#the brown is from being out in the sun she is faded like old t shirt and the silver is probably bc she’s older | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

augustinapril · 1 year

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𝐒𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐁𝐨𝐲 || Steve Harrington

Synopsis: You love Steve Harrington with all of your heart, you just hope he knows that. And he does, but It wasn’t until Steve witnessed you with his son had he realized just how much he loves you back.

Warnings: gn!reader, descriptions of food and eating, descriptions of reader feeling lonely, fluffyness.

A/n: Some of this is inspired by jade (luveline) so you should definitely follow her if you already don’t. <3. She got me hooked on Steve as a dad so here’s some of that. She also mentioned steve in a headband so that’s in here too. Proofread by @elemental-of-magic !!

Wc: 4.2k

REBLOGS APPRECIATED <3

The smell of freshly brewed coffee filled the small space of your bedroom, being one of the first things you sense as you begin to wake up.

You turned slightly in your sheets, shirt twisting uncomfortably around your sunbathed body.

You kept your eyes closed for a few minutes, relishing the serenity of the early morning before sitting up and readjusting your t-shirt. You could tell it was old because of its faded texture and design. It wasn’t as soft as it was when you had first gotten it.

There were a series of soft footsteps outside your door, making you try to rub away the tiredness lurking behind your eyes just as your bedroom door was carefully inched open with a quiet creak.

You could see a few small strands of wavy brown hair falling in front of a familiar set of round russet-colored eyes. There was an excited squeak before your door was pushed open.

Sam ran across the little space left between your messy bed and the doorway, a blur of gray passing your vision when he jumped up onto your bed.

“Good morning, Y/n” he whispered, his quiet voice contradicting his excited demeanor. You smiled down at him and opened your arms, an invitation he easily accepted.

He curled up against the side of your body, snuggling into the heat your body radiated. “Daddy’s making breakfast for you,” He whispered quietly, "I need you to pretend to like the bacon, okay? He accidentally burnt it.”

You giggled at the thought of Steve’s panicked face when he realized that the bacon he was cooking wasn't the kind of crispy he was initially aiming for. Steve wasn’t a bad cook, he was actually quite good at it when he tried to be, but everyone had their bad moments when it came to cooking.

You could still hear him now, the slight sizzle of an ingredient you couldn’t quite place.

“I’ll make sure his feelings aren’t hurt because of his burnt bacon,” You reassured Sam, and he nodded to you approvingly before he squirmed out of your embrace, climbing off of your soft, sheetfed mattress.

“C’mon, we have to surprise him,” He continued his whisper, but you were sure Steve had already figured out you were awake.

There was a difference between whispering as someone who’s older and someone who’s a child; sometimes kids can’t quite reach the level of quiet they are hoping for.

You started unfurling yourself from your warm bedding and scooting off of the mattress. Your bare feet hit the ground of your bedroom, making goosebumps spreadacross your skin at the contrast of body warmth and the cold, faux wooden flooring.

Your pajama pants helped just a little bit, the legs being longer than they should, leaving a small pool of fuzzy cloth to surround your feet when you stood up.

Sam wrapped his small hand around yours when you began to exit your room, the sound of a spatula scraping against a frying pan and the brief smell of eggs mixing with the essence of coffee.

Your apartment wasn’t very big, so you reached your kitchen in just a few steps.

You were met with Steve’s back, his broad shoulders wrapped perfectly in his tightly fitted blue shirt. He turned around at the sound of your light footsteps, the warm sun gracing the half of his face that turned in his direction in a soft, honey-colored yellow.

A combed headband kept his sun-dyed hair out of his face. You thought each strand looked like a series of golden threads.

“Morning, sweetheart,” Steve told you with a smile, the pet name making your face heat up. “Are you hungry?”

“Kinda,” You replied as Sam let go of your hand so he could sit back down at the cherry wood coffee table in your living room.

Steve had begun putting a few slices of warm bacon on a plate he had prepared before—and Sam was right, the bacon was burnt—along with a quick scoop of scrambled eggs and some hashbrowns.

Where he had gotten most of these ingredients, you weren’t sure, so you made a mental note to ask him about it later.

He brought the plate over to you, your cup of steaming coffee in the other hand, before he went to grab smaller plate, which you assumed was for Sam.

“Thank you,” You told him, your voice soft and full of love. You weren’t sure if Steve knew just how much these things meant to you. You’ve always been used to giving, instead of getting; yet here Steve was, showing just how much he cares through simple gestures.

It meant everything to you, and you hope Steve knows that.

“So,” He began, swallowing the chewy eggs he had put in his mouth earlier before finishing. “Today is quite the day.”

You grinned at him, “You said his game was at one?”

Steve nodded in confirmation, taking a quick bite of his bacon, a loud crunch following the motion, and quickly made a face of disgust afterward. “Maybe, don’t eat the bacon. . .”

You laughed at him, shaking your head as you started to tease him. “The rest of this is delicious, baby, but how did you manage to burn all of the bacon?”

Steve feigned a look of offense, “I cook you breakfast and this is how you respond?”

You know he doesn’t mean it, but part of you still questions whether you’ve hurt his feelings. He did spend time making all of this for you, waking up early enough to walk down the street to buy the ingredients because you know the eggs were the only thing you had out of everything he cooked.

Steve could read you like a book because it hadn’t taken him long to realize exactly what was running through your head, “I’ve never been good at cooking meat-related foods. They always vary in times and all sorts of other things to be cooked correctly—seriously, I swear there's like ten different ways to cook just one type of meat.”

You listened intently as Steve continued this mini-rant about how there are simply just too many forms of cooking when it came to carnivorous meals. Count on Steve to go on a tangent about things you wouldn’t originally expect a person to talk about.

He was interrupted by Sam, who had just finished his entire plate of food.

Sam was a food lover, that was for sure, especially when it came to grilled cheese; you’d need more than your two hands to count the number of times he’d asked you to grill one for him whenever Steve left him with you so he could work overtime.

Steve told you all the time about how much Sam loved how your sandwiches were cheesy but not overly cheesy.

“Is there any more?” Sam asked, holding his plate in his hands. Steve hadn’t been able to make a lot, not really expecting Sam to want more when he was given the normal amount he usually eats.

“Oh, sorry bubs—”

You cut Steve off, gesturing to your half-filled plate of lukewarm food with a gentle smile. “You can have the rest of mine.”

Sam beamed at you, giving a quick thank you before clambering onto your lap, startling you. You assumed Sam was just going to take the plate and return back to his previous spot, not turn you into a chair. You weren't going to tell him no, though. You'd do anything for this seraphic boy.

Sam took a hold of his small silver fork from earlier, placing his empty plate beside yours before eating what was left of your breakfast.

"You're still coming to my game today, right?" Sam asked you, his mouth full of eggs he had just stuffed in his mouth, making Steve reprimand him for talking with his mouth full.

"Of course I am, sweet boy," You told him, readjusting his position in your lap. His elbows were digging into your side. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Sam shrugged, taking a quick bite from the crispy brown hashbrowns, making sure to fully chew and swallow before taking it. "I dunno. Daddy says he wasn't sure he wants you to go because he says the boys like you more than him."

You smirked, your eyes drifting up to Steve who looked as though someone had told the world his deepest, darkest secret. He's just a little embarrassed. "Oh, is that so?"

"Mhm!"

Steve had gotten past his initial embarrassment before jumping to his defense, "I didn't not mean that literally! Seriously though, I swear those kids like you more than they like me. Do you know how many times a day they'll ask me if you're gonna visit at practice that day?"

You started to chuckle, a delicate sound Steve cherished but he still took the time to pretend umbrage that you were laughing at his incredibly serious feelings.

"Hey don't laugh! I'm their coach and they never get as excited to see me as they see you!"

You shook your head. "They see you every day Steve. They have a far closer connection to you compared to me, they only like me because I bring them snacks."

Steve rolled his eyes at you and crossed his arms, the sleeves of his shirt creasing around his slight muscles. "That is not true. They definitely love you for more than just your food, Y/n."

You shrugged, "Whatever you say, Harrington. You all done, Sam?"

He nodded at you and climbed off your legs, taking his plate to put it into your kitchen sink. Steve kept his eye on him, making sure he didn't accidentally drop the plate and hurt himself.

Then he noticed the small collection of dirty dishes he'd used for cooking, wincing at the sight. "I'll make sure to clean those once we get back." He looked at his watch before standing up. "Sam and I should probably head back home. The both of us need a bath and I may, or may not have, forgotten to pack extra clothes."

You nodded and stood up, walking over to him and wrapping your arms around his body. Steve didn't even hesitate to return the embrace, laying his head in the crook of your neck. His hot breath fanned against your bare skin, making you shiver at the feeling.

He placed a gentle kiss on the skin between your shoulder and your neck, the feeling tickling your sensitive skin, making you giggle. You returned the gesture, pecking the underside of his jaw, his scruff itching at your lips.

"I'll see you at one," You told him, pulling him closer to you. Steve always thought you gave the best hugs; he said it was like being wrapped in the softest of freshly baked bread. "Love you, get home safe."

"Love you too," He tightened his arms around you as well before the both of you pulled away. Sam ran up to you, having already gotten his green dinosaur-themed shoes, the bottoms a flashing green from his running start towards your legs.

"See you later, alligator!" He told you, a phrase he'd learned from you a few months after he had learned how to talk.

"In a while, crocodile." You returned, ruffling the hood of his cotton shark pajamas. They were his favorite thing in the world and wore them almost every night.

Sam let go of your legs, Steve grabbing ahold of his hand as the two left your apartment. He made sure to carefully close the door behind him, keeping it from slamming shut.

You stood in your spot and stared at the door they had just walked out, suddenly cold from the lack of human presence in the room, and wrapped your arms around yourself.

You should probably shower too, you thought, quickly walking back to your room for a change of clothes.

———

The sun shining through the four white squares of your bedroom window was far brighter than it had been earlier, this time blinding in color instead of a peaceful shade of golden. It felt warm against the bare skin of your arms, the sleeves of your white shirt barely reaching the middle of your bicep, the sleeve flowing around your arm. It was accompanied by this soft knitted vest you thrifted a few months ago when you needed new clothes but didn’t have the money for actual clothing stores.

It contrasted your white shirt perfectly, the collar of the top placed around the neckline of your vest. There were a few different pairs of pants that went well with the top, so you just decided to go with the one that felt most comfortable to wear. You’d been wanting to wear this outfit for a while but you never had the motivation to put it on, but you thought you should look nice for one of Sam’s most eventful games of his season.

That’s what Steve and Sam told you, anyway. You didn’t know anything about baseball, and no matter how many times Steve tried to explain it to you nothing ever really clicked together. It was like a puzzle but many of the pieces connected everything was missing.

You lifted your non-dominant arm to look at your watch. 10:27 a.m. it read. You let out a huff, standing from your spot on your bed. You needed something to do before you exploded.

You walked into the bathroom and quickly check yourself over in the mirror. You noticed everything. The creases of your eyes, the way your nose stood out against the rest of your face, the redness of your lips from when you had been chewing on them earlier, and the dampness of your still drying hair. You had taken a rather long shower.

You weren’t sure why you felt like this today. There wasn’t really anything bad that happened today, but you felt anxious. There was too much space around you and nothing, no one, to occupy it. You felt pathetic. How was it so hard for you to handle being alone today?

You shook your head as if it would get rid of these thoughts, which made you notice the half-full laundry basket in the corner. You could attempt to do your laundry, you thought before realizing you can’t recall the last time you had washed your clothes.

You took two steps forward, your socks sliding against the pale tiles of the floor when you reached down and grabbed the handles of the basket, your fingers brushing against the series of holes that decorated its sides. You always thought the oddly shaped holes were like spots.

You were sure there were probably miscellaneous clothes scattered around the floor of your apartment, mainly in your bedroom. You exited the bathroom, quickly flicking off the light before walking over towards your room. You were correct. There were clothes on your floor, an old brown jean jacket dangling off the corner of your bed.

You picked up everything you could, placing everything in your basket and coming to the conclusion it was full enough to do a load. You were lucky enough to have your own washer and dryer, which were held in a small room near the bathroom. You turned on the light in the small room, strode towards the two square white machines, and opened the one on the right side of you.

Hadn’t taken long for you to put detergent into the machine, start the water, and then place your clothes in as the water ran. Once you started it, you realized this was only a temporary fix to your problem. Now you had to wait for the washer to be done.

Almost as if life sensed your slight distress, there was a loud knock on your door. You weren’t expecting anyone, making your anxiety spike for a split second before a familiar voice rang out from behind the slab of wood. “Y/n? It’s Nancy.”

You walked towards your door, opening it for the girl you had grown close to over the past decade. You thought she looked magnificent, having grown out her hair again, a mess of brown curls cascading down her back, stopping about halfway. “Hello, Nance. What are you doing here?”

She took off her shoes after she had entered, a pair of nicely kept white vans. How she kept them white, you weren’t sure. How anyone could keep their shoes white was a question you have yet to discover the answer to. “I got off work early and didn’t have anything to do,” She answered, placing her newly bought purse on the table in your kitchen. “Thought I’d come over here, chat with you. We haven’t been able to recently, and I’m embarrassed to say I miss your company.”

You smiled at her words. “Truth be told, I’ve missed your company too.”

She grinned, taking a glass from your cupboard and filling it with tap water, quickly noticing the collection of dirty dishes filling your sink and lingering around your countertops. “That’s a lot of dishes for one person,” She teased, knowing that many of these dishes were the cause of two other people. “Did you let Steve cook you breakfast?”

“How’d you guess?”

“You’re cleaner when it comes to the messy dishes,” She commented, “No offense to Steve, he’s a great cook, but sometimes when cooking unsupervised he struggles to grasp the concept of order.”

“Cooking takes order?” You asked her, striding to her side and staring at dishes in your sink. There was more than what Steve used this morning, some dishes from the days before you hadn’t taken the time to clean.

“It goes a lot nicer if there is a slight sense of order,” Nancy added, rolling up her sleeve and starting to run some warm water in your sink. “I’ll help you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to Nance—“

Nancy interrupted you, “I know I don’t have to but I want to. I wash you dry?”

“No seriously, Nancy, Steve said he’d wash them once he got back.” You informed her. You didn’t want your friend to do something that was gonna be done later.

She shrugged, quickly adding soap to the other sink before turning the faucet to run water on top of it. “It’d be better to get them done now anyway.”

You thought about it, realizing you weren’t going to be able to change her mind, so you nodded and grabbed a dish towel from the kitchen drawers right next to the sink. Nancy was a stubborn person, always had been. You wouldn’t be able to steer her from anything she’d caught scent of, which explains how she was one of the main editors in a really popular magazine. She wrote all sorts of articles about important events, often telling details of a story no one else had been able to get. You admired her for that.

Which reminded you of this article she was currently working on, “Have you been able to get anything else on that story on that house that burnt down? Do you know how the family’s doing?”

Nancy grabbed ahold of the plate Sam had eaten from earlier, holding the glass circle of red carefully before beginning to scrub away syrup residue still lingering. “Yeah. Turns out the fire started because a candle had been left burning overnight. Everybody was fine, including their dog, who was an absolute sweetheart. She loved me.”

You grinned, “I don’t blame the dog. You're a pretty lovable person.”

“Oh, hush.” The both of you laughed, talking about miscellaneous topics the entirety of the half hour it took you both to finish the dishes. The two of you went from the kitchen to the soft brown cushions of your couch.

“Wait, so your telling me Steve had a headband on?” Nancy asked you. Something about the look on her face made you think that she was probably picturing him with one of those chunky headbands instead of the one he had.

That thought made you loath, but you were he’d still look pretty cute with those headbands too. “Mhm. Sam walked me out of my room and there he was. It was a combed headband, though, but he looked quite adorable.”

“Oh I’m sure he just looked adorable,” Nancy laughed, shaking her head. She couldn’t see Steve looking cute in a headband.

You took a moment to look at your watch, realizing it was 12. You should probably eat lunch, and you’d know you’d have to leave soon so you could see both Sam and Steve before his game. “Wanna get lunch?”

Nancy looked at her watch and nodded, standing up. “McDonald’s?”

“Where else?”

By the time you both left the house, hopped into Nancy’s car, and got lunch; it was almost time for you both to leave for Sam’s game. It took you a second to remember where exactly you had to go. The both of you arrived there by 12:45, and Steve saw the two of you instantly.

He grinned from his spot at the side of the field, waving to you. He had the biggest smile on his face, his eyes closed because of the sun. You grinned, admiring him for a few seconds before you ran over to him.

You weren’t even standing there for a second before Steve wrapped his arms around your body, rocking your bodies side to side. “There you are, sweetheart.

You felt him kiss the side of your head, “Hello, Stevie.” You whispered to him, a giggle rupturing from your throat when you felt his scruff tickle your cheek. Trying to tug the sound from your lips once more, he nuzzled his head closer, making you try to squirm away at the feeling.

The two of you were interrupted by an excited shout a few feet away. “Y/N!” You pulled away from Steve, turning to Sam who was sprinting at you as fast as his legs would let him. “Y/n you’re here!”

You grinned at him, crouching down to catch him in a hug before lifting him up, not caring about the dirt that was probably transferring from Sam’s shirt and pants to yours. “I told you I would, Sweet boy.”

“Are you excited to watch me play?” Sam asked, his face full of anticipation for your answer.

His excitement always managed to bring a smile to your face that nothing else could and you nodded, “I've been looking forward to seeing you all day. Are you ready for your game?”

He nodded vigorously, “I'm way readier than anyone here! I'm a little scared, though.”

You were pretty sure ‘readier’ wasn't a word. “What are you scared about?”

“I really want us to win, and I don't want to disappoint anyone if I don't.” Your heart broke at his words.

“Oh, sweet boy. No one is going to be disappointed in you, I promise. Don’t ever think that.” You placed a gentle yet firm kiss against his head, reassuring him of the truthfulness behind your words. “Now you go have fun with your team, okay?”

Sam nodded when you placed him down, tightening his arms around your shoulders once more in a hug before he ran off.

———

Steve had never loved anyone in the way that he loved you; none of his past partners had ever treated Sam the way you do. Maybe it was because you'd known him since the day he was born or because you’d been friends with Steve since your senior year, but there was just something about you he couldn't have with anyone else.

You didn't define him by his seven-year-old son, never making a big deal when he had to cancel any plans on you because Sam had come down with a cold. Instead, you would show up at his small, two-bedroom house with homemade soup and some tea that was sweet and flavorful enough for a kid to drink.

He saw just how much you loved not just him, but Sam. The way you were tender with him this morning; let him hold your hand when the both of you walked out of your room, giving him the rest of your food because he was still hungry, returning whatever forms of affection he showed you with just as much love.

He also saw it just now, with how you didn’t even hesitate to catch Sam in a hug, kissing his head when he expressed his fear, the look on your face showing how the boys words affected you almost as heavily as they affected him.

Steve had fallen for you. Hard. He had this love that swelled every second he was around you, increasing in size and passion every time he felt the warmth of your body near his.

He swears he was gonna explode when he saw you cheer for Sam whenever it was his turn to play. Cheering louder than anyone on the crowd when he’d run from base to base, feeding the boy words of encouragement that fueled his reason to run quicker.

And he saw the pure joy on your face when his team had won the game. Sam had run towards you once more, yelling about how they did it, how they beat the game, and how happy he was that you were there to see him do it.

And the way you glowed in joy for him, telling him just how proud you were and he had played so well. Steve had realized at that moment, he didn't want anyone else but you.

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x y/n #stranger things x y/n #stranger things x you #stranger things x reader #stranger things imagine #steve harrington fanfic #stranger things fluff #stranger things #steve harrington #steve harrington imagine

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ladyzee-oddityhunter · 7 months

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((CW: seizure ))

[The uploaded video is dated August, 2010]

“Zee’s Archives: The Shedinja Affect”

[The footage is a little grainy, touting the quality of an older, cheaper video camera. Holding the camera is a girl with a sun darkened face peering almost directly into the lense with one of her big, honey brown eyes. She gasps in delight when she realizes it’s working, then sets the camera on something before dashing away to get into frame. The girl appears around fourteen years old, rail thin, and sporting a mess of brown hair with a faded pink strand hanging at the side of her face. She’s wearing black shorts, a pink tank top, and a beige gardening belt with a bug net jammed into the back of the band.

Beside her is a girl of the same age, pale with a splatter of dark freckles across her nose and a curtain of tangled, wavy orange hair. There are a few twigs caught in the curls. To offset all of her orange hair, she’s wearing grass stained jeans and a sky blue t-shirt. Both of them are wearing matching pink and blue friendship bracelets on their left wrists.

The girl with the brown hair throws her hands out to the sides dramatically]

Nono: Hello Mewtube! You’re watching Cutie Miss Nono and her lovely assistant, Lady Leila! Today we’re-

[The orange haired girl, Leila, pulls back and punches her companion in the arm. Nono, recognizable as Zee in her early teen years, yelps and rubs the new sore spot]

Leila: I’m not a lady. And being prettier than you doesn’t mean I have to be your “lovely assistant”.

Nono: If you’re not gonna be the researcher, you’ve gotta be the assistant. And you are DEFINITELY uglier than me, I was just being nice.

[Nono sticks out her tongue at Leila who mirrors the gesture and makes another fist. They exchange a round of blows, giggling all the way until they come to a truce of sorts, throwing in raised hands with the play punches until they come to a standstill]

Nona: As I was saying before I was RUDELY interrupted, today we’re testing a really popular myth!

Leila: YOU’RE testing a really popular myth. I’m on ambulance duty.

Nono: Well, one of us had to step up and bring something to the table, right?

[They look at each other with impish grins like they want to throw hands again, but this time they keep their hands to themselves. Leila then runs behind the camera, and the scene wobbles and rises as she picks it up. When it stabilizes, Nono is walking away. The scene shakes again as Leila follows.

They don’t go far, just a few steps away from where they began originally, but Leila continues to hold the camera. Nono is approaching a large net that’s laid on the ground with a full backpack sitting on the handle to hold it down. There’s a young noibat sitting beside the net, dozing off, but presumably on guard duty, because inside the net is a pokemon. A shedinja.

It’s hovering just an inch or two off the ground staring vacantly at the girls. Despite its trapped state, it’s doing almost nothing. It does not appear defensive, and it makes no effort to escape from the net, apparently leaving the noibat in enough peace to catch some shut eye before the day ends. As Nono moves around it, the shedinja slowly rotates in place to follow her. It’s uncanny how it hovers without any wavering or bobbing, simply pivoting to keep its face pointed at the stranger]

Nono: So you’ve probably figured out what we’re doing here.

Leila: Doy.

Nono: Don’t be mean to my fans. But yeah, a little doy. We’re testing the myth that looking into the hole in shedinja’s back will steal your soul.

Leila: I’m already calling it. Myth busted. We’d KNOW if these things did that because people train them and no one’s dead yet. Not that anyone out there has a shedinja on purpose. Er… Sorry, Shedinja, I’m sure you’re great, but…

Nono: I dunno, Leila. I’m pretty sure it’s real. My theory is one day a pregnant woman looked into the hole in a shedinja’s back and it stole her soul, and then her baby was born without a soul. That’s how we got gingers!

[The camera swings and shakes abruptly, and Nono lets out an angry screech when Leila hurls a composition book at her. Nono grabs it and hurls it back, and there’s a sound like pages exploding out when it hits the ground instead of its target]

Nono: ANYway, I’m thinking it’s real. Leila’s thinking it’s bullshhhhh- shenanigans. I’m going to test it.

Leila: Ha! You’re gonna torchic out the second you try.

Nono: Nope! This is for science. There’s no backing down from science.

[Nono circles around toward the back of the shedinja. It continues rotating to follow her, prompting Leila to let out a little yell. The camera swings toward the ground and shakes wildly as Leila scrambles away from the back that had been turning toward her. Nono laughs at her, and when the camera focuses on her again, she makes a shooing gesture toward her noibat]

Nono: Benjie, keep it facing that way.

[The noibat dutifully flaps over to the shedinja. After taking a moment to observe it, he begins slapping it with his wings, just hard enough to be irritating. It turns to face him as if it might defend itself. However, the empty shell pokemon does not move further. Nono is able to take her place behind it]

Nono: Okay, I’m looking at it.

Leila: And?

Nono: I mean… It sure is a HOLE.

Leila: Okay? How do you feel? What’s it look like?

[Nono is quiet for a long moment, staring into the back of the shell pokemon. She stares. And she stares. She goes rigid, unblinking]

Leila: No?

[Nono gasps, then her spine arches as she throws her head back wildly. Leila screams and the camera shudders as she starts to stumble forward]

Nono: Oh, Arc! Oh, it hurts! It burns! My soul is being STOLEN!

Leila: Oh! You BITCH!

[Nono starts laughing, and the camera tilts down. Leila’s hand is visible unzipping her mint green backpack and rummaging around in search of something else to throw. She begins gathering a handful of granola bars]

Leila: I’m literally NEVER caring about you again!

[There’s a sound of footsteps in the grass, some bickering, and the camera jolts and begins to move as Nono takes it, panning back briefly to show Leila fuming, red in the face with her cheeks puffed.

The camera then moves behind the Shedinja and points at it. It looks like what the back of a shedinja might be expected to look like. It’s pale brown, smooth, slightly translucent as it’s simply the shell of a nincada. The oval hole in its back is somewhat unnerving, as it clearly opens to the inside of the pokemon’s shell, or rather the inside of the pokemon itself, and it’s unusually dark inside despite the presence of early evening sunlight and the translucent shell. Nothing of note happens when the camera focuses on it, however.]

Nono: Aw. So I guess this one’s a bust after all.

Leila: Well, explains why no one’s ever died from one of these.

[On the far side of the shedinja, the face side, Leila goes to gather her fallen book and papers and stuff them back into her mint green backpack. The hole in the shedinja’s back remains in center focus in the foreground, the pokemon itself remaining stone still. It’s almost as if it’s posing. Or waiting.

Benjie the noibat flutters over to Leila, unhelpfully stealing a loose page and playing a game of keep away when she tries to snatch it back. When she turns to finally yank it from his claws, her eyes widen a little as she looks at the camera, or the person holding it]

Leila: You good?

Nono: Eh? Yeah. I’m fine. It’s just…. Yeah. Just getting a little cold out here, huh.

Leila: Uh, yeah, I guess. Sun’s going down.

Nono: Yeah. You know, it’s really dark in there. Definitely hollow inside. Really dark…. Actually. It’s deeper than it looks. So… So dark. And it’s… It’s cold. Wow, yeah, I’m getting… It’s…

Leila: Yeah, okay, very funny. Knock it off.

Nono: Cold… So… So lonely. He’s lonely. He can’t…. He can’t s-speak. Can’t… Express. E-empty. No one…. No… No one to… Hold… Hold… H-hold… Me.

[The camera sways forward toward the shedinja, toward the crack in its shell. Then the grass rises to meet it as the camera slams to the ground and tumbles. It falls still somewhere on the ground. Nono appears just at the edge of the frame. She’s gone ashy and pale as if the blood has simply drained out of her face, her arms, her hands. Her pupils have dilated drastically, and she stumbles open mouthed toward the shedinja before she crumples to her knees, still staring. Still staring]

Leila: What the fuck!?

[Nono’s mouth is moving. Like a fish, it moves open and closed, open and closed as if she’s trying to speak, but no sound comes out. Tears begin welling in her eyes, and they slide down her drying skin as she draws closer. Closer.

Leila appears in the frame, suddenly hurling herself between Nono and the chasm she’s crawling toward. With her body, she breaks the line of sight.

Nono begins convulsing as Leila pulls her against her chest]

Leila: Nono? Holy shit! Oh, oh fuck. Oh fuck. Are you joking with me? No, can you hear me? Nono? NONO!! Wake up!! C’mon! It’s REALLY not fuckin’ funny!

[As Nono’s spasms worsen, Leila struggles to push her into what she thinks is the proper position, seemingly trying to get Nono onto her side. In the struggle, she kicks the camera, knocking the lense toward the sky.There’s scuffling of feet and hands against the grass and shaky breathing, then the snap of a flip phone’s hinges]

Leila: Hell… Hello? Oh, f-fuck, am… Am… Amla… I… I… Amb… Ambulance!! I need an ambulance! My friend is having a… A fucking stroke, or… Or…. I dunno, uh, a h-heart attack? Lo… Location? Where… I… I’m… W-we’re…

[The video ends]

Description:

Hello my lovely skiddo kiddos! This one’s a little old, probably the oldest one where I actually did anything useful, so you won’t have to endure much Teen Zee!

As you may imagine, yes, I lived. No, I don’t think I lost my soul. Might have been close, though! What we learned that day is the shedinja affect does not translate through images or video, because officials were able to watch the footage later with none of the same symptoms. But if you look into a shedinja’s back in real life for too long, something bad definitely happens. Was it stealing my soul? Hard to say, but it was very unpleasant, and I was hospitalized for a few days. I woke up on the second day, if memory serves.

So if any of you out there have shedinja, do not do that! Your pokemon probably loves you very much and would be very sad if you made it eat you.

#pokemon irl #pkmn irl #zee’s archives #shedinja #cw:seizure

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lunagb · 9 months

Text

A Plague of Sleet and Rot (ASoIaF x The Walking Dead fanfic)

BOOK 2 - A Road of Snow and Grime

Chapter 10: Ghosts of a Dead and Distant World

Masterlist

Relationships: Daryl Dixon x Carol, Rick Grimes x Lori Grimes, Carl Grimes & Sophia, Jon x Andrea, Jon x Beth Greene

Summary: A month has passed since Jon Snow awakened on a highway outside of Atlanta and joined Rick Grimes and his fellow survivors. His memories of his death have returned and our alien world is beginning to make a bit of sense. Ever since the loss of the CDC, surviving in the apocalypse has been a daily struggle. The group is on thin ice. Supplies are dwindling. Hope is fading. The dead are walking. And their only chance for life may be a run-down farm, an old man and his daughters.

Chapter Summary: Jon heads out on an expedition to the McMillian farm to scavenge sheets of tin roofing, a material needed for the construction of their wall. All should go smoothly. That is, unless the dead have nothing to say about it.

Time Frame: Farm Arc - Original Variation

Featured Characters: Jon Snow, Ghost, Mormont's Raven, Rick Grimes, Carl Grimes, Lori Grimes, Daryl Dixon, Carol, Sophia, Dale, Glenn Rhee, Andrea, T-Dog, Edwin Jenner, Shane Walsh, Beth Greene, Maggie Greene, Hershel Greene, Randall Culver,

Warnings: gore, vivid descriptions of dead bodies, child mutilation, graphic violence, death, murder, active combat, descriptions of armed warfare

[Art above is a piece by Art.of.Azrael. You can support them here: https://linktr.ee/Art.of.Azrael ]

Any notes are appreciated!

The forest guzzled the summer sun. Bright, domineering light poured into the pit of a boundless evergreen void. It flanked the road on either side. Two solid walls of bark and leaves; of browns and greens. They loomed high. Their branches reached out above Jon’s head in an enteral struggle to reach each other across the asphalt. Branches, trunks, leaves and shrubs whizzed on by, melding into a single form. An illusion. Just like the figures beyond the tight-knit trunks. Familiar shadows of days gone by played among the evergreen void. The dead weren’t out there. Not here. They were illusions. Just illusions. Nothing more.

If one of them is out there, who would be best? Grenn mayhaps? His strength would be invaluable. But so would Samwell’s smarts. As would Pyp’s aim. And Dolorous Edd always knew who to brighten up a… No. Stop that. They aren’t bloody wares at a market to be haggled over, to be weighed and compared. They were men. Good men. Honest men. Brave men. They didn’t deserve to die. A second life, now that’s what they deserved. Whoever’s out there, may the gods show a bit of bloody mercy for once.

The wind had a certain, homely chill to it. Like an excitable child, it whispered in Jon’s ears, played with his hair and tugged on his cloak. In all this sun and shine, a little cold was welcome even if it was but a summer chill, and a southern one at that. Not that warmth was unwelcome. Andrea was warm. Her warmth seeped through her back into his chest, through her arse into his groin. The women of this land had a much higher tolerance for immodesty. A woman of Westeros, even a northern one, would have been insulted or embarrassed by the situation they were in. She would have been teased afterwards and whispers of her maidenhood would have spread about barracks and long tables for weeks to come. Well, not all women would feel such shame. Beyond the wall, he’d be the one being whispered of. It’d be his manhood that would be the subject of gossip around the fire. The jests and japes would be unending and most would come from the woman herself.

Ahead, the pickup truck led the way. Jon’s stomach sang Glenn’s praises. Thanks to him, Andrea had been forced to slow some. Behind, Sam followed on his motorcycle. He kept a safe distance. Perhaps he knew better than to get too close to Andrea.

Their little procession made good time along the roads. They passed through fields and forests, long straight stretches and winding turns, unblemished paved roads and cracked, crumbling ones. How long until every road crumbles away?

Jon caught her looking again.

Throughout the whole ride, their eyes kept meeting. Just a small glance here and there as their aimless gazes born of boredom crossed paths. Each time, Beth stiffened and looked off to nowhere in particular. She seemed quite relaxed for someone without a harness. She was bizarre. Why hate him? She knew he’d been right. The dead were dead. Not sick. Dead. And yet, her eyes dripped with poison each time they met his.

A man stood on the side of the road.

Not a shadow. Not a trick of the mind. A real man. He whizzed by, fast as a bullet yet, Jon caught a glimpse of him.

Fat and clad in black.

Jon squeezed Andrea’s waist. “Stop! Pull over!”

Andrea veered to the side of the road. A horrible screech pierced the air. White smoke erupted from the tyres. Gravel dust clogged the air. The wind died. The air stood still. Jon leapt from the bike and bolted down the road’s gravel shoulder. More screeching filled the air. The fat man clad in black turned to face them. He was the right height. The right shape. A black cloak draped past his shoulders. It had to be him. It was Samwell. The distance between them obscured the features but, it was the right face. Pale, round and black hair. Samwell began moving towards Jon along the road’s shoulder.

“Jon?!” Andrea called after him.

“The hell’re you up to, boy?!” Sam yelled.

As the distance closed, Jon slowed. Samwell’s eyes were yellow and green. Long strips of pale flesh dangled from his chubby cheeks. A growl grumbled in the back of his throat. The corpse staggered along the gravel, shuffling and tripping over his feet. His hands reached out, raking the air with cracked nails slick with grime. Jon stopped. The cloak wasn’t wool. It gleamed beneath the summer sun. Silk not wool. His skin was dark. Not pale. Dark. Not as dark as T-Dog’s but still, dark.

Sam appeared at his side, huffing and puffing. “What-” He fought for breath. “What the hell’re you doing?”

“Jon, what’s wrong?” Andrea appeared on his other side.

“It’s not him.”

“Not who?” She asked.

Gravel crunched beneath the corpse’s feet as he shambled closer. Faster crunching approached from behind.

“Did you know this guy, Jon?” Glenn asked.

“Not unless Mo travelled to fucking Westeros,” Sam said.

Andrea shot him a glare and grasped Jon’s arm. “Does he look like one of your friends?”

“Aye, from a distance.” A pit hollowed Jon’s stomach. He ought to be upset. A brother was lost out there somewhere, in need of help. He ought to be relieved. If the corpse had been Samwell, Samwell would be dead. At least I could have buried him. At least I could have said goodbye.

Rot’s sour stench burned the back of Jon’s throat. Sam heaved his sledgehammer over his head. Flesh became pulp and bone became splinters. Black and brown viscera sprayed and splattered. The fat corpse crumpled onto his side. Black blood oozed onto the gravel.

“Fucking Mo the Magician…” Sam muttered. “Had him do some tricks for James’s birthday when he was a tyke.”

“He performed at my 8th birthday party,” Beth said. She approached the corpse with slow, small steps.

“He any good?”

“No.”

“Still the same old Mohammad then.”

“He was a kind man,” Hershel said.

Sam smiled. “Yeah…” He pulled a knife from his belt, cut off the corpse’s shirt and lay it across his caved-in head.

“If he was all dressed up, does that mean he was performin’ when it all started?” Beth asked.

“Probably,” Sam said.

“You think the kids’re okay?”

Sam avoided Beth’s eyes. “Yeah… Yeah, they’re probably fine.”

“They’re not,” Jon said.

Beth flashed him a glare. “How would you know?”

“Because children are the first to die in times like these. Them and the sick and elderly.”

“So? That doesn’t mean these kids are dead. My daddy’s old and he’s still alive.”

“Why do you think it is Carl is the only child in our group?”

“We’re kids!”

“No, we’re not.”

“God, just have a little hope for once!”

“Oh, yes hope. It’s easy to hope, isn’t it? On your little farm, hidden from what’s real. Aye, I’ll simply pretend that the dead aren’t dead. Then they’ll just come wandering out of the woods right as rain, won’t they?”

Beth’s scowl flared and tears brimmed in her eyes. “Bein’ nasty ain’t gonna fix nothin’ neither!”

“Alright, enough,” Hershel snapped. “Both of you, separate. Now.”

“We’re wasting time.” Jon twisted out of Andrea’s grip and made his way back to the motorcycle.

The stench of the corpse stalked him. It loitered as he waited for the others. Jon slipped his brother’s dagger out from beneath his belt. It caught the sun’s glare as a dazzling gleam. He ran his finger along the flat of the blade, over the subtle bumps and diverts left behind by a blacksmith’s hammer. On The Wall, the cold would bind bare flesh to the metal as if it were covered in sticky resin. Even when the sun shone.

The metal warmed his fingertip.

I shouldn’t have said those things. What’s the harm in a bit of hope?

Andrea sat down in front of him. Her back faced him. “Don’t be an ass, Jon.” She put her helmet on. “I get you're upset but don’t be an ass.”

“I’m not upset. I was wrong to say what I said, but I’m not upset.”

“Then you’ve got no excuse.”

Jon put the dagger away.

“She’s out here, Jon. Same as you and me, risking her life for others. And guess what? She’s lost people too. We all have. If she finds comfort in hoping for the best, then let her be.”

“Aye… I know.”

The pickup truck and Sam’s motorcycle roared to life and sped off down the road. Andrea remained parked.

“We need to follow them,” Jon said.

Andrea turned around to look at him. “Tell me you’ve got your head in the game.”

“I do.”

“Do you? If we find something out there like that again, are you gonna freak out on me? Are you gonna keep seeing ghosts? If you are, tell me and I’ll take you back right now.”

Jon bristled. “No. I can control myself. I’m not a child.”

Andrea stared long and hard at him. “I’m trusting you, Jon.”

“You should.”

Andrea nodded and turned back around. As she began tying up her bandanna around her mouth, a latent question simmered in the back of his mind.

“That bad dream you had last night? What was it about?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Was it about a sky of eyes and a sea of black blood?”

“What?” Andrea turned around. “What kind of fucked up dreams are you having?”

“Well, was it?”

“No.”

“How do you know if you don’t remember?”

Andrea sighed. “Because it was about Amy and my dad, okay?”

“Oh. I- I’m, uh, sorry.”

“It’s fine. It was about their deaths. I saw them, like I was there as it happened all over again. I saw Amy get pulled over the hood of that car and swallowed up by the horde. I heard her screams and smelt the blood in the air. And I saw my dad… get stabbed and Amy… Amy screaming over his corpse, pushing her hands on his chest and the blood seeping between her fingers.”

“Death dreams… I’ve had those too. They’re horrible.”

“Yeah…”

“Your father, he… he died during all this?”

“During all this. At the start. The… the dumbass. A little while before Amy and I met these guys, we were looking for food on the outskirts of Atlanta. We came across this guy. He was covered in blood, shaking like a leaf and begging for help. My dad tried to help him and the asshole put a knife through his heart. The wide eyes, the begging, the shaking, all stopped after he pulled out that knife. He snatched up all our food and ran off. He just left us there. No sorry. No nothing. Didn’t even look back as he ran off, the little bitch.”

Jon’s scars ached. “An awful way to die.”

“Yeah… Well, he’s better off for it. My Dad. Amy too. It’d have killed them eventually. They weren’t cut out for a survivor’s life.”

“Aye, I suppose.”

“Alright asshole, you owe me now. How’d your dad die?”

“Nothing as spectacular as yours. I found out about his death from a letter. A king cut off his head for a crime he didn’t commit.”

“I’d call that pretty spectacular. My dad got stabbed by some random dipshit. Yours got killed by a king.”

“A boy king and a shit one at that.”

Andrea shrugged. “Still, a king’s a king.”

Jon chuckled. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

Andrea twisted the motorcycle’s handle and the engine gave a mighty roar. Vibrations coursed through Jon. He threw his around her waist. The wind whipped his face. A spray of gravel erupted behind him. The world turned to blurs once again.

***

A smog of rotten stench hung over the McMillian farm. Corpses clumped around the farmhouse, wandered between the rows of green tents, and stumbled through the fields. In all, Jon counted about thirty of forty. More than manageable.

As Andrea sped after Sam down a thin, dirt road through the fields, Jon took in the sight. Tents huddled around an aged farmhouse. All green. Jeeps, bikes and cars accompanied the tents. All green. Matching uniforms and armour covered the corpses. All green. An army. A tank sat out in the field, idle, like a slumbering beast of steel. Some other odd vehicle was out in the fields too. Like a windmill, it sported four blades that stemmed from a central point. They rested atop a rounded cab. Like a sled, it sat upon skids. Like a dragonfly, it sported a long tail. Another smaller set of four blades sprouted from the end of the tail. A powerful army.

Hershel stuck his head out of the pickup truck’s window and waved for them to pull over. They came to a screeching halt on the side of the road in a grass field. Glenn rushed to meet them, trailed by Beth and Hershel. Sam threw his helmet to the ground as he dismounted.

“God fucking dammit!” He kicked the helmet.

“Calm down!” Andrea snapped.

“Calm down?! Look at ‘em all! We’re fucked on time as it is!”

Glenn arrived. “We got lucky last time. The dead were bound to become a factor eventually.”

Sam faced the farm. He ran his fingers through his hair and took several deep breaths.

“There are two fronts to consider,” Jon said. “The fields and the farmhouse. Most of the dead are around the farmhouse but, as we deal with them the field corpses will swarm us.”

“We’ll focus our numbers on those around the farmhouse,” Glenn said. “One of us can take the pickup and run down the field walkers.”

“Daddy should,” Beth said.

“Me?” Hershel said.

Beth pointed at his hand. “You ain’t no use in a fight no more.”

Glenn nodded. “While Hershel clears the fields, we’ll position either bike on opposite ends of the farm.”

“Split their forces,” Jon said.

“Exactly. You and Sam can-”

“Oh my God! Guys, look!” Beth shouted. She pointed at the farm. “In the upstairs window!”

A bed sheet banner hung out an upstairs window. Written across it in childish scrawl were four words.

Help Stuck Baby Inside

“We gotta help ‘em!” Beth said.

“They’re likely dead already,” Jon said.

“Or it’s a trap,” Sam added.

“Either way, we can’t do anything until the dead are, uh, more dead,” Glenn said. “We’ll make three groups. Andrea, Sam, place your bikes on opposite sides of the house. Rev those engines as loud as you can. Jon, Beth and I will make the third group and make as much noise as we can. We’ll split their forces in three. After that, we sweep the house.”

“And if those people are alive, we’ll help them?” Andrea asked.

“Of course, we will,” Beth said. “There’s a baby. How’s it even a question?”

“We’ll help them if they’re alive and friendly,” Glenn said.

“Let’s move out,” Jon said.

As one, they rushed back to their vehicles. Jon followed Beth and leapt into the bed of the pickup truck. Dirt and dust smogged the air. Engines roared. They were thrown to the bed’s floor by an invisible hand. Rotten eyes and dismembered faces converged on their approach. Aimless shambling froze. Dull groaning and droning snuffed. The mass of corpses around the house shambled to meet them. Shrill, screeching wails filled the air.

The pickup truck screeched to a halt a fair distance from the house. Beth leapt from the bed. Jon tossed her, her weapon. A knife fastened to the end of a pole by a thick layer of duct tape. He drew Longclaw and leapt after her as Glenn bolted from the driver’s cab wielding a machete. He pointed it at the porch and the back of the house.

“Sam, there! Andrea, there!”

Sam and Andrea screamed on by either side of the pickup truck. Rooster tails of dirt, dust and shredded grass followed them. The horde’s steady approach faltered. The corpses turned on each other, throwing themselves into one another as they tried to follow three opposing targets.

Glenn slapped the pickup truck’s roof. “Go! Go! Go!”

The pickup truck roared and sped off into the fields. Hershel set his sights on a pair of walkers shambling towards the house and ran them down. Black blood sprayed into the air. A black streak smeared across the grass. The truck veered to the right and set its sights on another shambling corpse. All around the farm, out in the fields, corpses converged on the farmhouse. Most from quite far away.

Deafening revving roared.

“Make some noise! Wave your arms!” Glenn waved his machete in the air. “OVER HERE!”

“HERE!” Jon made himself as big as possible and waved Longclaw about like a madman.

“WE’RE OVER HERE!” Beth waved her spear above her head.

Jon drew deep, squeezing every ounce of noise from his lungs and then some. His lungs burned. Glenn’s and Beth’s shouts and screams rang in his ears. But they were infantile compared to the roar of two engines. The horde split in two. A dozen or so walkers shambled towards Andrea. Even more towards Sam. Four shuffled towards Jon.

“Fuck!” Glenn poised his machete to strike.

Beth readied her spear. “What do we do?”

“Kill the dead and split up!” Jon dropped Longclaw into a steady, two-handed long point guard. “You two help Sam! I’ll help Andrea! Quickly, now! Charge!”

Glenn and Beth’s cries intermixed with the revving of engines as they charged the dead. Jon raised Longclaw above his head, twisted and robbed two corpses of their heads with a sweeping slash. Fountains of black blood spurted from their necks as they collapsed in a heap. The heads snapped their jaws as they stared at Jon with bulging eyes. Glenn brought his machete down on a corpse’s head with both hands. Black blood covered his hands. As the corpse collapsed, he wrenched his blade free of her skull. Beth planted her feet and thrust her spear through a corpse’s mouth. The blade burst out the back of his neck. Black blood sprayed out of the wound. It oozed out of the mouth, dribbling down the spear’s shaft. The walker's eyes bulged. He gargled a wailing cry and struggled against the spear, skewering himself further and further. Beth screamed and yanked on the spear. The knife caught in the wound. She scrambled backwards, dragging the wailing corpse with her. It reached for her, raking the air with cracked, blood-crusted nails.

Jon and Glenn descended on her, weapons poised.

“I’ve got it!” Jon yelled.

Glenn backed off and Jon brought Longclaw down on the back of the corpse’s head with all his might. The blade ate through flesh, bone and the shaft of Beth’s spear. The corpse crumpled to the grass and dragged what remained of Beth’s spear from her hands.

She stared at it, eyes wide. Her rot-soaked hands trembled. “What do I do? It’s broken.”

“Leave it.” Jon whipped out Needle and shoved it into her shaking hands. “You know how it works, aye?”

She gripped the pistol and gave a small nod.

“Come on, Beth. Sam needs our help,” Glenn said.

“R- Right!”

Beth and Glenn raced off together towards Sam. A pack of walkers closed in on the giant man as he swept his sledgehammer back and forth, caving in the temples of the dead. While Sam attacked, Andrea retreated. She ran backwards, facing the encroaching horde. A knife tumbled blade over hilt into a corpse’s face. It fell and in an instant, the horde trampled it, swallowing it whole. Jon raced around the horde’s flank, drawing the attention of several pairs of yellow eyes.

I could draw them away. Divide their forces. No, strength in numbers.

Jon joined Andrea’s side, hacking down a corpse on her flank. “Forget the knives! Use your gun!”

Andrea drove her last knife through a corpse’s forehead. “Fuck that, we’ve gotta make these rounds count!” She yanked her knife free. The corpse collapsed only to have its spot filled by another.

Jon robbed two corpses of their heads. “This is what we’re saving them for!”

Needle’s shots rang out, exploding above the deafening wail of the dead.

Andrea stabbed a corpse in the eye. It tripped as it died, stealing her knife from her grip. “Argh, fuck it! Fine!” She whipped out her gun.

Corpses on the flanks began to circle in on them.

“Back up! They’re closing in!” Jon yelled.

Together, they turned and ran a dozen paces.

“Turn!”

They turned and Andrea took aim. Thunder clapped from the barrel of her pistol, shredding Jon’s ears. The back of rotting heads burst with black, bloody rot, spraying the faces of those who shambled behind them. Eight rounds were fired. Five corpses fell. Two remained. A man clad in a green uniform and a woman clad in green armour shambled towards them.

“I’ve got it,” Jon said. “Save your ammo.”

“Be careful.”

Jon smiled at her. “No promises.”

Andrea smirked. “Fuck off.”

Jon met the two remaining corpses with a sweeping, overhead swing. Longclaw caught the neck of the unarmoured corpse and ate through it like butter. The second corpse’s helmet stopped Longclaw in its tracks. The blade splintered the helmet but the head remained intact. As the corpse wailed and reached for him, Jon yanked Longclaw free. He kicked the walker in the chest, knocking her off her feet. Longclaw pierced between her eyes. She lay still, staring at the sun. A name tag over her breast read Lt Winchester. Jon tried to forget that as he turned his sights on Sam’s horde.

Corpses littered the grass, forming a trail towards the others. Glenn and Beth looked on as Sam delivered a blow to the final corpse of their horde. He swung his sledgehammer over his head. The hammer’s head crashed down on the corpse’s skull. It caved. Blood and brains oozed through the cracks as it toppled over onto its back.

“You bit? Scratched?” Andrea asked.

“No. You?” Jon asked.

“All good.” Andrea looked out into the fields. “Fucking hell… GLENN!” Andrea pointed past Glenn.

The pickup truck wasn’t moving. Its wheels spun, kicking up a spray of rot, grass and dirt. Two corpses hammered on the windows with rotting fists.

Glenn turned around. At once, he shouted, “SAM AND I WILL GET HIM UNSTUCK! YOU THREE SWEEP THE HOUSE!”

“GOT IT!”

“AYE!”

Glenn and Sam mounted the motorcycle and sped off out into the fields. Beth met Jon and Andrea before the house’s porch.

“What do we do?” Beth asked.

“We move as a single unit. You two keep at my back. I’ve got armour. I can block the corpses if need be.”

Beth and Andrea nodded.

“We’ll head straight upstairs?” Beth asked.

“No.”

“What? But the baby-”

“Has survived this long. If indeed it has. It can wait a few extra minutes.”

“We gotta make sure walkers don’t sneak up on us,” Andrea said.

Beth gummed her lips. “Fine.”

“How many rounds have you got?”

“Ten,” Andrea said.

“I’m out,” Beth said.

Jon held out his hand and she returned Needle. He whipped out his dagger. “Take this. You’ll guard the rear.”

Beth took the dagger and took a deep breath. “Okay.”

Jon slipped his brother’s lost dagger into his dagger scabbard. They hurried up the stairs of the front porch. The steps creaked and wobbled underfoot. A dead corpse lay sprawled out on the stairs. A pool of dried, red blood covered the boards beneath his head. The front door had been left open ajar. Small, uniform holes littered it. The stench, sour and rotten, seeped out from inside the house. Jon opened the door and wrapped Longclaw against the door frame. Three, sharp hits. Bang. Bang. Bang. He retreated back to Beth and Andrea. They waited half a dozen heartbeats. No response; dead or alive.

“Slowly, now,” Jon said.

He crept through the doorway, Longclaw poised to thrust. Light made itself scarce inside, barred entry by shuttered windows. The doorway led into a small lobby, which led into a long hall. The hall’s door lay on the ground, its hinges torn from the walls. More small, uniform holes covered the walls. Splatters of blood accompanied the holes. Rot soaked into the carpet. Each creak and squelch underfoot rang as loud as gunshots amidst the silence. Flies swarmed around two dead corpses. Maggots festered in tiny, pinpoint wounds on their foreheads and gaping wounds on the back of their heads. They had no wounds on their stomachs. Nothing had torn into them. Their guns lay beside them within arms reach. Jon stepped over them, eyes trained on the dark. No movement. No sound.

“Did these people kill each other?” Beth whispered.

“Looks like it,” Andrea said.

“Why would they do that? They had so much here.”

“Don’t search for reason. You’re not likely to find it,” Jon said.

They came across the first door of the hall. Jon shouldered it open and took a step back. Light streamed through a blood-caked window. A corpse sat hunched over beneath the window. Bullet wounds covered her chest. Her head was fine.

“Lurker,” he whispered.

Andrea readied her pistol. Beth raised her knife. They nodded. Jon slapped Longclaw against the floorboards. No response. A variant? Or hard of hearing? Jon stomped his foot. The corpse’s eyes flickered open. A hissing screech passed through her lips as she struggled to her feet. Jon checked his blind spots. Empty. He charged and thrust Longclaw. The valyrian blade pierced between her eyes. The screech caught in her throat. Black blood cascaded down her face. She slumped again. Her yellow, rotting eyes stared at Jon, glassy and unblinking.

“Dead?” Andrea asked.

Jon flicked Longclaw. “Dead.”

Jon rejoined them in the hall. Thump. Thump. Thump. Beyond the darkness at the end of the hall, heavy thumps shook the floorboards.

“The hell?” Andrea hissed.

“Form up. Let it come to us.” Jon stepped in front of Andrea and readied Longclaw.

“What if it ain’t a walker?” Beth asked. “We should say something.”

“No. We’ll find out.”

“She’s right, Jon. What if they have a gun?” Andrea said.

Jon clicked his tongue. “We mean no harm! We’re here to help!”

A deep, gravelly growl answered any doubts. Beyond the shadows of the hall, a towering form began to emerge. Tall and broad of shoulder, it towered a head and half over Jon.

“Move back to the end of the hall. Give us space,” Jon said.

“Be careful.”

Andrea and Beth moved to the back of the hall. Jon moved back too, putting space between him and the light pouring through the open doorway. He dropped Longclaw down to his side. He’s tall. Better to thrust through the chin rather than open myself up by swinging overhead.

Grenn’s corpse stepped into the light.

A neck as thick as an auroch’s. It’s not him. He’s wearing green. Grenn stopped and stared at Jon. A broad flat face that only a mother could love. He wears no sword or dagger. It’s not him. A tremble plagued Jon’s hand. Fool, it isn’t him. It can’t be. It’s not. But he had his eyes. Those squinted, dull eyes so often full of bewilderment.

“Jon, kill it! What are you doing?!” Andrea shouted.

Grenn’s eyes snapped to Andrea. He broke out into a sprint. With a sweep of his long, thick arm, Grenn swatted Jon aside. The arm caught him in the rib. Jon slammed against the wall and fell to the floor. An invisible blade stabbed him between the ribs.

For the Watch.

The white winds howled. A giant raged. Men screamed.

The air raced from Jon’s lungs, stealing his strength with it. Andrea raised her gun. Thunder cracked. Grenn’s shoulder exploded. Andrea shoved Beth out of the way. Grenn barrelled into Andrea. The floor shook. Pinned beneath Grenn’s hulking mass, Andrea’s legs kicked and her hands pushed against his face. Jon fought to stand. He fought to raise Longclaw. But his fingers were stiff and clumsy.

For the Watch.

The white winds howled. A giant raged. Men screamed.

Andrea’s scream and Grenn’s growl mixed together into a single, awful sound. Beth’s joined them. She lunged forward and plunged Jon’s dagger into the back of Grenn’s skull. Grenn collapsed and Andrea threw him off.

“Andrea!” Jon croaked. He reached for her.

“Are you okay?” She shouted.

Black blood coated her face in a vile mask of rot. The whites of her stood in great contrast. The invisible blade stabbed Jon’s side as he tried to stand. My ribs…

A round face. A red face. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Are you bit?! Are you bit?!” He yelled.

“No! Why can’t you stand?! What’s wrong?!”

Beth sobbed and screamed. “What the hell was that?! It ran!”

“I think…” The corpse didn’t have Grenn’s face. “I think my ribs are broken.” The nose was all wrong. The jaw was too narrow. It wasn’t him. She almost died and it wasn’t him.

Beth’s tear-stained face appeared in front of his. “Let me see.” She reached for his side.

A round face. A red face. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“NO!”

Beth yelped and scrambled away.

“F- Forget me. Check her for scratches. Check her for bites.”

Beth gave a quick, skittish nod and scampered back over to Andrea. She scrubbed the blood from her face as Andrea tried to fend her off.

“I’m fine. He didn’t get me. Help Jon.”

“No, dammit,” Beth snapped. “Let me check!”

Jon and Andrea fell into silence as Beth looked Andrea’s face over. When she lifted Andrea’s shirt, Jon looked away. His eyes found themselves looking at the corpse again. His face is wrong. He’s wearing green. He has no sword or dagger. What was I thinking? Trembles worried his hands. Every breath felt short. She almost died. I almost killed her. Tears brimmed in his eyes. He scrubbed the cursed things away. He wouldn’t cry. He wasn’t a boy. A man. He was a man. Ten and seven. That’s a man grown. Lord Commanders don’t cry.

A thousand whispers beggared him. “Lords Commanders shouldn’t be murdered by their own brothers, yet here you are Lord Snow.”

Jon grit his teeth and forced his legs to stand. Searing heat scorched his chest. He staggered over to Andrea and, forgetting his courtesy knelt beside Beth as she inspected Andrea’s chest.

“Is she scratched?” He managed.

“I’m fine,” Andrea said.

Beth shook her head slowly. “I can’t find anything.” She put Andrea’s bra back in place and lowered the shirt.

Andrea’s shoulders sagged as she let out a sigh. “Fuck…” She gave the corpse a quick glance. Despite the black grime, her face looked ghostly pale.

Jon stammered. “I’m sorry, I- I don’t know what-”

Andrea waved him off. “Fuck off. It’s fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine…”

“Did you swallow any blood?” Beth asked.

“No.”

“What about-”

“No. I shut my eyes.” She raised both hands. Her voice wavered. “Give me some fucking space.”

Before either Jon or Beth could move, Andrea lurched to the side and spewed all over the hall’s fallen door. On hands and knees, she made a horrible, guttural cry as spewed again and again and again. After three bouts, she sobbed, spat and stood. “We’re not done.” She staggered past Jon and Beth, gripping her pistol tight.

Beth shot to her feet. “Wait!”

Jon struggled to his. He paused. Outside, footsteps thundered up the stairs. The lobby door flew open. Blinding sunlight filled the hall. Sam burst inside, sledgehammer at the ready.

“The hell’s going on? We heard shots!” He shouted, craning his neck to look down the hall.

Glenn and Hershel rushed in after him.

“Beth?!” Hershel shouted.

“It’s been dealt with…” Jon said.

“I’m okay, Daddy!”

“Thank the Lord…”

Andrea turned around. “Jon broke his ribs. Take him outside.”

Sam lowered his hammer. “How the hell’d you manage that?”

“I’m fine.”

“He’s not,” Beth said. “Daddy, can you see to him?”

“Course. Come on, son.” Hershel offered him his maimed hand.

“No, I’m fine. I’m needed here.”

“Jon, if you’re ribs are broken you can’t swing your sword,” Glenn said.

“I can,” Jon snapped. Pain coursed through his chest.

It must have shown for, Sam patted him on the back. “Go on, tough guy. We’ve got it from here.” He strode over to Andrea’s side.

“I’m fine,” Jon said.

“Beth, you too sweetheart,” Hershel said. “Come where it’s safe.”

“I can’t, Daddy. The baby. Whoever’s up there might need my help.”

“I’m fine.” Jon found his voice came out small.

A pained look crossed Hershel’s face as he nodded.

“We’ll look after her,” Glenn said.

“Alright… be safe.” Hershel grabbed Jon’s hand.

Jon found himself being led out the door. His legs moved on their own. “I’m fine…”

“Sure, son. You’re fine.” Summer’s sun warmed the air. “Sit down here.” Death’s stench soured the air.

Jon’s arse planted itself on the porch’s steps, right beside the dead soldier. Hershel sat on the opposite side of the corpse and began removing Jon’s layers.

“Let’s take a look at you.” Hershel placed his cloak, mail and shirt in a pile on the porch behind them.

Sun kissed Jon’s chest, warming it even further. Fire danced on his skin and magma pooled in the tapestry of scars across his front, on his side and on his back. Hershel pressed on his side and the invisible blade returned. An invisible blade. A blade. A blade.

For the Watch.

A round face. A red face. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Piercing cold snuffed warmth.

“STOP! NO!” Jon shoved Bowen Marsh away from him.

Hershel’s side hit the step. He lay there for a moment just staring at Jon, wide-eyed, mouth agape. Jon’s shame had never reached such heights.

He held his head in his shaking hands. “I’m losing it… I’m fucking losing it… I’m seeing bloody ghosts.” Pins and needles pricked his fingers.

Hershel got up and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You’re still here, where it’s safe. Not there. Here.”

Jon nodded. He stripped his hand of its glove and felt his chest. Warm. Not cold. Warm. Shadows danced in the woods beyond the farm. Jon ignored them.

“They’re broken, my ribs.”

“Can I find out how many?”

Jon nodded. Hershel touched his ribs one by one. As the invisible blade stabbed again and again, the shadows kicked up a frenzy. Jon ignored them and felt his warm chest as he gave Hershel a nod for each stab.

“Three. Could be worse.” Hershel handed Jon his cloak.

Jon shrugged into it. Soft cloth hugged his arms and swaddled his torso. The shadows died and the pins and needles faded. His scars hurt.

“My scars hurt.”

“Your chest?”

“Aye.”

“Just your chest?”

“Aye.”

“Not here?” Hershel touched him above the heart.

“No.”

“You short of breath?”

“Not anymore.”

Hershel nodded. “Muscle pain, most likely. Nothing to worry about. All that sword swingin’ probably.”

“I’m sorry I pushed you. I thought- I saw- He was- … I’m a fool.”

“You saw who did that?” Hershel touched the scar above his heart.

He stabbed me in the belly. Not the heart. “I saw nothing. He wasn’t there. None of them are. I’ll never see them again.”

Hershel gazed upon Jon with a sad look. His eyes searched his. After a moment, they broke away and he began unbuttoning his shirt. He lifted his undershirt and revealed a patch of ruined flesh on his belly.

“A going away present from Vietnam. She’s got a sister on the back, thank the Lord. Would have killed me otherwise.” Hershel smiled. “Kinda funny ain’t it? I mean, who saves the medic?”

Jon smiled despite himself. “Who did it?”

“A boy. A little younger than you. The Vietcong held no qualms about using children. They took what they could get, I suppose.”

“And you see him?”

“Oh, he hasn’t visited me for quite some time now. Around the time Beth was born, now that I think about it.”

Jon opened and closed his scarred, sword hand. “He may have tried to kill you but, it’s different. It was war.”

“It was.”

“He was your enemy and you were his.”

“Technically.”

“The men who… who stabbed me were supposed to be my brothers.”

“And when their time comes, they’ll be judged for it. Rest assured.”

“You really believe that?”

“I do.”

“And you believe me?”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t they contradict one another?”

“Maybe, but the… the bible said the dead would rise.” Hershel looked around at the carnage that surrounded them. “I don’t know if it meant like this. That’s the beauty of it. We can’t know. Not until it’s over. Maybe it’s real. Maybe it’s not. It don’t concern me. While I live, death ain’t here and when death does arrive, I won’t be here. Same with heaven. Same with God. So, I may as well keep on believin', huh? What’s the point in stoppin’?”

Buzzing flies filled a lingering silence. They swarmed around the corpses in thick, black clouds.

“Will my ghosts ever stop visiting?” Jon asked.

“One day, son.”

“Which day? How will I know when it comes?”

Hershel smiled. “You won’t know until the day arrives. But when it does, you’ll know. It’ll lift off you. Like takin’ off a big ol’ backpack.”

A scream pierced the air. High and shrill. A girl’s scream. Hershel shot to his feet and rushed inside the house.

“Beth?!” he bellowed.

Jon hurried after him, pain be damned. They found Beth at the end of the hall, on her hands and knees at the bottom of a staircase. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Vomit splattered against the carpet. Sobs and retches mixed into an awful, guttural cry. Glenn knelt beside her, holding her hair and rubbing her back. He stared past her with wide, glassy eyes. Trembling plagued his hands.

Her teary eyes found them as they rushed down the hall. “D- Daddyyyyyyy!” she wailed.

Hershel dropped to his knees beside her and swaddled her in his arms. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

Beth buried her face into his chest, responding with only muffled wails.

Hershel stroked her back. “Glenn? Son, talk to me. What happened?”

Glenn blinked at him. “It, uh- he…” He looked over his shoulder, up the stairs.

A great splintering crash shook the house. The sound a shield might make upon buckling. “Son of bitch! You goddamn motherfucker!” Another crash shook the house. It came from upstairs. “Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!”

“Sam!” Jon called out.

Silence answered. Stomping footsteps approached the staircase. Sam appeared at the top from around a corner. Blood dripped from his knuckles.

Jon began to climb the stairs. Each step stabbed him in the side. “What is it, Sam? Is anyone hurt?”

“Fuck yes, somebody’s fucking hurt!”

“Is it Andrea? Is she okay?”

“What?” he snapped. “N- No. It’s- that bastard he fucking- ARGHHHH!” Sam punched a hole straight through the wall.

Jon reached the top of the stairs and placed his hands on Sam’s shoulders. “Go outside. Clear your head.”

“I can’t.” Sam’s breathing hastened. “I- I- I- gotta bury ‘em. They deserve that much. Not him though. Not that spineless, pixie-dicked bitch! I won’t do it! Never! Fucking never!”

“Sam!” Jon summoned the voice of a Lord Commander. “Calm yourself, now!”

Sam looked about to kill him. Then about to cry. In the end, he did neither and, wandered down the stairs. He sat beside Glenn on the bottom step and held his head in his hands.

Jon found Andrea at the end of the upstairs hall, standing in a doorway without a door. Scratches covered every inch of the door frame. A corpse with mangled legs and broken fingernails lay in a pool of black blood to its right.

“You shouldn’t see this,” she said barely above a whisper.

“I don’t think I’ve got a choice now, aye?”

Andrea looked back at him with tears in her eyes. They carved valleys in her mask of blood and grime. She bowed her head and stepped aside. The whole house stunk of death but even so, it couldn’t hope to compare to the wave of putrid stench that washed over Jon.

A man lay slumped over a crib with a hole in the side of his head. His brains painted the wall beside him. No gun lay at his feet. His body blocked his hands. Jon crept towards the body. Throughout his time admits war and strife, Jon had seen a hundred gruesome sights. Yet still, he baulked at what he found in the crib. A crimson crust covered the babe’s front, from the gash across her neck to the bottom of her tiny rib cage. Thick, white maggots squirmed in her open throat. She looked up at him with a squall frozen upon her face. A knife lay in the fingers of the man. Blood covered the blade.

Jon stared. It didn’t make sense. A knife? But the brains are on the wall. How? Who had-

The answer sat slumped in a corner, on the other side of the room. A boy. No older than Carl. A pistol lay on the blood-soaked carpet just beyond his blood-soaked hand. He had a hole beneath his chin and in the top of his head. Blood and brains painted the ceiling. He started at Jon with bright blue eyes, not blinking, never blinking.

Andrea touched Jon’s shoulder. “Sam wants to bury them.”

“Aye. We should.”

“Have we got time?”

“We’ll take them back with us.”

“Even him?”

“No. Never.”

The first step was the hardest. But after it was taken, the rest rushed to be next and before he knew it, Jon was crouching before the boy. He put an end to the staring, concealing those bright blue eyes from the world for the final time. Jon lay him down. His brother’s lost dagger cut through the blood-soaked fabric of his shirt in one clean, slice. He covered the boy’s head and face with the shirt.

“Have you got your bandanna still?” Jon asked.

“Yeah.” Andrea pulled it from her pocket.

“Do you mind?” Jon gestured to the crib.

Andrea shook her head and held the bandanna out to him. “I- I can’t-”

“It’s okay.” Jon eased the bandanna from her grip.

He cleared the coward’s corpse out of the way. It crashed to the floor. The bandanna obscured the babe’s frozen squall and open neck. Blood soaked through the bandanna’s white pattern. Jon took off his cloak and lay it over the crib. The blood and pain of days gone by hid behind the black cloth of a dead, distant world.

***

No one acknowledged the stench as they stripped the roof. It hung over them, an invisible, sour smog. Nothing smelt worse. Not shit. Not piss. Not vomit. Not even blood. The smell of rotting flesh held no equals, though still, no one acknowledged it.

Not Sam as he removed the bolts from the sheets of tin with a tool known as a drill; a device that looked like a gun but served only to install or remove screws and bolts. Not Beth as she collected the bolts into a plastic container. Not Glenn nor Andrea as they handed the unbolted sheets to the ground. Not Hershel as he helped Jon stack the sheets into a pile. Jon had smelt rot’s stench more times than he could count. And the current stench was nowhere near as bad as the stench in Atlanta. Still, Jon could not ignore it. It nagged at him, prodding him each time as his mind began to wander. Not even his pain could distract him.

“You don’t gotta do this, son. Rest. Before you make it worse.” Hershel squatted with Jon. The tin roofing’s crinkled cut allowed each sheet to perfectly slot into one another.

“I’ll rest when we return.”

Jon and Hershel stood.

“Will you?”

“Aye.”

They approached the side of the house. Andrea and Glenn lowered a sheet over the side.

“You better,” Andrea said.

“It’s not just a little bruise, man. Take it seriously,” Glenn said.

Jon grit his teeth and resisted the urge to snap at him. “I will.” He and Hershel took the sheet from them.

As they carried the sheet over to the pile, Jon studied the helicopter out in the fields. Windmills have similar blades but Jon had never seen one of those take flight.

They dropped the sheet onto the others. “Explain it to me again, the helicopter.”

Hershel wiped his brow with his maimed hand. “When the blades spin, they push air towards the ground. The force of pushin’ all that air down creates lift that pushes the helicopter into the air.”

“It pushes up and down at the same time?”

“Well, uh yeah.”

“How?”

Hershel rubbed the back of his head and looked at the helicopter.

Sam laughed. “Give up, doc. He ain’t gonna get it. It’s like tryin’ to explain physics to a rock.”

“Shut up,” Andrea snapped.

Sam chuckled. His drill whirred a piercing scream. Jon and Hershel approached the house again. However, the so-called helicopter functioned it would be an invaluable asset. If Aegon the Conqueror had taught Westeros anything, it was that flight trumped all. That and fire. Surely, there had to be some kind of science in this world to replicate dragon fire.

“Who invented the helicopter?” Jon asked as he and Hershel accepted another sheet of roofing.

“Leonardo da Vinci, I think,” Hershel said.

“Does he have texts on his invention? Could we find them in one of your libraries?”

“Probably,” Glenn said.

“Not in any local libraries,” Andrea said. “Maybe a state library… shit… we lost the fucking internet… It’s all gone, right? I mean, there’s no way any of the servers are still running.”

They all stopped and stared at her as if all coming to the same revelation.

“Should I even bother asking?” Jon asked.

Hershel patted his shoulder. “Maybe another time.”

“You know, da Vinci didn’t invent the helicopter,” Sam said.

“Yeah, he did,” Glenn said.

“No, he didn’t. He just made a thing that could fall real slow. Igor Sikorsky invented the first real helicopter in like, 1939.”

“Really? They’re that recent?” Glenn asked.

“Yeah, man. Flight’s only like a hundred years old.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Andrea asked.

“You never read a book?”

“Didn’t know you could read.”

“Oh, would you look at that? She’s got jokes. Fancy that.”

“Can you fly it?” Jon asked.

“What?” Sam laughed. “Fuck no. I just studied their design at college, is all. That thing out there may as well be a heap of scrap metal. Same goes for the tank. They ain’t your every day, mom and pops Sudan. You can’t just hop in one and ride away. This other shit, though?” Sam pointed at all the abandoned jeeps and bikes scattered around the farmhouse. “This we can use.”

“Not with the amount of gas we have left,” Beth said.

Sam shrugged. “We’ll just make more.”

“You know how?” Glenn perked up.

“Nope, but it’s gotta be possible right? That scientist friend of yours is pretty smart. I’m sure he can figure it out. Hell, maybe he knows how to fly a copter or drive a tank.”

Glenn deflated. “We’ll ask him. Let’s get back to work. We’re burning daylight.”

Sam grinned. “Yes, boss.” His drill let out a screeching wail.

As Jon and Hershel carried the sheet to the pile, Jon caught a glimpse of them again. They didn’t look human, covered by his cloak, in the back of the pickup truck. Just two small lumps. Not two dead children. Just two lumps. The lumps would go in the ground and then they’d just be two wooden crosses, at the base of a hill in the shadow of a barn.

“Don’t stare, son,” Hershel said. “Look too long and you’ll lose yourself.”

Jon tore his eyes away. “Aye. You’re right. I’ve seen it happen to others far too many times.”

Hershel nodded.

“HELP!” A shout came from the woods. Shadows danced beyond the trunks and shrubs.

Everyone froze. Everyone stared. The shadow grew larger. The shrubbery ruffled. A man erupted onto the fields. A hulking mass of a man with dark skin and desperate eyes. In his arms, he cradled a girl. Blood gushed from the stump of her missing hand.

“PLEASE! PLEASE, HAVE MERCY PLEASE!” Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Behind him a boy with fair skin emerged, wielding an axe covered in blood. “P-Please! We’re not dangerous! She’s hurt!”

Hershel raced across the fields.

“Hershel!” Glenn shouted. His next words faded into nothing.

There was a ghost behind the boy.

“We gotta...”

An older man.

“Quit yappin’ and fuckin’…”

A man clad in black. A cloak. A black cloak. Made of wool and cloth. A round face. A red face. Like a pomegranate.

The white winds howled. A giant raged. Men screamed. And the white winds howled.

Can’t they see the giant has been cut? They have no idea. His strength. Men will die. A horn, I need a horn. Wick has a knife. Put it away. It’ll scare him, it’ll- he cut me… why? There’s blood on the side of my neck. I’m bleeding. Why did he cut me?

For the Watch.

I caught his arm. He’s backing away. His eyes are speaking. “No, not me, it wasn’t me.” But it was. It was you. Men are screaming. I need Longclaw. My fingers are so stiff and clumsy. It won’t come loose. Come loose! I need you!

A round face. A red face. Tears are streaming down his cheeks.

For the Watch.

He punched me in the belly. His hand left behind a dagger. Why is there a dagger? Where did that come from? Why is it inside my belly?

They were running. All of them. His friends. The strangers. Across the fields. They were running to meet each other. The man was screaming. His daughter didn’t have a hand. The boy was crying. Hershel was helping them but still, the boy was crying. The tears were smudging his glasses. The ghost stayed where it was. Silent and still. It stared at him.

Longclaw left its scabbard without a fight this time. They were screaming at him now. Why? What’s wrong? The boy was in front of him now, between him and the ghost, arms wide, eyes wider. The boy was yelling at him. He didn’t look very old. A few years younger, mayhaps. He needed to move. He was in the way. If he didn’t he would die.

Arms wrapped around Jon’s chest. Big arms. The ground abandoned his feet. A chest pressed against his back. Longclaw cut the air.

“God dammit, kid! Fucking stop!” Sam’s voice erupted in his ears.

There were too many voices. They were all screaming so loud. Together, they made each other indiscernible. Only one cut above the others.

“What are you doing?!” Cried the boy with glasses. “Leave him alone! He’s our friend!”

Sam’s arms squeezed him in a crushing vice. “Drop the sword, Jon!”

“Let go of me,” he heard himself say.

“No.”

“I have to kill him.”

“Fuck off!”

“It’s okay.” Bowen Marsh stared at him with a pair of dead eyes. “Let him go. It’s less than I deserve.”

#fanfiction #fanfic #asoiaf fanfic #the walking dead #jon snow #rick grimes #asoiaf #the walking dead fanfic #game of thrones #game of thrones fanfiction #jon snow fanfiction #crossover #andrea the walking dead #horror #zombie #zombie apocalypse

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alexdli · 1 year

Text

HISTORY | HEADCANONS | CONNECTIONS | SOUNDTRACK

◇──◆──◇──◆◇──◆──◇──◆◇──◆──◇──◆◇──◆─

♦︎ basics;

Full Name: Alexander David Li

Nickname/Preferred Name: Alex

Age: thirty-six

Birthday: December 30, 1986

Zodiac: Capricorn sun, Capricorn moon, Capricorn rising

Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual

Relationship Status: Single; mostly divorced x 1

Religion: his mom was Buddhist and taught him some, but most of it has faded over time and it isn't a daily part of his life as much as something he thinks about from time to time.

Neighborhood: Montara

Occupation: general practice attorney

♦︎ background;

Place of Birth: San Diego, CA

Hometown: San Diego, CA

Education: BA in Communications, SDSU (2013); LL.M (2014), S.J.D (2017), Harvard

♦︎. physical;

Faceclaim: Harry Shum, Jr.

Eye Color: Brown

Hair Color: Brown

Height: 1.80m (5'11")

Weight: 72kg (159 lbs)

Tattoos, Birthmarks, Scars, etc: tbd

♦︎ relatives;

Father:

Father’s Status: Alive

Father's Occupation: in prison

Mother:

Mother’s Status: Deceased

Siblings:

♦︎ connections;

full listing

Anderson Ramsay, ex-wife?; @andiramsay

Rhea Gujral, first heartbreak; @rhea-gujral

Evie Morris, home reno ; @evangelinemorris

♦︎ personality;

Positive Traits: humble, hard-working, caring

Negative Traits: apprehensive, stubborn, guarded

♦︎ personality assessments;

Zodiac: Capricorn ☀ | Capricorn ☾ | Capricorn ↑

MBTI: INTJ-T (The Architect)

Enneagram: Type 4 (The Individualist)

Love Language: Quality Time

Harry Potter house:

♦︎ Timelines;

History/Biographical

Dash Chronology

♦︎ Headcanons;

Full page here

Speaks Cantonese

♦︎ Biography: tw prison, burglary, drugs, death, divorce

Alex was born in San Diego, California, the second son and third child of immigrant parents. While his mom worked tirelessly in whatever jobs she could get, barely able to get by in a place dominated by a language she barely spoke, his dad tried less conventional methods of supporting a family, winding up in jail for a long time as the fall guy in a burglary that went bad. Thankfully, no one was killed. But it sowed a seed of discontent in young Alex that would never be entirely plucked away.

His older brother took up the charge, following in dad's footsteps to some extent. But with related drug charges and different circumstances, his brother floated in and out of jail well into adulthood. He could be out now, but Alex wouldn't know.

Escapism came in the form of a neighbor who let Alex do chores for pocket money (that he would hide from his brother because he wasn't an idiot). To this day, his 'Aunt Nan' is one of his favorite people. She encouraged him to just keep his head down and work hard, to refuse becoming like his brother or his father.

Another form of refuge for him was the gym around the corner from his family's small apartment. He was there enough that, by the time he was in high school, they gave him a job. He quickly learned he would need a college degree to advance very far, much to his disappointment. Though he'd done fine in high school, graduating with no one present in spite of all the obvious roadblocks. he hadn't ever had the bandwidth to consider college.

Witnessing the struggle of Nan's son to gain US citizenship influenced him to consider more schooling in order to become an immigration attorney, though saving for it proved a little daunting. He eventually worked his way up to being a personal trainer, no degree required, which made a little more money to help him toward his goal.

His mom died shortly before he finished high school, a combination of way too young and, to him, too old considering her struggles and heartbreak. Though Nan had been his support system, by virtue of being around, he loved his mom. She was the only other constant in his life and the loss absolutely floored him.

While he did qualify for some assistance during his undergraduate education, he continued to work in a gym near his college in order to pay his way without student loans as much as he could. It was a stalling effort, because there were a few times living expenses got the better of him and he had to sit out a semester, but eventually he made it to law school under his own steam.

While in law school, he met Andi Ramsay and she basically made his blood boil with a competitive fire he hadn't entirely realized he had, pushing him to work harder than ever before (which, he felt, was saying something.)

Eventually, they would marry and begin planning a family together, something he hadn't known he'd wanted at all until he and Andi really began negotiating in earnest.

Andi's brother, and moreso Andi's drive to help her brother out of sticky situations, drove a wedge between them and led directly to first, their plans being put on hold indefinitely and eventually to their divorce. It wasn't the kind of failure Alex really knew how to cope with. Rather than face it head-on, he's been wallowing and never filed their final paperwork. They have a total of five years until their petition expires so he could file it, but something is still holding him back.

Between the time Andi left to really focus on her brother and now, Alex's Aunt Nan passed away after a brief illness. It's possible this has led to his reluctance to finalize their divorce because Nan adored the girl and encouraged him to do everything for the person who really woke him up and helped him learn so much about himself.

#hmbintro #( about. )

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outercrasis · 3 years

Text

Maybe It’s A Sign

Pairing: Modern!Din Djarin x F!Reader

Rating: Explicit 18+

Word Count: 9.3k+

Warnings: alcohol, implied age difference, oral sex (f receiving), vaginal fingering, p-in-v sex, unprotected sex, cockwarming

Summary: You and Mando have been driving across America together for months. You're happy to be with him but part of you longs for something more.

A/N: I don’t really know the time period for this, probably like anything pre-2010s. There’s no use of y/n and let me know if I missed a warning :)

Read it on AO3

The breeze from the open truck window is cool against your heated skin. It's your only relief as the sun beats down on you through the windshield, the busted A/C offering no help. You're headed down some freeway in the middle of nowhere America, riding shotgun in an old beat-up truck that's seen better days.

You've been keeping your eyes on the flat landscape surrounding you, watching as field after field passes you by. They really weren't joking when they'd named them the Great Plains. Music filters through the air, some classic rock song you've heard a thousand times before. You still hum along mindlessly, enjoying the small amount of entertainment.

Bored of the vast sameness outside your window, your eyes drift over to your companion, driver, and owner of the truck. Mando. You study him, finding him far more interesting than the fields outside.

His worn baseball cap has been pushed up, presumably from scratching his scalp underneath and not bothering to fix it. Soft brown curls peek out around the edges of the hat. He has his sunglasses on and his eyes are firmly fixed on the road ahead, as they should be. The patchy scruff along his jawline has grown out a bit from your recent days on the road and you can see a few gray hairs mixed in with his darker natural color.

He shrugged off his jacket earlier in the day, leaving him in a worn gray t-shirt that hugged his lean muscles all just right. His faded blue jeans are on and you wonder how he can stand to wear them in the oppressive summer heat. You gave into shorts days ago.

All in all, he was a far better sight than anything outside the truck. As you look him over, you muse how everything he owns seems to be worn in. His rusty truck, his old hat, his distressed clothes. They all carry a sense of being lived in, nothing new and shiny on him. Well, except for his jewelry. His silver necklace and rings always shine brightly, a dramatic contrast to the rest of him.

"Stop staring," Mando suddenly says, breaking you from your observation of him. You're a little embarrassed to have been caught, but you aren't going to let him know that.

"Why? Nothin' else to look at around here."

That rewards you with a chuckle. At least he isn't irritated by your staring then.

"Don't you have a book or something?"

You look over at the book you had thrown on the dashboard. A used copy of Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger that you picked up a couple states back. You aren't sure you like Holden, but it's a good read at least. "Yeah, but I can't read it for long before I start feeling sick. So I guess I'll just have to look at you instead."

"Sure that I won't make you sick?" Mando teases.

You smile. He's in a good mood today. There are days where conversation with him is like pulling teeth, but it makes days like today all the more worth it.

"Nah, you aren't so hard on the eyes." You say it cool and casual, genuine but not needy. As though you don't often think of his looks when you have the time and privacy to satisfy your needs.

Mando shakes his head slightly but you can see the ghost of a smile on his lips. "Sure, sweetheart."

He never seems to believe you when you compliment his appearance. It breaks your heart a little. Sure, he has some years on you, but you aren't blind. You know a good-looking man when you see one and Mando? He was it. If the man wasn't oblivious, he'd notice the looks plenty of women and some men throw him when he strolls into town.

Not sure of what to say next, but not wanting the conversation to end, you take to a habit that's been slowly forming over your months with him. It had begun out of boredom one day, but continued due to a desperate urge to learn anything and everything your mysterious companion will tell you about himself.

"When's your birthday?"

Mando isn't surprised anymore by your random questions. "May eighteenth."

Your eyes go wide at his answer. It was July now, meaning he'd let the day come and go without telling you. You had just assumed his birthday hadn't come around with you yet. "Mando! Why didn't you tell me? I would have at least said something if I had known."

He shrugs. "Birthdays aren't a big deal where I grew up."

"Were you raised Jehovah's Witness or something?" you ask.

"No, nothing like that." His fingers drum slightly on the steering wheel. You noticed a while ago that he did that when you got close to something he didn't want to talk about. His childhood always seems to be a touchy subject.

You want to know more, want to learn all of his secrets, but you don't want to jeopardize his good mood. Mando had shared bits and pieces of those more intimate details with you over your shared months with him, but always on his own time. His own terms. You won't push it now. Instead, you pivot to something more innocuous.

"If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?"

You're surprised when he barely takes any time to consider the question before answering. "Tacos."

You raise an eyebrow. "Tacos? I took you for more of a burger and fries kind of guy."

"Nothing compares to a good authentic taco from down by the border." He says it with such confidence that you can do nothing other than believe him.

"I wouldn't know," you say.

Mando cocks an eyebrow at you now. "We'll have to fix that then."

A warm flush runs through your body at his words. You know he isn't looking to get rid of you, but hearing him make plans for the future with you, no matter how tentative, makes you happier than you care to admit. Small promises that you know he'll make good on eventually given the time and opportunity.

"What about you?" he asks.

"Easy. A full breakfast. Eggs, bacon, potatoes, and toast. Doesn't matter how they're cooked or the specific options, you can't go wrong."

You stretch yourself out in the cab as you answer, throwing your feet up on the dash. Your eyes close for a moment and you miss the way Mando's eyes rake over your extended frame.

"You're never awake for breakfast," Mando comments. He's right. You enjoy your sleep and when left to your own devices you easily dream through breakfast hours.

"That doesn't matter," you retort. "Breakfast food isn't only good in the morning."

You continue that way for a while, gathering small bits of information about him and sharing your own in return. You learn that he prefers hot weather over the cold, soft pillows over firm ones, showers over baths, and most surprisingly that he has a soft spot for musicals. That fact had made you giggle, imagining Mando singing along to The Music of the Night. With all of his mystery, he wouldn't make for a bad Phantom you think.

As the afternoon wears on, you can feel yourself growing tired. Between the warmth of the sun, the lulling rumble of the truck, and the comfortable environment of the cab, you're fighting to keep your eyes open. Mando notices your struggle and reaches a hand out towards you.

You aren't really sure when this began, but you aren't complaining about it. Mando would hold your hand whenever you fell asleep in the truck, thumb gently rubbing against your skin. His hands were rough, callused from years of work, but they felt nice. They felt strong, comforting. In those moments nothing else in the world mattered. And if you thought about his hands later, touching places other than your hands, then that was your business and no one else’s.

You wake up a couple hours later, Mando calling your name to pull you from your sleep. The sun has moved down in the sky and you guess it’s somewhere close to five o’clock. You’d check the time on the radio, but Mando never seemed to bother keeping it right due to regularly changing time zones with all the cross country traveling.

You’re sitting outside of some 24 hour diner on a random roadside. Mando seems to be fond of these little dives, preferring them to any of the big chain restaurants you always pass. Fast food is the only exception to that rule and even that’s rare, these food stops often being one of few chances to stretch your legs when you’re on the road.

“What do you think? Do they have the best pie in America?” you joke, pointing at the sun-worn sign hanging below the restaurant’s name. You can’t count how many ‘best blank in America’ signs you’ve seen at this point. While you can’t credit their authenticity, it usually did mean there was something good waiting for you on the menu.

“I suppose we’ll have to be the judges of that,” Mando replies.

You tug on your socks and shoes that you pulled off earlier in the day and hop out of the truck. The easy conversation and warm nap have you in a great mood, one that makes you a little bolder than you might otherwise be. Walking into the diner, you grab onto Mando’s arm, smiling at him when he looks down at you in surprise. He doesn’t pull away from you though and your heart beats a little bit faster.

The diner has plenty of open seats and you seat yourselves, grabbing one of the booths. The stiff vinyl isn’t the most comfortable, but you can’t say you’re surprised. The place looks like it hasn’t been renovated in a decade. If the smell from the kitchen is anything to go off of though, the food will be just fine.

A waitress comes over to take your orders. She’s exactly what you would imagine a waitress to look like in a diner like this one. Slightly heavyset, a kind face, and a big smile to offer you. “Hi there, what can I get the two of you?” she asks.

“I’ll take a coke, ma’am,” Mando says. He seems oblivious to the flush on the waitress’s cheeks at his baritone.

“I’ll take a coke too.”

“I’ll be right back, folks.”

You reach over to grab a sticky menu from the end of the table. The stickiness grosses you out a little, but it really does add to the ambiance of the place. Your conversation from earlier drifting back into mind, you immediately look for the breakfast section. Perfect. Their ‘two eggs and more’ option is exactly what you were looking for.

The waitress returns with your drinks and takes your orders, Mando getting himself a burger and fries. You smirk at him, taking the wrapper off of your straw. “I thought you said you weren’t a burger and fries kind of guy?”

Mando watches as you carefully make a wrapper worm, dropping the smallest amount of soda on the paper to make it move. “I just said tacos were my favorite, never said I’m a guy who doesn’t enjoy a good burger and fries, sweetheart.”

“Fair enough,” you say with a shrug.

You fall into a comfortable silence together at the table. Silence isn’t an uncommon occurrence between the two of you. When you first joined Mando you talked all the time. Trying to fill up the empty space, feeling like if someone wasn’t talking then the situation was awkward. Slowly you learned though. The silence was never awkward until you made it that way and unless Mando had something to say, he’d stay quiet. He’s not incapable of conversation, he just doesn’t like to force it.

You softly hum a tune that’s been stuck in your head, looking out the diner window and enjoying the sunset. It’s a gorgeous one today, the sky looking like an oil painting with its gradient of colors. The flat plains allow for a good view of it too, only a small building in the distance blocking any part of the horizon. You kick yourself for not picking up that disposable camera at the gas station this morning. The photo would never do it justice, but at least that way you could have a small piece of the gorgeous sky to hold onto.

Plates being set down on the table brings you back down to earth. You happily dig into your meal, pleased to have been right about the quality of food here. Nothing could beat a good meal at a greasy diner. Mando seems to enjoy his burger as well, scarfing it down well before you finish your plate.

He always ate like that and you aren’t sure why. It’s as though he thinks if he doesn’t eat it fast enough then someone is going to come and steal it from him. Early on you’d tried to speed up your eating, feeling awkward every time he finished and was forced to wait on you. Now though, you don’t care. Mando rarely ever stops moving and a meal with you is a time you can be certain that he isn’t doing anything for once. You hope that eventually it might encourage him to actually enjoy his food as well, but that still seems a long way off.

Mando picks at his fries and sips at his coke while you finish up. The waitress comes by to refill the drinks, another flush on her cheeks when Mando thanks her. There must not be many attractive men who roll through here if a simple thanks has her blushing, you think. Poor lady, she seems quite nice.

“So, what’s the plan?” you ask Mando between bites of egg and toast.

“Plan?”

“Yes, plan. We’ve been driving west for two days now and you seem to have some destination in mind. So, what’s the plan?” What plan, of course Mando has a plan. He always does. Was it always well thought out or complete? No, but there is never a time where he doesn’t have some sort of plan, some idea of where he’s off to next. You’re the one without plans, content with travelling alongside him.

Before Mando can reply, the waitress returns to the table and clears his now empty plate. “Can we get a slice of your pie?” Mando asks.

“Of course, what flavor would you like?” she replies.

“Whatever flavor you think is best, ma’am.” That garners yet another blush on the waitress’s cheeks. Wow. Things must be really bad around here then. One good-looking customer shouldn’t have that big of an impact on anyone, much less a woman who’s clearly made this job her life’s work.

She leaves and you prompt Mando again. “So? Plan?”

“I’m going to meet someone tonight, pick up a new job. Then we’ll go from there,” he finally tells you.

You aren’t pleased by his half-cryptic half-telling answer. He’s always doing this to you, giving you answers but never quite the whole thing. You bet he already knows what the next job is, he’s just being coy about it for some ridiculous reason.

You decide not to push it and slide your plate over to Mando. There are some hash browns left and he won’t just ask for them despite the fact that you’re clearly done. He doesn’t say thanks, just picks up the fork and shovels them in. This by now is routine too so it doesn’t bother you, but it’s still odd. Mando is just weird about food.

He finishes the last of your meal and the waitress returns with the pie. “Blueberry, winner of the county festival five years running,” she tells you.

You grab a fork and dig in, suddenly finding the room in your stomach for dessert. Best pie in America might be a stretch, but you believe their claim to the best pie in the county. It’s delicious, eliciting a small but satisfied groan from you on the first bite. You go to take a second bite when you realize Mando hasn’t moved yet, he’s just watching you with an expression on his face that you can’t quite make out.

“Earth to Mando?” you say, waving your hand. “Try the pie, it’s delicious.”

He breaks from his stare and takes a piece of the pie. “‘S good,” he says around the mouthful.

You laugh at his terrible manners. “Gross, finish chewing before you talk.”

He doesn’t have a witty retort, but he gives you a grin that makes you feel like you’ve won a million dollars. It’s one of the ones that reaches his eyes, making them just shy of sparkling. Now you really wish you had bought that disposable camera.

Finishing the award-winning dessert, you and Mando go up to the counter to pay. He’s left a tip on the table, a sizable one in your opinion, but you aren’t going to say anything about it. Mando is always leaving big tips at places like these.

You take in the diner for one last moment, not paying attention to Mando’s conversation with the waitress until she says something that catches your ear.

“-shift ends in a half hour.” Did you hear that right? Was she really propositioning Mando right now? Christ, things must be downright desolate around here.

Your heart stops as you wait to hear Mando’s reply. He could easily accept. She’s an attractive woman with that classic middle America charm about her. Any other man would probably take her up on the offer. Would it shatter your heart into a million pieces if Mando did? Most likely. But do you have any right to feel that way? Most likely not.

Mando isn’t tied to you, at least not in that way, and he’s certainly still a man. You haven’t known him to chase after any women the whole time you’ve been with him, but surely he has needs and the waitress is beautiful and willing. You wouldn’t be able to fault him for it.

“I’m flattered, but the lady here and I need to be getting back on the road,” Mando says, slinging an arm around your shoulders. You do your best to keep your face neutral, not wanting to come off as rude while also trying not to make it obvious the way your heart swoops at Mando’s reply. You know he doesn’t mean anything serious by it, but the implication is still very much there.

Embarrassment washes over the poor woman’s face. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I just assumed…” she trails off, not finishing her thought. You want to feel bad for her, but you can’t help but feel sorry for yourself.

You have a good idea of what she assumed. You’ve heard a multitude of mistaken relationships by now between you and Mando. Everything from some kind of family relation, to something more perverted that’s assumed by greasy motel attendants who cast odd glances when you ask for a double instead of a single. It’s never any less uncomfortable.

Mando brushes it off. “It’s fine ma’am, no harm, no foul.” The waitress doesn’t blush at his words anymore.

Bill paid, you and Mando leave the diner. His arm leaves you and you climb back into the truck. The radio flickers back to life and neither of you speak. You wish you could know what’s going on inside of his head. Probably just thinking about the next job. That seems like him, always focused on what’s coming next.

You can’t help but be consumed with thoughts of him. Situations like the one with the waitress always left you distracted. There’s no real way to describe your relationship with Mando. You had helped him with a deal and he had helped you with a way out of your one-horse town. Originally neither of you planned on staying together for this long, but at some point Mando stopped asking you where you wanted to go and you stopped asking if he was going to leave.

You’re comfortable around each other, content to drive across America while Mando picks up job after job. At some point your feelings deepened for him, you aren’t exactly sure when, but now you can’t imagine leaving Mando. It’s no longer just about the adventure of it for you. It’s something more, a deeper tie than you’ve ever had to anyone. However, you have no idea if he feels the same way and you don’t intend to find out. Better to love your mystery man from afar then reveal yourself and get left in the dust.

Fifteen minutes into the drive, Mando reaches over and turns down the radio. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable back there.”

You’re a bit surprised to hear an apology. After all, he had nothing to really apologize for. The waitress had come onto him, not the other way around. You know Mando isn’t the type to flat out refuse and insult someone like that. What he had done was… fine. You had hardly even considered it.

“You didn’t make me uncomfortable, Mando,” you tell him. “If anything she did, propositioning you like that.”

A small, relieved smile works its way across his face. “It was quite bold.”

That makes you laugh. “I’m not surprised, she was sizing you up since we walked in.”

“She was not,” Mando argues.

You shift in your seat to face him. “Are you kidding? You really didn’t notice her blushing every time you spoke to her?” If Mando was this oblivious maybe you didn’t need to worry about him catching onto you.

“Now you’re just lying, sweetheart.”

“Am not. You just don’t pay attention.”

Mando rolls his eyes and turns the radio back up. He mumbles something but you can’t make it out. You let it slide and allow yourself to relax. Your hand falls to the center of the bench seat as you look out the window. The stars are coming out now, another gorgeous sight in the vast expanse of the sky. So far away from the city, it feels like you can see every pinprick of light the universe has to offer. It’s a bit disorienting honestly. Nothing makes you feel smaller by comparison and yet, you don’t really mind.

You startle as something wraps around your hand. Looking down, you realize that it’s just Mando, holding your hand as he does when you’re close to falling asleep in the truck. You look up at him, confused. You aren’t anywhere close to nodding off. He should know that, so why…?

Mando doesn’t look at you, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. His thumb softly rubs against the back of your hand. You relax into his touch, turning your eyes back to the stars. Confusion about Mando’s actions doesn’t compare to the way your stomach flips at his gentle touch. It feels nice, domestic almost, if one can consider a life lived out of the front seat of a rusted out pickup domestic. His hand doesn’t leave yours until he pulls into the pothole filled parking lot of some dive bar.

Mando parks and turns the truck off. You move to get out of the truck with him when he squeezes your hand to stop you.

“Stay in the truck,” Mando says. His hand leaves you and he opens his own door, jumping out onto the cracked asphalt.

You look over at him, incredulous. “Excuse me? You know I am old enough to go in there, right?”

“I know. Stay in the truck.” Mando closes the truck door, giving you no more room to argue with him. It pisses you off.

What is this? Soften you up by holding your hand only to leave you behind? You hate when he does this, treating you like a child that’s just tagging along with him. You suppose you are tagging along, which stings a bit more, but you could be helpful, useful even if he would just let you in. Instead he keeps you at arm’s length at times, treating you like you can’t take care of yourself. He has no right to boss you around like that, telling you where you can and can’t go.

You watch his figure enter the bar, temper rising. If this place was good enough for him, it was certainly good enough for you. A bar like this had been where you met Mando months ago, working as a bartender and server. It didn’t bring back the best of memories, but you can handle yourself. At worst a fight might break out or patrons might get a little handsy. You can avoid the first and as for the second, it’s not as though Mando would need to put someone in the hospital for getting a little too flirty with you.

After fuming in the truck for a couple minutes, you make up your mind. You look yourself over in the mirror, trying to fix your appearance to look like you hadn't just spent the last two days in a truck. Pleased with yourself, you pull your shirt down slightly to reveal a bit more cleavage. The discovery of the power a pair of tits held in dive bars was one you made a long time ago. You flip the mirror back up and get out of the truck.

You practice your walk as you approach the bar door, trying to keep it calm and confident. Mando is going to be pissed at you for this, you already know, but you refuse to be treated like a child. If coming in here without his permission is what it takes for him to view you differently, then so be it. Younger you might be, but incapable you are not.

The moment you walk in the door, you spot Mando. He’s in the corner, talking to someone with his back to the door. He doesn’t even notice as you walk in and stroll up to the bar.

The man behind the counter is old, his white shirt spotted with stains and a towel thrown over his shoulder. It’s almost too stereotypical a look and you want to laugh. The stiff look he gives you though stifles your amusement.

“What can I get you?” he asks gruffly as you take a seat at the bartop.

“I’ll take a whiskey on the rocks.”

Whiskey is not your favorite drink. Not by a long shot. Really, you would have loved to order something fruity that you can’t taste the alcohol in, but whiskey is something you’ve learned to tolerate. You know that appearances matter in a place like this and a fruity drink would mark you as someone lost, not as someone who belongs here. You aren’t looking to get trashed anyway, just something to calm your nerves.

It doesn’t take long before someone is sidling up next to you at the bar. You don’t acknowledge him right away, instead staring up at the small CRT TV that’s playing the local news above the bar. Some murder case from a couple towns over is currently being highlighted. Lovely.

“What’s a pretty thing like you doing here?” he asks you.

You glance over at him, enough to get a look, but you don’t let your eyes linger. Lingering eyes would mean an invitation that you certainly don’t want to give. You have to admit, as far as seedy dive bar men went, he isn’t hard to look at. Not much older than you, clean shaven, bright blue eyes. Another time you might have gone for someone like him. Not now. These days your thoughts are only occupied by scruff, dark hair, and warm brown eyes.

“Came in for a drink,” you reply simply.

He leans in a bit closer. “Can I buy you another?”

You take a sip of your drink. “I think I’m alright, thanks.”

He pushes in even further, placing a hand on your thigh. This guy didn’t take no for an answer apparently. “Aw, come on now, don’t be that way sweetheart.”

Hearing him call you sweetheart makes you want to punch him more than him touching you does. It sounds wrong coming out of his mouth, harsh and manipulative, not the smooth and warm way Mando says it. For a moment, you do seriously consider punching this guy square in the jaw before deciding against it. You came in here to prove a point and not being able to handle a pushy guy would just prove the exact opposite of that.

You turn in your chair to move your thigh away from him. He has the decency to let his hand fall at least. “Don’t call me that,” you tell him.

“Alright then, what do I call you?”

You turn your attention back to the TV. Now they were highlighting a feel good story about an animal adoption from the nearby shelter. Odd shift in tone. You don’t reply to Blue-eyes and hope he gets the message.

“Playing hard to get, that’s fine,” he says. You take another sip of your whiskey. The news shifts to the weather. There’s more warm weather on the way for the next week, no storms in sight. That’ll be nice to drive in you think.

Blue-eyes’ hand returns to your thigh, creeping up higher than it was before. “I don’t mind hard to get, sweetheart.”

That one garners a slap. You do it before you even give it a real thought. It’s a good one at least, making a very solid sound as his head spins. It’s a testament to the bar that no one even spares it a second glance. Blue-eyes turns back to you, furious.

“You’re going to regret that, bitch,” he hisses at you, roughly grabbing your arm.

“You’re going to regret it if you don’t take your hand off of her.”

You’ve never been so happy to hear Mando’s voice in your life. Could you handle this guy? Probably. Do you want to? Absolutely not. You know on your own there's a near certain chance you'll end up with bruises before this guy gives up.

Somewhere in your mind you register the very real possibility that Mando is pissed at you right now. You shove it down, choosing to focus on the fact that he did just come to your defense.

Blue-eyes is more stupid then he looks and doesn’t read the very obvious threat Mando poses. Instead he doubles down and tightens his grip on you. “Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it, old man?”

You can't say you're surprised when Mando punches him in the face instead of answering the question. You also can’t say that you feel bad about it either. The surprise and hurt of the sudden punch makes Blue-eyes release his grip on you, giving you enough time to move out of the way as Mando moves in. Mando grabs a fistful of Blue-eyes' shirt and pulls the guy in towards his face.

“Do you regret it?” Mando grits out. Blue-eyes sputters something that sounds like an apology and pushes himself away.

Satisfied, Mando now turns on you. You were right, he's pissed. His typically soft, warm eyes are hard on you now as he pulls you away.

You flounder to tell him you haven't paid for your drink but he just ignores you, dragging you out of the bar. If you were smarter, you would think to be a little scared about making a man like Mando mad at you. Instead, your thoughts are occupied with how he's barely even trying to overpower you and yet you couldn't break free of his grip if you tried. You wonder if there's something wrong with you for how much it's turning you on.

Arriving back at the truck, Mando releases his grip. "Get in," he demands.

You do as you're told and climb into the passenger seat as Mando goes around. Nerves finally settle in. Mando would never hurt you, you know that, but he could decide to ditch you somewhere. Whatever this situation is with him, it's far from formal. He has no obligation to you and could easily choose to end it. With the trouble you’ve just caused, you wouldn’t be surprised if this all comes to a swift and sudden end.

As Mando climbs into the cab, you stare down at the floorboards, terrified that he's going to tell you he's dropping you off somewhere and leaving you behind for good. You can't imagine your life without him now. There's nowhere for you to go, nothing for you to do without him. Right back to square one.

He doesn't speak right away, which only makes you more nervous. He peels the truck out of the parking lot, headed back in the direction you came from. You still don't look at him. It's obvious you fucked up and there's nothing you can really say to fix that. Your only hope is that he forgives you.

You're headed back through the small nearby town when he finally speaks. “I told you to stay in the truck.”

You don’t say anything in response. Anything you can come up with sounds childish in your head. The exact opposite of what you'd been trying to prove. Thankfully, Mando takes your silence as an answer.

“Why would you even do something like that? Do you know how stupid that was?” His hands are tight on the wheel, glancing between you and the road as he yells.

You mumble back to him.

“What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

“He called me sweetheart,” you say a little louder.

“What?” He isn't going to let you off the hook with this and it gets under your skin. Some part of you thought he might be proud of you for smacking that creep and here he is berating you for it.

“He called me sweetheart, alright?” you half-shout.

Mando gives you a confused look, clearly not the answer he was expecting. “Do you- do you have a problem with that?” The heat is still present in his voice, but you can hear a little worry in it now. Shit. This is not what you wanted out of this whole ordeal.

You've never wanted the ground to come up and swallow you more. Why didn’t you just say that you smacked him for touching you? That would have been simple. How do you answer this without making everything weird? No, Mando, I don’t have a problem with that. I smacked him because I only like it when you call me that. Sure. That won’t be weird or awkward at all.

After cursing yourself for a few seconds, you manage a response. “No, I- I just didn’t like it when he said it.”

"Oh." That's Mando's only reply.

You know he's still angry about you coming into the bar, but apparently your answer has sidelined him. If it wasn't so embarrassing, you might even be rejoicing at his reaction. Instead you just feel like a fool.

The silence remains as you pull into a little local motel with the vacancy sign lit up. Mando hands you forty dollars, way more than you need, and tells you to get a room.

Okay. So he isn't getting rid of you… yet.

You barely even listen to the attendant as they tell you they only have one single available for the night. Now is not the time to be arguing about sleeping arrangements. You take the key, room 104, and make your way back to the truck.

You grab your bag from the flatbed and let Mando know the room number. He nods and goes to pull the truck around. You kick yourself as you walk over to the room. Why didn’t you just stay in the truck? Why didn’t you just lie to Mando about your reasons? He’s smart and it won’t take long now for him to put two and two together. Especially if he asks anymore questions.

You have no idea how Mando might react. If learning about your feelings towards him combined with what happened in the bar might be enough to leave you. He’s certainly not cold with you, but you’re not sure you’d call any of his actions romantic either. Holding your hand after the diner today is the closest he’s ever come. You wish you knew what that meant to him. You know what it meant to you.

Mando parks the truck outside of the room as you unlock the door. It’s not a fancy room, just one big square with a bathroom attached. There’s a full bed, a dresser with a TV on it, and a small table with a couple chairs. You toss your bag on the table and sit down on the edge of the bed. There’s no point in pretending you aren’t upset, Mando can always see through your lies. Might as well just get this over with.

Nervous, you hide your face in your hands, leaning forward with your elbows on your knees. You’re ready to deal with it, but not while actually looking at him. You can’t handle seeing his face as he figures things out; the way he might look at you while he rejects you. Suddenly you feel a wave of sympathy for the waitress earlier today. You hope Mando will let you down easy like he did for her.

You don’t look up when Mando comes into the room. His boots enter your line of vision and you close your eyes. You can’t look at any part of him right now. It’s too painful.

Mando says your name softly and you can sense as he kneels down in front of you. You don’t reply. Gently, he moves your hands away from your face. You still refuse to look at him and he cups your chin, lifting your head up to his.

“Look at me, sweetheart.” You wish you could resist, but you can’t. Not when he speaks to you in that soft tone. Not when he calls you that.

You meet his eye and see all the concern and worry he holds there. “I’m sorry, Mando. I should have listened to you.”

His hand slides up to hold your cheek. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have treated you that way. I could have at least told you why I didn’t want you coming in with me.”

You’re surprised at his apology. Two apologies he didn’t need to make in one day. This isn’t something you ever expected. You assumed he would still be full of heat and anger, not this careful kindness.

“Why didn’t you want me to come in?” you ask. You need to know the reason, need to know why it is he told you to stay behind. No matter how much the reason might hurt.

Mando sighs. “I didn’t want you to come in because I didn’t want anyone else looking at you.”

You pull back out of shock. “What?” Did you hear that correctly? Could that mean what you thought it might?

He takes off his baseball cap and runs a hand through his hair. “What can I say, sweetheart? I’m a jealous man.”

A thousand thoughts run through your mind. There are so many things you want to say, so many questions you want to ask, and yet none of them can find their way out. As a result, you do the only thing you can.

You lean in towards him, slowly, giving him enough time to stop you if he so chooses. He doesn’t though, instead following your lead and moving in closer. You carefully search his eyes for any answers they may hold. Your noses bump and you both pause. “Mando, I-”

He cuts you off. “Din. My name is Din.”

You close the gap and kiss him. The kiss is careful at first, as though you’re both still looking to confirm that yes, this is what you both want. Mand- Din’s lips are soft and sweet against yours and you melt as it’s everything you could have imagined and more. A small moan escapes you, one that you’re embarrassed about until it causes Din to deepen the kiss. Caution evaporates, quickly turning into passion as your tongues meet.

Din moves, getting up from the floor and pushing you back against the bed. His lips never leave yours, devouring you as though you might slip away at any moment. He gives your bottom lip a small nip, quickly soothing it with his tongue. You pull away, needing a moment to catch your breath.

“Is this okay?” Din asks, his voice low with desire. You respond by pulling him back down into another bruising kiss. Your positions shift as the kiss continues, Din’s knee finding its way between your legs as his arms wrap around you. Both of your hands have worked their way into his hair, something you’ve been fantasizing about for months now.

Din begins to kiss his way down your neck, leaving little love bites along the way. You gently tug on his hair, pulling a heavenly sound from him that only intensifies your pool of desire. Desperate for more, you move a hand down, seeking the hem of his shirt and slipping your hand underneath. His skin feels remarkable under your fingertips.

Din pulls away from your neck and quickly divests himself of his shirt. He allows you a moment to take him in, his lean physique flexing as he holds himself above you. Scars litter his body in various shapes and sizes, but you think they look beautiful against the glow of his honeyed skin.

Taking the opportunity, you remove your top as well, leaving you in your basic everyday bra. You wish you had worn your other bra, the sexier one, but with the way Din is looking at you, you’re not sure it matters. His lips return to your body, working his way across any and all of your newly exposed skin. One hand splays on your waist, holding you, grounding Din against you.

“You’re so soft, sweetheart,” Din murmurs against you. His lips find their way up to your chest, placing careful kisses against the globes of your breasts. He pauses and looks up at you, seeking your permission. You arch your back, allowing Din access to slip a hand beneath you and undo the clasp.

He pulls the bra away from you and you flush under the intensity of his gaze. “Perfect, you’re perfect,” Din says before reoccupying his mouth with your breasts. It seems that he has a real oral fixation, not that you mind in the slightest. His warm mouth feels heavenly against you, licking and sucking wherever he can.

Din takes one of your nipples into his mouth, his fingers playing with the other. It’s the best thing you’ve felt in months, better than any of your late night fantasies when you would try to satisfy your growing want for the man currently giving you so much pleasure. As though your attempts could ever come close to the real thing.

Din releases your nipple with a pop and returns to your mouth, licking his way inside. His kiss alone is enough to make you see stars. It makes you forget any other kiss you’ve ever shared, enveloping you in him and him alone.

You pull back slightly from the kiss, unable to take more without further relief. “Din, please, I want you,” you pant into his mouth. Din growls, actually growls, at your words. It's a far hotter response than it should be.

“Yeah, sweetheart? What do you want me to do to you? Tell me.” His knee comes up and presses his thigh against you where you want him most, causing you to moan out his name. “Use your words, sweet girl.”

He’s trying to kill you, you think. Calling you a name like that. Sweet girl. It loops in your mind until Din’s fingers ghost over your nipples again. “I want you to touch me,” you tell him.

“I’m already touching you,” Din says. He’s a tease, you think, growing slightly frustrated with him. His thigh moves against you again though and he’s immediately forgiven.

“Please, Din,” you whine, hoping he’ll take pity on you. Thankfully he does, moving his leg away and quickly removing your pants. You already know you’re soaking, your panties feeling cold against you with the loss of the other cloth barrier.

Din pauses for another moment to take you in before moving. You’re nearly bare before him, almost entirely on display.

“You’re so beautiful,” he compliments, his hands parting your thighs. “So perfect, so beautiful, and all mine.” You can feel yourself clench at his words. No one has ever made you feel this way before. His stare only relaxes you more, his words feeling like a warm blanket wrapping around your fears and quieting them.

Din’s fingers brush against you through the thin cotton. “Is this all for me, sweetheart? I can already feel how wet you are.”

He continues to tease you, only leaving you capable of nodding your head back at him. His eyes catch yours, watching your reaction as he pushes the near useless fabric off to the side and pushes one finger between your folds. Just the small touch sets you aflame, pushing yourself down onto his hand, wanting more.

His finger leaves you and you frown until you watch as he brings it to his mouth and licks your slick off of it. Din moans at the taste. “You taste better than you do in my dreams.”

He leans down to kiss you, sharing the taste of yourself while he pulls your panties off completely. They’re thrown haphazardly into the room, lost to be found for later.

Din then moves himself between your legs, slowly working kisses down your body as he slides back onto his knees on the floor. He grabs your waist and pulls you to the edge of the bed with ease and starts nipping and kissing your inner thighs. Your hands wind back into his hair, while you lie in disbelief that this is really happening right now.

Gentle kisses are placed along your folds, Din moving back as you try to grind your hips down onto him. His eyes catch yours again, mouth hovering over your clit as he speaks. “I’m going to taste you until you cum on my face and then I’m going to fuck you, okay?”

This time you manage a response, frantic to let him know that’s exactly what you want. “Yes, please, I want you so badly, Din.”

It’s all he needs to hear. His mouth comes down on your clit, carefully playing with the bundle of nerves, making you cry out and clench around nothing. He pulls away slightly and then licks a long stripe from bottom to top, pausing again at your clit to give it a teasing suck. Your hands pull at his hair from the attention.

He moves back down, teasing your entrance with his mouth. He moans, lapping up your pussy, acting every part a man dying of thirst who’s found oasis at your core. You buck into him and his hands quickly wrap around your legs, holding your hips in place. Din wants to pleasure you, but on his own terms, at his own speed.

You can’t make a coherent thought as he continues to eat you out. Small snippets of words make their way out of you, none of them making any real sense in conjunction with one another. It’s not until his thumb finds your clit as he continues to lick, suck, and nip at you that you find complete words to shout. “Din, oh god, yes, right there, I’m so close...”

Moments later you feel the tension within you snap, crying out as your body shakes from the overwhelming pleasure. Din continues to work you through your orgasm, only stopping when you physically push his head away from you. He trails hot kisses along your inner thighs again, telling you how beautiful you are, how good you taste, how perfect your pussy is.

As you come down from your high, Din removes the last of his clothes, finally freeing his stiff erection. Your breath catches as you take him in, your Adonis in the flesh. He’s gorgeous, you think, wondering what you did to get so lucky.

Then he’s back over top of you, kissing and sucking at your skin. Some of those are bound to leave marks for tomorrow but you don’t mind. You want everyone to see, for everyone to know that you’re his. No more mistaken assumptions about your relationship, you want it on display for the world.

You look down to catch a better glimpse of his cock, satiating the curiosity that’s plagued you for so long. He’s big. More than enough to fill you, possibly even more than you can handle. As wet as you are, you know you’ll need him to go slow, to slowly stretch you out before he can truly fuck you.

You tilt your hips, bumping against him, letting him know that you want him. “Do you want my fingers first?” Din asks. You know you should say yes, but you can’t imagine another moment without knowing what he feels like inside of you.

“No,” you tell him. “Just go slow.”

Din places a quick searing kiss against your lips and positions himself. The head of his cock presses against your slick entrance and you feel like you’re already seeing stars. Din is muttering in your ear, holding you tightly against him as he pushes into you.

“Fuck, you feel so good sweetheart. So tight and wet for me. I can’t wait to fill you up, to feel every inch of your sweet pussy.”

You nearly forget to breath as he slowly pushes in further. You can feel every inch of him and you only want more. Din’s stream of compliments are interrupted when he finally bottoms out in you, holding himself still as your walls clench and stretch around him. “Fuck, sweetheart.”

You turn your head and pull him into a blazing kiss, loving the way he feels filling you up. You wonder how you were ever satisfied with your fingers before when this had been next to you for so long. Din is apparently thinking along the same lines, whispering to you, “I’d have done this long ago if I knew you felt this good.”

You don’t even have time to consider the words as he slowly begins to move in you. The pleasure borders on agonizing as you begin to move your hips, encouraging him to move faster. Din responds quickly to your urging, setting a furious pace as he begins to lose all control. You know you’ll still be feeling him tomorrow and the thought makes you smile. You never want to go another day without a reminder of how he feels.

His thumb returns to your clit and you don’t have time to warn him before you’re thrown into another orgasm. Your walls clench around him and you lose yourself in the feeling of cumming on his cock. Din quickly follows, pulling out of you just in time to paint your stomach with ropes of his spend. You mourn the loss of him, but once Din finishes he buries himself back inside of you, causing another shock of pleasure to zing through your body.

Din rolls the both of you over, keeping himself sheathed in you, and allowing you to collapse on top of him. You’re both sweaty and panting, trying to come up with words. Din’s fingers lightly trace along your back, causing goosebumps to erupt across your flesh. You lift your head up from his chest in order to look at his face.

He’s completely debauched, sweat causing hair to cling to his forehead, the rest completely wild from your hands. His eyes are still blown wide, happily looking back at you. His lips are pink and swollen from all the kisses and licks he’s pressed into your skin. You know you can’t look much better than him.

You give a small clench around him and smile at the expression that runs across Din’s face. “I love the way you fill me,” you tell him. Din presses a loving kiss against your sweaty forehead.

“I never want to leave this perfect pussy of yours.” You can tell he means it too. If he could, he would stay buried in you forever. You love the way that sounds. His eyes flutter closed, reveling in the feeling of having you surround him.

“Din,” you say.

His eyes pop back open and refocus on you. “Yeah, sweetheart?”

A smile blooms across your face. “Nothing, I just wanted to say it. Din. It suits you.”

His name suits him in a different way than Mando does. Mando is the rough exterior, the front he puts up to the world. The one who punches men in bars for touching you and calling you pet names. The one that strikes fear into others, knowing that if he’s hot on their trail that they’re screwed. Din is the soft inside, the place where all of his ‘sweethearts’ originate, the cause for the hand holding and sparkling smiles. The man behind the armor that he presents to the world, the one who kisses and fills you up just right.

Din’s arms wrap around you tightly, clearly intent on never letting you go. You’re fine with that, letting it sink in that you’re finally laying in bed with the man who’s consumed your thoughts for months. A small, joyous giggle escapes you.

“What’s so funny?” Din asks.

“I thought you were going to leave me earlier. Now here I am, laying on top of you with your cock still inside of me.”

Din chuckles and you can feel it rumble in his chest. “I’m never letting you go sweetheart, no matter how much you piss me off.”

You fold your arms across his chest, letting your chin rest on your hands. “I am sorry. I just wanted you to notice me. I felt like you were treating me like a child,” you confess.

Din’s eyes widen a bit at your admission. “I always notice you, mesh’la. I never meant to treat you that way. I only want to keep you safe.”

“I know that now. Honestly, I feel so silly about it all.” He reaches up and pushes a strand of hair back from your face.

“Next time, I’ll take you in with me. I’ll show everyone that you’re mine.” He grinds his hips up into you to prove his point. It makes you squeal, causing a smirk to settle on Din’s lips. You give his cheek a small flick in retaliation but make no attempt to move.

You lay there for a little while longer, laying your head back down against Din’s chest, listening to his steady heartbeat beneath you. His hands trace anywhere he can touch on you, intoxicated by having you so close against him. Eventually though, you feel the call to use the bathroom and can no longer ignore it.

Din is almost painful sliding out of you, but you’re more upset about the loss of having him buried in you. Your legs are shaky as you stand, managing to make it to the bathroom on wobbly knees. You take a moment to clean yourself up, running a damp cloth across your body. Exhaustion hits as you return to bed, crawling under the covers and into Din’s arms.

You begin to drift off when Din asks, “Why’d you get a single? Not that I’m complaining.”

“All they had left. Maybe it was a sign,” you mumble back.

Din chuckles and presses a kiss against your head. “Yeah, maybe, sweetheart.”

#din djarin x reader #din djarin x female reader #modern!au #modern!din #din djarin fic #pedro pascal x reader #din djarin x you #the mandalorian fanfiction #mandocrasis fic

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elles-writing · 3 years

Text

Daughter Moments

Request: Hello! I’ve read your imagines they are sooo good! I was wondering if I can request a Kili x daughter reader? The ploy can be anything you want but the reader has to be kilis daughter pls? Thankyou!!❤️

Requested by @imagines4everyone

A/N: First of all, thank you so much!! I hope you will like it!

Then also...The ending is my favourite.

Triggers: mentions of injuries, scars, angst, feels (if there's any more, let me know please!)

Tags: @guardianofrivendell @dumbassunderthemountain @imagines4everyone

Kili took a deep breath, as he looked over Dale. The town was beautiful, and he was lucky to be able to look at it during sunrise, every day, before he had to get back to his duties.

He felt the soft wind, running through his hair, and sun glittered in his deep brown eyes. He thought of his wife and daughter, and his mouth had soft dreamy smile in second.

When Kili came back to their shared chambers, he noticed Tauriel, gently stroking their ten months old Y/N's cheek.

"How are my two beautiful girls?" He chuckled, and his eyes were soft, as he looked down at his daughter and wife.

"Papa!" Y/N suddenly let out, and Tauriel and Kili looked at each other in shock and surprise. Their daughter just said her first word!

"You did it, Y/N! You did it!" Kili cried out, and started dancing across the room with his daughter in his arms. You giggled, and Tauriel watched the moment with tears in her eyes.

Five years later

"Papa?"

"Hm?"

"What are you doing?" You frowned, when you noticed your father.

Kili was trying to make a surprise for Tauriel - his wife's birthday was a very special day to him, as well as your birthday - and this year, as any other, it was something sweet. Last year he made her a pair of twin daggers and got all her favourite sweets from bakeries around Dale.

This year, he decided to bake a cake.

Needless to say, it was very funny.

To watch, obviously.

You sat up on the chair, and Kili put his hands on his hips. You looked into the bowl, and giggled. You tasted a bit of it, and frowned.

"Uncle Fili said you can't bake, daddy." You shook your head. Kili nervously looked at you.

"What did uncle Fili say?" You looked at your dad, and decided to tell him everything.

"Well, Uncle Fili said you cannot bake, and that you only eat in the kitchen, and he was right," you said. Kili looked at the light-coloured dough.

"It is salty," you said, and Kili's eyes widened. He slapped his forehead.

"I really switched sugar and salt," Kili sat down to the table, and put his chin on his hands. You wanted to say something, but you noticed his eyes were filling with tears. You jumped off of the chair, and walked to him.

"Why are you crying, daddy?"

"I'm not crying," he said, and got up.

"Can I help you?" You gave him your best puppy-eye look, and Kili sighed.

You just had to get this from him.

"Okay."

When you finally finished the cake, the sun was rising, but you and Kili fell asleep, sitting by the table.

The finished cake was, however, worth it.

Twelve years later

"What did you say?" Kili frowned at you. You shrugged.

"What do you mean?" Kili's usually kind brown eyes had a spark of anger in them.

"That I don't care about you."

"Oh, this. Well, because it's true! You literally make any guy run away from me, and then you make me stay inside! How am I supposed to get to know at least one?"

"You have still enough time for boys." Your father shook his head, as if he tried to get out the idea of dating out as quickly as he could.

"Fine. But if anyone asks, it's your fault," you said half-upset, half-joking.

You almost opened the door, when you heard your father speak.

"You know I want you to have someone who truly loves you," you turned around.

"I...I, um..." Kili deeply sighed. He felt a bit of guilt about the misunderstanding.

"Sit down, please." You did as he said, and he gently took your hands to his.

"When I met your mother, I knew she was...the One. My One. I fell for her even more, when we talked for the first time. And a few years later, there was also you. I was holding you after you were born, and I promised I will make sure you will have the same kind of love, the person you will roll your eyes at, but know you wouldn't want them any other way."

"Dad, I-"

"I didn't mean to upset you. I'm just worried about you and want the best for you, but...the problem is, that in my eyes, nobody is good enough for you. I know you think it's the other way, but, it isn't. At least to me." You felt tears in your eyes.

"What do you think...mom would say?" You quietly whispered, as you felt tears in your eyes. He took a deep breath, probably to try to stop tears, too.

"Your mother would...secretly agree with me, but let you...let you go on an adventure, as long as you promise you are safe." Kili blinked to stop a tear, and sadly chuckled.

"You never know who you meet on an adventure."

You took his hands into yours, and gave him sad smile.

"She is alive. Trying to find her way back, from the orcs. Mom is a fighter."

"I believe too," he said, and looked outside. The sun slid across his face, and made his eyes spark, and showed you the way they used to shine when your mother was still there.

It's been a few months since you and your father talked, and you were on a ride from Hobbition. You liked to visit Bilbo and Frodo, and, as always, told each other news. When you almost got to Rivendell, you noticed someone lying down - with red hair. You stopped your horse, and jumped off of it.

You felt a rush of shock, when you realized who it was. She was full of cuts, but breathing.

You got to Rivendell safely, and when Lindir saw you, you let out just a whisper.

"Help her,"

You had no idea how did you end up in the working space of lord Elrond.

But, having soft blanket over your shoulders and sipping warm tea, after the shock, you wouldn't complain.

"Can I see her?" You whispered. Lord Elrond talked to a healer, and both of them looked at you.

"Your mother is asleep now," the healer carefully said. You nodded.

"Is she-"

"She is alive. We cleaned her injuries, and luckily, they were not even infected yet. You found her just in the right moment." You let out a breath. It felt like a huge weight fell off of your shoulders.

"Get some rest, princess Y/N. It will be good." The healer said, and helped you to get to other chambers, you guessed for guests. You laid down to bed, and fell asleep. You didn't even notice the healer turned around in the door, and slightly bowed, before he walked away.

You woke up into bright sunlight. You realized it was afternoon, and when you properly woke up, you found out you slept almost whole day and night.

When you took a bath and changed into light dress, you decided to go ask healer how was your mother doing.

You carefully knocked on the door. Someone slowly opened the door, and you realized it was the healer you already knew. After a short talk, he told you to get some rest. You decided to listen to him.

You didn't expect to fall asleep next to the bushes of lavender in Rivendell gardens, but the sweet, calming scent was strong.

You woke up with slight headache, and sat aside from the plants. You watched the sunset, and yawned. You also realized you haven't eaten whole day, and looked around for some fruit. You got up, and soon you found a few servants, who were actually looking for you, and as they mentioned dinner, you had no more questions.

At the dinner, you noticed the male healer you met earlier. You blushed when he noticed you looking at him, but he didn't do anything. Later, he catched your eyes again, and send you a tiny smile. You felt yourself smile as well.

After the dinner, Lindir walked you to your chambers. You took a bath, and when you got dressed, you opened your window and put a pillow and a blanket on the floor, to continue watching the sunset, and look at the stars. The sky was bright, and the fresh air made you feel lot better.

You got back to bed, but left the window open.

Your felt familiar smell, as you woke up. For a moment, you were five again, in your chambers in Erebor, and it was your birthday. Only other thing was the itchy feeling on your arms and legs.

Damn mosquitos.

"Mum?"

"I didn't mean to wake you, wildflower," you gasped and sat up, wide awake.

It was really her. Your mother, her red hair shining in the morning sun, looking at you.

Her face was full of cuts,which were in process of healing, and fading scars. Her hair was literally chopped off, now down to her chin.

Her green eyes were, however, full of motherly love. Just as you always knew them.

"This-this is a dream!" You let out a cry. She hug you tightly, and let out a cry too.

"I'm so glad you're safe..."

"What happened to you?" You whispered, as your arms tightened around her, afraid of it being just a dream.

"The orcs prisoned me, I tried to escape, but I was weak and didn't have any weapons. This time, I was finally lucky," she whispered, as she brushed your hair by her fingers.

"I'm here, Y/N. I promise it isn't a dream. I was fighting to run away every single day, and nothing could keep me away from you anymore."

Later that day, you sat down, to write a letter to Erebor.

Dear father,

I had to stay in Rivendell for longer, but, as you will find out - it was worth it...

Two years later

"Kili," Tauriel frowned at her husband. Kili looked at his wife with raised eyebrow.

"It's a boy, Tauriel!"

"And?"

"She's my little girl! She was born like...yesterday," Kili wiped off a tear from the corner of his eye.

"Well, our little girl is having a lovely partner. You will like him." Kili's eyes widened, and Tauriel tried not to laugh.

"You already met him? And didn't tell me?!"

"Well..." Tauriel would roll her eyes. Her husband was literally freaking out.

She didn't have the heart to tell him the reason you went to Rivendell or Mirkwood was because of your love, not because of political...anything.

Before she answered, you walked in, nervously smiling at both of them.

"I have, um...someone I want to introduce to you," you said. Your mother nodded at you with smile, and you sighed and patted your father's shoulder.

"It's fine, dad." You opened the door, and 'the elven healer from Rivendell', as you knew him two years ago, walked in.

"Mum, dad...this is, um, my boyfr-"

"Nice to meet you," Tauriel said, but looked at her husband by the corner of her eye.

"So...you are the elf my daughter is courting," Kili said, and you looked at your boyfriend. Him and your father were watching each other, and you gently took your lover's hand into yours, worried they might start fighting. Until...

They both broke a smile.

"Nice to meet you, Prince Kili. Y/N has told me a lot of good things about you."

"Y/N, would you come and prepare some tea with me?" Your mother asked you, and you both got out of the room.

You listened their conversation, talking about your meeting, and, your dad's, and your lover's, favourite - archery.

"I can't believe it!" You said, whispering.

"I know," your mother tried to hold in laugh.

"They literally-"

"Yes. Seems like they go along well."

"Now my dad will spend more time with my lover than I do," you pretend to be dramatic, but secretly you thought if it wouldn't be better if they didn't like each other.

You walked back in the room, with cups with steaming tea.

"Don't worry. Both of them know who are the best archers in the family," Your mother gave you a smile, and you proudly nodded, as you placed the cups down on table.

"That's not true, I always let you win!" They said at the same time, and you and your mother shared a look.

Later that day, you were with your father in the gardens. He was enjoying the quiet evening, and you were reading.

"Dad?"

"Hm?"

"You know...you said, about boys...that nobody would be good enough for me. In your eyes."

"Yeah." He nodded, and turned towards you.

"So, um...what do you think, now when you met my boyfriend?" You nervously waited for his answer.

"I think...I would never expect to say this, but...I approve him." You let out a laugh.

"Just because you're both good at archery?" He rolled his eyes.

"I wanted to say he seems to be very nice, but that too. We gotta keep the skill in family, don't we?" You shook your head and snorted with laugh.

"As well as recognizing elf men and elf maids." You started laughing when you noticed your father's wide eyes and flushed cheeks under his beard.

"Who told you that story?"

"Well...Uncle Fili has told me many interesting stories from your adventures," you said. Your father quickly stood up.

"Uncle Fili will quickly be reminded of what does it feels like to have younger brother," Your father muttered, as he walked inside the castle.

#kili #kili x reader #tauriel x reader x kili #tauriel x reader #tauriel #the hobbit #the hobbit fanfiction #fluff #angst #request #requested #aidan turner #aidan turner x reader #fili x reader #kiliel

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petersnya · 3 years

Text

SOMETIMES

PETER PARKER X FEM!READER

---NOT MY PHOTO/GIF---

PART ONE

Prompt/Summary: “...some people fall in love with the wrong people sometimes…” /// Peter Parker meets the love of his life. But is he the love of hers? Having a bad past always affects the future.

Warnings: ANGST, FLUFF, SMUT(light smut towards the end xxx tehe) ECT.

Word count: 3026

[A/N]Wattupp! So I have been busy with volleyball lately but I finally have the time to write! I got this idea while I was in class and it seemed like it would be perfect lol. I love Marvel so much like I grew up reading the comics so I’m excited to write this ( I'm in love with Peter Parker/Tom Holland too ). I'm thinking this should be a series??? Idk. Let me know what you think! ENJOY AND SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS!! Explicit content ahead…(this was also inspired by a song I love called moral of the story. tehe I love Niall Horan bruh)

-J.T.S xxx

“Sup Parker, ” a tall, curly-haired girl rushed through the front door of Peter Parker's apartment. “Aunt May here?” the girl questioned the brown-eyed boy who was frantically following the girl with his eyes from his seated position on the couch.

“No, uh, she's not. She's at work actually- wait what are you doing here MJ?” Peter questioned the girl, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. He stood from the couch, approaching the kitchen counter that MJ was standing behind, putting whatever she had run into the house with in the kitchen drawer.

“Uh, just… Hangin’ out, ” MJ explained, shrugging her shoulder as she hopped onto the counter facing Peter, swinging her legs with an innocent look on her face.

“Yeah sure, I'm not gonna believe tha -”

“MJ! The hell is wrong with you! Give them back you oversized giraffe!” a loud banging on the door caught MJ and Peter’s attention making them turn their heads towards it. MJ, not looking shocked at all, but Peter having a tariffed look on his face.

“We’re the same height dumbass!” MJ shouted back to the girl on the other side of the door with a smirk on her face. Peter was confused by the situation. Turning his head back at MJ, who was silently snickering, he questioned, “Who the hell is that?”, the tan girl, who was now standing next to him, made her way to open the door.

“MJ gets the fuck out here and give me my-” the mystery girl on the other side of the door was cut off by the door opening in her face. She stood there in shock, looking past MJ at the curly-haired boy standing next to her. Peter looked away from MJ then at the girl who was standing in the doorway. He couldn’t help but stare at her, taking in the beautiful sight in front of him. Peter was taken aback when suddenly, her lips curled into a wide smile. She pointed her finger at MJ, the at Peter, and back again. Peter had no idea what was going on until MJ’s smirk that she had faded off of her face.

“No. No, no, no, ” she said grabbing the girl's hand and pushing it down to her side.

“And who is this MJ?” she said slyly.

“This is…” MJ paused, glancing back at Peter then back to the girl at the door. “Penis Parker.” she then said with a slight chuckle.

“Hey! Wha- no! That’s not my name! MJ I swear to-“

“Your mom named you penis?” She said, raising an eyebrow in confusion. MJ laughed walking out of the door and next to the girl. “And this is my cousin, Y/N.”

“Sup man,” Y/N said to Peter with a big goofy grin on her face.

“Alright we’ll be leaving now,” MJ said grabbing her cousin’s hand, dragging her away from the door.

“Penis is kinda hot cuz. How have you not fu-“

“We’re leaving!” MJ shouted over Y/N, dragging her out of the way to where Peter couldn’t see them anymore, but just in Peter’s favor, he heard everything.

\\\

The next day, Peter was walking out of school with MJ and his best friend, Ned.

“So MJ, I heard you have a cousin. Y/N…” Ned said, leaning forward, looking across Peter to see MJ who was walking on the other side of him. Peter hit Ned on the shoulder with his, silently telling him to stop talking about it. MJ chuckle.

“Well uh, I gotta go. See you guys later! Good luck Pete.” Ned said with a wink as he walked towards the bus.

“Wait, Ned! We ride the bus- together… whatever.”

MJ and Peter walked down the stairs talking about all their classes, the teachers they hated, and other things. As they made their way to the sidewalk they heard someone yelling at them, causing both of them to turn their heads towards the loud voice.

“Ah. I forgot, Y/N’s picking me up today.”

“Y/N? Oh…” Peter said, trying to hide the blush on his face. Every time he thought about her, he couldn’t help but re-play the words she said yesterday: ...he’s kinda hot… Peters has never had that sort of attention given to him by a girl especially one that looked like Y/N. To him, she was an angel. But Peter, being the typical person he was, wouldn’t even think about approaching her- being afraid of rejection.

“How old is she?” Peter asked curiously, the thought lingering in his mind.

“Our age. She’s home-schooled.” the tall her said, stuffing her hands in the side pockets of her jacket. Peter looked at her curiously, if she’s home-schooled then why is she with MJ all the time now?

“Her uh, her dad just recently passed, due to health difficulties, so she and her mom moved down here to get a new start. While her mom is trying to get their new house and a stable job down in Queens she will be staying with me for about… a year I think. I, of course, let her stay with me. She’s my favorite cousin and I don’t want her to be alone during this ruff time.” she explained, practically reading Peter’s expression. He nodded in response, his eyes glued to his feet.

“MJ! MJ come on! Harry Potter re-run of the first two movies start in T-minus 10 minutes and I have to go pick up my new sweatshirt!” Y/N yelled from her car while honking the horn. The upper half of her body sticking out of the driver’s window while her forearms supported her on the roof of her car.

“Annnddd, she kinda a nerd, but she considers herself just ‘well educated’.” Peter chuckled as he looked at Y/N. Once they got to the car, MJ threw her backpack in the passenger window. Y/N slide back into her window, shoving the bag in the back. MJ then opened the car door and hopped in, clicking her seat belt. She waved bye to Peter.

“Bye Peter Parker.”

“Later MJ.”

“Oooh, so his name isn’t penis… I knew it! Peter, it’s cute. Sup Parker!”

Peter started to blush but it was hard to see from his face already red from the heat of the sun. He smiled and waved to her, noticing how her Y/E/C eyes glistened in the sun.

“H-hey, Y/N.” He said toying with the strap of his bag, his curls in his face.

“Heyyy! You should come watch the Harry Potter movies three and four with me and MJ Friday! You can even bring that one guy you guys are always talking to.” She said leaning on the steering wheel, looking at Peter through her long, mascara coated eyelashes.

“Sure I’d love to come… wait- do you have your driver's license?” the question lingered in Peter’s mind.

“Nope!” Y/N yelled as she sped away, the tires of the car screeching on the road. Peter could still hear their loud laughter of the two cousins as they drove away.

That night while Peter was patrolling as Spider-Man, he stopped and landed on the building next to MJ’s place. There was a window that was the only lit room. He thought it was MJ so he was going to go up and scare her, but once he got closer, he could see that it was Y/N. His heartbeat quickened as he watched her walk over to her bed, putting her hair in a ponytail. She was wearing an oversized black T-shirt. As she was putting her hair up, she stretched her arms causing her shirt to reveal her very small underwear. Peter could feel his suit beginning to get uncomfortable at the view in front of him.

Quickly, Peter swung away from the building making his way home before Y/N or anyone could see him.

He crawled back into his window making sure to stay quiet so that Aunt May wouldn’t hear. Once he had his suit off, he showed and got into bed. Peter couldn’t sleep that night. He couldn’t help but think about Y/N. She was tattooed in his brain and, of course, tattoos don’t go away.

///

The days went by slow, well, they went slow to Peter. He was overly excited to go to MJ’s place and watch a movie with Y/N. That was the only person on his mind, her. But those slow days soon went by and it was Friday afternoon. Peter was so anxious he practically ran home to put his school stuff away and then ran to MJ’s.

He approached the door to her place and knocked on the door with his fist. Peter whipped his sweaty palms on his flannel, waiting for the door to open.

“What up Pete! MJ said you would be here around this time. Come on in man.” Y/N said as she flung open the door with a soft smile on her face. Peter couldn’t get enough of her energetic personality. He followed Y/N, closing the door behind him. The brown-eyed boy couldn’t help but admire her as she walked in front of him. Her outfit consists of high-waisted but loose jeans, a plain black tube top with a very large flannel that was left unbuttoned.

“Uh, Michelle and your other friend… Ned! That’s his name, I can never remember,” she chuckled nervously, “they uh- went to the store to go get snacks and food so they should be back in a little while. I’m gonna go get some blankets and stuff from my room for the movies, there pretty long so I wanna be comfortable. Wanna help?” Y/N said as she started to walk towards her room, looking over her shoulder to see if Peter was following.

“Oh, yeah, sure I’ll help you,” he said, slowly trailing behind her. As they went into her room she started to grab blankets and pillows, tossing them by the door. Peter couldn’t help but admire her well-decorated room, it fits her personality so well, he thought to himself. He walked over to her tall nightstand and saw a pair of glasses sitting on them. For some reason, they intrigued him.

“Do you mind?” he asked. “Nah, not at all,” Y/N replied not looking up from the pile of blankets in the corner, waving her hand in a ‘go ahead’ motion. Peter shrugged and turned his attention back to the glasses. They were small and black, they didn’t look like they would fit her face. He picked them up, examining them curiously. Y/N looked over at Peter, immediately dropping everything in her hands and rushing over to him. She snatched the glasses out of his hand and put them in her drawer. Peter was taken aback by this sudden action, raising his hands in a surrendering motion.

“Don’t touch those,” Y/N said harshly. She looked at Peter’s face that was plastered with an apologetic look. “I- I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. My… my dad gave me those,” she explained. Peter mumbled an ‘it’s ok’ under his breath.

She walked over to the edge of her bed, scooting over to give Peter room to sit down. He took the hint and went to sit next to her. Y/N sat there, her leg bouncing as she tried to take steady breathes to calm herself down, fiddling with the many rings on her fingers.

“Hey, you ok Y/N?” Peter asked, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. She looked up at him with glossed-over eyes. She let out a shaky breath and nodded. Licking her lips, she began to explain.

“Well uh, m-my dad, he uh… he passed away about two weeks ago. When I was younger we used to always read together and I would have trouble saying some of the words. My mom thought it was just cause I couldn’t read properly yet but my dad always said ‘my little girl is the smarts little girl I know… she’s just as blind as a bat, like her father,’ Y/N paused, sniffing while wiping the tear that rolled down her cheek before continuing, “He bought me those glasses after the eye doctor told me my vision was terrible. The day before he passed away, he took the glasses off that he had and handed them to me. I tried to stop him and tell him that I had some, but all he did was look at my mom and then back at me and said, ‘she’s just as blind as a bat, like her father.’” the last part came out in a whisper.

Reaching over to her bedside table, Y/N grabbed a pair of circular glasses that looked like they were from the Harry Potter movie. “My dad loved Harry Potter, I never wear them though cause I-I’m just...scared. I don’t know why though. It’s just silly.” she said with a slight smile. “MJ took my contacts from me just a few days ago to get me to wear them and I still haven’t gotten them back.” so that’s why she came over that day, Peter wondered.

Peter was about to say something but MJ and Ned came into the apartment, yelling that they were back with the snacks and food.

“T-minus 10 minutes Y/N,” MJ yelled from the kitchen.

“Yeah, I’ll be out in a second,” Y/N shouted back to her, “you should go ahead.”

Peter got up to leave the room, but before he did he turned to say something, “I think that your dad would want you to wear them, Y/N. Trust me,” he said with a soft smile that caused Y/N to smile back at him.

///

“Dude, where’s Y/N? She’s never late for an H.P movie,” MJ questioned. Peter and Ned looked at each other shrugging before looking back at her. Only two minutes later, Y/N came walking out of her room, they all turned their heads to look.

“Ok, I’m ready for the movie,” she said with a big goofy smile on her face. Peter and MJ looked at her in shock. Ned had no idea what was going on and just sat and ate popcorn. Y/N had on some shorts and a Slytherin sweatshirt, but that wasn’t the shocking part. She was wearing her dad’s glasses.

“What? Do you guys not like my sweatshirt?”

“I think it’s great,” Ned said giving her a thumbs up.

“Thanks, Ned, glad to see someone appreciates it,” Y/N said sarcastically. MJ and Peter looked at each other. Peter was about to say something but MJ put a finger up signaling for him not to. Y/N sat between MJ and Peter on the couch, grabbing a bag of chips while adjusting the glasses on her face. She looked over at Peter mouthing the word ‘thank you’ causing Peter to blush but hid it quickly.

About thirty minutes into the movie, Y/N got comfortable and snuggled her head into MJ’s shoulder while MJ laid her head onto of Y/N’s. Y/N had her exposed long, smooth legs draped over Peter’s thighs. This sent Peters mind wondering:

As she slowly straddled my lap, I placed my hands on her thighs, keeping her steady. My large hands squeezed at her exposed skin. I ran them to her ass, repeating the motion causing her to jerk, rubbing her core against jeans, making her moan quietly in my ear. Her arms hugged around my neck. She moved her head to where her lips were perfectly leveld with mine. She connected her lips with mine in a soft kiss, but I wanted more. I needed more. I ran my tongue over her bottom lips, squeezing her ass in my hand once again. Her lips were parted slightly, giving me access to slip my tongue into her mouth. She surprised me with her next move. She wrapped her lips around my tongue then released it with a slight smacking noise. This made me harder than I was before- if that was even possible. We sat there for a second, staring into each other’s eyes, noticing how they were filled with lust. Before I could even think my actions through, I removed my hand from her ass, grabbing her jaw and pulling her facing into mine, catching her lips and lustful but passionate kiss. My tongue almost immediately won the dominance against hers. I flipped us so that I was on top and started to trail kisses down her exposed stomach. Her thighs wrapped around my head as her back arched off of the bed. I put my hands on her lower back. I started to tease her soaked-

“I don’t see how you like Draco Malfoy?” Ned’s voice snapped Peter out of his daydream, turning his head over to Ned who was munching on a handful of popcorn.

“What!” MJ and Y/N screamed. Ned and Peter both turned their heads to them, wondering why they seemed so upset. “What do you mean why do we like Draco Malfoy,” MJ said.

“What type of question is that?” Y/N said, finishing her sentence. This caused MJ and Y/N to go into a whole ordeal on why Draco is their favorite character. All Peter could do was watch the way her pink lips moved as she explained.

This helped Peter calm down from his daydream and stoping his hard-on to be seen. Thank God…

///

That night, Peter laid awake in his bed, thinking about how Y/N looked in his fantasy. He wished that it was really like so so badly. He couldn’t help to feel this attraction towards her, from the first time he saw her. It wasn’t just her good looks, even though to Peter she was stunning, it was her style, her personality, the way her eyes squinted and her cheekbones rose when she laughed. The way she would ramble about anything and everything. His last thought before he drifted into sleep rang in his brain,

Does she feel the same?

[A/N] Hey bestie :))) hope you liked this chapter! Thank you for the support and make sure to send me ideas for imagines you guys want! IM GONNA TRY TO UPLOAD EVERY DAY OR EVERY OTHER DAY AT 5:30/6:30 PM.

DISCLAIMER!!! THE NEXT CHAPTER IS FULL OF SMUT.. are you ready?

-J.T.S xxx

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k2padfoot · 3 years

Text

An Auror & A Healer

Draco x Y/n

Summary: Y/n is an auror who gets injured while searching for an escaped prisoner. Draco the healer has to cope with it all. ( side note- pretend Dolohov was never killed by Flitwick lol.)

Warnings: Blood, angst, fluff, husband!Draco.

Today had been dragging on, and on to say the least. You were called this morning to an emergency meeting with Harry and the rest of the aurors. A prisoner from Azkaban had escaped, and needless to say you were all asked to search for him. The escapee being Dolohov, once one of the dark lords followers and a very cunning wizard.

You were absolutely exhausted, you had been out searching for at least 9 hours now. “Y/l/n!! Snap out of it, we have to keep searching until the sun goes down, ok?” Harry yelled to you from across the mainland. Harry, yourself, and a few others had taken the mainland to search while more aurors were spread elsewhere around the prison.

You nodded back to him and snapped out of your daze. You had trailed off a bit from the rest of the aurors, you knew you weren’t supposed to go off alone so you made sure Harry was still in your sight somewhat. Kicking rocks across the sand you felt like just laying down right there and taking a nap, but that’s when you thought you heard the snap of a branch from behind. You spun around to face the wooded area behind you, when you could’ve sworn you saw a dark figure pass by. Quickly without thinking you ran into the woods.

It was dark, and cold and you weren’t exactly sure how far you had run in at this point. You knew the person had to be around here somewhere so you casted the lumos spell to light the way. You continued to walk a little bit further when your light caught glimpse of Dolohov, his dark disheveled hair, pale sweaty skin, and beady brown eyes staring back at you.. Within seconds his wand was raised and he began shooting curses your way.

“Reducto!” you yelled but he quickly jumped out of the way causing the ground next to him to blow up. His lips curved into an evil smile as he raised his wand again. “Stupefy!” he screamed, but you were faster taking off running the other way.

You were silently cursing yourself for getting in this position alone, with one of the most skillful duelers in dark magic. You kept sprinting while zigzagging your way through the wooded area, dodging branches and rocks. Every so often you’d look back and throw whatever curse you could his way, but it’s like he’d never give up no matter how many times you’d hit him.

“Stupefy!” You heard him yell and suddenly you were being thrown through the air into a large tree. You hit the ground hard, slamming your head into a rock in the process. You could feel your eyes getting heavy, and hear the crunching of leaves around you. You were waiting for Dolohov to come end you right there and then but you faintly heard what you thought could be Harry yelling. All the sudden half the aurors were around you and with that your eyes slowly fell shut.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Draco’s POV:

My shift had started at least 10 hours ago now, and all I wanted to do was go home to my beautiful wife y/n. My thoughts were quickly interrupted by my coworker shouting at me that another auror was being rushed to St. Mungo’s.

Everytime a call comes in about an injured auror my mind of course goes straight to her. I love that she truly enjoys what she does for a living, but merlin can it be terrifying. I knew she was out on a search today with Harry and all I could do was hope and plead to god it wasn’t going to bet her coming through those doors.

The emergency room doors came busting open and I could see healers rushing in a woman on a gurney. It was hard to make out her features at first, but that’s when I noticed the large diamond ring on her left hand.. the ring I gave her.

I didn’t know I had been standing there for a couple seconds until my coworker started yelling at me to snap out of it and help him. I quickly ran over to her unconscious body and started to assess her injuries. Her hair was a bloody mess with a large gash to the top of her head, I could see a few cuts on her legs, and what looked like a broken right arm. I looked up to see Harry and two other aurors standing beside her with worried looks.

“What the hell happened Potter?!” I yelled at him, not meaning to sound so harsh.

He gave me a sad look, “Draco.. I’m so sorry. We were searching for Dolohov and I could’ve sworn I had my eye on her! But.. all of the sudden she was gone, and then we heard fighting coming from the woods. When we ran in there she had already been hit by a curse, and she was sent flying into a tree. I think she might’ve hit her head on it, i’m not really sure.” Harry said.

“Dolohov? Oh merlin. I’ll kill him.” I said with my teeth gritted and a tear slipping from my right eye. I turned away from Harry to help the other healers take you to a trauma room but that’s when my boss stopped me.

“Healer Malfoy, you must not work on family. I know you want to, but I can’t let you. Please, just go wait for now and I will update you as soon as I can.” he said to me with sad eyes as he put a hand on my shoulder. I nodded and walked away to go change out of my scrubs.

I had been sitting in the healers lounge for what felt like hours now. I was worried sick. All I could think about is what if she doesn’t make it? How am I going to live without her? I gazed up at the clock to realize I had actually been sitting here for 4 hours now. It was getting late, and merlin am I tired. I tried to fight the sleep but I just couldn’t, my body eventually giving in.

I was quickly woken by my boss shaking my shoulders, “Draco... Draco, Oh good! Since your awake you may go see her now.” he said while looking down at me.

“Oh merlin she’s ok! Thank you, oh thank you so much! Is she awake??” I said while i jumped to my feet.

His eyes turned soft. “Malfoy listen, she suffered major head trauma from the fall. She’s going to be ok, but we aren’t sure how long she will be out for. Everyone’s body heals differently, you understand?” he said to me and I nodded while he gestured to what room she was in.

I walked in the bright room to see her unconscious laying there. Her right arm was in a sling, she had a white bandage wrapped around the top of her head, and a few fading scars lining her legs. She looked so peaceful, yet so broken. I walked a bit closer and took in her state for a couple of seconds, a few tears slipping from my eyes. I could only hope she’d wake soon.

It’s been a few days now I think.. The nurses come in ever so often to check on her, and sometimes ask if i’m ok. I’m not. I haven’t been sleeping, I really don’t remember the last time I ate, and I think I might be wearing the same clothes as yesterday.. I won’t be ok until she is.

The moon was sitting over the horizon and shining through y/n’s hospital room. It was around 10 o’clock now, and I was becoming increasingly sleepier. I’ve had trouble letting myself fall asleep, scared I might miss something. Scared she might slip away from me. Scared to close my eyes and see her lying there all mangled up again. But I couldn’t stop my eyes from closing anymore... too tired.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your eyes slowly opened to bright lights and white walls. Your head was pounding and you weren’t exactly sure how you got here. The last thing you can recall is running through the woods.. Your eyes shifted to him, sitting next to your bed in a grey armchair sound asleep. You noticed his gorgeous blonde hair all messed up, the bags under his eyes, what looked like a two day old outfit, and his hand grasped tightly to your own.

You squeezed his hand a little bit, “Draco.. Hey love wake up.” you whispered.

His eyes shot open faster than you could blink, “Y/n!! Oh darling, it’s so good to hear your voice!” Draco said while grabbing your face in his hands, a sob escaping his lips.

You pulled him into your chest, “Hey... don’t cry. I’m ok, see? I’m right here.” you said while rubbing his back.

He looked up at you with glossy eyes, “I was really scared y/n. You have no idea what it felt like to see you so hurt, and then have to just wait and see if you’d come back to me..” he said whispering the last part.

You now grabbed his face and pulled him into a long, and much needed kiss. The two of your lips moving in sync with one another. Needing to catch your breath you pulled away and stared into his sky blue eyes.

“How long was I out Dray, and wh-what happened out there?” you asked while he made himself comfortable next to you.

You laid your head in the crook of his neck, and he looked down at you to speak. “About 5 days.. the longest 5 days possible. I don’t know if you remember but you were with Harry searching for Dolohov. He said you ran off after him on your own, and when they found you he had already cursed you. You hit your head, and seemed to have broken your arm in the fall..” Draco told you.

You nodded starting to remember why you were running through the woods in the first place. You looked up at Draco and asked, “Can we please go home now?” and his eyes softened looking into your own.

“Of course darling.” he replied delicately kissing your forehead.

Draco opened the doors to your large home and guided you in. Your head injury still had you a little wobbly on your feet so he made you let him carry you up the stairs.

You were a giggling mess when he sat you down on the bed. You didn’t notice you had been staring at him as he put your things away and got you out comfy pajamas.

“Yes my dear?” he asked while turning around to face you and handing you one of his t-shirt’s.

“Nothing, I just love you!” you said with a big smile on your face while slipping on the shirt.

Draco walked over to you and leant down in between your knees, “And I love you more. I don’t know how I existed these past couple of days without you. You can’t ever leave you know that right?” he said while looking up into your eyes with pure love.

You grazed your hand over his cheek and pressed your lips to his, “Of course my love.” you said as you pulled away from the kiss and smiled at him.

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ushidoux · 3 years

Text

Look at Me, Senpai - Hinata x Reader x Daichi

Summary: Reader starts to see Hinata in a different light once he returns from Brazil. It turns out Hinata’s inability to give up isn’t just something restricted to the court. (~3.6k words)

Warnings: fem!reader, nsfw, infidelity, a touch of the yandere

A/N: This got really long so I split it in half lmfao, expect part 2 in a couple of days.

Part 1|| Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4 || Part 5

---

Senpai, I like you.

As you continued to sit courtside, watching Karasuno’s team overtake the opposition led by your boyfriend Daichi Sawamura, your eyes briefly settled on Hinata, the orange-haired first year. When the ball finally sailed over to him, and he hit it with an inhuman speed, the middle blocker’s signature, you thought briefly about his frank and surprisingly serious confession earlier in the day. How bold! You hadn’t taken it seriously of course - your affection towards him was nothing short of motherly. Plus, he was well aware of how serious you were about Daichi.

What an odd joke, you thought, but you had played along with it despite the fact that you knew he meant what he said, dismissing him with a laugh and a pat on the head.

I like you too, Hinata! You’re very fun to be around!

His smile had only wavered slightly at your words but you could feel his eyes get just a little darker as the twang of rejection set in.

But he was just a baby and this was just puppy love. He’d get over it eventually, right? He’d eventually find someone his own age.

Suddenly across the court, you could feel Hinata’s gaze fall on you again, and he smiled again, but this time it was different. Maybe it was bleed over from the boundless confidence and determination he had whenever he stepped on the court, but something about the way his eyes flashed just for a moment as he looked at you made your face grow just a little bit warm.

[Years pass.]

“So when’s the wedding?!”

Your grandmother’s voice blared through the phone in raucous joy as you laughed and tried to field her many follow-up questions. She, like almost everyone else you had told, was incredibly excited about your proposal, and despite the fact that it was only three days later, the high was already starting to fade and you were getting tired of answering the same questions.

When’s the wedding? Where’s the wedding? How excited are you? Are you already pregnant? Are you going to move into a house?

Between your grandmother, your parents and siblings, your wonderful friends, your neighbors - honestly, literally everyone and their mother - you were feeling incredibly supported during this time. But still, somehow, something felt wrong, and you couldn’t exactly place why.

Once you had finally answered Grandma’s questions to her satisfaction, you hung up the phone and flopped backwards back into your bed with a sigh. Holding up one hand in front of you to display your engagement ring, you inspected the stone carefully, letting it glimmer in the slowly fading sunlight beaming in through your bedroom window.

“Mrs. Sawamura,” you tried out the name in a soft whisper. It had a nice sound to it, ____ Sawamura. This was what you had always wanted, ever since you had met and started dating in high school. You’d always wanted to support his dreams, whether it was excelling at schoolwork, volleyball, joining the police force… and what better way to do it by agreeing to be his wife and spending the rest of your life with him? So many years had passed with you by his side, this was only the next natural step.

So what exactly was this reticence inside of you? You knew he would be good to you, no matter what, even if you felt that something about your relationship had already started to lose its spark. He had been working longer days and later nights, leaving very little time for you, and with all this time left alone, sometimes you regretted not having spent more time in high school or even later on making friends outside of those people he knew. The problem was that the volleyball team was so warm from the start, and you were so invested in caring for them as Daichi was… maybe this was some form of delayed empty nest syndrome, solidifying as the members all grew up and grew apart.

You checked the time on the small wall clock before you. Daichi wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours, and again you couldn’t fault him for this. The ring on your finger looked quite expensive, so he’d clearly worked hard to afford it.

Maybe you would draw.

Minutes passed, maybe even an hour, and as the sun finally set, you set down your pencil and reached over to your window to close the curtains so that the neighbors couldn’t peer into your home once you turned on the lights. Clicking on the bedside lamp, you settled back into a cross-legged position before your large sketchbook again, now taking a second look at your drawing.

An ordinary but hyper realistic-looking crow now peered back at you, almost as if it were wondering why you had decided on putting it to paper out of all the things that could have come to mind. You looked at it carefully and remembered a single fact about crows:

Crows never forget a face.

---

The next morning was Sunday and Daichi was fortunately off work for the day so you sat with your new fiancé at the kitchen table, listening to him talk excitedly about the week as the two of you shared a large omelette and munched on toasted bread.

“Honestly, you wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I see, babe, it’s really something.”

His laugh was always hearty and you couldn’t deny the sparkle in his brown eyes as he shared work shenanigans with you, so while you were uncomfortable with the idea of him being in harm’s way so often as a police officer, you couldn’t help but smile with him whenever he did. His happiness was infectious, especially when he held your hand tightly and squeezed it just like this very moment, interlocking his fingers with yours as he ate with his other hand.

Once he finished eating, he leaned over to kiss you on the forehead, threading his fingers through your hair.

“Thanks for breakfast, baby,” he whispered, his voice smooth and lowered an octave. With his gaze, he drank up the image of you only in his oversized t-shirt and panties before pulling you towards him so that you straddled his hips as he sat on the chair. With you pressed close to him like this, between his hardening cock and the edge of the table, you could feel your breath hitch ever so slightly in your throat. Years had passed and you were still like this - you were still the shy, bashful girl who dared to date the captain of the volleyball team.

“Daichi…,” you trailed off, as he started to litter soft kisses on your collarbones.

“Do you want to uh…,” he paused and pulled back, a smile spreading across his features, as one of his hands found its way up your shirt to palm your breast, “... start off our morning right?”

He didn’t bother waiting for your reply before his lips met yours for dessert.

---

Parted thighs and many soft sighs later, the two of you lay side by side in pleasant exhaustion. You stared at the ceiling, your cheeks flushed as you pulled air into your overworked lungs. Daichi’s head found its way to rest in the softness of your abdomen and you languidly caressed his hair, your body still buzzing from lovemaking.

Daichi was clearly apologizing for passing out the moment he came home, you knew, and you appreciated his thoughtfulness. As you continued to softly scratch his scalp, the soft glow of the late morning sun warmed the two of you up even further and you knew that this feeling had to be what ballads were all about.

Love.

You loved Daichi. Right?

His fingers traced up and down your thighs, just barely avoiding the dampness of him releasing inside you just moments earlier slowly leaking from your center.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, as his fingers traveled your skin. He always told you this, reminded you were the most wonderful girl in the world.

And he was the most wonderful man on Earth. How incredible it was that you had found each other, you thought, as you lay together for what felt like hours and found yourself dozing off in each other’s embrace.

Yes, this was enough.

---

“You don’t have to go all out babe, it’s just the guys!” Daichi’s loud voice carried from outside the bathroom as you perfected your mascara. You ignored him with a playful roll of the eye even though you couldn’t see him, focusing on perfecting a winged eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man. It had been a while since you had dressed up, and it didn’t hurt to really go all out. This was a sort of mini-reunion anyway and what better way to make your fiancé proud than to make all his friends jealous?

“I thought you said I was pretty this morning,” you called out, as you dabbed perfume behind your ears and at the center of your chest. “Don’t you want everyone else to know?”

With that you posed dramatically at the end of the hallway, cat-walking with a face so straight it was ridiculous until you reached Daichi who stood at the front of your door, holding in a laugh. You burst into laughter once you reached him, falling into his chest.

“Let’s go see your old team!” You said, quickly pushing him away playfully when his eager hands settled too comfortably on your ass. He nodded, deciding to grab your hand instead as your cab approached.

Your car ride was short and your mind started to wander as you idly rubbed the knuckles of Daichi’s hand with your thumb. You remembered him telling you vaguely about one of his teammates returning to Japan, prompting the reunion, the orange-haired one named Hinata who you recalled was nothing short of a ball of sunshine and had confessed to you once.

Senpai, I like you.

Well, he would probably have gotten over that crush by now. It had been years.

The restaurant was loud when you entered, following Daichi closely. A table full of young men almost erupted in praise once the two of you approached.

“Captain!”

Tanaka, who you recognized easily from his shaved head and brash attitude came sailing over to essentially crush Daichi in a headlock, but before he could reach him, the orange-haired boy who had just graced your thoughts a couple of minutes earlier beat him to it, slapping him heartily on the back.

“You finally made it! Did you miss me?” Hinata said, with a grin and for a split second, you thought you saw his eyes flit to you. Without warning, your mind started to race, realizing that immediately your face had started to warm as you watched your goofy little underclassman with a crush talk and tease your fiancé animatedly-

And to your dismay, you realized you couldn’t take your eyes off of him.

---

You couldn’t pinpoint exactly what had you unsettled throughout the lively dinner - was it the fact that even though you sat by Kiyoko, the previous team manager, she seemed to be more focused on eating quietly, a smile on her face as she basked in the glory days with the boys? Or was it the fact that you could see Hinata’s rare but noticeable furtive glances towards you, the ones that Daichi seemed to miss now that he was more than a little drunk judging by how red he was in the face? Maybe it was the fact that you were trying to understand what was this sudden gravitational pull you felt towards Hinata at first glance, something that made very little sense to you and seemed oh-so-very-wrong.

Was it the fact that while he was still shorter than average for a volleyball player, his time in Brazil had tanned his skin nicely, bringing out the well toned muscles in his shoulders or arms? Or that while his eyes were still bright and kind, the angles in his face had grown sharper and his smile had made the very slight shift from determined to confident and almost even cocky?

What the hell was it that had you suddenly so distracted?

You fiddled with the ring on your finger above the table between bites of grilled meat and poured sake, trying desperately to make small talk with Kiyoko, only to be disappointed by how unsuccessful you were in engaging yourself in meaningful conversation.

Eventually you decided to get up for some fresh air, giving Daichi a little nudge on the back to let him know you were stepping out and took a seat in a small chair set outside the chilly restaurant meant for smokers. It was nice to have a little more quiet, and you briefly pondered if Daichi would be okay with you going home first.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong, and it was about to get way worse since it turned out that Hinata had followed you out.

“Heya!” Hinata’s voice startled you as he approached, quickly taking a seat beside you. Your face flushing for the second time today (you blamed it on the alcohol, of course), you eked out a hello, mentally shaming yourself for being so awkward.

“You were quiet in there...”

“A-ah, yes! It’s just I haven’t really seen any of you guys in a while and we weren’t close, so it was a bit hard to follow the conversations…,” you trailed off, not making eye contact. You decided that a good way to politely add distance would be to re-introduce yourself even though you knew exactly who he was now, and you knew he remembered you.

You stuck your hand out to greet him formally with a handshake.

“I don’t know if you still remember me but I’m ____ -”

“I know,” Hinata interrupted curtly, without looking directly at you and your hand fell to your side slowly and returned to your lap. He stared out at the street with his face unsmiling, a look that appeared almost unnatural for someone like him and then turned back to you to give you a wide smile anew.

“How have you been? I didn’t think I’d see you here again!” He was cheerful again and polite as always, but for a moment you felt mildly insulted, as though he’d implied that maybe he didn’t expect you to be with Daichi for this long.

Maybe you were just overreacting.

...

Yeah, you were just overreacting.

“Mmm, things have been great!” You replied earnestly, fiddling subconsciously with your engagement ring again, only to catch him laying eyes on it but making no comment. For some reason, you didn’t feel like it was worth mentioning either.

Silence sat between the two of you as you stared out into the road again together. Two strangers who’d known each other briefly. You wished he would go back in and the night would be over and you could forget the fact that you were suddenly attracted to him.

Ah, that was it. And that would be it.

Hinata spoke again and your heart thumped at his simple question, “Are you happy?”

You gave him a look of confusion but you could already tell what he meant just by the look in his eyes. The same look he gave his opponents on the court, the one that demanded to be taken seriously.

While, it wasn’t exactly the same look that he gave you when you brushed his confession off those many years ago, it was pretty darn close.

“Y-yes?” You asked, feigning incomprehension. He smiled in response but not with his eyes.

“When’s the wedding?”

The shift of his tone back to excitement was jarringly unnatural, especially since you hadn’t even brought up your wedding, and now you wondered how one person could be confident enough to appear out of nowhere and ask bold questions to a complete stranger.

“I’m not sure yet… we haven’t planned yet.”

“Great!” He interjected suddenly, and rose to his feet. “I still have time!”

Time?

He turned to re-enter the restaurant as you looked at him in shock and incredulity. “Excuse me, time to do what?” You asked, immediately questioning why those words had come out of your mouth the moment they did.

Hinata turned to face you, his smile only mildly sinister when compared to the seriousness of his gaze.

“Time to convince you, of course. I've always liked you from the start, ___, and I think… actually I know that I can treat you better than Daichi does.”

And with that he turned the corner, re-entering the restaurant and leaving you in a complete and utter shock.

---

Who would believe you?

Sweet little Hinata threatening to break up your upcoming marriage?

Sweet little Hinata planning to steal your heart right under his senpai’s nose?

Sweet little Hinata texting you suddenly at 11pm the next day while you got ready for bed just to let you know that he was “thinking of you”?

You looked at the phone incredulously, your other hand still holding your toothbrush wondering how to best respond to the message. The obvious answer was to block his number - you weren’t exactly sure how he’d gotten it anyway, but as your finger hovered over the button, you paused.

Then Daichi turned the corner of your bathroom door and startled, you fumbled and dropped your phone.

“You okay, Shakes?” He joked, as he reached for your phone, but you grabbed it quickly, locking it and placing it facedown on the bathroom sink. You quickly nodded, continuing to brush rapidly.

“Can you believe he grew taller?”

Your eyes rose.

“H-he?”

Daichi laughed. “Hinata, of course. He was such a shrimp, remember? I mean he’s still not that tall, but he definitely looks a lot more like an adult, right?”

“Y-yeah…,” you agreed, sheepishly, as Daichi hopped into bed, leaving you to squirm at the sight of your own reflection in the bathroom mirror.

---

The next morning, you woke up to no new messages on your phone and breathed a sigh of relief, assuming that your non-response had sent the point across to the young volleyball player. With that odd guilt now off your shoulders, you occupied yourself with the first steps of wedding planning, spending most of the day browsing through websites and calling companies. You were determined to do this mostly yourself and do it right.

You weren’t exactly sure what you were trying to prove but over the next couple of weeks, you dove headfirst into flowers and venues and elaborate table accents and fancy invitations and ignoring Hinata’s messages that had now upgraded to thirst traps that kept your eyes lingering on the phone way too long, while Daichi spent more and more time at work, and less and less time with you, until suddenly…

“Daichi!”

For the fourth night in a row, Daichi had come home in the middle of the night and wordlessly crawled into bed beside you as you tossed and turned waiting for him to come home, because that was all you did: waste time until he returned to you, of course. What else could you do? Your world was so small, after all.

And it would only get smaller once you got married. Your miniscule sphere of existence centered around Daichi and you were beginning to resent it.

Was that the reason you were starting to save every one of Hinata’s dirty pictures?

Dirty was an overstatement - you had seen everything up to his V-line and while your artist’s eye could now trace every single bit of his anatomy from memory, you couldn’t say anything he sent you was truly risqué, could you? Maybe he sent those pics to every girl on his phone, or maybe you were different...

That was besides the point. The point was that suddenly the man who lay beside you every night was no longer doing it for you.

“___,” Daichi whispered groggily, revealing that he really had just passed out the moment his head hit the pillow. “I really need to sleep… what’s the problem?”

You faltered, unable to come up with something to explain why you’d just thrown a mini-tantrum.

“... there’s no problem, I was just… never mind.”

Too many things bubbled inside you and were left unspoken that night, and so in order to express yourself, you settled on, or rather on top, something way worse.

“I have to admit, I didn’t expect it to be this easy.”

Hinata didn’t mean to be offensive - howcouldhebehewassuchasweetboyafterall - but the pang of guilt in your chest said otherwise, as you inhaled and exhaled softly under the weight of his muscular body pressed against yours.

Maybe you felt bad, but the feeling was short-lived because once Hinata’s fingers dug into the flesh of your hips and gripped you tightly, firmly, so much so in fact you were sure it was just to prove that for all these years you had really belonged to him, he thrust into you so sharply and precisely that you let out a gasp as the intense pleasure blinded you.

“S-Shoyo!”

“Say it louder,” was all he whispered as he flipped you over before slamming you down onto him hard, sending another wave of intense stimulation through you.

You screamed his name again, tears now coming to your eyes as he bucked his hips against you, bouncing you up and down his deliciously large cock at a brutal, energetic pace, knowing very well that you couldn’t keep up from the short, unintelligible sounds now leaping out of your throat.

“You’ve always been mine, ___. You just didn’t know it yet.”

Warm wetness streaming from your face almost as much as from the space between your legs, you couldn’t find the words to protest. Did you want to protest? Was he right? Wasn’t he right?

Your mind was too hazy for thought, and instead you let selfish desire overtake you for the rest of the night.

#mae.writing #hinata x reader #daichi x reader #hinata shoyo x reader #sawamura daichi x reader #hinata x reader x daichi #not sfw #haikyuu smut #haikyuu x reader #hinata shoyo #sawamura daichi #hinata #daichi #daichi smut #hinata smut #series: look at me senpai

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honeymoonjin · 4 years

Text

𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔: fanboy!taehyung x artist!reader

𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡: 13.7k

𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑦: still bitter about a scandal that ruined your painting career, you’re recommended a getaway by your therapist to a small island off the coast of seoul. expecting a tranquil location to wallow in self-pity, you’re startled when on your first night, you encounter an avid fan of your work. instead of annoying you for an autograph, kim taehyung ends up being the very thing you need to fall in love with art again.

𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠: sexually explicit content, reader suffers from poor mental health but nothing serious, unprotected sex, oral (f receiving), fingering, praise, that’s kinda it, it’s pretty soft tbh

The breeze is light here, broken by the gentle rise of the sand dunes behind you. It runs over your skin like water, a warm current that lasts long after the sun slips below the horizon line.

You sit for hours watching it, the tail of pinks and oranges and ochres that reflect thickly on the top of the water, the shallow crests of low tide. There’s a pull in your heart, a twitch at your fingers. The you a year ago would’ve had her paints out already, an easel with legs precariously shoved in the dry sand. The you a year ago would have been tossing up whether cadmium yellow or cadmium orange would suit the last slip of sun above the water, and whether you should wait til it was gone entirely to save making the decision.

Then again, the you a year ago would never have needed to come here.

The you today just waits, silently, you don’t even know what for. You’d been told this was a getaway. That you just needed some time to recover your muse, or some bullshit like that. But the more time you sit in silence and watch the sky blacken to navy and the stars prick the darkness with dazzling clarity, you think your therapist was wrong. How was this a getaway when all your problems were still festering inside you?

“Oh my god, Y/n L/n?”

You groan and sink back into the sand, head cushioned on the warm piles. Just your fucking luck. “You’ve got the wrong person,” you call out with eyes squeezed shut, praying the stranger will leave you alone. The last thing you needed was a green reporter or psycho fan to spill your location to the rest of the world. You can only imagine the headline. Disgraced painter Y/n L/n found hiding away on a tropical island eight months after she ruined the Met Gala.

“Oh my god, it is you! I’m a massive fan, wow!”

Fuck. At least there was a chance they’d keep quiet. You crack open an eye, staring up at the figure beside you, cast in shadow. From the glint of moonlight, you can see a crown of ruffled hair that’s a faded teal. It reminds you of the impressionist painting of a mountain lake that threw your work into the public eye. Just as faded as the dye on his hair, that time feels worn and aged, like from another life. A reminder of how far you’d fallen. “Look,” you confess lowly to the silhouette, “I just wanna be left alone, I’m not- I’m just here for a break from...everything.”

The figure shifts his weight in the sand, raising an arm to scratch at the back of his neck shyly. “I don’t mean to disturb you,” he apologises. With the slight breeze, his baggy clothes buffet around his lean figure and in the darkness he looks like some vengeful angel, towering over you with the moon behind him. But his voice is so soft, so genuine, so- so warm. Perhaps not vengeful, then, but definitely an angel. “You’re a hero of mine, I wanted to thank you for how much you’ve inspired me, saved me. Gosh, it’s crazy that you’re even here, I-”

“I’m sorry,” you force out, sitting up, wincing as grains of sand work their way down the nape of your neck, “really, I am. But I’m not the person you’re thinking of. Not anymore, at least.” You hate the way your voice rings out so thinly in the night air, nothing like the deep honey of his. You hate the way you sound broken.

He senses it too; he takes a step back, turns towards the dunes. “I should be going, I guess,” he murmurs. “For what it’s worth, I hope I see you around. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

You don’t respond, wrapping your arms around your hunched knees and staring at the silver ocean until you can no longer see him in your peripheral vision.

—

It’s over a week before you see him again. Though you’d never admit it to anyone, you keep an eye out for the boy with the teal hair. There wasn’t enough light that day to make out his face but still, with hardly any people for miles, you hadn’t anticipated he’d be all that difficult to find.

Truth be told, there had been a deep curl of regret and dissatisfaction that took root inside you shortly after you left. He was just trying to be nice, and you could use a friend. Could use someone.

You had asked for privacy when your therapist began recommending a break, a getaway, but you hadn’t expected it to this degree. The place you were staying at was a rundown bungalow just behind the dunes, tucked away in a sliver of land where sand met forest, rising up into hills. The only people you saw were the employees that ran it: a maid that stopped by every day at 1pm, even though you had already made the bed and cleaned up after yourself; an older gentleman that delivered you fresh groceries every couple of days in his ancient-looking four wheel drive; and finally, the electrician you’d had to call out a few nights prior after the power went out.

The mysterious fan hadn’t been dressed like an employee; then again, it was long past the workday when he’d approached you. Mulishly, you find yourself lugging a picnic blanket and a pillow down to the beachfront every evening, monitoring every inch of the coastline that stretches around this edge of the peninsula.

It’s only on the ninth night, when you’re folding up your rough blanket with a disappointed grumble, that a sudden yap catches your attention. You whirl around, toes sinking deeper into the light sand, and gasp as a familiar silhouette approaches, stumbling down a sand dune to your left.

He hasn’t seen you yet; so focused on the tiny fluffball that tugs restlessly at its leash. It’s a lot earlier tonight than the last time you’d seen him, and there’s enough remnants of sunlight in the sky to cast him in a warm golden glow.

He’s in baggy clothes like last time, a long-sleeved white t-shirt with a v in the center, unbuttoned and sagging over the shoulder of the arm that’s getting yanked along, and some tan linen shorts. It’s hard to tell with how he sinks to his ankles in sand with every step, but he’s barefoot, almost sliding down the steep dune more so than walking.

You can’t hear him at this distance, but his lips are moving, parted in a boxy grin as he responds to the constant yipping of the tiny dog at his feet. He’s gorgeous, tanned skin to fit the honey of his voice - the voice you’ve been unable to shake from your head - and the roots of his hair are the colour of brown sugar, lightening into the dyed teal ends, whipping over his cheeks and neck in the seabreeze.

He turns off when he reaches the base, following his dog, who pulls in your direction, short bursts of energy that get cut off by the length of the leash. Your heart jumps, and you find yourself waiting in anticipation, breath caught in your throat.

But the moment he glances up and sees you, he halts in his tracks. Stepping back, his smile falls, bowing his head to you apologetically and pulling on the leash so that the small black-and-tan puppy at his feet turns around with him.

They start walking away from you, and you don't have time to think before you're calling out to him, jogging over with your blanket and pillow forgotten behind you.

He stops walking, though he doesn't turn, and when you finally come to a stop beside him, he keeps his head down.

"Look, I'm sorry about yesterday," you rush out, slightly out of breath, "I was in a really shitty mood, and I had kinda come here to get away from...everything in the first place. I wasn't expecting a fan, and I reacted badly. I'm sorry."

Even after standing still, you can't seem to catch your breath. You haven't seen him this close, in this much detail, and it makes the air catch in your lungs. His eyes are an intense burnt umber, dancing over your face with an unreadable depth to them. He's taller than you, but not bulky. Though his shoulders are wide, he's lean, with a narrow nose and soft cheeks. The wind plays with the ends of his hair, revealing glimpses of a strong brow. He's beautiful.

"I didn't mean to bother you," he says after a moment, and you almost jump at the timbre of his voice so close to you, "I should be the one apologising. I'll leave you alone, honestly. I can find another place to go for a walk, or go at a different time-"

"Do you walk here a lot at this time?" you interrupt, the euphoria of finally holding a conversation after so long loosening your tongue. "You haven't been back since that night."

He tips his head to the side, shoulder jerking when his dog impatiently tugs at the leash, quiet snuffles and yips of disapproval ignored in the air between you. There's a flicker of something in his eyes - surprise? Amusement? "You were looking for me?"

"I-" Your voice fails you, and you realise how pathetic you must look. Your shoulders sink. "I was... I wanted to apologise," you land on finally.

That strange flicker in his eyes settles into a grateful warmth. "I normally do, yeah, but I had to go back to the mainland to pick up this guy." With a genuine smile, he glances down to the ball of fluff that's now lying over his bare foot. "I stayed there while he got his first lot of vaccinations. You can pat him, if you want."

You can recognise that offer for what it really is; an olive branch. In other words, he's apparently not holding a grudge against you for being an asshole. You smile gratefully, crouching down to pat the tiny animal. "What's his name?"

"Yeontan," he answers cheerily. "he's nine weeks old!"

You coo, chuckling at the soft fur wriggling beneath your fingertips, at the wet nose prodding at your palm for more pats. "Yeontan..." you muse. "Why does that name sound familiar?"

You hear a sheepish laugh from above. "Your, um, your painting of the old barn in Icheon? There's a kennel that's beside it in shadow, but you can just make out the name Yeontan painted on the front. I-" He breaks off awkwardly, falling silent.

Your hand freezes, and you feel yourself slump from a crouch to sitting fully on the sand, still hot from the afternoon sun. Yeontan. A detail you couldn't even remember painting, yet he'd named his dog after it. The dog continues to cover your hands in slobber and stray fur, but you just stare at it blankly.

"I'm sorry," the man winces, tone low with defeat. "You probably think it's stupid. I swear I'm not one of those crazy obsessed fans! There was just..." His voice changes then, closes up to cut off any emotion. "I shouldn't say. Sorry."

Your shoulders slacken. "You don't have to keep apologising," you say softly. After a moment's thought, you push up off the sand to stand up again, grains clinging to the skin that's damp from the dog's affections. The handsome stranger's face is stricken, reluctant as he watches you get up. You miss the boxy smile he'd held when he made his way down the dunes. You wonder if he'll ever smile that way at you. "I wanna hear. What you have to say."

Hand flexing on the leash, he looks down at Yeontan and back up at you, eyes squinted slightly as the sun glares onto his face; a radiant, sharp orange. "One of the reasons I'm such a fan of your work is the emotion you can actually see on the canvas. I don't even know how to explain it, but I feel it. And with the Icheon barn painting - I actually saved up for years to buy the original - there's something so sad and lonely about that kennel, that patch of shadow. The rest of the scene is so bright and open, it feels like a party that the kennel wasn't invited to. I don't know, it's stupid. But I thought if I ever bought a dog, I'd name it Yeontan so that it wouldn't feel so alone." He faces the horizon as he speaks, wincing into the light, and a broken laugh bubbles out of his throat once he's done. "Like I said; it's stupid."

But you don't think it's stupid at all. "Did it work?" you ask instead, nose prickling as tears build behind your eyes. The more he spoke, the more you remember the painting. It was your last work before the Met Gala disaster, and after everything went down in flames, desperate online tabloids went back to it, citing it as a 'cry for help'. You hadn't really painted it like that though, not really. You'd seen that beautifully painted barn in the countryside when you were driving between cities to visit your parents, and was taken by the dilapidated dog kennel tucked just beside it. Painting it wasn't some sort of clue to your nosedive, but more like a solidarity with that kennel, the dog that once lived there. The story that had been forgotten. And to hear this man had seen it, had wanted to ease the suffering just like you had... The emotions inside you, ones that had felt so dull and monochrome, now churn inside you in indecipherable technicolour, too many to count. But you think one of them might just be hope. "Did- did getting Yeontan work?"

He's looking at you now. He stays silent for a moment, the softest smile tugging at your lips, and it takes your breath away, watching the colours of sunset play across his skin while his brown eyes seek yours out intensely. "Yeah, it did," he answers eventually, his voice almost a whisper. It's only once he starts speaking that you realise the two of you have moved closer inwards without realising, so that it would only take a half step forward to be pressed against him. "But I think talking with you has helped more."

You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. The whirlpool inside you settles, leaving you feeling lighter than you have in years. You don't know what it is about this man that makes you feel...sane again, but you want more of it. "I think talking with you has helped me too," you confess, voice lilting in uncertainty. "Can... can I see you again? I don't even know your name, but-"

"Taehyung," he answers immediately, and even with the fall of night, the sun well and truly gone, his eyes are bright. "I could come back tomorrow?"

Your toes flex in the sand fighting the urge to jump in relief. "Yes! Yes, I'd like that," you chime, a smile tugging at your lips. "It was nice to meet you, Taehyung."

"The pleasure is all mine."

You sleep well that night. You can’t remember the last time the peaceful rays of sun have woken you so gently, but you certainly aren’t complaining.

You’d spent the past week or so moping in your cabin until late afternoon and then moping on the beach. Only now, after finally meeting the boy again - Taehyung - you realise how much you’ve been wasting your time buried in your own thoughts. Now all you want to do is explore. You’d been told on the ferry over here that the island was only a few hours’ walk around the coastline, and that your cabin, a street of shops and a small village of houses were the only signs of life. No bar to drown your sorrows at. No club for finding faceless strangers to make you forget who you were for a few hours. All your coping vices had been replaced with open stretches of nature in all its colours; the cool grey rocky beaches on the southern shore, the lush greens of the hilly forests, the glinting turquoise of the sea, and open plains of pastel sky for miles and miles.

The walk isn’t particularly intensive, but it’s long, and your feet ache in their sandals by the time you reach the docks again, having marked a full loop around the island. The dock, empty this late in the morning, leads directly to the main street via a cobblestone path that weaves between dunes, flax bushes, fields and a skinny stretch of trees, and you follow it to the center of the island, resting in a small cafe.

There’s no free WiFi here, so you sip at a tall glass of homemade strawberry lemonade and watch the streets through the storefront window. From your seat, you can see the people wander back and forth, the odd few with kids, but almost all are retirement age. Slow-moving couples with walkers and canes, elderly men jangling the keys to their vintage cars (that surely didn’t have much road to drive on), women with age-spotted skin and heavy beaded jewellery.

You can’t work out how Taehyung fits in this picture. It’s almost impossible to picture him walking down the same street as everyone else; his dyed hair, clothes two sizes too big, tall and slender frame hurrying down with a dog leash in one hand and a grocery bag in the other-

Wait.

You straighten up, eyes widening as you watch the man himself pauses to let Yeontan cock his leg on a patch of grass by the intersection. Physically, he’s entirely incongruous with the rest of the villagers, but he looks entirely at home, glancing up to smile in recognition at every figure that passes by him. One goes so far as to reach up and ruffle his hair playfully as she talks, and his face brightens with crinkled eyes and a boxy grin, greeting her warmly.

The same feeling of longing and dissatisfaction stirs you from the other time you saw that smile. You want to be the one that makes him so happy. You frown, unconsciously chewing on the end of the paper straw. It’s too hot in here. There’s not enough ventilation, and with the sun streaming in, the heat just pools inside, sticking to your thighs and arms. That’s why you leave the cafe before finishing your drink. The heat.

The lady has left by the time you cross the street, and you fake a cough noisily as you pass him, eyes cast away but face turned so he’d easily recognise you.

“Y/n!” Your heart warms, keens at the calling of your name, and you turn to him, smiling broadly. Taehyung grins when Yeontan rushes over to greet you too, whole body rocking with the force of his tail wagging. “Fancy seeing you here,” he remarks, and you take in a deep breath of air, feeling lightheaded with his attention back on you.

“I decided to explore a bit,” you answer, eyes dropping down to the supermarket bag in his hands, white plastic taut and digging red lines into his palm with the weight of it. “Retail therapy?”

He laughs goodnaturedly, but there’s a flush of pink high on his cheekbones, standing out beside the strands of green that he’s tucked behind his ears. “It’s actually, uh, something for tonight. I didn’t know if you’d- If you still-” He breaks off his stammering with another laugh, this one more self-conscious, and the pink deepens to red. “I thought you and I could paint together. I bought us some materials just in case you didn’t bring your own.” You fall silent, mouth slack and parted in surprise, so he continues on, lifting up his hand for a moment, bag rustling, then changing his mind and letting it fall again. “There isn’t a proper art supplies store here, so it’s just from the toy store. I know you’re probably used to proper stuff, but a bad worker blames his tools, you know! Not that you would- that you’re a bad-”

“You paint?” you ask finally, ending his nervous rambling.

His whole body slackens a bit, like you’ve cut some tension from him, his head dipping down to break eye contact. “Um. I’m- learning,” he answers with an uncertain wobble to his voice.

You tilt your head to the side with an expectant smile. “That’s really cool. How long have you been studying?”

He swallows, looking up to send you a hesitant smile. “I, um, I studied the instructions on the back of a paint-by-numbers kit in the toy store. Just now.” His voice lifts at the end of each sentence like it’s a question, that same bargaining smile plastered on his face.

You let out a genuine laugh, the first one you’ve had in a while. In too long. “Is that so? I better bow down to the maestro then.”

“Hey!” he whines playfully, shoulders rocking forward like a toddler feeling sorry for himself. “I learnt everything I know so far just from your art. And did you hear that speech I gave you about The Barn at Icheon? That was pretty good, right? You have to admit, that was good.”

His hand, the one loosely holding Yeontan’s lead, reaches out to grasp gently just above your elbow as he speaks, rocking you slightly like he’s pleading for you to agree. You find a constant stream of laughter bubbling out of your throat as he does so, feeling so light in the sunny midday breeze. “Okay, okay, that was good,” you confess, “you get a point for that.”

Once your laughter subsides slowly, you find yourself looking up at him with a residual smile, the same of which is spread on his face, eyes glimmering with something fond. He waits for the air between you to fall silent, tongue slipping out just slightly to wet his lips as you hold his gaze. “Y/n,” he asks softly, your name like molten sugar on his tongue, thumb unconsciously rubbing at the sensitive skin in the crook of your arm, “will you paint with me?”

Though the thought of painting still sours inside your chest, with his skin on your skin and his smile just for you, you feel like you could do anything. There’s only one answer. “Yes, I’ll paint with you, Taehyung.”

Painting with Taehyung is less painting with Taehyung and more staring desolately into the middle distance as Taehyung decides to make the clouds purple, bottom lip sucked between his teeth in focus.

“Don’t overthink it,” he stresses for the millionth time, glancing over at your blank canvas, “I’m not judging you.”

But it’s not about him judging you. If it wasn’t for him, you don’t think a paintbrush would have ever found its way into your hands again, certainly not so soon. It’s just that- you feel an overwhelming burden, a historical pressure of all your mistakes before. If you put brush to canvas now and create a work of art, then was your complete mindblank for the Met Gala all for nothing? Though your therapist advised against it, you had rather become attached to the idea that you’d somehow gotten artistically injured somewhere, and that eventually you’d broken completely, irreparable. It made the constant white void easier. Your first death.

“Happy little accidents,” Taehyung says lightly, dipping heavily into orange and catching a dollop on his wide-leg jeans. Not noticing it, or not caring, he swipes the orange into the canvas in a wonky line down past the horizon line, forming the neck and body of what looks vaguely like a giraffe. “And, um, happy little- happy little trees. If you want we could turn around and face the forest?”

Though a glum cloud is settling in your stomach you flick him a soft smile. “So you watch Bob Ross too? I thought you said you learnt everything from me.”

Using the same brush, he scoops out some black, using a pinkie finger to mix the colours together inside the bristles, a murky brown. “Maybe just a little,” he admits, daubing rough patches onto the giraffe, half of them overlapping the edges of its body. There’s an endearing quality to his carefree worksmanship, and you can’t deny that his painting looks good, wonky lines and all. “But don’t worry, you’ll always be my first,” Taehyung adds, not looking at you but smirking all the same.

The double entendre isn’t missed on you, but still, as you sit on a picnic table right on the edge of the village, blank canvas in front of you, you can’t bring yourself to laugh at it. All you can see is the paint drying on the tip of Taehyung’s finger, the messy pots of basic acrylics, and the warm smile that doesn’t leave his face.

He’s having fun. How long has it been since painting has been fun for you? Annoyed, you grab the clear green plastic brush from the set, dipping it into black. Muscle memory tingles across your knuckles and down the muscles of your wrist, an instinct to hold the brush in a certain way, tap off the excess, but your frustration overrides it, and you take the paintladen brush and smear it directly across the center of the canvas, a gaping maw of glossy shadow that bulges on the lower edges, gravity pulling at the thick stripe. You go completely still once it’s done. Staring.

Taehyung looks over after a moment, watching you carefully. “Is everything alright? If you didn’t want to paint, we didn’t have to-”

“It’s terrible,” you interrupt, a frown marring your face. “I fucked it up.”

“You didn’t,” he chastises softly, pushing his canvas to the side and leaning over your shoulder. “It’s a promising start. Maybe the duck pond is black in your world.”

Your eyes slide lower, unfocused. “Maybe the whole ocean is black in my world,” you murmur.

He’s silent for a moment, unsure what to say. “Then how will the fish see?” he asks in a light tone, bumping your shoulder gently with his, but you just let out a broken sob, tears spilling over your cheeks like they’d been triggered by his contact. Taehyung’s mouth opens in a rounded o, eyes wide, and as the dam breaks, you feel an arm find your back, rubbing soothingly, and long, warm fingers wrap around the hand that holds the brush limply, cradling it. “We can fix it, it’s okay,” he soothes in a kind whisper, “here; it’s that mailbox now, yeah? And behind it is the candy shop-” His voice cuts off while he guides your shaking hand to the green, mixing it with white in the plastic pottle to make a pale pastel. You feel the pressure of the brush in your hand shift as he moves the bristles over the canvas in a roughly rectangular shape, but you’re unseeing, crying tears that sting like turpentine into that black ocean behind your eyelids, letting him move you.

The two of you stay like that for what feels like an eternity, you curled in his embrace as he quietly paints for you, commenting on each step of the process so you know what he’s doing, even with your eyes closed. At one point, your energy leaves you, and you collapse into him, pressing your cheek against the stable warmth of his chest, heartbeat audible through his thin t-shirt. He doesn’t complain, just adjusting his stance to better support you and resting his chin on your head.

“I’m sorry,” you blubber thickly at one point, tasting salt.

“You don’t have to be,” he assures, “just keep breathing. Look; let’s put some trees in, hm? One for you and one for me.”

You open your eyes with a sniffle, feeling your hand lower in his secure hold, and you twist around your head to watch him dip the filthy brush in a green which has already been tainted by white and red in places. Your eyes follow it up again, until he fearlessly swipes in the graceful branches of the fir trees which cover the highest points of the island. You look at the rest of the painting, and a disbelieving giggle bubbles out of you, a smile across your face despite everything.

Unlike the mental image you’d been plotting in your head with the narration, this square of canvas has a line of slightly leaning buildings stacked beside each other tightly, colours smearing on the borders. In the middle of the uneven grey strip of cement down the middle to mark out the road, two trees stand proud, mostly green but with bleeding patches of muddy purple and brown too. Entire drops of paint spatter and run, creating a chaotic but vivid daydream of the end of the street in front of you.

“A lot better in your head, wasn’t it?” Taehyung asks knowingly. You laugh again, the last few tears pressed out of the corners of your wet eyes. “It’s okay,” he replies easily, “it was better in my head too. But the one in our heads is boring, don’t you think? If I wanted to see the street in front of me exactly, I’d just look up. Or take a photo. But nobody can visit this place we’ve painted. It’s just here, brand new because of us. I think I like that more.”

You sit up, wiping your eyes with a tired smile. “There’s no way you learnt all that from me,” you deflect, voice still raw from crying. “But yeah. I think I like this one more too.”

“I’m glad,” he answers softly, letting go of your hand and removing his hand from your back at the same time. You suppress a shiver at the sudden absence of heat. “I’ll let this dry and hang it up right beside The Barn at Icheon.”

You laugh again, sniffing away the last dregs of self-pity. “You better not,” you warn playfully, “as semantically poignant as it is, it’s an awful paintjob.”

When Taehyung smiles, it’s bright and boxy. And it’s just for you.

Time passes, but not like in the real world. Out here on this island, you start counting the passage of time by how many occasions you’d met Taehyung. Then, once you’ve seen him too often to count, you let yourself lose track of time completely, remembering only the moments spent with him like vignettes on a fragile chain.

The two of you always meet in the town or on the beach, speaking about everything and nothing. One day, while waiting beside the blue metal mailbox for Yeontan to pee (though Taehyung still insisted it looked better black) you tell him of the time you accidentally turned all your clothes yellowy-green after accidentally putting an apron in the wash that had an opened sampler of chartruese in the pocket. On a rainy afternoon when you’d gotten caught in the downfall walking through the forest, Taehyung told you, while wringing out rainwater from his rumpled maroon sweater, that he was meant to be studying agricultural sciences on the mainland, but his grandmother was sick and so he bought a place nearby to care for her.

“One good thing about being on the island,” he’d chimed cheerily, dark teal and brown plastered to his cheeks and forehead, “is that property is super cheap here. My grandma paid half and I paid half, and now the one-bedroom I live in is all mine.”

“But isn’t that sad?” you’d questioned, feeling the ground turn to mud beneath your shoes. “Living on the island, I mean? You should be in a big city, partying with your friends, living life. This place is like one massive retirement village.”

Taehyung had just shrugged. “My grandma likes it. And I like living for someone else, you know? Makes me feel good.”

Long after you’d gone home, warming up by the radiator in your beachside bungalow, those words had stuck with you. You wonder if, with all this time he’s been spending with you, he’s starting to live for you, too. You wonder if maybe that’s a bad thing.

But still, time passes in this hazy, episodic way. Money continues to filter out of your bank account each week you stay, but you hadn’t worried about your finances for years now, enough successful exhibits from your productive days keeping a healthy sum.

Though he never pushes as much as last time at the picnic table, Taehyung keeps you creating. Backs of napkins, tourism pamphlets, the kids colouring sets at the local diner. No matter how scrawled or indecipherable, the soft-hearted boy compliments your work all the same, slipping the scraps into his pocket with a joking promise that he’s going to frame them. Somehow, every unthought, unplanned line of ink or lead or pigment that lights the page feels like one less needle buried deep inside your heart, one small salve to ease the burden. You don’t know if Taehyung knows it, but in all the ways that count he’s a better artist than you.

When he’s around you, the world is lusher, more vibrant. Your time alone is grey and muted; a dull beach, an empty bungalow. With him, you feel like the sky is bluer and the trees are greener. The bonfire you sit in front of now casts an intense orange glow on everything around it, including Taehyung’s hands as he deftly impales marshmallows onto a skewer.

It’s cooler at nighttime these days. At some point, you’d both exchanged sandals for sneakers, t-shirts for sweaters. Taehyung seems to fancy heavy cable knits and thick trousers even in mild weather, and you wonder if he’d still wear clothing typical of an elderly gentleman even if he was on the mainland in a modern city instead of around the older generation on the island.

Tonight, you’d tried and failed a traditional Korean barbecue over the open flame. While Taehyung had shoved his cut of pork right into the fire, ending up with a charred outside and raw inner, you’d diligently held yours above the flames, turning and turning until the muscles in your arm screamed and you had to give up and admit perhaps the meat from the local butcher was cut too thick, and that a bonfire was good for nothing more than toasted marshmallows.

“This is where it’s at, this is it,” the young man enthuses confidently, each skewer laden with four or five marshmallows, bunched together, “dessert for dinner. The way it should be.”

You’re content to sit back and let him work excitedly, wrapping the edges of the picnic blanket low over your shoulders and lap. Though Taehyung is always devastatingly handsome, he’s the most gorgeous like this: focused in his element and surrounded by all the colours and textures of nature, a painting come to life. The heat of the flames is curling his hair lightly, making teal ends flick at his temples and the nape of his neck. His hair was growing out steadily, but still he chose not to cut it, and you can’t deny the length suits him.

“There’s more brown than green now,” you mention softly. “Soon it’ll look like dip-dye.”

Taehyung glances back at you over his shoulder with a rougish grin, shuffling around so he faces you fully. “What; is this your way of saying it looks bad?”

“No,” you defend with a pout, reaching for the near-full packet of marshmallows. “I’m just curious if you’re gonna leave it like that.”

Taehyung hums like he doesn’t fully believe you, and he leans over to shove his hand in the packet at the same time that you’re rummaging for the soft sweets, your knuckles brushing together. You shiver at the contact. Somehow, that’s been the first time you’ve shared skin contact since that day at the picnic table. Wide-eyed, you wait til he’s grabbed a bunch and pull your own hand away, empty and white with powder.

“Sorry,” he adds reflexively, but you just shake your head. How are you supposed to tell him that you liked the feeling of his skin on yours? Taehyung pops a pink marshmallow into his left cheek, letting it bulge and slur his speech as he gives you a broad grin. “You could dye it for me! My hair, I mean. Pick a colour.”

Against your will, you smile back, cheeks puffing at the thought. “I have no idea how to dye hair, Tae.”

Something flickers in his eyes when you say that, or maybe it’s the dancing flames reflected in them. He chews quickly, swallowing with a jerk of his jaw, and licks the rest of the white powder off his lips. “I bet it’s a whole lot easier than painting a picture.”

You scoff, but there’s no bite to it. “Oh, so you didn’t want me to paint one of my works on your hair, then? Don’t fancy Jeju Dusk on your scalp?”

Taehyung grins at the name, recognising the title of one of your earlier paintings - one that had been relentlessly criticised for its blending of techniques, something that later became your signature. “That’s my second favorite piece, you know? I have a print of it at home, and I saw the original in the Leeum Museum last year.”

You remember the director of the Leeum fondly. In your beginning years, he’d fought for your works to be shown in some of the frequent exhibitions they held. Even though you’d barely made a name for yourself, and had only recently moved to Seoul, Director Kim Namjoon took you in like a mentee and gave you a job himself as his PA. The experience you’d gotten there, as well as that vital exposure, had kept you business-savvy throughout your career, and once you were in a position to give back, you donated almost all of your original canvases to the museum in his name. Maybe one day you’d return home to Seoul and tell Namjoon of the boy who lived on a faraway island, the boy who taught you to open up again. Would Taehyung still be with you then? Though it hasn’t been long, it’s hard to comprehend a life without Taehyung. All you can visualise is a great absence, a lack. You banish the thought from your mind with a shake of your head, glancing back up to see the boy himself boldly setting a skewer of marshmallows on fire in the orange heat. “I hope that’s your one,” you joke weakly as he puffs out the blue and orange that lick at the blackening lumps.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what my favorite work is?” he asks instead, ignoring your statement.

You stay silent for a moment, observing the way he discards the charred skewer in his lap and delicately toasts the other one, swivelling the base so that each side of the marshmallow stack warms to a golden brown. Once he pulls it out, he hands it to you with an expectant quirk of his brow. You take the stick with a slightly suspicious smile. “What’s your favorite, Taehyung?”

“Your next one,” he answers immediately, gaze locked on yours.

You blame the heat radiating off the bonfire for the warmth in your cheeks as you suppress a smile. “Alright then,” you say decisively.

“Alright what?”

“Alright, I’ll dye your hair for you.”

He grins broadly, eyes crinkling into crescent moons as he starts eating his thoroughly-burnt marshmallows. “Tomorrow,” he announces, melted strings of pink and white pooling in the corner of his lips. “Let’s meet at the convenience store and you can pick the colour.”

You smirk at the way he devours the toasted marshmallows with childish glee. “You’ll regret that when you come out of this with highlighter orange hair.”

He chucks his leftover stick into the grocery bag you brought your supplies in, letting himself collapse backwards onto the heated sand. “I think I could pull it off,” he deflects calmly. “Just you see.”

Breath taken away by the peace on his face as he closes his eyes, your mind works dizzily, desperate to find something to keep him talking, to keep this moment between you alive. “Maybe you could get a job as air traffic control. Or a streetlight. Just you wait; it’ll be orange orange.”

Taehyung’s face warms in a lazy smile as he hums. He looks so peaceful lying there that you’re tempted to join him, but you choose instead to shuffle back from the fire so that you can see his face better. His hair’s splayed out over the sand, and you can see the warm flickers from the bonfire play over his neck, his jaw, and the tip of his nose. Taehyung’s right; orange does suit him. “I had a dream, you know. Last night.”

You feel - with the gentle breeze and the silence of the sea surrounding you - that perhaps you’re in a dream right now. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” his low voice hushes, barely louder than the popping of wood on the fire. “We weren’t on the island, we were in Seoul. Your wing of the Leeum Museum.”

You laugh shallowly, not wanting to make much noise for a reason you couldn’t quite pinprick. “I don’t have a wing at the Leeum.”

“You did in my dream,” he defends resolutely, the beginnings of a boxy smile tugging at his lips. “Anyway, we were in your wing, and I remember being so confused because I didn’t recognise any of them. But you told me they were all new. They were paintings of m-” he cuts himself off a beat too late, lips pressed together.

Your heart falters, a rush of adrenaline that flows to the ends of your fingers and toes. You fight to keeo your voice steady. “Maybe it was a premonition.”

Resting on his stomach, Taehyung’s hands twitch, his fingers twisting together. His smile flattens into a tense line and his eyelids squeeze shut tightly. “I don’t wanna get my hopes up,” he admits quietly after a short pause of thought.

Looking back, you can’t remember your thought process, or where your boldness comes from. Maybe something about the way the moment felt detached from reality, a timeless bubble of the two of you that sat adjacent to your real life, separate from consequence. Maybe it was the brief glimpse of pink as he wets the inner seam of his lips. Maybe you’ve just wanted this for too long to think rationally anymore.

Whatever it is, you swallow past the dryness in your mouth, bend down, and press a kiss to his lips.

Taehyung goes completely still at first. You’re cross-legged on the sand, knees faced to his side, and when you kiss him, it’s on enough of an angle that you feel his nose brushing your cheekbone, and you can feel your hair falling down either side of your face like silken rain. He stays still, though, and you press a little harder, just for a moment, before his lack of response shatters your streak of confidence.

With a minute sigh of regret, you lift off of him, ready to sit up again and apologise profoundly. But before there’s more than a few centimeters of air between you, his hand is suddenly snaking around the nape of your neck, fingers slipping up into your hair as he pulls you back down.

When you collide again with a gasp, his mouth is parted, and his teeth scrape against your bottom lip with his urgency. Losing your balance, you throw your outside arm over him, palm plunging into the sand just beside his head, and let your upper torso rest on his his.

“Taehyung,” you sigh onto his lips, shivering when his free hand rests hotly on your waist, thumb slipping under the hem of your shirt to rub maddenly over the sensitive skin of your stomach. “Oh, Taehyung.”

His lips are sticky with the remains of the toasted marshmallows, and tentatively you seek out that sweetness, kissing deeper, letting your tongue slide over the pinkened skin. He holds you so gently, like you’re made of glass, yet his mouth on yours is pure fire, and your breath comes in little gasps, bursts of oxygen that only fan the flames higher. It takes you a few moments to realise the humming in his throat and the motion of his lips are words, so softly spoken, but once you do you slow your movements to a languid stream to better hear them.

“...so beautiful, I’ve wanted to do this for so long, I must be dreaming…” He speaks with his eyes half-lidded, like he doesn’t want to fully lose sight of you, uttering words between sweet kisses, strong hands cradling you so carefully. He presses his lips against yours one last time and moves his hand from your neck to your face, thumbing tenderly at your cheekbone. “God, I’m so lucky to be by your side,” he gasps. “And when you paint new works and attend exhibits, I’ll still be by your side.”

His words are sweet, but something about them strikes an odd note in your chest, and you pull back slightly, shaking off his hands.

He looks at you with wide eyes and swollen lips which are parted in a confused pout. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s my paintings,” you whisper disbelievingly, “isn’t it? That’s why you think you like me. You like my paintings, and you think it’s somehow the same thing.”

He frowns, shuffling back to sit up, further apart from you than you’d been all night. “No,” he says automatically, “I like you, I just… I think you’re talented, and I want to help you-”

“It’s not your place to help me,” you snap back, and Taehyung flinches. “I’m not some- some out-of-order printer that just needs some TLC to start pumping out pages again. You’re a fan, Taehyung, not a fucking therapist.”

He lets those words sit in the air until they sour, staring at you with eyes shiny and lips trembling. “I know that,” he says, voice cracking, “I know that. I just- Just because you had issues with the Met Gala exhibit doesn’t mean you have to run away and hide, you know?”

Your mouth falls open. “I… I didn’t have issues with the Met Gala, okay, Taehyung? I blanked. Every time I tried to paint something for the exhibit, it sucked. I hated it. And then, eventually, I stopped being able to paint anything at all. It was like I just- I just couldn’t. And the Director kept calling, but I couldn’t answer him because I was so fucking humiliated, and you get the day of the Met and the walls are empty because Y/n L/n is a fucking failure. So it’s not- You can’t fix me, Taehyung. I’m just broken.”

The fire spits, crackles, as it smoulders down, nothing more than hot coals that barely light the surroundings. Taehyung, face slowly darkening to shadow, doesn’t say anything. Just sits. Waits.

You sniff, looking down at your hands. “My point is, Tae-” and you scoff at yourself for using a nickname at a time like this, “You shouldn’t like me. I have nothing to give you anymore.”

Sand sticks to your bare legs when you stand, but you make no attempt to brush it off. Though it’s nearly complete darkness, you see Taehyung’s hair shift as he tips his head up to watch you. Rather than speak back, he waits in the pitch black of the extinguished bonfire and lets you go.

Later, in the unforgiving silence of your bungalow, you find yourself gravitating not towards your bed but towards your suitcase, to the small wooden chest of travel paints you had brought never expecting to use.

It’s easier to paint than to think on your regrets and mistakes, and so you let your mind go black, your palette filling with shades of brown, ochre and beige, as well as a single swatch of teal.

The entire next day sees you in a sleep-deprived fervour, the entire main room of your bungalow cleared out and transformed into a makeshift studio, paintings drying on emptied bookshelves, sheets of old newspaper covering the carpet covered in stray spots of colour, the kitchen bench housing your mismatched array of paints and tools.

After finishing your first painting, you’d collapsed onto your bed as the sun began to rise, too exhausted to wash the dried paint off your hands and brow. But it only took a few moments of rest before you felt yourself sinking into a glum quicksand, sucked in by all the emotions swirling in your chest. Suffocated by the sole image of Taehyung, sitting alone on the sand in the dark as you walked away.

So, you’d gotten up, fed the itch in your hands and picked up a brush once more, and let yourself be taken by the mindless haze of work, of colours and angles and perspectives, starting to paint the knuckles on one canvas while you waited for the eyes to dry on another.

Just after 10am, your housekeeper had knocked on the door, and you’d had to play sick so that she wouldn’t come inside. If they kept your deposit or charged you damages for a stray lick of paint on some surface, what did it matter?

You threw yourself so intensely into these paintings, that weren’t art so much as sighs of relief, or buoys in a churning sea. It was all too easy to let your mind latch onto the task of mixing colours, of choosing techniques, of mastering proportions. Normally, you’d work in front of a landscape, or take a photo and paint it later, wanting to get things right, but Taehyung comes to mind with startling clarity.

Soon, your bungalow fills with artworks - some painted on newspaper, or pages of a book when you run out of canvases. Vistas of those moments with him like clustered vignettes: his eyes with orange glints reflected in them from that night with the bonfire; his hands wringing his sodden sweater the day you got caught in the rain; a boxy smile, the first time he ever grinned at you like that; and finally, just as your hands begin to shake too much to hold the brush steady, a lone silhouette walking down a dune, tiny dog tugging at the leash in his hand. The memories flow in reverse, like some sort of undoing, a wish to go back in time and do things right, to be better for him, to do right by him.

When you set the brush down one final time, fingers trembling with exhaustion, it’s nearly midnight. You realise with a dull pang that you’d forgotten to go down to the township to buy Taehyung hair dye. You realise he probably wouldn’t have come down either.

Your face is stiff in places where swipes of paint have dried, and your hair is tangled, thrown up a half-hearted ponytail that keeps threatening to slip, but as you stare around the chaos of the room, at the fevered paintings of him, only him, always him, your heart knows what to do. Whether you like it or not, you can’t go back in time and start new, start fresh. But you can go forward, and you know exactly where your feet will take you.

Well, maybe not exactly, because you’ve never been to Taehyung’s house. But shoving on some sneakers and wrappin yourself up in a jacket, you figure you can find it. The island’s population was barely fifty, and all the houses were in the same sleepy neighborhood behind the main street.

It’s after knocking on exactly twenty-six doors that you realise maybe you should just ask if the stranger knew Taehyung’s address, rather than leaving when somebody unfamiliar answered the door. Shivering, even with the thick padded jacket you’re bundled in, you decide that the next house better be the last. If they didn’t know where Tae was, you could just come back and pick up where you left off tomorrow.

The street is so silent that your sneaker soles on the gravel fill the void entirely, amplified in the chilled night air. As you went on, and the moon passed the center of the sky, less and less people even opened their doors, some that did scolding you for waking them at such an hour. You’d feel bad, only your mind’s entirely locked on one single person.

The next house you reach is small, like most of them, but looks particularly well-groomed compared to most. A gleaming white postbox with the number 13B rests beside the driveway and footpath, both of which are bordered by lush, freshly-mowed grass, almost black in the darkness. Like a beacon, a single lamplight shines white-yellow above the front door, and your eyes ache with the warm brightness as you knock.

After fifteen or so seconds, you hear muffled movement inside, and straighten your back expectantly, mentally running through your speech. A light turns on behind lacy curtains to the left, and eventually a blurred silhouette approaches in the foyer, unlocking the door.

You put on your most sympathetic smile and take in a breath when it cracks, revealing an older woman in mismatching winter pyjamas. “I’m so sorry to wake you, ma’am, but I was wondering if you knew a boy called-” As your eyes search the old woman’s face, you freeze. You know those eyes. “K-Kim Taehyung?” you finish, blinking widely at the woman who somehow looks so familiar.

Rather than grumble about the time or huff, she smiles broadly, lips tugging up in a boxy smile. “Well, of course, he’s my grandson!” The smile drops, brows furrowing in concern. “Is he alright?”

You suck in a breath through your teeth, eyes widening. “I- oh my goodness, I’ve heard so much about you,” you gush, her eyes crinkling fondly at your words. “Sorry, uh- yes, Taehyung is okay, I just-” You stop yourself, trying to steady your racing heart. “Mrs. Kim, you probably don’t even know me, but I did something bad and I need to make it right with him and I just… I think I’m in love with your grandson.” The moment you finish, something in your heart settles at the sound of the words lingering in the air.

She takes her time to reply, letting the words sink into her with a thoughtful sigh. “Darling, am I right in assuming your name is Y/n?”

You swallow quickly. “Yes, that’s right.”

She nods with a fond smile, a glimmer in her eye. “Then I think there’s something you should come see.”

“Inside?” After she waves you in and guides you to slip off your shoes and step into some house slippers instead, you find yourself awkwardly following her down a homely, perfumed hallway. “By the way, I’m so sorry for waking you.”

She waves it off before you even finish your sentence, sending you a kind wink. “No bother to me, lovie. I’m just glad you didn’t wake the dog.”

“The dog?” you mumble to yourself, before halting suddenly as Mrs. Kim pauses in front of a door, hand resting on the glass knob.

“My grandson’s been visiting me more lately, you see,” she explains, turning the knob to reveal a room in complete darkness, nothing inside visible. “He had so much to tell me and so much to do, became as hyper as a boy on Christmas morning! He told me not to go in here, but I couldn’t help myself.”

You step inside on her indication, breath caught in your throat as your eyes struggle to adjust. “I don’t understand…”

“Lovie, don’t worry about whatever went wrong with you two. You love him and… Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic, but it’s clear he loves you too.” And with that, she flicks the light on and the room comes into focus.

A barn. That’s the first thing you see. A painting of a bright, sprawling barn with a tiny dilapidated kennel in its shadow, wobbly letters spelling out YEONTAN. On the wall directly across from the door rests the original painting of The Barn at Icheon, close to a meter wide and half a metre high. The question of why he’d keep this prized possession of his in a random room barely bigger than a closet dies on your tongue as you turn, seeing the other walls.

A sketch of a bird you’d seen and wanted to show him, clumsily sketched on the back of a receipt with a pen from the lady at the grocery store checkout; a smudged map of your old neighborhood in Seoul that he’d made you draw on a napkin when you were explaining to him how far away the art supply store was; a tourism pamphlet that you and Taehyung had found on a park bench, drawing little Bigfoot silhouettes on the pictures of mountains and mermaids on the beaches. Every one of these thoughtless scrawls, careless scribbles and hurried drawings are here, each one framed or mounted like in a gallery, in order of the time they were made. You turn around slowly, barely noticing Taehyung’s grandmother in the doorway, giving you a knowing look. Finally, on the last wall, the trail of pieces disappear with a final creation, a canvas.

Feeling tears gather in your eyes, you look at the black smear of a mailbox, the wonky shops, the two tall trees incongruously planted in the middle of the street. And, in the bottom right corner painted meticulously in teal, the same teal as his hair, Y/n and Taehyung.

You let out a sob, turning back to Mrs. Kim. “Thank you for showing me this,” you make out in a voice thickened with tears, “but I really need to see him. Can you please give me his address?”

With a look of warm empathy, she steps forward to clasp your shoulders gently, maternally. “He told me about what happened, luvie. He doesn’t blame you.”

Trembling, you wipe the wetness from your cheeks and sniff. “He should,” you admit sullenly, “he’s too good for me. He’s been nothing but kind and patient and caring and all I’ve done is let him down.” Something occurs to you, and you frown in confusion. “Wait… Did he stop by and tell you?”

Her hands squeeze your upper arms comfortingly before dropping them and stepping back. “Oh honey,” she coos, and your heart stops as she steps aside out of the doorway, letting another, taller figure enter the room.

“Taehyung,” you whisper in shock, but before you can even comprehend his presence, his arms are around you, pulling you against his chest in a tight hug. You feel thick layers of pressure and worry evaporate off of you with a single moment, lungs filling with the familiar scent of him, body relaxing with his chin resting on your head and his arms cradling you. For what feels like a small eternity, you let yourself be fully enveloped in him, an indescribable catharsis of finally being in his arms once more. As your tears dry on the soft flanelette of his pyjama shirt and your fingers clutch at his back, you feel a thought transform into a certainty. “I love you, Taehyung,” you confess quietly, and his whole body shudders with a sob, arms tightening around you even more.

“I love you so much,” he confesses lowly, chest rumbling against your ear as he speaks. “And please don’t ever call yourself broken. You’re not. I didn’t love the art, I loved you. Because the art is a part of you Y/n, whether it’s perfect or not.”

“Tae,” you breathe shakily, his name the only word on your lips.

A soft voice comes from the hallway, Taehyung’s grandmother quietly excusing herself to “leave the two lovebirds alone.” You barely notice, lost in the way Taehyung gently rocks you back and forth in his arms, soothing you.

“I missed you,” you hear Taehyung whisper into your hair, nuzzling his nose gently.

Though you shiver at the feeling, you let out a teary laugh. “I saw you a day ago.”

“But it wasn’t the same then,” he insists softly, and a slow breath escapes you weakly. “It’s okay; you’re here now. You-” he breaks off to swallow, and when he speaks again his voice is much quieter, paper thin. “You won’t walk away again, will you?”

You answer by tipping your head up to look him in the eyes warmly, rising onto the tips of your toes so that you can reach his mouth, pressing a kiss against it tenderly. “Never,” you answer surely, “I promise.”

When he smiles, it’s beautiful - that big, boxy grin you saw that day on the dunes, that day you agreed to paint with him, and so many times since. But it never fails to make you melt, lips automatically returning the gesture. “Now,” he announces with a bemused lilt in his voice. “As much as I love this makeout session in my grandma’s closet, it is 2am. Shall we go get some rest?”

Sleep comes quickly once you have Taehyung’s arm around you and your face in the crook of his neck, and you let it take you, knowing you’ll have time to savor the feeling of sleeping beside him for many days to come.

You take him home the next day.

He hadn’t ever been to the bungalow before, but now there was something you desperately wanted him to see. You hadn’t cleaned up before you’d suddenly began roaming the streets of the island, and as he stares around at the chaos, you kind of wish you had. “It’s pretty messy, but…”

“No,” he deflects, mouth parted and eyes wide in wonder, “don’t apologise, this is- wow.” He steps further into the room, stepping over discarded paint tubes, dried canvases and uncleaned brushes. He takes a moment to take in each work. Every single one of them a snapshot of him. “How- When did you do all this?”

You bite your lip, loitering in the entryway. “From when I got back that night until I decided to come looking for you.”

He furrows his brow, fingers gently skimming the top edge of the painting that rests on the easel in the center of the room, the first one you’d painted. His teal growouts, his uneven eyes, the moles dotted so intricately on his face. Your Tae. “You haven’t been able to pick up a brush in months, and then...all this?”

“This was easy,” you say with a shake of your head, “it was easy because it was you.”

He turns, then, glancing at you over his shoulder with eyes brimming with affection. “You really love me.”

A disbelieving grin stretches across your lips. “The midnight confession didn’t make it clear enough?”

“It’s not that, I- I can read it,” he explains, stepping back over to you. “The Barn at Icheon is filled with loneliness, and a lot of your other works talk about fear or curiosity or patience. But this is all love. And it’s me.”

“It’s you,” you confirm with a soft smile, “I love you, Taehyung. So much.”

His eyes light up, then, a cheeky glimmer as his hand reaches out, gripping your elbow and giving it a playful shake. “If I’m your mojo then, you should paint something else today,” he bargains, “I wanna see your genius in action. The black mailbox sadly doesn’t qualify.”

Your mouth drops open in mock outrage, shoving his chest with a whine. “That’s not fair! You said you liked it better black.” Looking around at the disaster zone of the bungalow, you sigh. “I also don’t think I have any paintable surfaces left. I missed the housekeeper so I’ll probably get a fine as it is.”

“Use me, then.”

“Haven’t I painted you enough?” you fire back, but Taehyung just shakes his head emphatically.

“Paint on me. Here,” he says, and his hands leave yours in order to find the hem of his shirt, peeling his shirt off and tossing it into a far end of the room. “A big old waterfall, right down the middle. Rock pool at the bottom.”

“Stop it!” You blush fiercely, hands coming up to cover your cheeks as your eyes feast on his chest, the smooth planes and taut skin, a beautiful golden bronze. “Taehyung…”

For the first time, he doesn't press further. Instead, his shoulders sag, teasing facade slipping. "I'm sorry, you don't have to. I'll stop."

Inexplicably, you find yourself wanting to prove you aren't fragile anymore, unbroken just as he'd insisted you were last night. "I can do it," you protest, stepping away from him to fossick for some usable brushes. "Lie down, then."

Taehyung freezes. "Uh. Yeah, yeah, okay, gimme one sec, I'll just-" With the enthusiasm of a boy having his first kiss, Taehyung hunkers down on the newspaper-covered carpet, shuffling some tools and tubes and palettes out of the way. He looks beautiful like that, chest rising and falling shakily with anticipation, warm brown eyes widened on you. "You don't have to paint a waterfall, you know," he assures hurriedly. "Whatever you do will be perfect."

Heart leaping at his words, you feel a streak of confidence deep inside you, and instead of sitting beside him, you straddle his hips with a newly-filled palette in one hand and a brush in the other. "I want you to guess," you announce from above him, eying his chest and wondering how the colours might fill the space. "Guess what I'm painting. It'll be fun!"

Taehyung's throat bobs with a harsh swallow, nodding quickly. "O-okay, yeah, let's do that," he agrees weakly.

You smile warmly, and begin dipping into a forest green, coating the tips of the bristles. Bending down, you mark a single point of green on the top of his chest, just below his collarbone. The moment the cool paint touches his skin, Taehyung shudders, eyes falling shut. "Okay?" you check. He nods again, chest heaving, and so you continue tracking colour, gradual swoops downwards. Each drag of the brush makes Taehyung's breath catch, and you watch as goosebumps break out on his bare arms.

"Feels nice," he mumbles, lips barely moving like he didn't even intend to speak.

Your lip twitches, but still you focus, topping up the brush whenever the lines became too spotty. After trailing down to just above the level of his belly button, you raise the brush again, starting a new form on the other side of his chest, this one smaller. "Any idea what it is?" you question, but Taehyung just sighs airily.

Once you're finished with the forest green, you wipe your brush off on the edge of your palette and go for a deeper shade, pressing in shadows under each swipe of green. It's once you're working on the bottom half of the second structure that you begin to feel a hardness between your legs, the point where you're straddling him. Shocked, you look up, but Taehyung's covered his eyes with the back of his hand, face turned to the side with reddened cheeks.

"I'm sorry," he croaks out once he feels you stop. "Didn't mean to."

With a fond smile, you lean down, careful not to smudge the wet paint, and gently kiss the corner of his mouth. His fingers twitch and his lips part in surprise, but he otherwise stays still. "It's okay," you soothe, "if it's any consolation, I feel the same way right now."

Like a switch is flipped, Taehyung lifts his hand and tucks his chin, looking down at where the two of you are pressed together, then back up at your face. "Seriously?"

You laugh warmly. "Taehyung, I love you and you're currently lying beneath me, half-naked, writhing every time the brush touches you. Of course I'm turned on."

His cheeks flush hotter and he bites his lip. "You can- you can keep going. Keep painting."

Obediently continuing to fill in the shadow across his stomach, you grin. "Still no guesses on what I'm painting? I'm almost done, you know."

He cranes his neck down further, but the angle prevents him from seeing much. "Some-something green? I'll be honest with you, my focus really isn't-fuck!"

You suppress a laugh as he shudders, hands reaching out to clutch at your pants. Having finished the shadow, you'd mixed a paler green to add some light points on the tops, and one of those swipes had just happened to land across the top of one of his nipples, already stiff from arousal. You continue dipping colour here and there, smirking at the paint that covers the dark brown of his right nipple.

"You tease," Taehyung complains with furrowed brows. "Fuck, that felt good. Please tell me you need to paint the other one too."

You hum in mock thought, transferring your brush to the hand with the palette so that you can reach out, swiping a thumb over the sensitive flesh. Taehyung's whole body jerks, his hips beginning to grind under you, the dull friction pulling a pleasured sigh from your lips that's blessedly drowned by his drawn-out moan. "Why the pout, Tae? This was your idea."

"Next time I'm holding the paintbrush," he promises, hips moving slowly beneath you, eyes lidded as they focus on you, "then you won't be so cocky."

His words send a hot rush of arousal through you, and you rock your hips unconsciously, swallowing a moan. "Next time," you repeat breathily, "but for now I'm almost done."

It only takes a few more touches of pale green, followed by two vertical strokes of brown, before you're putting your tools aside, and standing up off of him.

Taehyung groans in complaint when your hips leave him, his casual grey sweatpants tented and a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. "Where are you going?"

"Come see," you guide, tugging at his hand. "I have a mirror in my room."

He gets up, palming himself with a pout before following you down the hall, pulled along by your interlocked hands. Once in front of the mirror, Taehyung lifts his eyebrows at just how wrecked he looks. Bottom lip swollen from biting at it, hair mussed and sticking up, and a burst of green slowly drying on his torso. "It's...trees?"

"It's us," you explain softly, "like that painting we did together the first time." From beside him, you reach around to gently tap each figure, two tall fir trees, the one on his right taller than the one on his left. "One for you and one for me."

Before you can pull your arm back, his hand comes up to flatten yours against his chest, hands going cold where the paint is still wet in places.

"Tae, you'll smudge it."

"Y/n," he said slowly, head turning to look at you, eyes brimming with affection, "will you let me make love to you?"

Your breath catches, and rather than trusting your voice, you nod wordlessly.

With a deep exhale, he bends down and joins your lips with his, a hand coming up to bury itself in your hair, keeping you close. His lips are hot against yours, passionate and wanting, and your stomach warms with desire. Clumsily, your fingers find the hem of your shirt, lifting it as far as you can before you have to break apart from him, flinging it away once it clears your head.

"The bed?" Taehyung pants in the moments his mouth is free, and you nod, shucking off your jeans before getting onto the mattress in just your bra and panties. "God, you're beautiful," he chants, "how did I get so lucky?"

He slips out of his sweatpants and joins you sitting on the edge, but your eyes linger on his face, the way his eyes soften and crinkle when they meet yours. "I'm the lucky one," you reply simply.

You shiver when a large palm runs up your bare thigh, warm and grounding. "Can I go down on your first?" he asks with a pleading gaze.

You laugh weakly. "I'm definitely the lucky one." In confirmation, you lie yourself back, scooting so your head rests on the pillows.

Hand now having slid down your leg to rest over your ankle, he wraps his fingers around and lifts it off the bed delicately, your knee crooking and legs parting. Smoothly, he slips himself in the gap, lying on his stomach and letting your raised leg rest on his shoulders. With eyes heavy on you, he leans forward slowly and licks a strip over your clothed pussy, a dull kiss of friction across your clit. You groan, head lolling back, and he takes it as his initiative to continue, sucking at the juices that have dampened your panties until the whole crotch is wet, your thighs shaking slightly with your increased sensitivity.

"Tae, please," you breath out, "I wan' more."

A finger slips below the hem of your panties, just over your hipbone. "Should we take these off?" You nod with a needy whimper, lifting your hips to give him easier access.

He sits up to slide them down your legs, calmly spreading your thighs again when you get the self-conscious urge to close them. With only your bra on, you feel so vulnerable, but rather than scaring you, you feel at peace, so happy to be having this moment with Taehyung.

When he shuffles back into place again, he takes his time, his warm breath tickling your inner thighs. At your needy wiggle of your hips, he chuckles and rubs soothingly at the top of your leg where it's crooked over his shoulder, finally dipping his head again to lick at you.

He starts out maddeningly light, the very tip of his tongue flicking slowly over your clit, tentatively venturing out to dip between your folds. You reach out for his hand, needing something to anchor you, and he smiles against you as he interlocks your fingers, keeping you grounded.

"So good, Tae," you encourage, moaning openly when his tongue trails lower and dips between your folds, over your entrance. "Fuck, so good."

Rather than answer verbally, Taehyung doubles his efforts and begins to speed up, lapping at your core and suckling your clit.

Every breath is a moan or a whimper, overtaken by pleasure, but you let yourself drown in it, letting Taehyung eat you out like a man starved. With one hand on your upper thigh and one entwined with yours, he's got no fingers free to play with you, but expertly he brings you to your peak with just his tongue, thrusting it inside you as his nose nudges at your clit.

When you feel your orgasm quickly approaching, your moans heighten and your back begins to arch, hips grinding against him desperately. Taehyung chuckles, the sound vibrating against you and making you shudder, and his hand slips high to press against your waist instead, holding you in place for him. Your thighs tense around him, praises and curses and his name spilling from your lips incoherently.

It's one last nibble at your clit, pulling it into his mouth and dragging his tongue over it, your vision whites out with the force of your orgasm, jerking beneath him and crying out wantonly, overcome with pleasure. He works you through it diligently, groaning as you come down from your high with weak shivers, his tongue never ceasing until you push at his head from oversensitivity.

He lets your leg down carefully, kissing his way up your bare stomach, the swells of your breasts and your throat until his lips are on yours and you can taste yourself on him, feel the ends of his hair tickling against your cheeks.

"That was incredible, Tae," you pant out, feeling boneless beneath him as he takes charge of the kiss, tugging at your lips and licking into your mouth. "I need you," he gasps, and you moan throatily when his clothed crotch grinds against your bare core, the fabric of his underwear catching on your sensitive clit. He's hard, probably painfully so, and all you want is to feel him inside you.

Desperate, your fingers slip behind you, arching your back so that you can deftly release the clasp of your bra, pulling it off hastily before reaching for his underwear. "I need you too, Tae," you plea, "please hurry."

His fingers, slightly cool from the air, slide down your stomach and between your thighs, making you jump as he slips two inside, thrusting them slowly. You're still sensitive, and his mouth falls to your ear, hushing you and pressing encouraging kisses to your temple as you whimper. "Doing so well for me," he praises, "just gotta make sure you're ready, okay?"

"O-okay," you make out, sucking in a breath when he pulls out and presses a third finger inside you, picking up his pace. Gradually, the prickling overstimulation warms into pleasure again, and you rock your hips to seek more friction, free hand coming up to wrap around his neck and shoulders, holding him close.

With no bra on, your full chest is flat against his, and as the paint dries it drags over your nipples, making you arch your back, seeking out the friction.

The warmth between your legs tightens with the extra stimulation, and your breath begins to catch, feeling another orgasm oncoming.

"Close?" Taehyung murmurs in your ear as he widens the gaps between his fingers inside you, scissoring to stretch you even more. You nod hastily, moans getting stuck in your throat, pushed out with every gasped breath. Taehyung hums in response, and you whimper when you feel his fingers slipping out of you completely. Before you can protest, the blunt head of his cock slips between your sopping folds, Taehyung running it up and down to coat himself in your slick.

"Fuck, yes, please Tae, I'm ready," you babble, legs lifting to wrap around his hips, attempting to pull him in closer.

He chuckles, but it's cut off prematurely by a hissed breath of pleasure as he lines up and begins to sink his length into you, a delicious feeling of fullness after his fingers left you so empty. Taehyung enters you slowly, letting you adjust, and you feel completely enveloped by him; his voice in your ear, his hand in yours, his cock inside you.

"Need you, Tae," you whine once he stills, bottomed out, "please move."

"Are you ready?" You wiggle your hips with a groaned yes, arm tightening around him as he pulls back. He stops when just his head still rests inside you, pauses for a moment with a moan as you clench around him, and then plunges back in with one slick thrust.

You cry out, satisfied smile stretching tiredly across your face as he finally begins a steady rhythm, favoring deeper thrusts that make your toes curl. "Yes, Tae, so good!"

"God, you're still so tight," he groans throatily, "so good for me."

On the edge before, you find yourself close after only a few minutes, and you tell him with a shaky breath. Taehyung lets out a relieved exhale as he continues to thrust into you. "Thank fuck," he huffs out, panting a word at a time, "I'm not gonna last, you drive me crazy."

You press your head against his, nuzzling at it as you unwrap your arm from around his shoulders, instead seeking out your clit for the needed friction to push you over the edge. The added stimulation has you clenching, and Taehyung swears desperately, his pace picking up but shuddering as he gets close.

The two of you pant loudly into the otherwise silent room, filling each others' ears with whimpered moans and slurred praises, until you finally catch the tip of your peak, and with one final drag of his cock inside you, you're falling apart, not suddenly and violently like the first time, but rather a slow, hot wave of pleasure that works its way out from your core, down to your toes and fingertips, clenching tightly around Taehyung until he curses and spills inside you, shuddering through his release.

"I love you so much," you whisper once you come down from your high, a contented exhaustion seeping into your bones.

"I love you too," Taehyung says with a final press of his lips on your temple.

---

"This one's gorgeous. I love the broad lines on the ocean compared to the texture of rocks on the shore. This is at the island, you say?"

You hum in confirmation, smiling at your old friend. "You should see, it, Joonie. There's this little cluster of houses and shops right in the middle but the rest is just open nature. Forests, beaches, everything in the middle. I go there every year."

Kim Namjoon, Director at the Leeum Museum in Seoul and avid nature buff, takes one last look at the landscape canvas and grins. "Ah, twist my arm..." You follow him as he moves down the line of mounted canvases, stopping at a familiar portrait. He furrows his brows and cocks his head. "I feel like I've seen this guy before, something about the face... He didn't have green in his hair though, I must be confused."

You laugh at your friend, spying a shock of red through the swathes of people. "You have seen him before," you explain, catching the figure's eye, "you would have seen him here tonight."

In front of you, Namjoon raises his brows. "Oh, really? Who is he, then?"

Over Namjoon's shoulder, you watch Taehyung approach, turning heads with his scarlet dye. He gives you a wink, and you grin back. "He's my husband."

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