also ik i be answering asks on here and stuff and acting normal but i am super isolating myself in like actual intimate friendships rn and i feel like crap so bad abt it...just bc im answering asks and being funny on the internet doesnt mean im not SO depressed...i hate things being expected of me 

PARTY FAVOURS I CHAPTER 7

Rating: Explicit.

‼️TW: Reader is EIGHTEEN! Recreational drug use, smoking and alcohol consumption, deeply internalised self-loathing, very questionable moral standards. Daddy kink taken half-seriously. BDSM themes in later chapters - explicit content will come with it's own TWs. FIRST PERSON POV. There is violence in this chapter.

Summary: You're Peter's classmate, a child of rich and famous but uncaring parents. Getting paired up for a lengthy project with the boy was an interesting turn of events and you don't know whether to feel blessed or cursed when you develop, seemingly, a perfectly normal, harmless crush on Tony Stark. Fueled by feelings of inadequacy and boredom, your life spirals out of control - and you're lucky your newfound friends are there to pick up the pieces even if you cannot find it in yourself to believe these amazing human (and not so human) beings voluntarily give you more than a fleeting glance and an offhanded thought. And they brought cake!

A/N: *chants* BRUCE FLUFF BRUCE FLUFF BRUCE FLUFF. *sings* they're ain't no big thing just show them a little swing. Beneficial Cucumber. Author's notes are spoilers without context at this point... Y'all-

My beta, @miscmarvelwritings . We make the best duo. I am her dumb of ass and she is my gay. I love her.

Tony was elbow-deep in a robot when I came out of the elevator, Peter holding up the spare part needed, hovering next to the engineer. Without preamble, I was directed to help and dutifully fulfilled Tony's requests. Nothing indicated that my evening stunt ever happened besides Pete's faint blush; I might as well have written it off to the tank top hugging the upper part of my body in all the right places.

I was disappointed, I won't lie to myself - I expected Tony to tease me at least a little bit, snark something vaguely lewd and move on. But the engineer was quiet today, eerily so, almost to the point where it seemed he was ignoring me on purpose. My pride didn't let me begin any of our usual banter so I frowned in silence, making the appearance of a very focused person. Bolts and screws - most interesting things in the world!

As usual, I clocked out first around eleven thirty, leaving Pete and Tony some time to discuss their secret science stuff. Usually I would be exhausted by this point which left little to no room for jealousy but that night, emotions hit me like a freight train and it took me every ounce of my willpower to head out to Bruce's for the inevitable "I'm disappointed in you/Fuck safely" round of brainwashing.

My brain kept returning to the downwards tilt of Tony's mouth and the somber mood around him. I hated seeing him so...unhappy and tense.

The moment I set step in Bruce's lab, I saw the man's back hunched over a tube, I felt the same energy coming from him. What a fucking day! The sigh that left my mouth was resigned. "Bruce?"

A couple of seconds passed before he turned. He attempted a smile but it didn't reach his eyes at all. "Hi, Princess."

I cocked my head in defeat. "If this is the part where you lecture me, let's get over it. Or even better, you say nothing and we carry on," I pursed my lips, inspecting my nails in favour of actually facing the scientist.

I heard the click-clack of his instruments being placed on the table and the soft taps of his shoes against the tiled floor. His arms reached around my shoulders before I could even attempt to pull away, one of his broad palms tucking my face into the crook of his neck.

"I'm not mad, baby girl," He told me quietly.

I felt some of the tension dissipate, wrapped my arms around him, coming to a realization the man was all but melting into me.

"Just stay safe, alright? I don't want you to get hurt," With the same quiet tone, Bruce gently shushed my worries away. "If something is wrong, you can come to me. You know that, right?" He sounded painfully hopeful as he withdrew just enough to capture my face in his hands, forcing me to look him in the eye.

Something about the look in his eyes made my heart ache. I didn't have the heart to refuse, nor did I want to, so I nodded. Promptly, I was embraced yet again, his lips resting on the crown of my head, both of us swaying gently.

I've never wanted to cry so badly in my entire life.

"I'm a fuckin' mess, Bwucie, you haven't got a clue what you've gotten yourself into," I settled for a round of self-deprication instead. Bitter as it was, it was the barenaked truth.

"Then you're a beautiful mess," I could feel the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. So I smiled, too, obscured by his lab coat.

As much as I didn't want to leave the embrace, like, ever, I had to get home before one o'clock - before mother went to bed, zonked out on Valium and Ambien from the endless supply closet courtesy of my dad. "M'hafta go home," I mumbled.

Bruce sighed deeply. "I'll grab one of Tony's cars and drive you," He went over to remove his lab coat as I gaped. "I'm a forty-five year old man, I can drive." He chuckled humorlessly.

"Tony won't mind?" I asked the first question that popped into my mind to attempt dispelling the awkward moment.

"Trust me, he won't mind at all," Bruce mumbled darkly. I wondered what's up with that but the immediate future for me was already planned out: I was really looking forward to going home, crawling into bed with my clothes on and having a good old fashioned cry.

We made quick work of locating a set of keys and peeling out of the garage in Tony's shiny Audi R8, tires squealing on the wet pavement. It had stopped raining sometime during my robot building but the city was still filled with puddles. I could smell the moist, decaying leaves through the tiny gap of the window, the city was drowning in autumn like I was drowning in my own cluelessness.

The adrenaline rush, the weight of Tony's foul mood, the grief and pleading that radiated off Bruce mixed into a horrendous cocktail of misery and pain. Too much pain for my little, weak, dumb heart to handle. And all these people out in the streets, dressed to the nines despite the disgusting weather - laughing, hugging and drunkenly giggling, it was like salt on my wounds, rubbing it in how much of a good time they were having.

"This your house?" Bruce pointed at the black, high gate of the entrance to my garage.

"Yeah, it's a bit much," I nodded absentmindedly, seeing Bruce's eyes bulge at the sheer size of my estate. My mother wouldn't settle for any less than the best so having a monstrously huge (for NYC) home was what she got. Dad just signed the checks.

Bruce hummed.

I made a face, reaching for his warm hand and giving it a squeeze. "Thanks, Bwucie," Smiling at him, I used up the last of my good mood to show the gratitude he deserved.

He pulled me into a tight hug right over the middle console. It wasn't comfortable by any means with the numerous buttons and switches poking at the soft of my stomach but there was nowhere else I'd rather be than in his arms during that moment. The breaths that left me felt like they were punched out of my chest cavity by steel-toed boots.

"Good night, Princess. Sweet dreams." He kissed my cheek, lingering just a tiny bit.

I did the same, rubbing softly against his stubble and giggling at the ticklish sensation. "Night night, Bwucie."

I waved at him again as I unlocked my front gates and watched him speed off from behind it, obscured by the shadows of the decorative trees growing right behind the fence.

Bruce's face had morphed into something akin to torment or suffering the moment I disappeared from his immediate eyesight and it baffled me to no extent. I ransacked my brain left and right, searching for a reason I might have inadvertently caused him to feel that way but found none. The only logical reason was that he was just lonely. He didn't have many friends from what I gathered and if judging by the proud tone in which he spoke of Will-Mr Davies today, he desperately needed some other company than his teammates. I wish I could have helped.

Mother was nowhere to be seen when I entered the house so a beeline for my bed was successful. The ugly, loud, dry-heaving sobs weren't in any shape or form attractive or acceptable to show to anybody but me so when they forced their way out of me, the pillow keeping me company. I cried as for everything that was happening to me as much as I sobbed because of the self-pity I was indulging in.

It was pathetic, really. My mother would scoff and my father... Well, he'd offer me to 'cheer up, throw a party, do normal teenager stuff'. The bottle of wine I kept in my closet was empty in no time: I justified that as a single lady in a big city, I was entitled to relax once in a while.

Who was I lying to? I downed a bottle in twenty minutes just so I could fall asleep and begone from all this bullshit for a while.

On Monday, I anonymously submitted the documents pertaining to Thompson's behaviour to the school board and to a local newspaper that was known to dabble in socialite gossip. Next day, an investigation was promptly launched and important-looking people started to appear in the hallways, going in and out of the principal's office. Flash was pulled out of class by two police officers: at this point, half the student population was unashamedly filming it on their smartphones, me included. With grim satisfaction, I sent the video directly to the group chat with an added message of "so long, fucker".

Steve didn't even remark on my profanity, just sent a thumbs up.

It really fuckin' blew up the next morning. The news was plastered across every paper, every social media site - "Midtown Principal's son arrested for grand theft auto and assault", "Midtown Principal Being Investigated for obstruction of education" and other ridiculous headlines that had me, Bucky and Natasha in shit-fits.

Flash returned to school on Wednesday accessorized with a pretty ankle monitor and a sullen frown. During lunch, he sat only with two of his closest minions instead of the chatty group he was usually seen with. Everybody avoided him like the bubonic plague, even teachers ignored him.

With the final bell, me and Pete went on to look for Happy outside the school territory.

I was spending nearly every evening at the tower either in Tony's or Bruce's lab or sandwiched between Wanda and Bucky on the couch, gossiping while TV shows mutely played in the background. I had found a second friend in the face of Winter Soldier who, much like me, spent a lot of his days occupied by the internet or in a general state of confusion. Bucky was charming, funny and very flamboyant. I enjoyed the no-nonsense attitude and zero fucks that he gave the world in general.

The moment I stepped on the other side of the gate, I immediately knew something was wrong. Peter squirmed uncomfortably beside me, looking frantically in every direction, trying to spot Happy's car in vain.

"Ay, Parker," The familiar obnoxious voice of Peter's bully reached our ears. "You wanna tell me how you got your grubby little hands on that file?"

Thompson had brought back up with him, the idiot that he was. He was standing off to the side, leaning against the fence while five older boys surrounded us in a tight circle.

"Leave us alone, Flash, you're already in trouble," Peter tried reasoning with the bully meanwhile I... I was searching for a cleaner, dryer spot to dump my $1500 bag onto in preparation for the inevitable. I was no stranger to swinging my arm - as a frequent house party guest, I've had to fend off enough unwelcome advances. I've been told I have a mean, mean right hook.

"Bold of you to assume Peter would actually steal something," I stated in a bored tone once my bag was out of the way and Pete was standing securely behind me. I wasn't afraid of Flash, mostly because I knew he'd step back for the fear of retaliation from my family was usually too much.

"Oh, look at that, the weirdo is talking," Thompson mocked, getting up and standing right in front of my face. "You know, I don't get why the likes of you have to go to school with us, normal people. See, Peter here might be a little wimp but at least he won't shoot up the whole school one day because his daddy didn't love him enough," Thompson decided to test his luck. To finish his epic tirade with a flourish, he spat on the ground next to me.

I snorted. "Wow, that's an awful lot of smart words for someone as dumb as a doorknob," I shook my head in disdain. "Look, either you go now or I'll sue you so far up your ass, you'll be sucking dick in prison just to get something to fill your stomach with." And wow, that comeback was really, really good. I was proud of myself.

I saw pure rage mar Thompson's already ugly face into something demonic and ducked at the last moment, feeling the blunt sting of his knuckles connect with my left cheekbone. Reflectively I swung, too, decking him straight in the nose with all the rage and despair that was burning deeply inside of me at that time.

I heard gasps all around me as the students whispered, shouted and cheered at Thompson's confused form hitting the ground. He held his face and his palms were stained a deep crimson; I felt something warm on my face, copper in my mouth.

"Does anybody want some of that, too?" My tone was icy. I shrugged off the hand that landed on my shoulder, glaring down one of the boys who came with Thompson.

"Shit, cops, RUN!" One of the students suddenly shouted and just like that, both me and Flash were surrounded only by a handful of students who had filmed the entire incident on camera. God bless technology!

"Uh, I think you're bleeding," Pete timidly remarked from behind me, hand still awkwardly outstretched towards me. He cast a guilty look to the side where Happy was running towards us, phone held to his ear, no doubt already on the line with Tony and the rest of the Avengers. Shit, fuck, SHIT. I didn't plan for this!

The police officers called an ambulance for Flash and took my statement while I was holding my bleeding nose up to the sky, much to the officer's dismay. Happy had passed the officer his mobile phone and I briefly heard Tony's voice saying that I will be taken care of in the tower's medical suite - and let's face it, no cop will go against Iron Man's charm and wit.

As an eighteen year old, I could refuse the on-site medical assistance that the city provided and my parents weren't required so I was let go after my statement was taken and my injuries photographed.

Not that the photoshoot really was required. Multiple people had the incident on video, from multiple angles. It was an open and close case. I called my mother in the elevator (she didn't answer) and left her a voice message with the bare facts of the situation and my current whereabouts.

Seeing the whole team assembled in the living room, some nervously twitching, some anxiously pacing, I couldn't help but let out a slightly hysterical giggle. "Oh my god, guys, I'm not in a coma, stop acting like I'm in a coma!"

Bucky was the first to approach me, carefully hugging me and steering me towards Bruce. He looked a bit rough, green-ish? I guess. But the first aid kit was already on the table and Stephen Strange was hovering nearby.

"You decked the sucker real good, doll," Bucky's Brooklyn accent made his speech less intelligible but he definitely got all the cookie points for the heat and the passion.

"Ditto. Should've kicked him in the balls, too," Natasha smirked and Steve mirrored her smirk with a darker twist.

"I'm going to sue him so darn far up his ass," Tony seethed, looking absolutely livid.

"Don't worry, mother's got it handled," I obediently laid down on the couch, staring up at Bruce's wide eyes and Stephen's focused face.

"You are fearless and fierce, dear lady," Thor boomed from somewhere.

All of this was making me... Emotional. I just punched a piece of human garbage, it was not a big deal, okay? He had it coming. I chuckled uncomfortably, wincing when Bruce began dabbing at the dried blood on my face with a piece of gauze soaked in alcohol. "Petey, you alright?" I asked, worried about the sudden onset of silence from the usually chatty boy. He mumbled something. "Speak up, I can't hear shit with all the ringing in my ears."

That earned me a worried look from doctor Strange and a frown from Bruce.

"I should've protected you-I mean-it's not that you can't do it yourself, or because you're a girl, it's just-I," he suddenly stopped.

"Go ahead, kid," Tony urged him with unmistakable kindness in his voice.

"You see, I'm-I'm actually Spider-Man and I'm afraid to accidentally kill someone, 'cause I'm really strong." Pete blurted out.

I had to replay his words several times in my head to get to the gist of what he was actually saying. Shy little Peter? Spider-Man? So that's why he was such a fucking pacifist? I mean, it made perfect sense if he really was strong enough to lift cars and hold together collapsing bridges like I'd seen on YouTube.

"Huh," I stated after a brief pause. "I guess I did double the work today, dumped out some trash and prevented a potential murder. I'm on a roll and I deserve chocolate cake," I rambled to distract myself from the incoming dull headache and the sting of the alcohol against the split skin of my cheek.

Strange chuckled, looking, possibly, the happiest I've ever seen him. Bruce giggled too. A tiny bit.

"Friday, order the biggest, most expensive chocolate cake that can be delivered in... Two hours," Tony immediately spoke up.

"Cake," I mumbled happily, a strange drowsiness overcoming me, making my eyelids droop. "Hey-mmm, doc?" I slurred, seeing Stephen's face fall. "M'think m'concussed, f'king 'ell!" The snort that left his mouth was absolutely hilarious; I started giggling, too, startling Banner into action.

He picked up his phone, saying something I didn't understand at all.

"Y'kno," I had this totally bright idea I absolutely NEEDED to share with everyone. "Y'kinda look like the guy... Wha's'is name... Bendy-snap Crum-ble-sticks? No, wait," Snorts and giggles began to resonate through the room as the amount of Doctor Stranges suddenly multiplied by two. He was a WIZARD, that was so cool! "I think... Mmm, yes... Benadryl-Claritin? No-no-no, 'das meds," Woah, a lot of people were there and they were suddenly all laughing. I wondered what was so funny. It was hard to think with so many people laughing; my temples were pulsating uncomfortably. "Wait, I know, I know!" There were wheezing noises now, noises that distinctively reminded me of Tony and Wanda and Bucky. "Bubble-butt Coitus-snack!" I triumphantly exclaimed, finally happy to have gotten it right.

The laughter turned into truly demonic cackling, surrounding me, they were so loud I almost managed to get fully afraid. And then, I passed the fuck out.

TAGLIST IS OPEN Y'ALL.

@another-stark-sub ​ @mostly-marvel-musings  @vozit ​ @littlegasps @pilloclock ​ @shereadsinquiet @downeyreads ​ @hermione-grangers-wife ​ @individualistfem

Alfonse

Introducing (or reintroducing, for those who read my Forgive and Forget) a loving father, mob boss and whumper.

@iaminamoodymoodtoday, @wildfaewhump, @ishouldblogmore, @lektric-whump, @that-one-thespian, @raigash

CN: gun, male whumper + female whumpee

Penelope had been home-schooled for her entire life. It was a deliberate decision from her parents. Many home-schooled children were kept with their families because of additional needs on their part; the additional needs in this case were, in fact, the family’s. The Family, to be more specific.

 Alfonse, therefore, had been one of Penelope’s tutors for her entire life. They hired some, of course, particularly for the areas in which the parents were not educated. Penelope had private help with her poetry, her violin, and especially her science. Sinclair was a capable tutor in most areas, between sessions in the design room teaching Penelope their craft, and when it came to mathematics, Alfonse was the go-to teacher.

 He had a busy schedule, but he always made time in it for her lessons. Half an hour on weekday mornings, an hour on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, and additional classes wherever the local schools or tuition centres put them on offer.

 This Thursday evening, the topic is fractions. Penelope despises fractions.

“If I have half of a cake,” Alfonse says, lying on his side on the indigo rug of Penelope’s study room, dividing a cupcake into two equal segments with a knife, “and then I get another cake, and I have all of that cake, how many halves do I have?”

 Penelope would rather eat the cake. It’s obvious in her jutting lower lip. But she sighs and hums and says, “Three?”

 Alfonse smiles. He cuts off a slice of the cupcake and holds out the blunt table knife to her, and she leans forwards to grab the piece off the end with a self-satisfied grin.

 “Now say I have my cake cut into quarters,” Alfonse continues, ignoring the eyeroll he gets in response. He cuts down the middle of the cupcake half. “And I have one quarter, and one half.” He indicates the other half, untouched since its creation. “How many quarters?”

 “Three again!”

 Alfonse grins this time, and cuts off a little more of the abandoned quarter. This time, Penelope leans forwards first, and he holds it halfway out towards her before eating it himself.

 “Dad!” Penelope complains, scandalised.

Alfonse winks. “Don’t tell mappa.”

 “I’m eating the rest.”

 “Finish your worksheet.”

 She huffs. She blows out her little cheeks. She picks up her pen with the pink fluffy bobble on top, and gets to work.

 Alfonse gets up, taking the plate with him, just in case she gets any ideas. “Twenty minutes, poppet. Then we’ll try mixed fractions.”

 Penelope isn’t listening. She’s gotten to work. Alfonse takes a moment to watch her think, his heart warm. She’s going to be an amazing woman someday.

 He sets the plate down on the desk, and steps outside to give her peace. Checking his watch, he heads down to discuss dinner with the cook. Sinclair is at a show tonight, so it’s down to him to keep things running smoothly. Without Sinclair home, maybe he can sneak some extra dessert, too. If Penelope gets her questions right and manages to fit the second worksheet in.

 Heading down the main staircase, a figure in the gallery catches his eye. The new girl, he thinks. She’d come on a recommendation from a friend, and he hadn’t really noticed her in her first week, which was a good sign. Had she been assigned to the gallery? Maybe she’s been struggling to find her way around. The house is quite expansive, and there are so many rooms, even Alfonse has trouble giving directions sometimes.

 He strolls through to give her a hand, or perhaps just to tell her she can go home. A little dust and disorder in the gallery would be no problem between today and tomorrow, especially not if it’s stressing her out. At least, that’s Alfonse’s opinion; Sinclair might disagree when they get home.

 “Lillian, wasn’t it?” he asks, letting her know he’s there. Apparently, he has quite an intimidating presence. “Are you alright?”

 The girl turns, wide-eyed. Alfonse feels for her; a big man like him appearing from the evening dimness can be alarming. “Oh, um, Mr – Dechart?”

 “That’s me. Why are you still here? Your shift should have finished at five.”

 “I, um… I just wanted to finish.”

 Alfonse glances around the gallery, but can’t see a single thing left to do. He looks at her more closely, noticing the cleaning bag on the counter opposite the bay window, zipped up. There’s a spray bottle and cloth left out beside it. He crosses the hall to it, while Lillian watches.

 Two fingers to the cloth confirms that it’s bone dry.

 When Alfonse turns, Lillian is looking far more nervous. But there’s no need for concern just yet. Alfonse keeps his friendly smile. “What exactly were you doing?”

 She’s convincing, he’ll give her that, but her eyes drop for a moment too long before she flushes, hands twisting behind her back. “The um, the painting…”

 Alfonse doesn’t look. The painting is behind him, and her hands are concealed. “Ah, Frankenthaler. It’s lovely, isn’t it? Did it keep you for a whole,” he pauses, recalling the time he saw on the watch before leaving Penelope, “thirty-five minutes?”

 “I’m an art student, I was…”

 “Lillian,” Alfonse cuts in, keeping most of his attention on her hands now. “Don’t take me for a fool.”

 Her throat bobs in a nervous swallow. Alfonse waits, half-tense and ready, if necessary, to pounce.

 When she moves, it’s in an explosion of motion, hand whipping from behind her back as she lunges forwards, and the firearm is already in his face by the time he’s reacting, but there’s no shot when he twists out of the way and grabs for her wrist. A threat, or an attempt to hold him, or a bluff, or perhaps she just can’t quite bring herself to escalate so soon; the possibilities run through the back of his mind as he leverages his weight, twisting her arm until he can bend her trigger finger back, hearing her breath catch and stop as she tries to shoulder herself between his body and their hands.

 The gun hits the floor with a clatter and, mercifully, does not go off. Lillian tries to pull back, but Alfonse moves with her, still pulling at her wrist, forcing it above her head until it hits the wall and stays there. Alfonse leans on it as his other hand goes for her pockets, checking for other weapons. She tries to grab the knife first, but he’s got her dominant hand in his, and he yanks it free and tosses it, too, across the parquet floor.

 The study room is up the stairs in the east wing. They’re at the front of the house, downstairs. Penelope shouldn’t be hearing a thing.

 He’s got fifteen minutes until he has to go back to teach her more fractions.

 If he doesn’t go, she might come out and look for him.

 There’s fear in Lillian’s wide eyes, now, as she realises how quickly she’s been caught. Alfonse has questions, but first, he needs to move her, and for that, he needs to assess whether she’ll fight.

 “You were sent, weren’t you?” he asks her, still holding her against the wall with his size, his free hand at her shoulder, fingers digging in. “Who?”

 She seems to have forgotten how to fight back, or has given up on doing so. Her voice emerges in a terrified croak. “I…”

 She thinks better of it, and her jaw snaps shut again. She shakes her head.

 Not enough time for a negotiation. Too difficult, too noisy, to fight. Alfonse leans closer still, until her neck is craned back against her shoulders to keep him in view, a cowed animal under a predator.

 “This is my home,” he says slowly, voice low enough that only she can hear it. The chef might be wondering where he is, but there’s no need to spread the drama. “Someone told you where to come. Someone helped you get a recommendation from our friends. Someone gave you a gun and a knife and told you to use them if anyone realised who you were. I’m going to find out who that is, and then, I may spare you.”

 Lillian’s eyes fill with tears. But if she can blush on command, she can likely do this, too. The important thing is that she doesn’t fight back as he yanks her away from the wall, twisting her wrist behind her back. His other hand goes around her throat, pulling up against her jaw tightly. He won’t ask her not to scream – that would be an invitation, really – but he can do his best to prevent it.

 He glances down, glimpsing his watch half-hidden under a shirt cuff. Ten minutes.

 Maybe he can swing pizza for dinner. It’d help with the fractions.

 The dressing room on the first floor, attached to the west wing’s guest room, is not actually a dressing room. The walk-in wardrobe is fortified and equipped for emergencies such as this one. It’s nothing compared to the panic room in the cellar, but then, there’s a slim possibility that the others in the house might need that room before the night is out.

 When she sees what’s behind the unassuming eggshell-white door, Lillian suddenly remembers how to struggle, but it’s too little, and much too late. Her attempt to drop herself to the ground is insufficient; he lifts more than she weighs on a regular basis. She’s a strange pick for an assassin or thief. He’ll ask about that, later.

 Instead, he hauls her up again, and though her legs drag across the floor and she tries to lift her arms and slide free, he gets her into the padded chair. The straps start at the waist, which is always the hardest, but the arms and ankles are easy after that.

 He closes the door behind them before she remembers to shout for help. She’ll have seen Penelope during the week. She may have realised how little his daughter knows.

 He’s comforted by the faint click of the soundproofing falling into place. Now, it may as well be only them in the house.

 Seven minutes. It goes so fast. He’ll text Sinclair later.

 As Lillian stares, Alfonse undoes his cufflinks and tucks them into a pocket. He folds back his cuffs and rolls up his sleeves. He rolls his shoulders, and stretches them, paying extra attention to his right.

 Five minutes.

 “Any heart problems?”

 Lillian blinks, stunned for a moment.

 “High blood pressure?”

 Slowly, she shakes her head. Her neat bun has gone askew in their struggle, leaving tendrils of dark hair hanging around her face in corkscrews.

 “Lovely.” Alfonse reaches up to the top shelf, the one Penelope still can’t reach. From the shoebox upon it, he takes what should be a fully-charged taser.

 He clicks it on, sees the lack of light, and flicks it off.

 He should really pay more attention to that.

 No matter. He puts it away again, clears his throat, and turns. Lillian is still confused, and less tense than she was, and looks up again at him when he stands before her.

 One punch, swift and merciless, to the corner of her jaw, knocking it sideways against her own teeth, probably cutting the inside of her cheek, and a second against the flesh of her cheek, his wedding ring catching the skin but not quite splitting it. Later, the small cut-gem pattern of her wound will tell her allies that it was him.

 “You’ll tell me who sent you,” he says, pleased to hear that he doesn’t sound even slightly out of breath. “Whether it’s now, or in an hour, or tomorrow, or at the end of next week. The longer it takes you, the worse this is going to get.”

 Lillian looks up at him with all the misery and fear she can muster, and Alfonse meets her gaze. She even sniffles.

 He swings again, and she flinches, but not as much as an innocent person would. This time, his ring does cut.

 He doesn’t give her a chance to repent. He checks his watch, turns on his heel, and leaves her there. On his way downstairs, he messages Sinclair to update them, and when he arrives back in the gallery, he collects her two weapons. The gun goes into the safe behind the Frankenthaler, and the knife tucks into his belt. He pops a head into the kitchen to suggest pizza for dinner, collects two apples from the fruit bowl, and heads upstairs.

 Outside Penelope’s room, he pauses, checking his reflection in the window, the light bouncing off from a dark exterior. He brushes a loose lock of hair back, and rolls down his sleeves. One cufflink, then the other, secures them back in place.

 He checks her knife. Clean. Two apples in one hand, knife in the other, he knocks on and opens Penelope’s study door.

 “You’re late!”

 Alfonse laughs, picking up the cupcake plate from the desk and delivering all the items to the rug where Penelope is lying on her front, doodling in the margins of her worksheet. “I’m sorry, I got caught up. I brought apples to help you with our next sheet.”

 She wrinkles her nose. “Not more cupcakes?”

 “You won’t want any dessert later.”

 “Yes I will!”

 Alfonse laughs again, sitting down cross-legged across from her. He shifts the cupcake aside on the plate, and lays an apple on it. With swift motions of Lillian’s knife, he divides it into eighths.

  “Now, say I have two apples, and I cut them both into eight equal parts…”

what goes on || tsukki x reader || ch. 11

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During your middle school years, you were always in advanced classes. This meant being in class with some of the same kids every year. Tsukishima Kei was one of them. You guys had been in the same class for all of middle school. At the end of your last semester of middle school, you hear Tsukishima and another one of your classmates, Yamaguchi Tadashi, discussing their plans to attend Karasuno High School. Looks like another year of Tsukishima for you. This year, you were determined to become at least his friend. This was proving to be a lot harder than you originally intended.

Chapter Eleven: Adore You

It was finally the first day of the Inter-High Tournament. You woke up with fond memories of the night before when Tsukki had come over. You smiled and glanced out your window at the street painted blue with an early morning glow. You stretched your arms and yawned, not wanting to get out of your comfy bed but knowing you had a train to catch soon. 

You climbed out of bed and dragged yourself to the bathroom to begin getting ready. You went through your usual morning routine but decided to change up your hair for the day. You opted for a half-up-half-down hairstyle with little clips adorning your hair. You took one final glance in the mirror, happy with how you looked.

Though the summer heat was in full force, the evenings and early mornings in Sendai could get chilly, so you opted to wear a pair of high-waisted, blue paperbag shorts with a white t-shirt. You grabbed a cardigan to wear in case the cool air was too much. You grabbed the bag of clothes you had packed the night before, along with your phone, headphones, and wallet. You pulled up your messages with Ichiko and sent a short message telling her you were about to leave for Sendai. 

Ichiko had promised to meet you at the train station and walk you to the Sendai City Gymnasium, however, she couldn’t stay for the matches due to having piano lessons on Saturdays. You walked out of your room and to the kitchen, grabbing the bentos you had made the previous night to bring today. You made two, one for breakfast on the train and one for lunch at the gym. You tucked them neatly into your bag and grabbed your house keys before getting ready to leave. You slipped on your white trainers and left the house, locking the door behind you. 

Your train was due to leave in forty-five minutes and you were a twenty minute walk from the station. You put on your headphones and shuffled your favorite mix to get ready for the day ahead. 

You arrived at the station with plenty of time to spare, but it was too early for many of the shops to be open so you pulled out your phone and decided to send Tsukki a goodmorning/good luck text. 

New Message

To: tsukki

good morning tsukki! be sure to eat a healthy breakfast! i’m rooting for you today! 

You took a photo of yourself doing peace signs to send with the text message. You smiled at your phone screen and sent the message before mindlessly scrolling through different apps, waiting for the train to come. You sat contently as Adore You by Harry Styles rang through your headphones. 

Honey

I'd walk through fire for you

Just let me adore you

___________________________________

After the forty-five minute train ride, which you fell asleep on, you were in Sendai. It was currently 8:30 in the morning and the matches weren’t due to begin for a couple of hours. You looked around the Sendai station, searching for any signs of Ichiko. You had texted her before leaving but never got a response, hopefully she remembered the time of your train. 

After searching for a couple of minutes, you were about ready to give up and walk to the gymnasium on your own, but you saw Ichiko running at you at full force. Her hair was in a messy bun and it looked like she was still in pajamas. 

You laughed slightly as you removed your headphones to greet her. 

“Did you just wake up?”

Ichiko kneeled over, hands on her knees as she took heavy breaths. “Yes, you should’ve CALLED me when you were getting close to Sendai, you know how I always oversleep,” Ichiko whined and stood up straight, regaining her composure only momentarily before tackling you in a hug. “It’s so good to see you again, I missed you.” 

You laughed and returned her hug. “I’m glad to see you too, it would’ve been better if you had been on time to the station but it’s okay, I’ll forgive you, because I love you,” you smiled as Ichiko finally released her grip on you. 

She smiled and poked your cheek, a gesture you guys had started when you were both young that never went away. “I love you too, (Y/N)-chan,” she looped her arm through yours and began to walk you in the direction of the gymnasium. “I’m starving, do you want to get something to eat before I drop you off at the gym?” Ichiko asked. 

“I had a bento on the train, but I could go for some tea!” You smiled at her and she smiled back. 

“Great! I know this adorable little cafe on the way to the gym that serves tea and breakfast,” she laughed and sped up her walking pace, essentially dragging you alongside her. 

“Okay, okay, don’t tug my arm off Ichi-chan.” 

___________________________________

You and Ichiko were sitting outside of a small book cafe, you had ordered a hot green tea while Ichiko ordered two pastries as well as a smoothie. You were sipping your tea while Ichiko slurped down her smoothie, watching the people of Sendai walk by. It was so nice being in a cityscape. Everything near your house was just the boring old countryside.

“So which boy on the volleyball team do you like?” Ichiko asked. 

You felt your cheeks heat up immediately at her question. “W-why do you think I like any of them?” You wanted the question to come out as offended and strong, but it came out sounding embarrassed and shocked, like she knew something you didn’t want her to. You didn’t like anyone on the volleyball team, but for some reason your thoughts wandered to how you and Tsukki had hung out last night. 

“Why else would you come all the way to Sendai for a volleyball game? It’s not even an interesting sport to watch,” Ichiko scoffed and laughed. She figured she had struck a nerve with her question. 

“For your information, volleyball is very fun to watch. This isn’t my first time watching the team, plus I help out at practices sometimes,” you tried your best to avoid her initial question. 

“Stop avoiding my question (Y/N)-chan, I know you too well for you to try,” she laughed again. 

“I don’t like anyone on the team, I’m just friends with them. Two of the first year players are in my class at school, that’s how I got to know the team,” you shrug, trying to be nonchalant. 

“Hmmm, okay. But I don’t believe you. Guess I’ll have to figure it out at tomorrow’s match, if they make it that far,” Ichiko took a bite out of her chocolate pastry. 

“You’re coming to the match tomorrow?” You asked, not expecting Ichiko to want to come. She just said volleyball was boring and her schedule was usually extremely busy. 

“Well, duh. I gotta meet this boy you’re in love with and I wanna spend more time with you!” She laughed and shoved your shoulder. “If you’re here to watch volleyball games, I’ll be there with you. Other than today of course, my parents won’t let me skip piano even though I don’t need lessons anymore,” she sighed with exasperation. 

“Your parents don’t want you to forget you’re a prodigy,” you laughed. Ichiko had been an extremely talented piano player when you met her and she only got better through grade school. You watched her win awards and play recitals all over the country. “Also I’m not in love with anyone on the team, I just told you that,” you sighed with frustration, but you could never stay mad at Ichiko. She was just too lovable. 

“We’ll see,” she laughed and finished her second pastry. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the gym before I go to my lessons,” Ichiko stood up, dusted the crumbs off of her pajamas and offered a hand to you. “Lets go, (Y/N)-chan.” 

You smiled up at her and grabbed her hand. You guys walked like that, hand-in-hand, for the majority of the way to the gymnasium. You noticed some funny looks from passersby, but didn’t mind. Ichiko made you feel like everything was okay, and you didn’t want to let go. 

You guys approached the gym and she finally let go of your hand. 

“Okay, okay, do you have an estimated time of when you’ll be done? I’ll try my best to come pick you up so you don’t get lost,” Ichiko smiled at you. 

“I’m not really sure, I think the afternoon games start at 1:30 so if our team gets to the second game they should be done around 3:30 or 4:00 I think. I’ll text you updates,” you smiled back at Ichiko. Being around her made you forget the loss of your mom. It made you feel like a child again. 

“Hmm, okay I’ll try to be here at 3:00 and if they’re still playing, I can stay and watch with you. Now I gotta run, I’ll be late to piano if I don’t. I love you, (Y/N)-chan. Root for your team for me!” Ichiko wrapped you in a bear hug before running off the way you had come.

You watched her leave before approaching the gymnasium. There were so many teams milling around the outside of the gym, your eyes began to scan the crowds for a certain lanky, blonde male. 

Once you spotted Tsukki, standing out above the crowd, even in a sea of tall boys, you smiled and began to walk towards the team. Hinata was the first to notice you. 

“(Y/N)!” Hinata yelled and ran over to you, jumping like a maniac. 

You laughed and patted his orange hair. “Hi, Hinata. It’s good to see you too.”

The rest of the team began to approach you as well. You smiled at everyone and greeted them. 

“Thank you for the treats, (Y/N), the entire team appreciated them. But how come you weren’t able to give them to use yourself? Yamaguchi said you weren’t in school for the day either,” Daichi gave you his concerned dad look. You smiled at his kindness. 

“I wasn’t feeling too well yesterday, I think I stayed up too late baking,” you laughed and quickly glanced at Tsukki. You were glad he hadn’t told anyone about your argument yesterday. 

“Well we all really liked the melon bread, especially Tanaka, he kept raving about it,” Daichi laughed. 

You glanced over at Tanaka and saw his cheeks were pink. “Melon bread is my favorite food and it was a nice treat, what about it?” He yelled and you laughed. 

“I’m glad you liked it Tanaka-senpai. I’ll be sure to make extra for you next time,” you smiled at him and he looked like his brain had short circuited. 

Daichi laughed and gave you another small smile. “Alright everyone, let’s get inside and get checked in. The first match is in forty-five minutes.” 

You watched as Nishinoya and Ennoshita pushed a broken Tanaka towards the doors and Hinata and Kageyama tried to race. As everyone else began to walk towards the doors, you caught up with Tsukki and tried to walk next to him, his long legs allowed for lengthy strides, however, and you struggled to match his pace. 

“Will you slow down you idiot bean pole? I’m trying to walk with you,” you huffed. 

“I don’t walk next to runts,” Tsukki said, as he slowed his strides to match your pace. 

“Whatever, softie. You love to walk with me,” you smirked in victory up at him. He glared down at you, but his eyes were soft. 

“Whatever,” he huffed. 

You smiled and walked with him in a comfortable silence. While Ichiko made you feel like a child without any problems, Tsukki made you feel like you weren’t alone in dealing with them. Being around him made the burden feel so much lighter, as if the load was being shared by the two of you. 

“You better win today, I’m counting on being able to come see matches today and tomorrow. My friend Ichi-chan might even come so you guys gotta be good,” you shoved him slightly as the two of you walked behind the rest of the team. 

“Well now that I know some random friend of yours is coming, we’ve gotta win huh?” He shoved you back, harder, making you stumble as you walked. 

“Hey! I just thought I’d give you more reasons to want to win, no need to shove me,” you huffed and turned your nose up at him. “If you’re gonna be like that, maybe I’ll just root for the opposing team and hope they beat you guys into a pulp so I can go hangout with my friend for the day,” you let out a dramatic sigh before laughing. 

“Whatever, I don’t care what you do,” he stated, before looking at you with kind eyes. You noticed that in public, Tsukki only seemed to smile with his eyes, not letting the uninterested look on his face change all that much. 

“Sure you don’t,” you smiled and almost walked into Nishinoya who had stopped short in front of you. You glanced around Nishinoya, trying to get a view of what made the team stop. Up ahead, in teal and white tracksuits was a school you didn’t know about. “Who’s that?” You whispered to Tsukki. 

“Aoba Johsai High School. One of Kageyama’s upperclassmen is on that team and he’s apparently a really good setter. We played a practice match against them and won but I think we won because Oikawa, the good setter, wasn’t there for the majority of the game.” 

“Oh, so you guys are like rivals?” You asked him. 

“I guess you could say that. But they’re almost always the second best in the prefecture. They have a way better team than we do, I don’t know if we can beat them and Oikawa,” Tsukki said, looking over the crowd towards the other team. 

“Well you don’t know if you’ll lose until the final ball touches the ground,” you nudged him softly. “Don’t get all scared now, you guys are gonna kill it.” 

“I’m not scared, there’s no need to be. What happens will happen,” Tsukki shrugged. 

“You should be more enthusiastic than that Mr. Apathetic,” you sighed and shook your head at Tsukki’s disinterested attitude. Daichi clapped his hands to get the team's attention. 

“Okay guys! Official warm-ups start in 30 minutes, I want everyone stretched and loose, ready for the first game. Remember, focus on the opponent at hand before you start worrying about the next opponent!” Daichi pulled everyone into a huddle for a pre-warm-up chant. You stepped back, not wanting to intrude on their team traditions. 

You watched as everyone put their heads together and yelled “Karasuno, FIGHT!” 

___________________________________

The second set against Tokonami High School was currently underway and you were watching intently. You cheered each time Karasuno scored and gave them waves when the boys glanced up at you. Tsukki had been adamantly avoiding your gaze which made you feel frustrated, but you still continued to cheer extra hard for him. You watched as Karasuno increased their lead against Tokonami. 

You admired the boys of the volleyball team, they gave one hundred percent effort in each of their plays. 

Before you knew it, the second set was wrapping up with Karasuno winning 25 to 14. It was before noon, so you knew the boys had some time to cool down and eat lunch before their next game at 1:30. You smiled down at the team before grabbing your things and running down to meet them in the gym lobby. 

You jumped off the last stair and began running through the crowds of people to the doors to the court. You stopped and watched the boys walk through the doors, an air of victory surrounding them. You smiled to yourself and you could just tell how proud they were. 

You walked over to them with the widest smile on your face. Nishinoya and Tanaka were there to greet you first. The two boys jumped towards you to give you high-fives. You used both hands to give each of them a high-five while praising them on a game well played. 

“You guys were so awesome, you did so well!” You gave them a big smile and they both looked ready to pass out from receiving praise from you. They smiled sheepishly at one another and wandered off. 

You greeted and gave congratulations to each player. After having attended so many practices, you were getting used to all of the team members and they were all getting used to you. Tsukki and Yamaguchi were the last two to walk through the gym doors and you gave Yamaguchi a high-five and congratulated him, even though he hadn’t played in the game. 

You stood in front of Tsukki, looking up at him, and gave him the biggest smile you could muster. 

“Good job, Tsukki. I’m proud of you,” you gave him a thumbs up. 

He scoffed and walked around you. “I don’t need praise from a runt,” even though his words were laced with their usual coldness, he put a hand on top of your head and ruffled your hair slightly. 

You giggled softly at how he ruffled your hair. “Fine, if you don’t want praise, I’ll make sure to tell everyone, except you, that they played well,” you turned your nose up at him and began to walk towards Kageyama and Hinata, who were having some random competition in the middle of the walkway. 

Tsukki stopped you by putting his hand back on your head. “I was kidding, you loser,” he said. He leaned down so his mouth was close to your ear and whispered, “Don’t stop. You help me play better.” 

You could feel your cheeks heating up at his words. You couldn’t manage to form any words so you just nodded and mumbled something incoherent. 

Why did Tsukki have that effect on you? Why was he able to scramble all of your thoughts with a simple seven words? 

Tsukki removed his hand and began to walk towards his team, leaving you frozen. You shook your head, trying to get rid of the lingering feeling of Tsukki’s breath against your ear. 

You sighed and then took quick steps in order to catch up to Tsukki. You walked by his side silently. Thoughts of Ichiko’s questions about who you liked on the volleyball team suddenly filled your mind. You glanced up at Tsukki and thought about how he made you feel versus the rest of the team. 

Everything with Tsukki could be so complicated though. Just yesterday morning he was upset with you but by the end of the day he was at your house eating dinner with you. You thought about the emotional rollercoaster your friendship was with Tsukki. It made you smile, though, thinking of the moments you two had shared. 

But that didn’t mean you liked him. Tsukki just knew how to press your buttons in the right way. That’s the type of person Tsukki was, he loved to press the buttons of the people around him. 

You sighed, frustrated by your feelings. You definitely didn’t like Tsukki. 

Right? 

✰ I AM SO SORRY FOR NOT UPDATING FOR SO LONG I HAVE BEEN SO BUSY AND HAVE HAD NO MOTIVATION IM SO SORRY ⊙﹏⊙

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You are not alone

This is a one shot with Arthur Morgan. For once, it is not a request but rather more like a therapy piece for myself in order to process some current issues I have. That being said, trigger warning for parental abuse. 

Masterlist

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You lie in bed, not really wanting to face the day. The idea of staying in bed all day and doing nothing is tempting. That familiar ball of nothing sits like a weight on your chest. This void inside you seems as deep and fathomless as the universe itself. It doesn’t feel good. 

You know why you’re feeling this way. How could you not after everything that happened with those people you used to call family? Everything’s blown up so quickly. There was almost no warning to it either. 

You’re also confused. Why are you so hurt to be abandoned by those people who hurt you for so long? Your father, that abusive bastard who never earned the title of “dad”. His words still echo in your head, the words “I want you gone, I don’t want you here”. When he’d screamed those words, it unburied so much hurt you’ve kept locked away for over 15 years. Things you never told anybody about, things you yourself barely remembered until recently. 

Then there’s your mother. Not nearly as abusive, but just as guilty. That pointless conversation she had with you a few days back did nothing but show that she’d seen your father’s abusive tendencies long before you were even born and she did nothing about it. Admitting now that she should have done better back then does nothing to erase the pain. Damn them both. Damn this whole scenario!

Of course, the fight that led to this situation has been overdue by several years. You’ve seen it coming for a long time, you just hadn’t been aware of it happening so quickly, and in such a bad place. You’d been on your vacation with your parents, visiting a lake you’ve loved since childhood. Because of certain situations and acts done by your parents (though you know your hands aren’t clean either), the fight broke out and the result is that you have now been estranged by both your parents. 

The situation is so complex and you don’t know how to feel. Anger, sure. Resentment, of course. Betrayal. You also want your parents to admit that they hurt you during your childhood and you’re damaged because of it, but you also know they won’t. Especially your father. He’s under the impression he was a wonderful dad, despite the fact that most days as a child, you hid for fear of his abuse. How can you hate them so much yet still want them as part of your life? 

There’s a sudden knock on your front door. Who the hell is calling at this time of day? Sure, the sun’s up, but it’s Sunday morning. Why would anyone be at your door? 

With a heavy sigh, you force yourself to get out of bed. You tidy yourself up enough to not look ghastly. Maybe it’s just the Amazon guy dropping off a package (though you don’t remember ordering anything within the last 2 weeks). 

When you open the door, you’re surprised to see your neighbor and good friend (not to mention the guy you’ve been crushing on forever) Arthur Morgan. He smiles when he sees you. 

“Hey, hope I didn’t wake ya.” 

“No, you’re fine,” you say, forcing yourself to smile. “I’ve been up a while anyways.” 

“Okay. This is gonna sound silly, but would you have two eggs to spare? I, uh, started makin’ myself some breakfast and realized I didn’t have any.” 

“Oh, of course! Here, let me grab them for you.” 

Arthur walks in the house after you. As you go into the kitchen, he looks around. Though your house is usually quite tidy, he can see there’s been a lack of care to it. Dust rests on your shelves, your TV. Your couch shows signs of not having been used in days. There’s also a smell that suggests the house has been empty, but as your neighbor and friend, he knows you’ve been home everyday. He’s been in your house often enough to know that it isn’t usually like this. 

Not only does it not look right, it doesn’t feel right. There’s a heaviness in the air, almost like a shadow sits over the house. He gets the feeling it’s stemming from you. 

Now that he thinks about it, he has barely seen you in the past 3 weeks. Pretty much ever since you came back from your vacation. You’d asked him before leaving to watch your house and feed your cat, which he did. But now that you’re home, he’s hardly seen you. Again, this is strange as the two of you are fairly close. 

Before your vacation, you’d watch movies together every Friday night. When you came back, you didn’t invite him over and when he invited you, he got responses that suggested you had other plans. 

“Here you go,” you say, walking out of the kitchen and holding out two eggs. He reaches for your hand, but then doesn’t let go. 

“Why don’t you come and have breakfast with me?” he says, his eyes soft. “You look like you could use some company.” 

You look up at him. You’ve wanted to see your friend for a while, ever since you came back. However, if your father made anything clear, it was that if he didn’t want you around, then no one did. 

“I… I don’t know, Arthur. I don’t want to be a bother.” 

“You ain’t gonna bother me, Y/N. Never have. Y’know, I been missin’ our Friday movie nights.” 

His comment makes you look away from him. “No, you don’t, Arthur.” 

He squeezes your hand a bit, then he lowers his head so he can look you in the eye. “You okay? You been different ever since you came back from that lake. Somethin’ happen up there?” 

Arthur’s the first person to point out that you’re not how you used to be, and his acknowledgement of that is what finally breaks you. Tears well up in your eyes and you cannot bear to look him in the face, feeling pathetic. 

“To… to be honest, a lot happened. Most of it wasn’t good.” 

A brief silence passes, then he squeezes your hand again. “Come have breakfast, darlin’. Looks like you could use a friend. I’ll cook for ya and you can talk about it.” 

At first, you think he just wants to hear some gossip, but when you look in his eyes, you can see he’s genuinely worried. So you nod and grab a couple more eggs and follow him out and over to his house. 

Arthur’s house is about the same size as yours. He’s more simple than you are, and being raised on a farm out west, he decorates like so. There’s a big painting of a horse over his couch which you’ve always liked. You peak in his office and see the large stag’s head hanging from the wall. 

In the kitchen, Arthur makes you a cup of coffee and then begins breakfast. As you sit at the table, your hands wrapped around the warm mug (which has a beautiful design of an elk), he gets some bacon cooking. 

When a few strips are sizzling away, Arthur sits down across from you. “So… tell me about this vacation of yours.” 

Arthur doesn’t say a word as you begin talking. First you start out with how you had bad feelings right before you went on vacation, but you attributed them to other aspects in your life. 

“It was like a part of me knew something bad was gonna happen,” you say. You’re shivering a little (something you always do when talking about a deeply personal thing). Arthur gently takes your hand in his to comfort you. It does help and you go on. 

You tell him about how things started to build up. Things started off with your mom. When you voiced your problems with her to your father, stating they made you want to leave early, he said if it felt right to you that you should leave, but then he suggested you talk with your mom first and try to resolve things. 

“The problem with that is these issues I’ve had with my mom have been going on for well over ten years. I’ve been nearing the end of my tether for ages.” 

Arthur nods and prompts you to go on. The talk with your mother you thought went well, but not twenty minutes after, she was doing the same things you said were causing the issue. Things escalated from there with not just your mother, but your father going and doing the same things that have been causing all these problems. They were doing a few things that suggested they’d heard you, but when push came to shove, they went no further. 

“On Thursday night, we went to this one place at the lake to try and fish. When I finished there,  I realized that I was just done. I wasn’t angry or resentful, I was just ready to come home.” 

Arthur nods and you notice he squeezes your hand a little. With that, you go on to say how the very next morning, you packed up your things and as you loaded up the car, your mother came bustling over, clearly upset, and accused you of ruining her vacation. She laid on the guilt hard. 

However, your father has always had a habit. When your mother gets upset, your father gets angry and he has an excellent way of making the person who hurt his wife feel like less than shit. He pulled out all the stops for you. Not only did he accuse you of being intolerant and inpatient, but he wouldn’t let you stand up for yourself. When you tried to, he put you down, stating you were an intolerant, selfish little brat and he wanted nothing to do with you. 

“What about your mama?” Arthur asks gently. “Surely she didn’t want things goin’ that badly?” 

You roll your watery eyes and look away. “My mom did what she does best. She just stood there and listened to him, not saying a fucking thing. She sat there and watched as my father essentially chased me out of there.”

Arthur lowers his head and sighs. “I’m real sorry, Y/N.” 

“That wasn’t it,” you say and then you go into explaining how your father’s verbal abuse uncovered a bunch of memories from when you were a child. Memories of your father verbally and even physically abusing you. Things you’d forgotten and sat on for over 15 years. They all came bubbling back up as you drove home, sobbing. Along with them came the emotions. The fear, the confusion, the anger and the hatred. 

“So…” Arthur says, dishing the food onto plates and handing you one. “That was, what… two weeks ago? Have either your ma or pa said anything?” 

You sniff a little and shake your head. “Well… my mom did. She came over and we talked for two hours. Honestly the stuff she said made the abuse from my father even worse, because she basically told me she’s known about his abusive tendencies longer than I’ve even been alive for and has let him do them. When I asked her why she didn’t stop him that day I left the lake, she said she was focusing more on what was going on in her head. Honestly I think that was a lie. I think she’s just as scared of my father as I was as a kid.” 

Arthur looks down. “That’s bad business, darlin’. Had no idea your daddy was so awful.” 

“Me too. I guess I worked hard to forget all that bullshit he did to me as a kid.” 

“Guess so. Did your mama try talkin’ ya into forgivin’ him?” 

You shake your head and sniff again. “No. No, she didn’t make excuses for him, but she tried gaslighting me. Said I should focus on the 80% that’s good and focus less on the 20% that’s bad. But when I think about it, there was no good when I was a kid. All he did was get angry at me. We didn’t start to have a civil relationship until I was just graduating college. And I don’t know, but in my opinion going to Yellowstone when I was 23 and having a good time doesn’t count.” 

“It don’t. Your daddy betrayed you when he hurt you all them times. He made a promise to protect you when he became your father and he broke up. Not only that, but your mama betrayed you too when she just stood by and watched him do those things.” 

You start crying again, letting the tears slip down your cheeks. Arthur stands up and cleans up the dishes (you didn’t eat very much, but he understands). When he walks back over the table, he comes over to your side and holds out his hand. 

“Come on, sweetheart. I know you’re probably feelin’ confused and hurt that even though your parents were abusive and did a lot of damage, it must be difficult to have lost them. Come here.” 

When you’re standing, he pulls you into a hug. Arthur’s only hugged you once. He’d gotten drunk during a movie night and had hugged you when he said goodbye. It was then that you’d developed your crush on him.

You press yourself into the hug, his heart thumping in your heart, calm and steady. Your body molds perfectly against his, like a puzzle piece. His arms wind around you, creating a protective barrier as you settle your forehead into the crook of his neck. 

As his heat seeps into you, all the emotions you’ve been mulling over come, only there’s a new one. Support. Arthur is the first person who not only showed any concern, but also showed any interest in wanting to help you. You feel his thumb rubbing circles on your lower back. 

After a few moments, Arthur leans away just a bit so he can look at you. “Y/N, can I tell you somethin’?” You nod and he goes on. “Even though you lost your family, I want ya to know this. I care about ya. Cared about ya a long time. When the two men who raised me passed away and I came out here, I had no one. But you reached out to me, made me feel like I wasn’t alone. I’m gonna do the same thing for you.” 

This makes you smile for the first time in days. “Thank you, Arthur. I couldn’t ask for more.” 

He smiles and then his hand comes up to cup your cheek. As you stare at him, his eyes flicker down to your lips. Is he thinking about you the same way you think about him?

“Arthur?” you whisper. 

He responds by leaning down and gently placing his lips on yours. Your heart feels like it’s going to leap out of your chest as you sink into the kiss. His breath washes over your face and his hand moves up your back. After a moment, he pulls away, his cheeks pink. 

“I, uh, hope that was okay,” he says softly. 

You smile a bit. “I would give it a better word than that, Arthur. Thank you.” 

Arthur’s lips stretch into a wide grin and then they’re on yours again. “I’m gonna always be here for ya, darlin’,” he says after another moment. “You ain’t as alone as your parents want ya to think.” 

Snowflake - Part 1

Part 1

Summary: You’re moving into the world-famous Sakura Castle for the month and you meet its permanent resident: Yuta.

Pairing: ghost prince! Yuta x duchess!female reader

Word Count: 5.2k words

Genre: Romance, Angst, Drama, Fantasy

Everything around you was a winter wonderland from a very recent snowfall. Sakura Castle was adorned with Christmas lights. The gardens were full of primroses and snowdrops. Horse drawn carriages were coming in and out of the estate. The French Renaissance-inspired chateau was located in the city of Neo Osaka. This would be your home for the next month. However, you absolutely dreaded this time of the year. You didn’t despise the concept of Christmas but your family and their acquaintances had certainly done on a number on your outlook of the holiday.

This year was the first time you visited Sakura Castle to celebrate. The only thing you looked forward to was getting the castle to yourself once your relatives left after Christmas Eve. You lived a very comfortable life. Most people would expect you to wholeheartedly embrace it no matter what. But with this life you were bound to your family. And some of your family...Well, they weren’t the most exemplary people.

You longed to escape your family at times. Change your last name. Move to a new town. Get a job you loved. But for now, you were what many would call a pampered princess. You were expected to be an administrative assistant at your father’s tech company. Then, you would get married to a Robert or a Harrison from Connecticut and he would get a job higher up than you.

Even if you were more qualified.

You would quit. Have his 4 or 5 children. Take up knitting and French pastry baking. It made your blood boil.

You were finalizing your appearance for the evening in your dressing room on the third floor of the castle. Your princess suite was the size of at least penthouses in Manhattan. It was like a little castle of its own. It had its own personal library. A bathroom with a tub as big as a hot tub. A personal gymnasium. Two walk-in closets. A balcony that overlooked the gardens. A King-sized bed that made you wish sleeping was a profession. A lot of renovations were made to Sakura Castle over the years but its integrity remained. The artwork and architecture of the castle. The furniture that dated back to at least 150 years. The skylight in the ballroom. The multiple libraries. The music room. The study rooms. The paintings of the royal families over the years.

“Miss y/n, your face almost matches your dress. Are you feverish?” Your family’s maid, Helena, asked you as she helped flatten the creases on your ruby red ball gown. It was an off-the-shoulder sleeveless satin dress that you wished you could have saved for a night that you would want to remember.

You shook your head. “I’m fine, Helena. Thank you.”

“There are a lot of fine young men arriving, y/n. I envy you.”

You frowned through the floor-to-ceiling mirror. “No...why?”

“Because they’re your suitors. Your choices are the cream of the crop. You’ll land a Prince Charming for sure.”

You wanted to vomit.

Your mother entered your dressing room. “Drop dead gorgeous, my darling daughter.”

You forced a smile. “Thank you, mother.”

“Of course you would be. Given you have my genes.”

After twenty minutes of your mom lecturing you about how to behave and how to flirt with your...you couldn’t even fathom calling them this but what else could you call them...suitors.

Oh, wait.

Bidders for an expensive and highly sought-after piece of merchandise (you). Olympic athletes trying to get the gold medal (you). Customers looking for best piece of prime beef at a local grocery store (you).

This night wasn’t going to be fun. The only thing you looked forward to was the snack table when you would be able to excuse yourself to go to the powder room. Heaven forbid your nose was ever shiny in front of anyone.

You looked forward to getting to know Sakura Castle for the estate was a magnificent being in itself. You haven’t explored the castle yet since you’d arrived a few hours ago. Preparations for the Eve Ball had been underway for months and they’ve finally winded down to the last details. Servants walked in and out of the castle. Some bringing in ice sculptures. Others bringing in King Louis XVI chairs that looked too fragile and pricey to sit on. Not that you would ever find out as you would probably be on your feet all night.

You were escorted to the main entrance of the ballroom where you would be announced. The bidders better get their paddles ready.

“Announcing y/n of House Surname,” the announcer declared into his microphone. The French double doors opened and you entered the ballroom. You were met with applause. You smiled as instructed and proceeded to walk down the steps, thankful for the last few moments you had alone.

Because when you reached the bottom of the stairs, five men were already waiting to take your arm.

Harrison Roberts was at the forefront. “It’s been a long time, Lady y/n. Can I have the first dance?”

Lee Taeyong cut right in. “Lady y/n, don’t waste your time with him. He was flirting up a storm with one of the maids when I was walking in. You deserve to dance with someone who has no wandering eye.”

Jung Jaehyun shoved them both to the side. “Care to dance with a friend who kicked your ass in Jenga too many times to count?”

You didn’t expect Jaehyun to be here tonight. “Jaehyun, how long has it been?”

Jaehyun offered his arm and you took it. “Seven years?”

You remembered seeing him off to college. You two lost touch. He was a family friend that made these kinds of events less dreadful. It was great to see him again.

The orchestra played an awe-inspiring rendition of “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None The Richer. Jaehyun led you to the center of the dance floor.

He led the waltz. He spun you around and pulled you close and for a moment, you thought Jaehyun saved the evening. But then he said the next few words:

“Wouldn’t it be cool if I took over your dad’s company?”

You stiffened but still kept moving. “What?”

“We should get married, y/n. Our families would be over the moon. I can get my dream job. Your crush on me can finally be fulfilled.”

The seven years away did not do Jaehyun good. Jaehyun went on and on for the rest of the song talking about where you would have your honeymoon and how he was sure your dad would spare no expense to let you two travel the world.

You were silent. You could feel your parents steely gazes on you as they watched from their thrones...well, from the head table.

The song ended and Jaehyun bowed. You curtsied.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to go powder my nose,” you said and quickly walked away. Thankfully, Jaehyun didn’t follow so you found your way to a part of the ballroom where a balcony was left unexplored. You walked out onto it and prayed for a few moments of quiet.

It was freezing outside but oddly enough, it didn’t bother you. You leaned onto the railing and looked down at the gardens. A spectacular fountain with a Cupid laid at the center of it. It felt like Cupid was giving you the big middle finger.

A stray snowflake fell onto your arm, quickly melting away on your skin before you could admire it.

You feared the snow would start and you would be compelled to go back inside. So you prayed to stay out here as long as you can. For any excuse. You sighed and plotted how to get to the snack table with little detection. Maybe Helena could sneak something out to you.

“For the belle of the ball, you seem pretty miserable,” a male voice started.

You jumped. You didn’t hear the balcony doors open. You turned to your right to find a young man leaning against the railing beside you. His pale blonde hair ran to his shoulders, caressing his face that was as elegant as a fairy’s. His skin glistened with the moonlight. Almost as if he was one with it. He was like a winter-themed priceless art painting come to life.

“You scared me,” you said as you put your hand to your chest.

He smirked. “Sorry.” Clearly unapologetic.

Shaking off the stunned feeling he gave you, you rolled your eyes. “Can you please leave me alone? I can’t deal with another suitor. Not this holiday season.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “I’m not a suitor, your highness.”

“Don’t call me that!” You started but then you tilted your head at him in confusion. “Huh?”

“You seem surprised. I for one am surprised your ego could be so big to assume that any male in your perimeter is intent on pursuing you.”

You blushed. “That’s not it.”

He chuckled. “Oh, it’s not? Then, what is it?”

“The Eve Ball is my parents’ excuse to get me a husband. Did you not see the turnout in there? Fifty percent of the crowd are eligible men between the ages of twenty and thirty five.“ And that was an underestimation.

The young man raised his eyebrows. “And they’re all here for you?”

“They’re all here for my family’s fortune. So no. I’m...an asset?” Hearing that part come out of your mouth sounded so wrong.

He frowned, seeming to regret his words before. “So tonight isn’t as romantic as you’d hoped it would be?”

You snorted. You couldn’t help it. “I never had any hope for that.”

“You seemed happy with that man you danced with. The pale one?”

“Don’t even mention him. He’s just like the rest of them.” Thinking about Jaehyun’s betrayal reminded you of how much worse this night ended up being than expected.

The young man noticed he’d gone too far with teasing you. “I’m...sorry. I’ve been messing with you non-stop. I thought you were another airhead heiress.”

“You wouldn’t be the first to think so,” you said as you fixed the creases on your dress.

He watched you as you looked down at your dress, He was mesmerized with how long your eyelashes were. How you smelled of roses and peonies. The way your curls fell to your cleavage. You met his eyes again and he looked away.

“Seems like a lot of people are wrong about you, Lady...” He began.

You interrupted. “y/n. No need for ‘Lady’.”

“So no formalities, huh?”

“They’re unnecessary,” you said. “Unless you’re royalty and you’re being modest. I don’t want to make another assumption.” You hoped this guy wasn’t a stickler for calling you by your noble title.

He shook his head. “Can’t say I currently hold a royal title.”

You were relieved and smiled without thinking. “Okay, good. What’s your name, then?”

“Yuta,” he said, beaming at the sight of your joy.

“Well, Yuta, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” The first man you’ve interacted with that didn’t want to marry you and wasn’t after your family’s wealth.

“The pleasure is all mine.” He grinned genuinely for the first time. It was a sight to behold.

“Lady y/n!” Someone called from right outside the balcony doors.

“Shit!” You exclaimed. “Hide me now.” You said to no one in particular. The only good time you had at the ball was about to end.

Yuta surprised you when he moved closer to you and held you.

“Yuta, what are you-“ You started.

He placed his fingertip on your lips. “Shh.” He shushed you.

Jaehyun came out onto the balcony. Kill me now, you thought. You didn’t know how Jaehyun would react to seeing you in the arms of another man.

Jaehyun looked around the balcony in confusion.

He looked right through you. In fact, he walked right through you as he looked past the railing.

You prayed you weren’t breathing too hard because being invisible had never felt so good. Feeling Yuta’s strong arms around you. Tight and secure. His body was so warm through his slim fit tux. His head laid on top of yours, teasing you that you were so short compared to him.

“She wouldn’t run off, would she?” He asked himself. He shook his head and headed back inside.

You exhaled when Jaehyun disappeared.

And then you realized what happened. You escaped Yuta’s embrace to look up at him.

“Yuta, sweetheart,” you said, laughing nervously, “What the holy hell was that?”

He smiled sheepishly, “We were invisible?”

You nodded. “Uh huh...I got that much. That begs the question...How?!”

He sighed. “I didn’t anticipate telling you this but...I’m the spirit of this castle.” He shrugged like he just told you his Zodiac sign.

You didn’t know what that meant so you shot him a look.

“y/n, I’m dead,” he delivered, deadpan.

You backed away. How could that be? He was warm and his presence just...glowed.

Maybe that glow wasn’t human like you thought.

Yuta continued as he snapped his fingers and a plate of your favorite desserts appeared on his other hand. He handed it to you.

You were torn between crying tears of joy that the holiday brownies didn’t run out and having a total meltdown.

You couldn’t be high. Your drink couldn’t have been spiked. You get your own beverages, much to the maids’ chagrin.

He nodded. “Come on, y/n. I know you’re hungry. One look at you and I could see the sweet tooth.”

You hesitated to reach out to him even though you were quite comfortable in his arms before. He handed the plate to you and you simply held the plate of chocolate-covered sin, focused on Yuta.

“You’re a warlock?” You asked. That much you could believe in because you always clung to the possibility of there being more than the mundane in this world. Even if it rattled you.

He nodded. “An undead warlock, if you want to be more specific.”

You nodded carefully. “But I...can touch you.”

He said, “Yeah, I can’t explain that either. You’re the first person in a century that could touch me. Which is why I had to meet you.” He looked at you carefully, then.

“A century?” You asked in disbelief. “Wait, when did I touch you?”

Yuta smiled. “I like to pop up around the castle every now and then. You bumped into me. You muttered something about ‘not missing your recording time’?”

You blushed. You remembered that. This morning, you had some free time before you had to prepare for the ball. So you wanted to record for your podcast where you just talked about everything and nothing.

You recalled bumping into a few people and apologizing profusely. You had no idea one of those people was a ghost. Much less the ghost of a sorcerer.

Yuta laughed. “You record? Music?”

You shook your head. “It’s a podcast. I talk into a microphone and record it. Post it online and people can hear it if they want to.” You had a decent-sized following. You modified your voice, of course. Your family wouldn’t approve that their high-profile daughter was posting about her inner thoughts and desires on the Internet. People always asked for your name and your face. But you went by the name Sunflower. It was what your grandparents called you when you were a child.

Yuta widened his eyes. “That sounds right up my alley. I’d love to do that.”

One look at Yuta and you knew he had a lot to say.

“Lady y/n!” You heard again. This time you had no time to hug Yuta.

You turned to him but he vanished. It was your mother, looking none too pleased. “Where have you been? Jaehyun has been looking for you for the past half hour.”

You sighed. “I’m sorry, mother, I...I needed some fresh air.” Suddenly, your teeth started chattering. Was it always this cold since you stepped outside?

Your mother looked down at your hands, seeing the plate full of desserts and frowned. She took it out of your hands and tsked. “That’s plenty of fresh air, darling. Now let’s go back inside. It’s cold out here! Jaehyun has turned into a fine young man, has he not?”

=

There you were, making chit chat with the Jung family. Jaehyun made no mention of the extravagant honeymoon plans or the kind of desk he wanted in his office. It was all smiles and fake concern for your well-being.

“y/n, can I get you something to drink?” He asked, putting on his best concerned boyfriend face.

You immediately shook your head. “I’ll get it myself.”

Jaehyun protested. “I insist. You’re a lady. A lady shouldn’t get herself her own drink. She should be waited on.”

You were about to speak up but your father halted you with the raise of his hand. “Son, please respect my daughter’s stance on this. We’ve insisted on it for years but she will have none of it. It’s best not to argue with her on it.”

The one thing your parents listened to.

And you’d soon realize that would work in your favor.

You went to the table where there unopened drink bottles (per your request) and poured yourself a glass of champagne.

You were surprised to find a strikingly gorgeous woman with long white hair tied in a French braid and a baby blue long sleeved dress. She looked eerily familiar. Her elven-like face was softer than...

Yuta’s..

“y/n, it’s me...Yu...na.” Yuta whispered playfully.

The woman before you was actually Yuta.

“Yuta?!” You whispered.

He...she winked at you. “Not bad, huh? I may just steal your thunder.” She spun in a circle, making a show of her sparkly blue dress.

You laughed. “Feel free. I’d love to see you slow dance with Jaehyun.” Only for Jaehyun to realize that Yuta was a ghost. And a man. But he’d be passed out on the floor before he reached that tidbit.

Yuta chuckled. “We must catch up...since we’re old friends from horseback riding lessons.”

Puzzled, you asked, “How did you know I...Never mind. What are you saying?”

Yuta took the glass of champagne you drank from and took a sip. “Your parents have to let you get away if a dead old friend wants to catch up.”

“You mean a dear old friend...” You said warily.

He smiled. “Sure.”

Yuta led you back to your parents and the Jungs.

“Father. Mother. Duke and Duchess Jung. Lord Jaehyun. This is my childhood friend, Yu..na.” Excellent delivery, you told yourself.

Jaehyun’s jaw nearly fell to the ground.

Yuta curtsied. “It’s a pleasure. y/n and I took horseback riding lessons together.”

“Oh, goodness. That was so many years ago I almost forgot y/n took those lessons. I went around saying you figure skated,” your mother said, oblivious to how hurtful those words were. That made everyone, except you and Yuta, laugh.

Yuta continued, “Yes, I was hoping to catch up with y/n. Just us girls. You see, I was recently stood up at the altar...The man was after my family’s fortune. But he found love instead. Horrible man. Shouldn’t have led me to the altar if his heart wasn’t in it. Makes me wonder why people don’t just marry for love...I needed to see my dear old friend. Talking to her helps me overcome this immense pain in my heart.” Yuta almost made you laugh with what were surely crocodile tears. You grew more fond of him when you realized he was making a slight dig at your parents.

And it didn’t go unnoticed by them either.

Your father cleared his throat while your mom downed the rest of her champagne. The Jungs were simply confused. Jaehyun looked at Yuta for far too long.

Your mother started. “Yuna, this ball tonight is for-“

“Mother,” you interrupted. “This is the Eve Ball. It’s for all of our friends and acquaintances to ring in the sacred celebration of Christmas, is it not?” Or was she going to admit that this was a mating ritual for her own daughter?

Your parents’ were taken aback. Surely, they weren’t going to admit the truth out loud for appearance’s sake. Even if everyone already knew.

Your father spoke up, “You’re correct, y/n. Well, since you’ve spent some time with the Jungs, you are free to spend time with your friend.”

Translation: Jaehyun was proposing when you returned from your holiday in Sakura Castle. You knew your parents were set on it when you saw how they never left the Jungs’ side. And why Jaehyun persistently searched for you.

You allowed yourself the luxury of relief for the moment, though. “Thank you, father.” You curtsied to the others. “Good evening.”

Yuta cheered. “Let’s go, y/n. Let’s bring out the Ouija board!” She squealed like a teenage girl.

Yuta was a little too convincing at that.

That cracked a smile out of you. She took your hand and you made a beeline out of the ballroom.

=

You led Yuta up the stairs to the top floor where your suite was. You opened the imposing double doors to your bedroom and pulled Yuta inside.

You undid the bobby pins so all of your hair fell free. You sighed in relief. That hair bun may have been one of your best hairstyles yet but it hurt like a bitch.

You checked yourself in your vanity and turned to see Yuta had reverted back to himself. His face was unreadable but uncharacteristically, he was silent. You jumped at his transformation back.

Yuta laughed. “What’s wrong?”

He knew damn well what was wrong.

You let a man you barely knew into your bedroom, essentially.

You faced him and got up the nerve to talk to him like you were unbothered.

And not that you’d forgotten that Yuta was a man. A ghost, yeah. But a man all the same.

The fairest man you’d ever encountered. “Thank you for getting me the hell out of there, Yuna.” You said his alias pointedly.

He poked his cheek and said in a cutesy voice. “I got your back, sister.”

You giggled a little too enthusiastically. You cringed.

He eyed you. “You okay?”

You sighed. “I’ll answer that when I get out of this dress.” You couldn’t wait to get into a Spongebob tee and some shorts.

Yuta whistled as he twisted your words. “I was going to be a gentleman but if you insist...”

You smacked his arm. “Stop it.”

He laughed. “You make it so easy, y/n.”

As you changed out of your dress and into your pajamas in your dressing room, Yuta waited for you in the library.

You joined him and watched as he picked a book off the self.

“I was wondering...” You started.

“Yes, I will stay the night,” he said with a lazy smile on his face. He flipped through the pages of The Shining by Stephen King.

“That invitation was for Yuna. But actually...How have you been in this castle for so long? I mean, it must be-“

“Agonizing. Endless. Despairing. I could go on. But I keep trucking along. I get to haunt a lot of the airheads when they come stay here. So it’s not all a big downer,” he said calmly.

You hurt for Yuta. All of this time, you thought you were trapped but meeting Yuta made you reevaluate your perspective.

Yuta noted the somber look on your face. He placed the book back on the shelf and took your chin into his hand. “Chin up, y/n. I may not be able to leave this castle but I’m a warlock who was has travelled all over the world before his death. And a photographic memory to boot. So if I wanted to go to Paris...” He snapped his fingers again.

Your room transformed into the sidewalk by the River Seine. The Eiffel Tower was across the street at night. It shined its brilliant shades of oranges and yellows. Crowds of people passed you by. It felt too real. Like this was truly present-day Paris. You looked down at at your clothes and you wore your favorite brand of skinny jeans and a plain white t-shirt. Yuta did as, well, but with a leather jacket.

Of course, he was a leather jacket guy, you thought.

It was spring time in Yuta’s manifestation but as it was nighttime in the scenario, it was a little colder.

Yuta removed his jacket so could put it over your shoulders.

Why didn’t he just conjure up a jacket for you?

Practically reading your mind, he admitted, “I wanted to put my jacket on you.”

Feeling very shy all of a sudden, you looked all around in awe. You haven’t been to Paris since you were ten but you treasured that time always. You visited with your maternal grandmother. She took you to all the patisseries your stomach could handle. It was one of the best experiences of your life. Growing up, you were closest to her. You teared up, remembering her and just being overwhelmed with what surrounded you. The hustle and bustle of the traffic. The faint accordion music in the distance. The laughter of children in the park.

“Not bad for a manifestation, right?” Yuta asked you as he proudly looked around at his creation. Then, he heard you sniffle.

“y/n,” he said, alarmed.

“Oh, no, It’s okay. I’m...happy. I love it, Yuta.” You wiped your tears with your arm. “Oh, look, crepes!” You saw a crepe stand by the river.

Yuta walked with you to the stand.

The vendor greeted you in French. “Welcome. How can I help you?”

Yuta replied fluently in return, lifting two fingers up. “Hello. Please, may I have two Nutella crepes?”

“So you speak French,” you said, preparing for another slick comeback from him.

“I can sing to you in French as you fall asleep, if you’d like,” he said quietly. No trace of mockery in his tone.

Caught off-guard by his candor, you sputtered. “You’re messing with me.”

Yuta shook his head. “I don’t mess around when it comes to my vocals.”

=

“Do you want me to shift it back?” Yuta asked after you two stared up at the stars together. You laid on the grass by the river.

“Not yet...I...Just a little longer,” you said, barely above a whisper.

Yuta continued, “You have questions.”

Sure, some quiet did you good. But you felt tense around Yuta. Feeling him so close to you. The rise and fall of his chest as he laid so close to you. Without touching you. It was killing you both, actually.

“You said you’ve been trapped at the castle for a century...You died there. So you must have lived in the castle prior. Were you a nobleman? If not, who were you back then?”

“I was the crown prince of Sakura. Before it was renamed to Neo Osaka.”

You turned onto your left side to look at Yuta and found he was already facing you. He pulled at the grass. “The Nakamoto family,” you said, recalling some of the castle’s history from your research.

“So you’ve heard of us.” Yuta met your eyes.

“The history books aren’t very kind, I’m afraid,” you admitted.

Yuta laughed. “Really? Tell me. What do they say?”

The Nakamoto family was the last of the royal line in Sakura before the country reformed. Sakura became a municipality called Neo Osaka. Nobility died quickly. Including any whisper of witchcraft.

“They called us devil-worshippers, didn’t they?” Yuta broke the ice.

How could you tell your new friend that his family’s name was dragged through the mud?

You nodded.

“They were jealous. The lot of them. My family had powers beyond anyone’s wildest dreams,” he said. You were surprised at how his words carried no emotion when they should’ve been spiteful.

“The books said your family was executed,” you quickly let out. Then, gingerly, you inquired, “But how could you still be at the castle?”

Yuta sighed. “You’re good. Getting to the root of my problem...My family wanted me to wed Princess Yena from Neo Seoul. Her family possessed the same powers we did. My parents believed that uniting our families would ensure the Nakamoto family’s eternal reign. Father and Mother were so excited to marry off their only son to a woman he didn’t love.”

And suddenly you had more in common with Yuta than you first thought.

“I didn’t want to marry her, y/n. I was young. I wanted to keep traveling. Meet more people. Improve my skills as a warlock. Maybe if I met Yena down the road, I...would’ve tolerated her as my wife. But as her family and my family pushed, I rebelled.”

Yuta began to shake. And with that, the illusion of Paris faded. You were back in the library, laying on the carpet.

You had a very bad feeling about this.

Yuta continued, “I planned to run and when I was about to, Yena and her family infiltrated the castle. In cold blood, before my very eyes, they murdered my family. My parents. My sisters. Our visiting relatives. All of my existing bloodline.”

You had no words. The only thing you could do was wait for him to finish this tragedy.

“Yena did the honors of saving me for last. And when it was my turn, she cast a curse on me. ‘Darling fiancé, may you haunt these halls for a millenium and remember how because of you, your entire family perished. You may never leave the perimeter. No one can touch you. You can be seen but can never have the warmth and affection of another’.”

You stood there, silent. Heartbroken for the man who stood before you.

He was quiet for a moment. You knew well enough not to say anything along the lines of “my heart goes out to you” or “that’s terrible”. You knew it wouldn’t do any good. It killed you not knowing what to do.

Because you wanted to help him. How? Hell if you knew.

Yuta cried silently, tears falling down and hitting your knees as you sat close to him.

You reached for him and wiped his tears away. Yuta looked at you and the most enchanting smile appeared.

“But you...y/n...you can touch me,” he rejoiced.

That puzzled the both of you. You didn’t know what this could mean. But it gave you great joy seeing how happy it made him.

“If that’s the case...then the curse is not all-binding. You may be the answer, y/n.”

No pressure, you thought to yourself.

Yuta lived with regret all of his afterlife and to find that you could be the key to his freedom...it gave him hope. He took your hands in his and begged, “Please help me. I need you.”

You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into but your heart was telling you that this was where you were meant to be. At this very moment. With this man who was too wonderful for words to describe.

You nodded fervently, “Of course, I will.”

Yuta thanked you profusely and kissed your cheek. You blushed and your eyes shot out.

Yuta apologized, “I’m sorry. I got a little excited, that’s all.” But you could see the smug look on his face. He liked having an effect on you.

You didn’t know this but from the moment Yuta first saw you, he was smitten. From your rose-colored cheeks. To your grace as you danced with that ogre Jaehyun. To the trust you two immediately had for each other in a short span of time. Yuta knew there had to be a reason why you were the only one who could touch him.

And that he was set on finding out.

To Be Continued

A/N: Hey it’s Ari! It’s been long overdue: a Yuta AU! When Yuta covered “White”, I was even more sure I wanted to write this. “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi served as a big inspiration. Shoutout to Krys for the inspiration behind the title of “Snowflake”, originally called The Winter Prince. I hope you enjoy! PS LETSLOVEYUTAONTHISBLOGALILMORETAEYONGISGREATBUTYUTAISJUSTASGREATKTHANKSBYE

Skulduggery Pleasant: Raising Cain - Chapter 6

Chapter 6 - Escape attempt

Stephanie woke in a small, dark room in the freezing cold sometime later. Resting on the floor in an extremely uncomfortable position, she tried to see if anyone was with her. She couldn't hear anyone and she honestly couldn't tell the difference between eyes open and closed.

She struggled to sit up as her hands were behind her back but managed it just as the door to the cell, and she was sure it was a cell, opened with a bang against the wall.

The sudden light after so much dark was almost blinding and she didn't see who dragged her up and out before she was halfway down the hall. It was the same man that had run in the room right before she'd passed out. Her thoughts went to Wolf, to her other friends. She hoped they were okay.

"Where are we?" She asked the man.

He snorted. "Do you really think I'm going to tell you that?"

"It's not like I'm going anywhere," she pointed out. "Also, that cut of yours looks infected." He reached out and yanked her hair sharply and she yelped out in pain. "Fuck you!"

He growled at her and pushed her up the steps. Stephanie stayed quiet and tried to think of what she could do. Until she knew if her friends were here there was no point leaving. Then again, if they were all here she would need to escape to get back up. She tried not to panic and followed the man despite the growing anxiety clawing at her stomach.

They entered a large room with at least twenty of the paper men and a few real men she didn't know lined up against the walls. No females of any type except herself. In the middle of the room stood Serpine. Stephanie was brought a few metres in front of the man and forced to her knees.

"Ah, I've been waiting for you to awake," Serpine said. "I think you might just know what I want."

Stephanie refused to say anything and glared at the small scar above his eyebrow. She hoped Skulduggery had given it to him.

"I have a little bargain for you. I know Pleasant and his Dead Men have decided to take you under their wing and make you their newest member. Usually, I'd dismiss anything they thought, but then I met you," he said, stepping forward slowly, looking her over. "You are young and weak now, but you show a lot of potential. You killed one of my men. Did you know that? Oh yes, he died quickly from his wound. I expect you would make a great apprentice and under my mentorship, you can help me take over this world and crush those that don't believe in us, that look down on us. Doesn't that sound better, my love? Doesn't that sound better than following muddy dogs around like a stray they took in to feel good about themselves?"

Stephanie tried to look blank faced. Gordon had written that that was a good thing to do.

"But with me,” he continued, “I will mentor you to your absolute greatest and you will aid me in completing all my dreams. You can be my daughter. I can be your father, and I will love you as my own. One day, they will look at us as saints and the beginners of the enlightenment. Do you want that, my daughter? Don't you want greatness?"

His hand came around and cupped her cheek. She glared into his eyes. "The Dead Men love me. And Gordon is my dad!"

He laughed deeply and struck her cheek hard enough for her eyes to water. "Would you listen to that? She thinks they love her. Darling, they will use you and hurt you until you can't stand and then feed you to their enemy as bait for their own ends. I will give you one final chance to join me before I am forced to torture you to death."

She pretended to think about it. "I'm afraid I'll have to pass."

"Oh?" He chuckled. "And how's that? Are you going to negotiate?"

"Yes. I will get you the Sceptre, but you have to let me go."

"And why would I do that? Do you not think that I won't know you'll run off?"

She shrugged. "Well, I don't exactly have anywhere to go. If I try and run, you'll find me and even if I do try I won't get far without magic and a passport."

He stared deep into her eyes and a grin slowly spread across his features. He leaned in close enough she could smell the coffee on his breath. "You are not in a position to bargain. Take her to the dungeon!"

Stephanie was yanked to her feet and followed the man willingly out the room – she didn't like all those paper men, and Serpine wasn't helping.

But what now? She was away from those eyes but she was still with her guard. She couldn't act like her friends were all free, or even one of them was, or even that they knew where she was if they weren't in the cells around her. She needed to get herself out, though knowing if she had to break out someone else would be good too. She expected Wolf would be but she'd already gone through the maze of the dungeons and didn't expect she could find him. And her fighting wasn't good enough to take down these people and she didn’t even know any magic!

"You're annoying," she told her guard.

"What?" He said. "Shut up. Stupid kid."

"Can't you tell me where we are now? What if I guess? We're at Serpine's house? Mansion? Wait, is it a castle?"

"How'd you guess that?" The man asked, looking at her.

"Castles have dungeons, dummy. What about my friends?"

"I can't tell you anything kid," he said. "Just stay quiet and keep your head down. You shouldn't be involved. You're a kid."

"Well I am, so tell me if my friends are safe."

"I don't know."

"So they're not here?" She asked.

He hesitated.

"Some of them are here? How many? I bet Wolf is."

"Who the hell is Wolf?" He asked.

"Dexter Vex," she clarified. "Is anyone else here? Are the other's safe?"

He shook his head, but she didn't think it was an answer more so than in annoyance. They came up to her cell and she was pushed into it. "Wait!"

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "What?"

She hesitated. "I need to pee."

He gaped at her. "What do you want me to do about it?"

She bit her lip. "Put my hands on my front. Then you can leave."

"I know I can leave." He said but got a set of keys out and came into the cell to move her shackles around. She waited until he had to move around her to reattach the cuff before striking – she twisted and punched him in the neck as hard as she could, and he let go of her other hand to stumble back and she stepped towards him to deliver a blow to his nose. He cried out and she wrapped her cuffed hand around the spare cuff and used it to punch him with the metal in the temple, which was strong enough to get him on the ground and it was just a simple matter of stamping on his head three times before he stopped moving.

She breathed hard and listened carefully. There was no sound except the slow drip of water elsewhere and the quiet breathing of the man on the floor. Quietly, she searched his pockets and found several cuffs, a flip-knife and of course the keys. She also took the chocolate bar that had melted slightly but since he had captured her, she felt she deserved it anyway.

She put everything in her various pockets, thankful for Wolf's advice already and of Panda for his amazing creation. She closed the cell door on him and locked it. She had no idea where her friends would be, or if anyone would come looking. With everyone upstairs, she figured that her guard would be expected back soon with either one of her friends or else for a meeting, or just by his fellow guard friends. She started looking through the open peek-hole on the doors, going through aisle after aisle of cells. She was beginning to give up hope of finding Wolf when she saw a cell peek-hole closed in the distance. She ran to it and carefully opened it.

Wolf and Snake looked up at her. They grinned.

She put a finger over her lips and got the keys out, looking left and right as she did. The cell was opened quickly, and she got them out their shackles. Luckily, it was one-key-fits-all.

"How did you get free?" Snake asked her in a whisper.

"No one expects to get their ass handed to them by a girl half their size. Come on, we need to get the others."

"Are they all here?" Wolf asked.

"I don't know. Snake, did you see anything?"

Erskine shook his head. "I know Skulduggery is here. I heard him with Serpine, but I don't remember who was hurt or not in the fight, they dragged me from the room at the start."

"Alright. Where do you think Crow is?"

They started scouring the cells together and came across Skulduggery whistling in his cell.

"Come to – oh hello," he said when they opened his cell. "How did you get free?"

"Tell you later," she said, unlocking his shackles as Wolf and Snake kept an eye on the halls. She could see them acting as a team now, as a unit. It was very privileging seeing a group as close as this able to protected her, to see them flow together so well. She desperately wanted to learn how to fit into that flow and learn them so well she could work without words too. "Who else came in with you?"

"Saracen and Anton got free but I know Ghastly is here. Any idea on times?" Crow informed them.

"Probably none. I got free at least ten minutes ago. The guard was probably expected back with someone," she said. "If we get Panda we might be able to fight our way out but there are a lot of people up there."

He looked at her sharply as they left the cell and the other two closed around them. She closed the door to make it seem like they hadn't been there. "You went upstairs?"

"I was taken. Let's talk later."

He nodded, and they split into two, Stephanie sticking with Crow, and they searched the last few rows of cells. He wasn't there though, and they were forced to do a running check back through the cells just in case. Stephanie rounded the corner just as four paper men went around the corner of the next aisle and she almost fell to the floor stopping Crow running passed her, and had to throw herself in front of Snake to stop him running passed too.

They waited a few moments as the soft rustling and thud, thud, thud of the paper men moved through the cells. Slowly, Stephanie stepped forwards and crouched down, looking around the corner. The paper men had stood outside a cell. She crept back.

"Guards," she said. They frowned. "At Panda's cell, I bet."

They nodded, and the three men looked at each other before Wolf and Snake jogged silently to the other side of the aisle of cells to come from the other side. Crow held up three fingers. Two. One.

They raced around the corner at the same moment as the others and rushed at the paper men. The four split and Stephanie was quick to simply run passed them and get the door open. Panda was unconscious but even after she got his cuffs off and patted his cheek he didn't so much as flutter an eyelid. She looked up to see Crow looking into the cell. There was a sudden shout from somewhere else. Their time had run out.

Wolf pushed in and pulled Panda onto his shoulders and pushed Stephanie out the door with his leg. She ran with the others to the stairs. At least twenty people must have entered the dungeon, but they didn't see anyone as they’d scattered to find them. They waited a moment for Snake to check the hall and then made a run up the stairs.

They were confronted with forty paper men at least and the three able to fight immediately began to rip into them but with no weapons they were soon choking in the gas, except for Crow who stood in the middle of the group pulling arms until he had a pile in a circle around him and he had to step high to get over the bodies. They ran from the last few who were slow to run after them.

Stephanie didn't see any way out at first but as soon as she saw the window she pulled her jacket off and let Snake grab it from her roughly and sprint ahead to jump through it.

They all followed and landed badly, though Crow did use magic to make their lands a bit better focusing on Wolf since he had Panda who was still out cold. Stephanie fell to the floor badly and felt her leg pull but rolled and started running after the others. Crow was the one who kept back to stay behind her and keep her safe, the others getting far ahead much too quick for her to keep up with. She looked back quickly before they went into the trees and saw what could have been thirty paper men and at least a dozen other guards running after them.

She squeaked and ran faster after Wolf and Snake, taking far too long to get to a big wall. Stephanie saw Wolf, with Panda, scale it in just one jump, push himself to swing over the wall, flash a grin at her, and fell from sight. She turned to Skulduggery and he kneeled with his hands together and she was in the air, flailing and then was grabbed by Wolf, sans Panda, and hauled her the rest of the way over. Wolf almost stumbled but Snake was there to steady him as Crow landed to their right.

A van was on the road with the door open and a man in white carried Panda into it. Stephanie looked to Crow but he put a hand on the back of her neck and pushed her gently towards it and the doors were closed behind them just as she heard the shouting of their pursuers.

They drove faster than Stephanie had ever experienced, and she couldn't help but grin and high-five Snake and Wolf.

webgott + jane/ chicken pox

a little fall of meme can hardly hurt me now  ( accepting )

AN:  this is almost certainly not what you were hoping for, but do you have ANY IDEA how much i’ve missed this little family??  writing jane??  this is officially part of the single dad web au and i regret nothing

It takes exactly thirty seconds of Googling for Joe to declare Webster banned from the house.

“What?” Webster exclaims, bracing himself against the doorframe as his fiancé blocks his way. “Are you serious? This is my house.”

“Our,” Joe corrects, because this is the hill he’s willing to die on, but not one Webster should. “The day I moved in, it became my house, and I’m temporarily kicking you out.”

“This isn’t funny, Joe. Let me in.”

“Nope,” Joe declares, and moves to slam the door in his face. Webster blocks it, and nearly gets a broken shoulder for the trouble. He’s nothing if not determined, the idiot. Gritting his teeth, Joe moves to shove him out, but Webster takes advantage of his loose stance to push himself further inside.

“My name is on the lease, so you can’t evict me — Joe, seriously, what the hell?” Finally, Webster pushes his way inside; he stands in the middle of the living room, hands on his hips. Webster’s got a Dad Mode, obviously learned through experience, and it’s in full gear now; he looks like he’s about to take away Joe’s X-Box for a week, though the genuine anger on his face speaks for itself. “What are you trying to do?” he demands, taking a step forward. “My kid’s in there, and she’s sick, so what do you mean I can’t be in there with her —“

“She’s got spots, Web,” Joe interjects, voice flat. “They showed up while you were at the store. Her arms are covered in them.”

Webster processes this for a moment, understanding dawning across his face. “Just chicken pox, then? Okay, that’s not so bad.”

Joe snorts, running a hand through his hair to force it back. When Webster raises an eyebrow at him, he just shakes his head. “That alone tells me you ain’t ever had chicken pox. So you’re gonna stay out of this house until Jane’s better, and I’ve deep cleaned everything. Not taking any chances.”

“Joe. Come on.” Webster’s incredulity is clearly toeing the line of frustration, but he doesn’t get it. “It’s just chicken pox.”

“Yeah, for her, because she’s ten.” Joe sweeps a hand towards Jane’s closed bedroom door — brightly decorated with drawings of Pokémon, sea creatures, and cartoon characters. Behind it, the poor kid’s laid up in bed, sheets thrown off because she’s too hot. Her dark curls are a tangled mess, since she couldn’t be bothered to tame them this morning; but they can’t quite hide the bright red rash steadily creeping up her neck. Joe was freaked out for a few minutes, before he recognized it. Once you’ve had chicken pox once, you never really forget those splotches, or the goddamn itch. “For her it’s just a little thing, sure. It’ll be over in a week. But in adults, it’s not so little.”

“Oh, come on —“

“Chicken pox is twenty-five times deadlier in adults.”

That shuts Webster up.

“I — you —“ He fumbles for words for a moment, the gears in his pretty little head apparently jammed up. “Have you —“

“Yeah, Web, I’ve had it before. Gave it to my whole family when I was six.” He rolls his eyes, before they catch on the plastic bag in Webster’s hand. Leaning across the room, he gets just close enough to pluck the bag from him, and immediately starts pawing around inside.

“Whatcha get, whatcha get... Tylenol, good.” He tosses it on the counter. “Children’s vitamins, weird, but okay — seriously, Web?” He holds up a shark plushie with unnervingly large, glittering eyes. 

“They were on sale,” is Webster’s only defense. “And Jane loves getting new toys when she’s sick!”

“Amazing you didn’t raise a spoiled brat.” Joe returns to the bag with a snort. Pulling out a pack of mango orange juice — the only thing Jane will drink when she’s sick, apparently — he finally lays out Webster’s haul on the counter. For a moment, he scrutinizes it, lips pursed. “You’re gonna have to go back,” he finally says. “She’ll need calamine, for the itching. You can find it in a bottle, or a little can that sprays... and who can you stay with ‘til this blows over? We could ask Lip, he’s got an extra room, or — could you call Hoob? Dukeman?”

“For god’s sake, Joe,” Webster groans, “I’m not going anywhere, just to leave you to take care of my sick kid!”

That actually bites. Joe goes still, words dying in his throat. His gaze stalls on the counter for a moment, intent, before he rounds on Webster. This is a conversation they’ve had before — many, many times before — and he didn’t think they’d need to have it again.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demands, voice low instead of harsh. “You really think I mind it? You think when I moved in here with you guys, when I put that ring on my finger, I wasn’t signing up for this?” He pauses for a moment, drinking in the silence, before throwing his hands in the air. “Jesus, Web. Shit. If we’re still on that page —“

“Alright.” Webster, at least, looks appropriately shamefaced. In any other situation, this could easily spiral into an argument — not like they haven’t gone to war over dumber stuff — but now isn’t the time or place. He sighs, raising his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. It just... feels wrong to leave you on your own.”

Jane’s not bad company at the best of times. Actually, Joe likes hanging out with her more than he does with her dad. At least Jane can put up a good fight in any video game — even the ones she’s technically not allowed to play — and she’s got enough stories to fill a library. Half of them, Joe suspects, she’s just making up off the top of her head, but Jane’s got an imagination like a firecracker. Her drawings are always brimming with color and life. When she brings them to her dad or Joe for inspection, she demands constructive criticism, and takes it seriously. Jane’s always busy — if she’s not drawing, she’s reading, and if she’s not reading, she’s writing, and if she’s not writing she’s caught in a very intense make-believe game in the backyard — but somehow she still finds time to spend with the adults.

It’s not like Joe doesn’t like Jane. It’s not like being around her is some burden or anything. Hell, he thinks he even loves her a bit — in a way he never imagined getting to love a kid of his own. He loves Webster, and Jane means the world to Web, so it’s simple as that.

And Web thinks he wouldn’t want to take care of Jane while she’s sick? Jesus.

“You kidding me? We’ll have a great time. Jane’s been trying to get me into Harry Potter, anyway, and you gotta show your kid Star Wars… I don’t trust you with the greats.” His topic shift is clearly a dismissal of the entire argument. Good old Web doesn’t get the hint.

“But you shouldn’t —“

“Fuck’s sake!” Joe exclaims — and if he wasn’t genuinely mad before, he is now. His tone lowers a second later, mindful of Jane in the other room, even if it’s hardly the first time she’s heard the two of them tear at each other. Instead, Joe settles for tossing the plastic bag on the ground, in blatant defiance of Web’s “pick things up” rule, and glaring at him. When Web gapes at him, incredulous, Joe just raises an eyebrow. Whatcha gonna do? Come over here and pick it up? It’s probably got chicken pox on it.

“You,” Joe says in a low voice, “are gonna let me do this for you. I’m gonna look after Janie. You are gonna go to the store and get some calamine, for shit’s sake, and then you’re gonna call up Hoobler and ask if he’s got a spare room. You can get whatever you need from our room, but I want you outta here, Web.”

Webster is silent for a moment, like he has to thoroughly chew his thoughts before saying them. His sigh, when it comes out, shakes a bit. “Joe…”

“Just let me take care of you,” he says again, and sees the exact moment Web breaks.

“What sort of lotion do we need again?”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joe’s encountered Sick Web in the wild before. He’s a drama queen if they ever existed — clingy, listless, and depressive. If he can manipulate you into doing something for him, he will; if he needs to act sicker than he is, he’ll damn well do it. If he gets you sick, he’ll have no remorse. Flu season in their house still feels like a bad dream, one Joe prefers not to revist.

Sick Jane, in comparison, is a dream.

“It’s so nice not to be in bed,” she chirps, sounding downright cheerful as she balances a soup bowl in her lap. Joe keeps an eye on her — not just because she’ll be devastated if she spills on her octopus PJs, but because of the scratching. Jane’s a sneaky scratcher. Joe’s caught her doing it at least twenty times today, and no matter how much he hammers the point home that she won’t get better if she keeps scratching at the things, she doesn’t quite get it. There’s a patch of spots just under her chin that are really giving her trouble, but other than that, she’s holding out well.

“It’s only if you’re up for it, okay? You start feeling tired and it’s back to bed.”

Jane makes a face at him. Joe rolls his eyes and makes a face right back.

“So,” she says, having seized control of the remote. “What do you wanna watch now?”

“I dunno, the amount of movies we’ve watched this week —“

“You want to watch a cartoon? Some of the new Marvel ones are supposed to be good, I haven’t seen them.”

“Meh. We could. Ooh, how about Young Jus—“

He’s cut off by the sound of hammering — not at the door, but at the goddamn window.

Jane yelps as a splash of her soup hits the couch cushions; Joe nearly falls to the floor, scrambling for the first weapon he can find, which happens to be the remote. The curtains are half closed to the cool night, which means anyone outside could see in if they got close enough — and, as Joe approaches the windowpane, he can see a white hand pressed to the glass.

It clicks for Jane first. “Oh my gosh,” she gasps, leaping from the couch. “Daddy!”

Joe has to fight the urge to groan as Webster’s smiling face appears in the window. How many times is this, now — eight? Nine? It’s been almost a week since Web left, but he sure hasn’t let himself be forgotten. Every day, he stops by… either to see Jane and leave gifts, or to see him and leave gifts. Collectively, they’re now three books, two plushies, three video games, three DVDs, and a dozen snacks richer.

At the moment, though, Webster’s not carrying any bags. He doesn’t seem to have shown up with anything — just himself.

It’s also impossible to hear him through the window, but to Jane that doesn’t seem to matter.

“Hi, Daddy,” she says, pressing her hand to the outline of Web’s in the glass. “Are you okay? Are you staying safe? Look at my spots, these ones are starting to get scabs. Joe’s been making soup every night, I’m so tired of it — can you get me a fruit salad? I like the hammerhead you brought over—“

Heaving a soft sigh, Joe steps back, giving the two some space. Knowing Jane, she can go on for a while… and she’s missed her dad. Rather than intrude on the moment, Joe slips out the kitchen door, into the backyard. The night air is sweet, waking him up in all the places exhaustion was starting to weigh on him. He closes his eyes, tilting his head to bask in it. The temptation to light up a cigarette is strong, but he’ll never hear the end of it from Web if he found out, so Joe just sits in the steps, arms braced against his knees as he stares into the night.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, footsteps echo around the side of the house.

“Oh, scarecrow. I think I missed you most of all.”

Joe exhales, deep from his chest. “That why you’ve been coming around every day? Careful, Web. I’m gonna start thinking you’ve got a crush on me.”

“Now, more than ever,” Webster replies, and the sweetness in his voice takes Joe aback.

When Joe looks over, he finds Web standing with his hands in his pockets, silhouetted against the porch light. His expression is open, warm — and his eyes might be glittering a bit too, which, crissakes Web — vulnerable in a way that leaves Joe feeling unmasked.

These are not the sort of feelings Joe knows how to deal with. He shrugs, eager to shake them off.

“Hey, you know, you don’t come back soon and Jane and I might take over this place for ourselves. We’re thinking of putting in a movie theater… indoor swimming pool…” Web is still smiling at him, and it leaves Joe feeling a bit weak. The bravado in his voice slides away, tone gentling. “A few more days, yeah? You saw her. She’s doing great. As soon as those spots scab up, she’s all yours.”

“You’re doing a great job, Joe.” And, because Web can never resist making everything ridiculously sappy, “Thank you.”

Joe shrugs, and has to look away. “Next time you visit, bring a pizza or something, huh?”

“I do have something for you, actually. Jane, uhh — Jane told me to give it to you.”

“Yeah?” Interest piqued, Joe turns back. “What?”

Web isn’t smiling now. He actually looks a little mortified. Sterling himself, he shuffles his feet, clearing his throat. “I — okay, Jane told me, remember, she said I had to —“

“Web.”

At last, Webster cracks. He raises a hand to his lips, and — to Joe’s amazement — blows a massive kiss.

“Thank you,” is all Web says — and he doesn’t get upset, even when Joe almost falls over cackling.

Any time, Web, he thinks, gripping the porch railing for dear life. Any time.

Pictures

Summary: Roman is Roaming around.

Word count: 3,108

Ship: It’s a surprise! Shush!

Warning: drive-by/gun violence, major character death and grieving, ghostly nonsense, angst ft. lots of tears, broken glass, like 2 (?) swear words, Deceit exists but it’s just his name, hurt with minimal comfort (if there is any at all), please let me know if I missed any! “It’s awful and sad, don’t read it.” -my friend

Author’s Note: ... Carrie Underwood is inspiring. I was sick the other week, so I wrote this. I would like to thank my friends for reading it for me and catching my mistakes, also screaming “What have you done?!?!”. They’re some real ones. I also am currently undecided on leaving it like this, or forming a part two with a better resolution... It’ll come to me eventually! Enjoy! :)

I’m just going to tag a couple of people, because that’s what other people do, idk: @altruistic-skittles @fearfilledvirgil @notalwaysthevillian ... @not-so-innocent-bi-sander @things-we-used-tc-share @stormcrawler75  idk, I just like all your writing :,)

“Roman!”

Roman jumped awake in a cold sweat, trying to settle his breathing. He looked around, gathering information regarding his surroundings. He noticed it was dark, and he was outside- aka: not in bed within the safe hold of his husband. As he continued, he concluded he was in an alleyway. He stood up, dusting the dirt off of his jeans and exited onto the quiet street.

He continued walking, trying to think of the possibilities of why he woke up in an alleyway, though he couldn’t figure it out. His memory was hazy, seemingly not being able to remember the last twenty-four hours, (at least, that was his guess.) He shook the thought as he eventually approached his doorstep, ready to curl up next to his husband and sleep for as long as possible. He started his search for his keys in his leather jacket pockets, as well as his jeans, but came back unsuccessful. He frowned and turned his attention to the potted plant by the door, knowing there was a spare at the base of the plant.

But, as he went to reach for it, he couldn’t believe what he saw.

A leaf of the plant going straight through his hand.

His eyes widened and he gasped as his knees buckled under his weight. Tears threatened to prick his eyes as he fell to his knees, wishing what he saw was all imaginary. He looked towards the door, and then back at his hand. He reached out to touch it and instead of feeling the wood of the blue door, his hand passed through without a care in the world. He pulled back almost instantaneously as the tears were now streaming down his cheeks and hiccuped sobs escaped him.

Roman Knight was dead… and he didn’t know why.

~

He sat on his doorstep for god knows how long before he finally noticed the sun start to peek over the houses across the street. He stood up, with tears staining his cheeks, and turned back to the blue door that caused him to break down just hours earlier and decided to step through. Once he was through and into the living room and open kitchen, he noticed the abundance of flowers amongst any surface that was available, as well as cards and other tokens of condolences.

“Well,” Roman said to himself, “at least it’s evident that I’ll be missed.” Roman gave a half-hearted chuckle as he continued through the room and found the stairs. He continued up, stopping when he reached the end to look at the photo that had been recently hung, adding to the small collection of family photos.

It was of him and his husband as well as their seven-year-old son, appreciating the newest addition to the family, that sat in his husband's arms, with wide eyes and tender smiles. The seven-year-old was desperately attempting to poke the new addition before Roman grabbed his hand and whispered, “He’s sleeping! If you poke him, he might wake up.”

“But I wanna hold him!” The seven-year-old frowned as he removed his small hand from his dad's grasp, crossing his arms once he was free. Roman gave a soft chuckle and ruffled his son’s hair before pressing a kiss on top of his head.

“How about you hold him when we get home?” He asked as he turned his son towards him. The small boy’s eyes beamed with excitement and he vigorously nodded, turning back to see the baby in the other man’s arms.

With that memory, Roman shook his head and brought his hand up to his eyes, wiping away the tears that threatened to spill out of him. He turned and continued down the hallway, approaching a room with a red door: his bedroom. He sighed before stepping through it with shut eyes, fearing what he might see on the other side.

Once he was through, he opened his eyes, mouth falling agape at the sight before him. The once pristine space was currently in a state of chaos. Clothes littered the floor, along with a digital alarm clock upside-down on the floor, (reading 6:55 AM). Drawers were remained open, picture frames that were on their dressers were now flipped.

Roman felt his heart snap in half.

He continued further into the room, turning toward his bed, relieved to see his husband fast asleep. Roman didn’t think he could handle the emotion if he were to be awake. He walked closer to the foot of the bed, watching his husband’s chest rise and fall under the purple comforter. Roman walked around to the left side of the bed so he could see his husband’s face. His brown, semi-curly hair was sticking around in all sorts of different directions and with his glasses off it could be seen that his eyes were a tad bit puffy. Roman continued and noticed his skin was only the slightest bit paler, making his freckles stand out against it. Roman smiled softly at the sight of him. A sense of peace surrounded by all the chaos.

He was about to head out of the room, but he stopped when he noticed a newspaper on the nightstand out of the corner of his eye. He contemplated ignoring it, to head off and check on his sons… but his own curiosity got the better of him. He turned to face the nightstand and read the headline: “Drive-By Within The City.”

Roman’s head began to spin as different noises filled his ears. Police sirens, people screaming, tires screeching across the pavement. He groaned in agony as he pressed his hands against his ears and shut his eyes, hoping to drown out the any and all noise. Though, that didn’t solve anything.

When he decided to open his eyes, he was back in the same alleyway where he woke up.

~

Roman walked along the sidewalk with a small grocery bag in hand as he reached into his jacket’s pocket for his phone. It was getting a little late, so he figured he should call his husband to tell him.

He just had to reach his car and he would be on his way.

Roman quickly found his husband’s contact and clicked his number, bringing it up to his ear and letting it ring. A wide smile broke onto his face when he heard his voice.

“Roman? Where are you?! It’s almost time to eat!”

Roman chuckled at his husband’s distress. “I’m sorry, Lo. I had to get some stuff done before I left work. I’m on my way home right now!”

Logan sighed on the other end of the line and Roman continued to giggle. “It’s alright. Though, when you get home you must talk with your son.”

“What is it this time?” Roman asked, “Did our little prince draw on the wall again?”

Logan giggled at the memory of a tiny boy, showing off his masterpiece of purple and light blue crayon.

“No,” Logan began, “he did, however, draw on the baby.”

Roman burst out laughing, and he could hear Logan chuckling across the line. “Roman, this is serious! Virgil thinks he made Patton beautiful by putting small blue flowers on his arms!”

Roman cleared his throat once his laughter died down, “Of course it is! I’ll talk to him when I get home, don’t worry about it.”

“Thank god. I don’t see why he doesn’t list- hey!” Roman could hear Logan being interrupted by a stifle of giggling quickly passing him. “What are you doing with the marker?!”

Roman quickly swallowed his laughter before Logan had the chance to reprimand him, “I think you need to go after our little artist.”

Logan let out a dejected sigh, “You’re right. I’m going to go after him, prevent him from drawing on his brother again. He has red, he’s probably contemplating ladybugs. I love you, Roman. Drive safe please.”

“I will,” Roman began, not noticing the screeching tires behind him, “I love you t-”

Roman was cut off by the sound of a gunshot and a burning fire in his side. He grunted as he fell to the ground, gripping his side and listening to the other people scream and some more gunshots in the distance. The world around him was becoming blurry as his eyelids became heavy. He carefully pulled his hand off of his side to see it covered in blood. His breathing was becoming light as the burning turned to ache. Police sirens could be heard in the distance, but it was too late.

Roman’s world slowly faded to black, and the last thing he heard was the faint voice of his husband on the other end of the phone.

“Roman!”

~

Roman’s thoughts were interrupted by the blaring sound of an alarm clock and the faint sound of a baby crying, forcing the previous sirens to fade away. He noticed that his face was wet from small tears escaping his eyes while he was out of it. He brought a hand to his face to wipe them away and walked away from the paper that was still sitting on the nightstand.

Roman Knight was dead… and now he knew why.

He turned to face the bed, standing at the foot, when he heard a small groan come from underneath the pillow. He noticed Logan, who was once peacefully asleep, locking the pillow over his head with his arms- prolonging the inevitable, no doubt.

Roman stifled a small laugh. Logan was always more of a night owl.

“Y’know,” Roman began, “if you didn’t stay up to look at the stars all night, you wouldn’t need an alarm!”

Another minute passed by before Logan finally flung the pillow off of his head and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Roman watched as the rest of his husband’s movements became sluggish- from searching for his glasses, (which were under the bed), to walking over to the dresser and retrieving a red t-shirt from one of the pre-opened drawers. He then bent down and shut off the alarm that was continuing to scream.

Before Logan could get to the door, a faint knock was heard and the door opened to reveal a small boy in purple pj’s, and his black hair sticking up in every direction imaginable. Roman’s heart swelled at the sight.

His son was adorable.

“Daddy, your alarm is loud,” Virgil stated as he tried to begin entering the room. He was quickly stopped by a wide-eyed Logan who scooped him up in his arms, shutting the door behind him to which Roman decided to follow. Virgil released a light screech at the sudden movements. Roman continued behind them as they began to walk across the hall.

“I’m sorry, Virgil,” Logan began, voice drenched in sleep, “daddy didn’t hear it. I also broke something, so you can’t go in there right now, okay?” Virgil gave a small nod against Logan’s shoulder.

“Broke something?” Roman furrowed his eyebrows as he whispered in confusion. He only saw a mess, he didn’t see anything that was broken- especially to the point where Virgil wouldn’t be able to enter the room. Roman decided to turn back, re-entering the bedroom to search for the said broken object.

Once he entered, the search began. Roman looked under the bed, in the closet and the bathroom and on top of his dressers but still came up short. Roman groaned and tilted his head back in defeat, ready to exit the room and completely move on. He brought his head down to look at his feet as he was walking back toward the door when he finally noticed tiny pieces of glass on the ground underneath the tall dresser that was closest to the door. Roman looked up to see a dent in the wall next to the dresser, to which he tilted his head in suspicion.

Roman continued to walk around the foot of the bed and towards the tall dresser, only the slightest bit afraid for what the smashed object may be. Once he reached the corner of the mattress, he followed the dent that was on the wall down to the ground and tears threatened to spill out of his eyes when he saw what was before him.

He saw a smashed picture frame, with a picture of him and his bespectacled husband on their wedding night, peeking through shattered glass. Logan was rolling his eyes, for there was a bit of white frosting on his nose, while Roman was looking at him fondly while trying to hide his laughter, though it was nearly impossible.

The tears were now spilling from Roman’s eyes as he gave a small, but sad, smile; wishing he could pick up the broken pieces of what he saw before him.

Before Roman had the chance to walk away, his head began to spin and the once fading sounds of a baby crying were now turning into glasses clinking and people chatting. Roman shut his eyes, though it was much more bearable than the last time, and once he opened them he wished he never went looking for the broken object in the first place.

Across from him, he saw a twenty-four-year-old Roman and a twenty-three-year-old Logan, holding hands and walking down the aisle; away from the arch from where they presumably said: “I do.”

~

“Roman, what are you doing?” Logan asked as he grabbed the long knife off of the table, ready to cut the cake. He was looking at his now husband, who had a dollop on frosting on his finger.

“I’m not doing anything!” Roman gave a mischievous smile.

“You are aware that you’re supposed to wait until the first slice is cut for this typical wedding scenario, correct?” Logan blinked at Roman while the other just shrugged.

“You’re right,” Roman began innocently as he stepped closer to his husband. Before the other could react Roman swiped the frosting onto Logan’s nose, “but this is a lot more fun!”

Logan simply rolled his eyes while Roman chuckled, along with their guests that were watching the scene unfold. Logan set the knife back down on the table, feeling it currently unnecessary.

“Alright,” Logan smirked as he obtained a small amount of frosting on his finger, “if that’s how it is going to be, then I will just have to do the same!”

“Wait-” before Roman could even begin to protest through his laughter, the frosting that was once on Logan’s finger was now on his cheek. Their audience cheered in delight as Logan snorted at the offended look on Roman’s face, mouth agape and eyes wide. Logan continued to laugh, with Roman eventually giggling, stepping closer to the other.

Soon, bright green eyes met bespectacled blue ones, both reaching for the long knife to the right side of the cake, and finally deciding to cut it.

~

The scene quickly faded as Roman was once again in his bedroom, bringing his hand up to smear away fallen tears. He looked to the left of him, about to head for the door but couldn’t help but notice this was not the same room he was standing in moments earlier.

This room was neatly organized, pictures that were once flipped were now standing face up on the dressers. Roman looked to see that the glass that was once scattered on the ground was nowhere to be seen, along with the frame itself. When he looked up he saw that the dent in the wall had also vanished.

“If God could stop fucking with me, now would be the time!” Roman said dramatically, spreading his arms out to make a point. He started to turn around and face the foot of his bed, “I’m starting to get real tired of this bullshi-” Roman’s voice trailed off at the sight of Logan, wearing a black suit with silent tears rolling down his face as he clutched the once missing picture frame close to his chest. Roman’s heart ached at the sight.

He’d never seen him look like this.

Roman opened his mouth to say something, though he knew the other wouldn’t hear him anyway. But, before he could there was a knock on the door.

~

“Knock, knock!” Logan heard Remy on the other side of his bedroom door, knowing damn well that he himself should be on that side as well.

He just didn’t have the will or the energy.

Logan let out a soft groan as he fell back onto the purple comforter, still clutching the same photo he’d been looking at for the past day and a half.

He didn’t want to let go.

“Sweetie, if you don’t open the door in the next five seconds, I’m going to break it down!”

“That won’t be necessary,” Logan began, voice hoarse from his lack of talking, “considering it is unlocked, there should be no need to break it down.”

Remy sighed as he entered the room, catching sight of the man before him through his sunglasses. He walked to the foot of the bed, sitting down next to Logan’s legs and folding his hands on his lap.

‘Y’know,” Remy began, turning to look at Logan’s face, while the latter continued to stare at the ceiling, “your son missed you over the past day or two. He’s downstairs wondering if his daddy’s okay. He’s easy to distract, though. Yesterday his ol’ Uncle Rem decided we should break into Uncle Devlin’s reptile room and pet his snake. Virgil thought Ryan was chill. Hashtag: get the child a corn snake, 2k19.”

Logan stayed silent, not breaking eye contact with the white paint above him.

“Girl, you’re going to have to say something. I’m not a mind reader.”

With that, Logan sat up, bringing the photo that was at his chest down to his lap, stroking the edges of the frame with his thumbs. He glanced towards the other man, who was currently adjusting the sleeve of his black dress shirt and then glanced back down at the photo, taking in the past smile of his husband.

A smile that he, nor Virgil, would ever see again.

A smile that Patton would never even remember.

A smile that was taken from the world too soon.

Before Logan could even process what he was doing, he threw the picture to his right, smashing it against the wall, leaving a noticeable dent and glass shattered on the floor. His body shook as it wracked with sobs, tears no longer flowing silently as Remy wrapped his arms around him, rocking and soothing the other as he hiccuped for air.

Roman Knight was dead… and Logan was barely surviving.

Babysitting

Soo this is my first time writing a fic and it’s a little bit iffy but eh I’m posting it anyway. It ended up being a lot longer than originally intended so I’m only putting up the first part right now. WIP so don’t judge too hard. It looks like it’s going to be a cool action story about some looming villain but is actually just about the avenger kids babysitting Morgan. Lots of Peter & Morgan being siblings ‘cause I love them. Oh and contains Endgame spoilers I guess so don’t read if you haven’t seen it yet. Enjoy

___________________________________________

Communication was iffy, to say the least, among the remaining Avengers after the second snap. What with many retiring, some being halfway across the world, and a large percentage of them in space, it wasn’t always clear as to how to get in touch with each other. Whenever a threat arose big enough to alert everyone, it usually went through Nick Fury, who seemed to have an obscure way of contacting everyone. At the moment, though, he and Agent Hill were investigating the aftermath of some European incidents, and were indisposed. That meant the process was much slower.

It had started when Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel herself, had heard about trouble brewing on a distant planet; something that might affect the rest of the galaxy as well. Upon visiting the said planet and realizing it was much worse than she could have imagined, she made the decision to call in some backup.

 She managed to track down the Benatar, because of the homing device the Guardians had entrusted to her. From there, Thor gave Rocket Bruce’s email address and sent him a message, hoping for the best. Intergalactic messaging is normally not the quickest, but it was going to have to work. Carol led the Guardians to the planet, insisting there was no time to waste. The Earthens would make it there eventually, but until they did, there wasn’t a minute to spare.

 Dr. Bruce Banner, currently large, green, and Hulky, received the email approximately twenty-two hours after it was sent. He was working in his lab then, and at first was delighted to get correspondence from his adventuring buddies, but quickly became horrified at the news. He made nine phone calls in the next half-hour, to a various number of people.

.***

“So, uh, because of all that there will be a Wakandan airship arriving on your farm in about two minutes…”

“Um, what? Buddy, you gotta be kidding me. I’m retired, I thought you were too.” Clint had his phone pinched between his ear and his shoulder, attempting at multitasking. 

 “I know, I know, but-” Bruce paused and flinched as loud grinding sounds came from the other end. “What exactly are you doing right now?”

 “I was trying to finish building our new shed.” Holding a wooden beam upright, he clicked the button on the drill he was holding and it whined as it forced in a screw. Using his left hand to dust sawdust off of his shirt, he set the drill down on his workbench and laid the phone flat on his shoulder. “Lila, hon, come here a sec. Tell your Uncle Bruce why I’m not skipping out on our father-daughter weekend.”

“Sure, Dad.” She laughed, setting down the bucket of apples she had been picking from a nearby tree. She jogged over to him and was handed the phone. Clint returned to building his shed.

 “Clint- are you there?”

“Hey Uncle Bruce, I’m really sorry but my dad is unavailable this weekend because mom took the boys to her parents and I finally don’t have to deal with them for once, and once he’s done with his latest construction project he promised to teach me some moves on his sword and then we’re staying up late and eating ice cream-hey Dad what’s that noi-”

 She dropped the phone in surprise as huge gusts of wind blew down on them from above. Lila’s hair whipped around her face as a glowing hexagonal shield appeared in the sky, revealing a sleek black airship. She glanced at Clint, who was shielding his eyes with his hand. He sighed. “Guess we’re going to have to pick this back up next weekend.”

***

The couch at the Lang household was, as far as they were concerned, the most comfortable piece of furniture in the world. Scott, Hope and Cassie had all settled into it, gigantic bowls of popcorn on their laps, and were just about to press play on their favorite movie when their phone rang. Scott dramatically dropped the remote beside him in defeat, and reached over to grab the phone from the coffee table.

“Who is it, Dad?” Cassie asked, looking over to see the number.

“If it’s Luis again, just leave it,” Hope joked, playfully stealing some popcorn from Cassie’s bowl. 

“No, no. I gotta take this. It’s Bruce, my favorite guy!” he exclaimed, stepping into the next room.

“Is that the big green one?” Cassie whispered as Hope laughed.

“Hey, Doc Green, what’s up? Scott asked, leaning against the wall.

“Something bad, I’m afraid. We need both of you to come in.” 

Scott rubbed his forehead. “What’s wrong? Can’t someone else take it for once? We just started movie night, man.”

“That’s pretty much what Clint said. But no, it’s an emergency, and we’re calling in the whole team.” Cassie listened from the living room, waiting anxiously. Secretive phone calls were never good. And neither were giant airships in your backyard.

***

“Bruce- are you sure? I mean, I’ve got both the kids here, and-” Pepper spoke into the phone with a hushed voice, leaning against the kitchen counter. She glanced over to the dining room table, where Peter was helping Morgan with her homework. Not that she had much homework at six years old, but Peter had taken it upon himself to make sure she lived up to the reputation of her genius father. That meant many late-night reading sessions.

In the year since the second snap, Peter and Morgan had grown close. They were basically siblings. Peter bounced from his apartment to the lake house to HQ, and Pepper had gotten to know him better. She really liked the kid, and decided to keep up her late husband’s legacy of parenting him. It’s what Tony would have wanted, anyway.

“I’m sorry, Pepper, but we really need everyone we can get. Rescue’s needed, too.” Bruce hated calling everyone in from their lives, but it was crucial.

Careful not to disturb the kids, she sighed and said quietly, “All right. But the kid stays here.”

“But Pepper, he’s got some powerful skills-”

 “Out of the question. He’s seventeen, and he’s already had to deal with enough after everything Fury put him through.”

He started to protest more, but just sighed. “Okay, fine. Everyone’s going to meet up at your place in a few minutes. Expect lots of airships.”

 “At this point, nothing would surprise me.” She hung up and set the phone down on the counter. She rested her chin in her hands, deep in thought. She had never been to space before; it was both exciting and terrifying. She didn’t want to leave Morgan, who had already lost one parent to a supernatural battle, but everything Bruce had told her made it clear this mission was more important than their daily lives. If Carol Danvers, one of the most powerful people in the galaxy, called for help, it was definitely serious.

“W-wan-”

“Close, look at the context clues.”

 “Wonderful!”

 “Yeah, you got it! Nice job, Morgs.” Pepper watched from the kitchen as Peter gave Morgan two high fives. Morgan was usually ornery as a donkey when it came to learning new words, but with Peter she didn’t seem to mind. She thought he was the coolest person in the world.

“Can we take a break? We’ve been going for hours,” she whined, yawning a little and slumping over into his lap. “And I want a juice pop.”

 “Perfect timing. It’s probably getting close to your bedtime, too,” he teased, tickling the back of her neck. She squealed and sat up, batting away his hands. Scampering into the kitchen, she made a mad dash for the freezer before Pepper sidestepped in front of her, blocking it.

“Uh uh, little miss. Supper before dessert.” Morgan crossed her arms and stamped her foot, but failed to contain a smile. 

 “You haven't cooked us dinner yet, Mommy! How are we supposed to eat it?” she cried, throwing up her arms. 

 “There’s the leftover risotto in the fridge, I told you I would heat it up when you wanted it.”

She made a face. “That stuff’s gross.”

Pepper shrugged. “Guess you don’t get juice pops, then.”

“Hey- hey, Mrs. Stark, what’s happening out there?” Peter had pulled aside the curtains and was peeking out the window, where in the soft evening light you could just make out several descending airships. And a lot of noise.

“Mommy?” Morgan asked hesitantly, looking at her with wide, anxious eyes.

“Don’t worry, kids,” Pepper replied, walking up to the door and unlocking it. “This is just...well, you’ll see.”

Part two to come soon!

(Wanted to share a piece of what I’m currently working on. This story follows Lexi as she returns home after three years of university to face her past. This is a rewrite and still quite rough around the edges, but it took me a while to get this first chapter down so I’m a little proud of it regardless. If you read it, thanks for taking the time to do so!)

Freefall: Chapter 1

Present Day

I had been standing on the edge – that much I could remember. One of those moments where your toes are no longer on the ledge and you’re staring down, and you can feel yourself tipping forward and then – nothing. You don’t fall no matter how long you wait for it. No matter how close you get.            But you swear you could. Oh, you swear with every damn shallow breath in your battered lungs you could. But you don’t. You never do.            I don’t know what pulled me back, but something tugged at the edges, stopping me from going over completely. I remember I couldn’t wait to hit the bottom; I remember the gaping hole in my chest at realising I would live another day. The bottom never came – it eluded me – and a part of me forever claws and screams for answers.            Why? Why couldn’t I reach it?            Maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t supposed to. And maybe that’s why it’s okay to come back. To come home. A home that isn’t really a home at all – it’s just a place now. Has been for a long time. 

           I drummed my hands on the wheel, waiting at a red light. I glanced at the half-burnt cigarette between my fingers, watching as the smoke swirled up and out the window before finally deciding to toss it. Smelling of smoke wasn’t going to help me today, and no amount of nicotine could calm the nerves in my stomach anyway.            The light changed to green, I geared the car forward, and rounded the corner onto the familiar street of my childhood. The sun blared down onto the pavement from above, but the warm glow didn’t deceive me. If only everyone knew the stories; if only they had seen even a glimpse of the life I had lived here. I tell myself it could have been worse – much worse – but three years away still didn’t seem long enough. If I had it my way, I never would have come back at all.            I scanned the houses as I drove, peacefully nestled together with pristine gardens. The street was empty, quiet – probably no kids here since I left – and then I slowed as I spied my parent’s house. I carefully parked up behind my father’s blue truck and switched off the engine.            I slid my sunglasses onto the top of my head, eyes sweeping over the view of the home I had left three years earlier. The flower baskets, now empty, still hung either side of the blue front door, the silver doorknocker still intact. The garden was clean, the grass freshly cut, the stone path near-immaculate. On the surface, nothing had changed.            The anxiety took a moment to settle, a wave of nostalgia briefly washing over me – interrupted by the front door swinging open to reveal my mother. A beaming smile plastered on her face, ash-blonde bob bouncing on her shoulders, she was almost skipping towards the front gate as she stepped into the sunlight.            “Lexi!”            I ducked my head, dropping the sunglasses over my eyes so she couldn’t see me rolling them, and forced myself out of the car. She pulled the gate open and threw her arms around me with a squeeze. Much to my detriment, the tiniest pang of guilt crept in as I returned the hug.            I had avoided coming home since I first started university a whole other town away, trying to separate myself from everything I knew here. But she was my mother, and I was her daughter, and I suppose cutting myself off from her wasn’t entirely fair.            I had my reasons. Those reasons didn’t disappear when I did.            She held me at arm’s length. “I thought you were going to be late.”            I glimpsed at my watch and shrugged. “Nope. Right on time, just like I said.”            As far as first digs went, it could have been worse.            Taking my hand, she led me back up to the house, bustling me inside and shutting the door behind us.            “Where is everyone?”            “Your dad is in the back garden,” she replied, still smiling as she veered left into the kitchen. “Charlie is at work for another hour yet. But he’s coming straight home – he can’t wait to see you.”            I brushed my fingers through my hair and leant against the doorframe, stifling a snort of disbelief. I hadn’t heard from my brother in three years. Somehow, the prospect of Charlie missing me seemed incredibly unlikely.            Removing my sunglasses again, I watched my mother pull bags of frozen vegetables from the freezer, laying them out on the kitchen counter – still smiling. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen her this way. She certainly hadn’t been this happy before I left; so much had happened all that time ago and I could still picture the way she used to look at me. The disappointment. The exasperation whenever she didn’t know what to do or what to say to me. Neither of my parents had been particularly proud of me back then.            They were probably relieved to see the back of me for a while – maybe it even helped.            It made me wonder how my father and Charlie would look at me now, too.            I shoved my hands in the pockets of my faded jeans, unsure what to do. “Is Charlie still working at the gym?”            She didn’t look at me as she said, “You would know if you bothered to pick up the phone once in a while.”            Her tone was airy and light, a tiny laugh in her throat. But the accusation didn’t go unnoticed. It may have been three years, but the low gut-punch was as familiar as ever. I knew that tone – a few years away wouldn’t change that.            I ignored it, kept my voice bored as I said, “University keeps you busy.”            She turned to face me this time. “You could have spared five minutes, Lexi. You had five minutes, didn’t you?”            I met her blue eyes for the first time since arriving. My jaw clenched. Her smile was gone. We levelled our stare until, finally, she turned her attention back to the cutting board. I listened to the knife dice through carrots. I knew I’d have to endure at least a little scolding my first day home, so like the good daughter I always should have been, I kept my mouth firmly shut.            I pushed off the doorframe, turning to take in the hallway. The wooden floorboards had been replaced – they were darker now, more cedar than birch – and the dark red wallpaper had been stripped in favour of mulberry paint. Family photos, just as I had remembered them, adorned the wall leading up the staircase, framed in silver filigree. I angled my neck to look at them.            The first, my parent’s wedding day, followed by a professionally taken photograph of them holding baby Charlie only a few years later. There had never been a baby photo of me for as long as I had lived in this house, but there was one of the four of us together. I was six at the time, Charlie nine, and my parents stood with tight-lipped smiles on their faces – proud, forced. Posed. Charlie was the same, but I was beaming, all white teeth and squinty green eyes.            I grinned to myself. I had always been the odd one out. Unruly and bright, adventurous and curious about the world.            Oh, how things had changed.            The last photo, at the very top of the stairs, was Charlie adorned in his graduation gown and cap, diploma in hand. And as I averted my eyes to the table by the door, where the bowl with my father’s car keys lived, there were two smaller frames that held yet more pictures of my brother.            One was from the day he completed a cycling marathon when he was twenty-one, not long before I left, shaking hands with the event organiser handing him a certificate. The other, a candid photo, when he was just a kid fixing the front wheel of his bike for the first time by himself. Oil stained his hands, a smudge of it on his cheek.            Charlie. Perfect Charlie. He was blonde, like our mother, with the same blue eyes and slight up-tilt of the nose. I used to believe it meant I was more like our father, but it turned out the only thing I got from him was my dark hair.            Truth was, in the end, I was nothing like any of them.            “There she is!”            I scrunched my nose up with a smile as I turned to my father emerging from the living room. He wrapped his arms around me, briefly, and planted a quick kiss on the top of my head. Then he held me at arm’s length as he said, “It’s nice to have you home.”            I stifled the urge to say otherwise and looking up at him I could see there were more grey hairs than before, deeper lines around the corners of his eyes.            “Only for a week,” I said.            A hint of surprise flashed in his eyes, a tell-tale sign that my mother hadn’t told him as such. “Oh? How long do you have left at university?”            “Three weeks.”            “And then you’re coming back for good?” He headed into the kitchen where my mother was still chopping up vegetables and throwing them into a pan.            I took my place against the doorframe again and crossed my arms over my chest. “That’s the plan.”            For now. There was a week’s break at the university, no classes, and I’d had no reason to stay behind. Much to my dismay, everyone else had returned home, too, and most of my work was complete for the semester. So, when my mother called, and I finally picked up, I had no choice but to give in to her persistence. Since I would be returning home after three weeks anyway, it made sense to at last show my face. I would have to move back home for a while to plan my next steps, but I had no intention of sticking around – and I had no idea how to tell them.            It wasn’t that I thought they would be disappointed to see me leave again. On the contrary, it seemed ludicrous to imagine living at home forever, especially with a family that felt as taut as ours. But I didn’t know what I was going to do next, once university was over, and it wasn’t a conversation I really wanted to have with them.            “So, how’s my room looking?” I asked. “Is there enough space in there for a person?”            My father chuckled, taking a seat at the dining table and unfolding a newspaper. “Your room is untouched. No one has been in there since you left.”            I blinked. “At all? Dad, it’s been three years. Are you telling me that you haven’t moved anything in there while I’ve been gone?”            “Why would we do that?”            I opened my mouth, shrugged. “Spare room. Extra space. I don’t know, it kind of makes sense to use it for storage.”            My mother clicked her tongue. “It’s always been your room, Lexi, you haven’t moved out entirely just yet.”            The hairs on my arms rose – I hated the way she used my name.            “Sit down.” My father gestured to the chair opposite himself. “No need to stand, this is your house, too.”            The urge not to react surfaced once again – it was like second nature, an old habit impossible to break. I clenched the car keys in my hand and made my way to the table, but as I sat down, it was immediately uncomfortable – unnatural.            This wasn’t home. It was just a place. And no matter how much I had tried to change that feeling, it had always remained true. I couldn’t recall a time when it wasn’t.             I waited a few minutes, flitting my gaze between my mother preparing dinner and my father nose-deep in the newspaper. She was stubborn, and he was oblivious. It didn’t make for great conversation. I blew out a sigh between my lips, jangled the car keys between my fingers.            Finally, I stood again. “I’ll be upstairs.”            I took a few slow steps at first, giving them a chance to acknowledge my leaving, but still no one said a word. So I left the kitchen and ascended the stairs, two steps at a time. At the top, I paused – the hall looked longer than I remembered, my bedroom door at the very end, closed and … small.            My throat felt thick. My stomach rolled.            No. I wasn’t ready.            I turned around and headed back down. I’d have to face it eventually, but there was no rush. Instead, I spent the better part of the next hour inspecting the rest of the house. For the most part, everything was the same, with just a few new licks of paint. And everywhere I looked, every place I stood, was filled with the memories I had tried so hard to forget.            It was why I hadn’t come back – why I couldn’t. Too much had happened here in this house and in this town, and there were faces of people I once knew that I was afraid to see again. And some faces that I never would.            Sometimes, that felt worse.            I was standing outside the open patio doors, watching the clouds roll by overhead and lost deep in reverie, when voices drifted through the house. My parents were talking, laughing – and Charlie had at last arrived from work. The moment their voices fell into a hush, I knew they were telling him I was home. It was how they always used to talk about me, and it was how I always knew that I didn’t belong.            Well, I wasn’t going to make the first move. I’d let Charlie decide how he wanted to approach me after all this time.            It didn’t take long.            “Hey, sis.”            I turned to look at him over my shoulder as he stepped tentatively to my side. Calling me ‘sis’, or ‘sister’, was something he had always done; always referring to me as what I am to him. If he ever used my name it meant he was being serious. Maybe this meant he was going to be civil.            I tried to smile, but it was weak. “It’s been a while.”            He nodded, hands in his pockets. He was still wearing his work uniform – a black tracksuit with baby blue stripes down the sleeves of his jacket, and a shiny nametag attached to the left pocket. And there was stubble, which was unusual for Charlie. He was the poster-child for pristine, but there seemed to be something … relaxed about him.            I poked his chin. “What happened here?”            He grinned and dragged his fingers down his cheeks. “Trying something new.”            “Being a man?”            He rolled his eyes, but he still laughed a little. “I just wanted to see if I could pull off a beard.”            “They take a while to grow, you know.”            He shrugged. “It’s only been a week.”            I turned my eyes back to the sky and we fell into silence. He shifted and sighed and continued to glance at me from the corner of his eye. I wondered if he was ever going to say what was really on his mind – something he used to avoid doing with me when we were younger. Until things got bad, anyway.            “You look good,” he said. “Better.”            I chewed the inside of my lip.            I turned to face him, and I saw his wall shoot up. But I held my tongue.            That wall – we both had one. It was how we could tell when the other was on the defence, when things were about to get sour. It was a way to tell when we had said something we shouldn’t have; a way to prepare for biting our tongues before we said something regrettable.            Perhaps we had both learnt to finally back down from a fight, because as much as it caused an odd twinge in my chest, he wasn’t wrong. I did look better, and rather than make an unnecessary snarky comment, I offered a small nod instead. He seemed to relax at the gesture, then turned back into the house.            With not much else to do, I followed. Dinner was almost ready; the smell of boiled vegetables and minted lamb drifted through the rooms. I taught myself to cook while I was away, so that I didn’t have to face the horrors of living on packet noodles or mac and cheese, but my mother’s cooking reminded me that I wasn’t anywhere near her level yet. Home-cooked meals had become a distant memory, and to say I hadn’t hungered for them would be a terrible lie.            We each took a place at the dining table – exactly the same as before – while my mother laid out all the food. Dad tucked in first, pulling a few slices of lamb onto his plate, followed by a large portion of cabbage and sprouts. And those damn diced carrots. Then Charlie did the same as we waited for the roasted potatoes to come out of the oven.            I waited until everyone else began to eat before filling my own plate and, as I predicted, there were more potatoes and gravy left over than vegetables. I took one small scoop of sprouts, then shovelled the potatoes onto the side of the plate before drenching them in gravy. I used to do this when I lived here – I missed it. Just for good measure, I took a few extra slices of meat, too.            They chatted as we ate, and I sat back and listened. And it was while my eyes searched their faces as they spoke that I saw how happy they were. They were content, talking about work, laughing at inside jokes about colleagues. Laughing at each other’s stories in general. I garnered a few quick glances from Dad and Charlie – but my mother avoided eye contact throughout dinner. It was fine: I wasn’t waiting for her to notice me, I was too busy taking in this life, this family, that wasn’t mine.            Somewhere, deep down, I ached.

25 days of Christmas drabbles//day eight//visiting friends and family

My 25 days of Christmas drabbles challenge that can be found here.

Drabble challenge: 25 days of Christmas drabbles Day: 8/25 Prompt: Visiting friends and family Ship: Jeanmarco

“Marco hurry up. My mom is expecting us any minute now!” Jean calls from getting his shoes and the like on. After finals the two where flying out to visit Marco’s rather large family down in Florida, but for now they where planning to spend at least one day with Jean’s family here before they left. The house was a two hour drive away. Jeans mother had been pretty disappointed to hear Jean was going with his boy friend over Christmas break instead of going home, but she understood the time was coming for them to meet the other’s families as their relationship got more serious in Marco’s senior year and Jean’s junior year of college. Living together off campus while Jean was doing college with his full ride American Football scholarship and Marco was doing his with soccer full ride never ceased to be a challenge. However, in their off season they had time to visit at least their friends and family. That was the thing neither of them ever gave that up, but prior to now Marco had only really met Jean’s mom at some of the home football games he ha attended.

‘‘I know Jean I know. Getting out of here is important.” The winter clothes easily found their way onto Marco, but he was fighting his boot laces and groaning as he did so. He really did want to meet the woman that had raise Jean almost on her own while Jean’s dad served over seas. Unfortunately while Jean had been in his senior year of high school, his father had died in an IED explosion and Marco had never really gotten to meet him because of that. That had been one of the things that had brought them close in Marco’s sopho year as first time roommates. The lack of a father. Marco’s own father had died when he was ten during a shoot out with bank robbers. His triplet younger siblings never got to know their dad, but Marco had memories. He ha helped Jean where he could through the grieving process he had still been in. Talking had helped quite a bit for both of them. Before either knew it, they where having their first ate just a week before everyone went home for the Thanksgiving holidays and spent time with their families. Then by the end of that summer they had skyped and found this apartment they moved into and renewed the lease on for this year.

‘‘I am ready Jean, let’s go.”‘ Marco move with haste, but allowed Jean to keep the lead. The other male was the only one of the two that ha a car in this area. Marco’s car sat in his mom’s drive way because it was much cheaper to fly out to college than to pay the tolls all along the high way, plus food, plus hotels, and finally adding on gas to drive all the way up from his home in Florida. There was too many miles, to many toll booths, too much of everything like that to justify bringing his car up with him. It meant he would either walk or take public transportation to class if Jean could not drive them both for whatever reason. He never dared to ask to drive Jean’s car. It wasn’t his, and he had only done it a few times. Just because it was safe for Jean to drive the smaller car, Marco was used to the van he usually drove, the only thing that really helped his family given the size of it. The smaller car was a bit intimidating to Marco given he had not had time to get equated with such a thing. He wished there was more he could do for Jean, but there really wasn’t. 

‘‘Now remember, the drive is long, but the visit is well worth it. It would mean the world to my mom if we stayed the night, you think we can do that?” Jean asked. He had spare clothes Marco could borrow at home, and he definitely thought it might make his mom a lot happier to have company for breakfast in the morning. She had never remarried after her husband died, so she was often times alone when she got up, unless a stray cat came in the house. Jean had tried to convince her to get a cat for her company a year ago. She had declined, so he was still working on that argument with his mom. Maybe Marco might be able to help him with the convincing his mom  to get some  form of company in her house with her.

‘‘I don’t mind long rides Jean, trust me. It is easier to stay tonight. But we need to get back first thing in the morning after we get breakfast.” Marco leaned back against his seat after he buckled. The world was very calm and did not do much as they began to drive. There was snow on the ground so Marco dared not talk. Christmas music filled the silence that had settled in the car. Things were always hectic this time of year, but it seemed more so when snow littered the ground the way it did now. Even the highway did not seem very safe. People drove much slower than normal, but that was to be expected. It was just too dangerous to go the speed limit.

The drive was thankfully uneventful. They made it to Jean’s house in a pretty quick time frame. The house was well decorated. Jean’s mom forced them in and gave them presents they opened, then gave her some in exchange. It was a nice way to relax before they sat down for dinner. Jean’s mom poured them each a glass of whine to drink. Though it was maybe illegal as Jean was only twenty until April, they where not driving back tonight as it was what they had decide.

‘‘So mom, about that cat thing. I really think it’s a good idea. I mean you haven’t date in awhile and Marco and I are really worried about you and that is not a good feeling.” Jean tried to reason. Not that he didn’t love his mom and think she was okay on her own, he thought that she could use the company as she had shown no interest in remarrying. At least as far as Jean had seen. He wanted her to be happy. This was the big thing that was on Jean’s mind around this time of year, he was worried about his mother because she was just about the most important person in his life.

“I think it is a good idea to Mrs.K. I know that you might not want to marry again, but I think it is important to have some sort of companionship and felines are a very good companion. Plus the cat door on your house would allow them to sun bathe in warmer months.” Marco said calmly. He was used to talking about animals as he was a veterinary science major. He was used to working with all of this and more. He could easily point out how low maintenance they where and how they where perfect for one who really enjoyed their free time.

Mrs.Kirstien was silent at first. She was used to Jean making avocations for her to date or get a pet or at least get out for more fun with her friends. There was so much that Jean wanted here to do. That was for sure why he had gotten his boyfriend’s help with all of that. She put her fork down and sighed looking between them.

“I guess I can do that. It is a bit lonely around here. I might try dating again too, but don’t blame me if you get younger siblings Jean.” She  teased and they all laughed. “Now let’s finish our meal.” The rest of the evening and the visit passed rather nicely.

The Gift For You | Suga

Yoongi has many sides to him which is what attracted you to him in the first place. He’s been doing a good job as a boyfriend these past few years until on your birthday he doesn’t give you the usual attention you’re used to.

Word Count: 2k

Angst, Fluff

The clock finally hits 12:00 A.M. I am now a whole year older. Once I finish up the show I was watching by myself in the living room, I decide to call it a night.

I enter my bedroom where my boyfriend, Yoongi, is dead asleep in our bed. I wasn’t expecting him to cheer and sing happy birthday to me since he’s not that enthusiastic, especially when he’s tired. I’m not usually into celebrating my birthday but every year Yoongi always spends the whole day with me. No matter the schedule. Aside from his cold exterior and fuzzy inside, I loved that about him.

He’s curled up into a ball on top of the sheets. It’s something he usually does when he’s looking through his feed on his phone while lying down.

I take his phone from the bed to put it on the bedside table so it doesn’t get lost within the blankets. Without pulling the blanket from underneath him I wrap my half over his body. I pull out an extra blanket from the closet to get comfortable next to him. I take a good long look at his adorable sleeping face until I went into a deep sleep myself.

The following morning, I woke up to the sun blinding me through a small peak of the curtains. I stretch and reach over to other side of the bed to find it empty. Yoongi is gone and the blanket he was wrapped in was draped over me. I reach for my phone to check the time when I see a note placed over it.

‘I’m starting off early in the studio. I’ll be home late. I’ll see you later. Love Yoongi.’

My chest starts to tighten once I finish reading the note. Was he pretending? This was the first time he’s left early on my birthday without saying anything. He didn’t even write happy birthday on the note. He has to be planning something. He’s just trying to get me worried.

The sound of my phone momentarily distracts me from the situation. I thought it was Yoongi but it turned out to be my best friend, Ji Yoon.

“Happy birthday, unnie!” She cheers loud through the phone’s speaker that it sounded like the speaker was on.

I rub my ear to stop the ringing, “Volume, Ji Yoon.”

“Sorry but I’m just excited that it’s your birthday. Are you and Yoongi gonna spend the day together again?”

I sigh, “I guess not this year. He left really early this morning and didn’t even say anything about my birthday plans.”

“Well he did just have a comeback and it’s been pretty busy for Bangtan but it’s not like him to forget. Since you’re free, do you wanna come by my place later?”

I didn’t want to make plans just in case Yoongi had something planned but I also don’t want to be rude to Ji Yoon’s offer, “Sure. I’ll just check on Yoongi later on then make my way over to you.”

“Sounds good and I’ll drive you home.”

The whole day went by. I received birthday wishes from my parents and the guys of Bangtan but there were no texts from Yoongi. He can be very cold at times and do things without being asked or reminded but it’s usually with physical gestures like massaging my shoulders when I was stretching them. This was on a more emotional level like when he says ‘I love you.’

It’s not usually like him so I take it upon myself to go visit him at the studio. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what’s going on with him. I’d rather figure it out calmly than automatically start a fight with him.

I enter the hallway of the recording studios. It was quiet like everyone had already gone home. Everyone’s room was silent. All but one.

I knock on the door to hear Yoongi reply for me to come in.

“Yoongi?”

He looks up at me for a second then quickly back at his computer, “Hi babe, what are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to check in on you. I figured you would be overworking yourself so I brought you coffee.”

“Oh thank you. I was thinking about going to get a cup but you read my mind.”

I take a seat on the leather sofa he had up against the wall. I sat there for about five minutes until I decided to break the silent.

“I’m going to Ji Yoon’s. I was wondering if you would want to spend the rest of the night together when we’re both done.”

There’s a long pause before he sighs, “I don’t think I’ll be done anytime soon but go have fun with Ji Yoon.” He gives me a side smile glance.

“Yoongi,” I reach out to take his hand away from the mouse, “I know you’ve been working hard these past few months especially with the comeback. I was really hoping to spend today with you. Can’t you spare a little time?”

Yoongi turns his attention back to me. He seems to be conflicted until he sighs, “Babe, you know we just had a comeback and it won’t be long before we release the repackage album. Things are extremely busy right now. Besides, we’ll have time on your birthday to spend a whole day together.”

I swallow hard to make sure the knot that had formed in my throat would disappear and I wouldn’t go crazy. I want to yell at him. I want to hit him. I want to express my anger but I can’t.

Yoongi kisses my hand before turning his attention back to the monitor, “Go and have fun with Ji Yoon. Tell her I said hi.”

Without saying another word I nod my head and leave the studio. It take so much not to cry right there in the hallway. Instead, I manage to hold it in until I exit the building. I wipe the excess tears that gather under my chin.

I don’t know what to do. Without thinking, I just run. I run in the direction to where our home is. I don’t know what I’ll plan. A part of me wants to take my things and stay at Ji Yoon’s for awhile until I develop some sense. I thought I knew Yoongi. All these years of being together spoke for it. He isn’t the type to be with someone just for the physical parts of a relationship.

I’m so distracted by my thoughts that I miss a step causing me to land and crash hard. My right knee slides across the pavement. I manage to get on all fours when I feel a stinging sensation. I roll myself to sit. I bring my knee up to inspect the damage.

My jeggings are torn where there’s a painful gash across my knee cap. At first there’s no blood due to the skin being shaved off from the pavement but then it starts bleeding a lot. There are also minor scrapes on my palms. I wipe away some of the dirt from my bleeding knees as to keep it from getting infected. With enough force I manage to get to my feet and start walking again. This time I make my way to the house at a much slower pace.

At this rate, Yoongi will get home before I do.

Back in the studio, Yoongi felt so guilty when you left. He wanted to pull you into his lap and give you a hug but he wanted his plan for your birthday to go off without a hitch. He’d been planning it for months. He didn’t want to be so cold to you but it was the only way his ultimate gift to you was going to be worth the wait.

About twenty minutes go by that Yoongi decides to head out of the studio to prepare the finishing touches to your surprise. He calls your mom, whom is a part of it all, along with your dad, since you haven’t seen them since moving to Seoul with him.

“Hi eomma-nim,”

“Is Y/N with you?” She asks whispering.

“No, she’s with Ji Yoon but she should be coming home in about an hour. Did you and abeoji arrive safely?”

“Yes, thank you so much for having us brought out here to celebrate with you two for Y/N’s birthday.”

“Of course,” his phone beeps and the screen says Ji Yoon’s name on it, “oh Ji Yoon’s calling. I’ll see you guys at home.”

After hanging up, Yoongi switch over to answer Ji Yoon’s call, “Yaah Min Yoongi,” she shouts in my ear, “what happened? Did you and Y/N have birthday sex or what? If you wanted to distract her that way then you should’ve told me.”

“What are you talking about? Y/N left awhile ago towards your place.”

There was a silence which is rare for her, “She hasn’t been here. I tried calling her but she didn’t answer so I thought she was with you the whole time.”

Yoongi begins to panic as he hangs up on Ji Yoon and dials your number. The phone rings a few times but there’s no answer. It starts to hit him that you may have taken his surprise plan too seriously. He can understand though, it was unlike him to not care at all especially on her birthday.

With no way of knowing where you were, Yoongi starts running in the direction towards your home. The only place you would go when you were in distress of any kind.

He stops in his tracks when he spots a figure limping down the street.

“Y/N!”

I stop when I hear his voice call my name. I look over my shoulder to see Yoongi, out of breath, sweaty, running towards me. He embraces me as soon as he reaches me.

“Y/N, you had me worried sick. I thought you were going to Ji Yoon’s.” He starts combing my disheveled hair while kissing my cheek repeatedly.

“What are you doing here?” I ask in a hushed tone.

He didn’t hear my question. He got too distracted by the blood that was running down my shin. He kneeled down to inspect the cut. Without hesitation, Yoongi took the sleeve of his sweatshirt and dabbed away some of the blood.

I hiss at the contact.

“Sorry,” Yoongi turned his back towards me, “come on, there’s a store nearby. We need to clean it.”

I hesitated taking the piggyback ride but I was tired from running so I ultimately climbed on his back. The whole walk down to the minimarket Yoongi talked about how I should be more careful with the cracked roads. I was more confused than anything. If he cared so much, why didn’t he remember what today was.

I stayed seated at one of the tables set up outside the market while Yoongi went inside. It had to be no more than twenty seconds when he entered the building and came straight out with the green plastic bag. There was bottled water, antiseptic wipes, antibiotic cream, and a gauze bandage.

Yoongi emptied out the bag on the table. “Here,” he hands me a bottle of water. He starts wiping down the dried up blood then dabs the antiseptic wipe on the cut which stung like hell, then gently applied the cream, and finishing it off with wrapping the bandage around my knee.

While he was tying off the bandage I manage to building up the courage to get my questions answered, “I thought you were busy.”

“I thought you were smarter than this.” He gestures to my knee.

“How could you forget, Yoongi?” The tears were coming up again.

Yoongi wipes the tears that had managed to stream down my face. He scoffs,

“Did you really think I forgot your birthday?” “I waited all day for you to say something. It’s 9 and we’re spending it outside of a minimart.”

He ruffles my hair, “Babo, I was planning to surprise you once Ji Yoon took you home.”

“You don’t do surprises, Yoongi.”

“I know, so you can image how hard it was to keep it from you this long. I’m sorry that I had to be such an asshole to you but if I didn’t I would’ve given it away sooner.”

“What’s that surprise?”

“I flew your parents out to spend the weekend with us. I know how much you miss them and with work you haven’t been able to see them.”

“You brought my parents here as my gift?” I start slapping myself mentally for thinking he could be as low as to forget and not plan anything.

“Well they weren’t THE present but I did bring them to be a part of the real gift.”

“The real gift?”

“Y/N, before I met you the only love I knew was towards music. I never thought that I could love anyone or be loved by someone. Bangtan was music’s gift to me.” Yoongi reaches into his pocket to pull out a beautiful diamond ring. “You were life’s gift to me, a gift that I’d like to permanently make mine.”

I lose complete control of my breathing, “Are you serious?”

“I know I don’t show my feelings so well but I really do love you.” He nods as a glint of joy starts seep through his eyes, “Y/N, will you marry me?”

“Yes, you sloth.” I instantly cling to him as all the sobbing starts to overtake me. Just when I think this man couldn’t surprise me anymore he does all this.

“Have you seriously been carrying the ring loosely around in your pocket like that?”

He scoffs, “Yah, did you want the box or the ring?”

A/N: Happy Birthday, @brenduuhhh28.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Shadowhunters (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Alec Lightwood & Maryse Lightwood, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood Characters: Alec Lightwood, Maryse Lightwood Additional Tags: Angst, Introspection, Good Parent Maryse Lightwood

Summary: Maryse and Alec both have their reasons for haunting the halls of the Institute late at night. Perhaps between the two of them, they can figure what to do next.

Notes: This fic doesn't really focus on Alec's pain over his separation from Magnus. While it's certainly there, he has more pressing issues to deal with first.

This work is unbetaed.

Nothing on the 3D display of Manhattan had changed in minutes, perhaps hours, and yet Alec stood hunched over it as though if he stared long enough, it would reveal to him the secrets of the universe. The Ops center was quiet--the patrols were either out looking for Valentine and his son, or they had reported in and retired for the night--and Maryse almost hated to disturb Alec’s concentration, except that his study of the display looked less like concentration and more like self-flagellation.

“Coffee?” she murmured, holding up the spare mug she carried. Alec startled, blinking rapidly.

“Thanks.” He sounded like someone had scraped a rusty file along his vocal cords. He cleared his throat and accepted the mug, testing the temperature with a tentative sip as his eyes drifted back to the map. “You checking on Max?”

Maryse shook her head, grimacing. “Taking a short break before returning to the infirmary. I’m sure I’ll be treated to a tirade in the morning about how he’s too old to be fussed over, but I can’t bring myself to leave for long.”

Alec’s head dropped, his chin nearly touching his chest as his shoulders rose and fell with a long, slow breath. “It was a close call.”

“It was.” Maryse blinked. Once. Twice. Three times, until the treacherous burning in her eyes dissipated. “This family has had too many of those the past couple months.”

Alec said nothing, and that silence said everything. Most of the Lightwoods’ recent near-misses, Maryse had learned about from afar, long past any opportunity to help. Alec had been in the thick of them.

To be honest, she wasn’t sure which was worse.

“Take a short walk with me,” she invited, tipping her head in the direction of one of the corridors branching off the Ops center.

“I can’t.” Alec swept his hand toward the projection display. “I need to--”

Yes, Maryse knew what he felt the need to do all too well. It was a tendency he’d learned while he was practically still at her breast.

“It won’t tell you anything it hasn’t been telling you for hours, Alec. Let’s get some air.”

He sighed and nodded, cradling his mug between his hands as they turned their backs on the Ops center. His shoulders remained hunched, bent under an old, invisible weight she only now realized he’d hadn’t been carrying the last couple times she’d seen him.

“When you were a toddler,” she remarked as he fell in beside her, his long strides considerately shortened. “Not long after the Circle fell, there were several months months where you were utterly inconsolable if I wasn’t with you non-stop. You were probably picking up on all the tension and anxiety from me and your father. I was quite pregnant with Isabelle, and virtually under house arrest while the Clave decided what to do with those of us who had defected from the Circle, so it certainly was no hardship to spend every hour with you.”

A sideways glance caught the tiniest, feeblest curve of Alec’s lips, a far cry from the sweet, unguarded smile she’d hoped to coax from him. ”But in that time, I had a chance to do a lot of thinking, about where everything went wrong, about what I could have done differently. I went over the same information in my head again, and again, and again, looking for signs I might have missed that we were doing the wrong thing, following the wrong path. How did I not see that the brave, heroic boy we’d admired and emulated since we were children had grown up to be a madman? Even if I’d come up with any answers, it wouldn’t have helped or changed anything. But that process of driving myself mad looking for them was my way of punishing myself for the choices I made.”

“You think that’s what I’m doing tonight?”

“You really think that map you’ve been staring at for hours is going to tell you where Valentine and his son are?” Maryse stopped at the elevator and pushed the up button. Alec was silent as the doors slid open and then shut behind them once they’d stepped inside. Maryse took them to the top floor, with its access to the roof.

Alec always went for high, open spaces when he needed solace.

After what happened at the party preceding Max’s rune ceremony, that knowledge filled her with more than a little unease. But she took him to the roof anyway, because this, too, he’d picked up from her. Many of those months she’d spent with his tiny arms around her neck, clinging to her like a limpet day in and day out, had been spent on the balcony of her rooms in their estate in Idris, and later here at the Institute.

Alec set his mug on the ledge of the parapet and braced his hands beside it, gripping the masonry in a white-knuckled grasp.

“I’ve been in charge of this Institute for less than two weeks and I haven’t done a single thing right in that entire time,” he said tonelessly.

“You’ve done more in two weeks than your father and I ever attempted in nearly twenty years.” That had been deliberate, of course. Any interference with the Downworld in those days would have looked as though they intended to continue Valentine’s work, and she and Robert hadn’t wanted to risk that. But she remained silent on that point. The reasons didn’t matter now.

“I let Valentine escape. I let thing he created waltz in and out of the Institute, treated him like a trusted advisor, put him in charge of security. I nearly got Max killed…”

Maryse grabbed his arm, pulled her around to face him. “Alec, that isn’t your fault. You couldn’t possibly have known. He even fooled Aline Penhallow into believing he was her cousin.”

His eyes flashed in the omnipresent glow of the city lights, the muscle in his jaw flexing. “I promised the Downworld factions complete transparency, then reneged on that pledge the second it was more convenient to stay silent than tell the truth. If they break with the Clave, that’s on me. I was the one who proved to them that they can never trust us.”

“The Clave.” Maryse sneered, bitterly enough to wrench Alec out of his spiral of self-recrimination. “Do you want to know why I left Idris?”

He gave her a bemused frown. “I assumed it was because of Dad.”

Maryse shook her head. “Not in the way you probably assume. I left because my voice was being drowned out. I couldn’t accomplish anything more there. Since the moment we realized the Soul Sword was missing, the Clave has been preparing for war with the Downworld. They’re convinced it’s inevitable.” She pressed her lips tightly together, then plunged ahead. “Some of them are even eager for it. There are too many who seem to have forgotten the horrors of the Circle uprising, or are too young to really remember. They would rather war with the Downworld than confront the evil being perpetrated by Valentine. It’s easier to convince themselves the Downworld is at fault, that the Accords are untenable, and that Valentine was right all along.”

Alec’s mouth dropped open, his face growing paler in the dark. “Are you saying some of them might want to ally with Valentine?”

“I certainly hope not. I’ve heard mutterings from a few who were thinking along those lines, but I don’t think the Clave has completely lost all reason yet. Still, if it comes down to a choice between a truce with Valentine and fighting a war on two fronts, especially against the Seelies? I really can’t say which way the Clave would go.”

“Oh, God.” Alec reached blindly for the parapet and knocked his mug off the ledge. It smashed against the ground four stories below with a muted crunch.

“That’s why I was so in favor of your Downworld cabinet.” Maryse smiled softly in memory of the pride she’d felt that night. “I had hoped if anyone could forestall the conflict, it would be you and Magnus.”

Alec frowned at her. “You don’t even like Magnus.”

“You’re right. I never did.” Maryse straightened her shoulders, staring out over the city with her hands clasped tightly together before her. “We clashed a number of times, and not just when your father and I were running the Institute.”

“When you were still in the Circle,” Alec said tonelessly.

“Yes. Exactly. I’m ashamed to admit that Magnus has been far more gracious to me than I’ve deserved, all things considered.” She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “You know, when I heard about Valentine’s attack on the Institute, I wasn’t afraid at first. Somehow I just knew that you and Isabelle and Jace were all right. But then I learned what Valentine had done to all those Downworlders, and I was terrified. For Magnus Bane, of all people. Because I knew if you were fighting for your life, surely he wouldn’t be far away. And I knew what it would do to you if he were killed.”

Alec’s breath hitched sharply, his face crumpling for a split second before he got it under control. He turned back to stare into the night again, giving her only his stony profile.

“Suddenly, I could see so clearly. All the reasons for my antagonism toward him stemmed from things that I really should have left behind me twenty years ago, when I turned my back on the Circle. My petty resentments had forced you to choose between your family and your heart, and I swore I’d never do that to you again.” She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Whatever you choose from here on out, Alec, I will stand behind you. I want you to know that.”

Alec’s head bobbed once, but he stood beside her in rigid silence for a long moment.

“If it comes to war, I can’t stand on the opposite side of the battlefield from him,” he said finally, the words so ragged it seemed they must be grating in his throat. “Even if it means dereliction of duty, going against the Clave. I won’t. I won’t be Aldertree, convincing myself years from now that it was always inevitable that I’d have his blood on my hands. I won’t do it.”

“I’m sure Jace and Isabelle will support you in that, and Clary Fairchild as well. And me, of course.” Maryse drew her shoulders back and made her tone brisk. The commander’s tone she’d perfected over her decades running the Institute. “But if you’re going to prevent things reaching that point, you probably only have a few more hours before the Downworld factions reach some sort of consensus. Figuring that out is certainly a better use of your time than staring at a map that isn’t going to tell you anything. Isn’t it?”

Galvanized, Alec shoved back from the parapet, a focused scowl already settling on his face. “Right. First thing we need to do is get patrols on the shores of Lake Lyn. Clary’s certain it’s the Mortal Mirror. We can’t take the risk of Valentine figuring that out.”

“I wouldn’t tell the Clave that, if I were you.”

Alec nodded grimly. “Agreed. There have been too many leaks already.”

“I believe Lucian ran with one of the feral werewolf packs in the Brocelind Forest for a short while, after he was turned. If anyone could get word through to their alphas, it would be him. They’d make excellent guards if someone could convince them it’s in their best interest.”

“Right.” Alec’s long strides carried him quickly toward the door, but he pivoted suddenly to brush a brusque kiss on her cheek. “Thanks, Mom,” he murmured, then strode away.

BUY ME A CUP OF COFFEE!!

“Those Magic Changes.” (For the 2017 Welters Challenge, Week Four.)

Author: Lexalicious70 (TheChampagneKing70)

Fandom: The Magicians/Those People (Crossover)

Rating: R

Warnings: Discussions of suicide, depression

Genre: Crossover: (The Magicians/Those People) 

Word Count: 5,248

Summary: During Quentin’s second year at Brakebills, the twin he never knew is tapped to take the exam, but he may also alter Quentin’s life in ways he never thought possible.

Author’s Notes: This is for Week 4 of the Welters Challenge: “Crossovers,” and because of my obsession with Those People. I don’t own The Magicians, this is just for fun. Comments and kudos are magic! Enjoy. For @thewelterschallenge

Read it on AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11513553

 Those Magic Changes

By Lexalicious70 (TheChampagneKing70)

 Studying magic at Brakebills taught you many things.

 It taught you how to prepare spells, how to cast them according to the environment around you, and what kind of magic you were most adept at according to your discipline (when and if they could find it.)

 But what it didn’t teach you is that magic wasn’t good for squat when a personal crisis or tragedy turned your life upside down. And that, Quentin reflected as he sat on the couch in the Physical Kids cottage with a thick manila folder in his hand, was a lesson that the faculty should teach above anything else.

 The couch tilted slightly as someone sat down next to him and then a long, elegant finger tapped the folder.

 “What’s this?”

 Quentin looked up to see Eliot watching him expectantly. Quentin lifted a hand, began to speak, then faltered.

 “I . . . I don’t even know where to begin, El!”

 “May I?” Eliot took the folder from Quentin before he was even finished nodding and flipped it open. Inside were some official-looking documents and Eliot’s eyes widened as he read through them.

 “Quentin . . . holy shit!”

 “See what I mean? I don’t even know where to begin! Dean Fogg gave me those when he called me to his office because he didn’t think I’d take his word for it, and I know they’re real, but—how could my parents have kept this from me? And now Fogg says I have to meet him? Christ, Eliot, what am I supposed to say? What’s he supposed to say to me?”

 “I don’t know.” Eliot replied after a moment, and Quentin ran a hand over his face. Eliot offered up his flask and Quentin shook his head.

 “No, thanks, I don’t think even that is going to help.”

 “When are you supposed to meet him?”

 “Dean Fogg said he’d have Professor Li escort him here—” Quentin turned his head at a commanding knock at the door. “—Oh God, that’s him. El that’s him, what am I going to do?”

 Eliot got to his feet and smoothed out his silk vest before tugging Quentin up.

 “You’re going to answer the door and invite him in.”

 Quentin walked to the door with Eliot shooing him along from behind. He opened it to find Professor Li there, his expression enigmatic and serene as always, and behind him, a young man of average height with collar-length sandy hair like his own, not quite brunette but not light enough to be truly blond. Dark eyes stared at him over Professor Li’s shoulder, who stepped aside without comment until Quentin and the stranger who wore his face were eye to eye. Eliot nudged him from behind, and Quentin took a deep breath before offering his twin brother his hand to shake.

 “Welcome to Brakebills, Sebastian.”

 _____________________________________________

 “But this must be some kind of joke.” Sebastian Blackworth said for the third time as Eliot offered him a martini. The young man accepted it with air of one who was used to handing liquor glasses, one of the dozen things Eliot noticed he didn’t have in common with his twin in the twenty minutes he’d been in the cottage. Professor Li had done one of his trademark fades, but Eliot knew he’d show back up to escort Sebastian back to the first-year dorms before the evening was out.

 “It’s not a joke. Magic is real, and you were offered the preliminary exam, just like I was last year. And also like me, you passed. You could be a magician.”

 “A magician.” Sebastian sipped his drink. “Top hat, cape, sawing ladies in half? I may not have many options for a lucrative career thanks to my father’s dealings, but that’s rather scraping the bottom of the barrel, isn’t it?”

 “That’s not what magic is.” Quentin said, and Sebastian tipped his head to one side as he set his glass aside.

 “I suppose anything’s possible, seeing as how the man I thought was my father, isn’t, and my real father, who I’ll never meet because he died from cancer six months ago, chose to give me up for adoption.”

 “Look, I know it’s a lot to take in . . . it is for me, too! My parents never told me about you, but according to the records Dean Fogg gave me, my—our—mother had severe post-partum depression and they couldn’t care for us both.” Quentin glanced away and tucked a lock of hair behind his right ear. “They made a decision that they thought was the best for everyone, I guess.”

 “Giving me away was the best decision?” Sebastian snapped, and Quentin looked up, his eyes widening.

 “I was two days old when it happened! It’s not like I had a say!”

 “I think we can agree that you were both innocent in what happened.” Eliot put in. “You were at the mercy of people who weren’t expecting two children, thanks to the inferior sonogram technology of the early 90s, and a decision was made without you ever knowing.”

 “And who are you, again?” Sebastian asked, peering up at Eliot, and Quentin bristled.

 “He already introduced himself.”

 “That’s all right, Q. Clearly, your spare wasn’t raised with manners.” Eliot rose from the couch in one fluid movement and headed toward the bar, leaving Sebastian flushed.

 “His spare? How dare you!”

 “And how dare you!” Eliot shot back from behind the bar as he shook up a cocktail with a bit more force than was probably necessary. “You passed the Brakebills exam, brava, but that doesn’t mean Quentin had to speak with you or even meet you! He did it out of the goodness of his heart, so maybe blaming him for your parents’ choice in which baby they gave away isn’t the best way to show your gratitude!”

 “I didn’t ask for that either, or to be brought here!” Sebastian countered. “I wasn’t doing anything more extraordinary than trying to learn how to use the goddamned subway when I went down a corridor and ended up on the front lawn of wherever this is!”

 “Brakebills. The same thing happened to me last year.” Quentin said. “Only I came from Brooklyn.” He shook his head. “This is so bizarre . . . I mean, neither of our parents were magicians but we both have magical ability?”

 “Having magical—whatever—is the least of my problems right now!” Sebastian glanced away. “But as it happens, I need housing. I recently sold my apartment building.”

 “You owned an entire building?” Quentin asked, and Sebastian drained his glass.

 “Yes. In Manhattan.” He set the glass aside. “You’ve never heard of Richard Blackworth?”

 “We’re kind of insular here at Brakebills. News doesn’t always filter in.” Quentin said.

 “Do you parents know where you are?”

 “I told my dad. Uhm. Before.” Quentin gestured. “I didn’t want him to die without knowing who I really am.” He paused. “I’m not sure where my mother is. She went on some painting sabbatical last year. Italy or Greece, I think? She didn’t even make it back for the funeral. She sent a telegram, though.”

 Eliot sat beside Quentin and pushed a glass of scotch into his hands. Sebastian nodded and tapped his fingers on his knees. His fingernails were finely manicured.

 “Well. I suppose I should see to my living situation.” He said, and Quentin glanced up as he got to his feet.

 “You’re staying?” He asked, and his twin smiled, no trace of humor reaching his dark eyes.

 “If you knew who Richard Blackworth was, you’d understand how little I have to go back to.” He walked toward the door and Quentin turned to Eliot.

 “Can’t he stay here? We have two empty rooms thanks to those two first-years who didn’t pass the trials last winter!”

 Eliot frowned.

 “Quentin—I don’t know. Not only is he already grossly behind, he has an abhorrent personality! No offense.”

 “I was the same way when Fogg moved me to the cottage! I’m amazed you or Margo didn’t strangle me in my sleep!”

 “Don’t count it out yet.” Margo said from a nearby chair, where she pouted at being usurped from her usual place at Eliot’s side on the couch. Quentin ran both hands through his hair.

 “Eliot please . . . he’s my brother!”

 Eliot glanced over at Sebastian’s retreating form, hesitated, then rolled his eyes.

 “Curse my bleeding heart,” He muttered, and Margo rolled her eyes.

 “I’ll say.”

 Eliot shot her a look and she gave him a knowing smile before getting up and leaving the room, to presumably pursue gossip, a sexual conquest, or to assume her final form. Eliot knew she’d be back to torment him some more later. Quentin jumped up.

 “Wait!” He said to Sebastian, who paused at the door. Quentin went to him.

 “You can stay here. The dorms are cramped and you won’t have any privacy. Here, you’ll get your own room and there’s three bathrooms. And it’s fun! Well . . . most of the time.”

 Sebastian regarded his twin for several moments, noticing his lack of eye contact, his sleeve pulling, and how obviously smitten he was with Eliot Waugh. Either the other magician didn’t feel the same way or he was oblivious, thanks to his hedonism, something Sebastian could appreciate, even if he was an arrogant ass.

 “We’ll have to arrange it with Dean Fogg,” Quentin was saying, “but I’m sure it’ll be all right. So. Will you stay?”

 Sebastian glanced around the room until he and Eliot locked eyes and he saw the challenge there.

 “Sure.” He said at last. “Might as well make the best of it.”

 ____________________________________________

  A few hours later, Sebastian moved into the Physical Kids cottage with a meager yet tasteful collection of clothing and a few other possessions. He put his things away in an orderly manner and crawled into bed in a way that suggested he hadn’t slept well during the previous weeks. Quentin closed the bedroom door and started hard as he nearly ran into Margo as he turned away.

 “Creep much? Jeez!” He said, and Margo lifted her chin.

 “Do you want to know more about your brother?”

 “What do you mean?”

 Margo shook some printed pages at him, and Quentin gaped at her.

 “You went and looked him up?”

 “Christ, calm down, it’s nothing anyone can’t find on the USA Today site.” She grabbed his hand and tugged him into her bedroom, which smelled like exotic flowers and her vanilla skin scrub. He glanced around and she shooed him over to the bed, where she sat down with him. He stiffened, poking his hands between his knees, and Margo pursed her lips.

 “Relax. This isn’t The Erotic Awakening of Quentin Coldwater, starring us.”

 “I’m not—”

 “You’re not a virgin, right, got it. ANYway . . . here’s the lowdown on Jay Gatsby over there.” She jerked her chin at the door and handed Quentin the papers. He took them with a frown and Margo narrowed her eyes at him.

 “You’re welcome!”

 Quentin sighed and began to sift through papers, slowly at first, then more quickly, his eyes widening.

 “This is who his adoptive father was? A thief and a criminal?”

 “A thief and a criminal who hung himself right after a holiday visit from his only son. Imagine dealing with that action!”

 “But Sebastian tried to right all his father’s wrongs. That’s why he sold almost everything he owned!”

 “I guess so. I mean, I would have grabbed what I could and made tracks for the South of France, but that’s just me.” Margo materialized a nail file into her right hand and worked on the nail of the other index finger. “I hate to say it, Quentin, but it looks like your twin has more baggage than a Beyonce world tour.”

 Quentin read through the second scandal sheet.

 “Did you read all of these?”

 “Only some.”

 “This one says he’s gay!”

 “You didn’t work that out?”

 “Well—no. I mean . . . Eliot didn’t say . . .”

 “It’s not like a boy scout troop! They don’t all know each other!”

 Quentin felt his cheeks heat with a deep blush.

 “I know that! It’s just—how do I deal? Do I ask him about it? Or about any of this?” He held up the papers. Margo shook her head.

 “I was an only child. I honestly have no advice for you in this area. Just—just don’t Quentin out over anything and try to be his friend, I guess.”

 Quentin got up from the bed.

 “Thanks for this.” He motioned to the papers. “Usually you’re not this invested in anything I do.”

 Margo lifted a shoulder.

 “Slow week. Now get out of my room before someone sees you and assumes we’re sleeping together.”

 ____________________________________

 Three days passed. The new semester began, and Sebastian proved to be a competent but antisocial student that walked to his classes alone and ate his meals with his nose in a book. He had none of Alice’s obvious brilliance or Eliot’s natural gifts with magic, but by the third day, as Quentin paused by the door to his brother’s room, he noticed that his Poppers were coming along nicely. Sebastian was working his fingers as he sat on the bed, flexing them to bend the way he wanted. Sebastian glanced up and saw him watching.

 “Something I can help you with?”

 “I don’t know . . . can I come in?”

 “I suppose so.” Sebastian nodded. Quentin stepped into the room. It looked the same as the day it had when Sebastian had moved in, except now there was a simple 70s-style turntable on the nightstand, the kind with a square acrylic cover. The cover was cocked back, and a vinyl record spun on the spindle. Quentin listened and recognized “Oh, Better Far to Live and Die” from The Pirates of Penzance soundtrack. He raised a set of mental eyebrows: his mother had loved musicals.

 Our mother, Quentin reminded himself. The one who was so depressed after our birth that she gave one of us away.

 “Your friend loaned me the record player when he noticed I had a collection of vinyl.”

 “My friend?”

 “The tall one. Maybe he felt badly about how he treated me the other day.”

 “Maybe?” Quentin allowed, although he knew from experience that Eliot didn’t spend a lot of time pondering past actions. He sat down on the bed. “So, what do you think of Brakebills so far?”

 “It gave me a stay of social execution. So there’s that.” Sebastian took a cigarette case out of his nightstand drawer, along with a slim sliver lighter. He offered one to Quentin, who shook his head.

 “What do you mean?”

 Sebastian lit the cigarette and exhaled a rich plume of smoke a few moment later.

 “I told you about my father. He was the most hated man in New York City, and as his heir, I was pursued by photographers, harassed by reporters, and denied service at most bars and restaurants in Manhattan. It got so bad that after awhile I refused to leave my apartment. My friends came to stay with me, at least until the press began to associate them with me and they became social pariahs as well.”

 “But it was your father who cheated all those people! Not you.” Quentin said, and Sebastian took another drag of his cigarette.

 “I knew about it. That was enough for them to crucify me.”

 “Oh, Better Far to Live and Die” gave way to “What Ought We to Do?” The player’s needle gave a satisfying crackle in between songs.

 “You tried to do the right thing.” Quentin said, and Sebastian gave him a wry, twisted grin.

 “Maybe in the end I did. That’s usually when I tend to come through.” He exhaled another cloud of smoke. “He likes you, you know. Your friend. He talked about you almost non-stop when he brought me the record player.”

 “Eliot did?” Quentin felt his face warm. “Well . . . we’re good friends. I don’t think I would have made it here without him and Margo.”

 “Do you blush like that when you talk about your other friends?” Sebastian asked, and Quentin frowned.

 “What are you talking about?”

 “I said, he likes you. You obviously feel the same way. Why don’t you go for it?”

 “Go for—no! I’m not—I’m not that way!”

 “You mean you’re not a homosexual.”

 “No! It’s—no offense or anything, there’s nothing wrong with it, I’m just not like that!”

 “You realize I am.”

 Quentin folded his arms across his chest.

 “I didn’t. Not right away.”

 “Does it offend you?”

 “Christ, no!”

 Sebastian watched him for a long moment. “Sexuality isn’t a fixed point on a chart, Quentin. It’s fluid; it’s changeable. If you have feelings for Eliot that you don’t understand or that are new to you, it’s not unusual, you don’t have to feel badly. Even people like me fall for their friends sometimes.” A shadow crossed his face. “It doesn’t always work out, but if they’re strong enough you should act on them!”

 Quentin tucked his hands up under his arms.

 “Even if I did have those feelings, even if Eliot does like me that way, which I seriously doubt—there’s no way I can.”

 “Why not?”

 “Because I’m—I’m me! I’m a mess, Sebastian . . . before I came to Brakebills I was a depressed, anxious dumpster fire. I was hospitalized for it more than once.” He looked away. “I guess I’m more like our mother than I want to think about.”

 Sebastian leaned forward.

 “I’m going to tell you something about myself.” He said, and it caused an echo in Quentin’s memory, an echo of Eliot telling him the story of how he’d discovered his telekinesis. “I’ve tried to commit suicide before. The most recent time was last New Year’s Eve, shortly after my father killed himself in prison. My feelings about him, and about my best friend Charlie were so fucked up that it seemed like the easiest thing in the world. Just close the book. End it with a dramatic flourish. It was Charlie that talked me down off that ledge.” He crushed out his cigarette. “So. You don’t corner the market on being mentally fucked up, Quentin.”

 Quentin glanced up at his twin and nodded.

 “Thank you. You know—for telling me that.” He said softly, then took a deep breath. “I just don’t know how. When it comes to approaching people or telling someone that I like them or flirting.” He admitted, and a smile curved over Sebastian’s full mouth.

 “Then let me help you.”

 “How?”

 “Leave it to me, Mr. Higgins . . . leave it to me!”

 ___________________________________

 One Week Later

 “Oh, Goddamn it all!”

 Margo turned her head, frowning, as she heard the curse ring out from the depths of Eliot’s closet.  

 “El? What’s the problem?” She called, and Eliot came to the doorway, his long arms laden with clothing, his face uncharacteristically flushed.

 “I can’t find my Perry Ellis jacket! The blue one with the darker trim!”

 “That’s a little showy for a walk to PA, isn’t it?”

 “Oh—you wouldn’t understand!” Eliot snapped as he stormed back into the closet, and Margo rolled her eyes as she got off the bed.

 “Okay. When you make statements like that, it’s time to pull the emergency switch on the train to Hysteriaville.” She walked into the closet and tugged on his arm. “Eliot! What is it? Really?” She asked, and Eliot turned to her. For a moment Margo didn’t know if he was going to open up or order her out of the room, but then he ticked over into sharing mode.

 “I think Quentin is getting involved with someone.” He folded his long arms over his chest. “A man.”

 “A man? Okay, and we think that why?”

 “Because I’ve seen all the signs, Margo! He’s pulled away from Alice, he’s not spending nights alone in his room anymore—and he’s wearing his hair differently!” This last bit was said as if Eliot was revealing the Holy Grail of Really Relevant Information for her, and she tapped her fingernails on the closet wall.

 “Hmm. Those are all pretty unusual signs, I admit. Especially the part where he’s not sitting up in his room mooning over Fillory.”

 “Exactly! I just know it’s a man, Margo! Q has finally realized what he’s all about! I just thought when he did, it—” He clamped his teeth over his bottom lip and Margo took his hand.

 “You thought he’d realize it because of you. Well, maybe it’s not too late! Maybe we can shift his attention away from this person! We really should find out who it is anyway, give him our stamp of approval. God knows we can’t let him date some first-year loser. He might be a mess, but he’s our mess, and he’ll need guidance.”

 “I don’t think I can do that, Bambi.” Eliot said softly, and she tugged him out of the closet.

 “Don’t grieve yet, sweetie. It could be we can nip this in the bud!”

 “Eliot? Can you come out here?” Sebastian’s voice called from the hallway, and Eliot frowned.

 “What could he possibly want?” He asked, crossing the room to open the door. Sebastian smiled up at him.

 “Sorry about the intrusion, but I need your expert opinion.” He went into Quentin’s room and dragged his twin out. Eliot felt his jaw unhinge and hang open before he forced it closed with a snap that almost severed his tongue. Quentin was wearing a designer suit in a soft shade of dove grey with slightly darker trim and an open-throat white silk shirt. The dark loafers on his feet carried a high shine. Eliot struggled to find his voice and willed his cock to stay soft at the same time. He mostly succeeded.

 “Is—is that a Prada suit?” He asked, and Sebastian nodded.

 “It is. It’s mine . . . one of the few things I brought with me from Manhattan. I’m loaning it to Quentin for a special occasion.”

 Quentin adjusted the collar and Sebastian slapped his hand. Quentin gave him a look before tipping his gaze up to Eliot.

 “Eliot? How do you think I look?”

 Eliot looked him up and down. The cut of the suit revealed everything his frumpy sweaters and baggy dad jeans usually hid: his lean chest, his arms, toned from months of casting, his pale, perfect throat. Sebastian tapped his twin’s shoulder.

 “Give us a spin.” He coaxed, and after a moment, Quentin relented. Eliot watched and noticed how even Margo’s eyes widened as the tailoring of the slacks showed off Quentin’s round ass in a way they’d never seen it displayed before. Eliot cleared his throat and put both hands behind his back so he didn’t give into temptation and squeeze Quentin’s ass, preferably until the younger magician gasped.

 “You look amazing, Q.” Eliot said at last, and Margo gave a wolf whistle.

 “What’s the special occasion?” She asked, and Sebastian smiled and patted Quentin’s shoulder.

 “Tell them.” He said, and Quentin squirmed a little.

 “Well, uhm . . . I’m—I’m going to ask someone out. For the first time.” He admitted, and Eliot mustered every emotional trick he knew to keep his expression neutral.

 “That’s wonderful! Anyone we know?”

 “It’s—kind of a secret. So it doesn’t get out before I can do it. You know.” Quentin muttered, and Sebastian nodded.

 “But it is someone here at Brakebills?” Eliot asked, and Quentin nods.

 “Yeah.”

 “Well. That’s . . . it’s wonderful news, Quentin! I certainly wish you luck.” Eliot said, and Sebastian snapped his fingers, as if suddenly recalling something.

 “That reminds me, Eliot! We have another favor to ask. Could you loan us the cottage common room this Friday evening? Quentin wanted to invite his would-be beau here to ask him out. I thought I’d whip up a bit of dinner for them, set a nice table. Give my brother the benefit of my experience?”

 “Yes! Yes . . . of course, and if it’s a chef you need, I’d be glad to offer my culinary services.” Eliot replied, and Margo gave him a look that suggested if he was headed to the gallows, he’d probably offer to help the hangman measure the noose. He ignored her. Sebastian smiled.

 “That’s very kind of you! Friday night then, shall we say . . . seven?”

 Eliot indulged himself with one more glance at Quentin in that suit, perfectly housing everything he’d never get to discover, and nodded as he shoved his emotions down to the soles of his feet.

 “Seven, then.”

 ___________________________________________________

 Eliot moved like a sleepwalker through the rest of the week as he attended classes during the day and spent a lot of time in his room at night with a bottle or two of Moscato as he listened to Sebastian and Quentin play records and Sebastian coach his twin on how to talk to his date, how to move to catch his attention, what kind of wine to serve. It was obvious that Sebastian knew what he was talking about and his recommendations were flawless, but Eliot hated him for leading Quentin down a path that led him anywhere but his own arms.

 Friday evening came, and Eliot cleared the cottage before meeting Sebastian in the kitchen. Sebastian wasn’t much at hands-on cooking, but he knew which foods complemented each other and soon Eliot had a pan of chicken marsala and braised asparagus going. A gilded table was set in the other room, complete with a blindingly white tablecloth and muted, colored lights swimming across the ceiling, thanks to a spell Margo had taught Quentin the night before.

 Everyone’s a Goddamned traitor, Eliot thought to himself as he shook the pan of asparagus and watched Sebastian pour two glasses of wine.

 “So who is it? Surely you must know.”

 “Oh, I know.” Sebastian smiled. “But I promised Quentin I wouldn’t tell.”

 “Why do you want to help him so badly? You don’t seem like the type who enjoys pleasing people.”

 “You’d be right on that account. I usually don’t care for people, and they don’t care for me. But I owe Quentin one. He gave me a place to stay, someplace where no one knows me and where I might be able to form a future.”

 Eliot tried not to snort as he reflected that he’d given Quentin permission to allow his brother to stay in the cottage and hid his gall under stirring the marsala. Sebastian took the wine into the other room and Eliot plated the food as he glanced at the clock above the stove. Everything was ready but he hadn’t heard anyone knock at the door yet.

 “Eliot? I need you a moment!” Sebastian called from the other room, and Eliot went, tossing his apron aside, praying that Sebastian hadn’t spilled the wine. He stepped into the room, blinked once, then stared.

 Quentin was standing in front of the table, two dozen white roses in his arms. The colored lights played across his face and hair, and he wore his brother’s Prada suit. He smiled, and Eliot finally found his voice.

 “What. Ahmmm . . . what is this, exactly?” He asked, and Quentin took a few steps forward.

 “It’s exactly what I told you. I’m asking someone out for the first time.” He said, and offered Eliot the roses. Eliot’s heart rode a dizzying, high-speed emotional elevator up into his throat and crouched there. He swallowed it back down.

 “Are you trying to tell me that all this—all this planning was . . .”

 “It was for you. Uhm . . . I’m sorry you had to cook. I didn’t want you to but Sebastian said you’d suspect if we didn’t let you because you’re smart and he knows these things better—”

 “Quentin.” It was a gentle reminder, a tone that let Quentin know he was rambling. Quentin took a deep breath and tucked a lock of hair behind his ear.

 “So. Will you, Eliot? Will you go out with me?” The question came out a bit rushed and shaky, but Eliot had never heard more glorious words.

 “Like you even had to ask. Yes, Q. Yes of course.” He gasped laughter even as he felt tears sting his eyes. Quentin blinked like Eliot had slapped him, then seemed to realize what he’d said. He hugged himself and took another shuddering breath, and Eliot set the roses aside.

 “Hey! Hug me, not yourself! Christ, you’re such a dork!” He drew the younger magician into a fierce hug and Quentin slipped his arms around Eliot, pressing his cheek against the soft satin of Eliot’s vest, realizing that their differences in height made them fit together like puzzle pieces. Eliot pushed a hand through Quentin’s hair, something he’d always wanted to do, and Quentin pulled back slightly to look up at him.

 “You’re not mad that Sebastian and I tricked you?”

 “I may have to punish you both later, which might actually be kind of hot, but for now? I’m so relieved that no one’s going to knock on that door and take you away from me that I don’t give a shit. I honestly don’t, Q—”

 This time it was Quentin that silenced Eliot, only he did it with his lips, rising up on his toes a little to press his lips against Eliot’s in a long, slow kiss. Eliot melted into it and they stood there for a long while, tasting each other, the genesis of their discovering each other. Up on the steps, just out of sight, Sebastian watched, his chin resting on his tucked-up knees. A hand fell on his shoulder and he glanced up to see Margo crouched there. She nudged him over until they sat on the riser side by side.

 “You did a nice thing.” She said softly. “But I won’t count it against you this time.”

 “Thanks.” They watched the two men kiss. “I screwed up my own love life so badly . . . doing this makes me believe I could almost start over. Charlie did. Maybe I can too.”

 “Are you kidding? You’re the anti-Quentin. The men on campus will want to eat you up with a fucking spoon when they realize you’re single!” Margo said quietly.

 “I think I can live with that. And with being a magician.” He smiled. “It’s almost like a snake shedding its skin and becoming something better. Something so beautiful that no one would ever know what it might have been before.”

 “Now you’re getting the idea.” Margo nodded. She floated one of the bottles of Moscato on the table into her hand, took a swig, and offered it to Sebastian, who grinned at her and took a drink of his own.

 Quentin said he’s not sure what magic really is, he thought as he watched his twin kiss the man who was clearly and for all intents and purposes, his soul mate, and felt it heal something inside his own heart, something that had been broken ever since the night Charlie kissed him back in Manhattan.

 But whatever it is, if it can fix a Blackworth, it must be something special.

 FIN

a x e : v

I stare up at the big white house, illuminated only by the street light in front of it. My fingers, numb from the cold, move a small rock against my palm. Which window is hers, again? I ask myself for the fifth time. I look over my shoulder—worried that if I don’t make a move soon, a neighbor will spot me in her yard and call the cops.

I will myself to remember sneaking in when I dated her friend Ophelia—then it dawns on me that I never sneaked into her house via the window on the second floor.

“Merde,” I mutter, teeth chattering. I step backwards, throw my arm back and release the rock. It hits the window to the far left with a loud crack. I wait until the room lights up to run to the backdoor.

With stiff fingers I pull my phone out of my pocket.

I’m at your backdoor. Please let me in before I die of hypothermia.

( message read 02:27am )

Within seconds I hear multiple sets of footsteps, loud then hushed chattering, and finally the sound of the deadbolt unlocking.

“Oh my God, finally,” I say. “I thought I was going to—oh sh*t.”

“Oh sh*t’s right,” Mr. Hughes replies as he opens the screen door.

“Kai?” I hear Ellie say. “Dad, move, it’s just Kai.”

Mr. Hughes does as he’s told and Ellie practically drags me into her kitchen.

“Were we expecting Kai?” Mr. Hughes asks, watching with an eyebrow raised as she pulls me into a surprisingly tight hug for someone so small. Part of me wants to push her away, to spare myself the wrath of her father, but the familiarity of it feels too good and I can’t help but to squeeze her back.  

“Dad,” Ellie says, like she’s chastising him. “Don’t be so dramatic, it isn’t like that.” She pulls away from me and looks me over. “Are you okay?”

“Does a certain Brody know that a wild Kai has decided to show up at our doorstep at two-thirty in the morning?” Mr. Hughes asks.

Before anyone has a chance to say a word, there are footsteps on the back porch and the screen door flies open, revealing a disheveled looking Brody, a lopsided beanie covering his most likely disheveled blond hair.

“I knew,” says Brody, giving Mr. Hughes his Cheshire cat smile. He lets a duffle bag fall from his shoulder before forcing me into a hug that is almost as bone-crushing as Ellie’s. “But I appreciate you looking out for me, Mr. Hughes.”

Ellie’s dad looks at the three of us—and we all know he’s judging us. “Well, in that case. I’m going back to bed. Kai, if you could, next time, don’t be so extra. Just call instead of throwing a rock at a window.”

Ellie gives her dad a playful shove as he walks away, while Brody and I engage in our gay, best friend tendencies.

“And he was worried about me,” Ellie scoffs, arms folded, watching us.

“We all know that he’s my boyfriend,” Brody says as he pulls my beanie off of my head. He plants a kiss on top of it. “He’s just a taller, tattooed version of you, Ellie.”

“Thanks,” Ellie and I say in stereo, before we both laugh.

Ellie collects our bags and totes them to her bedroom, leaving Brody and I to continue our questionable affection for one another. We take a photo together and I immediately post it to Instagram.

📍 Boston, Massachusetts

@Dyer Reunited with @BrodyHunter and it feels so good.

“I’m really feeling the love here,” Ellie says, phone in hand as she walks into the kitchen, where Brody and I are sitting, drinking her dad’s Death by Coffee.

“Aww, baby, come here,” Brody says and he pats his thigh. Ellie takes it as her seat without hesitation.

Seeing them together makes me realize, all over again, just how lonely I really am, and my hand inches for my cell phone, which buzzes on the table. I look at the screen, hopeful for anything from Sylvia but I see nothing other than Instagram notifications and I set it face down.

“So,” Ellie begins. I look up and see her serious face and I shrink into myself. “Are you going to tell us what happened? Perhaps where that shiner came from, and why you decided to run away from your prep school?”

I gingerly run my fingers over the tender area on my cheek, and explain what had drove me away from Middlebury—from the life I had no right to be living. I tell them about Elise, and how my half-brother hit me in the face with a stick at hockey practice; his way of defending Elise’s honor, no doubt. How it turned into a fist fight that ended with the ice stained with Rose blood. How all I’ve got going for me there is my reputation with my mouth and all of the pleasure it can cause. I notice Ellie visibly cringe as I tell them the story of my two-for-one at a party. I also notice how stoic she looks when I tell her how I mocked Elise’s eating disorder.

“Remind me—which one is Elise?” says Ellie. I pick up my phone and find her Instagram account, showing her the first picture on it.

“Ah, the not-so-bad one. Who’s the douche whose lap she’s sitting on?”

“My brother’s,” I say. “Tending to Jase. Hashtag you should see the other guy.” I laugh at the caption, so do Brody and Ellie.

“Well, you know you’re more than welcome to stay with me,” Brody says, though I see the hesitance on his face.

“It’s cool, I can sofa surf,” I say, shrugging.

“No, that’s not it at all,” he replies. “I want you back here, you’re my best friend, but what about school?”

“My birthday is in two days, I’ll be old enough to drop out,” I say, because that thought already crossed my mind.

“You’re not dropping out of school,” Ellie informs me. “You’re too smart and too talented for that. Plus, you have to be eighteen now, not seventeen.”

“Then what choice do I have?” I ask. “I can’t just go back to your school, and even if I could, there’s no way I can get back onto the team this far into the season.”

“You’ll go back there,” Ellie says, running her fingers through Brody’s messy hair. “Emilia would not be okay with you giving up like this.”

Brody nods. “Ellie is right, man. Your mom would lose her sh*t.”

“Look, you’ll stay here until Sunday night—that gives us five days to have fun and celebrate your birthday, and to let that bullsh*t at your school to blow over. Deal?” says Ellie. “I’ll even invite Phe over. She can be your date to your party.”

▲ △ ▼ ▽

S: Kai?

✓ Message read  

S: Kai, I am sorry. Please don’t ignore me.

✓ Message read

S: I messed up, okay?

S: Please, just talk to me.

✓ Message read  

Missed call from Sylvia

Missed call from Sylvia

Missed call from Sylvia

S: Kai, seriously I am getting worried. My friend at your school said that you’re missing.

✓ Message read

S: Happy birthday...

✓ Message read

K: IMAGE DOWNLOAD

S: Is this your way of hurting me, Kai?

✓ Message read

S: Did you go down on her, too?  

✓ Message read  

S: I don’t know why I even bothered. You’re clearly over me. You have been for a while. I just wish you would admit it.

✓ Message read  

S: I love you, Kai. For what it’s worth, I was told the truth about you and that girl. I should have believed you. I will from now on, if you give me a chance to.

✓ Message read  

▲ △ ▼ ▽

The last person I expected to see upon my return to Middlebury greets me in the headmaster’s office— Malachi Rose, in all of his glory, sits next to my brother Jason, whose face seems more swollen than it did the last time I saw him. I am disciplined for the fight Jason and I got into; scratched from three games, meaning I won’t play again until after Christmas, while Jason Rose is given a slap on the wrist and a scratch from one game. I am also handed detention for leaving school property without permission or notice. The punishment seems light for what I did and I imagine it has something to do with Malachi singing a check with a few zeros trailing it. When we are dismissed from the office, Malachi insists on walking me back to my dorm room, his hand on my shoulder sits too tight and too close to my neck for comfort.

Jason leads us out of the office and I’m surprised to see Elise outside of it, leaning against her wall on her cell phone.

I feel my phone vibrate against my thigh, but I don’t pull it out, for fear of my father seeing whatever might be waiting for me on the screen.

“Elise,” says Jason, and she jumps, surprised and tosses her phone into her purse like it’s made of acid. She looks up, noticing Jason first, then she looks over his shoulder at me—and my father. “This is my dad—Malachi.”

“Miss Allaire,” he says, smiling, though his tone tells me he is in no mood to stop and chat. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, but I have to go and make sure this one,” he squeezes my shoulder too hard—I can already feel it bruising and I move under his touch to loosen his grip, “gets back to his dorm.”

Once we are out of earshot of Elise and Jason, Malachi quickens his pace and pulls me along. My skin feels as though its ripping under his grasp. “If you ever pull another f***ing stunt like that, I will end you. Mark my words, boy.”

I don’t respond—he squeezes tighter, this time hitting a pressure point that instantly brings me to my knees.

“Pick your weak ass up from the ground,” he seethes. I look up at him and he’s still smiling. “My son, the clutz,” he says to someone passing by. I look to my left—it’s Sophie; even she enough intelligence to hurry past us without looking back.

When we reach my dorm room, he turns the knob and forces me in first. The door closes behind us quickly and I reach to turn on the light, but my hand is snagged and my wrist is twisted around until I scream with pain. I feel his hand cover my mouth, his fist wailing into my side to bring me to my knees. “If you make so much as a peep, I will break your fingers one at a time.”

So I grit my teeth and I take the beating that Malachi Rose has been waiting seventeen years to give me.

When he’s finished, and I’m laying on the floor, blood trickling from my nose, he finally turns on the light.

“I hope that will remind you never to embarrass me again,” he says. I hear my door open, then close again.

After twenty minutes on the floor the world comes into focus again and I see that my room has been gone through—my clothes lie all over the floor, dresser drawers open. I slowly pick myself up with the help of my computer desk and a piece of broken glass stabs my hand. And that’s when I see it—the picture of me and my mother, ripped in half, the frame she put it in mangled beyond repair.

I want to scream—I want to tear the world apart, but all I can do is hold the picture in my hands and bow my head and sob.

My phone buzzes again and I use my non-bloodied hand to pull it out of my pocket.

S: I need to hear your voice.

S: I’ve got a weird feeling. Is everything okay?

K: Nothing is okay.

I hear a phone go off outside of my door as soon as I hit send—and I pull myself up, head swimming, and walk toward it. I open it, look both directions, but I see no one.

My phone vibrates in my hand and I unlock the screen with my thumb.

S: Tell me everything.

I start with a picture of the ripped picture of me and my mother—then of my bloodied face, the state of my room, and the truth spills out of me like an oil spill. Sticky and devastating—doomed to ruin anything that it touches.

K: I think I may have a concussion. I need you to keep me awake.