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colorfullfalls · 4 years

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Blast to the past

Sodapop Curtis x Reader

Summary: Soulmates are very tricky because sometimes two people who are meant to be are born in two different generations. Your soulmate can be born three days after you die. Luckily the mystical universe transports you there to meet yours. That’s how you find yourself back in the 1960’s instead of the present.

Warnings: hinting at sexual assault

~~~~~~

Friday night is ladies night. It has been since you were twelve and it will be until you die. The core group gets together and does whatever seems interesting for the evening. The three of you ranged in activities of going to the movies, getting something to eat, thrifting, people watching, getting coffe and sitting at an empty park- you name it and it’s been done.

Tonight the gang decided to get smoothies and sit in an empty parking lot. The small town didn’t allow much entertainment for freshly graduated adults. Especially for adults that wanted more to life than such a simple place could provide.

Claire laid on the pavement, dark hair swirling around her shoulders as she turned to gaze at the moon. She was beautiful in the moonlight, soft skin glowing. You were always jealous of her unique good looks, but never aimed bitter thoughts at her. She was a warm and loving friend who was literally a ride or die.

Claire turned her head to look at Margo who was sitting upright with her keys in hand, twirling them around her hands. Margo was the wild one of the trio. The jokester who was basically a meme lord. You three fit like puzzle pieces, best friends for ever.

Claire and you shared a look of amusement as Margo dropped her keys, mumbling a quiet shit before laughing and picking them back up to repeat her actions.

“This is supposed to be a quiet, soul searching moment you know.” You deadpanned, lips curling into a smile as Margo rolled her eyes and flipped you off.

“If you wanted quiet then you picked the wrong bitch to bring along.”

Claire shook her head, “Okay, let’s post on snap about a replacement bitch. Preferably one that can be silent at times.”

You shifted so that your legs were pulled up in front of you instead of rested against the cold ground of the parking lot. A funny thing to add popped into your mind and you knew it would make them laugh, “There’s one more requirement though. It’s vital.” You added, swirling the contents in your cup to break up the remaining blotches of ice.

“Hmm?”

“They have to be willing to sacrifice their own life for Pakistan”

Claire busted out laughing hitting her cup off her leg and Margo snorted, causing everyone to laugh even harder. That fucking tik tok would never not be funny to you guys. Especially when their soulmates thought it was hilarious and would say it when you guys failed to.

Claire found her soulmate a year ago at a football game. Her soul mark burned when the cute player from the other team bumped into her after the game. Gage was the coolest dude you knew. He treated you guys like best friend and he treated her like she was the sky, the moon, and the stars. Not long after Claire found him, Margo found Naomi. A badass chick that was a tattoo artist in town. Margo now has little tattoos decorating her body from the designs her soulmate came up with. Naomi and Margo just fit, and you were happy for her. Happy for both of them.

Day after day with no luck of finding your other half, you were starting to despair for yourself. Soulmates usually found each other close to adulthood if they were in the right life time. It was disappointing to go to bed every night knowing that you were still alone. Your best friends loved you more than anything and always included you, but the soulmate connection was different- special above everything else. And here you lacked that.

Margo dropped her keys again but left them there. She picked up on your solemn mood after you didn’t talk for a few moments.

“I wanted to go camping this weekend, maybe you’ll find your lover there?” She softly spoke, giving you a hopeful smile.

You sadly smiled back, “I dunno, probably not. Sorta giving up over here.”

You looked down at the simple soul mark. An old pop bottle was the initials S.P in the middle with the letters DX very small on the bottom left underneath it. Marks were supposed to signify something important about your other half, describe something about them to you. Ever since you were old enough to remember you would buy old fashioned pop in order to collect the bottles. It meant the world to you.

“Don’t say something like that, of course you will meet them dude. We found ours early but that didn’t mean you won’t ever find them. I’m sure your other half is right around the corner.” Claire supported, patting your thigh for comfort.

“Yeah, it could be Harry Styles for all we know. And honestly it would make sense because how the hell do you meet someone famous like that?” Margo trailed off.

You scoffed, “Harry Styles- my ass. His indicator would so not be an old pop bottle. It would be a guitar or something like that.”

“I guess so. Point is, don’t fret. You have time. The world may fuck with people, but not good ones like you.” Margo grinned childishly.

“Yeah, you’re right. I am good. I sacrifice my own life for Pakistan.”

“God dammit, I hate you.” Claire stood up and offered a hand, pulling you both upright, “We better get going. The same cop has been driving by and I don’t like it.”

“ACAB.” Margo chanted as she crawled into the backseat of the car. You laughed and pushed her the rest of the way in with your foot before shuffling in yourself.

‘Best friend’ by Rex Orange County blared through the speakers as the car moved on the damp roads in the dark night. You guys sang loudly, hands out the window to feel the wind ripple against fingertips. Your heart filled with adoration of the girls in the vehicle with you. Getting sad about the soulmate thing sucked but dealing with it was easier when you had two people to assure you and take your mind off of it.

You waved bye as you walked up the steps of your house. You quickly noticed that no one else was home. Your siblings were off with their friends for the night and your parents went out for their anniversary. You sighed, taking your shoes off lazily. A warm bath would feel so nice to finish out the day. You stretched before taking a step forward toward the bathroom but your foot caught underneath the rug and you fell face first onto the hard surface of the tile.

****

Your body felt like it was on fire while rolling over to rest on your back. Forcing your eyes open, you gasped at the sight before you. Instead of laying on the bathroom floor, you were in an empty parking lot. Your heart thud roughly in your chest as you scrambled to stand.

Your mind began to panic as you didn’t recognize your surroundings. An old diner sat across from the lot and it wasn’t the one you, Claire, and Margo sometimes went to. You brushed yourself off and looked around, confused as to what was going on. Had you gotten drunk and imagined you were home and somehow managed to get lost? Did you fall so hard that you passed out and got kidnapped? Sharp pains alerted your mind to put a finger to your face. There was a scratch from where you fell, you must’ve hit it. You were just glad that your wallet was still in your hand but your phone wasn’t. You searched for it but no luck.

You meekly opened the diner door and shuffled inside. It was themed to be an old authentic diner. The usual black and white checkered floor tile, the twisty barstools, and the car sign decorations on the wall. Diners like this were adorable in your eyes.

You went to sit at a both and grabbed the young pretty waitress. She gazed at your clothes in confusion which made you internally frown. Your outfit wasn’t inappropriate or anything. Blue khaki shorts that came above mid thigh and a white and blue tie dye shirt.

“Excuse me, where am I?” You asked, embarrassment creeped up your spine as she gave you an old look.

“Tulsa. Are you lost?” She asked, shifting the tray to rest on her hip.

You quickly shook your head no, “Thank you, I’m not lost. Just uh, traveling. I’ll just have a water please.”

She gave you a funny look but nodded, going to get you the cup of water. Everyone in the diner glanced at you in curiously which made you paranoid. Alone without a phone and no escape plan. Not an ideal set up. You tried to rack your brain for what the hell was going on but you were outta luck.

Water was set down on the table and she stood there, observing you. You felt her eyes staring at your piercings, especially the hoop in your nose. You awkwardly looked up at her and smiled, hoping she would go away.

“That’s an odd looking necklace, Miss.” Her hand casually pointed towards the crystal gem necklace hanging between your breasts over your shirt.

You shrugged, “You’ve never seen them before? They sell them at Walmart or any hippy store really.”

She wrinkled her nose in judgement, “Huh, never heard of Walmart. Must be from wherever you’re from.”

You choked on air, coughing loudly to force oxygen back into your lungs. How could someone now know Walmart? Was she fucking with you right now? Waitresses usually weren’t rude unless you were rude to them first.

“They’re like nation wide? One in every town? Seriously, every town.”

No emotion appeared on her face as she shook her head no, “I still don’t know what you’re talking about... do your parents buy you those shorts? Do they care about your nose ring?”

You squirmed in your seat at her question, her voice carried a shrill tone that let you know that she didn’t approve. Jesus, did this girl think you should be in a full body suit without showing skin? You pulled them down subconsciously to try to hide some of your upper thigh. As for your nose ring, you were baffled as to why your that was an issue. So many women had them.

“I bought the shorts, but they don’t have an issue with them if that’s what you’re trying to get at? They think the nose ring is cute too. My parents are very cool with me choosing to do what I wish with my body.”

Her eyes widened in a holy-cow-you’re-crazy sorta way, “My parents would kill me if I looked like you.”

A dry laugh escaped your lips at her harsh words. And they were harsh, whether she met them to be or not. Putting women down wasn’t what you stood for and you really thought that the world was passed shaming people for what they look like.

“It’s twenty-twenty , they shouldn’t care about what you look like. Acceptance is key to a happy family.”

“What’s that mean?” She cocked her head to the side in confusion.

“Huh?”

“Twenty-twenty what is that?”

You glanced at the table to your left that was intently listening in on the conversation. You felt uncomfortable in the booth. Two guys stared shamelessly at your legs and you wanted to crawl under the table and hide.

“The year? It’s two thousand and twenty?”

She threw her head back, blonde hair following to fall down her back, “You really are an odd ball.”

You furrowed your eyebrows.

“It’s nineteen sixty nine, dear. Your cheek is bleeding and I’m assuming you fell because you’re acting crazy.” She quietly said, bending down to your eye level. A part of you wanted to hit her so hard that she fell down. Condescending attitudes rubbed you the wrong way to say the least.

You were fuming as you took two dollars out and put them on the counter, “Have a good evening.” You gritted out.

***

The cold night air pinched your skin as you walked aimlessly around the small town. You came to the conclusion that it was 1969 and you realized why the waitress was so taken back by your appearance. Girls in the sixties probably didn’t have shorts this short or nose piercings. It all made sense as you took in the town. The old styled cars, how people dressed, hell- how they talked. Old ass terms that people only used as a joke now.

So yes, you were in the past, but how and why. Watching Shameless in your bed right now seemed like heaven on earth. Your mom and dad’s faces haunted your mind when you thought about never getting to see them again. Tomorrow they would get back only to see that you have disappeared without a trace. Your dad will be so worried and heartbroken and your mom will be calling everyone to ask if they saw you.

And what would Claire and Margo think? You just knew they would feel so guilty for not knowing when they were the last ones you saw. Hurting them only hurt you more.

You found an old tree and sat down against it, letting the tears splash down your face. It was cold out from the brisk air and you had nothing to layer up with. This sucks, mega sucks, you noted.

An old red Ford Mustang parked on the road and two men got out of the car and headed your way. You clutched your wallet close to your chest in predetermined fear. Two men walking towards any woman would make that woman scared. It was a built in instinct that still wasn’t gone in the twentieth century. Especially with the men from this time. You knew women weren’t truly equal yet and they especially weren’t in this time.

They had on khaki pants and different colored polyester sweaters. Same guys from the diner that were watching you. Horrible look in their eyes as they stood in front of you.

“What’s a pretty lady like you sitting out here alone for? It’s late.” The one wearing a yellow sweater asked. His hair was brown and smoothed back, you were unable to see his eyes in the dark. He bent down to look at you in a way you didn’t appreciate. You were not having it.

“Really? Is it late? Couldn’t tell, not like the moon’s out or anything.” You retorted, shifting further back into the tree.

“Woah, no need to get lippy with me, hun.” He said, looking back at the other guy with the red sweater. Red shook his head to agree with yellow.

“Let’s not get comfortable with the nicknames. I’d say I’d call the cops but hah, ACAB... not that you would know about that.” You trailed off. You rambled when you got nervous and it was not a good feature.

“ACAB? You’re a weird one, aren’t you?” Red said, leaning down too.

“Weird, but an absolute doll. Not many girls ‘round here show skin like you.” Yellow said, hand grabbing your thigh.

Your hand slapped his away lightening fast before jumping up and backing away. You took your shoe off and held it up in defense, “Go fuck yourself! Get away from me.”

The men looked at each other in shock, assumingly at the vulgar words that escaped your pretty lips. You backed further away until you felt safe enough that you put your shoe back on and ran. You heard their feet shuffle in the grass as they ran after you.

You turned down an alley way and tripped again on a stick in the middle of the road, the boys were suddenly visible meaning you would not have time to get up and run. Instead of trying to escape, you grabbed said large stick and grasped it tightly between your hands. You wish Margo and Claire were by your side right now. You could do anything with them.

“A stick? Really? We just wanna spend some time with you.” Red said, walking closer.

“Fuck this! Fuck this so hard! Fuck toxic masculinity that makes pricks like you think it’s okay to do shit like this! Systematically you were probably raised to think chasing a woman is okay- judging from the car that you have money. Kids with money, especially in these days, are spoiled and never told no, but I don’t want you. Leave.” You shouted, twirling the stick like you saw so many times in Starwars movies. You saw the two men slowly step back and you were proud of yourself for fending them off until you heard another masculine voice behind you.

“You soc scum need to bounce.”

You moved to the side to be equally separated from whoever was behind you. A man about your age stood firmly beside two others that looked a few years off, one younger and one older.

The one that spoke was standing in the front and boy, he was beautiful. Dark hair slicked black to rest comfortably against his neck. He wore a blue and white flannel with blue jeans. His body was slim but you just knew he had some lean muscle on him. Red and yellow turned and walked away but not without making some derogatory claims about greasers.

You panted, finally breathing again as you doubled over, stick still firmly grasped in between your palms and fingers.

“Are you okay?” You heard the same voice quietly ask. You noticed they were standing right in front of you now. You meekly looked up to gaze into his pretty blue eyes. He hissed out in pain as he looked at his arm at the same exact moment that your mark started to burn so bad that you couldn’t take it. A searing pain ripped through every single one of your cells. You did it! You finally found your fucking soulmate! Without being able to stand the pain and excitement, your body tumbled forward for the second time that evening.

~~~

You heard rustling going on around you, but you clenched your eyes in fear that you wake up still stuck in the past.

“If I open my eyes and I’m not home, I’m gonna throw hands with whatever God there is.” You mumbled, slowly opening your eyes. The handsome man sat on the floor by your face, causing you to yelp and quickly move to a sitting position, hand clinging to your necklace.

“Hey, calm it, I won’t hurt you.” His gentle voice spoke. You laughed nervously as it hit you that he was your soulmate. Your life was fucked, oh so fucked. Sure, you found the one, but in a different decade!

“The world is a cruel place.” You muttered, hands removing from your necklace to rub down your face in irritation, “My life is a joke.”

He sat up on his knees, cautiously moving closer towards you as if you were a scared stray cat that he was attempting to take home to keep and take care of. You internally gagged at the idea of being kept inside as a house wife now that you were living in this time. You could not survive like that.

“It’s not. Usually people are happier to find their soulmate, yanno? I’m happy... I thought you would be.” His voice seeped with disappointment and pain.

You sighed as you felt his sadness creep up your bones and invade your sanity, “I would be thrilled if I wasn’t transported back in time. I’m not kidding, I’m from year twenty twenty. I can show you.”

You grabbed your wallet and ripped your lisence out, showing him. His eyes squinted as he read your birthday and the date you got it. His eyes enlarged as he looked back at you.

“That- that’s just impossible.”

You snorted, “S’what I thought too. Guess the universe really shoved us together on this one... and uh, thanks for saving me earlier, my inner jedi isn’t strong enough yet- I’m no obiwan.”

He furrowed his eyebrows, “I don’t know what that means.”

You blushed, “Big movie franchise that eventually comes out. I’ll try to avoid pop culture references... my bad.”

He smiled, pearly white teeth showing, “you’re really pretty, y/n.”

Your heart raced in your chest at how attractive he was. Claire and Margo would hardgirl swoon with you over him but they’re not here to join you, so you had to soak up his beauty all on your own. And him saying your name like that? God, that would make any girl bust a nut.

“How do you know my name?”

He shrugged, “Saw it when you showed me the date. The name surely suits you. I’m Sodapop, Sodapop Curtis.”

He held his hand out and you hesitantly met his half way as if to give him a handshake, but instead he intertwined your fingers together before moving closer. His skin was so warm against yours and all you wanted to do was pull him closer and bury yourself in his chest. Finally finding him was overwhelming after convincing yourself that you were doomed to be alone.

“Those guys that chased you, we ain’t letting them get away with it. We’ll find them and give ‘em a good what for.” A new voice spoke.

A kid, you guessed to be about 16, stood in the living room doorway, hands shoved deep into his jean pockets. He had longer brown hair like Sodapop, but his eyes were more hazel instead of the pretty blue. You awkwardly smiled, attempting to pull your hand away but Soda tugged it back, stubborn to lose contact so soon. He gave you a sweet smile to reassure you that he wasn’t going to try anything like the two men last night.

“Y/n, this is my brother ponyboy, and that’s my brother Darryl.” Soda said, pointing to the younger kid and the full on man that walked through the front door. You nervously waved with the hand that Soda didn’t claim.

“Hi, thank you guys for saving me... although I think my stick was pretty promising...” You awkwardly spoke making all three of them chuckle softly.

“Better safe than sorry.” Darry said, offering a smile, “Come on, Ponyboy. We will be back.”

Darry signaled Pony to go with him outside, you and Soda sat in silence as you heard the truck doors and the rumbling of an engine pulling away. His thumb grazed over the back of your hand. Your insides felt like they were melting. Sodapop was extremely attractive and you could not believe that you found him. Harry Styles has some competition for sure. Well, maybe that was going far. It’s Harry Styles, no one could really beat him.

“So what’s it like here? What do you do for fun?” You asked, looking around the house. You imagined the houses around to be very similar. Old couches, ancient TVs with the antennae’s, framed photos on the mantles, and the cool old wallpaper. Very similar to the sorta place your grandparents grew up in.

“Play cards every couple nights. Go to the drive in movies when I’m not working. Diner is open late at night so that’s where young folk hangout. We find good times.” He smiled softly, getting lost in his own thoughts, “What’s there to do for you?”

You couldn’t even begin to explain that you lay in your bed watching tik toks off your phone while Netflix plays softly in the background. Or that you quote memes in a parking lot with your friends. Soda would not understand memes at all and that would be a huge struggle because half the shit that came out of your mouth were memes.

“I have fires a lot at my house, we usually sorta just sit there and bullshit for hours but uh then there’s the usual- getting coffee and sitting in a parking lot. Not much to do in my town but eat and go somewhere to hangout...”

“That sounds nice.”

You shrugged, “More people than not get drunk or smoke weed everyday because what the hell else is there to do?”

He quirked an eyebrow, “you do that?”

You shook your head no, “My friends and I drink from time to time but not heavily. And we especially don’t go to parties because those are cesspools waiting to be caught by cops. Well, fuck cops anyway, but..”

You froze when you realized that cops in this time weren’t critized by the public as much. Political climate ranged from your time to now. Soda probably wouldn’t support the LGBTQ community, or if he did he didn’t know much about it. And racism surely lingered in the 1960’s air. You felt sick thinking about fighting barriers that you usually didn’t have to.

“Do girls swear a lot in the future?” He asked timidly, not wanting to upset you but also he was just very curious. He never heard ladies swear and especially not that word.

You snorted at how cute he was, “All the time. It’s normal for us. Trust me, if you are shocked by that you don’t want to imagine the crude things that are said daily..”

His thumb stopped rubbing circles on your hand and your heart faltered. He was probably used to obideint women who were dainty and didn’t outspeak too much. Women in this era were subservient and you could not be further from that. You had quite the mouth on you and your idea would not be oppressed. You graduated pretty high in your class. You were intelligent and political and that was mind blowing to men of this time. What if you were too much for him? You wouldn’t dare change but it would be heart breaking to know that your other half couldn’t take who you are as a person. As a woman.

“What you said about the cops.. what did they do wrong? I mean here they can be annoying but they try to be fair.” He asked, thumb rubbing your skin again. His eyes glanced down at your thighs and you blushed a bit, wishing you would’ve put on your sweatpants instead before leaving to go with the girls.

“If I explained it all, we would be sitting here for days. Long story short; African Americans still aren’t equal and they are murdered by cops at an unequal rate compared to the population size. Protests turned violent and the whole country is a mess. Half the country trusts cops and the other half wants the systematic corruption to be dismantled. Personally, I’m with the latter. So cops aren’t really my heroes. I try to avoid them. Of course my dad disagrees because he’s old fashioned and doesn’t get it, but what’s so hard to get about treating people equally. America’s supposed to be a melting pot so what’s with the racism and harsh divide? Guess the founding fathers only meant equality when it came to every white man- and that’s bullshit.”

You stopped rambling to see that soda was grinning from ear to ear at you. You gave him a questioning look. “Did I miss something?”

“You are wicked smart with politics. Wiser than anyone I know, prettier than anyone I know.”

~~~

Three weeks later you found yourself walking through the library with ponyboy, fingers grazing over every book you walked past. Books were little keys to jump inside different worlds. You wished you could find a book from 2020 that would magically transport you back. You found Soda, but at what price? You wanted to go home where you had control over your life. You were lost here.

“Any book recommendations? I’m sure you had to read a lot of these.” The youngest Curtis asked as you rounded the corner.

“Hmm, ever read any Tolkien books? Like The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings Trilogy?”

“No.”

“Awh, goodie, I get to be your mentor for this. Basically these are the best damn books that you will ever read. Bit lengthy but the detail is beautiful.”

He gently took the Hobbit in his hands, one gripping the back while the other flipped through the pages, examining how many there were before he tucked it under his arm, affirming that he would take a stab at it.

“What’s it about? Is it girly stuff- not that I mind really.”

Ponyboy was unlike the rest of the gang. He was a little softy that you wanted to hide from the world in order to protect him. The gang protected him physically but his feelings were usually punched, as much as Soda tried. Ponyboy felt things differently and deeply. He was in touch with literature and his life revolves around movies and books. You imagined how much he would adore the twentieth century with how much content there would be for him.

You crossed your arms and shifted your weight to one foot, “It’s a fantasy set up. So like elves, dwarves, hobbits, trolls, orcs, shapeshifters, magic, and I’m sure there’s more but my mind is blanking here. I promise it’s worth it. And I can explain as you read.”

“You’re a nerd?”

His innocent question made you laugh, “I guess you could say that, bud. Give it a shot and if you don’t like it, so be it,” you muttered this part to him, “although no one can resist middle earth’s charm.”

“What’s middle earth?”

“Where it takes place, it’s like another version of earth basically. But hey! You’re already so interested. Soon enough you’ll be wishing you were an elf slaying orcs too.” You joked, jabbing him in the side, “and if you say you wanna be a dwarf instead, you’re dead to me.”

He smiled, “what if I like the humans more? What then?”

“Then, I would consider you an absolute freak. Humans in this are like mediocre. Well, in the hobbit at least. Lord of the Rings they are more of a key part, but they’re so boring compared to the other cultures. Unless you like boring?” You raised an eyebrows at him.

“No, I ain’t boring. And I don’t like boring either.” He stubbornly said, walking side by side with you to go check your books out.

You grabbed a few random books that you wanted to check out. Soda worked and he refused to let you go anywhere alone, so you and Ponyboy just read a lot. It was summer vacation so he was outta school and had all the time in the world. You liked hanging out with the kid.

The two soc boys were standing by the counter when you guys got there. You huffed as the one winked at you. In that moment you wished you were legolas with a dagger and could gut him.

“Surprise seeing you here, considering I doubt you guys are literate.” You spoke, smiling at the librarian as you handed her the books.

“Surprise seeing you here with only the kid, we’ve heard you’re shaking up with Sodapop now. Looks like the greaser found his soulmate.”

The derogatory term aimed at Soda fueled your veins with rage. Blood rushed into your head at the idea that these guys thought they were above Soda, who was the kindest man you knew. Your heart told you to call them motherfucking cunts but your brain warmed you that it wasn’t a good choice. You glanced over and noticed that Pony looked as mad as you. If you retaliated, you wouldn’t get beat up but if he did, he would go home bloody while you trail behind him with a guilty face. You would give them a little talk.

You blew air out of your mouth before turning around to them, “Boys, I don’t know if you keep up with the news or not, but Vietnam is an ugly war filled with horrible people. Do you know what soldiers see? People being burned alive, dogs getting shot down, bombs obliterating people, women in villages getting raped, and most importantly you watch the men you grew to love die right before you.”

The two men stared at you wide eyed as you paused to grab the books from the librarian who was also now listeninf to you.

“Drafts are inevitable, and you know what? War doesn’t care who you are; greaser or soc. The enemy won’t stop to ask your financial stability before ending your life. The boys who you deem greasers could be the ones to save you from dying. Maybe try being nice because you never know who you will end up with on that field.”

Ponyboy’s mouth opened in shock when the two socs slowly back away and left without a single word. You hummed in victory before ushering the younger boy out of the building with you.

“Where did you hear those things? Darry keeps up with that stuff and I never heard nuthin like that.” Ponyboy asked after a few minutes.

You guys walked through the gate of the house but you halted before the steps, “A lot about the war is exposed after it ends. We learned about it in school. I used it against them as a wake up call. Try not to worry too much about it.”

Pony slowly nodded, “okay.”

The door opened and two-bit shuffled out the door with a beer can in his left hand, right hand wedged in his pocket.

“You guys are in trouble.” He sang as pony pushed him out of the way and walked into the house. Two-bit walked off the porch and turned to head home. He didn’t wanna be present for the yelling.

Soda and Darry’s heads snapped to the door and you held the books tighter to your chest to hide yourself. You two forgot to leave a note where you were going and now you were going to get scolded.

“Where the hell have you two been? It’s past 8:00.” Darry scolded, throwing down the newspaper that been in his hands.

You looked to Soda for help but even he shook his head to signal that he was just as upset. You handed the books to Pony before holding your hands up in surrender.

“Oh no, you caught us. We were at the library.” You joked, quickly knocking the smile off your face when the two older Curtis boys glared at you.

“Not funny. Anything could’ve happened to you.” Soda reprimanded. Your soulmate was always worried for you when he wasn’t around. He knew how horrible soc could be and they clearly had an interest in you. It was bad enough being away from you, but getting home to you and his kid brother not there made his nerves fly through the roof.

“Socs aren’t a worry when she’s around, trust me.” Pony mumbled, setting the books down on the table.

“Whats that mean? Did those socs bother you again, Y/N?” Soda suddenly was in front of you, checking your body for any cuts or bruises. You smacked his hands away.

“No, simmer down, I’m fine.” You said, offering him a reassuring smile.

“Then what happened!”

“She shut them down with her wit before they could even start. Those soc didn’t know how to respond so they turned around and walked right away.” Pony explained.

“What did you say?” Darry asked, slightly amused. He liked you very much and was glad that such an extraordinary woman was meant for his little brother.

You shared a look with pony to silently tell him to shut up about what you really said, “Nothing that’s important. What does matter is that Ponyboy got a bunch of books that he should be reading.”

He playfully rolled his eyes, “You want me to read so you can talk to me about elves.”

You nodded, “Well yeah, they’re the best part so get to it! Once you start you will love it.”

Ponyboy nodded before picking up the books and heading towards his shared room with Soda to begin reading. You smiled as you watch him go. You knew deep down that he was excited to read but didn’t want to make it seem like he was. He liked to taunt you with your taste in movies and books but you knew he really did agree.

“You baby him more than Soda does.” Darry stated, giving you a teasing glance.

“I don’t baby him.” Soda argued, glaring at his older brother.

“You do, Soda. Darry’s right though, I baby him a lot but I can’t help it. Pony’s a good kid that’s curious about the world. Reminds me of my best friend back home... I am sorry that we didn’t leave a note, we didn’t even think about it.” You admitted, grabbing Soda’s hand and intertwining it with his. He melted into your touch and you could tell that he wasn’t mad anymore. He couldn’t stay mad at you even if he tried.

“I know, I know. Just try to be more careful.” Darry softly spoke, “I’m headed to get a shower and go to bed. Don’t let Pony stay up too late.”

Soda muttered a yes and goodnight as you saluted Darry in a joking way, making the oldest Curtis smile and roll his eyes before going about his way.

As soon as the door was shut you were pulled into Soda’s arms, both wrapped tightly around your midsection as he nosed against your neck. You blushed as you wrapped your arms around him too, smelling the oil and dirt that came with working at the DX. It was an oddly comforting smell. Distinctly him. Your soul mark tingled as he left a soft kiss against the skin of your throat.

“You gave me a real fright, doll.” He softly spoke. Your eyes fluttered shut as he pulled you closer, his lips grazing your skin with his words, “ just worried when you’re not around, ‘m always thinking about you.”

“I didn’t know you thought about anything other than cars all day,” you poked.

He snorted, “yeah right. As if.”

“I’m so used to my independence that I forgot that here I need to let people know where I’m going.”

He pulled away slightly, “Did your parents not care about your safety?”

You snorted, “They did. Of course they did, but it was so easy to get ahold of them that I could just let them know while I was away. Plus once I turned 17 they stopped really caring what I did as long as I wasn’t doing anything sketchy. And I was always with my best friends.”

“Makes sense. Darry doesn’t care what I do if I’m with Steve...”

You pullled away and picked up one of the books to start reading it, “He should be the most concerned when you’re around that boy.”

You sat on the couch and held the book in your lap as you gave him a pointed look. He rolled his eyes. You and Steve sorta got along. He was nice and all to you, but he was a dick to ponyboy and that wasn’t appreciated. He walked to the kitchen to get a pop.

Minutes later he sat beside you on the couch, glancing down at the words splashed across the pages. He skim read but the book didn’t seem that great to him.

“Y/n?”

“Hmmm, soda?” When he didn’t reply you half way shut the book and turned to him, “what’s up?”

“Does it ever bother you that you’re so much smarter than me?”

Your heart burned at his question. Soda had a complex that he was stupid because he dropped out of high school. Everyone knew he did it because of his situation in which he tragically lived. Darry couldn’t do everything on his own and soda knew that. He sacrificed his future for the better of his small family. He wasn’t dumb.

“Education changes through years, so a lot of new material has been taught to me that you wouldn’t have known.”

He crossed his arms against his chest and slunk down in the cushion, “Come on, for real. Doesn’t it bother you that I’m a drop out?”

You set the book down and shifted so that your hands wrapped around his right bicep. You leaned your head on his shoulder. He didn’t look at you, instead he was staring holes into his bedroom door.

“Sometimes I feel like you should’ve been Ponyboy’s soulmate instead of mine.” He softly spoke, “He’s brilliant.”

“Oh my god, Soda. Can it. The universe wouldn’t send me decades back to find you if we weren’t meant to be. Not one part of me cares that you didn’t finish high school. You’re Soda. The smart man who takes care of his family. Does it bother you that I’m brainless when it comes to cars?”

Soda gave you a look like you were insane, “I don’t mind at all.”

“See, it doesn’t matter. I don’t see you as dumb and I wish you would stop seeing yourself that way too.”

Ponyboy walked into the living room, blonde hair messy as if he was playing with it. His cheeks were flushed from sitting under blankets and he looked a bit sleepy. Reading always made him a bit tired from how at peace he was, which was rare in his current life.

“Y/N, I don’t know how to feel about Bilbo. He seems good but he also seems a little selfish.” He said, eyes skimming along some of the words.

You smiled, “He’s a really pure character. You’ll grow to enjoy him. What part did you get to?”

Just like that Soda was in a better mood. Watching you speak so happily and effortlessly to his little brother about a book made his heart soar. Sometimes he felt like he couldn’t connect with Pony like he wanted to. And where he was lacking you were there to make up for it.

A few hours later Soda sweetly kissed you goodnight before retiring to his shared room with Pony. You snuggled into the couch with blankets wrapped around you.

~~~

Opening your eyes you saw that you were laying in your bed instead of the Curtis’ couch. Panic flood through your veins at the idea of returning home without the boys. Your heart was racing out of your chest as you looked at the decorations on your wall. A place that felt like your safest place was now a personal hell.

You wanted to return home but not without Soda, Pony, Darry, Two-bit and even Steve. God, you had to have been especially emo if you wished to see Steve more.

The idea of seeing Claire and Margo was beyond relieving but the pain of never seeing Soda again almost cancelled it out. Once again you would be the friend without a soulmate- without a better half. You sighed as angry tears slipped from your eyes. Why did the world have to fuck with you so much? You didn’t have a soulmate, found them in another decade, and then when you grew adapted to the times and people, Mother Earth ripped you back to your old life.

“Hun, why are you crying?” You heard Soda say. You tried to sit up to look for him but a firm arm was wrapped around your middle. Somehow you completely didn’t register that when you woke up.

You struggled to turn around and there he was. Beautiful Sodapop Curtis laying right beside you in your bed. In 2020. His hair was slightly shorter but his kind blue eyes were still the same. He was still the same handsome boy from the 1960’s.

A choked sob escaped your lips as you wrapped your arms around him, pulling yourself as close as you could. Warm skin against yours assured yourself that he was real. This was real. Not some dream that your brain cruelly conjured you in attempt to calm you down.

“Did you have a nightmare?” He softly asked, a hand coming to rub up and down your back. His gesture only made more tears leak out of your eyes. You were so confused. Why wasn’t he freaking out too?

“I don’t know. Where’s Ponyboy and the guys?”

His hand faltered for a moment before he went back to comforting you, his lips pecked your forehead a few times, “They’re at home, probably asleep. Did you have a nightmare about them?”

Your mind was spiraling. Somehow the boys made it here too and soda seemed to not find this weird at all. He was acting like everything was normal.

“What year were you born?” You asked, clutching onto him, trying to remember what his skin felt like against yours.

“1999. Babe, tell me what’s going on. You’re starting to scare me here.” He lightly chuckled, adoring that you were clutching onto him as if he would disappear.

You didn’t know how to explain so you disguised it as a dream, “I had a weird dream, a really realistic one, that I was transported back to the 1960’s and I found you and the guys there. I can’t remember how we met now.”

You felt him shift slightly to get his arm free. He picked up his phone and the screen lit up. His lock screen was a picture of you two in front of a well taken care of old blue camaro.

“We met five months ago at a car show. You were with your grandpa, Claire, and Margo and I was with the boys. My mark burned when I accidently brushed your arm when I passed. We realized what was going on and we got this picture. We’ve been together since.” He recalled easily.

As he spoke, you could faintly see all of this happening in your point of view. How happy you felt when you saw him, the tingling of your mark, gushing internally at how attractive he was, you could even hear Margo cat calling in your head when you two got that picture.

Suddenly memories were dancing around in your brain. Getting Taco Bell together at midnight. Him joining your friend group to sit around the usual fire pit, him making you a s’more when you beg him even though you knew you didn’t have to ask more than once. Him building you the nice wooden shelf in your room that you put your weird Knick knacks on. Him laughing along when you scream “I will sacrifice my own life for Pakistan.” Going over for dinner and watching Lord of the Rings with pony boy.

“It’s all real.” You breathed out, “I’m sorry, that dream just really messed me up..”

He grinned down at you, his lips slowly drifting right above yours until they softly brushed together. Your soul mark tingled in utter delight. His arms slithered around your back as he moved on top of you, “I should be offended that you forgot about all of that, you know.”

You laughed, “Yeah... I’ll make it up to you by being nice to Steve for a whole day.”

He snorted, “wow, a whole day... that might kill you.”

You exaggeratedly nodded, “Honestly. He’s seriously the worst, soda.”

He boyishly smiled as he rolled off of you and stood up, grabbing his jeans and pulling them over his legs. He shoved his hands in each pocket to make them go in. He grabbed his plain black shirt and slid it over his shoulders and then head.

“I have to get home, Pony’s drivers test is in an hour and I’m the one to take him. He’ll for sure pass. I made sure of that. But tonight we will probably get cake to celebrate, the boys are all coming over. You’ll come, right?” He asked grabbing his hat and sliding it on his head.

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

He winked at you once and leaned over the bed to give you a quick peck, “see you soon, pretty lady.”

You blushed, “see ya soon, handsome.”

He smiled softly before walking out the door. You laid there in the bed in disbelief. Your dream was too real to not be true but at the same time you recalled meeting him in 2020 too.

Either way you were thankful that soda was in the present with you because it was honestly the best of both worlds.

A strong breeze hit the house and your window popped open. A small scrap of paper floated in and landed on your dresser. Your hands smoothed they paper before reading it.

“Sometimes reality changes for people who deserve it.”

#sodapop curtis imagine #sodapop curtis #sodapop #sodapop imagine #outsiders imagine #soulmate au #soulmate imagine

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beyoncesdragon · 4 years

Text

A stretch mark called Aphrodite | pjm

→Pairing: : Jimin x Reader

→Summary: Jimin just really loves all of your body

→Warnings: major fluff! So no?

→Wordcount: 1k

a/n: HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the one that has irrevocably yeeted my standards to the moon and back! Happy happy birthday, wow I can’t believe he’s turning 25 already. I am so proud of you Jimin-ssi. So proud and so thankful for being able to have you in my life. You truly are one in a million and I hope that everyone has the chance to find someone that helps to heal their soul like you are healing mine. Thank you for showing me that I wasn’t as happy as I pretended to be – and thank you for inspiring me to finally change that. I owe you and I hope that one day, you can love yourself just as much as I love you.

Masterlist | BTS Masterlist

They never really bothered you. At least they didn’t until someone pointed them out to you and said something along the lines of; you do know that they stay forever?

A sentence designed to make you feel insecure or unsure of yourself, really. Somehow like elder people remarking on tattoos, expressing their dislike of inked art on skin, but in a more subtle way. Now, of course, stretchmarks weren’t tattoos. Yet they did mark your skin, some more subtle than others. Like a net of tiny branches, shallow lines branched out like riverways across your upper tight, over your hip and on the insides of your thighs. Permanently etched into your skin, or rather sitting beneath it, within it, one with your skin. Almost lost in thought you brushed over them with your thumb, feeling the light bump wherever one was scarred thicker than the rest. You hadn’t even really noticed the frown that had formed on your face until you looked up and were met by the dissatisfied eyes of your own reflection in the mirror.

“What is it?” you looked to your side in surprise, having expected Jimin to still be asleep under the covers right next to you. “Hm? Oh I was just looking.” He hummed lowly, leaning into your direction before looking up at you. “Looking at what?” his voice was still so groggy from sleep and his Busan satoori stained his words heavily. “At my body, I guess?” He chuckled softly, scooting closer before wrapping his arms round your waist, so he could rest his head on your thighs. “Beautiful…” he hummed sleepily and you couldn’t help but smile a little. He rose his head and looked at you questioningly, waiting for you to agree with him. You silence must have given you away. “Don’t you agree, jagi?” your hand found its way into his hair, softly stroking through the white bleached mess of curls. “Yeah…just, well, I’ve got a few more stretchmarks, despite my efforts not to gain weight anymore. I’ve seen an ad for some cream to remove them but…” you never came to finish that sentence since Jimin sat up immediately. “What?” you shrugged, feeling a bit uncomfortable under his piercing stare.

“Remove stretchmarks. Though I heard that it doesn’t really work if they are already fully scarred, like one or two years old. And some claim it doesn’t work at all…” you continued slowly. He just shook his head.

“What do you mean, remove them? And are you eating enough, jagiya?” his overly concerned frown made you giggle a bit before leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead. “Yes, Jimin, I am eating enough. And what could I possibly mean by “a cream to remove them”? Got any ideas there, my baby mega mind?” he gasped in fake offence before pressing a kiss to your marked skin, right where your leg connected to the torso. “How dare you wanting to remove Becky!” he huffed out, pouting his lips at your skin, shaking his head. “Who the hell is Becky?” you asked confused, looking down at the spot where Jimin had fixed his eyes on. “That is her.” Jimin grinned softly, tapping against a pretty stretchmark with his index finger. “You are not naming my stretchmark Becky.” You called out, ignoring his big pout. “Why not? This is Chin-Sun, Gracie, Eun, Haneul and her sister Hyo-Sonn, Jennie, Rose, Kara, Jin, Kyung, Min-Ok, Fiola, Cleopatra…” he started, pressing a kiss against the chosen marks after each name.

“So many names…but not Becky. Becky just reminds me of the song by Beyoncé…Becky with the good hair? I don’t want to carry Beyoncé’s wrath on my hip.” Jimin only chuckled. “Whatever you say, jagi. Though I have no idea what song you are talking about, I see your point. You need to show me that song in this case.” You nodded quickly, a small smile appearing on your lips. “Alright. I will then call her...Aphrodite.” Jimin suddenly announced and you couldn’t help but laugh. “Aphrodite?” you giggled, cupping his cheeks with your hand. “Yes. Exactly that.” He replied with an amused wink before pressing another kiss to your soft skin. “This one I call....Myung. look how fair she is.” You hummed softly, stroking his hair again. “If you say so…” he nodded absentmindedly, tracing the lines with his finger now.

“You got more? This is fun.” He asked, an innocent lilt to his voice. Yet it still startled you and you stopped petting his head and looked down at him in slight confusion. “Have I got mo- Park Jimin, do you even know what you are saying?” at that he looked up with slightly batted eyes, peaking through his lashed up at you. “I do. I love them.” He simply explained, sounding incredible calm and sincere. You still couldn’t help yourself to ask in slight disbelief

“Really? You know I could try laser remo-“ he cut you off before you could finish the first part of your sentence, “They're like artwork on your body. Like little drawings, stories that you have collected throughout your life. Just because you can’t always read them, doesn’t mean no one can. They are unique, they make your body seem like you, make you look like you are living a life, going through changes and transformations whilst doing so. They should be admired and studied like those ridiculously expensive paintings you told me about. The ones they hang in the loafer…”

“Louvre…”

“Exactly that. So yes, I love them. And you should too, jagiya, and if I have to name and worship them every morning until you believe me!” You had teared up at his words and wordlessly intertwined your fingers with his. Jimin was still looking up at you, his eyes full of warmth and adoration. His thumb carefully traced random shapes over your hip and his warm breath tickled your skin.

“So. You got more?”

“I mean…on the insides of my thighs…” Jimin snapped up at that, a small smirk suddenly toying with the corners of his lips. “Oh really?” you couldn’t help but laugh at the way his eyes had already grown a bit darker, pupils starting to blow.

“We’ll save that up for another day, shall we.” His face dropped instantly. “No! We shall not!” And who were you to say no to him.

--- ✩ thank u for reading ✩ ---

#my baby boy bias turns 25!#happy birthday jimin!#park jimin #park jimin x y/n #park jimin x you #park jimin x reader #jimin fanfics #bts x you #bts x y/n #bts imagines #kpop #imagines #kpop imagines #bts fic #bangtan sonyeondan #networkbangtan #my writing #body posititivity #stretch marks

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1dffexchange · 5 years

Photo

to fight (when you feel like flying)

To: Anna @twomoonstyles

From: Inm @in-madhouses

Summary: harry has never had a place to call home, not since one direction became a thing. zaemira has intentionally avoided home, fearing the monotony and a life not lived. their paths cross and like two lines that are meant to meet and fall apart every so often, they find a home in one another.

a story about binge drinking, tattoos, and how sometimes, building homes out of people can be the only thing that keeps you going. also known as a tribute to brasil!harry and the (not so) secret thigh tattoos.

Warnings: some offensive language, alcohol use heavily implied, hints of substance abuse (if you squint) and sexual references. there are also mentions of hendall, hadine and hamille although not explicitly named. the timing is also nowhere near accurate but let's call it artistic freedom.

rio de janeiro

may 2014

They break up on the eve of his departure. It’s the band’s first all-stadium tour and somehow, as quickly as they were a thing, they just weren’t by the time February rolled around.

They’d clung onto one another for dear life through the winter months and the physical hole she leaves behind is filled by the pictures of her everywhere. There are fall fashion shows, and there are music festivals, and there billboards, and there are gossip rags. As far as the eyes can reach, there she is, in one form or another.

Harry leaves for the tour with the boys and it’s exactly like he expected. He is grinning from ear to ear standing atop of the world night after night, the stars in his eyes left by the glow of the headlights is eclipsed only by ear-ringing screams they are accompanied by.

Each night is a swirling tide, even when he is not on stage.

But the mask cracks eventually.

The air stills.

They do seven cities in twelve days and he’s tired already. He’d inadvertently frowns at the wrong moment, or sigh, or have a faraway look in his eyes, barely anchored to the present. And they catch it. They always catch it. But the walls come back up as swiftly as they tumble down.

He’d smile. Smile, smile, smile. Smile until it hurts.

Smile until it’s believable.

(It never is.)

He spends too much time bouncing between staring holes into his phone and wanting to go at it with a hammer. There’s just something confusingly enthralling about the pictures and the videos of her that keep popping up. The precise red carpet movements, the long lithe legs, the perfect posture, the jawline for days.

Niall sends him memes round the clock to try to distract him from looking at new pap shots, and Liam tells him to just not to think about it.

“It’s called a quarter life crisis,” Zayn announces, elbowing Louis as they chuckle at his melodrama.

As though it’s the simplest problem ever to grace the earth, Louis offers a solution, “What you need is a good bender and a good cleanser.”

He’s got good mates, he thinks.

But then he’s in Rio and there are pictures of her at the Met Gala and next thing he knows, he’s downing caipirinhas by the glassful and there’s sun and sea and sightseeing and then more caipirinhas. He remembers exactly how everything unfolded, like watching a lifetime worth of dominoes collapse into a rather large portrait of a car crash.

It’s a slow night.

There’d been exactly one walk-in so far; a giggly nineteen year-old girl who wanted a Taylor Swift lyric tattooed on the middle of her lower back.

“It’s our song,” Swiftie says in regards to the tattoo, and whether the blonde haired, blue-eyed, cherry lipped teen was referring to her boyfriend or the title of the song, Zaemira will never know.

Since then, she’d been all by her lonesome for four whole hours and the tan skinned brunette is bored. She’d left her latest acquisition, a tattered first edition copy of Factotum back on the couch she was crashing on and with nothing to read or distract herself with, she is decidedly… bored. She’s antsy and she’s restless, and she’s super tempted to just flip the ‘open’ sign around to read ‘close’ and get drunk on cheap booze at the dodgy little bar down the road. That’s what soul-searching girls do when they end up working part-time at a seedy tattoo parlour in the tv shows anyway, why should she be the exception?

She’s so bored that her mind wanders and she's thinking that maybe it’s finally time to go home, not like call it a day home, but home home.

Zaemira had packed a bag and left the comforts of London right after graduating from her graphic design degree, hoping to find some kind of excitement out in the world before living out the predestined rest of her life in a cubicle churning out ad after ad for the nihilistic consumerist society she lived in before kicking it too early. But after a year on the road, honing the needle and ink in her hands and collecting first edition Bukowski’s, she is left wondering if there’s even a home for her to return to. The concept of it now so foreign to her even though her childhood had not been lacking in much.

The tinted shop door swings open right then with a squeak and a clatter of really impressively expensive sounding heels echoes through the tight little tattoo parlour space.

It’s all limbs and hair, flailing and tumbling forward face first into the floor.

She instinctively backs up away from the swirling mess.

“I’m fine! I’m—fine, just—I’m fine,” the bloke says, waving his arms about before rolling onto his back, splayed on the floor, taking up most of the floorspace, “You should—there should be a sign. Two. Yeah, two. One in English, and one in—what country are we in?”

Zaemira blinks at this hurricane on the tattoo parlor floor and studies him for a quick second.

“You’re in Brasil,” she starts saying once appropriately convinced that he’s not about to sick all over the shop floor, “And a sign for what exactly?”

He huffs, blowing several strands of thick brown hair out of his eyes in the process, “The stairs, love.”

She squats close by to examine this specimen interrupting her plans to close early and get hammered.

“There aren’t any stairs,” she says dryly, arching an eyebrow at his direction.

He sits up, coming dangerously close headbutting her and blinks at her.

“Then what’d I trip over?”

And he sounds so fucking plaintive, adorably dismayed and hilariously distressed, that Zaemira can’t help but bark out a laugh.

“Well, if I had to guess,” she starts saying, biting down on the laugh teetering on her lips because he sounds so honest to god confused and hilariously distressed sitting there on the tattoo parlour floor, “You tripped over the fucking distillery you inhaled at wherever you went to dinner.”

He squints up at her like he’s doubting the validity of this observation.

And then, “Are you English?”

She rolls her eyes at that, “What gave it away?”

He shuts one eye to peer at the girl before him, as though considering her seriously, “You’re far from home.”

“I could say the same about you,” Zaemira contests as she recognises his too young and too pretty and too distractingly familiar face, “You’re Harry Styles.”

He blinks and there are alarms blaring in her head as he smirks.

“You’re doing the introduction thing backwards there, sweetheart.”

“You don’t like people telling you who you are then?”

“Not very much, no,” he scrunches his nose, deep in thought for a second, before turning his attention back to her, “What’s your name?”

“Zaemira,” she replies, realising they’ve been on the floor way too long and her leg is close to falling asleep.

She holds her hand out to pull him up, and he accepts it all too enthusiastically.

“What kind of name is… Samira?”

She shrugs as she helps the six footer to his feet wobblily, eyes scanning the door he stumbled in through, wondering where his entourage is, “It’s Zaemira, actually. But you know what, you get to call me Mira, drunky-pants.”

“Well, I want a you tattoo,” he announces, voice a little bleary but determined. But there’s something dangerous there, too, something that reminds him of the sting of needle piercing skin.

She eyes him up and down as he wobbles and crosses her arms across her chest.

“I don’t think so.”

“No, no. You don’t—” Harry hiccoughs and takes several steps on the spot to balance himself, “—understand. I want your name— Zaemira— tattooed on me.”

He takes extra care to pronounce her name right the second time around that she is just inexplicably fucking endeared by the entire spectacle.

Zaemira blinks.

“What?”

He frowns, as though worried he’s not articulating well enough for her to understand him, “Your name— I want it tattooed on me.”

She stares.

And then she stares some more.

“It’s a beautiful name— I never—” Harry hiccoughs, frowning and stopping himself mid sentence, “I never want to forget you.”

She’s definitely not bored anymore, she thinks.

So she cocks an eyebrow at him in a wordless game of truth or dare and he’s reckless and he’s dramatic and he’s beaming at her so brightly that she’s blinded by it, and her brain goes hazy and her thoughts switch frequency with an abrupt high-pitched whine of static.

cape town

april 2015

Harry thought he was doing better, he really did. It’s been almost a year since Rio and he’s Harry fucking Styles. He’s in one of the most popular bands in the world, he has a PR perfect sense of humour, sharp fucking cheekbones, and the word Brasil tattooed on his thigh to remind him that even when life feels like it’s spinning off its axis you can always find a centre again.

But then she breaks up with him, craving a more definitive commitment that he can’t offer, and they’re on tour again when Zayn, out of nowhere, announces that he’s needs to leave for a little bit which everyone knows is code for he’s tired and done with it all.

And the world just... started to spin a little off its axis again.

So he makes plans to arrive in Cape Town earlier than he needs to and heads straight to where his life last made sense when things moved too fast for him to catch up.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” he drawls from the doorway, smug and half a bottle of duty free booze dangling precariously in his hands.

Her whole body stalls, eyes the only thing that whips up from the book she’s engrossed in. The smile that carves itself onto her lips hits him square in the chest.

She sets the book aside, breathless, “How d’you know I was here?”

“I keep tabs on you,” Harry shrugs, tone casual, with a small smile playing on his lips playfully.

He had long made a mental note to keep up on her current location whenever he could since she’s far from forthcoming about her travels. Seems only fair since his movements in contrast is so easily trackable. One quick internet search and she’d be able to know if he was in Holmes Chapel or recording in Los Angeles or out grabbing a bite in New York.

“Why, because no one else will tattoo country names on you when you’re drunk?” Zaemira teases, taking a step forward, as though challenging him to crack first.

“Precisely,” he nods in all seriousness.

They both start grinning for no reason whatsoever and the laughter that sits in their chest bubbles over soon enough.

After Rio, he had gone back to his life and she went back to hers. She moved from city to city, continually avoiding home, and he went from stage to stage, seeking solace in the certainty of instability. But still, the heartfelt conversations and indelible experience they shared in various states of sobriety in Brasil bonded them together. Somewhere along the night almost a year ago, they had reached a point at which they both understood implicitly that no matter what, one could call and the other would answer no matter where they were.

And so they did.

They shared the big news; Zaemira whenever she found a new old Bukowski book and Harry whenever he was thinking about a new tattoo. To the layman, it may sound like a shallow kind of friendship, completely lacking any kind of commitment, but it wasn't.

On the contrary, it was the healthiest and longest lasting form of a relationship that either one of them ever had. Despite geographical and emotional distance, they were allowed to grow in their own way and not have to live through minute everyday highs and lows and petty dramas.

It was as liberating as it was peaceful.

And he could tell that his sudden physical presence is throwing her off.

“Seriously, what are you doing here?” She asks, tone light but the slant of her jaw more rigid than he’s used to and her posture brittle.

“We’re on tour,” Harry shrugs nonchalantly as he walks in around the tattoo parlour.

The space is small and intimate and starkly lit. The walls are embellished with clean lines and immaculate designs and it’s just like the spot in Rio where they met a year ago. Her caramel brown eyes are tailing him around the room and he wonders how someone who works with men looking to cover up prison ink all day can look so soft.

“I know that,” she says, her tone more curious than it is wary, “But what are you doing here?”

“Can’t a guy just drop by to see his friend when he’s in her neck of the woods?”

She narrows her eyes at him.

“A guy can, but a guy never has,” her voice dripping with the implication that he’s never lacking in the means to find her.

Which isn’t untrue.

He sighs.

“I was in New Orleans for all of a day, Zaemira.”

Harry likes saying her name in entirety. She prefers Mira, but he likes the unshortened version. It’s beautiful, it’s the kind of name that commands the full use of the orifice that most people use to stuff full of food or as a tool to lick and suck.

She stares at him, surprise evident.

“How could you possibly—”

“I have you on Instagram,” he replies, crisply, before taking another swig of the bottle in his hands.

“No, you don’t.”

“Only because I can’t publicly follow you.”

“So you just check my account obsessively like some kind of creepy stalker?”

Harry shrugs.

“Think we crossed that line when I fell into a certain tattoo shop a year ago, don’t you?”

Zaemira huffs out a breathless sounding laugh that hits him right in the center of his chest.

He had thought their paths would cross when after their last tour ended. He thought he might go out to New Orleans and get into that gumbo life for a couple of days. Stroll along the French Quarter and check in for a drink at Bourbon Street. Bask in the jazz and have a look around in a voodoo shop.

But when he’s back in LA after the tour, he finds out that she’s in Japan when he calls.

“Oh yeah, I’m in Tokyo,” she said over the phone distractedly, like it’s no big deal.

He frowned at that, confused. She had a tendency of not staying in one place for too long, but it was abrupt, even by her standards.

“What are you doing in Tokyo?” Harry questioned, brows furrowing so hard he felt frown lines forming.

“A bit of this, a bit of that,” Zaemira said noncommittally, “I thought Japan might be good after finding the boy I shacked up with completely naked and asleep with his ex.”

He gaped at that casual over-the-phone confession non-confession, befuddled and aghast.

“Did you let him have it?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Did you rip his dick off? Sock her in the nose? I could get some people together and hit him in the balls for you if you want,” Harry offered, only half-joking.

“No, I just packed my stuff and left.”

“You didn’t wake them up to confront him about it?”

“Why would I?”

Her confusion confused him. Harry paused, opening and closing his mouth several times, thinking back to break ups and make ups he’s been through, talked through, and fought through.

“You didn’t want any closure?”

“Why would I want to give him a chance to hurt me more?” Zaemira retorted, quick and sharp as ever, “He’s either going to lie about it, apologise and do something like it again, or completely be like whatever about the whole thing.”

“You... didn’t... think he deserved to know that what he did was wrong?” He prods along, cautiously.

Even after months of phone calls and texts, her candor and point of view never fails to catch him off guard.

“It’s not about him though,” she said all matter-of-factly, “I mean, he wouldn’t give me any kind of honesty, respect, or consideration, so fuck that closure.”

Zaemira isn’t shy. That’s for sure.

And she isn’t coy.

She’s loud and she’s outspoken and she had no qualms telling him that she didn’t want to die where she was born having realised that she’d done nothing out of her comfort zone which is why she left and took to sleeping on couches. Harry remembers how much he enjoyed that about her. How it had been refreshing to meet someone who enjoyed the newness. Someone who actually took pleasure in what life had to offer instead of just going through the motions.

“Well, now that you’re here…” she says as she moves towards the door, flipping the sign over from ‘open’ to ‘closed’, “What d’you feel up for tonight then, pop star?”

Her voice anchors him to the present. And she’s grinning up at him like he’s a firefly and she’s a mason jar, and he feels the countdown to self-destruction rumble in the hollow space beneath his ribs like the roar of a sports car engine.

His heart skips a whole beat at that.

The sun is creeping up slowly and steadily on the horizon. She’s sitting fully clothed in a fancy bathtub in a fancy hotel, clothes soaked and doing a piss poor job of trying not to smile.

She gives him a look and he just laughs, sat on the edge of the bathtub, also soaked through.

“We need to come down,” she said earlier, shaking her head as though the movement would clear her head of all that they’d indulged in through the night.

The first rays of sunlight had started to dot the skyline and he grinned devilishly, taking her by the hand, promising he knows just the thing that would do the trick. Harry promising he knows ‘just the thing’ was how they ended up high as a kite to begin with but she had trusted him thus far so she decided to trust him a little bit more. Which in hindsight was where it all went wrong because that’s how they end up in his hotel room filling up the bathtub with water and foam shampoos and bath salts.

The windows are open, carrying their laughter and giggles to the streets below. But that’s not her main concern. Somehow, in an effort to make the bath as enjoyable as possible, Harry had turned on the shower head and initiated a spray war. The physical exertion and the laughter had sobered her a bit, but the tradeoff was that she now wanted a cigarette which was not possible since he all but dunked her into the tub to claim his victory.

She pulls the soggy packet from her denim jacket breast pocket, the gross brown liquid oozing from it indelicately.

“You’ve wet my cigarettes,” she says as she tries to look upset.

One glance at him though and she’s reduced to a puddle within the puddle she’s sitting in.

“You should really quit anyway.”

“Piss off,” she tosses the wet box at him.

It lands two feet off its target with an unceremonious splat and they laugh at her aim. They laugh and they laugh some more and talk about nothing and everything.

She talks about her mum. She never talks about her mum. But suddenly she’s talking about her mum and how she left and how it broke her father and it had hurt her to see him hurt the way he did. How he had let himself be hurt like that and still cling on to the hope of her mother coming back one day.

Harry is nodding and then they’re both just complaining about how unfair and shitty life is when he says it. Blurts it out, almost, like a secret that he can no longer contain.

“I want a tiger on my thigh.”

She’s so dazed that all she can do is look at him.

“D’you reckon you can do a tiger for me?” He repeats himself, almost as though in fear that she wouldn’t understand the urgency of his request.

She doesn’t question it, but she understands the symbolism instinctively.

“Sure,” she smiles, leaning her head back.

“Tomorrow morning?” He quirks his head, eyes glazing over as he tries to, in his solidly drunk state, try to remember if he has any other planned activity.

“That’s right now,” she laughs, lifting her heavy head to look at him, “And neither one of us are sober enough to walk a straight line, let alone hold a tattoo gun.”

“I trust you,” Harry says, voice dropping impossibly lower and she hears alarm bells start to ring in her head.

She’s makes a joke about him always being so eager to drop his pants around her and regrets it instantly because he’s smirking at her and looking at her the way he does and she almost forgets how to breathe.

“Maybe you just have that effect on me.”

“Careful,” she says dryly, “Or I might think you're trying to flirt with me, Styles.”

“Oh, you'd know if I was trying to flirt with you.”

“Maybe,” she concedes, before deciding that the best course of action is to slide further into the tub, “But would you?”

His smile that follows is breathtaking and the unabashed laughter that spills over is something else entirely. It’s warm and new, with some kind of never seen before sparkle in his eye. As though it’s an exclusive layer of whoever he is when he’s around her and her only. A smile that’s peeled back and raw and intimate.

Her chest blooms of something she can’t quite explain.

los angeles

jan 2016

“Look, I don’t mean to sound outrageously savage here but… you have a thing for collecting winter clings,” she says.

“What on earth is a winter cling?”

Zaemira pauses.

“It’s the Harry Styles version of a summer fling,” she states simply, “But you have them around in the winter because that’s when you get loneliest.”

They’re in a bar, it’s small and it’s cosy and it’s not the kind of place that he would be recognised which is why it’s perfect. She pours him a shot of whiskey from behind the counter because it’s harder in LA to get a legal tattoo artist job (or any other job for that matter) than one would think.

“That’s not true,” he frowns before downing the amber liquid in a go.

She stares at him pointedly from behind the bar.

“You always get a girl at the end of the year so that you have a cosy Christmas and a nice New Year and then a blowout birthday party and then you break up with them before Valentine’s Day because commitment scares you. There are multiple blogs dedicated to the this specific phenomenon.”

“Maybe,” he concedes, a ball of something hard and sour and guilty forming in the pit of his stomach.

“No. Definitely,” she says as she tops him up for another shot.

“Is that what you think of me?” Harry frowns.

There's a beat of noticeably tense silence.

“Is it untrue?” She quirks her eyebrow just a touch.

Harry drops his gaze to the liquid he’s been swirling around his glass, “Is it really so bad to just want someone?”

“Not usually, but it takes twenty-one days to make a habit and you’re in too deep.”

“What exactly are you insinuating?”

“I’m not insinuating anything, I’m flat out saying that you don’t know how to be alone,” Zaemira gleefully volunteers, completely without provocation, before topping up his drink again, “Which isn’t a shocker because you’ve never really been alone. Even when you snuck out to have your solo adventure in Rio, you dragged me along for the night. And now that the band’s on hiatus, you’re falling back into old habits with an ex.”

He promptly forgets how to fucking breathe.

She does that to him a lot, he realises.

Even though the band is officially on hiatus, he’s never felt more trapped. He feels caged in and claustrophobic in his own skin. That’s why he even took up that yacht holiday up at St. Barts. He had a physical urge to flee his life. To escape. But he didn’t think that it would become another source for frenzied paparazzi shots which fueled speculation and rumours.

He throws back the liquid in his glass in another swift go and feels the burn trickle down his throat.

“You keeping tabs on me, Zaemira?” He asks, playfully, with a teasing lilt in his voice.

She merely rolls her eyes at that.

“I’m just saying. Maybe it’s time to work on solo you.”

“You’re taking this bartender psychologist thing way too seriously.”

She opens her mouth to contest that but another patron is waving over at her from across the bar and she excuses herself to see to the obviously lost Wall Street gentlemen in the suit and tie.

The moment of silence allows Harry to think back over her words.

But her tinkering laughter cuts through his reverie.

Harry glances over and sees that Wall Street has a shit eating grin on his face, and something unpleasant churns in his stomach.

His friends were all coupling up, or getting engaged, or getting ready to pop out kids, and he realises that the only constant in his life over the two years has been their over-the-phone friendship. While media was content having him as a charming albeit a little secretive little fucker, a true lothario, kicking up rumours with grainy pictures, reaching out for a comment anytime he so much as speaks to a person of the opposite sex, she’d been his odd inner balance through it all.

And increasingly, he’s finding it difficult to share her with anyone else.

Zaemira has a lot of bad habits.

She knows that.

She smokes and she drinks and she gets some kind of perverse sort of thrill out of spending her inheritance from her dead father. First she spent his insurance payout on a graphic design degree that was basically just a piece of paper. And now it’s been four years and the inheritance her father willed her hasn’t run out (mostly because she takes odd jobs to earn her keep in the various cities she bums around in) and she’s certain that this is what a quarter life crisis must feel like.

Her mother left her when she was barely eight and it broke her father’s heart. She is resolved not to make the mistakes her father made though. She’s determined to live, truly live. Even if it means not having a place to call home, crashing on couches of new friends and old. Even if it means spending one way plane tickets around the world and living out of one packed bag. Even if it means sleeping with strangers and leaving the moment they showed any sign of weakness.

What it means, is that she isn’t ashamed of her life choices.

Mostly.

There’s the small matter of a newly acquired bad habit — answering a certain call from a certain pop star whenever he rang.

She knew who he was before he accidentally wandered into her temporary place of employment of course. He was the golden boy from the band. The Harry Styles from One Direction. She hadn't been aware of much else to be honest, just that he had his start in fame from that reality show everyone watched and was involved in a band that was hailed a new coming of The Beatles.

Apart from that, he had never been relevant to her life in any way.

So when he tumbled into the dodgy, seedy little tattoo joint in Rio and practically falls head first onto her feet, she catches sight of the oddly familiar looking guy who is too long limbs and all overgrown hair, it takes a full minute before she makes the connection.

She’d seen photographs of him before, photos and headlines on Facebook shared by news organisations (or what passes for news organisations on social media anyway), and she recalled the basic impression of this Hollywood favourite in the making; the t’ shirts and the tight jeans and the expensive shoes and the barely thought out tattoos. He was basically like any young rock star in the making, cheeky and reasonably good looking, and perfectly groomed for the media and the fandom to dislocate their jaw to swallow whole.

But the boy who stumbled into the small tattoo studio is not the boy she’d seen on the interwebs.

They become friends.

He tracks her down to her exact location whenever he’s in a city she’s in and she allows it.

When she finds herself in Los Angeles, he finds himself on hiatus.

The band had been splintering since Zayn left, that much was evident. And then the band went on their ‘break’. And he’s lonely, an ailment he had long suffered from far even before he became the Harry Styles of One Direction.

So it doesn’t surprise her when he saunters into the pub she’s working at for the past month and a half.

As a rule, she doesn’t drink on the job. She’s not allowed to. But it’s hard to say ‘no’ to Harry. He’s lonely and he’s heartbroken in more ways than one and they comes dangerously close to depleting the bar’s whiskey stock because it’s a shitty little hole-in-the-wall kind of place that doesn’t really stock up often and so they go back to his place after her shift.

The too big Los Angeles house came with a pool and a view and a fully stocked bar and one moment they’re drinking some more and the next he’s on his piano, absentmindedly playing a tune he has stuck in his head and talking about life.

She’d been good at not feeling. For a long time, she didn’t even have to try. Zaemira just didn't let herself feel for people like that and it was easy. But around him, it’s suddenly not.

He’s talking about being afraid, and how he’s afraid a lot, and how he doesn’t know what to do with himself, and how the house feels too big and he’s too alone.

She kisses him.

She kisses him because she doesn't like what he's saying, doesn't like what it means, doesn't like that this boy, this rock star, this heart of gold and boots to match who had the world on his feet could be as lost and lonely and confused as her.

She kisses him so he can stop talking, and she kisses him so she can stop listening.

It works out fine.

Except—

She isn't entirely sure why he kisses her back.

His name rolls with disturbing ease off the tip of her tongue and she thinks she can get used to the way he says her name when he comes. It sounds like a prayer and a punch, a gasping exhale that hits her in the chest, or maybe in her heart, and he collapses backwards onto his bed, pulling her close to him like she belongs there.

Zaemira doesn’t sleep a wink and when morning comes she leaves her latest find from a seedy bookstore downtown, Love Is a Dog from Hell, on his bedside before she walks out the front door.

The sun hits her straight in the eye, like the glare of a cafe employee when you ask if the have soy milk instead of regular full cream. The city was a place for the hopeful, she realises. The hope that one day you’ll find love. The hope that you’ll luck out. The hope that working hard will get you where you need to go, as long as you hope and never let go of that hope.

It was decidedly not a city built for her.

She was a shitty bartender and an even shittier dreamer and the only thing that’s been a constant in her life is her slowly expanding collection of tattered Bukowski books that she will gladly throw actual wearable clothes out of her overhead carriage bag to keep said books with her. Through the years, the only thing she could rely on was the gritty, filthy words that a dirty old man could provide.

And she had no problem sharing that part of her life with him at all.

paris

march 2018

It’s just a flash, but he swears he sees her in the crowd and he thinks he’s going mad.

He’s barely two weeks into his world tour. His solo world tour.

He should be thrilled. He should be basking in the victory of it all. The world is loud and roaring in his ears but in the dreams he barely remembers dreaming, he sees her there, quiet and serene and bright, as though he is finally seeing her in the light of day instead of in the cover of night. (As though his mind is trying to make up for memories that didn’t happen.)

Not too long ago, it was another face he sought out amidst the crowd in Paris. But he catches a flash of what he thinks is her and suddenly he can’t think of anything else.

Harry hasn’t seen Zaemira in two years. Two years and then some. Not since that night.

They call and they text and they avoid discussing what happened in his LA house or why she left before he woke with not even a note but just a book by his bedside table.

There was no designated moment, no exact timing, but their dynamic changed. Because life is not a Shakespearean tragedy where it’s all fade to black and bittersweet endings. There’s mundanity and somehow, they sought each other out more in that monotonous day-to-day.

Their friendship was stronger despite having flirted with the very line that kept them together. She’d gone home to London and was spending her time putting together fragments of a former life and her current life like a jigsaw, jamming the pieces together hoping they’ll fit while he, well, he had a movie to film, and then an album to write, and that same album to tour after. He’d also landed himself in another relationship. She’s a model, because as Zaemira would say, he’s a glutton for punishment and ‘no seriously, same lips red, same eyes blue, you so have a type.’

His ‘type’ gets along great with his friends and his mum likes how laidback she is when she was over for Christmas and it’s a relationship that he’s only sure has lasted for as long as it did because of the change in their friendship.

But then he realises that he hasn’t seen his friend in over two years and it suddenly doesn’t sound like a real friendship anymore.

He can’t shake the thought and the screaming fans do nothing to help set his mind straight.

His heart aches like a broken bone over something he can’t explain.

Barely off the the stage, he whips out his phone and calls.

“Sorry, wrong number,” he says.

“You know it isn’t,” she says, eyes flicking toward the living room as a burst of laughter carries itself to her ears.

Zaemira grabs her pack of cigarettes and shuts the front door gently as she exits, “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

But she’s known him long enough to read into the subtext, the world that exist in between the words he’s actually saying.

“What’s wrong?” She asks again, determinedly, taking angry long strides down the road.

He sighs, voice sounding like it’s jumped through various hoops and crossed many a timeline in many universes to reach down the phone line to her.

“It’s nothing, Z.”

But she knows something is. Knows it from the way he says ‘Z’ instead of ‘Zaemira’. Or maybe she hopes it’s something more than knows it because she wants an excuse to see him. To wander the streets of London with him. To get drunk with him. Anything with him.

Where he’s calling her from, she wouldn’t know; could be a pub, a hotel, backstage of his concert, anywhere. And she’s not sure she wants to know. They haven’t physically seen each other since that night over two years ago.

Has it really been?

He’s travelling again, on tour, alone this time around, and his schedule always seems at odds with hers. Of course, it didn’t help that he’s seeing someone. She knows because he’d rung her up to ask if he should invite said someone home for Christmas and again to ask how many times you can ask someone to come to your concerts before it starts seeming narcissistic.

She pulls out a cigarette from the pack and puts it between her lips before lighting it, taking a long drag, trying to remember if there’d been any sign that his relationship had been on the rocks the last time he called.

Zaemira inhales the fumes while he quietly stays on the line.

Harry doesn’t say anything.

“How was the concert tonight?” She prods.

“It was good,” he says, but there’s no enthusiasm in his voice, just exhaustion, “Paris is always good.”

He doesn’t sound right.

It’s the stupidest, most clichéd thing ever, but he doesn’t sound like himself.

“Harry,” she says, voice softening because he’s quiet and he’s the one who called her and she has a horrible feeling that he’s about to cry and the last time he sounded like that on the phone, she found out that Robin had passed, “Has something... happened?”

He’s not saying anything, like he’s waiting for her to say something, and she doesn’t.

“I’m just… I’m having a minute”

Zaemira sighs.

Sometime in the past two years, she’s thought on more than one occasion that she might love him. Like proper love. More than just platonic love.

But other times he just feels so fucking far away that she’s not so sure anymore.

She heaves a not-quite calming breath and takes another drag of the cigarette before filling the line with chatter. Because she gets it. She gets that empty kick in the gut sometimes. She prattles on about how home doesn’t feel like home and even though life at home is, more or less, alright it feels like something is missing. She complains about her aunt who disapproves of her decision to spend the rest of her inheritance on getting her masters and she begins to outline in exhaustive detail just how dissatisfied she feels, how everything makes her feel like a shitty daughter and a shitty niece and a shitty friend and a shitty student and a shitty—whatever the fuck else she's failing at—when he cuts her off.

“When can I see you?” he asks, like they can pretend for a second that they haven’t spent the past two years apart, like they live on the same street and he could see her in an hour if he wanted to.

She flicks her eyes back towards the house, thinking of her aunt and her cousins and how they’ve been going on and on about this big Easter party they’ve been planning.

“Tomorrow?” She suggests, knowing full well that he can’t. Not really. He’s got schedules and plans and commitments.

And a girlfriend, a voice in the back of her head pipes in.

She doesn’t need to silence the voice though because reality has its way of doing that and she hears him exhale on the other end of the line, as though letting go of a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding.

“Tomorrow’s no good. How about day after?” Harry suggests, “I’ll be in Amsterdam. I’ll get you a ticket.”

And Zaemira thinks about that for a bit, seriously considers taking him up on the offer.

And then she thinks about him, about how maybe they’re like those horrible math love stories; like sine and cosine, meant to meet and fall apart every so often, forever out of step with one another.

She drops the cigarette to the ground and watches it burn.

“I don’t think I can do Amsterdam right now,” she says after a second, “I mean I have it on pretty good authority that if I don’t go to my classes I won’t be able to complete my masters.”

She chuckles to herself at the terrible not even remotely funny joke.

“I’ll be in London in April,” he says and she can hear his breathing all but stop on the line, like he was holding his breath for her answer and she almost wishes she’s not about to say what she’s about to say.

“I’ve got work on weekends.”

He sighs again and the line is heavy with words unsaid.

“See you after tour then?”

“Yeah,” she says, forcing a grin, forcing the lie, “Yeah, guess so.”

It’s quiet between for a bit. The silence is deafening and it steals her breath a little and she’s pretty sure it has nothing to do with the cigarette she just smoked.

And then the line goes dead.

london

december 2018

He doesn’t call her again after Paris.

His tour ends and his relationship ends and he half-heartedly makes excuses to himself and for himself for not calling; he's busy, of course he’s busy, he’s busy catching up with his mum and his sister and his ex co-workers and his industry friends and he tells himself that he doesn’t need anyone to help him get through the cold lonely winter nights.

But then it’s December and he calls and she picks up and they pick up exactly where they last left off. It felt good. It felt like breathing again. And he thought it was enough, but two days later, despite the promises he’s made to himself, he texts her a meme.

And then he calls again. And again. And again.

It would be almost like she’s his phone therapist except he’s also sort of keeping her functioning like a normal human that doesn’t lash out at people by texting him her darkest thoughts, so it evens out.

He’s realising with every call, and every passing day of his newly found (and truly enjoyed) singledom, that he was kind of a fuck-up. Not in any obvious, tangible, measurable way. He didn’t have a dozen different child of divorce issues, or problems with abandonment that run so deep he is constantly choosing to leave before he is left, or a mile long list of insecurities and fears that leave him utterly crippled, but he was fucked up in ways that were difficult to fully articulate.

And their relationship was a home that allows for it to be okay because they were both honest about just how fucked up they were.

Harry doesn’t know when exactly he figures it out, but he decides he’ll go see her in March. He’ll ring her and say ‘wrong number’ and she’ll call him a twat and then he’ll throw rocks at her window and hold up a copy of Bukowski she doesn’t yet have that he’ll have to find by then and yell, “Did someone order a creepy stalker?”

It’s a good plan. Except it’s two days to Christmas and she’s complaining about her cousins and her nieces and her nephews and how she just walked out when they were making pies together ahead of Christmas and now she’s just going to sequester herself in her shitty flat and spend the yuletide alone and he can’t help but smile at the whole thing because that’s so painfully Zaemira and he can’t help himself.

“I’ve got it planned out,” she says, “I’ll just Netflix and eggnog myself to sleep.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, come over to mine for Christmas,” he says, words tumbling out of his mouth completely of their own accord without passing through his head at all.

“Yeah, I’ll just come to Holmes Chapel at the drop of a hat,” she says sardonically.

“I’m serious. My mum won’t mind.”

“There aren’t any flights out, Haz.”

“I’m sure there is.”

“It’s fine. I’m used to it, I just called to rant anyway,” she says dismissively.

And Harry can see it play out at the back of his mind, the way her lips quirk, all wry and self-deprecating. Except there’s more of a bite to it than it usually would.

“What d’you mean you’re used to it?”

“I mean I only exist when it’s convenient for you,” she says it so matter-of-factly that he’s not sure if she’s making a piss poor attempt at a joke.

Her words are just so thoroughly her, and no one could say it without sounding like an attention seeking arse, but they hit him square in the gut and Harry feels all semblance of breathable air leave his body.

“Hold up—” He starts but she’s having none of it.

“You’ll see me when you see me. It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

She changes the subject and tells him to bring over ‘like ten crates of Vodka’ when he ever decides to drop by because she’s acquired a taste for it and he chuckles half-heartedly at that.

He makes a joke about her trip to Russia and she’s saying how she should have tried harder to seduce an oligarch. But he’s roughly only a quarter present. His mind is a riot. It’s like the time in school some kid hit him with a baseball bat and he feels all the blood rush to his head.

His gut twists with a vague, rumbling kind of horror.

The words left unspoken stings more than it should.

I don’t want to be your next winter cling anyway.

Her door buzzes.

It’s Christmas eve and she isn’t expecting anyone, but when she rushes down the hallway to open the building door, there he is.

It’s pure electricity in his eyes and a fire so hot in her bones that it feels like ice.

It’s been a full thirty-five months since she’d seen him in person and not through her phone. That’s almost three whole years. They’re just shy a week of the anniversary of that night and he’s still just so pretty. Painfully pretty.

He cracks the weakest smile she’s ever seen, “Hey.”

“What are you—”

“You’re not a winter cling,” he blurts out, eyes ringed red and slightly swollen like he’d been crying or up all night.

Or both.

She ignores the statement, crossing her arms across her chest as they stand out in the cold.

“Did you drive here all night from Holmes Chapel?”

“I wanted to wait. I wanted to wait until after Valentine’s Day. Because you’re not something to hold onto while I wait out the loneliness.”

“Harry—”

“Do you remember the night we met? In Rio? I was tired. I was so tired of being who they expected me to be,” he interrupts her, plaintive and gentle, “It’s why I got so drunk and slipped security. I wanted something that was just mine.”

He takes a step forward and she holds her ground, still not inviting him in. She’s not sure she wants to. Like the hours she spend not sleeping in his arms, she’s not sure she wants to be another warm body to him. But Harry is staring at her, expression terrifyingly open, honest, and contemplative, like he's looking right through her to her heart.

“Like a me tattoo on your body?”

Zaemira hates that she’s doing exactly what her aunt says she does when she’s uncomfortable; makes terrible jokes and thinly-veiled badly-timed humour in an attempt to hide her discomfort which never helps.

She hates that her aunt is right and she hates that this is how she’s realising it.

“Every other relationship I had never felt right,” Harry continues, holding her gaze as though he is equally fascinated and terrified, “Something was always missing.”

The tick-tock pounding thump of her heartbeat is so loud and gushing she can practically feel it in her veins. But he just keeps going, heart on his sleeve at the door of the girl he spent three drunken nights with and fell into bed once. As though he didn’t know he had the power to so completely destroy her.

There’s a taunting, almost brittle quality to what he’s saying that it makes her nervous. He’s making her nervous and it pricks like annoyance at the back of her head. It’s jarring what he’s saying. Striking.

“People aren’t answers to whatever mess that’s going on in your life, Harry.”

It's ridiculous and it's rude and it’s out of control and out of character for her except—

Except that it isn’t.

She wonders when exactly he’d figured it out.

And how it took her so long to realise that she’s the same as what she’s accusing him of.

She wants and wants and wants and then she takes, and takes, and takes, until she inevitably loses interest, and leaves.

And most people just let her.

But Harry isn’t most people.

And he’s there now to show her exactly that.

“I don’t want people,” he says so softly it’s practically a whisper, like he’s confiding a secret, like he knows that the harder she pushes the more she wants you to fight for her, “I just…want you. I just didn’t realize there was a difference between wanting you to want something and wanting you for you.”

The words slot into her heart perfectly like a deck of cards. The words that she never even knew she wanted to hear.

They taste like a perfectly brewed shot of espresso and too expensive whiskey all mixed into one heartstopping drink and she wants to savour the shockwave-sweet intensity of the moment.

She hesitates. And then, “Careful, Styles. Or I might think you’re trying to flirt with me.”

He grins at that. A real smile curving on his lips.

“Oh, I’m definitely trying to flirt with you.”

He tucks a stray curl behind her ears, simultaneously keeping his distance and drawing her close.

Her breath hitches on a tremulous little laugh.

She's paralysed with an emotion that feels a lot like fear and it's scraping at her skull, rhythmically ebbing into all corners of her brain like a growing virus and he's just there, staring at her.

She wants to say something. Something smart or witty or funny. But instead she just lets herself fall forward into his arms and onto his lips.

It tastes like a promise.

It tastes right.

It tastes like two beating hearts and a slow summer burn.

#1dff #exchanges

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junionigiri · 5 years

Text

BNHA Rarepair Month - Day 23 - Tattoos

for @bnha-rarepair-month

Summary: Seeing her interest in tattoos, Tokage brings Uraraka with her to Illusion Ink, where her girlfriend Jirou works as an apprentice. Much to Uraraka's surprise, however, Todoroki Shouto is also there getting inked. (Cafe/Hospital AU part 2)

Relationship(s): Tokage Setsuna/Jirou Kyouka/Uraraka Ochako (SetsuJirouChako); Todoroki Shouto/Uraraka Ochako (TodoChako)

Rating: T

Warnings/Notes: I know I tagged this one as SetsuJirouTodoChako in the other platforms but yeaaaaah. Please enjoy the disaster that is Uraraka Ochako hehehe. Story TBC in the upcoming dates~

Uraraka Ochako sighs as she pulls off her OR scrub suit in the women’s lockers. She doesn’t always feel like shit and that she’s super incompetent at her job, but then again she didn’t always have to assist Dr. Hakamata for three consecutive surgeries. After being yelled at and threatened to be stitched up the ceiling about fifty times, her ego had just about enough bruising.

“I’ve had my share of miserable days, but you make a funeral look like a rave, Uraraka.”

Uraraka looks up from her miserable face reflected in her little mirror inside her little locker to look at the woman who entered. “Oh--Dr Tokage? What’re you doing here?”

The green-haired internist gives her a saw-tooth grin as she saunters in with a sterile set of scrubs. “Cardiac monitoring duties. I ran into a miserable-looking Honenuki on the way here. I’m guessing you both got an acute case of Best Jeans Syndrome.”

“You got that right, doc,” Uraraka says with another despondent sigh, one that she pulls out of the very depths of her being. “I was literally moments away from being torn into shreds and woven into the world’s ugliest quilt… I made so many booboos that…”

Oh sweet fuck Happy Thanksgiving.

“That I can’t…” Uraraka struggles, as Tokage Setsuna casually starts pulling off her scaly-green dress, showing off an arsenal of tattoos over the smooth skin of her arms, chest, belly, and hips, and the most toned body on a woman she’s ever seen, ever, in her short existence as a disastrous bisexual. When the girl bends over to shimmy out of her shoes, Uraraka had to turn around to stop staring at her toned ass. “Sorry doc, I totally forgot what I was saying--”

Dr. Tokage chuckles. Through the little mirror in her locker, Uraraka sees that her stupid pink cheeks have turned cherry red. She’s probably a few moments away from floating herself into an embarrassed heap in the ceiling, if the doctor didn’t speak in the next second. “It’s fine. People tend to do that when they see all the tats. I regularly get shit over it, like why does a doctor look like a freakin’ Yakuza member, and things like that--”

“Th-that’s not what I w-was thinking at all!” Uraraka stammers, willing herself to look at the green-haired girl again. Thankfully, Dr. Tokage’s already pulling down the scrub top, and the brunette’s heart is spared a heap of extra work load. “I think your tats are amazing! I wish I had about half as many as you do! I just have a small one myself, and it’s not that nice-looking…”

“You think so? I’m sure it ain’t that bad,” says Tokage, with a playful little smirk on her wide mouth. “Care to show me?”

Uraraka blushes up to her hairline and internally beats herself up for even mentioning her tattoo. Because while she’s a little proud of having the courage to get a tattoo in the first place, she isn’t sure that she wants to show her fat ass to Tokage… especially not after she’s given such a lovely a visual treat.

Still, it’d be weird not to show it to her at this point, so she tries not to be too obviously reluctant when she pulls down her pants and shows the skin of the outside of her left thigh, angling her butt outwards so the other girl can see it. Her blush doesn’t die down as Tokage appraises it, bending her face so close over her bottom that she feels her piercing gaze on her.

“That’s such a cute little astronaut, Uraraka!” giggles the doctor, green eyes dilating from slits into interested dark oblongs. “And those cute planet-balloons! Are you into outer space or something?”

“Y… yeah… space is cool,” she says dumbly, making herself internally flinch at how uncool she sounds. Luckily though, Tokage doesn’t seem to mind her silliness, and just gives that melodic laugh again. She tries to recover by adding, “I mean… I want to have another tattoo… maybe like, a half sleeve or something, with all the planets--”

She shows off her bare arm, which contrasts quite markedly against Tokage’s decorated one. She sees that her muscly right arm has various sharp-toothed dinosaurs on it, inked in spectacular detail.

The green-haired girl hums thoughtfully, tapping one scaly finger to her chin. “You serious about that, Uraraka?”

The nurse blinks as she regards Tokage’s daring stare. “Yeah, I’m serious… I guess? I mean, I’ve looked around for artists and stuff, but as for design...”

“Coolness. That’s all I need to hear.” The girl shows off her sharp teeth again and raises both eyebrows. “You’re done with your shift, yeah? You should wait for me. This thing’ll take, like, a second or so--”

“Huh? But--”

“I mean, as long as the patient doesn’t die or anything,” she adds with a chortle and a graceful wave of her inked hand. “I’ll see you at the cafeteria in like, a couple of hours? Hey, maybe I can leave my mouth with you so we can keep talking?”

The young nurse yelps in horror and stammers the most polite no thank you I don’t want to spend the next two hours with your sexy disembodied mouth, and Tokage only cackles in response. In a few moments, the woman disappears into the operating room suites, and Uraraka can only calm her silly pink cheeks down and get dressed.

Clad in her casual clothes (which is just a faded black tank top, joggers, and a pair of sneakers), Uraraka nervously chews on the plastic straw half-dipped in her lukewarm coke when she sees Dr. Tokage amble up to her, clad once more in an emerald-green snakeskin dress and a white coat.

In her doctor-ly regalia, all her tattoos are hidden from plain sight. There’s a certain thrill that comes with knowing how the map of her body looks like, while the rest of the world around her doesn’t. “So good news, the patient’s alive and I get to go home while Ibara-chan takes care of the rest. You ready to go, Uraraka?” she asks, sticking out her forked tongue for good measure.

“I guess?” Uraraka answers uneasily. Wherever Tokage’s taking her, she hopes it’s a place where she can see those lovely dinosaur-studded arms again.

They walk out of the hospital, with Tokage filling the empty air between them with chatter. Uraraka’s amazed by her ability to be able to make a conversation about anything. By the time they reach their destination, the young nurse finds herself up-to-date with all the latest gossip going around the hospital. In particular, one involving Dr. Todoroki and his father, the present number one pro-hero Endeavor, who’s allegedly on a head-hunt for a perfect mate with a perfect quirk so he can arrange a marriage and hopefully produce a grandchild who’d actually agree to being a pro hero, unlike any of his children who avoided heroism like the plague.

Uraraka wrinkles her nose at that. Arranged marriages--aren’t they a thing of the distant past? Or like stupid plot devices in shoujo manga, just an excuse for ordinary MCs to interact with impossibly rich and handsome men? Well, Dr. Todoroki Shouto indeed fits the bill for your standard shoujo or josei hero. He has the wealth, the breeding, and the brooding too. Just enough torment to be interesting, but not overwhelming, like Dr. Tokoyami or Dr. Kuroiro from radiology.

And the looks. Ohh, buddy boy, the looks. That dual-toned hair, those crazy heterochromatic eyes, how very, very pretty his face looks, even with the scar on his face. Not to mention how unfairly muscled his body is, for someone who spends all his time doing neurosurgery and probably not much of anything else. Uraraka’s spent many semiconscious moments inside and outside the OR watching him undress and unglove and unmask, enjoying how his strong arms look while scrubbing down for the next procedure--

Wait, did she really just--with Doctoroki again, of all people--ugh, Uraraka wants to punch herself in the damn face. She hasn’t even finished fantasizing about Dr. Tokage, and here she is moving on to the Hosu Gen’s unofficial image model--who, by the way, doesn’t even have a good reason to interact with her outside the OR.

But even though Uraraka’s notoriously mercurial when it comes to her crushes, Dr. Todoroki’s one of her strong constants. She always comes in danger of losing herself in her thoughts when she thinks of him, for some reason. What a true disaster she’s turning out to be.

She focuses her attention instead on the small place they’ve ended up, called Illusion Inks. The young nurse tilts her head curiously at the entrance and doesn’t move until Tokage does a little come-hither motion with her fingers.

“Come on. Are you backing out or something, Uraraka?” she asks teasingly.

“Um,” she begins uneasily, rubbing her arm self-consciously, “I know I said I wanted a tattoo, but I didn’t mean tonight--”

“No time like the present, babe,” is all the green-haired girl says before she forcibly drags Uraraka by the arm and into the threshold. Damn, the woman’s frickin’ strong, those muscles aren’t just for show.

The inside of the shop is nice and neat and bright. The walls are full of illustrations of varying themes, all of them dream-like: dragons and florals and creatures of the deep blue sea. Uraraka finds herself taken in particular by the galaxy themed ones, showing off clouds of purple and deep red surrounding a sea of stars.

She doesn’t pay attention to the beautiful illustrations for very long, though. Behind the counter is who Uraraka swears is an actual pixie of the dark-elemental type unless proven otherwise--straight, dark hair that falls above her shoulders, dark purple eyes that have just-enough-torment, and smooth beautiful skin riddled with tattoos all over her arms, neck, and chest. Her elongated earlobes are plugged into her phone, and she seems to be strumming on a phantom guitar before she looks up to the two visitors.

She breaks out into a cute grin. “Hey, Setsuna~ My fav crazy internist!”

“Kyouka! My beautiful tattooed angel, I missed you!”

Uraraka watches as they share a kiss that definitely lasts for more than ten seconds. She wonders whether it’s polite to look away or not, and whether it’s normal to suddenly feel so single and miserable upon the sight of two beautiful girls kissing until they thankfully break apart.

The girl called Kyouka then turns to Uraraka and regards her with a curious stare. “So Setsuna, are you going to introduce me, or…?”

“Of course I am,” she says, with some sass. “This here’s Uraraka Ochako, one of the best OR nurses in Hosu Gen, and your next beautiful canvas.”

“Hey. Jirou Kyouka. I’m an apprentice here,” the girl offers, offering out her hand for Uraraka to shake. “If I look familiar, it’s probably ‘cause you see me down the street sometimes trying not to kill my boss and co-worker at NTG Cafe.”

Uraraka gasps. “Oh, you work there? Your cold brew’s amazing. And yeah, I’ve seen your boss maybe once? I’d just like to say, from the bottom of my heart: yikes.”

Jirou laughs heartily at this. “I like this girl. You should ask her out too, Setsuna.”

The green-haired girl hums thoughtfully. “I was getting to that,” she begins, and before Uraraka can even process what they meant, Tokage’s already shrugging off her doctor’s coat, and she’s looking at those wonderful arms again, and all sound reasoning goes out the window. “Anyways, Kyouka, Uraraka here tells me that she wants a galaxy-themed sleeve to match the cute little astronaut she has tattooed on her toned-as-fuck left thigh--”

… she likes my thigh? Uraraka stammers bashfully in her head, before she realizes that Tokage’s already motioning for her to take of her pants right there to show Jirou the astronaut. Blushing, she obliges, hooking her thumb against the garter of her joggers while severely regretting her choice of hot-pink, kitten-print cotton undies that day, to show off her ass and all its unseemly stretchmarks for the second time that evening.

Jirou whistles low and carefully touches her skin and traces the outlines of the astronaut and balloons with her calloused fingertips. “Wow, it’s so cute, Uraraka. You might need to have it retouched, but it’s really well-made. Who’s your artist?”

“Um… he moved away, but Kamakiri-san from Mantis Tattoos did this one--”

“Yikes. Another mess of a human being, that mans is. Totes cray-cray, amirite?” a different, sultry voice calls out from behind them.

Uraraka goes ramrod straight and struggles dumbly to pull her pants up, but instead drops the mess of fabric to the floor. A tangled mess of astonishment and horror finds itself uncoiling inside her chest when she sees just who comes out of the back of the shop, to also stare at the little insignificant artwork on her thigh.

Uraraka thinks that the woman who walks in is the very definition of babe--long, light brown hair that falls over her shoulders, wide brown eyes, full lips with a tasteful hint of rouge, an hourglass figure accentuated by a jet-black bodycon dress that shows off her ample cleavage. Like everyone else in this damn place, all her exposed skin is covered in ink. Most of them are floral and dreamy and absolutely gorgeous, of course, and if she were the only one there, Uraraka would have spent more time appreciating all the details.

Yet, the person next to her just…!!! Makes her want to drop dead right there!!! Makes her want to walk her fat ass back to the ER and ask for a sedative that’ll last her for the next seven years!

Because why in seven hells would Todoroki Shouto, of all people, be standing there with his shirt only half-way on, with his stupid sexy arms and stupid sexy torso and stupid sexy abs on full display, his stupid sexy mouth half-open and curious, and his stupid sexy eyes directed right at her naked, stretchmarky ass?!

Uraraka knows that she should probably pull her stupid pants up and rescue what little dignity she has left. Her little brain goes shit shit shit as it takes her too long to hide her butt and her silly underwear and tattoo.

Thankfully, his stare doesn’t last very long. He makes an awkward noise in his throat, trains those distinct eyes elsewhere, and mutters, “I didn’t see anything, Uraraka.”

Yes you did, you obviously did, Doctorokiiii whyyyy do you exist, she cries in her head. Beside her, she hears Tokage trying to keep her shit together. She somehow manages not to float her ass up the ceiling and into outer space and to straighten up.

She hears the woman laughing next to her. “You didn’t? Too bad, fam, those are the nicest set of gams I’ve ever seen in me life. Cannot. Even.”

When Uraraka dares herself to look at the young doctor again, she sees that he’s already got his shirt back on and that his face is a little pink and he couldn’t look at Uraraka in the eye. She ponders briefly if she needs to leave the OR--maybe ICU has openings or something.

“So… Camie, I hear she wants a galaxy-themed sleeve, so I’m planning to make some designs for her right now,” the dark-haired girl pipes up brightly, interrupting Uraraka’s shame-filled train of thought.

The bombshell named Camie puts a finger to her full lips and makes a show of thinking about it. “This’ll be your biggest project to date, fam. You up to this?”

“Sure am, boss.” Jirou makes a show of flexing her slender arm and all its tattoos. Tokage subsequently swoons theatrically next to her.

“Yass~ then she’s all yours, my sweet child. Although, ya gotta make time for her after closing hours. We’re fully booked for, like, the next hundred years and so~”

“Leave it to me.” Jirou does a lazy salute and gives Uraraka a pure, excited smile, one that momentarily makes the nurse about the terrible misfortunes that had happened to her and her ass just then. All she wants to do now is to spend the rest of the evening with this beautiful pixie, talking about the vast infinity of space, all the undiscovered planets, aliens--

“Hey, Todoroki, lemme see your back!” Tokage says, pulling at the end of his shirt.

“Okay.”

Suddenly, Todoroki’s shirt comes off again, and Uraraka feels the Big Bang emulating in her brain once more. She cannot keep her jaw from opening like Pandora’s box as she takes in the beautiful sight.

Dr. Todoroki Shouto’s back is a fuckin’ masterpiece, and she isn’t talking about the obra maestra of a tattoo that Camie must have been working on before they arrived. Even miniscule movements of his arms and torso--fuck, even when he fucking breathes she sees muscles moving deliciously under his skin. It’s not too bulky either, just lean and well-proportioned and tasteful. Everything the light touches is a kingdom for her eyes to feast on--her fingers itched to touch the cuts--

Oh, and also, the tattoo. There’s saran wrap over it, but Uraraka still sees that it’s so beautiful it’s fearsome. Two dragons, entwined in each other, staring each other down as if they’re preparing for a battle to the death. On the right the dragon is grey and white, with glaciers surrounding it. On the left, a red dragon with hot blue eyes is engulfed in flame. The tattoo isn’t complete yet, and most of the skin on his back is swollen and tender, but Uraraka can tell that once it completely heals, it’ll be the most beautiful back in the history of all backs.

“Hot damn, Todoroki,” Tokage whistles. “Knowing you though, it still screams daddy issues--I mean, really, ice versus fire? You’re still hung up about that mess? But. Hot fucking damn.”

“Sure,” Todoroki says flatly, not deigning himself to remark about the daddy issues thing. Uraraka sees a little annoyed flash in his eyes, however, and she’s sure that he isn’t thinking of Tokage’s super foul remarks.

“Lit, ain’t it? My best work to date, even if I say so myself,” Camie says, proudly strutting around to stare at her handiwork once again. “We gots maybe two sesh’s to go, and his back’s good to go. You like it, Astronaut Sis?”

Uraraka closes her mouth shut and hates herself for the loud sound it makes. “Y-yeah, it’s pretty… um, lit,” she offers weakly.

She tries not to think too hard about the slightly-less-disinterested look that Todoroki gives her before he shrugs on his shirt again. He gives a curt little nod to Camie and says, “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, Utsushimi.”

“Sure, TodoBroki. Have fun saving lives and all,” Camie says, puckering her lips for a flying kiss that the dual-toned man ignores blatantly as he turns for the exit.

Uraraka thinks that she’s finally going to be able to catch her breath, but suddenly Todoroki stops at the door and turns his mismatched eyes to her. “Uraraka,” he calls out, making her freeze.

“Y-yes, Doc?” she stammers, her posture suddenly meek and all nurse-like.

There’s that odd look on his face again, and for a second Uraraka worries that he’ll tell her not to spread the word about his huge fucking ass back tattoo, but all he says is, “Show me your tat once you’re done. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Uraraka doesn��t know what she says in response, but he gives her a ghost of a smile before he leaves the premises.

When she deflates, Tokage and Jirou are positively cackling at her, and all she’s able to manage is a whine about how unfair life is. “I can’t believe I just showed Dr. Todoroki Shouto my ass,” she whines into Tokage’s arms, as the lizard girl holds her in mock-comfort.

“And as a direct result of it, he’s in-love with your astronaut ass,” the doctor remarks with a sawtooth grin. “But we can talk about our future foursome later. Right now, please let my beautiful and talented girlfriend draw on your sexy arm, Uraraka!”

Uraraka obliges and follows Jirou out into the back, where they finally talk about her tattoo. But she finds out how much of a struggle it is to keep her thoughts in outer space when most of her mind is occupied by fire and ice.

#bnha fic #bnha rarepair month #uraraka ochako #todoroki shouto #tokage setsuna #jirou kyouka #utsushimi camie #todochako #setsujirou #setsujiroutodochako #really confused on how to tag this but w/evs

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maknaekink · 7 years

Text

found you.

Based off this AU.

words: 1,817

rating: Fluff fluff fluffy AU (I’m thinking about making more out of this AU so tell me what y’all think)

summary: A world where when you write something on your skin with pen/marker/whatever the hell you want, it will show up on your soul mates skin as well. Yugyeom’s favourite part of the day is watching small doodles and lines show up on his skin, hoping to one day decipher your scribbles and be able to find you.

Yugyeom watched as lines began to surface on his forearm once again. You were obviously bored, wherever you were, because it was a new piece that carried on for ages. He watched, hypnotised as you drew a fairy and surrounded her with intricate patterns and flowers. He watched as you drew the one flower that made it’s way into every piece you drew.

A lily.

He had pieced together bits and pieces about your life and who you were. You were an art student somewhere in Korea, itching to become a tattoo artist. He discovered this as you scribbled down your art history homework on your arm before writing a reminder to ask Hyungwon for the name of the tattoo parlour looking to hire. Yugyeom had frowned when he saw another boy’s name but shook his head as he prayed that you would write down the name of a shop and he’d be able to find you.

He had tried meeting you before, writing locations on the back of his hand, hoping you would see it and realise. But you never came. You had somehow assumed it was an old reminder, completely forgetting the fact that every time you marked your skin, you marked his too.

He himself was a bit of an artist as well, although he prefered dance. He would add little details to your pieces here and there, allowing you the reminder that he was out there and waiting.

You knew he was there. Adding things, giving you reminders. But you were scared. Scared that he wouldn’t be satisfied with the broke aspiring tattoo artist you were. Scared that he wouldn’t be everything you dreamed of. So you pretended to be oblivious.

After a while, Yugyeom gave up on trying to trick you into meeting him and just tried to meet you by chance. Hoping that the supermarket you were going to was the one near his dance studio or that you bought your paints from the same store his friend Jackson worked in. No such luck.

You began to make your reminders a little bit more specific, as if understanding somehow that he was trying to find you.

Breakfast @ Kwang’s Noodle Palace with KiKwang.

Buy new pens @ Kinokuniya by Bingsu Barn.

You would linger a little longer after paying the bill or pretend to not see your pens as you circled the familiar store for the umpteenth time, hoping to run into him.

No such luck.

Years began to pass as you continued to scribble along your skin here and there. It had become a routine for him, watching you aimlessly doodle. You continued to watch as he added himself into your pieces, taking pictures of the final products for your boss at the tattoo parlour. You love how he signed his initials next to yours. KYG.

KYG. Three letters which belonged to someone who could change your life forever.

Your move from Busan to Seoul had been a quick one, and you thrived on being independent. You were doing what you loved and you loved where you were headed. What if KYG was controlling? Or misogynistic? Or unsupportive of your dreams?

You shook your head as you walked through the coldness of autumn to the shop, rushing past others on their way to work.

“Y/N!” Your boss and piercing expert, Im Jaebum, called, “You’re here!”

“Yah! Sorry I’m late, the train was packed this morning so I decided to wait for the next one.”

“No worries.” He pushed his chair back, “Could you man the front desk for a bit? I have to go pick up my little brother. He wants an industrial but is too pussy to come here on his own.”

“Yep, sure.”

“Cool, you’ll like him. Youngjae is pretty cute.”

“You say that about all your brothers. The artsy one, the music one, the dancey one, the martial artsy one. They’re all cute, I get it. It was a common trait in your foster home.” You laughed.

“Don’t sass me, girl. I do pay you.” Jaebum grinned before ducking out of the shop to pick up his brother.

“Next appointment is...” You mumbled to yourself, hoping to get some designing time in, “4pm, Jeon Jungkook.”

You internally danced at the four hours of free time you now had to decorate your arms with. Your designs were by far the most popular and you needed to produce new one.

“What shall our centrepiece be today?” You bit your lip and flipped through the animal and mythical creature designs, “Mermaid it is then.”

You began to lightly sketch the mermaid in the centre of your forearm with the carbon paper. You stopped mid sketch, and decided to put supposed Mr. Right to the test.

“Let’s see if you notice what’s missing, jagi.”

You rubbed the lily off and replaced it with a magnolia, continuing your design until the ink had finally dried on your skin.

Yugyeom was at the dance studio with Jungkook and Bobby when he began to see faint lines appear on his forearm once again.

“What are you painting for me today, my love?” He whispered as he continued to watch your masterpiece come to life. He loved watching you create, it was his favourite part of the day. It meant that you were well and alive somewhere in Korea, doing what you loved. He could just imagine you sitting at your desk, with your tongue out in concentration. He could feel that you were one of those people.

“You should bring your soulmate’s designs to the tattoo parlour I’m going to later.” Jungkook said, “They may just hire her.”

“Last time I checked she has a really good job. Her salary is more that you’ve ever earned.”

“Salty!” Bobby chided, “Jungkook was just making a suggestion, kid.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s finish this routine, then we can go watch Kookie squirm under the needle.”

“You should get one too!” Jungkook bounced on the balls of his feet, “Something significant to you.”

Yugyeom shook his head, “Not without her permission.”

“So ask her. There’s bound to be a pen somewhere.”

“It’s okay. I’d prefer to ask her in person. Then she can tattoo me herself.”

“You guys will be one of the the most artistic couples I know. A tattoo artist and a dancer. Your kids will be so creative Van Gogh will have a run for his money.” Bobby laughed before turning the music on once more, “Alright then. 5, 6, 5, 6, 7, 8...”

You had finished your mermaid piece and was awaiting any amendments made by him. He would notice right? He had been watching you sketch for almost your whole life, he had to know.

You remembered the first time you sketched on your skin. It was senior year of high school, and you had been bored in your Spanish class, no dar una cogida. You had been scrolling through tumblr, looking at tattoo designs for your friend. You spotted an intricate design of a lily of the valley and immediately needed to mark your skin with the design. So you did.

Once you had finished, you noticed a word below your art piece.

Wow.

He had to remember. It was your first encounter with the man on the other side.

After two hours of staring at the piece on your arm, you noticed a lily being sketched at the bottom of the portrait, making you smile.

He knew. He knew what was missing.

Maybe it was time to let him in. Maybe it was time for you to allow him the luxury of being yours.

Yugyeom traced his attempt at a lily at the bottom of your new design with a sharpie, slightly upset that he hadn’t done it as well as you would have.

“Sorry, love, never going to be as nice as yours.” He blew on the wet ink and lay down on Jungkook’s couch.

“Yah! Jeon Jungkook!” Heol, Jungkook’s girlfriend yelled, “You better pick a nice design. I’ll be stuck with it forever as well.”

“Well, there goes my forehead dick tattoo idea.” He grinned at her cheekily before looking at his friend, “You ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Yugyeom smirked, more than ready to watch Jungkook hold back tears as he got his and his girlfriend’s names tattooed over his heart.

“Are you sure I’ll be okay?”

“My brother makes a shit ton of money off his tattoo parlour. You’re lucky he even squeezed you in, pabo.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. You know this is just nerves speaking.”

“Mhmm. Suck it up.” Yugyeom ran his hand through his blonde hair, “At least your pain tolerance is better than Youngjae’s. Jaebum said he had never heard anyone scream as loud as him when he pierced his ear.”

“Oh lord.”

“Don’t pussy out now. You promised yourself you would do this.”

“Right. No turning back now.”

The pair pushed their way into JB’s tattoo shop, heading to the front desk where they found Yugyeom’s foster brother.

“Hm, the artist went to buy lunch for us, so she’ll be a while.”

“She?” Jungkook gulped, “Is she goo-”

“The best.” Jaebum answered firmly, “One of the best artists I’ve ever met.”

“Okay, okay.”

“You can check out her designs if you want. The book is somewhere in the pile on the table.”

Jungkook picked up the first book, which contained the designs for lettering, “It’s okay, I’ll just look for the font I like the best.”

Yugyeom’s curiosity to see how good this artist supposedly was compared to his girl caused him to grab the book under Jungkook’s. He made himself comfortable on one of the loveseats in the waiting area and read the front cover.

Y/N’s designs.

“Y/N.” Yugyeom murmured, “What a pretty name.”

He opened the book and froze. This piece looked so familiar. From the sharp edges of the vampire queen’s teeth to the lily at the bottom of the page. He frantically flipped through the book and found every single design you had designed together with your initials next to his near the bottom.

The door to the shop opened, “Yo boss man, they didn’t have your go to order so I just got you the beef fiesta burrito.”

There you were in all your glory, tight black jeans, Ramones t-shirt and black boots.

“Y/N.” Yugyeom stood up from the seat.

“Hello there...” You tried not to drool at the insanely attractive boy in front of you.

“This is my brother, Yugyeom, and his friend Jungkook. You’ll be doing a piece for him today.”

“Nice to meet you, Yugyeom,” You loved how his name rolled off your tongue.

You stretched your inked arm out to shake his hand, only to be met with a hand connected to an arm with the same exact design. You looked up at him and gaped as he grinned.

“Found you.”

#yugyeom #soulmate!au #yugyeom soulmate #got7 soulmate #got7 au #yugyeom au

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ask-artsy-oncie · 7 years

Photo

Welp, I did it

Behold, Human!AU Snack Pack, they are essentially the theater clique at their high school.

I have made the... very regrettable mistake of trying to use watercolor pencils on non-watercolor paper and let me tell you all it was a PAIN

But I got it done and here it is

Let’s learn a little about them, shall we? (HUGE shout out to @jammiehamato for throwing together a ton of headcanons for everybody!! I implemented a lot of them into this!! There are also some headcanons inspired by @chasinthecloudsaway and their fanfiction)

Suki Mendoza

-Half Filipino, Half African-American (first generation American on father’s side)

- Bisexual

- Has known Poppy and Branch since Kindergarten school, one of Poppy’s closest friends, one of the few people Branch can tolerate at his worst

-Has trouble finding her inside voice, tends to speak really loudly

-Dance is her main form of exercise and she’s really good at it, her secondary form of exercise being basketball (she’ll 2v2 with Branch, Guy, and Satin, or 5v5 on a team with Branch, Guy, Satin, and Smidge)

-Models for Satin and Chenille’s Etsy page

-When she gets passionate about something she’ll start speaking in rapid-fire Tagalog

Creek Sinclair

-Immigrant from Great Britain (came to America during middle school)

-Heterosexual

-Met Poppy and the rest of the Snack Pack during their freshman (his sophomore) year of high school (second to last member of the Snack Pack, only Gristle is newer than he is)

-Excels in science classes (physics and biology being his strong points)

-Teaches yoga to the Snack Pack (attempts to teach it to Branch) and is often found stretching or meditating before school hours

-Has a superiority complex and always tries to give off the illusion that he’s on the moral high ground (will antagonize others)

-Also no longer a member of the Snack Pack after being dumped by Poppy

Popi “Poppy” Hanako

-Japanese-American (second generation American on both sides, her grandparents from both sides came to America around the same time)

-Pansexual

-Friends with her neighbor, Branch, essentially since birth (their families were good friends prior to either of them being born)

-Tries to befriend everyone and everything. She often has to be stopped from feeding wild animals. That being said, a lot of critters, birds, and strays will follow her around because she feeds them

-Fills scrapbook after scrapbook after scrapbook with all the events of her and her friends’ lives (carries around one of those instax instant cameras just for this purpose)

-Crushes really easily and really hard, but never dated until Creek came along

-Plays many instruments, but her go-to instrument is the guitar

Brandon “Branch” Figaroa

-3/4 Mestizo, 1/4 Black-Latino (prefers the term “Mixed Latino” or just “Latino” because his entire family is from Latin America) (first generation American)

-Bisexual

-Friends with his neighbor, Poppy, essentially since birth (their families were good friends prior to either of them being born)

-Had a below-the-knee amputation when he was five years old due to a car crash that crippled him and killed his parents. He has a prosthetic left leg. (He actually has three different types of prosthetic legs by the time he’s in high school (and done growing), one that he wears nearly all the time, a waterproof one for swimming, and a more realistic-looking one that he only wears on very special occasions (like his performance in the school musical, “Aida”, because he couldn’t cover his legs with pants) because it’s expensive and he doesn’t want to scuff it up by wearing it all the time)

-Usually ends up socializing with other people ONLY because Poppy drags him along, is very emotionally dependent on Poppy

-Incredibly talented at poetry, writing, and songwriting, but usually too self-conscious to share it with the world

-Played the violin since middle school, was in middle school orchestra

Bridget Garcia

-Mexican-American (second generation American, doesn’t know Spanish)

-Heterosexual

-Met Poppy and the Snack Pack so far in sixth grade, when they helped her find the confidence to audition for the school talent show, she’s also a very close friend to both Poppy and Branch

-Moved from Austin, Texas to San Francisco, California at the end of fifth grade

-She grew her hair out in eighth/ninth grade, with Poppy’s encouragement to do so

-Pastel is her a e s t h e t i c (so is disco/70′s memorabilia) and her room and closet reflect this

-Gristle is, in her opinion, the most beautiful guy on earth, and had a crush on him ever since she moved to California, but never told anyone until sophomore year of high school (and, of course, once she tells the Snack Pack, they come up with the most elaborate scheme to get them together, which ABSOLUTELY involves a pink jumpsuit, an ungodly amount of colored hairspray, and an earpiece for them to relay things to say to her)

Gary “Gristle” King, Jr.

-White American

-Heterosexual

-Joined the Snack Pack when he and Bridget started dating in sophomore year of high school, but had known Branch as his tutor for a few years prior

-Got his nickname for being exceptionally greasy (his undying love for pizza doesn’t help this at all). He not only accepts, but embraces this nickname because he doesn’t know why he has it or how he earned it, he just thinks it’s so cool that he has nick name.

-Does not do well in academics, but really loves, and is really good at dancing and rollerskating, instead.

-Just like Poppy, he tries to befriend everyone and everything, and he’s actually generally well-liked because of this

-Thanks to this

quote from the art book, Gristle is that guy who still wears the same clothes he grew out of in middle school, haha. (I mean, one doesn’t really grow much, after high school)

Sadie “Smidge” and Felipe Roberto

-Identical twins (Smidge is a transgirl, and chose her name, but “Smidge” was a nickname she’s had since before she came out)

-Of Puerto Rican descent (third generation American, their grandparents were New Yourican, they don’t know Spanish)

-Asexuals

-Became friends with Poppy and the Snack Pack so far in fourth grade

- Felipe is mute and mostly uses a dry-erase board to talk to others (Poppy always gifts him with new dry-erase colors to use) but uses ASL to talk to his sister. If he doesn’t have his dry-erase board handy, Smidge translates from ASL so people who don’t know ASL can understand him

-People also sometimes affectionately call him “Scuzz” or “Fuzz” because he almost always grows his hair out, he hates having it cut

-Smidge LOVES sports and weight lifting and can usually be found at the gym. She will also fight anyone who hurts her friends (people are scared of her)

-They are the shortest people in their high school, at just 4′7″

Benjamin “Biggie” Denver

-Immigrant from Great Britain (came to America in fifth grade)

-Homosexual

-Poppy and the Snack Pack so far befriended him on the first day of school, because he was shy and didn’t seem to have any friends, yet

-Mr. Dinkles is his therapy pet chihuahua that he spoils to BITS and all his collars are rhinestone studded and if he’ll bring him wherever he can get away with bringing him (his biggest enemies are “no dogs allowed” signs)

-He strives to one day be a pet photographer and volunteers at the local animal shelter to take pictures for their website

-He’s very good at comforting the other members of the Snack Pack, and is usually the one to talk Branch down from his depressive episodes

-He carries around his digital camera all the time, and usually helps Poppy fill her scrapbooks by emailing her the pictures he’s taken

Guy Dihrati

-Indian-American (first generation American)

-Pansexual, but most people mistake him for homosexual

-Met Poppy, Branch, and Suki in third grade (he had already been friends with Cooper)

-Will only wear things that either already have glitter or sequins on them, or can have glitter or sequins added to them (and, of course, even his hair has glitter in it)

-If he had a higher pain tolerance, he’d get more piercings than just his ears

-He’s self confident to the point where he can borderline on narcissistic

-He and Suki become best friends, and people would think they were dating if they didn’t already think that he’s gay. They can usually be found hanging out with each other and playfully teasing Branch and Poppy (usually Branch) because of how openly cuddly they are. They’re basically capable of grade-school levels of humor, but it’s endearing, all the same

Cooper Laboy

-African-American

-Homosexual

-Met Poppy, Branch, and Suki in third grade (he had already been friends with Guy)

-Before getting his tattoos at the age of 16, he would often draw on his arms with pen, and sometimes, he’d end up with really elaborate designs that would unfortunately wash off in the shower

-He is so very passionate about dancing! He also is the theater teacher’s aide and helps choreograph for the school musicals (and, in the future, for the theater workshop Poppy runs in the summers)

-He has a different bow-tie everyday, and has drawers at home just full of them

-People try to challenge him to rap battles, he always wins

Shuchun “Satin” and Xuilan “Chenille” Wu

-Identical twins

-Immigrants from (formerly British) Hong Kong (Satin and Chenille are their chosen American names) (They came to America in fourth grade)

-Satin is heterosexual, Chenille is homosexual

-They became friends with Poppy and the Snack Pack so far in fifth grade (and tbh Chenille had a crush on Suki ever since)

-They run an Etsy store where they sell outfits they sewn

-They absolutely ABHOR how blandly Branch dresses, and will sometimes try to drag him off to go clothes shopping, despite his protests (once they get his measurements for costuming in the school musical, they try to sew him new clothes)

-They run costuming and makeup for the school productions (and, in the future, for the theater workshop Poppy runs in the summers) and do so in tandem to performing in said productions

-They’ll braid their hair together when they’re bored, they’ve done so ever since they were small children

Holy Hell this took me five hours to write. I hope you like it!!

#dreamworks trolls #snack pack #human au #josiemod draws #trolls #this took me two goshdarned weeks to draw

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