up, spit landing at the emperor’s feet. Almost immediately thereafter, his head whipped to the side, cheek smarting from the sharp strike the guard’s knuckles had indented into his swelling cheek. He grit his teeth as that same cheek came down on the tatami, someone pressing his head into the ground.
“Years upon years of trying to force yourself into nobility, and you’d think you’d learn some respect along the way.”
Had he not been the one with his face pressed into the ground, Keigo would’ve laughed at the shade of fury-red the man’s face was turning. Sake did not treat him well. The concubines at his side, fearing for their lives, immediately rushed to whisper soothing words and calming pleas. Somehow, it worked, and he reclined back into his seat with a heavy sigh, draining the sake in one gulp.
“The son of a criminal shall inevitably become a criminal. Now that I think about it, this is a wonderful opportunity to get rid of an eyesore. A grave in Kozukappara should suit him well.” A sadistic grin split his lips around the cup, chortling with laughter at his own (terrible) wit. “Being buried next to his criminal father! What a filial son!”
The table shook from the force of a fine porcelain cup slamming down on it, as if the emperor were stamping his death certificate right then and there.
(He was.) 
“Get him out of my sight. The next time I want to see his head is on the gates of Kozukappara.”
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Keigo the official had died in that room, and the man that was dragged out by his shoulders left the castle as a criminal.
“Done saying your prayers?” 
Slowly, he looked up from the white paper fan set in front of him in place of the tantō that should’ve been there for his use (obligatory seppuku, his muddled brain supplied with annoyingly familiar haughtiness, so the ex-warrior could die a warrior. What a joke—) to the man he’d chosen to be his executioner. Normally, he would’ve snapped back with something witty, something sharp, but going days without water wasn’t treating him well. A heavy sigh, and the man ran a frustrated thumb down the bright blue wrap of his katana hilt. 
“The concubine, of all women? An imperial concubine, at that. I’d expect you to know better than that, my friend.”
Ah, the static in his head was a little stronger today. Wonderful.
“I thought I knew better, too. At least I get to die to someone with a steady hand.”
He scoffed, thumb running over the blue hilt again. Keigo idly remembered seeing the man rub his burn-leathered skin the same way countless times, the anxious habit having stubbornly ingrained itself into his being since childhood.
“Must you be so dark?”
“When am I not?” He managed to muster up a slow grin. “I’m hurt, I thought my closest companion would’ve known this after years of keeping swords out of each other’s backs.”
The heavy gong announcing his execution sounded, and he watched his best friend’s melancholic gaze glaze over into soulless steel that mirrored the blade drawn from its hilt. Keigo dipped his head with a solemn smile and shut his eyes in resignation.
I really… should’ve known…
“Keigo!”
Everything paused for a breath, in shock at your shout breaking the stillness of the moment. He didn’t have to lift his head to know who was crying out, trying to delay the inevitable certainty. A sharp smile and an even sharper tongue reduced to nothing but cries and desperation.
“...I’ll continue.” The executioner ignored your desperate “No!” as he shifted his stance, scarred hands steady as he placed the blade against the back of his neck despite the pain Keigo knew he was in. 
It would’ve been nice to hold you in his arms, at least once— 
No, for eternity.
The blade came down and, like a lotus facing the sun in supplication, you screamed your despair into the heavens. 
That day, the blood red sunset matched the crimson pooling on the execution ground’s floor.
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【 ☀︎ 】
Dawn finds Private First Class Takami Keigo marching into a small city on the way to the front lines, rifle slung over his shoulder and feet aching.
They’ve been marching through the night, and for the first time in his life, he found himself grateful for Japan’s humid summer nights. He’d take sweat over losing toes from frostbite any day. 
But, he decides, sighing in relief along with the rest of the company at the sight of a town once they crested the hill, there was nothing like the relief of a warm bed and any food other than the tasteless military rations.
“Tired already?” The low voice beside him would’ve made him jump had it not been so familiar.
“Aw, what’s this? Is Touya-kun worried for little old me?” Keigo shot a grin at the man marching next to him and dodged the elbow that he aimed at his side with a short laugh.
“A tired soldier is a dead soldier.” A pause, and the next response came backed with a dry laugh. “Not like it’d affect you and your monstrous instincts, anyway.”
“Yes, as we’ve been told a thousand times, General.” The teasing tilt to his voice came easy, and he let his best friend elbow him this time, too busy laughing at his annoyance. 
Should he have been a little more worried of the captain catching him messing around? Yes, but he couldn’t be bothered to care. Judging by the restless shifting rippling through the soldiers, no one was too worried about getting a scolding when they were so close to a warm meal and rest.
“Think the inn will be big enough to house all of us? Another night sleeping on the floor doesn’t sound all that nice to me.” 
Touya scoffed as if his question was the stupidest thing he’d heard all day, keeping his gaze straight as he adjusted the rifle on his shoulder, the company shifting around them into formation as they approached the gates.
“You’re complaining like it’s anything new to us.”
“Harsh.”
The conversation faded after that, the rough dirt under his boots soon transitioning into the packed earth of the town’s main street as residents gathered to whisper and gawk at the soldiers passing through, the sight of their uniforms a jarring eyesore in this sleepy town. 
A sleepy, familiar town.
Keigo’s mind was spinning. His restless gaze kept flicking around the too-familiar buildings and shops and people that remained after all these years. The restaurant with the broken kitchen window that was too easy to sneak into, the grocer who still kept his trash bin too close to the alley, the old woman sitting in front of her izakaya who always had ginger candy and a meal to give. 
They slowed to a stop in front of the large inn, and he stared up at the building that looked much smaller than he remembered, the interior much less grand than he’d imagined it to be as they filed their way in, and he found himself in the room he once dreamed of sleeping in. There, Keigo sat in near disbelief, on the futon that wasn’t as soft as he thought it would’ve been.
“How time flies, huh?” He looked up to see Touya dropping his pack next to his futon and sitting down across from him with a melancholy grin.
There was too much Keigo wanted to say, nostalgia bitter in the back of his throat, so he settled for a matching smile.
“Old Man Yasutaro never got around to fixing that boarded up window.” 
Touya barked out a surprised laugh, Keigo’s smile widening into a self-satisfied grin.
“You ever think he did that on purpose? He always did stock too much food.”
“Are you kidding?” Keigo shuddered at the phantom pain of the beatings he earned. “He was scary whenever he caught us, there’s no way mean ol’ Yasutaro would do all that just for a pair of orphans on the street.”
“Mm, I don’t know, he was always pretty sweet to Granny Tamayo, so anything that made him look good in her book.” Touya leaned back on his arms, the melancholy melting into the ease of bittersweet nostalgia. It was easier to smile through the painful memories rather than dwell on the past, so Keigo let himself toss his head back with a laugh.
“God, her ginger candy was the best.” 
“You sure it was the candy? Or the granddaughter who always snuck an extra piece to you?” That earned Touya a frustrated noise of protest and a half-hearted kick he dodged.
“That was ages ago!”
“And you still react like a little boy!” 
Keigo groaned, burying his face into his hands as if that would tune out Touya’s cackling laughter. It was short moments like this that took the weight off his shoulders, the murmurs of public dissent, the leaked plans of a planned riot, the magnitude of his actions tomorrow morning.
(Civilians. Of all things, why did it have to be civilians?)
He suddenly pushed himself to his feet, the heavy weight having pushed itself back onto his shoulders and slotting the familiar hum of alertness back into place. Touya gave him a knowing look that he, decidedly, ignored in favor of getting out before his mind swallowed him whole.
“Dinner is supposed to be in a bit, we should get going.”
“Wonderful job of changing the subject, really.”
“Wonderful job of being annoying.”
Touya dodged another swipe of the leg, laughing at his displeasure as he stood to follow.
“Why thank you, I try.” His grin widened with a certain glint in his eye that Keigo found himself dreading. “Now let’s get going, I heard some of the guys are at Granny Tamayo’s izakaya.”
“What?”
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“My, isn’t that little Keigo? And little Touya?” 
Keigo faltered halfway through the entrance, smoothing his grimace into a smile as he watched the old lady totter over from her seat with all the coddling of a grandmother. The soldiers within earshot (who were already drinking and eating away. It was barely sunset—) paused to gawk and grin at the endearing interaction.
“Not so little anymore, Granny.”
“I’ll say. Are you eating alright? Is the military treating you well?”
“Granny!”
“What’s this? Speedy and Torchface have some history here?” Keigo kept his smile smooth, only shifting it just the slightest bit into what he knew would look like a sheepish grin instead of the pained grimace underneath the surface. Boisterous laughter that only alcohol could bring rippled around the spacious izakaya, the men cracking jokes over drinks and food.
“Careful calling him Torchface, he has the temper to match.”
Ah, there it is. Touya shouldered past him to stalk towards the offending table with a scarily wide grin, pulling the loose-lipped rookie into a chokehold, his wide grin unmoving.
“‘Has a temper’ my ass, you’re just jealous that a guy with a bunch of burn scars has an easier time with women than you idiots.”
The laughter only grew louder, Granny Tamayo’s expression softening at the interaction before turning back to Keigo with a nostalgic smile.
“Not so little… I see.” She motioned to the table Touya had made a space for himself at, shoving the rookie (who was still in a chokehold, poor kid) aside to make room for him. “Take a seat, dear, and the drinks will be right out.”
The too-loud laughter and incessantly clinking glasses filled the space up with ear-grating noise, and Keigo wanted to leave. Search for peace and solitude in the quiet streets in a way that was strangely familiar. 
(For a fleeting moment, he thought a quiet garden would be nice.)
However, he’d rather eat with the company of drunks rather than the void of his own mind and the horrors silence tended to bring, so the migraine starting to brew in the back of his head was a small price to pay. As was the heavy arm slung over his shoulder from some random soldier, alcohol-loosened and heavy, and the awkward conversation he found himself following along with perfectly tailored humor.
“Alright, I have two beers as well as a few rounds of edamame and—” 
The familiar voice stopped short, and Keigo felt his heart stop in tandem. Slowly, he looked up and saw the girl who used to sneak out an extra candy when her grandmother wasn’t looking, now a woman in the izakaya uniform balancing trays in one hand and two mugs in the other. 
“...Keigo?”
Almost as if the locked gates had been thrown open, a new rush of memories past had overcome him. Jaunts through the town disguised as adventures, clumsily dancing around an old gramophone and calling it a waltz, and the start of blossoming love. Keigo simply smiled, easygoing and familiar, like it hadn’t been years since you saw him run to the military with Touya the first chance they had, drawn by the promise of food and shelter. Like he hadn’t left a malnourished boy and come back a man with more scars than skin.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“‘Been a while.’” You rolled your eyes, setting down the mug in front of him with a huff. “The two most important people in my life run off to join the army without so much as a word, and that’s what you say?”
His words stopped halfway up his throat the moment he saw Granny Tamayo come up behind you to pinch you on the arm, the half-formed response morphing into a laugh as he watched you flinch back with a surprised (and betrayed) yelp.
“Y/N, darling, don’t be rude to the customers.” You pouted, rubbing at the sore spot on your upper arm.
“Yes, Grandmother.”
“It’s fine, Granny. Nothing new, right?” At the sight of his cheeky smile, the old woman scoffs, something endearing, before nudging him out of his seat despite your noise of protest.
“Well, since you two seem to be talking of nothing but the past, why don’t you go take a walk down memory lane?”
“Wha— Grandmother! There’s still customers—”
“Kaede can handle it just fine! Shoo, shoo, get out of my hair.” 
Without missing a beat, Granny Tamayo smoothly plucked the trays from your hands and nudged you two towards the door as the soldiers watching roared with laughter and cooed jokes at the two “childhood lovers”. Keigo turned towards Touya, almost desperately, in a futile search for— what? Escape? Wasn’t he looking for escape in the first place?
“Wait, Granny, come on. Touya’s part of this too, isn’t he?”
“Don’t drag me into this, a trip down memory lane isn’t for me!” With an arm still slung over the now-wheezing rookie’s shoulder, Touya raised the cup of sake he’d ordered as if in toast. Whether it was to Keigo’s mortification, or to the potential opportunities this meant, Keigo didn’t want to know.
Probably both.
(...Probably the former, if he were to be honest with himself.)
A flurry of drunken laughter and lighthearted jokes, half-hearted protests that fell on deaf ears, and insistent pushing at his back later, he found himself standing outside the izakaya, blinking up at the full moon before looking over at you.
“...Did we just get kicked out?”
“I think we did.” You snorted, scuffing a mark into the dirt path with your heel, and Keigo wanted the earth to crack open and swallow him whole. What was he supposed to do? Stuck with the remnants of a rekindling love, the awkwardness that tended to come with years of estrangement and words that failed him when it came to you. 
Well, there’s really only one thing he could do.
Talk.
“So, what’s new with you?” He immediately cringed at his choice of words, forcing himself to school his expression over into an easygoing smile instead of recoiling like he so desperately wanted to do. 
Nice going there, Keigo, really.
“...Same old.” Your quiet answer snapped him out of his thoughts, and he tilted his head, almost like he was beckoning you to continue. “Same old town, same old job, same old life. I pretty much walked the path everyone knew I was going to go on as the granddaughter of the izakaya’s owner.”
You looked up with a sheepish grin, the bright moonlight casting the world (and you) in a silver glow, and Keigo felt his heart leap into his throat.
“Not the most exciting to a man from the military, huh?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I’ve seen a lot—” Keigo rubbed at the identification tag hidden under his clothes by force of habit, the leather cord heavy around his neck. He has seen a lot. Too much, to be exact, but how would he even begin to explain the horrors of man to someone… “normal”? How could he?
For someone whose wit and silver tongue helped him survive all these years, he was awfully tongue-tied tonight. Or maybe it was just you, and the surreal lightness settling into his soul that had him stumbling over his words.
“But you’ve seen enough?” You finished his sentence with a wry grin, and the surprised laugh found itself past his lips before he could catch it. How could he forget? You were always, always a step ahead of him. Back then and even now.
“Enough of my barracks and Touya’s face? Yeah, definitely.” You swatted his arm with a huff, and the familiar action made the next laugh come a little easier, his chest a little lighter as the awkwardness slowly dissipated into something… comfortable. Normal.
“You know that’s not what I meant!” 
“Well, that’s your answer, Y/N. Don’t know what else to tell you,” He shrugged in mock ignorance, and you groaned, going back to worrying at the deepening scuff in the dirt. 
“What, so, we both had boring lives?”
Far from boring.
“...Yeah, I guess so.” 
You pursed your lips and stared out at the quiet street, the beat of silence almost bordering on awkward by the time you broke it with a resolute sigh, starting to walk forward into the moonlight.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to make up for it somehow.” 
“And how would you do that?”
“By going back to when life wasn’t so boring,” You hummed, spinning to face him and grandly spreading your arms, as if you were presenting the lantern-lit street to him, “C’mon! Tonight, this main street is memory lane!”
“Aren’t you taking me out of town at one point, though?”
“Oh, hush. Are you coming or not?”
“I’m coming, coming.”
Oh, your smile was radiant, and Keigo had to force himself to keep moving instead of gaping like a fool.
(Was it possible for him to make you smile like that all the time?)
For the next hour, time seemed to stop. The moon stood frozen in the sparkling sky, watching two star-crossed lovers go around town, laughing and reminiscing on what could’ve been. What could be, if Keigo were to be bold. You took him down Main Street as promised, and he found it hard to relate to the memories you spoke of, associating each store with scornful stares and pitiful ignorance. Eventually, you two looped around to the outskirts of town. To the river that looked more like a creek now, and the quaint houses and maze of alleyways. To familiarity.
He smiles as he watches you skip rocks in the creek, laughs when you wrinkle your nose at the dog that always seems to only bark when you two pass by Old Man Yasutaro’s gate, and revels in the memories.
“You still suck!”
“Hey! It’s not like we skip rocks all the time in the military.”
You merely rolled your eyes and continued to skip ahead, the slow and awkward trudge from before revived into the enthusiastic step he remembered, fueled by the joys of nostalgia and escape. 
This, Keigo realizes, is nostalgia.
Not the pain of remembering a past he wanted to forget, not looking at alleyways to remember what used to be his childhood, not thinking of the shops as someplace otherworldly. Rather, it was this. The joy of reminiscing on good times. The joy of breathing new life into old memories.
The joy he now knew was to be found in you.
“Hey.” Your voice pulled him from his thoughts, and he looked up to see you grinning, the moonlight illuminating something akin to mischief in your eyes. “Remember that old gramophone we could never figure out when we were little?”
“You mean you could never figure out. I didn’t want to touch it because Granny Tamayo is a scary, scary woman.”
And a dirty street orphan’s hands had no place on such an expensive thing.
You rolled your eyes and he chuckled, following along anyway as you set off down the path with a new purpose. The route was familiar, and Keigo already had an idea of where this was going, but who was he to speak when you were nearly buzzing with excitement?
“What I mean to say is: I figured it out, so—” You spun in place again, taking his hand, and his heart damn near stopped, “—would you like this dance? To some actual music, this time.”
“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you? A proper lady needs the proper etiquette, after all.” His cheeky grin betrayed the politeness of his words, and you scoffed, tugging him along.
“Like you would ask me first.” Keigo’s tongue stalled around a response, scrambling for a proper comeback because you were right. Deep down, he knew that he still never would’ve asked you first for anything. It wasn’t his place. First, as a kid on the street compared to the granddaughter of the izakaya owner. Now, as a man with blood on his hands compared to an innocent civilian, untainted by the shadows of war.
Who was he to ask anything from a normal person?
“Lead the way, then.”
There was that radiant grin again, brimming with excitement and sending him reeling. Keigo couldn’t help but let your enthusiasm rub off on him as he followed you to the little communal courtyard behind Granny Tamayo’s home, where he knew that she liked to keep that Western gramophone to play for guests. You broke away to go and try and work the old machine, mumbling to yourself as you fiddled with the knobs and rifled through the records filed away in the ornate cabinet it was sitting on. 
He took the chance to look around the empty courtyard, struck with the realization that it hadn’t changed at all in the years he was gone. He left all those years ago, only to return to a town that seemed almost frozen in time. It was too far from the cities for all the modern inventions to catch up with it, so the only things that changed were, well, the people. Keigo most of all. What if he hadn’t—
The sudden burst of music and your shout of victory cut off his wandering train of thought, and you walked back into his line of vision with a triumphant grin.
“I still don’t know how to fix the tempo, so the song’s a little slow. You’ll have to forgive me for that.” You offered up your hand and tilted your head, still smiling. “May I have this dance?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“Like you’d ask me first.”
【 ☀︎ 】
Keigo grinned in well-earned defeat, and his hand slipped into yours with the other on your waist. The music swelled, and he took the first step.
One, two, three, one, two, three…
With too-slow, clumsy steps, the two of you slowly began waltzing your way around the small courtyard. You still kind of didn’t know how to work the gramophone—the song almost eerily slow, despite the years of fiddling—but that didn’t matter in the face of the giddy smiles shared, your soft laughs when he spun you in a flash of spontaneity, and the nostalgia of old times.
Before, he was a scrawny kid on the street who clumsily tried to follow the steps of the pretty girl playing a song on her father’s gramophone. Tomorrow, he would be Private First Class Takami Keigo, fighting for his life on the battlefield. Tonight, he would be normal again, slow dancing to Clair de Lune playing off an old, off-beat gramophone with you in his arms, mourning a start he didn’t get to have.
(As normal as a kid scrounging for scraps on the street could’ve been.)
Your voice, soft and wavering, broke the stillness of the moment, as if it were something taboo that shouldn’t have been uttered into existence at all.
“Keigo?”
“Yes, beautiful?”
You flushed at the endearment, the next words shattering his illusion of happiness within nostalgia with the renewed vigor of confidence in the face of the impossible.
“Will you come home?”
Home.
A simple word, really. And yet it dropped like a stone in his chest. Home meant a roof over his head. Home meant warm food on the table. Home meant a simple life in a sleepy rural town. Home meant the promise of a new beginning.
To you, “home” probably meant nothing more than the place you had known all your life.
To him, “home” meant you.
So, like a dreamer in love, he answered with all the confidence of a fool.
“Yeah... I will. I don’t care how long it’ll take me, but I’ll come home.”
He thought the shaky lilt to his voice would’ve given him away, or the way his step faltered in the already clumsy waltz as if trying to step around what he knew should’ve been the answer. 
Instead, you laughed. Something soft, and let him spin you once more.
“Well, I’ve already waited a couple years, what’s a little more waiting?”
Keigo had to keep himself from double checking if this was real. Dancing with you in the moonlight as he tried to step around the reality of that answer with all the awkward grace of a scared child.
One, two, three, one, two, three… 
Truth be told, the both of you knew the answer long before you had pushed the question into desperate existence, searching for a shred of hope. That his simple answer should have been an realistic “I don’t know” or a pessimistic “no promises”, instead of a foolish “yes.”
Instead, he slowed the waltz to a sway, pulling you close to both ingrain the feeling of you into his soul and to hopefully hide the resigned melancholy of a soldier being carted off to uncertainty.
And, for a traitorous moment, Keigo wondered.
Dreamed, even.
What would it have been like to have a “normal” life? Instead of grasping the hand of desperation, would he have grown out of the side alleys and homes made of boxes into a “respectable” man? Maybe he could’ve gotten a job at the grocer’s, at Old Yasutaro’s restaurant, or maybe even Granny Tamayo’s izakaya. Could he have—he pulled you closer, pressing a ghost of a kiss to your temple—could he have courted you the “right” way? Brought you flowers and honey-sweet words of praise and promises of a happy future, instead of a single night dancing in the moonlight with a brittle promise hanging in the tense air that the both of you clung onto like a lifeline. A promise that Keigo wasn’t even sure he could fulfill.
He would later come to regret this single moment. Of this, he was sure.
(But, as you lifted your head from his chest with glassy eyes and a shaky smile, he knew he wasn’t alone in this regret.)
Keigo knew the words that you wished to let fall into the night air, in hopes of making that brittle promise tangible. Of giving life to a bright future with three little words. The reality crawled up his throat like poison, bitter and cloying, something that he knew shouldn’t be said. Keigo settled for gently wrapping his hand around your head to pull you closer, filtering the harsh truth into something a little softer, the bittersweet tone marking the unspoken truth as a reality instead of the dreams of a future.
One… two… three… 
“Don’t,” He muttered, heart tightening as he felt you go rigid in his arms, “I know. Please, God, I know—”
You slowly relaxed in his arms with all the bitter acceptance of a night before battle, and he murmured the next words into another ghost of a kiss. A whisper against your lips, seen only by the fading notes of a song in the moonlight.
“—but don’t.”
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【 ☀︎ 】
Keigo’s breath was rattling, ears ringing with war cries, death wails, and everything in between. The once-blue noon sky was now a startling haze of ash gray, thick with the choking scent of the world burning.
He couldn’t even tell where the carnage started or ended anymore.
(Would it ever end?) 
How long has it been since the first shot?
(Too long.) 
Would he live to see the sunset?
(Of all times to worry about this, why now?)
The incessant drill of artillery fire was nothing new to him, as was the stench of the battlefield that could only be described as death.  What was new, was something that pushed his aching body to keep moving, the autopilot state he usually entered backed with something raw. Something like fear.
Something like the will to survive.
The pain that set his nerves on fire has long since faded, all the pain of countless wounds blending together into something numbed by the adrenaline of survival. Were the wet patches on his uniform sweat? Blood? Both? He couldn’t tell anymore, all he knew was survival and the persistent voice whispering deadly distraction in the back of his mind.
Civilians. You’re fighting civilians, you mur—
The skin of his back prickled, the telltale whistling of something flying screeched in his ears, and his reflexes yanked him to dive out of the way before his mind could catch up. Not even a second later, another explosive detonated behind him and heat blazed across his back. His nerves screamed fresh pain into his senses and he grit his teeth, ignoring the concerning sound of sizzling over the ringing in his ears in favor of ducking into cover, collapsing against the wall of a destroyed building. 
Since when did regular people know how to make bombs?!
In the next breath, someone else had ducked into the small shelter he’d found in this hellscape of a city. 
Well, the remains of one. All hell broke loose once the other side brought homemade explosives into the fray and now, as he stared at the burning and destruction, Keigo wondered if those Westerners who muttered meaningless blessings whenever they passed were right. 
If this “Hell” they spoke of really was on Earth. 
He turned his head, suddenly sluggish, to the man that had joined him in the makeshift cover, and grinned at the familiar face.
“Hey, man.”
(Maybe giving his body a chance to slow down was a mistake.)
Touya ignored his exhausted greeting, instead opting to yank a rag from his pouch as he pulled Keigo to sit up so he could press the rag into the deep gashes the shrapnel had gouged into his back. Keigo immediately groaned in protest at the stinging pain, despite how necessary he knew it was.
“Fucking— how did you even survive that?”
“Dunno,” He let out a weak laugh, “Don’t think I will—”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll kill you myself.” Despite his harsh threat, Touya pressed the slowly darkening rag deeper into his wound. A desperate (futile) attempt to stop the life pooling onto the floor underneath them, steadily flowing from the deep gashes in his back and all the other wounds peppering his body.
“Isn’t that the exact opposite—” He hissed in pain at the pressure on his wounds, “—of what you want?” 
“Shut up.”
“You know you don’t want me doing that.”
(He was right. Keigo running his mouth meant that he was breathing. Meant that he was alive.)
Touya pressed his lips into a thin line, Keigo blearily tracking the way his burn scars pulled with the movement. 
Grounding himself, that’s what he’s supposed to do during times like this, right? Hell, he didn’t know. Not every day he came so close to death. Touya really needed to look into something for those sc—
“For the love of the gods, I am begging you to shut up.”
Ah, he said all that out loud? He managed to muster up a sheepish grin, despite Touya’s grim expression.
“Ooh, Touya? Begging? That’s a first, I should stay awake to hear it.” Keigo didn’t have to look to know that the rag was soaked through and Touya was fighting against the inevitable at this point. Keigo? He… he was too tired to fight to keep his eyes open. Too cold.
“Maybe you should stay awake to go home, loverboy.”
“I should.” He fumbled to find purchase, pressing his palm into the ground and scooting his feet closer for leverage. “Can’t leave Y/N waiting after all.”
Maybe it was the delirium from the blood-loss, or the desperation of this cursed situation, but Keigo tried to pull himself up. To move, to get somewhere safer, somewhere where he could survive. His palm slipped on the blood-slick floor underneath him and he came crashing down once more, his strength disappearing along with it as he slumped against Touya.
“Ah—”
“Shit, I’ll get you to the medic.” 
Keigo groaned at the pain of his wounds being jostled as Touya tried to haul the deadweight of his sluggish body up. The reality of the situation weighed heavy on his shoulders (or was it his strength leaving him?) and he licked his chapped lips, whispering the grim truth into the ash-hazy air.
“I’m not gonna make it to the medic.”
“How many times do I have to keep telling you to shut up?” Another attempt to pull him to his feet, and Keigo managed to push out a weak laugh.
“Just a couple more times.”
“Hey… hey, c’mon now, I still have to make fun of you and Y/N for being the most disgusting couple I’ve ever met.” He carefully shook Keigo, trying desperately to get him to keep his drooping eyes open.
“Aw, don’t tease Y/N too badly.”
Something changed in Touya’s voice, a block in his throat that he had to force his words through, and he clutched the dripping rag closer to his wounds as he muttered out his response.
“I won’t.”
“Good, good,” Keigo’s hands clumsily fumbled for the cord wrapped over his chest, tugging at it until it came loose. “Hey, can you tell Y/N that I’ll do my best to come home? In any way I can.”
“...Just do it yourself.” 
“Mm, that would… that would be nice. Coming home, I mean. I promised… Y/N… I would…”
His words faded, and Touya froze, arms suspended in midair around the slumped form of his best friend, his stunned gaze locked on the identification tag hanging from a limp, bloody hand.
“Kei...go?”
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【 ☀︎ 】
Waiting was agony.
You used to think you were a patient person, years of dealing with drunks, horrible customers, and everything in between training the patience of a saint into you. 
Today, however, revealed that you were anything but. The moment the company had crested the hill and out of sight, your anxieties slowly overcame you the farther they went. Working in the izakaya helped, the constant flow of customers and orders kept you on your feet and your thoughts off the battle that was no doubt waging mere miles away. Every so often, a wandering patron would come in murmuring that they heard bits and pieces of the battle, and you forced yourself to forget again.
All that effort was lost once the company’s runner came barreling through the town, shouting that the soldiers were on their way back. That they needed spaces cleared for the wounded and their lodgings secured. They called for the doctor, they called for food, they called for supplies. 
If you didn’t know any better, it would’ve sounded like a cry for help.
Word spread like wildfire, and the rush of serving customers turned into the rush of trying to help prepare for the soldiers’ return. None of it helped get your mind off the one thing you didn’t want to worry about. If anything, it just shoved all your worries to the forefront of your mind, accompanied by the dull headaches of something you hoped were just random fantasies.
(Fantasies of a lotus garden, a guarded grin, a red hairpin, a betrayal—)
Would he have to be wrapped in the bandages you were carrying? Would he have to rest in the bedding in your hands? Would he be able to eat the food your grandmother was preparing?
Then, they came. 
A slow straggle of wounded and weary men, leaning and limping on each other as they slowly trickled in through the main street.
There were many things that wouldn’t happen, you would later realize, watching the company trudge back into the town. Their formation was shaky from the hobbling wounded, and you felt your heart drop as you desperately searched the noticeably thinner crowd, trying to peek through the uniforms and bandages and dented helmets for any sign that he had come home. That he had survived.
How many men did they lose?
(Too many.)
You watched the flow of soldiers slowly follow their commander to their lodgings and the doctor, the once boisterous crowd now silent and battle-worn. The rookie that had just been under a chokehold the other night was now cradling bandaged wounds and a gaunt expression that only told of his first brushes with death.
One soldier broke from the crowd to make his way towards you, and—for a fleeting moment—you hoped. 
And just as quickly as it came, that hope you had soon sunk into despair once you saw who it was, and what he held in his scarred hands.
Across the street, a man broke rank, with a heavier burden than most would’ve thought and few would ever experience. He hoped that no one would have to experience this, a death and the task of delivering such news weighing heavy on his shoulders.
Life, Touya thinks, is cruel.
It left such a brilliant mind like Keigo to starve with him on the streets.
It forced him to run to the military in desperation, searching for steady food and shelter.
It snatched away the one man who had salvation waiting for him.
Death, Touya grieves, is even crueler.
Keigo would never get to go home.
He wouldn’t get to see the joy on your face once you welcomed him home with open arms. 
(How could he? When your expression twists into something akin to dawning horror instead of joy, watching Touya make his way up to you with downcast eyes and a heavy bundle of fabric carefully cradled in his palm.)
He wouldn’t get to start the new life he deserved, in a sleepy rural town with the one he adored.
He wouldn’t get to fulfill his promise to you.
A promise that everyone knew was too risky a promise to make. Yet, he believed enough to make it to you.
A promise that Touya holds back on his tongue because he knew this—a little metal disc on a bloodstained cord—wouldn’t fulfill it, not when he hands you the neat square of scrap fabric and watches your tears flow before you even open it. Not when you slip out a worn identification tag, holding it up to the sunset to try and make out the letters you already knew were there.
A lantern illuminates what the fading sunlight could not, casting the stamped characters of Keigo’s bloodied name in an amber glow, and you crumble.
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【 ☀︎ 】
Dawn finds Professor Takami, Head of the Sociology Department, first through the doors of the campus café with essays to be finished grading in one hand and his laptop bag in the other.
The cashier greets him with a familiar warmth as he steps up to the counter, his staple order already halfway punched into the register with a knowing smile that he forces himself to return. There’s a nervous energy simmering under his skin that he can’t seem to shake, and it shows. The barista (Touya. His name is Touya. He literally has one of the guy’s essays in his hand, fucking hell. Get it together, Keigo) shoots the normally easygoing professor a worried look as he slides the warmed pastry across the counter to him, the full sleeves of swirling blue and black ink a stark contrast against the smooth wood of the counter.
“Everything good with you, Professor?”
“Perfect, now that I got my pastry. Think I’ll be even better once I drink some coffee.” 
Nothing was perfect, and he couldn’t even put a finger on what it was. 
He plastered a convincing smile on his face as he picked up the too-heavy plate, careful to hold it steady before making a beeline for his usual table. The faster he got to sit down at his usual corner booth and sort himself out, the better. 
He knew that he would just drown himself in grading papers instead of figuring out what was making him feel off, but it was the thought that counted.
The hum of energy under his skin was nothing new to him. Something deep inside that made him almost jumpy, wary of the peaceful days that had consumed his entire life, lying in wait for… something. For what? Keigo wished he knew.
(For battles yet started, for warcries yet sung, for survival yet fought for.)
All he knew was that the strange hum that threatened to vibrate him out of his own skin was different this time. Wrong. It didn’t help that his sleep had been suffering for the past week, plagued by dreams and nightmares both of eras past, the blurry picture of the same person a constant sight in the swirling mix of history. Images flickering between a secluded lotus garden and an elaborate kimono to an old izakaya and Clair de Lune at moonrise. Images of yearning and blood and tragedy and endings before the beginnings.
At least his conversations with the once-intimidating Japanese Literature professor got a smidge more interesting.
With the resolute click of a red pen, he swept away the thoughts clouding his mind as he resigned himself to his fate of just dealing with the strange mood for now, fully intent on getting to work. Years of repetition and muscle memory had him opening up his email with practiced ease, quietly sighing to himself as he waited for the doubtlessly endless emails from students and colleagues alike to load. 
Would procrastinating just the tiniest bit by fiddling with the rolled cuffs of his sleeves or pushing up his glasses for the nth time help at all? 
No, but it let Keigo expel the weirdly restless energy in what ways he could, the creeping sense of foreboding setting his nerves into overdrive. The page loaded and he frowned at the onslaught of emails he knew were going to flood his inbox. 
Hell, he expected them to.
What he didn’t expect were the contents, the subject lines all variations of “Did you know?” and “There’s no way” and “I can’t believe it” from colleagues he didn’t even talk to regularly. Sure, the email from the cultural anthropology professor made sense, but the graphic design professor? The head of the business department?
Before he could open the first email of many, his laptop chirped out the familiar ‘ding!’ of a new email, the sound rippling through the café as everyone’s phones and laptops lit up with the same message. 
A schoolwide email? Okay, th—
The world slowed to a crawl, everyone in the packed coffee shop silencing almost at once and the shocked whispers rippling throughout the space only serving to make the silence all the more deafening (“Hey, check your email.” and “Look at this.” and “No way.” and it was too loud someone please make it stop—), his ears near ringing as he struggled to tear his gaze away from the picture embedded at the top of the page.
“Looking a little rough there.” The cotton suddenly stuffing his ears muffled the barista’s voice and would’ve made him jump out of his skin had he been focused on anything but burning the email into his eyes. God, he’d barely even registered the guy coming up to serve his coffee, what was wrong with him? “Professor? Was it that email?”
“Y-Yeah, I just read it.” He cleared his throat and slid the mug closer to himself, taking a sip of the scalding hot coffee to ground himself as he stared at the picture of you. 
The barista merely arched a pierced brow and muttered a soft “ah.” before going back to his spot behind the espresso machine, vibrant blue eyes tracking the rattled professor suspiciously. Keigo was too preoccupied to thank him as he usually would’ve. Too preoccupied with what was staring back at him from his laptop screen.
A picture placed right under the subject line plastering “Unfortunate news about Prof. L/N Y/N” across his screen, the few words in the body text (that he could pick out through the sudden tidal wave of memories past clicking into place) painted an image that he couldn’t help but mourn.
After being reported missing… remains found… will be missed.
Will be missed… 
Well, now that he thought about it, Keigo had been missing you all his life, hadn’t he? 
Both figuratively and literally, always arriving after you left and vice versa, never really seeming to connect in person. Any emails were shrouded with a veil of professionalism that he couldn’t pierce through. Yet, there were things so irrevocably you that he knew to pick out now. The jovial note at the end of your emails, the unapologetically confident sharpness to your words, the extra mug you left for the next person that passed through the faculty lounge (that somehow always ended up being him on the days he was rushing to his next lecture). 
All these things, all these moments, and the fool had passed all of them by.
The restless energy humming under his skin through his entire being disappeared much quicker than it had come, its job done, leaving a gaping  void in its wake that was shockingly familiar. Almost as if this wasn’t the first time this had happened, where the curtains never raised on the beginning you two could’ve had. He took a shuddering, stabilizing breath (that didn’t work), too numb to feel the freshly brewed coffee scalding his tongue that he had hoped would pull him back to reality, hoped the sweet taste would wash away the bitterness at the back of his throat and the splitting headache of years upon years of memories crashing into him like a tidal wave.
Professor Takami had work to get done.
Keigo could mourn later.
Even as he convinced himself of that, he couldn’t even bring himself to brush the dead lotus petals off his work, the sight of the wilted centerpiece only bringing more pain. The cruel coincidence of the once bloomed flowers now dead in his hands didn’t go unnoticed, and Keigo desperately tried to bore the printed words laid in front of him into his mind. 
As if doing that would sear away the sudden onslaught of memories, dead lotus petals igniting a yearning for a long-demolished lotus garden and a pretty concubine who didn’t belong in the palace (or was it a small town and the life he could’ve had?) and the love that slipped through his fingers once more.
Did you go through this too? When he—
The half-graded essays lay untouched for the rest of the day, red ink disappearing in the crimson light cast by the setting sun.
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【 ☀︎ 】
When did I…?
He blinked down at the concrete under his feet, stunned, before looking up to see an endless sea of trains passing in front of him. The incessant rushing of the trains around him had replaced the silence of the hotel room he was supposed to be sound asleep in, the too-rhythmic noise of the train tracks surrounding him in an almost ethereal white noise. 
I had just gone to bed… How did I end up at a train station?
He winced at the glare of the midday sun reflecting off of the last car of the train passing in front of him, before stopping short at the sight of someone standing on the other side of the tracks—alone—revealed by the passing train. His heart leapt into his throat and pushed a name he didn’t know and wouldn’t remember out of his lips. There was no way he knew her, the multi-layered kimono and elegant hairpins looked like something out of a millenia-old ukiyo-e print and wholly out of place in a modern train station. But... something deep in his soul knew that it was right, and it sang as he watched the woman turn around. 
“You’re dreaming right now, Keigo. Go back to sleep,”
“What…?” 
“It’s true,” The woman tilted her head with the soft smile that he’d missed so much (missed? Wasn’t this his first time seeing it?) and the ancient hairpieces jingled and swayed with the movement, his gaze locking on a familiar crimson gemstone catching the sunlight, “Don’t believe me? Try to count some numbers, then. One… two…”
Another train hurtled past, blocking his view once more as her painted lips moved soundlessly around the final number.
“Three.”
Keigo sat up with a gasp, staring at the soft shafts of light the sunrise painted on the walls.
It was the start of a new day, and he found himself mourning something lost that he couldn’t even remember.
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Dawn finds Hawks, the number two hero, leaping out of his Tokyo hotel window, wind catching on vermilion wings to buffer his descent to the sidewalk.
He was far from home, his current mission dragging him all the way to Tokyo from his agency in Fukuoka. Sneakers touched concrete, and he started down the path where he was supposed to meet with the last person he wanted to see right now. Especially after that mess with the High-End Nomu. He shuddered, spreading his wings as if to remind himself that they were all there, recovered after that hellish fight.
Come to the location on foot, he’d been told, and don’t be conspicuous.
Weird request, and it was kind of hard to remain inconspicuous when he was the number two hero and had a pair of bright red wings announcing his identity to the world. Alas, he needed to cooperate or else he’d end up jeopardizing the entire mission, so Keigo settled for ditching his hero costume in favor of casual clothes and a cap to hide his identity. He pulled a mask over his nose and tucked his wings closer to further help conceal himself as he walked down the street, dipping into the first alley he saw.
His path through the grid of alleyways and side streets had already been mapped out the days before, so it was just a matter of making the short trek there. Unfortunately, the area wasn’t the best, and Keigo found himself slowed by sidestepping trash and the occasional bottle of liquor. The scent of stale alcohol only brought unpleasant fragments of memories, and he pushed them aside in favor of quickening his pace.
“My, not every day I see such a bigshot hero pass by.”
He almost tripped over another bottle, wings ruffling in surprise as he cursed himself for being caught off guard.
There was an old woman sitting there, a steaming cup of tea in her hands as she sat outside her quaint little storefront. 
A flower shop, in this secluded side street? 
“Ah, sorry, ma’am, you have the wrong person. I mean, me? The number 2 pro hero?” He was quick to deny her, sheepishly scratching the back of his neck. She merely hummed and took another sip of her tea.
“Do I? Well, this old woman’s eyes aren’t what they used to be after all.” She set down the cup and stepped out of her chair, shuffling over to the water feature on the other side of the doorway that served as an attraction. He could see why, the soft rush of the small waterfall and fragrant lotuses drawing his attention the more he stared.
Suddenly, the woman plucked one of the younger lotuses, patting the stem dry before handing it to him with a smile.
“Uh—”
“You saved my son that day, from the Nomu attack in Fukuoka. This is the least I could do.”
Against his better judgement—he really needed to get going to catch the train in time—he took the half-bloomed lotus in his hands and pulled down his mask to smile at her.
“Your eyes are… actually pretty sharp, ma’am. Thank you.”
She laughed, sitting back in her seat and sent him on his way. The rest of the walk went smoothly after that, and he soon found himself jogging up the stairs to the station, muttering under his breath as he checked his watch. 
Right on time.
【 ☀︎ 】
A strange sense of deja vu creeped into his chest as he stepped onto the platform in Minami-senju station. He’d been feeling off all day, and the weird sense of familiarity that had been tugging at the back of his mind didn’t help. Luckily, he’d managed to arrive in time to catch the noon train so the rest of his schedule should hopefully go smoothly from here. A departing train screeched into motion, and he winced at the rippling glare of sunlight that reflected into his eyes, the strange deja vu rearing its head again.
Keigo stared at the train passing in front of him as he idly twirled the lotus stem in between his fingers. The words left his lips before he could catch himself.
“One… two…” He cut himself off with a sigh, dropping his head and dragging a hand over his face.
It was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous.
Keigo.
His head shot up at the sound of his name, the world darkening under the shade of a passing cloud. Did he just imagine that? He had to. The train station was practically stranded, and there was no one even close enough to call his name without shouting across the station (if they even knew his name in the first place). Despite his better judgement, he wet his lips and shut his eyes, the strangely familiar words passing his lips once more as he desperately tried to recall the familiarity he longed for.
“One…”
I want to see you.
“Two…” 
I don’t even know who you are, but I miss you anyway.
“Three—”
Suddenly, the steady rhythm of the train tracks silenced and left him with the raging drum of his heartbeat, the blood rushing in his ears as he stared at the person standing on the other side of the tracks. The emerging sun smiled upon him, casting the world in light once more as his voice locked around a familiar name he’d never spoken.
It started as a hushed whisper, and he swallowed the lump in his throat to call the name thrice ingrained into his soul.
“Y/N!”
The familiar smile that bloomed across your lips was answer enough as he pushed through the newly arrived train to the other side, to you. He reached out, clawing through the rush hour crowd (why were there so many people? Why were you so far? Closer, closer, closer—) and he nearly sobbed in relief as you fell into his arms, clinging to each other as your souls finally, finally, melded together as one. Now and forevermore.
The questions could come later, but now... he had a promise to fulfill.
He was home.
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notes: minami-senju train station is located in very close proximity (a two-minute walk) from what is left of the kozukappara execution grounds, where a temple now stands in its place. he’s made quite the journey to come full circle, hasn’t he?
471 notes · View notes
in-superbloom · 3 years
Text
did you ever hear about the girl who got frozen? (a.i.)
right where you left me: prologue
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pairing: ashton irwin x olivia jones (oc)
warnings: uhh a kinda grieving theme i guess? but no deaths. it has a sad tone overall, but nothing major (in this chapter hehe). foul language because i can't help myself. the tiniest mention of alcohol, but as a memory. think i should probably warn you that this contains a very sad ash. also not much dialogues. this is mainly for explanation and introduction, but very important for the story. if you find anything else that might be triggering, please let me know so i can add it here !!
author's note: oof okay. so. this is the prologue of a series very very dear to my heart that i've been working on for what it feels like my whole life but really it's been just a few months. but i'm in love with the story (which rarely happens with my own writing) so i hope you can enjoy it too !! this is also my very first time posting a fic since 2013 so pls keep that in mind <3 no i am not shaking as type this ofc not also: although i have the full story ready in my head, this is the only chapter that's written. i wanted to wait until i had at least a few ready before posting this but i'm too anxious for that lmao just saying this bc it will take a good while until i have any more chapters, so <3 (p.s.: i went over this thing a million times since may so if you find any errors pls look away, i'm not fixing this thing anymore. thanks <3)
another note: anna from the future here to say that i completely forgot about the playlist i made for the story lmao here it is in case you're interested k thanks bye <3
credits: title is from taylor swift's song right where you left me. model in the picture: paola locatelli. banner by me.
i also wanted to take a minute to thank some really nice friends that i've made here over these past few months & that i'm extremely grateful for @wastelandcth @suchalonelysunflower @littledrummerangie i cannot thank you babes enough for inspiring me the way that you do & for letting me yell about this to you && for encouraging me so much 🥺 i'll never be able to explain just how much this means to me, so i'll have to settle for saying thank you at any change that i can get <3 i love you all 💜 also gem my baby, thank you for the inspo with the banner 💚
@bluesdelis look babe i did it 😌 you know how grateful i am for you & for you letting me have a breakdown every week about my writing for the past 8 years so let's not dive into that or else i will write something bigger than this prologue jsjsjdjd love you 🖤
i hope you all have a good reading and a nice day ♡
let me know what are your thoughts about the fic ! ♡
word count: 4.1k
☆☆☆
Cold. That was the first thing that Olivia’s brain processed.
Still with her eyes closed, she buried herself more into the duvet, while her arm blindly reached for the furnace in human form that she calls boyfriend. However, as soon as her arm was only met with cold sheets, her eyes shot open.
Blinking the sleep away, she sat up on the bed, searching for the infamous red clock resting on Ashton’s bedside table that was supposed to look like a vintage alarm clock. Olivia had ordered it online at an auction website a couple of years back, as a gift for his 23rd birthday, since it was something he had mentioned multiple times prior that he was looking for, but still hadn't found. But when it finally came in (two weeks after the due date), it looked nothing like the picture she saw on the website. Feeling beyond frustrated, she wanted to send it back immediately and ask for a refund and maybe leave a not so polite review on the seller's page. But Ashton stopped her right away, laughing like the situation was absolutely hilarious to him, while saying, 'I like it, it’s quirky'. So, the clock stayed and found a home right next to him in their room.
Some days, however, she would wake up at some ungodly hour because of the blaring noise of the only ringtone the clock had. But whatever annoyance she could feel towards the object, it always vanished as soon as she felt Ashton's lips gently touching her face in a good morning kiss before he would get up to start his day, leaving her to catch some more hours of well deserved sleep.
As the furthest from a morning person as a touring musician could possibly be, Olivia had always feared that living under the same roof as Ashton would turn her into an early bird like him, but she's thankful that it never happened (not that he needs to know about that).
When she sees the red clock, she smiles at the sudden but welcome memories of them flooding her foggy brain, but frowns slightly when she realizes it reads 12:13 pm. Ashton rarely lets her sleep past 10 am.
Gathering all her strength and will, she rises up from the bed, smoothly picking up a grey wool sweatshirt from the chair (way too baggy on her slim body, but it smells like him), pulling it over her head and relishing on the soft material warming up her body. Making her way to the door and calmly going down the stairs, she can’t help but stop for a minute to admire the picture frames on their walls, one in particular catches her attention – probably one of the most prized pictures and memories they had. It felt older than it actually is, but it was around 4 years ago, she's sure – a little while after the two of them met. The picture was of their group of friends that still remains the same: Ashton and his best friend, Luke; Olivia, her best friend, Calum and their old hometown friend, turned into Calum’s new friend at college, turned into everyone’s friend, Michael; and her then newly band members, Suki, Eli and Ravi. Together, their group was the life of the party through all their college years, and it showed by the big smiles and drinks in hands they all had in the picture. It was a very special night, the first time Olivia’s little band played for the public – for a small audience sure, but it was a wonderful night nonetheless. What a long road it had been since that night.
Her nostalgic thoughts were interrupted by a shiver that went through her whole body, and it made her realize how oddly cold the whole house was, not only their bedroom. Which, granted, it was November in New York and the weather was just getting colder, but that’s exactly why Ashton always made sure to keep the house warm enough. As much as she loved the chilly season, the warm weather always reminded him of his hometown, and who was she to deny him that?
The smell of fresh made coffee could be sensed even before she reached the kitchen. Arriving there, the curly haired woman still found no signs of her boyfriend, so she went straight after the coffee maker pot sitting on the far left corner of the cream marble counter. Smiling softly at the tons of memories of Ashton's sleepy figure making their favorite beverage, she reached for a coffee mug on the cupboard on top of the counter and poured the remainder of the hot liquid on it (it's her favorite mug, if she must choose – it was a gift from a fan, and it had printed on it a collage of the pictures of her and Ashton that were posted on social media through their first year of relationship).
Moving to the glass doors that lead to the mini garden they cultivate, she didn't have to open them to spot the 6-feet-tall man sitting on a bench outside, looking oddly small in his oversized clothes, coffee mug tightly held between strong hands. Something about his figure made Olivia frown, however: he was staring with an unwavering look at her small but eye-catching pot of yellow daffodils that were almost as much of a pet to them as Stitch at this point. Sensing that there’s something definitely off about his semblance, she made a mental note to talk to him and find out what’s wrong later. So she goes back to the kitchen, knowing that he might need this quiet and private moment for himself.
She lost count of the minutes that went by (couldn't have been more than five) before she hears the garden's door opening and closing, and then his bare feet are dragging his brawny body to her. Except, he goes over to the sink, walking right through her, not showing any sign that he even saw her hunched figure over the counter table in the middle of the room.
Alright, someone's in a mood.
Olivia tries to swallow the annoyance already bubbling inside her – he knows how much she hates to be ignored, no matter how mad he might be – by trying to think of what she can say that won't piss him off. This is always a hard feat to accomplish when Ashton gets in these moods, but there’s a reason for them to work so well together.
“I missed my favorite body heater when I woke up,” she says in her best sweet voice, knowing how quickly his resolve crumbles when he hears that voice.
Still, no reaction.
That settles a worry at the pit of her stomach, because Ashton is never like this. Even when he's not in the mood to talk, he always gives some kind of reaction to her words; it doesn't matter how small, just enough to make her feel acknowledged.
When he's finished washing his mug and the few scattered dishes across the sink – she noticed that he already had lunch, if the lone plate in the drying rack is anything to go by –, he dries his hand in a towel, turns around and throws it on top of the same counter Olivia was leaning up against. Once again, he walks away not even sparing her a look.
Indignant, she leaves the now empty coffee mug on top of the table and follows him as he walks up the stairs, any determination to not aggravate his mood now well gone.
“Hey! In case you didn't notice, I'm right here. Whatever got you in this sour mood, I'm certainly not to blame, so can you stop being a child now and talk to me?!”
Ashton just keeps walking – more like sluggishly dragging his body – until he reaches their bedroom and suddenly stops just merely two feet inside the room, looking around with vacant eyes; like he was expecting to see something that wasn't there.
“Okay, that's really mature of you. Are you planning on ignoring me all day then?” Olivia questions exasperated, staring angrily at the back of his neck, where the condor tattoo lives – her favorite of his, but that sight doesn't bring her any peace today like it usually does.
Her glare only breaks when she hears the familiar sound of dog tags swaying on her right side. Shifting her gaze to the direction of the sound, Olivia notices Stitch, their small, black & white French bulldog – who she thought was outside in the garden – slowly trudging his way from around the bed until he stops at Ashton's feet, looking up at one of his humans with sad eyes. That realization only makes the worry in her stomach grow uncomfortably.
“Hi buddy,” Ashton's voice cracks a bit from the lack of use, but he smiles softly at the sweet dog, and crouches down to pet him.
Olivia can't help but gasp as she notices three things all at once that leave her overwhelmed: first, how she didn't even notice Stitch was in the room when she woke up – which never ever happens, in fact, most days he wakes her up whenever he deems her bedtime as finished and can't ever contain his excitement when she finally gets up; second, how the windows blinds are closed, which, again, rarely occurs under their roof, not if Ashton can help it. And third, how sad and melancholic the whole scene in front of her is – how sad and melancholic Ashton is. Pointless to say by now – that's also a very rare occasion.
A chill creeps up Olivia's spine, putting her body into high alert and also serving as a reminder of how everything looks out of place today. Trying to keep her head from spiraling down way too soon, she wraps her arms around herself and crouches down beside her two favorite boys, trying once more.
“Ash? Can you hear me?” even with her throat closing, she softly asks, purposefully putting her face in Ashton's point of view. Her only answer is the low whispers he's letting out to Stitch, while cradling the tiny dog in his arms, spreading gentle kisses on his head.
“I know, bud, I know. I miss her too,” is the only whisper she could understand and immediately wishes she hadn't. The weak wail that comes from Stitch's throat seems to fit perfectly with how the three of them feel.
Ashton then looks up and for a couple of seconds, and Olivia can swear he’s staring right into her eyes. But when he shows no reaction, she knows he’s just staring ahead and not at her, with that look that says there’s too much going on inside his head. She feels the urge to embrace him and get him to talk about whatever is on his mind, so they can share that weight like they always do, but when Ashton gets up from the ground and settles on the bed with Stitch, Olivia can physically feel the crack in her heart caused by the feeling she’s left with.
While Ashton is pulling the duvet over him and the dog, with clearly no intentions of getting up anytime soon, Olivia stands up on her feet with a new-found determination – she needs to figure out what the hell is going on.
This nightmare had to be just that, right? Nothing but a very vivid dream – she's had those before. Scary sure, but they always go away, and soon enough she's back into Ashton's arms, with Stitch jumping on the bed ready to lick their faces off. She just needs to wake herself up from whatever fucked up dream this is – right?
She's running down the stairs this time, frantically in search of something, of what exactly, she doesn’t know – but she knows she needs an answer. The more she looks for something, the more desperate she gets, not knowing what to look for. Then suddenly, something catches her eyes.
The white and blue calendar that's held up by magnets on the side of the fridge. She knows their calendar is red and yellow. They got it from their favorite flower market. Slowly, as if scared of what it might be there – “It's just a calendar, for fucks sake” – she approaches the damn thing. Upon inspection, she deems it as a normal calendar – she really doesn't know what she was expecting – until.
She knows what's wrong with it now.
It's November. She knows it, because the Asian and last leg of her first world tour is about to begin November 21st, eleven days from today. Right after Mike's birthday, she knows this.
Then why does the calendar say today is January 14th?
☆ ☆ ☆
Ashton woke up with a jolt. He quickly sat up, frightening the little Frenchie that was asleep right next to him on the bed. Trying to make sense of his surroundings, he roughly rubbed his face to get some sleep off of it and soon reached for the dog that was staring at him with sleepy but sad eyes. Ashton is sure Stitch understands far more than a dog is supposed to understand about their current situation.
The room is covered in shadows, almost pitch black, but he can see the sunlight even through the thick dark grey blinds covering up the windows. Ashton knows he won't be able to sleep again at that moment, so he gets up from the bed – much slower than he used to. His heartbeat is still out of control because of the nightmare that woke him up, but he can't bother to pay attention to it when Stitch is softly wailing beside him. Ashton lets out a ghost of a smile when the dog rests his head on his right upper thigh, looking up at him with an expression Ashton knows all too well.
“C'mon you little ravenous creature, let's feed you,” the bulldog excitedly jumps to the ground, already running his way down the stairs, not even waiting for Ashton to get up.
That gets a real smile out of him, but it vanishes as soon as he glances at the alarm clock on his bedside table. It reads 5:13 am, nothing out of the ordinary for him. But that small and inoffensive clock, with its red paint peeling off, holds a lot of memories for him. Memories that two months ago would bring joy to his heart, but now he almost wants to throw the object across the room.
It was a stupid thing, really. He had been wanting a vintage alarm clock and Olivia got one for his birthday. But the product they received was definitely not the one she bought, and if he's being honest, he didn't like it as much as he made out to. But seeing her so excited in the weeks before it arrived, and how disappointed she was when it did, he couldn't help but try his best to make her smile that luminous smile again. It's part of his nature by now.
That's also the reason why he lets her think that he doesn't notice when she wakes up at some ungodly hour (her words, not his) along with him, because of the annoying and only sound the alarm clock is able to produce. He always leaves soft kisses in every inch of bare skin he can find on her sleeping figure, so she goes back to the dream land and doesn't wake up before 10 am. No one wants to deal with that kind of bad humor, not even him.
As much as he likes being a morning person and absolutely enjoys her company in the mornings, he knows she'll take any and every extra hour of sleep she can get before starting the day. And that's why he loves that she's so stubborn that his early bird tendencies never got to her – he knows she feared that this would happen when they moved in together, but he met her like this, fell for her like this. He wouldn't change a single thing about her.
Ashton drags himself out of the bed, wincing slightly at how cold the wooden floors are under his bare feet. He doesn't bother putting some socks on, or a sweater – the cold weather in the house is uncharacteristically comforting to him. Nothing feels warm without her anyway.
While descending the stairs, he mentally curses himself for not being strong enough to look past the picture frames on the wall. One in particular catches his eyes – a picture from the night of Olivia's first concert with her band. The memories of that night are still painfully vivid in his mind: the laughter among their group that eventually infected everyone at the pub, Suki and Luke's first kiss and the silly smile that didn't leave his best friend's face all night, the standing ovation Olivia got after her three-songs set, and her captivating and breathtaking smile that made him realize right then and there, while watching her sway to the music, that he was definitely falling in love with her and there was nothing he could do to stop it – not that he wanted to.
So many memories held up on that wall, in the relatively short time since they met, that he can't help but wonder if that's all they'll get in this lifetime.
Ashton is abruptly taken out of his thoughts by Stitch's barks coming from the bottom of the stairs. He quickly jogs down the few steps left and goes straight after the dog's food in the kitchen's cabinet. After Stitch starts to happily devour his breakfast, Ashton goes to make his coffee, doing enough for two people like he always does, since Calum drops by most days for a chat or to drop Duke before going to work. Although all three of them know he just can't bother to make food for himself in the morning, while Ashton is the group's elected chef. Ashton always says he just needs a boyfriend – Olivia says Calum already has one who makes him breakfast every day.
He grabs an apple from the fridge and makes his way outside to their garden. Even though a lot of their memories took place there, the garden is the only space in the house where he doesn't feel like suffocating all the time. At least here, he can breathe some fresh air and look at the sky when he's feeling overwhelmed – which is basically all he's been doing for about a month now.
Yet, a lot of the garden has Olivia's name written all over.
He remembers vividly the day she came home after spending two weeks in LA doing some pocket shows, with a pack of daffodil seeds and the largest smile. She excitedly told him that a friend gifted it to her when she mentioned the little garden they were planning to build together at their new house. The friend told Olivia that daffodils symbolize rebirth and new beginnings, so as the good lover of symbolism that she is, Olivia loved the idea of having those flowers to symbolize their new beginning.
Ashton, on the other hand, wasn't a fan of the flowers at first – he just didn't see the appeal to them. But nonetheless, he indulged her, letting Olivia plant the seeds near the bench they used to sit during the quiet and unrushed afternoons, so they could admire the sunset, and she could happily look at the daffodils.
Pointless to say – the damn flowers grew on him.
Now, however, looking at them without Olivia and her contagious joy next to him, they were back to be as dull as they were before, if not more so.
Still lost inside his head without any sense of how much time went by since he sat down, Ashton doesn't hear the front door closing, and doesn't notice that he's no longer the only person inside the house until someone sits next to him on the bench. Yet, he doesn't show any sign of acknowledgement to them.
A few minutes go by before either of them speaks up.
“Luke said you didn't go to see her yesterday,” Calum starts softly, not wanting to disturb the calmness of the morning.
Ashton takes a few seconds to respond, “No point in doing that.” The black haired man licks his lips while thinking carefully about his next words.
“You know staying inside this house all day by yourself won't help either,” Calum turns his head to his left and takes a good look at Ashton's uncharacteristically hunched over figure, and immediately thinks that anyone can tell this man is not himself anymore. His second thought is that Olivia would hate seeing him like this.
“And what exactly do you expect me to do? Move on with my life like nothing happened? Like I'm not slowly and painfully losing the love of my life? Just because it’s easy for you doesn't mean it's easy for me.”
Calum closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He knows Ashton doesn't mean it, it's the anger and frustration talking. He knows it. Doesn't make it sting any less.
“I'm not telling you to move on with your life, because that's far from what I'm doing, and I certainly don't expect you to do it. I'm just saying you need to occupy your mind or else–”
“I'll go insane? Think it's a bit too late for that,” Ashton interrupts with a bitter tone that doesn't belong to his usual chirpy voice.
“You know it's not,” Calum sighs and drinks the rest of his coffee, moving his body slightly, so he's facing the blonde man, “I got a job interview for you at that school you talked about so much last summer, the principal said you can go any day this week. I went ahead and sent her your resume as well as explained everything that she needs to know about Olivia, so you don't have to. You just gotta put on some decent clothes and show up.” he sees Ashton's face softening a little and takes it as a victory. A few beats go by and then, “Maybe take a shower too. That's gonna make you feel better.” Calum leans in closer to his friend's personal space and takes a sniff, causing Ashton to deflect from him slightly, but not to push him away – another small win.
“Definitely take a shower, you stink. When was the last time your hair saw shampoo?”
“Fuck off,” is Ashton's only reply to the younger man's inquest. But Calum can see a smile creeping up on the blonde's face, which brings out a smile of his own.
“I'll send you all the details later today,” he checks the hour on the watch on his wrist and gets up, “Just please, Ash, go. I can't lose you too.”
Calum gently lays a hand on Ashton's shoulder and squeezes a little. The man doesn't look up, but gives a curt nod to his friend, who's satisfied enough. Calum stops on the threshold of the garden glass doors to give some kisses to Stitch – who came to make Ashton company as soon as he finished his food –, and then he puts the coffee mug on the dishwater. And soon enough, he's on his way out of the door. But not before snatching a tangerine from the fridge.
Ashton is left by himself once again. As he hears the sound of the front door closing, he thinks that this might be his life from now on. Just him and Stitch, trying their hardest to make it through another miserable day without the love of their lives. While everyone else comes by just to make sure he's still breathing. Breathing, maybe, but alive?
Swallowing the tears, he looks up at the sky. It's a deep, beautiful mix of orange, pink and blue, but he knows that it won't last long and soon the rain will be pouring down. He thinks about how much Olivia loves the rain.
God, he needs to pull himself together. She would hate to see him like this. Maybe he should take Calum's offer after all, he really needs to occupy his mind.
Making a mental note to thank Calum later, and also to apologize for how rude he was to him this morning, Ashton slowly gets up from the bench to put his mug on the sink and makes his way to the living room, with the small dog loyally following his every step. He puts on some cartoon that for once doesn't remind him of her (she always lovingly made fun of him for still watching those) and cuddles with Stitch on the couch. He can take a shower later.
Not half an hour goes by, he falls asleep and has a good dream for a change. He dreams of the days he spent with Olivia in the Philippines last February, right before her first world tour started. Some of the most magical days of their lives – surrounded by delicious food, a whole new culture to learn about and the warmth of the sun. Infinite counted days full of love and passion, where they were the only people in the world.
Even his subconscious knows to hold on to that brief moment of happiness, because he might never live that again.
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