#imagine having a legitimate memories of fighting with yourself
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Me trying desperately to find fics actually about Four Swords, particularly the manga, only to get repeatedly beat over the head with whatever the fuck the "Linked Universe" is.
#and why do all the fics actually about Four Swords leave link shattered?#that's a bit of a rhetorical question I know why logically people do that#but why isn't anyone exploring the implications of him re-becoming one and then having all the memories of all the four Links post canon#imagine having a legitimate memories of fighting with yourself#him remembering what everyone did split up#both sides of the violet and green duel.#the greif blue and red must have felt when they believed green was dead. the guilt of violet must have felt telling them green was dead#the legitimate care Violet had developed for Shadow Link. putting Hyrule over Shadow bc he knew despite his feelings Shadow was a bad perso#who needed to be stooped#zelda four swords#zelda four swords manga#zelda manga#the legend of zelda
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Yandere Alastor having a huge alcoholic meltdown before deciding to take you back is making me crazyyyyyy because like. He sees you crying because you see him spiraling and takes it as confirmation you still love him and need him!!! Sure those scoundrels led you astray but you’re clearly miserable, he just needs to intervene more firmly this time for your his own good, no matter what you say.
One thing that really does it for me is the concept of, he's having an intense public breakdown for, WEEKS, MONTHS even, just spiraling spiraling spiraling, every time you think he's hit his lowest, you hear something worse: being drunk in public, starting fights over perceived disrespect, being extremely hostile and standoffish to those who try to speak to him, AVOIDING ROSIE, like....honey you destroyed this man
and then... all it takes to knock some sense into him is Vox showing you up on the big screen for Alastor to see, the Radio Demon watching you look upon his image with legitimate concern and PITY, like you're looking at a puppy being kicked or something. He hadn't seen your face (in person anyways) in what feels like AGES and then he finally sees his precious beloved beau again and you're. Crying, FOR him, BECAUSE of him. You're crying and that dirty nasty flat faced capitalist bastard is mocking you for all of Hell to see and THAT is something Alastor won't tolerate
Can you even imagine like. It becomes too much, you're crying and getting taunted by Vox and Alastor is like VISIBLY SHAKEN by the sight of you, amd, you just feel too much guilt, you run off absolutely sobbing and don't even see if Alastor manages to sober himself up enough to stand before you do. You just can't watch, it's torture. Which also leaves you completely unaware of how seeing your image seemingly renewed the absolutely WASTED Radio Demon's strength. You spend several days curled up in bed, refusing to watch TV or get on your phone, but, wait, doing your word searches and crossword puzzles or playing solitaire just makes you think of Alastor too--
Meanwhile he's like absolutely tearing through Hell personally tracking down every man you've so much as blown a kiss at behind his back and, well... you know what he's known for. These men might not have even known you were the Radio Demon's piece and are begging for their lives, but Alastor doesn't care. They've defiled you. They've tainted you. They've dirtied you with their disgusting grimey pig hands. There's no taking that back. If he can't exactly reach into their minds and remove their memories of seeing your exposed body, hearing your wanton noises, then, Alastor will just have to remove their minds from their heads entirely, won't he? Brain is such a tasty organ meat.
I just. The mental image of Alastor finally coming to fetch you and he finds you in like. the worst situation possible and I mean that. He's either finding you drunk in the gutter yourself because you started binge-drinking because of how seeing him Like That made you feel, OR, he's finding you getting railed in a sex club. I mean it. I want this man kicking down a door because he's finally coming to take you back and he thinks his precious boo is being tormented by gross men and you're like, a willing participant in a Czech reverse gloryhole. I want this man absolutely convinced you need him to survive and he walks in on you doing something that strikes him as so WILD that it instantly confirms WHATEVER INSANE THEORIES he had. I want a yandere Alastor who got cheated on because he never wanted sex (or, needed to become attached to you enough to want it and you lost patience before he reached that point) and he sees you cheat on him, dump him, and immediately run headfirst into the wildest kinkiest craziest shit to the point he thinks you're having a mental health crisis and, oh honey clearly this is HIS FAULT. He didn't... cater to all of your needs, so you sought out men who could. It's not YOUR fault these, DISGUSTING PIGS would take advantage of you, which is CLEARLY what happened!
But anyways, oh no no, don't worry darling! He's been doing a lot of self reflecting on himself and his feelings and --ignore the tentacle climbing up your leg -- and he's been thinking a lot about what to do about your... apparently very rigorous physical needs and --yes there ARE multiple tentacles starting to kind of grope all over you but you're not focusing on the conversation, dear-- and Alastor thinks he's found a solution that should.... DEEPLY satisfy both of your desires :) now, all you have to do is relax and allow him to show you the fruits of all the "anatomy research" he's been doing recently...
#yandere hazbin hotel#alastor x reader#yandere hellaverse#hh#yandere x reader#sinprompts#i got some thoughts about red string au but the string doesnt appear right away bc he has to get attached to you first#imagine getting feelings for him but knowing hes not your intended soulmate so you bang another dude and... turns out your SM WAS al.. oopa
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Skin
Summary: Bucky finds a way to keep you with him, always.
A/N: This was originally posted under my old user captain-ariel-barnes and was my most popular Bucky one-shot! This is a modern biker AU. Gender Neutral Reader, no use of (Y/N), and no pet names. I did have to edit it to be that way though, so if I missed something let me know and I will fix it asap!
Morning peeks through the windows of your third-story apartment. The only sounds are coming from the cars below and the faint whir of the fan. You stretch out your limbs and roll over on the bed, expecting to see your boyfriend snoring softly beside you. But he’s not there.
You look to the bathroom and see that the door is open, but the light is off, so he’s not there. You listen for sounds throughout the apartment and hear some light clinks coming from outside the bedroom door. A smile makes its way to your face and you slides out of bed, taking the fuzzy blanket you sleep with and wrap it around yourself before making your way to the kitchen.
Bucky’s making breakfast, his hair haphazardly tied back and sweatpants so low on his hips it doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
You pad your way through the small apartment and wrap your blanket paws around his large torso, pressing your cheek into his warm, bare back.
“Good morning.” He says to you, and you can hear the faint hint of a smile plastered across his face from the tone of his voice. “Sleep well?”
“No. Because you weren’t there.” You tell him, placing a small kiss to his left shoulder, where angry scars are lifted from the skin there. Your heart aches as you think back to how he got those scars.
It was early on in your relationship. Bucky loved motorcycles, and riding with his friends. He also liked to go fast--too fast. He always said the feeling of adrenaline pumping through his veins when he hit top speeds was too good to pass up. It scared the life out of you, even back then. The one thing Bucky did do (which gave you at least some peace of mind), was wear a helmet. His other biker friends made fun of him for it, but he still wore it, for you.
“I always gotta come back to you.”
That’s what he always said.
One summer night, he was riding with his friends Steve and Sam, when a car illegally crossed over a double-white line in front of him. He was going way too fast and barely had any time to react. The accident was devastating. It was a miracle he survived at all.
He had to have ten surgeries on his arm to repair the damage, but it was so severe they made the decision to amputate. He also had a traumatic brain injury. If he hadn’t have been wearing his helmet, he wouldn’t be standing in front of you right now.
The long-term consequences of the accident came in the form of memory loss. Sometimes Bucky would forget things, forget people. Forget you were waiting for him to come home. Forget who you were in the mornings, lying in his bed next to him. He would always remember, eventually, but the toll it took on you was the worst part of it. He hated the way your face fell when he would forget.
Sometimes, you’d roll over for a morning kiss and he’d lean away, assuming you were a one night stand. Other times you’d be waiting for him all night for a date he legitimately forgot about.
Yet you stood by him. Not many people would go through that, especially so early on in the relationship. It was long before the first “I love you” was spoken, and he cherishes you deeply for sticking by his side through it all.
His arm, what was left of it, was a different story. He hated the constant reminder of the huge mistakes he had made, and he hated that he was just that much less perfect for the love of his life. For you.
You snake your hands up his bare chest, tracing little patterns when your blanket-covered fingers come across a bandage straight over his heart.
“Did you get in another bar fight with the boys last night?” you ask, half-sarcastic, half-worried. His intimidating nature and ego got him into lots of trouble sometimes.
“Nope.”
“Don’t lie to me, James Barnes! C’mon, turn around. Let me see the damage.”
He sets down the spatula he was using to cook breakfast and turns to face you with a goofy grin on his face. You examine him, narrowing your eyes suspiciously at his unconcerned gaze. He doesn’t seem to be injured other than his chest.
Of course though, you always assume the worst, and the panic begins to rise in your chest.
“Did you get stabbed in the heart? Oh, god! You did, didn’t you? Someone stabbed you and I fell asleep before you got home safe and I had no idea—”
He pulls you into his chest and squeezes you tight enough to cut your sentence off.
“No. I promise I didn’t get stabbed. At least, not in the way you’re thinking.”
You look up at him with even more confusion and worry on your face. Your hand gently grazes over the bandage and then you wait for Bucky’s nod of approval to remove it. When you do, a breath of relief escapes you when there’s no stitches. No stab wound to be found.
Instead, you find a tattoo of tiny heart with your initials inside of it.
“Do you like it?” he asks, unable to read the emotions on your face.
You pull his face into yours and lock lips in a searing kiss. “James,” kiss, “Buchanan,” kiss, “Barnes.” Kiss, “You are,” kiss, “without a doubt,” kiss, “the stupidest man I’ve ever met!”
“Why am I stupid?” He asks, slightly offended.
“Don’t you know it’s bad luck to get your significant other’s name tattooed on you?” you scold, less playfully. That scowl means he’s in trouble.
“I thought I could use something to help me remember you when I forget.” He admits.
You face softens quickly, and you wrap your arms around him again.
He elaborates. “I hate it when I forget you. My mind ain’t always there, but this…” he nods to his chest, “…will be.” He finishes, kissing the top of your head. “And besides, I thought it might make you a little extra turned on when you see it.”
You roll your eyes and wriggle out of his arms in a teasing disgust. “You sure know how to ruin a mood, James.” You tell him, shuffling to the bedroom. When Bucky doesn’t move, you worry that he thinks you really don’t like it. “Well? Are you coming to go test that theory or are you gonna stand there all morning?” You wink at him and then disappear behind the wall. Bucky’s feet have never carried him to the bedroom so fast, and he’s behind you in an instant.
You’re both halfway done taking each other’s clothes off when he suddenly makes a full stop, with your shirt stuck over her head.
“What’s wrong Bucky?” you ask, voice muffled by the shirt. You pull it back on to see that Bucky’s not in the room anymore. “Bucky?”
He sprints back into the room in the full nude and pulls you onto the bed with him. “Left the stove on.” He says with a mischievous grin, right before pressing a kiss to every last inch of your skin for the rest of the morning.
#bucky barnes x reader#bucky x reader#bucky barnes#bucky barnes x gender neutral reader#bucky fluff#if you were around when i originally posted this you qualify for a veterans discount
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BG3 EPILOGUE STUFF
since i had a save from just before the final battle and, for one, had been dying for details all afternoon: this is from a game where i was durge and romanced astarion.
It's in the slightly random order of "who I happened to talk to in whatever order."
MINSC: Taking his job of "working with" the Guild seriously, and shows up to the party with a random thief he had been in the middle of dangling from a high tower. Says he visits Astarion a lot, but that Astarion keeps accidentally forgetting to tell him when he moves. You can ask him if there are others from the first Bhaal crisis left alive, because you're studying it.
OWLBEAR CUB: Been having fun fighting! You can suggest he settle down with Halsin or Shadowheart (I picked Halsin) and he's very excited.
SHADOWHEART: Says she's almost surprised you came; you can joke "what, just because I don't have a butler anymore?" and she says she was worried, but is glad to see that old memories haven't kept you away. She's found a little cottage in the country and is having a nice time living peacefully. Her parents are doing well, and her mother is teaching her to cook. She also has EVERY SINGLE pet she can find. Just gone from full goth princess to cottagecore.
You can tell her that you went Candlekeep to research Bhaalspawn history, and you agree you'll keep in more proactive touch.
JAHEIRA: The Bhaal temple is still standing, but she assures you it's empty, thanks to you. Jord has joined the Harpers, and Rion has rejoined the Flaming Fist, and is spending her time bullying them. Jaheira is mildly/proudly worried they'll kick her out. Again. She's wrangling Harpers and working to rebuilt Baldur's Gate. She asks if you plan on starting a family of your own, and you can tell her that you plan on letting Bhaal's line die with you.
VOLO: He's writing a tell-all, and says he's gotten very good at faking your signature for the disclosures. He wants to call it "The Hero and Me," and you can suggest "The Bhaalspawn 2." He doesn't think you should think of yourself as a mere sequel.
KARLACH: "I've missed you, you old Bhaalspawn. Oh - do you not want to me to call you the B-word any more?" You can joke that your "army" is bath salts and scented candles, tell her that everyone slips up from time to time, or brag about not thinking about it AND not killing anyone in six months. The answer I picked: "I see my blood not as a curse, but a duty. I have been studying Bhaal, so I can fight him, if his cult ever strikes again."
Karlach and Wyll have been having a lot of fun fighting and surviving hell. She feels a lot better, and tells you about their plan to heist a new heart for herself. You promise to meet up again.
WYLL: Mizora hasn't been bothering him much, sending him after legitimate demons and evils. She's set him on a new mission he doesn't know the details of, but apparently his target is a devil. He's happy to be traveling with Karlach. He's been able to visit Baldur's Gate and his father a few times, and dad's doing well, leading the city and rebuilding. No Bhaalspawn talk.
HALSIN: He's still hanging out in the former Shadowlands, and Moonrise has been torn down to make new houses. He gives you a wooden duck. No Bhaalspawn talk.
LAE'ZEL: Is just on her full YA Youth Hero phase. Has been fighting and leading and just being super cool, allying with the githzerai. She's currently a dipomat, and you can be like "lol, seriously?" She's amused and says you taught her that diplomacy and words are as sometimes as important as a blade. She's clearly joking around a bit (she calls herself bossy and that it's her charm), but as deadpan as ever.
GALE: HE'S A PROFESSOR, school of illusion. As a sorceror, you can say you're surprised he's only teaching one school, and he agrees and admits he offered to teach them all, before being told he had to pick one. He talks about how much he likes illusion and imagination, and so now I feel like I have to make him illusionist in my runs. He gave the Crown to Mystra, and feels great relief to have the Orb gone. He clearly really, really loves teaching and spends his time trying to make his students love magic as much as he does. He complains they sleep a lot, and Tara butts in to call them cheeky and offers to swipe them.
He asks what you're up to, and you can joke you're napping and thinking of becoming a massage therapist — he jokes that he's glad you found a new career, but maybe leave off your "neck snapping" past when meeting clients. Gale offers you a "guest lecturer" spot, and you can remark that "the healing of my cranial trauma would be a prime case study for the school of Evocation." Gale invites you to stay in his — SORRY, TARA, OUR — tower.
TARA: YOU CAN PSPSPSPSPSP TARA. She does not deign to respond. She asks if you're the one who helped Gale with the Absolute, and if you politely say that Gale helped you, she doubts it very much — obviously he's the hero. She then invites you to visit them, and if you accuse her of having no respect for the "co-savior of Faerun," she retorts that she's here, isn't she? Before dismissing you.
ASTARION: He's happy all your friends are well, but hesitates on joining the socializing himself, because he's just so good at "skulking." He says he doesn't want to hog you because he gets you all the time.
LETTERS: (This was not a 100% completion game.)
Art is rapidly declining, his age catching up to him. He doesn't have long to live, but is happy and content seeing the Shadowlands cured.
Duke Ravengard does not even mention Wyll in his letter.
Arabella is being trained by Elminster! Love that for her.
The Gur write their letter to Astarion specifically, saying they've been keeping an eye on him and admire his restraint and control over his bloodlust.
THERE'S A LETTER FROM ALFIRA ahaha. I did the Durge Savescum to save her, and her letter basically goes: Yeah, I heard you're a Bhaalspawn? I saw murder in your eyes whenever you looked at me, and I'm glad you're doing well, but I'm not going to tell you where I am now. Thank you for sparing me! Bye!
Barcus Wroot has the single most Barcus Wroot letter of all time. "Withers gave me this address and said I could consider writer. Well, I considered it. Return address included. Best, Barcus Wroot." I love him so much.
Dammon 100000% has a crush on Karlach. His letter is basically: "Are you still alive? I think of you all the time. Will you write to me? Yours faithfully." Omg.
Nocturne is in a new Sharran cloister, but she hopes Shadowheart is well and wonders if maybe one day she'll also be brave enough to leave.
ROLAN DID NOT WRITE ME, woowwwww
CONCLUSIONS:
Durge gets two threads: I am living in a spa, and I am spending my time researching Bhaal. Or maybe both!
Wyll and Karlach definitely seem to be hinting towards some kind of DLC, with Wyll's new devil target and the whole heist situation. Withers also has an unreadable note on his desk with Hints Of Important Things.
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Character Ideas Day 3: Artillerist Artificer
During your tenure as a student in a college for creation bards, you were fairly convinced you were the worst spellcaster alive. None of it made sense to you, and even creating small inanimate objects companions seemed nearly impossible. So, fed up with feeling like a failure, you cheated, constructing tiny mechanical constructs to serve as fake versions of the companions your classmates could make so easily. You were caught and sent to your instructor’s office, but instead of being reprimanded, you were praised. Turns out, you’d made something conducive to a completely different type of spellcasting, one your instructor wants to help you improve at. It’s an offer you quickly and graciously accept.
As a child, you, like many others, enjoyed pretending to fight with sticks, a harmless game that should have caused nothing but good childhood memories. You even liked to carve your stick, a mighty sword for a mighty warrior. However, you unknowingly carved a legitimate arcane symbol on your “sword” one day, making an extremely rudimentary arcane firearm and accidentally hurting one of your dearest friends. Now, years later, some still haven’t forgiven you, and some deeply question the fact that you continued your craft, but you press on regardless, determined to make more of a reputation for yourself than the kid who made a dire mistake.
You come from a place with an elite corps of warriors, able to fight off any single attacker with unrivaled proficiency with swords and shields. So, your people’s enemies got creative, sending swarms of flying beasts to overwhelm your protections. You, a weapons designer for the corps, weren’t exactly ready to unveil your experimental weapon, but circumstance gave you no choice, and with gritted teeth, you watched as your invention was singlehandedly credited with saving your town. Now, you’re off to pitch your invention elsewhere, but you know all too well that the swarms are moving faster, and beginning to target you.
The eldest child of beloved and peaceful nobles, you’ve grown tired of the nice guy routine your family demands. Soon enough, a rebellious spirit begins to blossom, one that not only craves adventure and combat, but wants to do it in the most obnoxious way you could possibly imagine, just to stick it to mom and dad. You’ve always been savvy in the classroom, so redirecting your intelligence into making loud, obnoxious and visibly arcane weapons instantly appeals to you, and after you build your first one, you leave to join the first adventuring party you find. Any company is good company if they’ll let you blow shit up.
You grew up hearing endless horror stories about the time one of your parents spent lost in the feywild, honing skills of nature out of necessity, and a drive to survive alone in such an odd and often terrible place. These stories make the magic of machines seem much more beautiful than nature based magic to you, and for most of your life, it was the only sort of magic you trusted. It wasn’t until you met and befriended (or perhaps fell for) a druid that you began to reconsider, and even combine your ideas of magic into something entirely new. But a new threat is emerging, one that sounds a lot like one from those years old horror stories, and you find yourself reconsidering once again what exactly makes magic “good.”
You are a dragon living in a disguised humanoid form after being badly injured by an adventuring party desperate to find your rumored hoard. When they came out without a scrap of material wealth, they were livid, and your legend faded to obscurity. Until, that is, someone discovered the true meaning of the riddles that guarded your hoard: You did not hoard arcane goods, but arcane knowledge, and the exact details of how to make magical items of untold and unrivaled power. You managed to escape with much of the knowledge, and now, the hunt is on to find you. Thankfully, you’re more than prepared to build what you need to defend yourself.
Though your sibling is a powerful sorcerer, their physical health has always been extremely fragile, to the point where using their magic even to perform extremely minor spells can be extremely dangerous. They’ve expressed time and time again that they love their magic, and they want to use it freely, but it’s just not safe to do so. So, you and your family set off on a quest to make an item for them to channel magic through, something that will take the weight off of their body. You find you have a particular knack for it, and what starts as a necessity to help your sibling turns into a passion.
While exploring an abandoned or decimated town, you stumble upon the skeletal remains of a powerful mage, whom you quickly recall has no family or close connections. Before you can stop yourself, you steal and study them, shaping some of the bones into a powerful arcane staff that can sling spells you can barely conceptualize. All you can do now is adapt as you go.
You’re a toy maker by trade, one famed for your clockwork implements and wooden animals. It earned you a reputation as a jovial and loving person, popular with the kids of the town you lived in. But when war broke out, your technology was sought out by completely different sources, people who are desperate to turn your tech into weapons of war. Horrified by the production, you take some of the weapons for yourself, determined to protect and help those the war left behind.
You constructed and operated a state of the art shooting gallery carnival game in one of your town’s most popular traveling carnivals. The weapons were far from powerful, but they were easy to operate and fun, which mattered to you much more anyway. So, when a group of bandits robbed your carnival, and the other workers looked to you, you thought they were crazy to think your weapons would stop them. Thanks to some last minute alterations, they did the job well. Now, the people who own the carnival are paying you good money to work out even more improvements, and your reputation is quickly beginning to grow.
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What's your take on Stella?
Personally I find Stella to be a character that's overall very lackluster. As a saturday morning cartoon esque villian she's not over the top enough to be very entertaining when we see here. As a legitimate portrayal of an abuser in a relationship, I find it rather distasteful and sloppy as Stella is simply implied to have been born a little monster child who didn't even care about her own daughter, thats not to say you must resort to trying to make her sympathetic, however if you intend to portray a very serious issue of abuse, you should be doing your research and understand human components to what makes people abusive. Let alone the idea Stella doesnt care for Octavia reads rather hollow of a point when Stolas didnt want to have Octavia as much as he didnt have a choice.
I almost want to say Stella functioned as funny when she came off as a odd take on the nagging wife trope where she's constantly yelling and fighting with Stolas except its from an angle where theyre both in a relationship equivalent to roomates who've lived together for so long that you'd almost mistake them for a couple, except if you asked them they'd in tandem insist they cant stand each other.
A large problem is the writing not being well planned. We know initially Stella being an abuser was not the planned story because Octavia says they used to be in love and clearly has times she looks back on as when they were happy. Now I can speak as someone who's parents had quite the messy and unpleasant divorce and the problem with this is Octavia is in her teens. When you're still young, its easy to look at moments with rose tinted glasses as when your parents were happy, specifically because we grow up with them in our heads as what a happy relationship looks like, but its usually by your teens when your discovering yourself and learning more about the outside world beyond the circle of your immediate family that we learn to look back on moments of our childhood in a different light. Ill keep it from being too personal, but in my younger years while i didnt understand why my parents fought because I had memories of going to the park with them and seeming happy together, in my teens i thought more about how many times I went to bed hearing them yell and break things downstairs because while I didn't do it often, when I did stay at friends houses their parents never fought or at least nothing like mine. And because of this it reads rather inconsistent Octavia is 17 and somehow yet to have realized in retrospect this was a long ways coming, or be rather uncaring about it due to arranged marriages meaning you'd have many unhappy couples meanwhile everyone on the outside of the Goetia circle looks in with a sort of disbelief because marriage is such a expensive and important thing, some people go their whole lives never marrying their loved ones because they hope to save it that money for their children, but people like the Goetias do it all for status and money. But this is about Stella, not Octavia.
If I had a say, I'm not opposed to the idea Stella and Stolas were in an arranged marriage, I think this would be a tragic root of their problems. I imagine because the reason being that this actually is commonplace in the goetia. It's not for money, but it's been very much a practice going back generations that you marry someone of equal status and standing. It's seen as a garuntee you don't marry someone who is only interested in your money or anything else you provide and it's something planned at a young age because it's your parents job to find someone as soon as possible to avoid being out of options at 17. When Stolas and Stella met, they got along, and were childhood best friends, the problem is as they got older and the weight of marrying started becoming something they could process, they found it something they didn't want. Stella was crying in their early teens because she didn't want to end up unhappy like her parents, and Stolas was the one who reassured her they wouldn't be like that and were gonna be different. He promised no matter what happened they'd try to make it work.
And Stella did try, its just that when she caught Stolas cheating of course she felt a lot of things. Angry, lied to, betrayed. This was the guy who told her they were going to try to make it work, and now he was cheating on her. I think Stella would be compelling if she was someone who because of the timing, feels as though Stolas used her for a child and proceeded to throw her out. And so she very much insists upon and teaches Octavia to never rely on men to provide for her but instead to learn to provide for herself and be independent because to Stella, trusting Stolas is what ruined her life.
Stella is someone who due to her limited understanding of Stolas's actions and Stolas's unwillingness to communicate feels wronged by Stolas but ironically despite the twos anger towards each other (Stolas feeling like Stella is choosing not to understand his situation) they both agreed upon not setting up Octavia for an arranged marriage, they've never looked and refuse any offers. I think they would be these sort of rivals in a way that Octavia feels she's being pulled between but the resolution would be them seeing how upset Octavia is and how she feels ignored by both of her parents who spend more time fighting than with her, and its this moment both of them see their daughter upset at them fighting it's somewhat of a wake up call. They dislike eachother but despite their differences, they love her. And its this moment they both realize how they lost sight of what really mattered during all of this. Both of them got so caught up in their emotions and wanting to get back at eachother they never quite thought of how Octavia must have been feeling.
Stories wise this is when their arguments would tone down and we could shuffle in a new big bad guyTM, with Stella and Stolas's arguments now relatively tame where they have the petty argument but they always make sure Octavia isn't their to know about it and largely are focused on whats best for their daughter. I just think overall Stella would be a better character if she was more human, But right now it seems Vivs primary focus is using her to make the fact Stolas cheated on her actually justified, which unfortunately flattens and removes the nuances both should have to come off human.
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It is a matter of fact that the human animal will, if tormented by a greater force, lash out at a weaker force.
I don't know if this is, itself, an instinctual thing. I suspect that, when facing violence or abuse, the human will instinctively want to fight back, but any little kid who gets beaten up by a larger kid will discover quickly that fighting back against that same kid will just result in being beaten again. So there's this anger that comes from instinct and it needs an outlet, and little kids who experience this will need to act on that anger, so they'll usually target someone who likely won't fight back or have any reasonable defense. Hence, the stronger abuser assaults you, but you can't assault them back so you go after someone weaker.
Victims of abuse often find that their parents are their first abusers. Instead of lashing out at their parents, the source of the abuse, they will attack one of their weaker peers at school or a younger sibling.
Employees will, if abused by their superiors, lash out at their more vulnerable coworkers.
People who are abused by their spouse will lash out at their own children.
It's not a matter of right vs. wrong. It's a matter of being full of anger from having been torn down by a greater force and needing to lash out in a way that doesn't result in being beaten again, so you go after someone weaker.
It's really quite profoundly horrifying when you wake up and realize that, while you have been the victim of abuse, you've also done abusive things yourself.
The Biblical axiom "Evil begets evil" could easily be updated to "Abuse begets abuse", because it's true. Those who are abused are significantly more likely to become, themselves, abusers.
All of those years worth of memories of being abused never go away, and the brain that harbors them will seek to lash out at weaker opponents. It will seek out the Easy Win.
The eldest child in an abusive house will not fight back against a violent father; he will, instead, blame his mother, who is desperately trying to keep the family together. Sometimes he will actually start to develop a Stockholm Syndrome-like sympathy for his alcoholic father, perhaps even using the same vernacular, word for word.
Middle management sympathizes with their abusive superiors and blames, instead, their subordinates for not doing whatever it is they are "supposed" to be doing.
The average person under a fascist dictatorship will not blame their own oppressors, they will blame "the liberals" or some other phantom group that might as well not even exist.
It's absurd, really. Imagine going to the store to pick up a drink and walking in moments before someone with a gun holds the place up, and then hurling abuse at the clerk for handing over the cash in the register when the poor guy is just trying to avoid being shot.
But it's just the way it is.
Real courage would mean standing up to a force that could actually hurt you. Most people are not courageous, though.
Bullys and other cowards will, instead, only engage in a fight when their victory is the easiest victory possible. Worse, often times they will seek out weaker opponents just to experience the rush of destroying someone.
Onlookers will also resent the victims of abuse because their existence reminds them of their own cowardice. It's easier to blame the victims. The victims can't do anything to hurt you. The person who made them victims, on the other hand, are legitimately dangerous.
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i dunno if it’s strange to imagine darling from SAGAU having a partner when they were transported to teyvat like. . .
are they holding a funeral while darling is being hunted down / worshipped?
are they searching for darling while they’re crying / sleeping peacefully in a character’s arms?
is the partner falling into turmoil while their darling is fighting for their life / playing with the children of teyvat?
YES that’s an interesting idea hmmm. Ty for the ask btw! I’ll serve you the angst first, then the alternate comparatively less sad version. I’ll add the other version in a reblog, because the angst would contain sensitive topics below, and must be separated.
First part: Angst version
Tw: angst, disappearance, funerals, ‘suicide’ of oblivious darling, manipulative yanderes
(Proceed with extreme caution! Skip this if you are sensitive to these topics. Don’t feel bad for skipping it, as long as your well-being is well and intact, anything else is of no such importance! Do not act in a distasteful manner to those who cannot deal with the traumatic topics. Being disrespectful is not tolerated for this post, due to obvious reasons. This is a safe place.)
Darling’s partner would unfortunately, have to frantically search for the isakai-napped darling, to no avail. The family would be shocked as well, reasonably so. They call the police and the community searches for you as well.
The police are naturally unable to recover you from Teyvat. After finding your shoes on a balcony/the top of your house or building, they write it off as a suicide with help, taking it as why there’s no body or mess underneath.
Now you might wonder how your shoes would be up there in the first place. Albedo, the person who came through his portal to kidnap you, had returned for the second time to set the supposed suicide scene up. He made sure to bring Kaeya with him for his ideas and shady methods. He kept Sucrose and Zhongli on the other end, to maintain the portal’s stability and openness.
Kaeya&Ayaka helped him come up with the fake suicide evidence idea. Ayaka knows about the Japanese suicide victims leaving behind their shoes before jumping, and Kaeya puts it into action. All while Albedo attempts to pick up on your device’s use, then researches on suicide methods in your search engine. Both ‘evidences’ produced by them are seen as legitimate by most.
Your family and irl romantic and/or sexual partner is left heartbroken and guilty, for not being there when you ‘died’. Some may be in denial, but they had to have come to terms with your ‘death’ being your disappearance’s reason. They either move on, go to therapy, or end things if their mental health collapses due to the trauma. Albedo has left most of your items untouched except for a few things, but the two were cautious enough to not leave any traces of their presence, so only the lack of certain personal belongings roused suspicion from a few detectives. Not that they were able to figure out ‘logical’ conclusions to the case. Some of your loved ones hold funerals as a form of closure to them. Some elect to not go, or continue searching for you until they pass away. By the time all of your close ones had passed, you’ll still be alive in Teyvat’s dimension as their diety. Knowing nothing spared you the heartbreak, in a twisted way.
You as the darling is oblivious to all these, and with them having already destroyed the portal as soon as Albedo and Kaeya returned, you have no way of returning or reaching out to your world at all.
They gaslight you into thinking that everything is okay when you wake up. That your close ones’s memories of you had been wiped. After staying for a long while, you force yourself to make peace with what information they’ve fed you, for your own sanity. You will have to do therapy for yourself though, seeing that you would probably have trust issues, and there haven’t been therapists in Teyvat yet. Or not easily - found/accessible, at the least.
#bamboo headcanons#bamboo’s inbox friends <3#tw cult#suicide#tw suicide#tw suicidal thoughts#genshin impact#angst#genshin impact yandere angst#sagao genshin impact#sagao cult#sagao au#sagao#self aware genshin cult#self aware genshin impact#self aware cult#self aware genshin#yandere#kidnapping#tw yandere#tw kidnapping#tw death#death#mentions of death#mentions of suicide#sad#tragedy
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Ted Lasso 2x8 thoughts
I am so lucky that the creators of Ted Lasso decided to make this entire show specifically for me. #blessed
If last week felt like a bit of breathing room (albeit tense, poignant, character-progressing breathing room) with distinct narrative lines, this week’s episode was a chaotic yet tightly-written swirl of pain and hope and sadness! No neat subject headers for this one, y’all. Just my brain and heart in the inadequate form of a bulleted list. It is the medium available to me at this time.
I am going to remember the moment when Ted calls Sharon and tells her his father killed himself for the rest of my life.
(I could say a bunch of stuff about his face and what he says and how he tries to hide his tears from Beard right after and how insanely much I adore this character and ahhhhhhhh but I’m just going to leave that scene there in our collective memories.)
Jamie. JAMIE. Higgins has given some great advice about love on this show, but his musings about his up-and-down relationship with his own father were not helpful in the context of Jamie’s dad, who is an abusive piece of shit. I really adore that all of the main AFC Richmond staff members are realistically a bit hit-or-miss with their advice and life philosophies (some are mostly miss this season, of course).
And I am completely in awe of the moment when Jamie punches his father. The way he just stands there after Beard kicks his dad out of the locker room. The way you can hear a pin drop. And Roy—Roy who is learning in so many areas of his life about his influence on people, learning that the things he needs aren’t necessarily the same as the things other people need—is the one to cross the room and hug him. Hold him, really, with the tenderness Ted used when he hugged Rebecca outside the gala in 1x4. God.
I’ve thought a lot about how s1 was about giving people a soft place to land. There’s always an angel there when you need one. There’s always an opportunity to be kind. If you look for someone, you find them. If you look for the good in someone, you find the good. And as everyone works through their individual journeys in s2, that can’t always be the case anymore. But there are still so many moments of angels on this show, and it’s not about chance and serendipity and fate [not that it was about that in s1] but about the effort it takes to become someone who can be there for someone else. Or who can be there for yourself. I’m so proud of Jamie for physically fighting back against his father. I’m so proud of Roy for being the one who recognized what Jamie needed.
I have every feeling in the world about how Ted is almost totally frozen both times (s1 and s2) he witnesses Jamie’s father abusing him. In s1, he was still there for Jamie after, and I have every reason to believe he’ll be there for Jamie after this incident as well, but that frozen stance HURTS. He’s in so deep with his pain about his own father that it’s like he physically cannot snap out of it to act in the moment. It seems entirely outside of his control, and it breaks my heart, because Ted wants so badly to be a good father, a good coach, a good friend, a good partner, a good patient. He’s there for people in all kinds of ways, even in his current less-than-capable state. He takes care of Sharon post-concussion and even gets her a new bike! During the disastrous match at Wembley his coaching is ineffectual and everything is chaos but he’s the last one standing on the pitch! But this really awful thing keeps happening to Jamie and Ted is just…frozen in the face of it. Like one of those nightmares where you’re running in place.
The frozen-in-place nightmare also kind of applies to the way the total separation between Ted and Rebecca feels, too. I have never for a moment doubted the writers’ intentions in setting these characters up as soulmates on parallel journeys, and I’m actually really digging (on a story level) how disconnected they are right now. It is IMPRESSIVE that their absence in each other’s lives feels like such a glaring loss, one we cannot forget even as there are so many other things happening onscreen. It is 100% not just shipper goggles making me process information about Ted while thinking about Rebecca and information about Rebecca while thinking about Ted. I know there are a lot of really angry and frustrated people in the fandom right now (both T/R shippers and T/R antis and non-shipping fans who don’t get why s2 is different from s1) and while I understand being frustrated by choices characters make, and frustrated by the feelings the show makes us feel that we just want to feel more of or less of, I continue to agree with pretty much every narrative choice happening right now.
Agreeing with the narrative like this?! This is such a unique experience for me as a viewer—to feel like I’m on a ride that is at once absolutely wild and incredibly sensible and well-crafted, and to feel simultaneously completely invested and anticipatory and speculative but also totally willing to trust where it goes. I long for Ted and Beard to really talk. I long for Ted and Rebecca to stop missing each other. I long for Roy to have a serious conversation with Ted about what’s happening with him. I long for Keeley to find a vocation, something that drives her beyond her projects. I long for so many things! But I wouldn’t long for them if this show was less good. If the show was less good, I wouldn’t have a wish list a mile long because I wouldn’t be so attuned to the details and potential lurking in every scene. THIS IS SUCH A GOOD SHOW, I CANNOT HANDLE IT, I LOVE IT SO MUCH.
(To that end, a great deal of the Ted Lasso tag and so many Twitter reactions reactions to the show feel super stressful right now and I am kind of just trying not to look?! I love this fandom so much because of the amazing conversations that happen and because of brilliant fic and because there are some awesome people I never would have encountered were it not for this show. That little bubble is wonderful and I’d stay in this fandom no matter what in order to keep experiencing those things. But fans’ catastrophic reactions to every little thing that happens, every little choice a character makes that isn’t the “perfect” choice? The takeaway that the writers—on this show of all shows—wake up in the morning ready for another day of torturing shippers rather than another day of writing a beautiful story they genuinely want to write? I do not enjoy those parts at all. I would like to opt out of those parts. I’m having such a magical experience watching this show and talking about this show and listening about this show and writing about this show with a variety of people who feel all kinds of ways. I truly wish I could somehow transfer the energy of this experience onto all the people who are hating it right now. I don’t mind at all that people are having vastly different reactions to this show and are sharing their honest feelings, including the really angry ones (I can appreciate something and disagree with it!), and I get that sometimes the language of fannish reactions is intentionally, ironically hyperbolic. But there feels like this very serious trend of people legitimately thinking writers on this show are targeting shippers and have lost respect for their characters, and I just feel like an alien from another planet when I see that stuff. I guess I just feel like people make art because they want their art to be visible to other people and to themselves, but that doesn’t typically involve specifically catering to or torturing a subset of that audience?)
I am more fascinated by Sharon Fieldstone than ever before. I have been running through every single action with her and Ted so many times. The confirmation that she’s living in club-provided housing (that could not look more different from Ted’s club-provided flat). Ted clearly noticing the many bottles. Sharon’s face while she tries to casually recycle them. (Sharon could legitimately have a more problematic relationship with alcohol than Ted does, and I find that extremely interesting and am very curious to find out what happens there.) Sharon leaving him voice notes while she’s concussed, probably because she’d been thinking about him shortly before the accident. The way Ted calls her and does all the funny voices and it’s not frustrating like all the times he uses his silliness and allusions to deflect during their prior conversations because this time, those behaviors are just a part of him showing care for another person. The way they stretch each other, and Ted is still wrong about the things he’s been wrong about, but they both grow all the same.
While it is pretty much impossible for me to imagine that this show would include an actual romantic relationship between Ted and Sharon (it would be beyond unethical even if they could write it well, and Sharon in particular is so professional and committed to her work, and it would erase so much of the powerful message about the importance of seeking therapy from a professional who is not your friend or partner, and I would totally hate it), watching this episode was the first moment I had this queasy little feeling that it’s possible that Ted could end up developing really complicated feelings about Sharon since, at this point, he’s been honest with her about things he’s hardly spoken about before and you can really form an attachment to people you feel safe with in a new way. (I mean, I’m sure Michelle knows what happened with Ted’s father, but I’m not even certain if Beard does.) He’s so broken right now, and Sharon is such a great person and so different from anyone else in his life (even though Rebecca is also different, and Beard is also different, and Roy is also different, and so on), that I could see things getting really fuzzy for him. I continue to have faith in the way the storylines on this show are handled. I’m just. Putting this here.
(In saying that, though, I also wanna make it really clear that I don’t just automatically assume anytime a new female character is introduced that they’re going to end up becoming a romantic complication. Like, Phoebe is allowed to have a teacher who is an attractive woman and AFC Richmond is allowed to have a sports psychologist who is an attractive woman and Keeley is allowed to talk to Jamie Tartt without it threatening what she has with Roy and all these people can exist as human beings without the introduction of romantic drama.)
Isaac gives every player one haircut per season, OH MY GOD. The JOY during the haircut scene. YES.
KEELEY AND REBECCA. Their text thread. The affirming video call right before Rebecca goes into the restaurant. The way Keeley sits all snuggled up against Rebecca in her office.
I was pretty thoroughly spoiled for the Sam and Rebecca plot through 2x8, and I was bracing for something far more problematic and tortured than what happens in this episode. The words I would use to describe their scenes: awkward, cute, cringy, and understandable. There are a million reasons why this relationship isn’t sustainable, but I felt completely understanding of both their choices here. This show has a lot of thesis statements, but I keep going back to the idea from 2x1 that there are people who enter your life to help you get to the next point, and I think it’s entirely possible that Sam and Rebecca will mutually be that for each other.
I find comparisons between Rupert and Rebecca super upsetting. There are absolutely meaningful things to say about the irony of ending up in a situation with an uncomfortable resemblance to certain taboo elements of an ex’s situation. But that ex is abusive and manipulative and cruel and Rebecca has exhibited NONE of those behaviors, and it makes me really sad to think that people feel that the writers on this show have betrayed Rebecca in giving her this storyline.
As always, I reserve the right to keep blathering about this show. I’ve had a headache for a couple of days, but my head is also so full of 2x8 thoughts that I couldn’t keep them in even if the circumstances for writing this were not ideal. I kind of hate that I’ve included frustrated fandom thoughts within the analysis of what I felt was an absolutely gorgeous, complicated, heartbreaking, near-perfect episode of television, but if ya can’t be a little dramatic on your own tumblr while you’re feeling raw and under the weather, where can ya?
#ted lasso#ted lasso s2 spoilers#meta by me#ted lasso 2x8#a lesbian watches ted lasso#cw: suicide mention#cw: alcohol abuse mention
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What Izuku would be like in a relationship: The positive traits, the toxic traits, his love language, my own personal headcanons and an overall conclusion
WC: unknown
TW// POTENTIAL SPOILERS, No smut but Izuku is aged up, Toxic traits aren’t necessarily toxic...more so just bad traits, Teeny tiny little bit of angst, I think that’s it!
Masterlist
Disclaimer: I am in no way claiming the following headcanons are true. You are 100% free to disagree with me but please DO NOT send me hateful comments or asks. I am simply writing what I think Deku would be like in a relationship
a/n: Just to let you know, your nickname for him is Zuku just so you don’t think I kept spelling his name wrong.
-Deku is literally the kindest soul ever and it makes me want to cry. He’d give you his umbrella if you ever forgot yours, he’d literally carry you to first aid if you ever injure yourself- this man will legitimately do everything for you
-He’s incredibly observant. If he catches you looking at a pretty ring then he’ll literally show up at your door days later with that very same ring in his hands
“I saw you looking at it a few days ago and I wanted to surprise you!”
“Zuku baby oh my god how much did you spend?!”
“You don’t need to worry about it sunshine”
I wholeheartedly believe Izuku would call you his sunshine or something along those lines
-I have this one headcanon of him drawing you all the time as an excuse to “observe you and your quirk” but it’s really just because he wants to admire the way you shine underneath the sun- and that’s how he came up with the name Sunshine for you
-Deku has a heart of gold oh my god, this guy cares so much about you it’s unreal. Imagine trying to hide the fact that you’ve been crying while on a phone call- mission failed because he heard your shaky voice and now he’s on your doorstep with your favourite hoodie of his and your favourite snacks
-His memory is insanely good, like it’s freaky how good it is. Like you mentioned to him ONCE that you liked a certain drink and now he pulls up to your dates with that drink all the time (not like I’d complain if Deku brought me my favourite drink)
-Just like Bakugou, Deku is incredibly smart and he literally always comes up with a solution. You could literally vent to him about a problem you’re having at work and he’s come up with at least 73 solutions within 6 hours
-He’s determined and hardworking. Again, he’s just like Bakugou in the sense that he’ll put his blood, sweat and tears into whatever he’s doing- no matter if it’s a serious high stake mission or something like planning your weekly date. The second he puts his mind to something, he makes sure to give it his all.
-Izuku is your own personal cheerleader, this dude will hype you up no matter what. Training after work? he’s cheering for you. You completed a really difficult task? you better believe he’s gonna pat you on the back for it.
-He’s very protective of you. Remember when the LOV attacked the training camp and he rushed to find Kota? yeah he’s 10x more protective of you.
-And it’s not because he thinks you’re weak and can’t defend yourself, it’s because he genuinely worries about you all the time and just wants to make sure your always safe
-He’s an inspirational person, he makes you hella motivated to do even the most boring chores around the house
-Deku isn’t afraid to show his emotions. Unlike Bakugou, he’s often seen showing his emotions. Deku said “toxic masculinity who?”. He definitely gives 0 fucks if someone sees him crying/upset because I feel like Pro-Hero Deku would stop the stupid mindset of “Hero’s can’t show their genuine emotions”
-Izuku is the type of person to analyze all his losses, figure out what he did wrong and then learn from it to make sure he doesn’t make the same mistake again. He’s the complete opposite of Bakugou who gets bitter over his losses due to his superiority complex.
-He’s so good at comforting you that it’s unbelievable. Deku gives the warmest hugs that make you feel so safe- you literally cannot change my mind about this
-You know those hugs where the other person lightly rubs your back and lightly sways side to side with you? Yeah those are the hugs that Deku gives (he’d definitely give you a sweet little kiss on the forehead/cheek)
“Sunshine come here, let me hold you while you let out all your frustrations. I’ve got you, nothing can hurt you while you’re here with me”
-Can you tell I want some comforting Izuku hugs? He wouldn’t let go of you until he put a smile back on your face and GAHH oh my god I need Izuku hugs
-As much as I hate to do this, it needs to be done 😔✊🏻
-Izuku is such an over thinker, this guy worries about EVERYTHING under the sun. Your eyes didnt crinkle when you smiled? he’ll think you’re upset with him. You gave him a side hug rather than a normal hug? he’ll think he did something wrong.
-He’s self aware that he overthinks things but he just can’t seem to stop his thoughts. No matter how many times you reassure him that you aren’t upset with him, he’s subconsciously thinking about how to make it up to you
-He constantly pushes himself past his limits. You guys saw how many times he’s broken his bones. Deku may be intelligent but when it comes to his own self he can be completely hopeless
-The amount of times you’ve scolded him while you clean up his scrapes and cuts is insane. He just sits on the toilet lid and bites his lip nervously while you wave your finger angrily at him
“Sunshine please, I said I was sorry and that it won’t happen again!”
“Zuku you and I both know that’s a damn lie, I’ve had to patch you up 3 times this week! When are you going to start being more considerate of your limits?”
-I’m sorry but I picture him being so nervous to initiate anything with you. This guy would be so fidgety just by THINKING about holding your hand
-And deep down he knows he’s being ridiculous because come on, you’re his S/O and he’s been dating you for years now- why does he still get shaken up just by holding your hand?
-At first you think it’s cute, he’s just being respectful of your boundaries- but as time goes on you kind of get a little annoyed because he always asks you a bunch of times if you’re okay with him being affectionate.
“Zuku...sweetheart you know you don’t need to ask me a million times if I want to cuddle, right? I love cuddling with you!”
*cue sweating* “I’ll keep that in mind, Sunshine”
-He eventually gets a lot more comfortable with affection...more often than not you wake up with him nuzzled into your side like a cat
(Side note PLEASE wake him up with a bunch of kisses, he’ll literally melt)
-He’s very insecure about his scars because they make him feel like he’s “ugly” and sometimes he doesn’t even want you to look at them
-Do me a favour and please kiss along his scars/ trace them with your fingers while you compliment him- he’ll start crying because the scars he thought made him ugly are now starting to look beautiful to him
-This isn’t necessarily a toxic trait, more like a bad habit. Whenever Izuku gets stressed he’ll train himself to the brink of exhaustion just so he can try to focus on something other than how stressed he is
-Again, not a toxic trait but a bad one...Deku puts everyone else before himself. Which isn’t a bad thing if it’s done in a healthy amount, but Izuku goes to the extreme. I feel like he’d neglect his own needs just to satisfy everyone else and you’d have to intervene before it gets worse
“Sunshine I said I was fine, you don’t need to worry about me! Your Zuku is perfectly energized and ready to go”
“Zuku don’t lie to me, you know I can read you like a book. You’re coming with me and I’m putting you to bed”
-I hate to say it but this guy hates confrontation so much that sometimes he’ll suffer in silence for MONTHS before he even hints at being upset with something
-I honestly think your biggest argument with him would be about his lack of communication in terms of him not being completely honest about how he feels and he just breaks down-
-Like he has a really bad breakdown because he’s been bottling everything up for so long because he hates the idea of fighting with you.
-And now he’s sobbing because he’s so frustrated that he doesn’t know what else to do
-Anyways, the two of you just silently comfort each other until you’ve both calmed down enough to talk properly. This is the night Izuku finally starts opening up to you rather than bottling up every negative emotion he feels
-I honestly think his love language is a mixture of giving you gifts and words of praise
-He’s a little shy when it comes to showing you how he feels through affection, so giving you gifts and his praise get his point across
-He’s totally the type to send you cute messages throughout the day, send cute selfies when he misses you, or he just sends you a random bouquet of flowers because he saw them and thought of you
-Also the type of guy to have photos of the two of you displayed around his office. His most prized one being the photo of your first mission together
-Just warning you now that if you ever mention that your suit ripped or a certain item isn’t functioning properly then he’ll literally buy 10 replacements- each one better than the last
“Zuku I said that the sole of my BOOT ripped off, not my entire suit!”
“Well now you have 10 new upgraded suits to make sure it won’t happen again! Isn’t it great, Sunshine?”
(Someone take his credit card away from him)
I definitely think Izuku would be an amazing S/O! He’s caring, kind and comforting- and he does his very best to try and work on the bad habits he has.
Overall, I would say Izuku definitely would win a “S/O of the year award” (sorry Bakugou)
#izuku midoria x reader#izuku midoriya x reader#izuku x reader#deku x reader#deku angst#deku fluff#deku headcanons#my hero academia headcanons#bnha headcanons#bakugou angst#bakugou fluff#bakugou hcs#bakugou headcanons#shoto todoroki x reader#todoroki x reader#bakugou x reader#bnha deku x reader#mha deku x reader#todoroki fluff#todoroki angst#kirishima x reader#denki x reader#kirishima headcanon#denki headcanons#shoto x reader#shoto todoroki headcanons#katsuki bakugo x reader#katsuki bakugo headcanons#katsuki x reader#bnha shinso x reader
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the JGY amnesia Fic
[AN: Someday I will come up with decent titles for my fics... but not now XD I hope you like this fic, the premise is that the issue with XY and NMJ happens before JZX’s death, and so the argument and the stairs moves up in the timeline! And JGY hits his head and gets TV-show amnesia, and remembers no one, not even himself, but is otherwise his sharp, suspicious self...]
He wakes up sure that he is dying, nothing else could hurt so sharp, agonizing pain radiating out from the back of his head, stabbing sharply every time he is swung, and he forces his eyes open. The light burns, but he can make out an earth green and brown collar, and a strong jawline. He is being carried by this man.
He doesn’t know who this is, but he feels… safe. Even though every step this man takes makes his eyes water.
He blacks out.
*
His name is Jin Guangyao. It rolls smoothly off his tongue, but sits wrongly in his mind. “Temporary amnesia,” the doctor had informed him, when Jin Guangyao could not tell him the answers to any pf his questions; not his name, or the date, or where they were.
A fancy young master in white-and-gold robes, who introduces himself as Jin Zixuan, is the one who sits by his side and tells Jin Guangyao the basics of his life. There is such an obvious lack of detail that it leaves him intrigued. And Jin Zixuan looks ashamed when Jin Guangyao asked if he was Jin Zixuan’s uncle. “No, I’m your older brother,” he says. “We… we share a birthday, but you’re a day younger.”
Jin Guangyao watches him for a moment, and wonders at the source of his brother’s shame. “I’m a bastard, aren’t I?” he asks.
“My father legitimized you!” Jin Zixuan protests. “You’re my brother.”
Jin Guangyao smiles at him. This man is clearly naïve, but has no ill-intent. The man who had named Jin Guangyao Jin Guangyao, however? He is yet to ascertain that.
*
Jin Guangyao’s memory doesn’t return within the first week. With his head injury healed, though, he’s allowed to leave the infirmary which allows him to collect a lot more useful data.
There is a lot of work piled up in his room. Disorganized, as if someone had gone through it to take the important paperwork to work on while he is <infirm>. That he was assigned so much work that was non-essential makes him wonder if he was actually pretty low on the social ladder, here. He goes through all of them anyway, most of it is useful information, painting a picture of Jin sect’s activities, and the sorts of projects that they allow to drag on for weeks. Jin Guangyao has left meticulous notes in a separate notebook about how to put everything into a more sensible order. That such reworking was required
His accessories, or lack-there-of, are even more enlightening. There’s also a scholarly-sort of hat, and only a few cheap hair ribbons. Nothing at all like the intricate jade hairpins or crowns with intricate metalwork and precious stones that Jin Zixuan and Jin Zixun wore daily.
Jin Guangyao’s place here is… obvious.
He wonders who the man who had picked him up after his injury, was. No one tells him, not even Jin Zixuan, he just pats Jin Guangyao’s hand and says, “Don’t worry, you’re safe now.” The implications of that are obvious, of course, that the stranger was the one who had hurt him. And yet it’s a subject no one speaks of, of how Jin Guangyao had fallen down the thousand steps of Koi Tower, and he hadn’t asked after the first two times. He stays wary, watching everyone. Someone had tried to kill him, and he doesn’t even remember which of his acquaintances might want him dead.
*
Lan Xichen arrives two days after his release from the infirmary, Lan-Zongzhu, according to everyone else. He’s beautiful, the most beautiful person that Jin Guangyao has ever seen. Since he remembers all of a week, this doesn’t sound like a compliment, but Jin Guangyao could probably search for decades and not find anyone more beautiful. It would not be fair.
They have tea together, after Lan Xichen – “Call me er-ge, you are my sworn brother, A-Yao,” – has checked him over worriedly, and checked his meridians, and pressed his fingertips gently to the back of Jin Guangyao’s head, to where his head injury had been, and ascertained that he truly is well.
“They did not tell me you were injured,” he says. “Da-ge had to, and this is the week of new students for the summer lectures, I could not leave. Jin Zixuan promised me you were well, though,” he says. Sincerity shines through him, and Jin Guangyao wonders what on earth he, an unwelcome child in his own family, could have done to make this man care for him.
So he asks.
Lan Xichen describes a heroic young man, who gave him shelter when he needed it most, who had smiled and laughed at him, and helped him with chores he could not do, and gave him the strength to fight a war. Lan Xichen tells him that this kind young man had gone into a war that did not affect him, only to help, that he had turned spy against a raging mad man, and finally taken off his head.
“So that is why my father took me in,” says Jin Guangyao. There’s a flicker of pain on Lan Xichen’s face as Jin Guangyao tells him what he’s surmised about how he’s treated here. “Did you know?” asks Jin Guangyao.
“I suspected,” Lan Xichen says softly. “But you were too proud to tell me. You insisted you were happy here. I visited when I could, but I never… I’m so sorry.”
Jin Guangyao reaches out to pat Lan Xichen’s hand, it feels so familiar, even if Jin Guangyao can’t remember doing it before. He must have, Lan Xichen’s sad face cannot be borne. “I’m sure I didn’t want to bother you, er-ge. You’re overworking yourself even now.” The signs are there, even behind his flawless composure. “You look so tired.”
“I had to come,” says Lan Xichen. “I was so scared that you…” He trails off, then turns his hand, holding onto him tightly. “If you don’t remember your place at Koi tower, do you want to return with me until your memory recovers? We’re still reconstructing, but Cloud Rececsses is still an excellent place to ”
“This Jin Guangyao is honoured, but what if it doesn’t?” asks Jin Guangyao practically. “I can’t just leave my home like that.” More quietly, he adds, “There must have been some reason I didn’t leave before.”
“You never said, exactly, but I believe it was because of your mother,” says Lan Xichen. “She wished that you would gain your father’s recognition, and a place at Koi Tower.”
“Do you know anything about her?” Jin Guangyao is not an idiot, he knows from the snide remarks, the way that people try not to touch him that he is of low birth, that his mother’s occupation was. That. He wonders if Lan Xichen will lie to him.
“She was an educated woman,” he says. “A renowned beauty. You’ve told me that you take after her, in many ways. She was skilled in the arts. She never taught you art but she was your master in calligraphy and music. She loved you very much and wanted you to have a good education because she knew… she knew that A-Yao is so incredibly smart and destined for greater things.” He squeezes Jin Guangyao’s hand. “Her life was not easy. She suffered, but she loved you. She would be proud of you, to know how much you achieved.”
It should matter, it does matter, Jin Guangyao’s heart squeezes, but it is from sympathy for what Lan Xichen is feeling. The dark honey-gold eyes are bright with tears. Clearly Jin Guangyao had loved her very much, before. But Jin Guangyao cannot find in him any love for a woman that Jin Guangyao cannot imagine. A woman with his face, a prostitute, but educated, talented. And ambitious to have Jin Guangshan’s son.
“My father did not take her in, I gather?”
“He did not. She died of illness shortly before I met you.”
“Thank you for telling me,” says Jin Guangyao.
*
Lan Xichen stays an entire afternoon, and readies himself to leave at dusk. Jin Guangyao accompanies him to the sky-pavilion on Koi Tower that the Jin disciples use to take off from.
There’s a last nagging question that Jin Guangyao hadn’t managed to slide into the conversation, as it meandered into cultivation theory and Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen had tried to piece out some kind of pattern in what kinds of cultivation knowledge he had retained, and what he had forgotten. It had been an interesting exercise.
“Er-ge, before you go,” says Jin Guangyao. He looks around cautiously, but no one is near enough to overhear. “You’re older than Jin Zixuan, aren’t you?” he asks, and Lan Xichen nods. “So our da-ge… you never said. Is he… did he die during the war?”
“No!” cries Lan Xichen. “A-Yao no, he’s not. He’s fine, he just could not find time to visit.”
Lie.
It’s the first time Lan Xichen has lied to him today, but Jin Guangyao is certain of it.
“No one talks about him, and I couldn’t find any letters from him. I did find a few of yours. No one even says his name. Who is he?”
“Nie Mingjue,” says Lan Xichen, sounding defeated. “Of course you would think to ask, but his name is Nie Mingjue.”
Everything falls into place. Jin Guangyao has seen some Nie disciple couriers on their way to private meetings with his father and the Jin council of elders. Hard faced and angry looking, they kept to themselves and departed the moment they could, without staying for a meal or entertainment.
“You think he pushed me down the stairs,” says Jin Guangyao.
“No,” says Lan Xichen. “We know he did. He kicked you down the stairs. He–”
“And you believe that?” asks Jin Guangyao.
“Of course I do,” says Lan Xichen. “Da-ge was the one who told me. I knew that things were difficult between the two of you, recently, but I had not imagined… It does not matter, we are looking through the records now, so that you can be free of your vows to him, and even if we can’t find something, he won’t visit Koi Tower again, Jin-zongzhu has forbidden it.”
“Oh,” says Jin Guangyao, mind whirring. “Okay then.”
“Is A-Yao afraid we’re covering something up?” asks Lan Xichen. Jin Guangyao is not sure what gave it away, he thought he’d kept his face smooth.
“Naturally I trust er-ge,” he says, smiling up at him. “I just remember him, vaguely. He picked me up. He saved me.”
It’s Jin Guangyao’s first memory, pained and fragmented though it is.
“He did take you up to the infirmary right after,” Lan Xichen agrees. He looks faintly puzzled, like he’s not sure why that matters to Jin Guangyao.
“I understand,” says Jin Guangyao. “Nie-zongzhu would of course regret his action after his moment of anger.”
“He does,” Lan Xichen assures him. “You should write to him, if you are willing to accept his apologies, but Da-ge is terribly sorry.”
“Thank you er-ge, I will,” Jin Guangyao promises. The relief on Lan Xichen’s face is too pure for this world.
He waves goodbye after Lan Xichen takes off, and steps back into the maze of Koi Tower, mulling over all the new knowledge that Lan Xichen had brought with him. He was right, he should write to Nie Mingjue.
But after some more research.
What could they have possibly quarrelled about so badly?
Jin Guangyao makes his way back to his rooms, keeping his face expressionless at the gilded opulence and overt unfriendliness of his home. He doesn’t understand his past self at all.
Why does he still live here, where he’s so clearly unwanted?
Why did he even care for the acknowledgement of Jin Guangshan, who from even just Jin Guangyao’s few interactions this week and the gossip he’s picked up, is a selfish, disgusting pervert who wouldn’t spit on Jin Guangyao if he was on fire.
Just because his mother wanted him to?
She was a good woman, he hears again, in Lan Xichen’s sincere voice. But Jin Guangyao doesn’t get it. She had to have been a fool, to believe in Jin Guangshan, or terribly cold and cruel to send him to Jin Guangshan knowing exactly what kind of derision would await him here. He is a war hero, and yet he’s treated like a servant.
Jin Guangyao is in the mood to be charitable, so he picks the former.
He still doesn’t know why he stayed.
[You can now read part 2 here!]
#meng yao#jin guangyao#nie mingjue#lan xichen#3zun#fix-it#JGY revaluating his own life objectively#amnesia#the fictional kind
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Here is My Completely Self-indulgent Medivh Essay! OKAY HERE WE GO!
Whenever I think about it, I find that Medivh’s situation was really a fucked up one. Possession by Sargeras aside, his story deals a lot with trauma, neglect, abuse, and the selfishness of a parent. I think it’s really easy to forget about all of that with Blizz’s writing and the fact that Medivh was a really powerful mage.
Medivh didn’t have a choice in things for the majority of his life. Ignoring Chronicle’s softening of Aegwynn (the only thing I actually liked that was added to her lore was her friendship with Moroes), she straight up used Nielas Aran to have a baby and then came back to use him as free childcare because she wasn’t looking to be a mother.
Disclaimer, Aegwynn is a complicated character who I really appreciate. She was a hero and probably the best Guardian, period. Yet, she was a very flawed character and I like that about her. She could be selfish, self righteous, and a smartass. Chronicle having her in love with Nielas and loving Medivh as her son is something I think took a lot away from her and the impact of her eventually bringing Medivh back. Aegwynn didn’t want love or to be a mother, she wanted to pass on the power of the Guardian to someone born from herself to spit in the eye of the Council of Tirisfal. Aegwynn did it because she considered them to be idiots and was petty.
Medivh was born with a future already chosen for him. He was to be the Guardian, he couldn’t be anything else. From the get-go, Medivh had little autonomy and it makes his mischievousness and eventual wilding out post-9-year-coma in the form of partying and living vibrantly make more sense. When you add Sargeras and him possessing Medivh since before he was born, it’s a double whammy. Medivh not only had no future of his own but was set up for failure from the very beginning.
I’ve always pictured Sargeras as being an abuser that gradually broke Medivh down. Whispering things to him throughout his life, making him think they were his own thoughts, gaslighting him, and suddenly stripping things away from him. Medivh had friends in Llane and Lothar, he also had his father. When he was about fourteen, the powers of the Guardian suddenly lashed out and killed Nielas. Medivh then fell into a coma that lasted for almost ten years. Medivh never got a chance to be a teenager and grow into an adult. He woke up and suddenly he was 23-24 years old. Lothar (now the kingdom’s champion) and Llane (now the king of Stormwind) had moved on in their lives, his father was dead, and time left Medivh behind. Physically he was an adult where he was likely still fourteen mentally. Medivh lost a good chunk of his life and likely would have felt horribly alone. I always figured a situation like that would be traumatizing and that would be something Sargeras would capitalize on. The long coma was just another part in his campaign to twist Medivh to his will.
But Medivh is the Guardian, he has to do his job, it was what he was born for. I could see this being the main reason he wilds out during his younger years. Trying to shake the trauma and anxieties, he clings onto things his loves and likes. He wants to make his own personality, his own choices, and his own life. He’s thinking like a teenager because, mentally and emotionally, he is one. This makes it easier for Sargeras to take advantage of him. To play on depression, anxieties, and the crushing weight the mantle of being the Guardian was.
Being the Guardian means you have amazing magical powers at your fingertips. You are Azeroth’s best line of defense, putting your life on the line to fight against threats that could decimate a planet. It’s also a lonely existence, since you have to keep your role a secret from the world at large. You have to forsake the ideas of relationships and being too close to people because you could make yourself vulnerable where you can’t afford to be. It’s a great honor to be the Guardian...if that’s what you wished to be. Again, Medivh never asked to be the Guardian, he was born to take on that role. So I imagine to him, it was more of a burden than anything else.
In Wrath of the Lich King, there’s an item you can fish from the Dalaran fountain called ‘Medivh’s Silver Coin’. It’s flavor text I think says a lot about Medivh and what he was going through. Sargeras and the Guardian were the dominant forces in his life, overshadowing who Medivh himself actually was as a person. It makes some of the new lore for him all the more tragic. Throwing parties, surrounding himself and filling his tower with people and things he liked. Only for it to be taken and destroyed once again by Sargeras. Moroes, who had survived the incident, seemed to legitimately care for Medivh. But having seen the horrors he did that killed so many of the tower’s denizens and party guests broke his mind. Medivh, out of care for the steward, sealed Moroes’ memories of the event away but he was never the same since. Thus put an end to Medivh’s gallas and vibrancy, he shut himself away as he fully realized his situation. Sargeras had taken everything from him.
So, who was Medivh as a person? Not the Guardian, not Sargeras, who is Medivh Aran? I think that when he’s able to make his own choices, Medivh is more inclined to at least try to do good.
In ‘The Last Guardian’, Medivh’s relationship with his mother is a complicated one. Aegwynn did abuse him with her reasons for giving birth to him and then neglecting him. Medivh understandably resented her but also still loved her because she was his mother. (Without going into anything from my personal life, I can understand the conflict of these feelings.) Sargeras at that point in his life had an iron grip hold over him, Medivh was his tool, his property. Using her own son, Sargeras spoke though him and called Aegwynn out on her bullshit. Right there Medivh could have killed her, instead he spared her and sent her away. Even with that anger and resentment he seized what autonomy he could and chose his love for her instead.
When Medivh was resurrected, free of both Sargeras and the Guardian, he chose to try to help Azeroth in what ways he could. Trying to warn them and nudge things into a better direction but events throughout ‘World of Warcraft’ undid a lot of it (the Bombing of Theramore being one example).
While the debate on whether Medivh is actually alive or is a ghost is still up in the air, I headcanon him as being alive. That Aegwynn gave him a new life to finally have for himself. The biggest issue being that Medivh is haunted by the events that happened to him. He’s a survivor, likely living as a hermit (and hating it) in his study, living with the trauma he’s stuck with. With him and Khadgar reuniting and apparently hanging out together in Karazhan, I hope that he can get a chance to heal.
If you read through all this, thank you, I hope that you enjoyed it.
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Comfortember: Day#23 - Hiding
I feel bad about the last two (depressing) chapters. This is supposed to be comfortember after all, so I’m bringing some levity to the plot again. :D
************
“Are you done staring at yourself?”
Din quickly pulled away from the mirror and straightened up. He’d been waiting for Bo-Katan to join him in the command room to discuss their strategy before they were to meet a distant Mandalorian tribe. They’d somehow already heard about the recent reacquisition of the Darksaber and wanted to see it for themselves. It had been deemed prudent for the time being to let them believe that Din was its rightful owner and wielder, as Bo-Katan had readily admitted she had no idea how they would react.
Din didn’t particularly care either way, as he was still ambivalent about his involvement, but if it meant he could stop expecting an ambush every time he turned a corner from someone who wanted to duel him for the ancient blade, he was certainly in favor of it. That, and it was a great distraction at the moment – he didn’t have to think about the kid. Or his own tribe.
“I wasn’t staring at himself,” he quickly refuted, shuffling his feet and fighting the urge to put his helmet back on. Truth was, he was still having a hard time with the whole showing his face thing. Much more than with the legitimate ruler of Mandalore one.
“You’re going to have to get used to it,” Bo noted knowingly, arching an elegant eyebrow. They’d discussed it before, and decided it wouldn’t do for the visiting tribe to learn he was a Child of the Watch – at least not yet. They could turn out to be powerful allies in their quest, and they needed all the help they could get at the moment. It was all about reuniting Mandalorians, and Din begrudgingly agreed it was indeed for the best.
It didn’t mean he had to like it, though. Or be good at it.
“Actually, we should train some more while we wait for the others, sit down,” she all but ordered, and Din groaned. Not this again.
“Show me your ‘I’m listening intently to what you’re saying’ face,” she requested as soon as he was seated in front of her. Din tried to school his features carefully – this was an easy one.
“You look bored out of your skull,” she remarked.
“I look like I’m listening,” he countered.
“You’re not, try harder.”
Din sighed deeply.
“Don’t roll your eyes!” Bo complained.
“I’m rolling my eyes at you, not at this imagined scenario.”
“Fine, let’s try something else: show me your serious face.”
Din forced himself to appear somber but unthreatening – a difficult feat at the best of times, but made worse when he had to do it at the drop of a hat.
“You look like you’re about to murder someone,” Bo-Katan remarked, fighting a smile.
“That’s my serious face.”
“It needs some work.”
Din drummed his fingers over the table – where were the others? He was getting tired of this and he could tell Bo was enjoying herself a bit too much. But then he was pretty bored, and this was harmless fun – something that had been hard to come by lately.
“One more,” he requested, surprising himself.
“Alright, a difficult one then,” Bo determined. “Show me an actual smile.”
Din pictured the kid making a silly face at him – it really wasn’t that hard, those memories were always at the forefront of his mind.
“This one could actually work!” she noted, observing him carefully and with a small grin of her own.
“Really?”
“Koska, come over here!” she yelled, turning towards the open door. “You have to see Djarin smile, he has dimples and everything, it’s adorable!”
Din grumbled an expletive – why had he agreed to play this game again?
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Forgiven - Gajeel X Levy
WARNINGS: Light swearing
WORD COUNT: 1.9k
GENRE: fluff, slight angst
FANDOM: Fairy Tail
PAIRING: Gajeel x Levy
The guild hall was loud and rowdy as ever as Gajeel sat alone at the bar, drinking whatever the hell Mira had put in his mug. It didn't matter to him as long as it got him drunk.
"Getting a head start today are we?" Gajeel turned around and saw the small master of Fairy Tail climbing into the stool next to him.
Gajeel chuckled as he took another swig, "It's gonna take a lot more than this to get me drunk, old man."
"Oh I don't doubt it," Makarov replied. He signaled for Mira to pour him a drink, then promptly chugged it down as if it were nothing but water. "Your tolerance must be impeccable if this is what you're putting away this early in the morning."
Gajeel smirked, "years of practice."
The two men chuckled as they drank together, falling into a comfortable silence as the guild hall roared behind them.
A small pair of arms wrapped themselves around Gajeels shoulders as a kiss was planted on his cheek. Gajeel turned his head to face his bright eyed girlfriend Levy.
Gajeel couldn't help the smile that came to his face every time he saw her. "Hey short stack," He said as he gave her a quick peck on the lips.
Levy ignored the nickname, "Me and the guys are heading out on a job for a few days."
Gajeel grunted, "is anyone else going?"
Levy shook her head, "No, but the job isn't that dangerous. Just a simple escort mission for a Lord and his daughter."
"Still, I'd feel better if you took Lily with you," Levy puffed our her cheeks.
"I can h-"
"Trust me Lev, I know you're capable of kicking so serious ass, it's the other two I don't trust." Gajeel looked behind Levy at Jet and Droy stuffing their faces.
Levy sighed, "fine, you big baby."
"That's my girl." Gajeel leaned in to whisper in Levy's ear, "I'll make it up to you when you get back."
He couldn't help but laugh as his girlfriend turned bright red in front of him. "I-I gotta go now!" Levy gave Gajeel a chaste kiss on the lips. He watched her as she met the black exceed by the door.
"Hey," Gajeel called out to Jet and Droy before they could join them. They walked over to Gajeel who then grabbed them both by the wrist and pulled them in close. "If she comes back with a single scratch," he hissed, "I will put you two in a fucking coffin."
Jet and Droy both shivered as they nodded frantically. Gajeel let go of them and they practically ran out of the guild hall. Sighing, Gajeel turned back around to take a drink, already missing his girlfriend.
"I must say Gajeel," The master started, "when I first took you in, I never would have imagined you would have fallen for my little Levy."
A faint blush dusted over his cheeks, "Well," He didn't like thinking about his time before Fairy Tail, the person he was, but he couldn't help it as the memories came back, "I was a real piece of shit back then."
He didn't realize how hard he was gripping the handle of his mug until he let go of it, revealing dents in the shape of his fingers.
"Shit," he muttered as Mira came up to grab the mug from him, "I'll buy you a new one."
Mira just laughed it off, "No need Gajeel. If we had to replace every dented mug in this place, we'd go bankrupt!"
"Mira, could you give us a minute?" Makarov asked. Nodding, Mira walked into the back room, leaving the two men alone at the bar.
"I was wondering when you were gonna cut to the chase," Gajeel said.
"Yes, but I believe it is you with something to say, my boy." The two men sat there in silence for a few seconds before the master asked, "Can I see it?"
The box in Gajeels pocket suddenly felt like a weight dragging him down. In one fluid motion, he grabbed the box and slid it to the old man next to him, careful to not let anyone see it.
Makarov pulled back the lid to reveal a small iron ring. Intricate designs of swirls carved to look like vines and flowers decorated its sides, meeting in the middle to hold a heart shaped diamond.
"How did you know?" Gajeel asked.
"I know a lot of things, Gajeel. I just happened to catch you staring at it when you think no one is watching." Makarov said as he twisted the box around to look at the ring from all angles.
Gajeel nearly choked on his drink, "fuck," he muttered. The master chuckled and clapped Gajeel on the back.
"It's a beautiful ring Gajeel," he said, sliding the ring back to him. "You must love her a great deal."
Gajeel smiled softly, "Yeah," he looked at the ring and closed the lid with a sigh. "I don't deserve her."
"How so?"
"Are you serious?" Gajeel asked, but Makarov stayed silent. Softly, Gajeel said, "I hurt her."
Makaraov hummed in acknowledgement, "So that's it huh?" Memories flooded into Gajeels mind. Him attacking her that night, the way she screamed, her nearly lifeless body hanging from that god damned tree. Gajeel swallowed down the bile rising in his throat.
"I hurt her, Master. I hurt her and her friends and laughed about it, bragged about it. But the moment I joined the guild, she treated me like nothing had ever happened. I wasn't 'Black Steel Gajeel', I was just Gajeel Redfox. If I'm being honest, it kinda pissed me off."
The master hummed, "Really?"
"Yeah," he replied, "it pissed me off because I had no idea why she would even bother being nice to me. I wouldn't have been. But of course, she's just that wildly forgiving of other people. I didn't deserve her forgiveness, and that's why it pissed me off."
"You have long since been forgiven for your sins of the past, Gajeel" The master said. Gajeel whipped his head to face him.
"What?"
"Do you know why I chose to recruit you instead of the other members of Phantom Lord?" Makarov asked and Gajeel shook his head. There was no hint of sarcasm or condescension in his voice, just plain sincerity. "I picked you because not just because I wanted to help you find the right path, but because I knew that it was possible. I saw a light in you that had been clouded by Jose and his teachings. The things you did were deplorable, and you know that more than anyone, but answer me this. Would you have done the things you did that night if Jose hadn't ordered you to?"
No. He wouldn't have. He didn't even go as far as he was supposed to that night. Jose had ordered him to kill Levy, Jet, and Droy, but he refused.
Makarov continued on, "Ever since I took you in, you have done nothing but prove me right. You have shown that you are willing to fight for your family and that you're proud to be a fairy, and we're proud to have you."
Gajeel looked around the guild hall as he processed the masters words. He looked at the people he had met over the past several years, and he realized he was proud. He had made legitimate friends in a guild he once tried to destroy and fell in love with a girl he had almost killed.
All those nice thoughts however couldn't stop the doubt from creeping into his mind. "Even still, I can't provide for her. It took me months to work enough jobs to even buy the materials for that ring, and it's not like those jobs were easy."
"You and I both know she doesn't care about that."
"But I do master!" Gajeel slammed his fist on the bar a little louder than he wanted to. Some people looked their way for a moment but quickly resumed doing whatever it was they were doing. "She deserves the world, but I simply can't give it to her."
Makarov took another swig of his drink, "You're right. She does deserve the world. But she wants you," He stood up on the bar stool and made eye contact with the man across from him. "We all have our demons, Gajeel. We all have scars that will never fade, those voices in our heads that tell us to just give up and that we'll never be good enough. But you are lucky enough to have a family that will support you in every choice you make, and a woman who loves you with her entire heart.
"You will have to live with the things you have done for the rest of your life. You cannot go back and undo it no matter how much you wish you could. What you can do is live every day showing how much you've grown. You have atoned for your sins. Levy, Jet, and Droy have forgiven you. I have forgiven you. Now you must work to forgive yourself. And if you never do, that's okay. Just don't let it stop you from living your new life.
"Never forget Gajeel that you deserve happiness just as much as everyone else under this roof. If that means a future with Levy, then I will spend every remaining second I have left ensuring that future comes to pass, and every second after that protecting it. On my honor as the master of the Fairy Tail guild."
Gajeel didn't know at what point he had started crying. No one had ever told him that he deserved to be happy, but here was someone saying it as if it were the most obvious thing it the world.
"Master I-"
"Do you love her, Gajeel?" Makarov asked.
In that moment, Gajeel saw Levys face. Her bright smile, her eyes that always sparkled, her blue hair that reminded him of the sky, the way she puffed her cheeks whenever he teased her.
He remembered all their missions together, their time in the military, all the times they had nearly died; Tenrou Island, Tartaros, Alvarez, he had never felt fear the way he did when he was confessing to Levy as he was slowly dying, and the pure elation he felt when he finally saw her again.
He thought about what he wanted in the future, and in his mind he saw Levy in a white dress walking down the aisle. He saw with a hand on her rounded stomach. He saw her reading to their children and him singing to them. He saw them growing old and gray together. His heart swelled with emotions he had never felt before as he looked into the future.
Every day he wakes up to Levy lying next to him, and he always thinks that he'll never be able to fall for her more than he already has, and every day he is proven wrong.
Gajeel smiled as he wiped away a tear from his face, "more than anything."
Makarov returned his smile, "Then marry her Gajeel. You have my blessing. Make a family with her. Make a life that both of you can be proud of living. Make her as happy as she makes you." Makarov held out his hand and Gajeel took it in his.
"I promise I will," Another tear fell down his face, "Thank you master."
"You're welcome, my son."
#Gajeel#gajeel x levy#Fairy tail#Gajeel redfox#levy mcgarden#fanfiction#writing#natsu dragneel#lucy heartfilia#fluff and romance#romance#marriage#oneshot#fairy tail one shot#gajevy one shot
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Lost & Found | Jimin (M)
Jimin x Fem!Reader | s2f2l au, (ex)-policeman!Jimin, vetnurse!Reader | fluff, meet-cute, (emphasis on) hurt/comfort, angst and heavy angst, found families, slight humour, mentions of other members
Summary: You’ve essentially spent your whole life working around dogs, through sickness and through health, but one memorable encounter at the park has you thinking ‘why not one more?’
Or, maybe it’s not the dog that needs help, but rather the beautiful yet reserved man with honey blonde hair at his side. Perhaps, rather than dogs and cats, you need to start learning how to heal people. Maybe then you can start to heal yourself too.
Warnings: tw // (mental health, descriptions of death - no major, descriptions of abandonment - not by main characters, absent parents) // Descriptions of traumatic experiences, mental health issues/struggles (depression, anxiety), minor character death, hurt/comfort, mental breakdowns / resolved breakdowns. Only the tiniest, vaguest references to suicide - basically nothing.
- semi non-descriptive smut, fooling around in the pool, kissing, touching, fucking ... plenty of cussing lol
Word Count: 18.6k (hahahha kill me)
A/N: Okay so here is my entry for the Ghostie Network’s ‘Dynamite Dads’ event, and it’s a bit late oops! I wasn’t really feeling up to write Jimin as a dad with an actual human baby, but I did the next best thing and gave him a gorgeous pupper who he basically treats as his own child ... enjoy :)
The genre was FLUFF, and my trope was ‘found family’. I promise you there is definitely some fluff to pay off for the angst. I feel ok saying it’s nothing too extreme, 🥺 but please heed the warnings and don’t hate me too much for the pain hehe
There will be a sequel, so this will most likely end up being a two-shot. You’ll see what I mean :)
<< masterlist
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Jimin knows from the very moment he opens his eyes to the sound of 6 a.m. birdsong, that today would be it. His last day.
He drags himself from bed, all fluffed up hair and puffy eyes, shrugging on the same dark navy uniform he’s worn for the past five years. He blinks away the sleep clutching at his eyelids, trying his best to prevent the flashing colours behind them from focusing into memories.
Perhaps they were a lingering dream, flooded with the distant sounds of wailing sirens and a snarling canine, but thankfully they vanish with one brisk shake of his head.
Snarling swiftly changes into a gentle whine, and Jimin raises his head with a troubled sigh to see Mandu sniffing by his bedroom door. His best friend, his companion, and most of all his boy. Jimin’s cheeks lift in a small smile, and the dog with a pelt of rich fawn brightens instantly, tail thumping the wall in innocent glee at seeing his handler’s eyes shine.
“Morning, bud.”
Not two hours later, Jimin’s sitting just outside the chief’s office. He waits with downcast eyes, fiddling with his fingers to ward away the nerves and anxiety causing his heartbeat to pick up speed.
He knows how it looks; he knows that everyone there can see through him and his firm expression. He’s never been good at hiding emotions very well, despite society’s expectation that anyone working in the law enforcement sphere should. No, not him, and that’s exactly why he has to leave it all behind.
“Officer Park…”
The chief’s eyes are not upset, angry or surprised by the news, but rather concerned. Jimin swallows his guilt down heavily, knowing full well that he has every right to do what he’s doing. He fights the urge to comb his fingers through his soft honey blonde hair, or the instinctual need to scratch at his own neck from the sheer distress of it all.
“Park, is it because of yesterday?”
That simple phrase was all it took to send him reeling back.
Flashing colours and background noise burst into focus, and Jimin suddenly finds himself reliving everything. Heavy well-worn boots thudding against the road slick with fresh rain, the sound of shrieking sirens all around, piercing his eardrums like knives. His lungs constricting, burning, with need for air as he follows Mandu into the darkness of the alley.
“Jung! Jung, where-”
Jimin can barely hear himself think above the clatter, the vicious snarling and gnashing of teeth against flesh being the only sound keeping him grounded. He has a job to do, and he’ll see it through to the end even if it costs him his life. He cocks his pistol and carefully peers around the corner of the dimly lit alleyway, hoping that the pathetic cries of the criminal under attack means that the coast is somewhat clear.
Anxiety bubbles up in his chest, for his partner and his boy, but he knows he can’t let his worry for them cloud his judgement now, of all times.
“Drop your weapon now!” he shouts above the noise, rounding the corner to apprehend the man currently locked into a bloody fight with his K-9 counterpart, desperately kicking and shoving to try and escape the ferociously snapping jaw knocking him down.
To Jimin’s relief, the weapon in question had been thrown down with a clatter amidst the man’s struggle, the gun still rotating slightly in its place from the force of its projection.
Then his bones freeze up when he watches the shiny object come to rest by a steel-capped boot, a boot so familiar to his eyes because it’s the exact same one he wears.
It’s Jung. Slumped against the wall, unmoving, unseeing … blood pools everywhere around him, and the iron-tinged smell hits Jimin right in the face until he can barely stand to breathe. “H-Hoseok, no…”
Mandu’s growls bring him crashing down to Earth, and Jimin’s pulled the trigger before he can even think twice about his actions. In the back of his mind, he knows he’s trained unconditionally to aim for non-fatal points on the human body, but right then and there, through the crimson haze of his fury, he wished he’d been able to do it.
Avenge him.
“Park…”
“Officer Park? Are you with me?”
Jimin gasps lightly, blinking his eyes to chase away the all-too-fresh memory from his mind yet again. His bottom lip is clamped so hard between his teeth, he wonders if the iron taste of blood in his mouth had actually been more than imagination. The superior officer sat at the desk in front of him nods solemnly.
“Park Jimin, I understand completely. I can’t stop you…”
The chief’s voice fades into the background as Jimin lets his thoughts wander once more, but he soon feels the darkness eating away at him again. The inner demons, the pain and suffering, because everyone leaves you, Jimin. The cycle repeats, you let yourself love then you let yourself lose.
“The … adoption of ‘Mandu’ as you’ve stated here, has already been finalised. We’re glad to see a long serving canine of our force retire to a responsible home. Thank you, Park.”
“Of course, Chief.”
The older man sighs and gives Jimin a once-over, clearly recognising that the man before him needs time to heal, however long that may be. Jimin feels it too, deep within his heart, his mind, and his very soul. This was it. He could finally hide. He could finally stop inflicting all this pain on himself and push it back to the deepest corners of his mind, where it would remain untouched.
“We thank you for your service, please hand in your badge and equipment by the end of the week.”
~ three months later ~
“That’s it for the day!”
Muscles aching and eyes watering from a yawn, you peel the stretchy gloves from your hands with a grimace. The sweaty feeling lingers on your skin long after throwing the disgusting things in the trash. It’s only after you shed your nurse scrubs and lanyard that you remember you aren’t quite ready to finish up.
“(Y/n), you just have to take Jessie out for a bit before you go,” your colleague calls, much to your chagrin at the reminder. It’s been a long day at the veterinary clinic, and even if vet nursing wasn’t quite as strenuous of a job as legitimate veterinarian work, it still sapped a decent amount of energy.
God, you just want nothing more than to go home to your warm bed, and your fluffball cat. Instead, you pack away your uniform and grab a leash to prepare for the walk.
“C’mon girl,” you coo gently to the old border collie resting in her cage. There was an immense pride in the way the clinic took care of its sick and injured animals, and that included exercising the dogs every single day without fail. You absolutely loved it, loved your job and everything it entailed.
Ten minutes later, you’re letting the gate to the local park click shut behind you.
The dog park is remarkably busy today, you muse after letting Jessie off her leash for a run. Inside the spacious area – fenced off nicely with grasses delightfully green from the Spring air – are dogs and puppies of various shapes, sizes and colours bounding around each-other like ping pong balls.
You can’t suppress a snort of amusement as a particularly handsome pooch catches your eye, something akin to a German Shepherd though not quite as large. Your eyes follow the energetic bundle of energy as he darts around the group of dogs, chasing them and nipping at their heels to keep them controlled, just how he likes it.
It was inevitable that Jessie would soon join in, and you can only let out knowing sigh at the sight of the beautiful collie’s eyes lighting up with that familiar fire; a flame that had remained dormant for many, many years within her ageing mind. She takes off and rounds up the strays of the flock, arthritis in her joints long forgotten as her instincts to chase and collect take over entirely.
“Mandu, why…”
A breathy sigh escapes the person standing barely a metre away from where you sit on the park bench, and you finally take a moment to observe the other dog owners milling around this sector of the park. Their eyes are wide in confusion as they witness the spectacle happening before them, but you’re brought back to the man closest to you as he lets out another disappointed click of his tongue.
“It’s normal with herding breeds,” you find yourself saying through a fond smile, though your socially awkward inner self wants to kick you in the ass for it. The man, who looks as though he’d been about to jump in to collect his zippy companion, falters in his motion to regard you in surprise.
“Yeah, uh, it’s just been a while since my boy’s done it.” He rubs at his neck self-consciously, eyes glancing around to see if anyone’s thrown him a dirty or judgemental look already. From your place on the wooden seat, you can easily catch the way the sunlight caresses the man’s unique features, the worn-out sneakers and running wear telling you that he comes this way often to exercise.
He clears his throat. “You…”
As he trails off, somehow losing confidence halfway through his sentence, you feel that familiar pang of embarrassment that comes with talking to strangers. “Mine’s the collie, so I know I should probably step in too.” You laugh quietly, instantly breaking eye-contact when he holds your stare for a second too long.
He was stunning, to say the least, with incredibly soft looking caramel hair swept back from his face, and pillowy looking lips that were large, but fitting when placed together with his smooth sloping cheekbones and an elegant jawline. His eyes, though, were tired. They were so tired, and you knew exactly what it felt like to leave home every day when you were … that emotionally exhausted.
At your comment, the man breaks into a grin, because well … you’re in the same boat here. He’s probably relieved that you hadn’t lectured him on dog behaviour or keeping his pet in check, or something like that. Nope, turns out you were just as liberal as he was.
You get to your feet, trying to inwardly shake the tingling in your chest from the sight of his lips curling into a smile alone, and jostle the leash in your hand to try and get your playful lady’s attention.
When that didn’t work, you let out a loud whistle and hope that the slight burning sensation travelling up the back of your neck would fade away soon. Although, you knew that as long as the curious man kept his eyes trained on you, it would persist. “Jessie, here girl.”
The beautiful stranger follows suit, but to your shock he barely has to make any noise, just a simple gesture and briskly spoken word before his responsive dog is sitting to attention at his feet. Ears pricked and warm canine eyes focusing on his owner as if nothing else in the world would ever matter as much as he did in that moment. You quickly look up to catch a glimpse of the man’s face once more, and the love now swimming in his gaze as he ruffles the dog’s pointy ears was nothing short of breathtaking.
You should go now.
You utter a tiny ‘bye’ as you take your leave, not even sure that the captivating man is able to hear you over the way he’s currently trying to scold his tawny-furred dog in a soft, gentle tone. A stern voice that still made it obvious just how endeared he was behind the annoyed façade.
You glance down to where Jess pads quietly on the pavement beside you, her black and white wavy pelt somewhat tousled from the exertion and her tongue lolling out in pure elation after stretching her legs. Sunlight, a blinding smile, caramel blonde hair…
How were you supposed to think of anything else now?
~
Three days pass, and you’re back in the clinic. Work is piling up, and you’re basically booked out thanks to a spontaneous outbreak of ‘Kennel Cough’ throughout nearby shelters. How the infectious disease spread to not one, but two localised areas, nobody knew.
“Someone must have taken their dog to all of them, or maybe had it transferred mid-vacation,” you growl to Dr. Kim, lining the antibiotics up on the med table after checking the clipboard thoroughly. Healthy vaccinated dogs would be fine, perhaps a tad sickly for a week or two, but puppies and those with immune deficiencies? Out of luck unfortunately.
“I’ve scheduled the radiographs for the most affected,” Dr. Kim informs, and you’re in a right mind to believe he’s only trying to reassure you right now. He sighs and flashes you a weary smile, age-lines prominent around his kind features thanks to the recent months of stress. “Hopefully we can rule out any pneumonia. You’re free to go on break by the way, Nurse (L/n).”
At the word ‘break’, you feel dread crash through your body like a heavy wave. Shit, had you forgotten to bring lunch today? A wishful image floats through your head of the delicately tossed Greek salad you’d prepared the night before, only problem being that it was still wrapped neatly in the fridge at home.
“Damn it,” you mutter, planting a forced smile on your face when the older doctor eyes you worriedly at the soft outburst. “Sorry, I’ll need to head out today.”
You can’t stop internally punching yourself for being forgetful, knowing that it’ll cost you precious time to walk to the nearest eateries and back. Perhaps if you owned a car, you’d be able to savour those few extra minutes of relaxing during your break.
Nope, it’s walking for you now. Idiot.
So off you go. The route is pleasantly quiet for the most part, with the sun slowly beginning to warm the leaves on trees as they protect their newly forming flower buds. There’s the incessant yet melodic chirping of birds while they scourge the nearby plants for food, either for themselves or their young. It was easy to stop and appreciate the various signs of revival and rebirth around you, but maybe not today.
Today, you had too much to worry about and too much weighing you down. There were so many helpless animal lives that were going to be lost, all because of one person and their ignorance. You had to come to terms with death fairly quickly when entering this line of work, but that didn’t make it any easier as time passed by.
Especially for someone like you.
You come to a sudden stop and blink your eyes firmly. The painted sign that blocks your path display the words ‘DOG PARK’ in all capitals, and it throws you off guard completely. You’d … somehow taken this heavy of a detour? Well, you suppose it could be worse, and the park did have another entrance on the far side you can use to somehow shortcut your way into town, but you can’t shake your confusion until ah.
There he is. The dog park guy, standing slightly off the well-trodden path. He’s dressed in a casual grey tee shirt and comfy matte black shorts this time, effortlessly showing off the defined muscles of his calves as he bends down to retrieve a bright green frisbee. He then flings it so high into the air, you doubt even his wonderfully enthusiastic dog will be able to catch up to it.
But when the well-built canine does in fact manage to clamp his teeth down on the airborne toy, you only manage to pick your jaw up off the floor after a handful of shellshocked moments. Some special kind of training had become evident in the way the animal springs off its hind legs with such intensity.
Right, you should stop staring like a maniac and keep walking.
At this rate, you’re going to be late back to work, and with the sheer number of things left to do and problems to solve with the shelters and kennels, you know that’s not an option. Hell, you’re so swallowed by your anxiety that you break out into a slow jog to make it at least halfway through the dog park in time.
Don’t look at him, don’t.
You glance at the man as you pass him, hoping to dear God that he’s focusing on his dog rather than the strange pet-less woman running through the park meant for pets, wearing dark forest-green scrubs underneath her jacket because she was too stupid to remember her food for the day. But alas, he is looking at you too.
It’s a weird kind of energy you can’t place, as if some kind of invisible force is trying to slow your feet down. The air thickens in resistance, and it’s like you’re barging through it to continue forward on your path. Everything in your body screams at you to stop, to talk to him, to say ‘hello’ with a smile because he deserves to have his own friendly one returned in some way. Oh wow, he’s actually looking at you, isn’t he?
The thing is, in situations like this you get nervous. You and attractive guys? Not quite the match made in heaven you’d probably expect. He flashes you that smile, all pearly whites to accompany the recognition from yesterday glittering in his startled gaze, but all you can manage is a strained grimace-like grin in return with a tiny wave of your sweaty palm.
Great. Fucking great.
At least you’re already gone before you can wallow in the humiliation; before you can simmer in it like a fine stew. He’s probably forgotten you already anyway, but you can’t help looking over your shoulder to check regardless.
Checkmate, he’s watching you go. The smile is now amused, and his head is cocked cutely to the side in playful confusion. As his dog jumps all over him to try and win back his attention, you flip the hoodie of your jacket up and try to ward off the embarrassed onslaught of laughter that bubbles in your chest. It would take more than a few days to wipe the image of his crescent moon shaped eyes from your memory this time around.
~
Jimin wakes to a wet and uncomfortable sensation prodding his face, and if he didn’t already have an innate sense for his favourite living being in the whole world, he’d be on his feet and ready to fight in no time at all.
“Mandu you gotta let me sleep,” he groans out, voice deep and groggy from his slumber. A persistent whine dragging from the throat of the animal rouses Jimin further, and he slides up to rest back on his elbows, eyes squeezing shut and skin covered in the slightest sheen of sweat from how hot it’d been under the bedcovers.
His dry lips part in a yawn. “Fine, you hungry?”
Mandu pokes his snout into Jimin’s cheek once more, big gentle brown eyes urging him to get up and start his day. Jimin knows that without his best friend with him, he’d barely have any motivation to step foot outside his room, let alone head out for a run each day consecutively.
It helps that his buddy looks out for him as diligently and as loyally as he had back when they were in the force together. It’s like nothing ever changed, and in the back of Jimin’s mind, he knows that the sense of routine had most likely saved his life time and time again.
“Alright,” he grunts loudly, lips curving into a smirk as he cups Mandu’s furry face into his palms, squishing the doggy cheeks he finds there together until the dog squirms in his spot on the bed. It’s not until Mandu lets out a frustrated yet playful growl that Jimin leaves him be with one last ruffle of his dark pointed ears.
Yeah, he really was fucked without his boy reminding him to eat, walk and sleep every day. Jimin knew it was pathetic, and he’d never felt so useless in his whole life, but it was enough to get him through for now.
Jimin scratches at his bare chest, freezing on his amble towards the kitchen when he spots something. Mandu stops along with him, his nails click on the floorboards in impatience but Jimin’s eyes are intensely locked onto the photo frame perched on the living room cabinet.
Idiot, of course there was one left.
He slams the frame down, making sure he can’t see the two laughing faces for a second longer than needed. He realises with a frown that he probably forgot to remove it due to barely ever setting foot in the living room as it was. Up until now, for the last five years, he’d spent most of his time at the station or out on the field. Patrolling, tracking … even apprehending, but that simply meant areas of his home went essentially unused for months on end.
Things were changing…
“Hey bud, what’s for breakfast?” he hums to his pal softly, finding a small happiness in the way Mandu circles around his legs like a bothered child. He assumes that if the dog were human, he’d be sporting the mightiest of pouts right about now.
Ten minutes later, Jimin finds himself nose deep in a bowl of flavourless cereal. On any other ordinary day, he and Mandu would usually race to see who could finish their meal the speediest, but he’s not feeling it this time around. The fawn coloured dog seems to give him a judgemental stare, as if saying ‘what’s wrong with you, did you let me win!?’ to which Jimin looks down at him and lets a breathy laugh fall from his lips.
“Not everything’s a competition boy, grow up already.”
Mandu simply huffs and moves to lay down, resting his muzzle on his front paws in defeat.
“How dare you roll your eyes at me.”
A dismissive sniff in response. Jimin finishes his meal with a shake of his head, knowing that if anyone were to ever hear the way he spoke to his pet dog, he’d most likely get shipped off to the nearest mental institution available. The sudden dark thought earns a surprised raise of his brows, but as he rinses his bowl off in the sink, he knows he has nothing to worry about.
It’s only him and Mandu now, and nobody else mattered. Nobody else was allowed to matter.
Yet Jimin’s always one to wear his heart on his sleeve. Even if he tries the hardest he can to shut the world out, he’s continuously drawn to people. Drawn to seek company and validation, drawn to love others with his whole heart unconditionally. He could have it all, but all the world does is take from him.
He sighs and sits back at the kitchen countertop, head resting on his folded arms much like the sassy child sprawled underneath the stool right now. “Do you think we’ll see the pretty lady from the park again today?”
The dog’s ear twitches, then flicks as if bothered by an irritating bug of some description. Jimin doesn’t know how to take that, really. Was it a no? Did Mandu even want to see her as much as he did? He supposes not, considering the ex-police dog was trained to be protective, and was instinctively so in every possible way.
He belongs to Jimin, and apparently that means Jimin belongs to him too, no friends allowed. Something in the back of his mind shouts that he shouldn’t be wanting friends anyway, that they were something to be afraid of.
“Whatever.”
It was the next day when things turned sour. To Jimin’s slight disappointment, they hadn’t seen the pretty lady in strange green attire again, but something did go horribly wrong instead.
Jimin exits the bathroom with a snowy white towel draped over his head, hoping that somehow his laziness will be overlooked for once and the towel will simply dry his hair for him with no additional effort, only for the fabric to fall from his head once he catches sight of Mandu walking down the hallway. Only he’s not walking, but rather limping.
“Buddy c’mere,” Jimin calls, voice pitching higher than usual in concern. With fear and cold hard dread settling deep into the pit of his stomach, Jimin observes the dog instantly perking up at the sound of his voice.
Mandu lets out a small yelp of excitement, but still has a stiffness and slight limp to his gait when he makes his way over. Jimin crouches down and pets the canine fondly, the sinking of his heart telling him that his suspicions were right all along.
Something is wrong here. He has to know what’s up, has to make sure his boy’s alright.
Jimin’s bundled the both of them into the car before he can stop to even think straight, and Mandu is nothing but a ball of excitement – bouncing around and goofily grinning the entire time. It hurts to think he’s fooling the dog into believing they’re going on some sort of spontaneous adventure, but that wouldn’t be entirely wrong. It’s only around noon so the local vet clinic has to be open, right?
He’s not dying, you really need to chill out.
Jimin knows his inner voice speaks the truth, but he continues to justify his frantic driving with a carefully crafted self-assurance. He’s only making sure, he’s simply worried for his baby.
He doesn’t stop to think about the way his hair is still unpleasantly damp from the shower, having forgotten to actually dry it beforehand, or the way his socks had somehow ended up being odd colours. He hastily finds a park outside the clinic and attaches his leash to Mandu’s collar.
What Jimin doesn’t expect to see, when striding through the administration doors with the dog in his arms, is you.
Your expression matches his own look of astonishment, your beautiful eyes widening in recognition in the exact same split-second his do. If Jimin was being honest with himself, he could probably just stand there looking at you for the next thirty minutes or so, but a miniscule wriggle from the animal in his hold brings him crashing back down to Earth.
“Um, hi,” he begins awkwardly, paces enormous as he lurches towards the desk you’re bracing your hands upon, still recovering from the shock of seeing him again it seemed. “I have a problem…”
You clear your throat and try not to smile at the amusing sight before you. Jimin knows it can’t be the strangest thing you’ve ever seen here, but the openly scared and confused dog clutched to his chest is enough to make you bite your lip in an effort to restrain yourself.
“I can see that. Luckily, we’ve got nobody in queue so you can jump right out back with me,” you say with a kind lilt to your tone that Jimin can tell is part of the customer service sector of your job description. He doesn’t really mind, nor does he even care. Right now, his only concern is Mandu.
No pretty lady in green scrubs is going to distract him from his best bud right now.
Fifteen minutes pass, and Jimin is worrying the skin of his bottom lip with his teeth. His wide troubled eyes trail over every movement you make as you examine the incredibly stiff and uncomfortable dog on the sterilised table. When Jimin meets Mandu’s startled gaze, he tries his best to calm his best friend down in a familiar gentle tone he would use at home.
“It’s okay buddy, you’ll be alright. Good boy…”
If you’re irritated or weirded out by his vocalisations, you don’t show it. Your mind seems to be too wrapped up in gently working your fingertips into the back haunches of the dog, massaging in slow circles. Jimin’s drawn in by the way you handle Mandu with such care and precision, and he begins thinking that if you were to do that to him, he’d probably be relaxing in no time.
Weird thoughts, but whatever, I guess.
The same can’t be said for the dog, though, and Jimin can only pick up the intensity of his soothing praises once he catches sight of Mandu trembling in fear on the table. The dog’s elbows seem to want to buckle under the stress of the situation, and it breaks Jimin’s heart to pieces to see his pal all worked up like this. It’s lucky that the animal has been trained well enough to trust in his handler’s presence alone, otherwise this whole examination might’ve taken a … darker and more vicious turn.
“Do you know what’s wrong?” he asks you quickly, voice high and strained as he reaches forward to scratch behind one of the dog’s ears in what he hopes is a comforting gesture. Mandu licks his palm in return, and usually Jimin would recoil and protest loudly, but today he was fairly sure he’d let his boy get away with anything.
You sigh softly, and Jimin doesn’t know what that means at first, but then you peel the gloves from your hands and flash him a small smile. Everything starts to feel okay somehow. “You see, Sir, this is quite commonly seen in specific breeds of dog, including your German-”
“Belgian Malinois.” The correction is out before he can hold it back, and Jimin wants to slap himself for how snappy and rude it sounds, but you don’t take offense in the slightest. Instead, he’s stunned once more when you click your fingers with a light gasp of realisation.
“That’s what it is! I was trying to remember the name of this breed for days on end, after the first time I saw him in the park.”
Jimin raises his brows at that, feeling the last of his anxiety melt from his bones at the sight of your smile, which was slowly beginning to familiarise itself to him.
“Ah, well you could’ve asked me. I would’ve told you in a heartbeat.” He chuckles, though it’s somewhat dry from the raw emotions still running their course through his brain. When you let out a soft laugh in return, he forces himself to tear his eyes away.
“Oh well, anyway you can calm down a bit, there’s nothing life threatening going on here just yet,” you assure in a calming tone, and Jimin can easily sense how there’s more sincerity behind the sound compared to the voice you’d used earlier when greeting him.
“There are two things I can narrow down for you, taking into consideration the information you’ve given me so far. Commonly found in these breeds is something called hip dysplasia, where the hip joint undergoes abnormal development or growth. The other possibility for his lameness is a form of chronic arthritis called osteoarthritis, which deteriorates joint cartilage more commonly in older dogs like Mandu here.”
“He’s not that old though?” Jimin hums, brows furrowing in bewilderment at the news. He pats the dog’s head fondly, saddened but glad that he can breathe a little easier now that he knows what’s going on.
“Perhaps, but he’s lived a very active lifestyle, you see. Heavy strain and activity on the dog’s body can bring this forth quicker, much the same as it does in humans,” you explain with a sad sigh.
“I do recommend getting x-rays done to check out the full extent of the damage, as well as to check for any other abnormalities.”
You then take your leave to fetch the main doctor, and Jimin finds himself startled to discover you’re only a veterinary nurse here. By the way you were reeling off information from the top of your head, as well as the confident manner in which you examined and diagnosed his dog, he would’ve effortlessly assumed you ran the goddamn joint.
He waits in the administration area while Mandu’s getting his x-rays done, fingers fiddling with themselves from the trepidation building up inside him. He doesn’t even hear you enter the room, and can’t help his back going ramrod straight attentively when you clear your throat. Curse his years of training in the force.
“Hey, I can just see that you’re a little stressed out there. He must mean a lot to you.” You walk around the corner of the front desk and take your place one seat away from him. Jimin realises that you most likely keep your distance from most customers with an unmistakeable barrier of professionalism, but for him you seem to be stepping right out of your comfort zone.
He can tell by the unnecessarily chipper tone of your voice, and how your eyes flicker nervously to the side every once in a while. You’re good at hiding how anxious you are, he’ll give you that, but not good enough to escape watchful eyes such as his. Not when he goes through the exact same thing.
He finally musters the courage to respond after a few seconds of simply eyeing you in curiosity. “Yep.” He smiles tightly and returns his gaze to his interlocked fingers, knowing the expression wouldn’t reach his eyes. “He’s been with me through thick and thin. Almost like a little brother or son to me, as weird as that probably sounds.”
“I wouldn’t say weird,” you instantly oppose, laughing to brighten the sullen mood Jimin knows he’s bestowed upon you. “I think it’s sweet, and he’s a very lucky dog to have someone caring about him so much.”
Your sentiment melts the icy sadness around Jimin’s heart ever so slightly. The cold blanket encompassing him ever since his last loved one left his side. He hasn’t felt the urge to open up since, but he knows he sure as hell wasn’t going to start now. “I- thanks, I guess.”
Before he can continue on and ruin the somehow light-hearted atmosphere by telling you he wants to be alone, you’re suddenly speaking again in that gentle voice of yours. “It’s kinda funny how we keep running into each-other, don’t you think? I can’t help but hope you’ll both be at the park whenever I pass by…”
Jimin’s at a loss for words at your candour, looking up sharply to see the way you’re shyly tucking a strand of hair behind your ear and avoiding his eyes like the plague. It looks as though you regret the words as soon as they’re out in the open air.
But … he feels the same.
He can’t say it. He won’t. He can’t just let you in and create a space for yourself in his life, or heart right now. He cannot admit that you’ve lived in his mind for free ever since he saw you that second time, running past him with that smile on your face, confusing him with your antics to no end. Why do you keep getting under his skin in the best possible way?
“I mean, i-if you’d like to go out for coffee or something later on, I-”
He dips his head with a small sniff to attempt to cut you off in a somewhat polite manner. “Ah sorry, I’ve got a … funeral at two. Not really in the mood these days, but I appreciate it. Seriously, I do.”
He doesn’t wish to see your reaction to his less than eloquent rejection, but he catches it regardless. That wrenching moment you come to the conclusion that you read the signs all wrong. The glimmer of hope and interest in your eyes slowly flickering out like dying embers, although not completely, and he has no doubt it ever would.
You frown and instantly come through with a quiet “I’m sorry for your loss,”, but Jimin dismisses the sympathy with a tiny wave of his hand, claiming that it was a colleague and acquaintance rather than a close friend or family member.
It’s already obvious to him how much of an optimist you are. You’re holding onto that tiny shred of hope as if it were the string of a helium balloon, one moment of slack and he’d be floating away from you far out of reach.
“Right, sorry if I overstepped.”
He doesn’t know what to say. You’re way too considerate and understanding of him, and the painful burn that leaves on his conscious is so real. It reminds him of all the times his brother would tell him to never take people’s kindness for granted, but here he was shooting you down even though you’d never given him a reason to.
In fact, he likes you enough to go back almost instantly on his words.
“I really am busy, otherwise … I would actually love to, believe me.” He combs a hand through his hair in exasperation, inwardly cringing at the damp dewy sensation greeting his palm as he’s reminded again of his post-shower dilemma. You’re already chuckling at your newfound victory, and he’s pleasantly surprised at the sudden streak of mischief in your eyes.
“Let’s make it a date for Saturday then, see you at the park usual time? I’ll make sure to come out earlier so I don’t miss you again.”
Damn you’re assertive, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t liking it. Something in the way you so effortlessly drew him out of his shell was electrifying. Was he even in total control of his own emotions right now?
He’s left in a stunned silence, nodding in response to your question before you’re suddenly making your exit, uttering something along the lines of ‘best wishes for the funeral’ and ‘good luck with Mandu’, but he can barely hear beyond the rushing of blood past his ears. He’s a flustered mess of a man right now.
He only regains majority of his focus once he’s left the clinic with some anti-inflammatory and pain meds for his dog, a slight dent in his bank account, and a date.
~
Holy fuck. You really did that. You did.
When it came down to it, you just saw your shot and took it. Simple as that, really. When the attractive guy from the dog park had shown up at the clinic, piercing deep brown eyes full of purpose, you’d very nearly felt your brain short-circuit at the sight. However, as time went on you began to get a glimpse of his true self.
It took every ounce of strength within you not to openly coo at the way he soothed his canine friend, with gentle words of encouragement spilling from his plush lips like a steady stream of water. If you’d been blind, you might have even been led to assume he was speaking to a fellow human.
Jimin, he’d revealed as his name. He was so lost in his worry for Mandu you didn’t think he’d even retained memory of your own name when you’d given it, but in the end it didn’t matter. You now had a literal date planned where you could talk and get to know him even more! How you’d managed to force the bold question out, you’ll never know, but hey at least one of your spontaneous and stupid decisions had to go well once in a while, right?
You sink into your couch, a fluffy white cat curled up on your lap as you relive the memories from the day. The relaxing sounds of purring surround you as you massage your fingers into your cat’s thick neck fur.
“Oh Ghostie, what the heck am I gonna do?”
Right now you can only think back to the way his hair was a bit of a jumbled mess, evidently damp and sticking out in all directions cutely. The addicting scent of his body-wash, if the rushed situation and flushed complexion was anything to go by, and aftershave. The man had those butterflies swooping around in your stomach already, and you barely knew him.
Your cat growls in protest when you let out a tiny squeal and make a harsh grab for a couch cushion, effectively burying your face deep into it in pure unadulterated embarrassment and disbelief. After living life being perfectly happy and single, why was this one somewhat decent-looking man sweeping you off your feet?
And sweep you off your feet he would, because when you finally show up to meet him at the dog park on Saturday, you’re being harshly barked at and sent flying to the ground before you can even process what’s happened. The dull ache from the force of impact fades quickly, and you try to regain your bearings before anything worse can happen.
“Fuck, sorry!”
The sight of your freshly washed jeans, now sporting a lovely scuff, causes you to cringe slightly. You shake your head and lock eyes with the pointy-eared dog standing over your body. It strikes you as bizarre, seeing as Mandu’s not exactly attacking you, but he’s not all that happy to see you either. You’re locked into a stand-off, despite you currently being knocked onto your ass with your heart still racing.
“Get off her!” comes Jimin’s outraged yell, his eyes are wide in sheer disbelief and disappointment. You can’t help but laugh softly at his exasperation, the shock of the fall now trickling away at the sight of the familiar face, or rather faces.
“I’m sorry (Y/n), I honestly don’t know what came over him. We were waiting by the pond and he just … took off when you came around!”
You stand and brush your clothes off, feeling your cheeks burn at the fact that he had actually remembered your name from the clinic the other day. You try to tell him it’s fine, but he still scolds the now sheepish looking dog at his feet – albeit as gently as possible through his vexation.
“I couldn’t leave him at home,” Jimin starts, sighing and clipping a leash to the dog’s collar pointedly. “Told him to behave himself but yeah, that didn’t go down well.” He regards you with concerned eyes, and you feel your heart melt at how he tries to subtly check you over for any injuries.
“I’m fine, Jimin, trust me. Working at the clinic means I’ve had my fair share of body-slams. Don’t sweat it.” You wave your hands before squatting, lowering yourself to be face-to-face with Mandu who still seemed to be eyeing you warily.
You understood it. Here you were, nothing more than a stranger, trying to take his owner and favourite person in the world away from him. You had to somehow convince Mandu that you weren’t a threat to their little family of two.
“Hey, buddy. Remember me?” You slowly reach out a hand to pat the top of the dog’s furry head, eager to earn his trust. “I’m not gonna hurt either of you, promise.”
You miss the way something flickers in Jimin’s eyes after hearing you say that. A glazed look of predictability, of cold hard doubt … but it’s gone when you rise to your feet once more. The dog seems to have accepted you for now, averting his eyes from the direct and intimidating glare he’d had trained on you ever since he’d pinned you down.
“Shall we, then?” You find yourself saying, self-confidence shocking you both as you smile and lead the way out of the park and towards the middle of town.
It doesn’t take long to find a nice café to sit at, and it’s with reluctance that Jimin leaves Mandu tied up outside. However, he knows he has to tone down his attachment in view of the public eye, and you especially. He doesn’t know just how far you’re willing to go for him.
He was a closed iron door to the world, yet he was still somewhat intrigued to see your efforts in getting inside. There was no way he was going let it happen, not again, but … why was he here then?
After ordering the coffees, him taking his black after years of late nights on patrol and you filling yours with sugar, you both surprisingly hit it off well. You suppose that after noticing how heavily you could relate to him, and vice versa, it was easy to understand one another and fall into steady conversation.
“The police force, huh.” You sip at your drink with a drawn-out hum of confirmation. “I actually kinda guessed that.”
Jimin blinks in shock. “You did?”
“Yeah! I mean I’ve seen Mandu a handful of times now, and it’s in the way he’s thoroughly trained to listen to your every command, not to mention the way he moves. When I gave him the check-up at the clinic, I forgot to mention that I just assumed your occupation when I said ‘active lifestyle’ back then.”
There is no way you’re going to tell him that you’d also made that assumption based on the man’s incredible build and well-toned muscles as well. Best to keep your thoughts on the dog, and luckily for you Jimin turns his head to check on his companion resting outside by a bowl of water, allowing your eyes to roam freely for a decent second or so.
“Well, you’re more observant than I thought,” Jimin notes through a breathy laugh, fingers lightly tapping at his coffee mug in thoughtful contemplation. You can’t help getting lost in the sight of him yet again.
He’s an absolute vision right now even if he’s dressed casually, only foregoing the shorts and joggers for simple black jeans and flatform sandals. His hair looks as soft as ever, and though his eyes are still open windows that show he’s hurting inside, you can’t help finding the immense beauty behind the pain.
There’s a short, comfortable silence as you both nurse your mugs of caffeine, but you break it in fear of letting an awkward air settle in. Damn, you do love being a little socially inept sometimes.
“Why the name Mandu?” You think it’s an innocent question, but unbeknownst to you, Jimin’s thoughts spiral at the reminder. The memories and origins of his boy’s name that uncomfortably sting at his heart like nettles.
“Ah, it was my brother who named him … actually,” he reveals, wondering if the slight crack of his voice is noticeable as he smiles convincingly. If you see through him, you don’t show it. Instead, you register the hint ever so slightly and aim to avoid prying.
“You would’ve only had him for a few years, right?”
“I served for five, so yeah he’s only been mine for a few years, but I did meet him before that while we were both in training.” Jimin laughs at what seems to be a fond memory, pushing the other ones to the back of his mind for now. “I was a little obnoxious about it back then, because I had to be with him. I demanded it to the chief and everything, if I wasn’t getting Mandu then I would drop my application because we’d bonded so well.”
You giggle, and cough lightly to hide your embarrassment instantly afterwards. “I love that, it’s quite obvious to me that you two are meant for each other.”
“What about you? Got any pets?” he asks, eyes alight with a newfound interest. Catching the way he leans forward in his seat ever so slightly; you feel a familiar warmth bloom in your chest. Jimin was finally relaxing around you.
“Yeah, a cat.” You cover your mouth with one hand to suppress your amusement, waiting for Jimin to scoff at you or screw his face up in disgust, but he doesn’t. Rather, he looks upwards in thought and then shakes his head while chuckling meaningfully. “Mandu would hate you for saying that.”
“Not a fan?”
“Absolutely not. I’m impartial though.” He watches you over the rim of his mug when he lifts it, an amused glimmer in his eye.
“Good to know. Good to know.” Your eyebrows shoot up and you can’t wipe the grin from your face, absent-mindedly stirring your coffee with your spoon. It wouldn’t be long before the drinks were finished, but you didn’t want this moment in time to end.
The two of you chat for another half hour or so, but you can’t help noticing the distant look that surfaces in Jimin’s gaze whenever he brings up old memories of his family or brother. Your curiosity burns at this point, and you feel yourself wanting to get to know him so much more. He’s such an enigma to you. Watching the way he tries to let go and be himself, unapologetically, but holding back just as you catch an addictive glimpse of what that might be.
As you exchange more stories and memories, you can’t help but feel yourself digging a little deeper to uncover what’s tearing him down so hard. “You keep mentioning your brother, I’m guessing you guys are close?”
And ah, now you’ve done it. It hurts to see the guarded expression slam back down on Jimin’s features, but you knew it had to be done. You didn’t know if it were just you who could see it, but by repressing all his memories and feelings, Jimin was doing more harm than good to himself. Some internal part of you wanted to help him, because you knew exactly what it was like.
Though you weren’t expecting every dam to break just yet.
It takes a moment for Jimin to deliberate on his next words, but you wait out every second with him, patient and understanding. He notices this and decides that it’s alright for him to indulge just this once, to let someone in for just a single moment. “Not really, well … used to be. He, uh, he left town a while ago.”
Left?
You keep your tone quiet, not wanting to scare him away because he did seem like the type to take off at any given moment. “Sorry to hear that,” you murmur.
“It’s alright,” he says, wondering just how much he should give away. It’s the first time he’s met up and gone out with someone he’d consider a ‘friend’ of sorts in ages, so he’s not sure how much he should be disclosing right now, but something about you makes him want to let it all go. It scares him like nothing else.
“Honestly it hasn’t been … a great time for me since he left. Y’know, he was the only one that ever stayed, and things were tough being in the force and everything,” he offers through a dry laugh.
You want to reach out for his hand on the café table so badly, but it’s too soon to be that close. He’s testing the waters right now, showing you a vulnerable side that you can easily tell he doesn’t let out very often. It warms your heart, and all these broken feelings he’s showing you make everything feel so real. You can’t help but want to give yourself back to him.
“I can’t imagine it would’ve been easy. I know how it feels, actually.” You mentally prepare yourself to revisit a time you usually laid to rest, keeping the gentle smile on your face because even though these subjects were touchy and very meaningful to the two of you, you’d actually come to terms with yours years and years ago. Learned how to turn that pain and suffering into progress, self-growth.
“You do?” You can tell the sheer hope and relief in his tone doesn’t quite match the caution in his eyes, as if he doesn’t want to think that someone as bright and bubbly as you can ever have as many problems as he does, but you shut that train of thought down for him.
“Yeah, I … don’t have any family left either.”
He wants to know how, why, but he pulls himself back from the question almost instantly. Still, you can see it all on his features. He’s an open book for you to read.
“It’s okay Jimin, I came to terms with it a while back. I’m an only child, but my parents died when I was a teen.”
It hits him like a freight train then. The realisation that yes, of course there are other people in the world who have lost just like he has. The sad but forgiving look in your eyes just about breaks him. He’s been so self-centred the whole time, not even thinking that maybe you’re sitting across from him going through a life just as lonely as his own.
“I don’t know what to say.” To your shock, it’s him that reaches across the table to grasp your hand gently, and you hadn’t even realised it was shaking slightly until he’d steadied it with his own. There were no hidden intentions in his gaze, just a pained understanding. You’d both needed to simply tell someone.
“I promise I’m fine now. It was years ago. I don’t even know why I’m…”
You trail off with a shaky laugh, tightening your grip on his hand slightly in fear that he would let go of you. You were essentially strangers, but you’d both needed this. You needed someone to listen as you talked, to have that visceral sense for the pain rather than simply try sympathising with it. It was different when you knew the feeling.
After the sudden serious note of the conversation had passed, both you and Jimin felt a little weight taken off your shoulders. You’d both torn some walls down today, and that in itself was enough to garner bucketloads of respect and admiration on both accounts.
You part ways back at the park, a new kind of friendship blossoming that, if you were being honest, neither of you had seen coming.
~
A couple of months pass after that, and in between his regular walks and visits to the clinic, Jimin finds himself spending more and more time in your presence. He even jokes around with Mandu that he should walk just a tad more lamely so he can stay a little longer between check-ups. But at the end of the day he knows he truly wants his boy to get better.
The first time he steps foot inside your house, he’s instantly halted in his tracks by the fluffiest white cat he’s ever seen. After hearing you mention, ‘she hates strangers’, and ‘she’ll probably cuss you out straight away’, it comes as a surprise to both of you when Ghost wraps herself around Jimin’s leg and purrs needily. A louder purr than you’ve ever received in your whole ten years of being her owner.
“Stop whoring yourself out! He’s just here to pick up some worming tablets,” you tut in disapproval, earning a hearty laugh from Jimin at the snappy tone. Ghost narrows her green eyes at you and rubs her chin along Jimin’s pant leg one more time for good measure, proceeding to saunter into the kitchen utterly oozing with sass.
After a few more random visits, you stop beating around the bush and begin inviting Jimin over to either chill out or have dinner. Obviously, more often than not it turned out to be both.
You’d order something in and then joke about how unhealthy you were for being too lazy to cook. Jimin even gets so exasperated sometimes that he carts food over from his own home to cook up in your kitchen, funnily enough. It wasn’t your fault you never really had the time to teach yourself during your unrelenting years of university and work, and it wasn’t as if you had a parent around to help you learn as a child.
Jesus, way to be depressing.
It wasn’t uncommon for you and Jimin to find random spots of humour within your combined trauma and abandonment issues either, as unhealthy as that sounds.
You always figured that life was too short to be sad all the time anyway, and even though that ideology alarmed your newfound friend at first, he soon slowly began to see the appeal. He was kind of over being sad, honestly.
He remembers standing by the coffin at Hoseok’s funeral, the very same fateful day he’d encountered you at the clinic for the first time. He’d felt overwhelmed at the emotions threatening to pull him apart at the seams, but at the same time, he’d felt cold at the lack thereof.
That was the result of letting himself get close to someone again, even through work of all places. His partner with the sunny disposition and heart-shaped smile? Gone from this world in a single click of a finger. It was too easy, too much of a risk to get closer. Jimin remembers not even being able to bring himself to cry back then, but things are starting to change now that you’re in the picture.
He still has that lingering dread that you’ll leave him too, but try as he might to keep you at arm’s length, he simply can’t. You bring out the best in him, and you make him want to try harder, to try being better. In a sense, you’re like another Mandu to him. He can’t just ignore that.
He tells you about Hoseok one night, just because it comes up in conversation and he’s already rambling on before he can stop himself. He looks up at your crestfallen face, knowing your heart hurts for him even though he’s unable to muster the correct emotions, all thanks to the disconnection he’s forged from his dead colleague already.
He recalls severing himself from those feelings right as he died, and again when he stood by his body at the funeral, but then you went and somehow reconstructed that bridge without him knowing.
“You know it’s okay to miss people, Jim. To remember them for who they were, and what they meant to you. It’s okay to miss them because they’re gone.”
He cries in your arms until 1 a.m. that night.
After a while, he begins to let people see the true him, fed up with hiding and done with shutting the world out. He returns smiles directed his way in the street, he ventures out to do nothing but simply stop and smell the roses. It’s refreshing, and it’s as if he can barely remember what it feels like after years of being chained down by depression and self-loathing.
You did that, with your calming presence, your affirming words, your genuine care. He’ll never forget it.
And slowly but surely, Mandu begins to warm up to you as well.
“I swear he’s only squaring up just to show off or something,” Jimin snorts as he walks beside you on the concrete path, Mandu in tow on a leash now that you’re leaving the park.
“He’s asserting dominance.” You cast a glance behind you to see the dog glaring you down, just as usual.
‘Why the hell are you walking next to him when I’m supposed to be there? You’re just a lowly human who doesn’t deserve my dad’s time or attention. How dare you!’
You bite back a laugh when you imagine the thoughts running through Mandu’s head, and he sniffs and growls at the sight of you not taking him seriously. He’s a big bad wolf, fear him goddammit.
“I’m sure he’ll accept me into the pack one day,” you respond good-naturedly, earning an eye-roll from Jimin as he shoots a pointed look of warning towards his boy once more. He can’t help but feel tingles erupt across his skin hearing ‘the pack’ come from your mouth. You make it sound like an actual family, and for some reason he seems to crave exactly that. That’s what all of you are to Jimin, a little family.
“Sure, but good luck convincing him to accept Ghost. I’m sure he’ll be walking around with a ‘NO CATS ALLOWED’ sign hanging from his neck soon enough.”
The dog agrees.
The next day is when Mandu’s last check-up is scheduled, and you wait by the front desk nervously as Jimin discusses options with Dr. Kim in the next room over. It’s been several weeks since the dog’s initial diagnosis, and he’s had a slight improvement, but it isn’t enough.
You and Jimin have spoken about how worried he is regarding the dog’s rapid muscle loss, and your heart always constricts at the sight as well. There’s only so much medication you can give.
You already know that Jimin’s current status of unemployment means he probably doesn’t have the means to fund more than one surgery, that is if he wants to remain financially stable. You’d need another plan.
“Hydrotherapy?” Jimin squawks. He’s a picture of confusion right now, one eyebrow cocked and pretty lips parting in surprise. You can’t help laughing at his dumbfounded expression.
“Yes, Jiminie. Dr. Kim has asked me to explain it to you so we can work out when to schedule it. Basically, dogs with chronic arthritis need to be able to exercise their joints and muscles without the excess strain, so regular swimming sessions are perfect.”
“It’ll help him get stronger?”
“Exactly, and since he’s up to date on his vaccinations we can organise a session right away, if you’d like?”
Jimin can’t suppress a shit-eating grin at the formal tone you’re using with him. He’s so used to messing around with you and having general chatter that the sudden switch to your ‘customer’ voice, as he calls it, is now more amusing to him than ever. You grumble under your breath, knowing all too well that he’s making fun of you without actually saying it.
“Fine, when can we start then? I’ve only ever seen him swim once, and it didn’t go well for the bad guy,” Jimin acquiesces, lifting his brows once and smirking at you mischievously. You ignore him.
“That’s alright Sir, we can start this Thursday.” You smile in such a pretentious and artificial way that Jimin has to smother his offended gasp. Now you’re just being rude.
“Pretending not to know who I am? Damn, guess I’ll just throw that strawberry shortcake I bought in the bin when I get home…”
And he’s got you. Your eyes light up and your fingers curl into fists on the desktop. You swallow thickly at the thought of him eating one of your favourite desserts on his own, or even worse throw it out like the heathen he is, but you’re determined not to cave in.
“I’m sorry Sir, I don’t quite follow. Your unhealthy affairs have little importance to me.”
You’re putting up a fight this time around, and Jimin’s willing to play. He leans on the desk with his elbow, the suave and impish air he suddenly exudes makes you nervous on the other side of the marble structure. “In that case, can we make this quick? I gotta rush home and catch up on the last two episodes of ‘Anohana’.”
This time you can’t contain your sharp inhale. “You promised we’d watch that together.”
Jimin chuckles with glee, taking the easy victory with a cocky lick of his lips. You trail the movement with your eyes before glaring at him again. “I don’t even care, you’d better not.”
He enjoys riling you up way too much. “Or what?”
“I’ll literally bust down your door at 2 a.m. in the morning Park, don’t test me.”
He knows you’re only joking around, but hearing his last name uttered in such a grave manner shifts something within him. He’s suddenly transported back to the chief’s office, hands wringing together in unease. “Park, is this about yesterday?”
“Park! He ran over there, follow me quick!”
“Jung wait…”
He has to shake his head, the smattering of memories and thoughts filtering from his mind slower than he’d like. He needs to drown out the sound of the echoing gunshot with something else, something louder.
You’re watching him the entire time with an apologetic gaze, picking up the miniscule signs that tell you he’s had something from the past triggered and brought back up unwillingly. You don’t even know what it is that you said, but you stay quiet and allow him to regain his composure.
“You okay Jiminie?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just thought of something,” he hums, not bothering to try and pretend as if nothing happened. You both knew each other too well at this point, and you understood him enough to have learned it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes these things just happened.
“Thursday sounds great, (Y/n).”
“Of course, I’ll lock it in. How does catching those last few episodes tonight sound? We can ugly cry and eat ice-cream like the cliché we are,” you say with an enthusiastic clap of your hands, and Jimin smiles tenderly. You always have a sense for what he needs.
He inwardly thanks the heavens for your existence, because now he won’t be alone in the silence of his home, with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. Even Mandu couldn’t help him sometimes.
“Lovely. It sounds lovely.”
You’ve changed him, and he wants to spend the rest of his life telling you just how thankful he is.
So when his phone rings one late night and he sees your name light up on the screen, he doesn’t hesitate to pick it up, even though his past self would have lethargically thrown it to the side while shrinking away from any kind of human interaction that wasn’t necessary.
“Hey,” he mumbles, eyes still squeezed shut from sleep.
Silence.
He’s startled into a more wakeful state by Mandu lifting his head suddenly from his lap, the attentive canine’s ears twitching as he bores holes into the phone in Jimin’s hand. Now worrying, Jimin says your name into the phone twice, eyes scanning the way his dog seems to be picking up whatever tiny sounds are coming from the speaker.
There’s a sniffle, and a tiny hiccup. “Jimin … I’m sorry. Can you come over right now?”
Anxiety flares up like some kind of wildfire within him, and Jimin’s rocketing from the bed before he can take the time to stop, breathe and think. Mandu follows, a bark of alarm leaving him as he dances around Jimin’s bare feet in excitement. He gets that the dog doesn’t know any better, but from the sound of your sobbing on the other side of the line, anyone could tell that something had gone terribly wrong.
He needs to be by your side now.
“Mandu stay,” he orders, not caring to use any proper commands due to the way his hands are shaking. His heart is hammering against his ribcage, just as it had way back when he’d rushed Mandu to the vet for a simple arthritis problem. Now, his next favourite being in the world was the source of his panic.
He’s thrown on whatever clothes he can find and tries to ignore Mandu’s flurry of whines and howls from inside the house once he’s settled in the car. You’re still on the phone, but he can barely get a word in when you’re crying and blubbering nonsense like you currently are. The most Jimin can do as he drives is what he would need in the stark moments of a mental breakdown, gentle words of encouragement and … a song.
He hates himself for it, but he remembers the lullaby his brother used to sing for him whenever he cried, and he hopes to dear God that he can calm you down with his voice just as Taehyung had when they were younger. The soothing notes fall from his lips, and the memories they bring hurt so much that he can feel himself choking up, but he tells himself that you matter more.
He pulls up to your house ten minutes later, your crying thankfully reduced to a collection of whimpers and sniffles. He doesn’t dare hang up, but barges through the front door without a single second of hesitation. He briefly glimpses the flash of a white fluffy tail disappearing down the hallway, the cat obviously scared out of its mind from the recent events.
Then he sees you curled up in the kitchen, and he just wants to make everything stop.
You’ve got your head in between your knees, tears falling freely from your cheeks as you cradle one arm in your other. Jimin notices with a jolt of shock that the arm you’re holding is all red and blotchy, and it’s clear to him that you must’ve burned yourself somehow.
He rushes to your side and holds you as carefully as he can, almost slipping on the pool of water and charred remnants of baking paper scattered on the tiled floor just beside you. “What happened?” he urges after trying to soothe your trembling form for ten minutes.
He has you on your feet now, arm in the sink as he runs icy cold water over the heated skin as gently as he can. He’s clumsier than you though, so even as he tries to handle your limbs with as much care as you’d once handled Mandu at the clinic, you still wince in pain every now and again. Guilt shoots through Jimin every time, but he knows you’ll forgive him.
You don’t speak until your arm is sufficiently treated and wrapped, thanks to Jimin’s courses in first aid that he can barely remember at this point, but it serves him well enough for now. Your eyes are downcast, and your lips are cracked from all the grief you’d caused them with your teeth. He waits for you to get it together.
“I’m … I’m sorry you had to come all this way-”
“Don’t say that, I’m so glad you called me (Y/n),” he cuts you off, leading you to the plush couch in the living room and sitting you down firmly. He kneels in front of your figure, now wrapped tightly in a blanket for security and comfort, and rests both of his hands on your upper arms.
“You need to tell me what happened, do you feel alright now?”
You nod your head, but he fixes you with strong disbelieving eyes and boom you’re weakened, shaking your head with a sigh. “No, I’m not.”
“How can I help? I’m not great at it, but I really want to help you,” he says earnestly, fingers pressing circles into your arms and calming you down enough to breathe evenly. Your lips twitch up into a nervous smile.
“That song you sang over the phone helped a lot, actually. I don’t know why.”
Hearing that causes Jimin to undergo a whirlwind of conflicted emotions, but he once again tells himself that you’re the only one that matters right now. He starts to sing again but you reach forward to ruffle his messy hair with a chuckle. “It’s okay, I’m just letting you know.”
Thank God, he thinks. Then again, maybe if he uses the melody and lyrics for good, those negative associations could be turned into positive ones. Maybe it was time to make the song his own.
He sees you struggling to think of where to begin and shifts to take a seat next to you with a smile. “Just start with what happened, yeah?”
“Okay.” You nod, combing back your hair with your fingers and wiping the last salty tears from your skin. “So I wanted to try baking something…”
You eye him with a glimmer of amusement in your gaze, and he instantly capitalises on it. “Well there’s your first mistake.”
You playfully wack him, feeling your spirits lift at the sound of his laugh and the sight of his crescent moon-shaped eyes. He really was your light in the dark right now.
“It was going well, actually, but then I heard Ghostie knock something over in my room and I went to check for … not even two seconds.”
Jimin knows that this is where it gets serious, your eyes glaze over again and he can see the recollection of the events flashing through your mind like a reel of film. “I left the baking paper out, and the space was way too messy, I-I definitely should’ve kept it cleaner. I came back and there were some things on fire, but nothing too bad. I just…”
You bend down to rest your face into your hands once more, and Jimin quietly rubs your back in concern. By the looks of it, you were able to put the fire out easily, so what exactly prompted you to break down like that?
You lift your head and keep your shaky hands clamped together by your lips, eyes stricken and weary from the onslaught of emotional stress. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet Jiminie, I would never hide anything from you, so I guess it just never came up. It’s … why I kind of lost the plot after throwing water over the entire kitchen like a lunatic.”
“You can tell me,” he soothes, brows furrowing in distress.
“It’s my parents. How they died….”
His throat tightens with apprehension at the topic, knowing it’s something you definitely avoid talking about whenever it comes up. It was always buried so deep, and Jimin can’t recall ever asking you about the finer details of what you went through.
He feels time slow to a halt as you utter your next words. “They died in a house fire when I was fourteen. Burned to death.”
Oh fuck. Fuck.
It falls into place now, and Jimin snaps out of his daze when he feels your shoulder shudder underneath the palm of his hand. He’s at a loss for words, the sight of how truly upset you are making his heart sink in sorrow.
He scoots over on the couch to hold you close and whisper soft calming words. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. You’re alright, I’m here now.”
You know he has no idea how much it means to you, just hearing those simple words when the anxiety and fear continue to claw at your throat like hellish nails. You’re caught in its grip, the flashing images of flames and the sounds and smells of screeching, burning, crumbling to dust. It surrounds you, and you choke on the tendrils of smoke as if they’re really there, filling your lungs like a heavy sand. It stings, and it’s excruciating.
“Maybe I’d fare a little better … if I’d just stayed somewhere else that night,” you can’t help whimpering out, the memories resurfacing too quickly for you to have control over them.
“You were there?” Jimin reels. Hearing that you’d witnessed your own parent’s death was nothing short of devastating. That was way too much for a young mind to handle, surely. Could the world really be that cruel to one of, if not the most amazing person he’s ever met? He can’t help but cry for you in this moment, trying his best to stay silent as his tears soak into your shirt.
You both stay locked together for another hour or so, Jimin listening intently as you explain the story to him of what happened that night. It’s agonising to relive it, but you know he needs to hear it from you. There’s nowhere else he can hear it from, really.
“Y’know, working in the force meant I had to handle situations like that a few times. It was rare, but it did happen. I’ve seen the faces of the families; I’ve seen the damage it can cause. I just wish you hadn’t been alone, fuck,” he mumbles, hating that he can’t just go back and fix what’s unfixable.
You wave him off. “Jimin, you’ve done more for me tonight than … literally anyone’s ever done for me. Truly, I love you for that.”
His heart leaps in his chest.
“I don’t relapse too often,” you carry on shakily, “it’s just that the sight of a fire that’s out of control just … it just terrifies me so much. I see their faces in the flames.”
It’s so fucking messed up. He feels his entire being shiver in discomfort at the image you’re painting for him, but he only holds you closer. He wants to chase it all away, even though deep down he knows he can’t. All he can do is be here for you, with you when you need it most.
“That’s why I went into vet science,” you say, eyes growing brighter the longer Jimin embraces you. It’s like he’s physically holding you together, and it’s so very safe in his arms. “I had to come to terms with death as a concept, like properly. I wanted to save those who didn’t deserve it just yet, those who deserve to live longer lives just like they did. It’s my life’s purpose.”
Jimin comes to the realisation, right then and there, that he probably loves you.
You are, without a doubt in his mind, the strongest and most remarkable person he’s ever met. He wants to be around you all the time, wants to share your energy, wants to be half as amazing as you are – with every fibre of his being. It’s not like he can just say that though. Not right now, anyway.
He tucks the thought away for another time. A better one.
“What about you? Why did you want to become a police officer?” you ask, snorting once into a tissue to finally rid yourself of the snot and tears.
“Me?” Jimin chuckles. You’re always one to turn it around, never wanting the spotlight for more than needed. He fondly reaches up to run his fingers through your hair, grazing the skin of your cheek along the way and making you smile wistfully.
“Well, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why. It always comes down to justice, right? We all want to enforce that, protect those that need protecting, and saving lives as well. I’m very similar to you in that sense,” he starts, clearing his throat to lighten the atmosphere with a confident tone. You find yourself snuggling into his side, just longing to hear him talk for hours while you wrap yourself in the warmth of the blanket and his reassuring presence.
“My family left a while back, and my brother was the only one who stayed with me. Both of us had to fend for ourselves, and with me being the eldest, it was easy to fall into that father-figure kind of mould. I wanted to protect what we had, but it was pretty laughable when I was the smaller kid.” Jimin laughs, surprising not only himself, but you with the way he speaks about his past so openly and without any bitterness or animosity.
He was looking at it a different way, and he had you to thank for that.
“So I trained,” he continues. “I trained so hard and spent years proving myself. I came home to our tiny flat every night, prouder than I’d been the night before. And Tae-”
His throat tightens and he has to cut himself off, the syllables of his brother’s name dying on his tongue due to disuse. He hasn’t said it in years, and the feeling his name conjures is strange. There’s the ever-present cold hard hatred building in his chest, but in some wild and wacky way, it’s easier to move past it.
“Taehyung … he was so proud of me too.”
You lift your head from where it rests on Jimin’s chest, moving your hand to envelope his where it resides in his lap. His fingers grasp yours gently, a simple squeeze telling you that he’s alright to keep going. He’s got you so relaxed in his arms that you can almost feel yourself falling asleep, but you know you mustn’t. You have to stay awake for him right now, right when he’s opening up completely.
“Since you shared your story, I figure I have to share mine.” Jimin smiles, the expression not completely reaching his eyes. Both of you have made so much progress tonight, it’s not even funny. He knows that if he doesn’t tell you now, he most likely never will.
“We … fell in love with the same person, me and Tae. It got ugly, and we were super close until the countless fights and yelling matches tore us apart. Even after we both got over this person, we couldn’t stand each-other. We couldn’t make it through one day without a handful of painful jabs being sent back and forth. It was bad, so bad.” He takes a deep breath, and you sit up slightly to hold him closer. The positions were reversed now.
“I needed him, despite all that, I really did. He was the only one left, and I was too proud to just forget everything that’d happened to us. I got offered a place in an exchange program with a group of officers in my force, it was to Europe and it went for no longer than two weeks, but when I got back Tae was…”
“He was gone,” you finish for him when he can’t, raising your hand to wipe the singular tear cascading down his smooth cheek. Jimin sniffs and smiles at you, turning to bury his face into your hair and letting out a large, heavy exhale.
“I sold the flat after many nights of just crying and breaking down,” he mumbles softly into your head. “I still don’t know where he went, but I also didn’t want to exploit my access to citizen information to find out. I think that’s when my passion for the force started to die down, though it took years for me to finally have the guts to leave. Nothing’s fair in this godforsaken world.”
It was a harsh and negative outlook, but you found yourself agreeing to a certain extent. Here you were, the epitome of optimism and ‘bright side’ herself, wanting to watch the world burn for just a second. Just like your family had.
You cringe at your own line of thought. “It’s our job to make it better-”
“Don’t even say it (Y/n), I swear to God,” Jimin warns playfully, cupping you cheeks in both palms and squishing them until your lips open and close like a fish. His eyes sparkle with adoration, and you whine out in protest against his actions before you can get lost in them.
“I’m just saying!”
“Don’t just say! Let me be emo for once you fool.” He tackles you onto the couch, spirits steadily rising from the depressing venture into his memories. Feeling light and as unburdened as a feather, he pins you down and tickles your sides mercilessly.
You miss the warmth of his comforting hugs but can’t help shrieking in laughter as you let it happen. You’re happier seeing him happy anyway.
Before things can escalate further, a disapproving meow interrupts the two of you, and you both whip your heads to the side to see Ghost sitting in the middle of the room. Her tail twitches in annoyance, and her face seems to be screaming ‘are you lumbering idiots done yet?’.
“Wow, a whole mood-killer. Maybe we should clean up the kitchen, actually,” you suggest while trying to catch your breath, grateful for the reprieve. Jimin’s eyes flit back to meet yours, and you catch the dark look he’s giving you. He knows you’re just trying to escape him right now.
“Fine, but don’t go thinking you’re off the hook even for a second.”
~
Weeks fly by after your emotion-packed, train-wreck of a night. If anything, it only drew you and Jimin closer than ever. You now had another layer to your friendship, another reason to stick together through thick and thin.
Jimin had attended around three hydrotherapy sessions with Mandu, and to your delight, it actually seemed to be working well! The dog would definitely soon be right on track to return to his former glory, minus the slight greying around his muzzle from old age. There only seemed to be one problem though…
Mandu was shit scared of water.
Every single time, the poor canine would whine and yelp for his owner as if he were legitimately dying. You could only watch on in amused silence, pursing your lips to hold back a cackle as your best friend had to bend down at the pool’s edge in order to calm the dog down.
The staff members working at the specialist pool were understanding at least, but that didn’t stop Jimin’s cheeks from flushing with embarrassment every single time.
“Buddy please, you’ve literally chased down killers and jumped over an entire ravine before. Some water won’t kill you!”
It fell on deaf ears, and Mandu howled extra forcefully in defiance. You couldn’t hold back your snort of laughter this time, the scene of the heated argument between dog and owner way too funny to let slide. Jimin throws a betrayed look at you over his shoulder, grumbling something under his breath you can’t quite catch.
In the end, some of the more patient staff members manage to coax the shaky dog into the water, and it’s with great struggle that they finally manage to get him swimming properly. Jimin has to stay within the dog’s line of sight 24/7, even one moment away and Mandu would start thrashing about and yipping in a panic.
You laugh at Jimin the entire time as you stand back to watch, the looks he sends you in return having ‘traitor’ written all over them. If he didn’t have to stay dutifully by the poolside, you’d be in your right mind to believe he’d storm over and kick you into next week for being so bratty.
“You just need to practice. Get him used to it,” you tell him once you’re all leaving the facility, a freshly dried pooch trotting beside you with fur sticking up in all directions. You can’t help but think the dog reminds you of Jimin like this, back when he’d rushed to the clinic in all kinds of disarray.
“Used to it? Did you see him in there!?” Jimin splutters, squatting down to hold Mandu’s face sternly between his palms. The dog remains unbothered as he flashes you a side-eye for assistance.
“Yes I saw. I’m surprised police dogs don’t spend more time training in water, to be honest,” you muse thoughtfully, reaching down to ruffle Mandu’s ears in reassurance. “It’s okay baby boy, you’re not alone,” you coo, smiling when the dog’s tail wags twice in response.
“Baby b…” Jimin trails off, clearing his throat consciously after feeling heat crawl up his neck at the pet-name.
“Anyway, it’s been a few sessions and he hasn’t quite got the hang of it. Why don’t we try spending some time in the water outside of sessions too?” you suggest cheerfully.
“Where? I don’t have a pool.” Jimin cocks an incredulous brow. There’s no way any public pool in these parts would let some random dude and his dog splash around and dirty their space.
You step up and poke Jimin firmly in the chest with one finger. “Did you just never look out the back of my place?”
“You have a pool? What in the hell-”
Jimin’s mouth hangs open in outrage. Even after all this time, he really hadn’t noticed it even once? You had to be fucking with him. “No way.”
“Uhh, yes way? Dude all you had to do was look outside.” You rest your hands on your hips, definitely unimpressed right now but trying your best not to laugh at him too much. He’s already been the butt of all your jokes today. Every single one.
Jimin has to see it for himself to believe it, so the next evening he pulls up to your home with Mandu in the passenger seat. The poor baby is blissfully unaware of the fate that awaits him here, but Jimin only feels the sweet, sweet taste of revenge on his tongue at the notion. After the hell Mandu had put him through these past few weeks, it was time to get payback.
“C’mon boy,” he sniggers. An evil grin stretches across his face and figurative crimson devil horns poke out from his hair.
“How dare you take advantage of him and his inability to be human,” you drawl lazily from the now open front door, and Jimin jumps in his skin from the shock. He hadn’t even made it to the damn porch and you’d already heard him.
“He deserves the slander.”
You shake your head and lead the duo inside, instantly groaning when Ghost and Mandu begin hissing and snarling at each other like their toes have been stepped on. Your fluffy white cat has all her hackles raised in hostility, and the dog in return has his lips drawn back to reveal a row of sharp white fangs.
You’re at your wits end, and similar to the other few instances of Mandu and Ghost meeting, you stomp your foot and stand over the pair as menacingly as you can. “You two are acting like complete animals right now, calm down or you’re going into timeout!”
When the two pets actually shut up, Jimin guffaws with no restraint. You simply huff, as if expecting that your threats would work regardless, and gesture to the glass sliding door adjacent to the kitchen. “It’s out there, are you happy now?”
Jimin cranes his neck and lo and behold, there it is in all its glory. A fucking pool. And to top it all off, it’s even surrounded by a towering black metal fence and gate, as if Jimin didn’t feel stupid enough for not noticing it already.
“So who was wrong and who was right?”
“Shut up.”
The two of you get ready to begin your little ‘home brand’ hydrotherapy session, with Jimin already donning swim trunks in case he has to jump in and intervene at any point. The pool is already much deeper than he’d anticipated, considering the ones at the actual therapy centre were nice and shallow for the dogs in rehab.
You’re dressed in a similar manner, with small tight shorts and a black t-shirt that’s so long it almost hides the fact that you’re wearing pants at all. Jimin has to keep his gaze controlled from raking up the expanse of your bare legs. He wonders if you’d somehow planned to get him all hot and bothered, seeing as it was a warm Spring night that was perfect for taking a dip.
“Okay, well he already seems spooked at the sight of water. You’re going to have to get in,” you say apprehensively, eyeing the way Mandu is already shifting anxiously from paw to paw. You’re all stood beside the shallow end of the pool, the gate fastened shut in case the dog tries to make a break for it suddenly.
Jimin coaxes Mandu forward with soft words of support and praise, taking the steps one at a time. It’s obvious how much the canine is hating this, his ears are pinned flat to his head and his knees are wobbling from the fear. Your heart is shot through with pity for the animal, but he needs to get better at this.
“Here, I’ll help,” you mumble, getting to your feet and stepping into the pool behind the jittery dog. With Jimin pulling him forward by his shoulders, and you urging him onwards from behind, it doesn’t take long for him to start doggy-paddling around. You help Jimin monitor his movements, checking for any signs of discomfort but finding nothing as Mandu works to keep his snout above water.
“I think he’s less nervous because it’s just us,” Jimin comments, a wide smile on his face at seeing his boy paddle around calmly. No frantic thrashing, no barking, no outbreak of chaos as usual.
“Funny that,” you breathe out with a chuckle. The waterline comes up to around your chest at this height, and you shiver as the cool liquid brushes against the underside of your bra. “I can’t go much further, all my underwear’s gonna get wet.”
The innuendo is essentially fresh bait, and you already know you’ve set yourself up nicely just before Jimin chuckles. “Right, why don’t you just go back and take a cold shower then huh?”
“Literally fuck you.”
“I thought you didn’t want to get wet?”
You gape at his bold humour, not used to the suggestive way he’s eyeing you as he leads his innocent dog around in the pool. If you were being honest, the ideas he’s putting into your head are absolutely sinful to say the least.
“What if I do?” you scoff, and two seconds later you’re plunging deeper into the refreshing coolness of the water before Jimin can even clap back with something lewder. You’re completely submerged, and for some reason Mandu begins to panic slightly when you vanish from sight.
“Woah, it’s okay she’s not drowning,” Jimin hushes in a serious tone, making sure to support the dog’s body with both arms as the animal treads through the water with powerful kicks of his hind legs. You resurface further down, hair now completely wet and sticking to your head uncomfortably.
“Hey, he got scared for you just then,” Jimin calls out. You feel a tug on your heartstrings and swim back down to the shallower part of the pool.
“Aw, Mandu was worried for me? What happened to hating my guts for stealing Jimin?”
Jimin gives you a weird look at that. “Stealing me? Jesus, do I just exist to be passed around by you guys?”
“Maybe.” You giggle. Something about the assertive way you act has Jimin feeling hot all over, and he’s reminded yet again that it’s a quality of yours he’s come to find madly attractive.
Or maybe it’s just the fact that your basically halfway naked not even a metre away from him. He can’t even focus on the task at hand when he gets a full view of your soaked t-shirt, and how the outlines of your rounded chest are now completely visible to his watchful eyes.
He can’t help but gulp at the thoughts running through his mind. “Hey, how long has it been now? Think that’s about one session’s worth for today.”
“Right, it probably is. Good progress! I might stay out here for a bit though, it’s super hot and my air conditioner basically cracked the shits last night.”
Jimin climbs out of the pool, the hem of his shirt soaked but luckily everything above that dry as a bone. He grabs a towel and dries Mandu off, whispering praises of how well he did to swim properly today. Once he’s done, he opens the gate and lets the dog out to run around your somewhat spacious backyard. Jimin has to look away in disdain, because he knows it won’t be long before his buddy starts rolling around and making himself filthy again.
Jimin returns his gaze back to you, and he stifles a laugh when he sees you randomly floating on your back in the middle of the pool, limbs splayed out like a starfish. You look dead to the world, but honestly, he can’t blame you. It is rather hot for a Spring night.
He barely even thinks about his actions before he’s peeling the shirt from his back. His honey blonde hair becomes tousled from the movement, and he throws away the piece of clothing without batting an eyelid.
As for you, well, now you’re stressed.
Sure, you knew he was an ex-police officer. You knew he worked out daily and took care of himself unbelievably well. Sure, you were happy to just close your eyes and pretend like you weren’t ogling the heck out of him right now, but it just wasn’t happening.
He was absolutely beautiful; you could even say carved from marble and it wouldn’t be much of a stretch. It was difficult not to gawk at the smooth way his muscled arms and shoulders tapered down into a gracefully cinched waist, not to mention the nice set of washboard abs and delicious V-line that has your mouth very nearly watering. You remind yourself to ask him later what the large ‘Nevermind’ tattoo stretching along his ribcage means.
“Wow, you could have some shame.” He flashes you that shit-eating grin, but frankly, you’re just ecstatic that he seems to be so confident in his own skin. Once upon a time throughout your friendship, he would have never been this comfortable around you.
“What, am I not allowed to appreciate what you’re showing me? You could’ve easily just left the shirt on,” you complain loudly, rolling over to lay face down in the water in hopes that it would douse the heating of your rapidly burning cheeks. With your eyes and ears underwater, you only feel the ripples hit your skin as he jumps in to join you.
You lift your head and gasp for air, catching sight of him swimming towards you rapidly. “Wait, what are you doing!?” You barely get to shout before he’s picking you up and throwing you back down into the water with a tremendous splash, loud laughter booming from his chest as you scream and struggle in his grip.
“Jimin I swear-”
You cut yourself off by sweeping a massive wave of water in his direction with both arms, grinning wickedly as it smacks him straight in the face. He wipes at his eyes and shakes his head, much like a dog would, and you vaguely register Mandu’s barks of excitement from somewhere out in the yard.
“I’m getting you back for that,” Jimin grunts, and you feel your stomach squirm as he starts moving towards you again.
“No, no, no! Okay I’ll be good, leave me please!”
Your pleas are left unheard as you try to escape from his grasp, but he’s too quick and too strong to evade. Your legs kick up into the air helplessly as he dunks you again, and once you finally resurface, he’s already got you in his hold. “Stop, I can’t compete with you, you beefcake.” You purse your lips and blow a raspberry of pool spittle into his face, struggling within his arms in fear that he would start throwing you again, or even worse … tickle you.
Your loud wails and shrieks of laughter had filled the air for the past ten minutes or so, but you were obviously weaker than he was, and you both knew you were going to tire out much faster. So, to your pleasant surprise, he stops teasing you and simply holds you by the waist, high enough that your entire head and neck are above water.
“You’re absolutely ruthless,” you grumble, bringing your hands up to rest on his bare biceps for support. You marvel at the way the lean muscles flex underneath your fingers as he shifts you to be more comfortable.
It’s so very hot, and you can’t help but notice the heat licking at your abdomen the longer you stay locked in this position. Your legs wrapped around his torso, and his face is just above the line of your soaked chest. You just thank God you hadn’t chosen to wear a white shirt at this point.
“Yeah, well you’re just fun to mess with,” he finally responds after a few moments of slowly floating around the pool’s edge. You smile warmly down at him and use both your hands to comb back his dripping hair with your deft fingers. Once again, you’re stunned into silence at how attractive he truly is. Especially when he looks at you like that.
Wait, why is he looking at you like that?
His handsome eyes are dark, and lidded. He’s smirking at you just as he always does, but this time there’s something different. The air around you changes. It feels … charged.
He’s not done, shockingly, and he continues to back you up until you feel the edge of the pool press into your back ever so slightly. He then lets you down to stand on your own two feet now that it’s shallow, your toes brush the pool tiles suddenly and the feeling elicits a small jump of surprise.
He’s closer than he’s ever been, and you feel your breath hitch at the feeling of his bare chest brushing against the material of your saturated bra. His hands come up to trace the line of your waist again, and you have to remind yourself to breathe.
“Jimin,” you sigh, looking up at him through your lashes. Your hands have a mind of their own at this point, and they find themselves tracing the lines of his dripping arm muscles once more. His eyes are staring into your own, burning with a heat and a desire you know all too well.
He wants you, right now.
You immediately cave in, feeling your thighs squeeze together as he descends upon your lips. The kiss is somewhere in between sensual and ravenous, with both your lips parting almost simultaneously in pleasant surprise. He lifts one hand from your hips to tangle into the wet hair at the back of your neck, pulling you closer to him as he melds his lips together with yours.
God, you’ve pined after him for so long that you somehow forgot what the feeling was called. You moan softly into the kiss and feel his lips quirk into a smile. He immediately knows just how badly you’d been craving this, and honestly, he’s been thinking about the exact same thing for months now. You both just needed some kind of hot situation to force you together, to give you the confidence to finally take the chance.
“You don’t know how long I’ve just wanted to have you like this,” Jimin says in a low voice, pulling back to catch his breath and rest his forehead upon yours for a moment. Your heart is going absolutely crazy in your chest, and you bring both your hands up to cup his face gently.
“I’ve wanted you since we met in that damn park, can you beat that?” You hum sweetly.
His eyes widen immensely, but then soften in a warm realisation. “Okay, I think you got me there. It’s been a couple of months though. Wow, the park? Really?”
You nod, and he lifts his hand to cover yours over his cheek. His eyes are swimming with a love so deep and profound, you just want to kiss him silly. “Yeah, I mean I don’t think I fully realised it until later on. I was happy to just keep that crazy good friendship of ours, but then I knew all along I was in deep,” you say candidly.
Jimin kisses you again long and hard. “Shit, I think I’m gonna say it. I love you. God I love you so, so much.”
You could almost cry at the heartfelt confession. His smile is blindingly bright, and his eyes are positively gleaming with happiness. You realise then that they weren’t tired anymore. Perhaps they hadn’t been for a while now.
“You saved me, (Y/n). You literally brought me out of a dark place I never thought I’d get to leave.”
“Stop you’re going to make me...”
‘I’m serious,” he murmurs, lifting your face with his thumb and forefinger to catch your overwhelmed expression.
You peck his cute little nose. “I know you are, and the same goes for you! You were always there when I needed you, Jim. I love you so fucking much, it hurts.”
He laughs airily, chest feeling light and fit to burst from your requited affections. He can’t believe that for once, this cruel world had decided to give him something nice for a change. He was … actually allowed to keep you?
At the same time, you’re positively brimming with relief and pure bliss. You jerk forward and catch him in a needy kiss mid-laugh, silencing all your nerves and disbelief as he returns it passionately. You squeak in surprise when he lifts your body – with ease, you might add, thanks to his physique – to sit up on the edge of the pool.
He continues to trail his lips along your skin as you hold him tight, and you love the way he handles you so carefully as if you’ll break in his palms if he’s somehow too rough. You simply can’t wait to see his face when you tell him you like it that way.
As he moves to your neck, you snake your arms around him and drag your nails down his back sensually, needing to feel him against you to prove that this is happening, that this is real and not some kind of dream.
“Fuck, you’re gonna be the death of me,” he groans, nibbling at the juncture of your neck and sucking harshly at the skin there. The contrast of the cool droplets of water clinging to your body as they meet his hot languid tongue has you shivering all over.
You can’t get enough of his lips, and you’re all but suddenly finding out just how skilled he actually is with his mouth. Tiny lustful whimpers fall freely from your throat as his hands move from your neck down to your breasts, and when he begins to brush his fingertips over your nipples through the shirt and bra with a broken groan, you just about lose it.
“Jimin, I want to feel you,” you choke out, pulling him as close as the edge of the pool will allow. Thankfully, it’s shallow enough on his end that he can still reach up to your face, and you instantly take advantage of your height boost to wrap your legs around his body.
You tilt his chin upwards towards you with one finger and part your lips, instantly feeling his tongue slide fervently past them into your mouth. It’s such a forward and sultry manoeuvre that you lose yourself in the pure unadulterated heat of the moment. God, you’ve never been so turned on in your life.
His hands, which had fallen to brace himself on the concrete tiles on either side of your hips, now find purchase on your bare dripping wet thighs. You can’t suppress a shudder when he digs his fingers into those too, tracing circles with his thumbs to let you know where he’s going with this.
You pull away from his irresistible lips with a gasp. “What are you..?”
He smirks, mouth all swollen from your teeth and tongue, eyes pinning you down with a dark gaze full of salacious longing. You don’t think you’ve ever seen anything hotter, until he growls, “I wanna take you right here, right now,” with a lick of his lips and downward glance of his eyes.
You’re left speechless, and before you can muster up anything to say in response, he’s hooking his arms underneath your knees and parting your shaky thighs slowly. He angles you closer to the edge of the pool, and you want nothing more than to just be under him. “Oh God. Jimin we should go inside.”
He looks like he’s about to argue, but then a flurry of wild barking and panting causes both of you to whip your heads around. There stands the source of the noise in question, all covered in grass and weeds from romping around your yard, and it bounds incessantly around the towering pool fence.
He’s watching you both excitedly and demands your undivided attention with another yap. If you had to take a wild guess as to what the dog wanted, it would be that he wishes to join in with his family’s little ‘wrestling’ match rather than being locked outside in the lonely backyard. You and Jimin exchange a look.
“Yeah, not in front of Mandu.”
“Never in front of him.”
You both grab your towels and scamper inside like two horny teenagers, very naked and afraid, but still laughing the entire way at your predicament.
Safely within your walls and locked away from the innocence of animals, you pick up where you left off beside the pool. The haphazardly tossed pieces of wet clothing and damp footprints throughout the house are soon forgotten when Jimin gets you in between your sheets. It doesn’t take long for him to have you screaming his name well into the night, and you’re sure that by the end of it, his lips and tongue have touched almost every inch of your body.
That’s not to say you didn’t have a fair go at him too, because when you wake in the morning to turn and see your hickeys scattered across his bare neck and stomach, you swear you’ve never felt more satisfied in your life. Yes, he’d proven himself to be quite a little switch in the making, and you feel positively giddy at the prospect of getting so much more time with him to find out exactly where that might lead.
He was yours and you were his. Together, you had something truly marvellous.
He turns his head with a grunt and catches you admiring his sleeping form. The resulting dazzling smile that splits his face leaves you positively breathless, just as every other aspect about him does.
“Morning,” you both mumble at the same time, and while you scrunch your face up in an endeared cringe, Jimin just laughs sweetly at the clumsiness between you. He moves over to plant the softest of kisses to your forehead, and you cuddle into his side like it’s your designated space to reside until the end of time.
In lieu of the family-shaped hole you’d been carrying with you your whole life, there now appeared a Jimin-shaped puzzle piece slotting into place.
And with that, you could ask for nothing more.
~
~
Somewhere in the distant night, a young man taps his finger on the steering wheel of his car as he speeds along the eerily quiet highway.
The late hour does nothing to deter him, and he fights back the drowsiness threatening to pull him under as the road falls away beneath the tyres. He’s been driving for hours, but he persists without rest and soldiers on, full of purpose. Every time he feels a shred of doubt begin to linger in his mind, he glances over to the wrinkled photo resting on his dashboard and the initial burst of vigour returns.
He runs a hand through his long, curly black hair and eyes the photo again. The smiling faces look back at him, and he immediately wonders for the millionth time if he truly is doing the right thing here. The turn-off sign whizzes by his car window, and he realises that now is his last chance to change his mind.
He can keep living a peaceful life if he just continues straight past without looking back, but there’s no way he can do that. He can’t fail his only remaining family any longer.
He veers for the turn-off, taking a deep breath and reaching forward to brush a finger against one of the smiling faces in the roughly crinkled photo. It’s final, he’s made his decision.
I’m coming home.
.
︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵
TO BE CONTINUED
Copyright © 2020 by salade. All rights reserved.
#jimin x reader#jimin angst#jimin smut#bgwdynamitedads#btsghostie#jimin fluff#jimin scenarios#jimin imagines#bts smut#bts angst#jimin fanfic#BTS jimin#bts fluff#bts fanfic#policeman jimin#s2l au#heavy angst#shy jimin#saladejin
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A Reader’s Guide to Writing: Lesson #2
I... expect to get shot for this.
-sighs and puts on a helmet- Body shots, fine, but I’m trying to avoid taking a headshot for what I’m about to say.
The Constant Reader... does not give a fuck about flat, cardboard-cutout “representation.” We just don’t. In fact, it’s downright insulting to your Readers to assume that labeling your character “insert woke points here” will automatically endear them to us.
(...god I’m going to get in so much trouble for this...)
When I see a book described as “it has two lesbians in it!” or “these characters are transgender!” my immediate and automatic thought is “...okay, but what is the story about? will I give a fuck about these characters?”
And that, right there, is something that can actually carry a weak plot (to a Reader’s mind) or absolutely drag a good plot into “well, I might as well finish reading it.”
Do I give a fuck about your characters?
Now this does not mean your character has to be Wholly Unproblematic or an Adorable Cinnamon Roll, Too Good, Too Pure for This World.
What it means is “do I respond to your character like they’re fleshed out well enough for my brain to read them as a person?”
For Comparison-- Two Characters:
Here’s an example of what is honestly a really well-written character (in a... very... ugh, look, the pervasive racism makes it terrible to read now and I just kind of wince and groan at it and wince even harder knowing how well it was received) because the character has caused Emotion in a Reader.
Scarlett Fucking O’Hara.
I hate her. I’m not even kidding, I just hate this self-absorbed bitch. She drives me nuts. I’d love to yeet her off a literary cliff and watch her drown.
...but I consider her a well-written character because she inspires emotion. I react to her. I legitimately read a page of “Gone With the Wind” (*again, I know, I’m sorry, the book’s slimy feel of ‘but... slavery was good!’ is just... horrific) and I want to grab the nearest heavy object and slam it onto her empty skull. She has obvious flaws--and they’re explicitly spelled out in the text--and those flaws totally fuck up her life. Scarlett doesn’t get what she wants because she is her own worst enemy in a lot of ways. And watching her make decisions based on what She Wants and then dealing with the aftermath feels legitimate. It feels pretty real to watch someone make a decision based on a want only to see them struggle with the result OF that decision. Not to mention the moment of realization that came too late, as let’s be fair, hindsight is 20/20 and a lot of us have had that ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhh...’ moment ourselves.
What Scarlett has a lot of, however, is Emotion. And I don’t mean she has a lot of emotionally wrenching scenes. What I mean is Scarlett is actively driven by or affected by An Emotion at nearly every part of her story, even when that Emotion is just some self-absorbed Glee at how she’s gonna one-up this whole town.
Let me compare my reactions to Miss “I’m So Self-Absorbed I Should Be Taxonomically Classified As A Sponge” O’Hara to a character that I... honestly couldn’t give less than a fuck about, despite having read six whole books she’s the main protagonist of.
Ayla of “Clan of the Cave Bears” Jean Auel fame.
In the first novel, Ayla is... actually kind of interesting. A Homo Sapien child found by Neanderthals and raised in their society, there’s a bit that can be read into just how hard it is to fit into a culture and how sometimes that involves more self-repression than is mentally healthy. And in the second novel, “Valley of the Horses,” all the parts with Ayla before her Male Perfection Love Interest shows up are also fairly interesting.
She’s alone, she’s fighting to survive with only her hard-earned skills to carry her. It’s great!
And then... Jondalar arrives and we see her through His Eyes.
I’m not sure exactly what happened here other than the novels (and Ayla) turn into a constant Display Of How Amazing Ayla Is. Everyone loves her! (And the people that don’t are Obviously Flawed and So Empty Inside.) She can do anything! She invents the needle! Horseback riding! Domesticating dogs! The travois! She’s drop-dead gorgeous, an accomplished healer, wants only to be a Good Wife (it’s a little icky, but considering the time period these books are set in, I give it a pass on that) and is always so confused as to why people seem amazed by her.
She becomes basically a Perfect Woman and to be honest, all her struggles after that just feel like they’re directly tied to how Perfect She Is. Ayla suddenly doesn’t have An Emotion behind her. She’s just a vessel for everyone’s awe that such a “perfect woman” exists. And it just... turns her completely fuckin’ flat.
What I’ve found after doing a LOT of reading is that a Writer should keep one big thing in mind.
(And this goes triple for stories that tote themselves on the representation platform.)
Emotion--the experience of it, the sharing of it, the looking for validation of it--is one of those defining things that make what we’d call the Human Experience.
People who are looking for representation in media are looking for actual representation. For a Person like them on the screen or page. Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to be a teenager struggling with a realization of sexuality, but you can ask people who do. And you can relate YOURSELF to that on some level.
Everyone in the world has had a moment where they’re trying to reconcile something about themselves with what the world expects or with what they expect from themselves. You can take that seed, that memory of sitting in your bedroom and listening to the same song on repeat while thinking wistful thoughts of what life could be like if This Was Different or imagining a future where What You Want is accessible, acceptable and within reach. You can find the Emotion and appeal to it.
I know that the experience of being gay or disabled or neurodivergent or trans or a minority is not universal; everyone has a different life, different experiences, different fears, worries, hopes, dreams.
And I say this in full awareness that someone could very rightly be angry at me for paring off societal issues and cultural problems to make this accessible to writers who may want to write a specific character FIRST and THEN find sensitivity readers to help them refine it*.
There’s a “but” to the whole “different life” thing.
Humans have felt the basic range of emotion across the board, across the world, across time, regardless of where or when or who they are. And a Character that makes you Feel is a character that you can give a fuck about. Pare off the labels and start with the tinest, most concentrated idea of who this person is so you can find their emotions to use in the story. Are they a dreamer? A fighter? A creator? An explorer? What Emotion drives them? Hope? Curiosity? Anger? Sorrow?
Because I personally have seen myself in characters that I have absolutely no surface experience in common with whatsoever, but I responded to the Emotion that drove them because I recognized it. I’d felt it. Maybe what created the Emotion was different (wildly so!) from what created it for me, but I had the Emotion. The character is having the Emotion.
And that makes me give a fuck about the outcome of their story, whether the personality carrying the Emotion makes me want to cut a bitch (fuck you Scarlett) or see them succeed in every aspect of life.
[*You will want sensitivity readers to refine the character because representation should actually represent and not be A Writer Getting Woke Points.]
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