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joy-haver · 2 years

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✨✨✨How humanity can survive, part 1. ✨✨✨

↘️Love, Labor, and Effective helping.

↘️adhd accessibility focused on. Feel free to make and share accessible copies for other things, just tag me

✨✨✨intro✨✨✨

I can’t cry, laugh, move, breath, clean my self, stay dirty, get dressed, be naked, brush my hair, leave it matted, sit still, move too much, use a wheelchair, walk, literally anything without doing permanent damage to my body.

But I do about 50 hours of housework / community work a week (lowballing it), in order to make our house expenses low enough for us to survive, and help people problem solved enough to survive, and doing other important work that prevents deaths. Everything I can possibly do in order to make our world survivable.

♦️: I’m degenerating

I can only get through this and the pain it causes by getting incredibly drunk every night. I can only cope with the fact that my disability is getting worse incredibly fast by drinking.

But I have blood work Friday so I have to sober up. Which is dangerous and painful and makes me so much worse, imagine if you had to go off your addictive medication every time you went to your doctor.

Which means no pain relief, nothing too joyful, and I have to stop myself from crying, so I can’t even feel to bad about it, because crying and laughing tear up my throat, which already barely work

Plus I have so much housework and community work that needs to be done and I really can’t do it, but I’m going to anyway because everything will fall apart if I don’t, and there’s too much work to do to survive under this system.

♦️: I’m dying

I’m going to die from working myself to the bone to create a better world. I’m going to die from working myself to the bone to survive.

And I don’t even get paid for it. I didn’t ask for get my allowance from my partners this month because we genuinely can’t afford my having expendable income for things that would help me.

And until I teach them to be more responsible with money, and get one of them a better job, and get them to work more effectively so we aren’t wasting money, there will be no financial autonomy for me.

And that work falls on me too.

✨✨✨what I need✨✨✨

I can only explain what I think the world needs by starting with me.

I just need someone to cherish me. To put thought and love into me. Not half assed little compliments.

Genuine, ‘thinks about how to make my life better’ love. Genuine ‘spends time actually paying attention to me and trying to show it’ love. And I need it constantly.

But no one has the time or energy or attention span or ability. I don’t get that for more than a few minutes at a time, maybe an hour a week.

And that’s not their fault. It’s this broken fucking world. Theres too much work to do and most of it is bullshit. And so many people people just want to survive individually and fuck everyone else over constantly. And they too are victims, because they are deprived of community

🔸:it’s the eugenics and white supremacy all the way down:🔶

God is trying to kill us. The capitalists are trying to kill us. The Leninists are trying to kill us. Even half the fucking ‘anarchists’ are leaving people like me for dead while they call it praxis.

Dogmatism is a death cult. Infinite growth is a death cult. Work for the sake of work is inefficient and it’s a fucking death cult.

Im grinding myself to dust to help everyone survive, while I see people whom I love being so focused on hating themselves, and on hating their oppressors, that they never make time to even *begin* to love one another. They are living their lives in reaction. Using all of most of their energy to create harm for no reason.

It’s the ideology of war, and they are at war against community.🔘

Constantly defensive. Constantly carrying out preemptive strikes. No active compassion for anything or anyone at all. Never helping anyone except for their own enjoyment.

🔹:. abled apathy is killing me. :🔷

The most abled bodied people I know take up the most work to help. they think that their trauma excuses them from giving a shit about other people.

The most abled people I know are literally constantly hurting people instead of helping, and expecting me to clean up the mess.

The severely disabled people aren’t the ones relying on everyone else’s labor to survive. The abled people are relying on us to fill the myriad of gaps they leave with their ineffective and inefficient labor.

And we work harder than them. Because if we don’t? We die.

If they don’t? They get another job. But most severely disabled people can’t get jobs, so we have to spend our lives supporting someone who can so that they can take care of us.

So, we die. We die young. We die fast. We kill ourselves slowly as your servants. Even in the best housing situations available for us, many of us are your unpaid servants.

👉if you are not incredibly, severely, currently dying from your disability, this is for you.👈

Look, if you want to people to survive, if you want to love people, here is the fucking recipe. It’s not forbidden knowledge. It’s not hidden. You just have to fucking live by it.

✨1. From each their ability,

Not more than you are able to do. Not less. Your actual ability.

When you over work yourself, you are wasting energy and doing a shit job that someone else has to fix. This leads to cycle of overworked people fixing overworked peoples mistakes, and that will always fall on disabled people, because we tend to work more efficiently.

But don’t do less than you actually can do. Don’t spend your energy on ineffective solutions when effective ones are available. Don’t treat ANYONE like a servant, to any degree. (Care takers included. They are performing good work, they aren’t your servant. Someone can help you with out being beneath you)

➕Do not do work for works sake. Working hard is not a virtue. Helping people is.➕

✨2. To each their need.

Do the most effective, most important, most sustaining, most life saving work possible first. Triage everything.

BUT, you have to protect the longevity of your work for this to work at all {back to the first maxim, from each their ability. Only as much as you are able to sustain}

The most effective thing you can do is build in layers.

•Improve your household,

•improve your community,

•improve the society,

•improve the ecosystem,

•start over. If you aren’t making progress, move to the next one.

You can do this however you want. But do what’s most effective *considering your place in each, and considering your ability honestly*

➕Do not do work for works sake. Working hard is not a virtue. Helping people is.➕

❤️🧡💛.

•If you want to love people, you have to do it actively.

•You have to try.

•But more than that, you have to do your actual best.

•You can’t act out of hatred, not for yourself, or the oppressor

•you have to help everyone you can, even or perhaps ESSPECIALLY, those who hurt you. But only if you are actually are abled to

•you have to try.

✨✨✨Alright, my hands are hurting like hell so that’s the end of part one. ✨✨✨

🎊I might make a part 2. I Might just keep adding new thoughts to this forever. But you know what? You could could make a part 2. You could keep adding onto this forever.

🎊Or hell, make your own post. Critique me. Call me out. I don’t care. *just do the fucking work, and do it effectively

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celestial-art-archive · 1 year

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'you own this game through library sharing, but actually need to own it to review it'

ignoring how absolutely bs that is (i played it on pc through steam, why can't i review it?) i want to type my little review/essay thing here. because i have many words to say about House Flipper.

House Flipper is a... simulation? game? Released in 2018, with a sequel having a slated release for quarter 3 of 2023. The game has an amount of DLCs, but honestly you get a decent package without any of the paid ones.

You launch the game. You live in a literal fucking shack. You clean it-- it looks nicer now but it's still not somewhere where you want to be, most likely. The game from here is literally just this: take a job, do the job, get money, come home, buy a new place to live or take another job. Repeat this. It sounds really boring, but it's boring in the same sense that Powerwash Simulator is boring (or, at least, i hear those two compared all the time).

Off the gate, something I like is the game has an option to turn cockroaches into broken glass. I find this feature immensely useful, as I believe I would explode if I saw a cockroach, even if only fictional. As for the broken glass... ehhh.

I can't fucking see it. The glass is so light, when on a light surface, I literally can't see it. For the unaware, I have a mild color deficiency. I can only describe it as colors look muted to me? I have a hard time picking out green and red, though I can see the two. I have issues seeing similar color shades. The glass isn't really highlighted like other objects, so I can't exactly see it all that well. If anything, I wish there was an option to outline the glass too.

Other than that, the jobs start really easy. Clean trash, replace radiator, maybe sweep up dirt and grime. Something that really helped me was the perk tree where, at the end, it would highlight all the dirt on the mini-map. This was a necessity for me, because a lot of the time I wouldn't be able to see it. Dirt and such on the brick texture in this game is a bad offender, I can barely see it at all.

Repairing things is okay. You start with it on easy mode, and it highlights what to do and such. Changing the difficulty to medium didn't do anything except take away the highlights, so I can't really see any interest in turning the difficulty to medium or hard. Sometimes, on a job where you repair a lot at once, it gets tiring. Forgetting to unscrew things and being confused as to why you can't install a new sink, or having to click multiple times to install something. It can get boring if you do too much of it at once.

Eventually, you get the ability to paint. Painting is... slow and tedious. It seems like it takes forever to even paint one wall without any perks (and ill get to perks in a moment)

You also can destroy walls and build new ones. Building walls takes a bit, and destroying them is satisfying but can get annoying.

Cleaning windows is my favorite part. You just click and drag and it cleans and it looks nice. I can't ask for much more then that.

Later in the game, you get to destroy walls, sell furniture, replace the furniture, and more. Getting to replace furniture really is where the game shines for me. I certainly think this game fits better with those who like house customization, because that's basically all this game is. Imagine buy mode from the Sims except you don't need to make a sim or play beyond cleaning the house and furnishing it. Kind of like a more realistic Happy Home Designer. If that sounds like something you'd like, you'll really like this game. If you're not sure, playing an hour or so will be enough to tell you if you're into the game or not.

Missions get longer, I've spent 30+ minutes on some of the ones I'm doing and I'm 5 hours into the game. This game seems like a really odd thing to like, but if it is your thing, it hits so damn well.

I don't know where to discuss perks so I'll do that here. Okay, you get skill points for doing things like cleaning, building, painting, you get the idea. And you can spent those skill points on one of three categories, and those categories are under their own subheader like 'demolition' or 'painting'. These perks can be things like more dirt showing up on the mini-map, or painting more tiles at once, or laying down wall tiles faster. This adds a really good sense of progression to the game. It's fun and motivating to watch you pay points for these skills and to put them to use. It makes you want to get more, so you can really see how fast you can paint. In my opinion, the only one I've found so far that is mandatory is seeing all dirt on the mini-map, but that's a personal preference.

The game is... functional. In my experience, it's alright. I've gotten stuck in one overhead lamp because i jumped on a table below it. When I tried to repair an electrical socket for the first time, it zoomed in oddly and didn't let me do anything, but restarting the mission fixed that issue. Sometimes glass doesn't register as picked up for a bit, even though it is picked up. For all the bitching this game gets, I was expecting more bugs than this. That's all I've noticed so far. Granted, I'm 5.4 hours in. It could get way worse. But I don't see that happening as of right now.

So, I do suggest the game if you're into customization. It's a more gritty Happy Home Designer, and it's a stricter version of Buy Mode from the Sims games. There's no NPCs or time limits, it's just you and this house. If you're looking for much more than what I've said, or what videos show, you'll likely be better off looking into something different. It really is entirely cleaning houses and replacing furniture. If this is your thing: it'll really stick. If it isn't, it'll fall flat and be disappointing. Maybe wait for it to go on sale, it is 25 dollars and that's a hefty price tag in my opinion (this is also considering my current financial state, though).

Overall, 7 or 8 out of 10. I like it a decent amount, and I've developed a sort of addiction to it. It's just pleasing to put on for a while. The fact that there's no time limit really helps.

#steam's wack #review #game review #video essay script #will likely make something from this yeah #house flipper #house customization #video games #games #indie games #steam #NebSys: Epsilon

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #covid for ts #i had a lot to say evidently #rant

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five-rivers · 3 years

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@lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks came up with this op!Danny/Marvel AU!

BTW I need help naming this newest proof that I can't keep anything to a short little one-shot.

Loki was not, and never had been, a good man. For that matter, whether or not he’d ever been a good boy was debatable. His mother would argue that he had, but she would very likely be the only one. Well, except for Thor, perhaps, but that was because he was an idiot who could drown in three inches of nostalgia. Like he didn’t remember every time Loki had humiliated him. Maybe he didn’t, for all that he kept falling for the same trick over and over again.

It made Loki’s late nights studying the arts of illusion, misdirection, and lying seem redundant. Almost. Not everyone was as dense as his big brother.

No. Loki had never been a good man. He had, however, been a free man.

Free to run or hide. Free to explore the nooks and crannies of Asgard, to uncover her secrets in ways few cared to do. Free to walk hidden paths between the Nine Realms and even farther flung territories, where his people did not and had never ruled, to play games, make deals, have adventures, take risks. To be. To exist as his own creature.

He had been free. He had.

But on one of those little secret excursions, he had discovered something that had made even his flippant, slippery heart clench with fear. A ravening plague, spreading across the stars. The death of half of everything on the horizon.

Loki was not a good man. What cause did he have to care for all the sundry others in the universe? There were too many. It was too much to ask.

But Asgard—His home, even though the had long ago realized the blood in his veins originated on very different soil. That was different.

Asgard, he could help. Asgard could survive.

But it had to be strong. It had to have strong allies. None of this barely-held peace, this enemy eternally at their gates. It needed strong leadership. Not his brother’s simplistic view and longing for the glory of war.

Loki was not a good man. But he was one who could get things done.

Before he knew it, he had burned all his bridges behind him. In one case, a literal bridge that was literally broken.

And he fell.

And he fell right into the hands of the one he had feared enough to do this. Broken enough for poison to drip into the cracks. No one knew where he was, no one could know where he was, except, perhaps, Heimdal, and Loki sincerely doubted Heimdal cared. No one was coming for him. No one was looking for him. No rescue was forthcoming.

He was alone.

Asgardians were considered gods for a reason. Their bodies and minds were much more resilient than the average mortal’s. But Thanos’s people had been titans, and there was a reason for that, too.

Thanos enjoyed breaking him.

And Loki turned his lies on himself. A skilled master of games always had one gifted opponent, even alone. Hadn’t he wanted to rule? To command? To see a world, any world, prostrate at his feet? To be given the recognition and praise of which he was so worth?

To pull something, anything, out of the fire?

(If he had spent less time learning how to spin lies and more on how to see the truth, he might not have believed it. A better, wiser, man would have. But Loki was not a good man. And he was very skilled in his craft.)

So, his new master put a weapon in his hands, and he went off to conquer a world.

Danny was used to rude awakenings. He was used to those rude awakenings being full body chills and ghosts, not someone knocking on his door.

Blearily, he pulled himself out from under the blankets. Quasi-military government facility or not, the beds were comfortable. Maybe Mom or Dad had gotten themselves locked out of their room? Or Jazz—No, not Jazz, she hadn’t come with them. She was at college, not being flown places by Mom and Dad’s suspiciously generous new consulting job.

At least it wasn’t the GIW.

He stood on tiptoe (curse his perpetually short body) to peer out the peephole. His parents’ buff, one-eyed, and incredibly imposing new boss stood in front of the door, hands on his hips, slightly sweeping back his long dark coat. If Danny listened carefully, he could hear two other people near the door, and… was that an alarm? Yes. Faint, but present, was a warning klaxon.

Okay. Danny would bet his right arm that something had gone horribly wrong with whatever his parents were consulting on. Didn’t explain why the boss was in front of his door.

Unless they’d gotten the rooms mixed up, somehow?

Ugh. Danny wasn’t paid enough to deal with this.

He opened the door. “What-?”

“Phantom,” intoned eyepatch guy with great solemnity.

Danny immediately tried to close the door. The guy stuck his foot in the jamb, and, sure, Danny could have crushed it, but that would be a jerk move. He didn’t think this guy was going for a pirate look, after all.

“We need your help.”

“I’m not sure what you think I can help you with,” yelled Danny over the beating of the helicopter blades. He’d remained stubbornly in human form. “My parents are the scientists. This sounds like a science thing. Not a punching-people thing.”

“We spoke to them earlier,” said Fury, “and we have plenty of scientists working on the theories they brought up. You’re the one with practical experience.”

“Practical experience in what?”

“Interdimensional portals,” said the woman, who had yet to introduce herself.

As if this whole thing wasn’t already giving him a bad feeling. “My parents built an interdimensional portal. Again, you should be talking to them. They’re the ones you’re paying.”

“We could pay you, too,” said Fury, “but we assumed you would want to avoid letting your parents know about this, as you’re still a minor and they have control of your bank accounts.”

Danny stared flatly. “This is blackmail.”

“We aren’t threatening you,” pointed out the woman.

“Emotional blackmail,” said Danny, glaring, daring her to challenge him on whether or not he actually knew what blackmail was.

In the meantime, the helicopter landed. Danny unbuckled and hopped out, trailing slightly awkwardly behind Fury and the woman. He didn’t want to stand out, but he suspected that, being the only kid here and being in the general vicinity of Fury, who radiated authority, that was a lost cause.

“This is Agent Coulson. Coulson, this is Phantom.”

Danny’s mouth went dry(er) at how casual the introduction was. His eyes went nervously to all the other people running around the field. With all the noise, it was unlikely anyone had heard, but still…

“Can you not? Secret identity and all? Unless you’ve told everyone herealready, which, rude.”

Fury sighed. “How bad is it?” he asked Coulson.

“We’re not sure,” said Coulson. “That’s the problem. Big fan of your work, by the way,” he added as an aside to Danny. He glanced at the woman. “Agent Hill.”

“Background?” asked Fury as he led the way into the building.

“The first energy surge was four hours ago. Dr. Selvig’s equipment picked it up – He’s the head scientist on this project.”

“Dr. Selvig isn’t authorized to test,” said Fury. “We wanted to run his plans by the Fentons.”

“He wasn’t testing. He wasn’t even in the room. He called it ‘spontaneous advancement.’”

“It turned itself on?”

“What are the energy levels?” asked Fury before Hill’s question could be answered.

“Climbing,” said Coulson.

“Mr. Fenton,” said Fury, “any comments?”

“Look, I don’t even know what this thing that you built looks like or what it’s a door to.” Danny frowned as a thought occurred to him. “You’re not expecting me to fight whatever comes out of it, are you? Because, unless you’ve got a ghost portal down there, I can’t make guarantees.”

“It’s called the Tesseract,” said Coulson. “It’s supposed to be a connection to the other side of space. A source of unlimited energy. At least,” there was a note of humor in his voice despite the evacuation taking place around them, “that’s what the scientists say.”

“A door to space?” asked Danny, firmly shoving down his excitement at the prospect. “Like, a Stargate?” It was no good, he could practically feel himself sparkling. He took a firm grip of his core and reminded himself he might need to fight before the end of the day.

“Well, no,” said Coulson. “It’s this little… cube… thing.” He made a shape with his hands.

“Oh,” said Danny, mind still whirring. “You know, if it’s really a tesseract, it isn’t a cube in just three dimensions, so bigger things could come out of it than you’d think.” He’d seen some weird portals in the Ghost Zone.

“Well, right now, we’re just getting energy.” They entered a large room with an extremely sci-fi setup. It looked like they were planning to shoot some kind of laser across the room onto a platform surrounded by strange-looking panels. There were men with guns scattered around in what was probably a well thought out formation Danny couldn’t see. There was also a dude with a bow sitting up in the rafters. He frowned down at Danny as he noticed Danny noticing him.

“Dr. Selvig!”

“Director!”

“What do we know?”

Danny allowed himself to be distracted by the centerpiece of the room, a piece of machinery built around what was indeed a little cube thing. He tilted his head and approached, trying to get a better view of it around the people in lab coats and protective gear currently swarming it. He caught mention of radiation a grimaced.

It was unlikely to kill him, but, really, everyone here should probably be wearing more PPE. You never knew what was going to come out of an interdimensional portal, after all. Except trouble. Trouble was a pretty safe bet.

It was pretty. Blue. Reminded him a little of a blue raspberry ice pop. Part of him wanted to lick it. Which was stupid. He didn’t want to wind up half what-ever-lived-on-the-other-side on top of his regular ghost nonsense.

“Mr. Fenton?”

Danny jumped and turned, refocusing on the adults, who had multiplied while he’d been daydreaming. The guy with the bow had joined them.

“Mr. Fenton? Like the Doctors Fenton I spoke to earlier?” asked Selvig.

“Yeah, it’s—”

This, of course, was when everything decided to explode. Sort of.

The blue cube shot out a beam of energy that had more than a little in common with the Fenton Bazooka’s portal setting. The beam terminated on the platform, a portal rapidly forming.

Danny slid into a fighting stance, and barely even noticed as blue energy washed over the room, throwing many less-prepared people back.

Something shaped like a man stepped through the portal.

Danny did not break his stance. Still. “An alien,” he whispered, eyes wide. If they were friendly, maybe they’d answer his questions about space. If they weren’t friendly, maybe they’d answer his questions about space after Danny beat them up.

(Danny did not go ghost. Did not even think about going ghost. There were too many people here, and the space was too open.)

Fury attempted to negotiate. Danny approved. Not everything that came through an interdimensional portal was necessarily evil.

Except this guy apparently was. Go figure. He could also deflect bullets and was very good with throwing knives, which led to Danny having to pull several of the gun guys out of their own line of fire as well as the alien’s line of knife. Who would have thought an alien’s weapon of choice would be throwing knives? The energy-blasting spear was much more in line with his expectations.

The bow guy proved to be more competent than the gun guys. This didn’t really surprise Danny. Bow guy sort of had to be competent. Otherwise, no way would they let him go around with a bow. Like, seriously. A bow.

Even so, bow guy was fighting an alien and—

“You have heart,” said the alien, raising the spear.

Danny pushed bow guy out of the way, and his mind fuzzed out.

(The human part of it, anyway.)

Loki didn’t know what a child was doing here, and he didn’t particularly care. The boy would do for a hostage, at least. He had a mission he had to fulfil, or else…

Or else.

“Please don’t,” he said turning with a shadow of his usual lazy affect, vaguely insulted that the human thought he could be sneaker that him, “I still need that.”

The human went on and on, apparently burdened with the delusion that he was on the same level as Loki.

Loki was burdened with other things. A glorious purpose. Glad tidings. Freedom. What could be better than freedom?

“A world free from what?” asked the human.

“From freedom,” said Loki, and wasn’t that what he believed, now? Wasn’t that what he’d been shown? “Freedom is life’s great lie.” He would know. He was an excellent liar. “Once you accept that, in your heart—” He batted away an arrow and tsked. “Shield me, boy,” he demanded. Had Thanos misrepresented the scepter’s powers? Or was the boy merely—

A dome of green surrounded him and the boy, thrumming with magic the likes of which he had only seen once, in a tome thrice forbidden.

“Oh,” said Loki, almost purring. “You are interesting. What are you?”

“Half human, half ghost,” replied the boy, tersely.

Loki had never heard of such a creature. No matter. He’d be sure to make good use of him.

“Grab the scientist,” he said, nodding at the balding man who had been with his brother when he’d fought the Destroyer in the desert.

Loki wanted the archer. He seemed interesting. Useful.

Fenton was under thrall. Phantom knew what that felt like. A hundred feet under red water, trying not to drown, whispers everywhere. Pulling. Pushing. Prodding.

This was different, but the principle was the same.

Neither half of him could truly ‘fight’ the other. Fenton and Phantom were a single entity. Not two in lockstep. Even so.

Fenton grabbed onto Dr. Selvig, as ordered. Phantom made sure that was all they did.

“What are you doing, boy?” snapped Loki. “Follow me! Bring the scientist.”

And so, they followed.

Loki breathed. Acquiring Barton had been the right choice. The boy was powerful, but, perhaps because of his unique biology, did not have Barton’s presence of mind, and couldn’t have led him to such wonderful allies.

Allies.

These weren’t truly his allies. Nor were they subjects. They were…

Loki forced himself to breathe. He just had to follow the mission. Follow the mission, let Thanos’s army through. He’d been promised this world. He would have this world.

And then he could be… His mind stuttered over the next word, and he shook his head, trying to drive out the painful buzz of Thanos’s herald and mouthpiece trying to contact him.

He looked up at the drones bustling around, all according to his will. Except the boy, who stared at him, somehow managing to be both utterly blank and challenging at the same time.

He was alone, here.

He was alone.

But what did it matter? Bad men always wound up alone, and Loki… Loki could never be a good man.

#danny phantom #marvel cinematic universe #avengers #dannymay 2021 #dannymay 2021 day 28: alone #dannymay #danny phantom x marvel cinematic universe crossover #op!Danny/Marvel #Not much op!Danny yet tho

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redpandaramblings · 3 years

Text

The Art of Blind Dates. Deku x GN! Reader

This piece was written for @rat-zuki 's the deku agenda escapes no one collab. Happy Birthday to our favorite broccoli.

Content warning- This fic rated PG-13. Aged up characters, Allusions to sexual activity, swearing, gender neutral reader.

“You know, we really have to stop meeting like this.”

You jumped, the spray can you had been using left an unsightly streak of bright red across your masterpiece. You scowled behind your mask as you turned to face the man who had spoken.

“We do. You keep making me mess up my hard work!”

You smirked, pleased with yourself as you saw Deku, the number one pro hero, recoil at the sight of your mask. It had taken a few weeks to convert the All Might mask into an ahegao face, but it was worth it if it horrified your number one pain in the ass. Izuku blinked a few times, sighing and bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He was clearly choosing to ignore your choice of disguise.

“I wouldn’t have to mess with your work if you chose to do things that were, you know, actually legal? You’re talented, Brushstroke. You could get paid to do murals or something instead of…” Deku gestured towards your latest creation. You were rather proud of it. It had taken a good amount of planning to manage to paint a fifty foot tall mural of pro hero Dynamight mooning the city with the bold caption ‘The Hero Commision can kiss my ass.’ It would be perfect if not for the red streak from where Deku had startled you. With a contemplative hum you shook your spray can and quickly turned the offending mark into a cartoonish lipstick print. Midoriya sighed heavily. “I’m standing right here, you know.”

“I know.” You grinned behind your mask. The voice distorter you used did nothing to hide your chipper tone. “I also know you like it. And you can’t tell me Dynamight wouldn’t love it. He literally said that on live interview!”

“Yes, but not with his pants down to his knees.”

You bent over, throwing your cans of spray paint and climbing gear into your duffle bag. It wouldn’t do for your nemesis to get his hands on some of the tools you used. Mei’s stamp was all over it.

“Which is such a shame. The man’s got cake for days.” You chuckled as Deku pulled a face.

He observed you, hands on his hips. “And where do you think you’re going?”

“Away, obviously.” You said as you threw the strap of your dufflebag across you.

“And I’m just going to let you go?”

“Oh no. You’re going to chase me like you always do. And I’m going to escape like I always do. And it’s going to drive you crazy because you can’t figure out how I keep doing it.” You began stretching, exaggerating each movement.

“A teleportation quirk isn’t that hard to figure out.” Izuku began stretching as well, rolling his shoulders and popping joints.

“Guess again.” You sing songed, bouncing on your toes.

“Wouldn’t have to guess if you just told me.”

“But that’s no fun. Unfortunately, I do have to be going. Catch you later, hot stuff!” And with a sprint, you raced to the side of the building and jumped off before activating your quirk.

Time slowed around you. It was like you were hovering in the air instead of falling. Freeze Frame was a quirk you had learned to perfect over the years. Between the quirk and the assorted gadgets in your bag and on your person, it was definitely enough to baffle the number one pro hero. Speaking of, you better work quickly before your quirk wore off and splatted you across the sidewalk.

Freeze Frame was named after what your quirk looked like from the outside. It was as if you teleported, or you had frozen time around you for everyone except yourself. In reality, you were a speedster. When your quirk was active, you were able to move at speeds so fast you were undetectable to others, and to you it seemed like everything was paused in time. You probably could have been a phenomenal hero or villain if you wanted. But currently, it was much more fun to thwart a certain green haired man.

With a press of a button, you deployed a grappling hook, snagging it on the building across the alley. You swung over, keeping a countdown in your head. Would you be lucky enough and have time to…? Yes. There! A balcony door was cracked open slightly. You gracefully landed on the balcony and used the door to slip into what appeared to be someone’s bedroom, thankfully unoccupied at the moment. Taking no chances though, you slip into the closet just as the effects of your quirk wear off. The other reason you had never turned to heroism or villainy- no matter how much you trained, you could only keep your quirk activated for ten seconds at a time. It wasn’t a lot. Plus you could only activate your quirk a couple dozen times a day without getting seriously ill. But it still was usually more than enough to be able to give any law enforcement the slip. Just like now.

Deku curses as he runs to the edge of the roof. You’re nowhere to be seen. “Brushstroke! Get back here, you damn brat!” He shouted, running a hand through his hair in frustration. One of these days he was going to figure out your quirk and how to counteract it. And when that day comes he was going to take you over his knee and… No. He shook his head, blushing to clear his thoughts. What to do with you. Well, he wasn’t sure yet. You weren’t a villain, really. More of a public nuisance. The murals you did showed a lot of talent and a good chunk of the population agreed with the social commentary behind them. But that didn’t change that you had painted ten foot tall asscheeks on a building without permission. And, technically, it was within his job description to apprehend you. “Brushstroke!” Deku called again as he made his way down to the ground. There was no sign of you anywhere. Invisibility quirk maybe? Though it would be unusual if you could turn all the stuff you had been wearing and carrying invisible as well.

Meanwhile, as Izuku was getting lost in thought, you were getting naked. You stripped out of your gear and paint covered smock, moving as quickly as you dared while still remaining quiet in your hidden location. Just because the bedroom had been empty doesn’t mean the rest of the place was, after all. You shoved everything into your dufflebag, pulling out a clean set of clothing from a zippered pocket. Getting changed was a simple affair, as was ruffling your hair, messily getting it to look like a different style. One of your favorite tricks happened when you pushed a hidden button on the edge of your duffle bag. The previously dull gray bag quickly morphed into a loud riot of tye dyed color. Chameleon bags, Hatsume called them. Still in a prototype stage, your friend and employer would probably make a mint on them if you put them on the market. After a final brush off and deciding you looked acceptably civilian, you peeked out the closet door. The bedroom was still empty. You crept out slowly. The balcony wasn’t a feasible exit anymore. Not without the gear you had had to store away. You were going to have to sneak out the front door. You activated your quirk, feeling a little queasy at having to use it again so quickly in succession. It was simple to race through the apartment and out into the hall within your short time limit. In fact, with your speed, you were easily able to exit the entire apartment complex. You still had a few seconds to spare when you shot out the door. You grinned at seeing the number one pro hero standing in the middle of the street. You knew you shouldn’t do what you were thinking. Instead you should use your last few spare seconds to put some distance between yourself and the large, green haired man. Instead, you quickly dug around in your bag and found your tube of lipstick. You applied a nice thick coat as you waltzed up to him. With a giggle, you planted a firm smacking kiss on his cheek, leaving behind a clear and perfect lip print. With a grin, you hurried back to the apartment complex. It was easy to make it seem like you were just coming out of the door as time snapped back to its proper speed. You watched, hiding your smirk as you observed the clearly frustrated hero scanning the crowds for any sign of you. His eyes passed right over you, barely giving you a glance. You almost felt hurt that he thought your normal look was that unremarkable. But that was the point, after all. As Deku continued to call out for your pseudonym, you turned and walked away, blending into the crowd. You were almost out of earshot when you heard a loud cursing exclamation that would have been more in character for a certain blond hero. You bite your knuckle to muffle your laughter. Someone had informed Deku of the lipstick mark.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You sipped from a bottle of water as you watched Mei work her magic. It was strangely relaxing to watch her in her element. Though it seemed chaotic the first few times you had witnessed your friend work, there was a clear method to the madness if you just knew where to look. And you knew exactly where to look now that you had been working with her for the past three years. You were simply listed as one of her assistants. Most days that involved a random jumble of cleaning, paperwork, schedule management, and coffee making. The real reason Hatsume loved having you around however, was days like this.

“Okay! Set!” She chirped happily. “You good to go now?”

You nodded as you slid down, and walked into the testing area. “Remind me what I’m looking for again?”

“Well, obviously the usual. Make sure it’s not lethal, of course. And then I want to make sure the grid is deploying at the right time. Should be about a quarter second after detonation.”

“As long as everything looks good, want me to be full blown dummy this time?”

Hatsume tilted her head, and considered a moment before nodding. “Yeah, should be fine. Have the explosive levels where they should be. If anything messes up it’s going to be the grid deploying too soon or too late and not restraining you right.”

You gave her a thumbs up as you got into position. She counted down, though that didn’t matter much to you, honestly. One of the best perks of your quirk was that it gave you insane reflexes. You waited until the moment you saw the detonation begin to happen and activated your quirk.

As usual, it felt like time slowed to a crawl around you. Hollywood directors would give a kidney to have access to the detailed slow motion you could experience every day for free. You walked around the device, looking it over. It was meant to be a capture aid for pro hero Cellophane, a small explosive that would shoot nets of tape in all directions. It had to be safe and effective. Better to have a few civilians stuck to the walls than to risk letting a villain escape, after all. You peered into the explosion that was slowly rippling outward. Everything looked good so far… Yep, there were the grids starting to deploy. Sure that everything was safe, you deactivated your quirk and instantly were thrown backward and stuck to a padded wall of the testing room.

“Looked great!” You called as Hatsume entered the room. “I think you’ve finally got it!”

While she cheered and began praising her baby for performing so well, you tried wiggling. No luck. You were stuck rather firmly. Apparently she had upped the strength of the adhesive. After a minute, Hatsume finally noticed your struggles.

“Oh good!” She chirped. “Looks like the new formula is holding up nicely. I mean, I still need to test it out against, like strength and fire quirks, but looking good so far.”

“Little help, please?” You ask, giving her a look.

“Maybe in a bit.” She said, turning her back and leaving you there, pinned. “Want to test how long it holds. Besides, I have some questions about your last escapade and how my babies held up.”

You let out a resigned sigh. Of course. Your friend had found out about your after hours hobby about a year and a half ago. Instead of discouraging you, it hadn’t surprised you that much when she blackmailed you. She wouldn’t tell the police or heroes…. If you used some of her experimental babies on your future excursions. You had been dubious. Hatsume’s babies could be a little dangerous in the prototype stage. But it ended up working great! Your pieces went from small tagging jobs to huge fifty foot murals. Though that had caught the attention of a few public figures, including a certain green haired pain in your ass.

“I didn’t use anything directly against Deku this time.” You sighed, going limp to test if the tape would hold your weight. It did. “Grappling hook works great. The painter drones are okay for filling in large areas, but aren’t able to do clean lines well. The gecko boots continue to be amazing, but the gloves need a lot of work. The control for when they release still isn’t great.”

Hatsume nodded, quickly making notes about everything you said. There was a bit of a quick back and forth where she asked questions and you answered. Though ten minutes passed and you were still stuck to the wall. She eventually sets her notes aside and turns to face you fully. “So,” she drawls. “You saw Deku again.”

“I always see Deku nowadays!” You groan. “I swear Mei, if I find out you’re tipping him off or something...”

“Aww, come on! He’s nice! Would you rather be dealing with Dynamight?”

You frowned, not meeting her gaze. “I mean, the variety might be nice?”

“You like that with the help of my babies you’re able to out fox the number one pro hero, admit it!”

“It might be a little satisfying,” you mutter.

“And it doesn’t hurt that he’s hot either! Heard you two get all flirty during chases. The tabloids loved the kiss mark, by the way. Enjoy finally kissing him?”

“Hatsume!” you groan. “Subject change, please! Anything else!”

“Anything?” she grins at you.

“Oh god, I’m going to regret this.”

“It’s not that bad, I promise! Just, would you be interested in a blind date?”

You blink. “A date?”

“Yeah! One of my friends from school has a lot of trouble meeting people organically. You know how the industry is. Ridiculous schedules, maintaining reputation, trying to make sure they like you for you and aren’t just a fan.”

“Yeah… I guess I can understand that.”

“Well, I just think you and him would be a great fit! He’s a huge nerd in a lot of the same ways you are, but a real good guy once you get past the awkward. Plus,” Hatsume dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper “I happen to know for a fact that he’s a fan of Brushstroke’s work.”

You sighed, rolling your eyes. “You know it’s extortion to try to get me to agree when you have me literally taped to a wall.”

“I know!” Hatsume chirped happily. “So are you going to agree? I made the adhesive pretty strong this time. Who knows how long it would take to wear off on it’s own?”

“Bitch!” You can’t help laughing. “Alright, alright, I’ll go. Just get me down from here!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You fidgeted with the ring you were wearing as you stared at the building in front of you. Maybe it wasn’t too late to bail? You don’t know exactly what you had been expecting when Hatsume had told you about the somewhat shy, nerdy man she had set you up with, but you hadn’t expected him to choose the fanciest restaurant in town as your date location. You were wearing your best and still felt underdressed. Well, if the date was a disaster, at least you knew what building you were going to spray paint next. The glistening white exterior would make for a great canvas. You chuckled quietly at your own thoughts.

Squaring your shoulders, you took a deep breath and marched in. You could do this. You were an infamous tagger. You faced off against the number one pro hero regularly. Your day job was working with Hatsume. You’ve got this. With an air of newfound confidence, you gave your name to the maitre d. It was a surprise when you were led through the restaurant to one of their private curtained rooms. This guy you’d been set up with was apparently going all out. Maybe you were going to like him after all, you thought as you were ushered in. Then you looked up.

Fuck.

Standing to greet you with a stupidly flustered look on his damn stupid handsome face was your nemisis. The number one thorn in your proverbial side. The giant broccoli himself.

That BITCH had set you up with Izuku Midoriya!

You froze. In the back of your mind you were aware that your mouth was hanging open. The green haired man shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Hi,” he said quietly, scratching the back of his head.

You continued to stare.

He cleared his throat, glancing to the side. “Sorry about the secrecy, but I think it’s understandable.”

You nodded weakly.

Izuku bit his lip. You realized with a start that he might be even more nervous than you are. As much as you planned to murder Hatsume later, this wasn’t Midoriya’s fault. You could get through this date at least. Eat some expensive food, drink the best wines, make some meaningless conversation, say your goodbyes, and then go home to plot the demise of your former best friend. Long, slow painful demise. Good thing about being an artist, you had lots of traps, so clean up should be easy. Looking at the worried expression on Izuku’s face, you realize with a start that you still haven’t actually said anything to him. You open your mouth to offer some sort of generic greeting. But what comes out is-

“I’m going to fucking murder Mei!”

Izuku blinks. Blinks again. Then he starts laughing loudly. He leans one hand on the table as he cackles. You stare before starting to chuckle yourself. Soon you’re both wheezing with laughter. You both slump into your seats, trying to collect yourselves. Midoriya speaks first.

“Yeah, I… I get that. I’d think that’s a common emotion when hanging around Hatsume.”

You can’t help your smile. “Only at least half of the time. But that’s what makes it fun. No one else like her.”

“That’s for sure.” Izuku leaned back in his seat, looking you over like he’s studying you. “So, I suppose we should actually introduce ourselves. I’m Izuku Midoriya. I do hero work.”

You laugh. “Y/N Y/L/N. I work for Mei and freelance art when I can.”

“Art, huh? What kind of stuff do you do?”

You’re briefly interrupted by the arrival of the first course. After the waiter leaves, Deku apologies. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to order for you, but this is one of those places where you pay them and they tell you what you’re going to eat.”

“It’s fine.” You say as you stare at the delicate wisp of some sort of thinly shaved vegetable with a dollop of strangely colored foam on top.

“You were saying what kind of art you do?” Deku cautiously was poking at the tiny fancy appetizer.

“A few different things really, but my passion is mural work. Latest job was in a maid cafe. They wanted something cute and floral, but they let me do what I wanted within that theme.”

The night continued on and was surprisingly easy. The food was delicious, the wine was better, and you were pleasantly surprised by the company. Maybe it was the wine softening you up, but as you looked across the table where Izuku was animatedly talking about how influential All Might’s example had been for him, you admitted to yourself that the green haired man was very handsome. And funny. And interesting. And you were trying very hard not to think about the way Midoriya’s large scarred hand wrapped around the delicate wine glass. It was a surprise when the final course was finished and Izuku was quietly taking care of the bill. He escorted you out of the building and you both stood awkwardly outside. Deku cleared his throat.

“If it’s not presuming too much, I’m not quite ready for tonight to end. Is it alright if I walk you home?”

“I’d like that. Like that a lot, actually.”

He smiled at you, and it was like the sun. You walked and talked animatedly. The conversation was so easy and fun, and a little flirty. Somewhere along the way your hands brushed together and holding hands became the most natural thing in the world. Time flew by as you walked together, your true destination long forgotten. You were only brought back to reality when out of the corner of your eye you saw a massive mural of pro hero asscheeks. When Izuku saw what you were looking at, he groaned.

“Could you please not check out my friend’s ass while we’re on a date?” He joked, gently elbowing your ribs. You laughed.

“I mean, you can’t blame me. It’s hard to miss.” You made a mental note to tell Mei that her paint formula was holding up beautifully.

“It’s a little embarrassing. Brushstroke is talented and all, but every mural is a time I couldn’t catch them.”

Maybe it was the wine still buzzing through your system. Maybe it was the thrill of it. Maybe you just wanted to see those beautiful green eyes widen. But you couldn’t help the next words out of your mouth.

“Well you might have an easier time if you ever actually figured my quirk out.”

“Yeah I…” He stopped. Stared. “You…” He stared harder, pulling away slightly as he looked your figure up and down. “You!!!”

“Surprise?” You laughed, and grinned at him. He was always so handsome when he was angry. You weren’t scared at all as he hauled you close.

“Do you have any idea how infuriating you are?”

“Pretty good idea, actually.”

“You’ve been leading me on goose chases for months!”

You grinned “Yes, will be our anniversary soon.”

Izuku groaned as he wrapped his arms around your waste. “You irredeemable brat!”

You would have replied, but in the next second he was fiercely smashing his mouth against yours. The kiss started harsh and desperate. The results of months of teasing and flirting. It gentled as the two of you stood there in the night, soft and sweet and full of affection the two of you had yet to put into words. The thought occurred to you that you’d have to thank Mei later. Your eyes opened as the two of you pulled away for breath. You started giggling almost immediately. Izuku pressed his forehead against yours.

“What’s so funny, darling?”

You smirked. “I never thought we’d have our first kiss while being mooned by Dynamight.”

Izuku groaned loudly before sweeping you up into his arms. You squawked and clung to him.

“That’s it.” He rumbled. “I’m going to spank you when I get you home, you fucking brat.”

“Promise?” you giggled.

You didn’t mind in the least when he shut you up with another kiss.

#the deku agenda escapes no one collab #izuku x reader #midoriya x reader #deku x reader #deku x y/n #deku x you #gender neutral reader #izuku midoria x reader #aged up characters #bnha reader insert

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dameronology · 3 years

Text

that’s all {din djarin x reader}

(i’m reposting this bc it wasn’t showing up in the tags and it was stressing me out)

summary: you’d saved din djarin from himself before. now, with the pain of losing his kid, you’re about to do it all over again. (kinda based on find me here by hayley williams)

warnings: this is...flangst. fluff and angst. swearing. mentions of depression but it’s also a bit ✨positive✨

this is just me trying to be the emotional janitor to...that. i’ve tried to keep it as gender neutral as possible but some of the conversation might imply an afab reader but hopefully it’s vague to be completely objective!!

- jazz

anyways i know i already said it but !! spoilers !! spoilers !! spoilers !!

p.s spot the titanic reference

Grogu was tiny but the whole he left in your lives was massive.

You always knew you were going to have to give him up - hell, that had been the job in the first place - but you hadn’t expected it to hurt so much. He wasn’t your kid but at the same he completely and entirely was. You’d never expected your first parenting experience to be with a tiny green Jedi but at the same time, you wouldn’t have had it any other way. The next few months were going to be hard; accepting that he wasn’t yours to keep and that he was in a better place was guaranteed to be a long process. It would be worth it in the end but the initial pain was bordering on unbearable.

Din was better at hiding it than you. Admittedly, he did have a thick beskar layer to shield his emotions and pain from the outside world but he couldn’t hide it from you; never from you. Even behind the metal, you could read him like a book. It was a product of spending every waking minute together (his overprotective doing, not yours) and in return, he had learnt every habit and every quirk of yours. He sometimes cursed your ability to read him, especially when it lead to you saying things like you did not just tilt your helmet at me like that, Din Djarin.

He’d been quieter in the days since Luke Skywalker had taken the kid - quieter than usual, at least. Din was already a pretty taciturn person; compared to how he was with other people, he practically spoke your ear off but since you’d landed back on Nevarro, he’d completely kept to himself. It was painful to watch, seeing him rise at the crack of dawn to take a bounty, only to return in the evening with a few more bruises than he’d had that morning. You wanted to say something to do something that would make him snap back to reality, but this was probably his grieving process and you had to respect that. Or, you had to at least try to.

That was, until, it felt like Din was killing both you and him; working himself to the point of exhaustion, barely sleeping and refusing to even acknowledge Greef or Cara. You could deal with him being angsty. You could deal with him grieving. You couldn’t, however, deal with him ignoring you. You had literally vowed to go through all your bad times together and Din Djarin was nothing if not a man of his word. He knew it. You knew it too - and you’d be damned if you’d let him forget it.

It was on a cold - at least by Nevarro standards - morning that you decided it was time to show him some tough love. The Mandalorian had decided to hole out on one of Karga’s old ships that morning, claiming that he wanted to fix it. You were no engineering genius, but given that the old jet’s wings had fallen off, you could see it was past the point of no return and that Din had just been looking for an excuse. He was good at that these days.

‘Din!’ You called. The bay doors were open, but the ship itself was dark and dusty. Tinkering, my ass. As expected, there was no reply. ‘Din! Don’t ignore me.’

Silence.

‘Please?’

You grumbled to yourself, walking further inside the dimly lit ship. Tiny specs of dust were floating in the streams of thin light, leading your path further and further towards the cockpit. Who ever it had belonged it, it pre-dated the Republic, let alone the Empire or new order. You tried to resist the urge to cough, instead choosing to focus on your mission: hunting down the Mandalorian. The tables really had turned, considering he was very rarely the prey.

‘I was talking to Karga.’ You continued - as far as you knew, you were talking to thin air, but you liked your chances. ‘He offered me a bounty puck for...Corellia, is it? For that big, bad guy we didn’t catch last year. You know the one that nearly killed me?’

There was a crash from the cockpit, and you grinned to yourself. It was a little unethical to scare the man out of hiding with your bullshit, but you were getting desperate.

‘I figured it would be good to get out a bit, try and distract myself, you know?’ You continued. ‘So I was gonna borrow a ship and head out there tomorrow-’

‘- like hell you’re doing that on your own.’

A six foot mountain of beskar suddenly stepped out from the darkness. Normally, that would have been enough to scare anyone, but not you. You’d married that six foot mountain of beskar. That probably gave you more guts than anyone in the damn galaxy -- until they found out he wasn’t actually that terrifying. Not many people would have taken the Mandalorian seriously if they knew he enjoyed having his hair played with.

You held your hands up in the air, stretching out your fingers to show that there was no puck in sight.

‘You lied.’ Din grunted.

‘And you were ignoring me.’ You shot back. ‘’S going on?’

‘I told you. I was working on the ship-’

‘- nope.’ You cut him off. ‘Try again.’

‘Karga asked me to fix it-’

‘- Still no!’ You snapped. ‘We gonna go three for three or are you gonna finally pull your head out your ass and stop lying to me, Din?’

There wasn’t a single person in the galaxy who dared speak back to the Mandalorian - except you. That was what had made him fall for you in the first place. It was like you couldn’t even see the beskar. You’d always seen him as Din, and never as the Mandalorian, or a warrior. You’d made it clear from the day you met that you wouldn’t take any bullshit from anyone, him included, and he’d always respected that.

‘You have been holing yourself away for weeks.’ You continued. ‘I know it’s hard but you have to accept it. Grogu wasn’t ours to keep - he never was.’

Din didn’t response, instead dropping his gaze down to the floor.’

‘Hey.’ You put a finger at the base of the helmet, tilting his head back up to look at you. ‘Look at me. Talk to me.’

‘I miss him.’ He stated; short and blunt. Fitting, really. ‘And it hurts.’

‘I get that.’ You gently placed your hands on either side of his helmet, fingers splaying out over the cold metal. ‘But it’s better to hurt together. Can I?’

Din nodded, signalling that it was okay for you to take it off. You gently tugged at the helmet, momentarily breaking away from him to place it beside you. It was a relief to see his face after so many weeks of having the beskar between you; the soft brown eyes and slightly crooked smile that met you on the other side felt like home. You could have stared at him forever if the galaxy wasn’t so fucking demanding of your presence.

You’d spent far too long on the other side of the beskar, waiting for him to let you in. And now that you’d got him, now that you’d promised yourselves to one another forever? You weren’t going to let it happen again.

You gently pushed back a few tufts of brown hair, offering him a sad smile. ‘You know we made the right decision, yeah?’

He nodded, leaning into your touch as your hands carded through his hair. ‘I know.’

‘So you gotta stop beating yourself up, baby.’ You stressed. ‘Stop shutting people out - stop shutting me out. I know we don’t have the kid anymore but we are still a family.’

‘I lost the ship. I lost the kid.’ Din quietly spoke. ‘I’m just worried that-’

‘- I’m not going anywhere.’ You shook your head, knowing what he was going to say before the words even left his mouth. ‘Even if you paid me. You are stuck with me, okay? Cursed with me till the day I keel over and die.’

Finally, Din smiled. He looked you dead in the eye and he smiled, eyes creasing at the side as he peered down at you, eventually tightening his arms around your waist. He held your head to his chest, ungloved hand gently clutching you as he rested his chin on your hair. The first time he’d clung onto you like this had been after a rough mission; neither of you had been sure if he was going to make it back and when he did, the first thing he did was pull you into his arms and you stayed there for what felt like hours. That was when Din realised for the first time that he loved you - and now, after weeks of isolating himself and shutting you out, this didn’t feel completely different from that. It was just that this time, it was less of a realisation of more of a reminder.

‘I didn’t expect it to be this bad.’ Din quietly admitted.

‘I know.’ You whispered back, voice slightly muffled by his chest. ‘But pain is only temporary. Dark times pass and we’ll learn to look back on this and enjoy the memories. They won’t always be tainted.’

He’d been in a dark place when he’d met you. It was like he’d been treading water, waiting for the riptides to take him, to stake their claim and remind him of his mortality, to remind him that not even the bravest people can forfeit their ability to hurt. He tried. Maker, he had tried. The icy and emotionless impression he gave to strangers wasn’t an accident. It was a survival mechanism; a defense mechanism. One that you’d chosen to ignore. You’d saved him in every way a person could be saved.

Just as the waves were pulling him under, you’d dragged him out; dragged him to the shore and reminded him that pain was merely part of being human. Most importantly, you’d called his attention to the fact that no matter how much beskar he wore or how impenetrable he acted, that he couldn’t avoid being one. He could run away from bounty hunters and Imperials and the thousands of enemies he’d made but the fact of mortality was always hot on his tail.

Now, you were pulling him up for air all over again.

Eventually, pain stopped being a reminder of his humanity and instead, it was replaced by his love for you. His ability to feel things for you. You’d saved him then and now, you were helping him come up for air all over again. Being human didn’t always mean to hurt - it could just as much mean to love.

‘I’ve got you, okay?’ You tightened your grip on him, eyes meeting his. ‘Whatever you need.’

‘You.’ Din replied. ‘I need you. That’s all.’

a/n: ok i realised i published an identical but slightly different imagine to this in october but...clearly i have a type and that type is imagines where the mandalorian confesses that you’re the only thing he needs because i eat that shit up. consume it whole. i am telling you. i have no regrets. my content might is predictable but HELL at least u can rely on something in these wild times❤️

#din djarin x reader #din djarin imagine #din djarin x you #mandalorian x you #mandalorian x reader #mandalorian imagine #mandalorian fan fiction #din djarin fan fiction #star wars x reader #star wars x you #star wars fluff #din djarin fluff #mandalorian fluff #mandalorian spoilers #mandalorian season 2 spoilers

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gwynrielendgame · 3 years

Text

Nyx x Tamlin’s daughter

Okay so literally no one asked for this but I gotta write when inspiration strikes 😭😭but I got like a whole story line for these two in my head so if people like it I’ll write more

"They're late."

"They'll be here. Just give them a moment."

"I told you they wouldn't come. Tamlin has never gotten over his grudge."

"Anyone else think this is lame?"

"Why are we even doing this?"

"We need to make peace with the Spring Court. This stupid feud has gone on long enough." Feyre declared from her spot at the dinner table.

Nyx thought his presence at this meeting was pointless. It was not his duty to befriend his mother's ex-lover. Alas, Violet, his youngest sister, and him seemed to have been roped into this evening.

"It's been over a hundred years and Tamlin is still pining over you? Yikes." Violet unhelpfully chimed in. Nyx rolled his eyes at her.

"He's not pining over me. I do not know why he has held a grudge all these years, but that's what this meeting is for." Their mother responded. She was obviously nervous from the amount of squirming she was doing in her chair. She had yet to remain still since they all sat down together.

"My High Lord and Lady, Lucien has arrived with your guests." One of the guards entered the dining hall. Feyre let out a deep breathe and adjusted her crown. Something she always did when she felt nervous.

"Send them in."

Nyx had never met the High Lord of the Spring Court, so he was not sure what to expect. Tamlin walked in with more confidence than Nyx would have assumed. He certainly exuded authority. Shoulder length blonde hair, tall, strong build, sharp facial features. Nyx could understand why his mother was so smitten with Tamlin at first. Nyx quickly lost interest in Lucien and Tamlin when the third guest walked into his line of sight. It was a beautiful woman. He could already tell she was young for fae years, but her tattoos and scars revealed she had to be old enough to have lived through the most recent war. Her white blonde hair was pulled up into a half bun much like Cassian often wore his hair. The pieces that were down barely reached her shoulders but a few of the pieces were braided by her ears. She was almost as tall as Tamlin and athletically built. She was built like the Valkyries, all muscle. Nyx thought it made her more intimidating; though, the tattoos on her face made that apparent enough. She had black markings that started above her right eyebrow, curved around her temple, and stopped at her cheekbone. They appeared to be similar to the Illyrian tattoos except hers were harsher, blunter lines. Most Illyrian tattoos flowed and ebbed with the body. These facial markings had defined endings. Perhaps it was a language that Nyx did not know. The tattoos did a good job of emphasizing her sharp facial features. Prominent cheekbones and a long sharp nose along with bright green eyes and large lips made her face more intriguing than conventionally beautiful. She walked with so much confidence that Nyx was certain she was well sought after by many suitors. He would just have to get in line it seemed. He continued to observe her as they all took their seats at the table and exchanged pleasantries. Her face remained impassive though. She gave nothing away. She wore a pale pink dress that Nyx knew was meant to make her seem less threatening. He would not underestimate her no matter how much Tamlin wanted him too. Pleasantries were exchanged all around the table except for the woman who remained silent. Tamlin was less than social which ended up making the greetings more than a little uncomfortable.

"I apologize, but I do not think we have met before." Rhysand began. "Are you Tamlin's wife?"

Nyx wanted to laugh at that. She was much too young to be the High Lord's wife. Besides, if Tamlin had gotten married, Nyx would have heard of it. He was certain his parents would have too. A small smile finally graced her lips as Tamlin snorted a laugh himself.

"I am Isa." Is all she offered. Nyx watched as the small smile continued to play at her lips. She was toying with them. She enjoyed that they didn't know who she was.

"Isa is my daughter and heir to the spring court." Tamlin finally answered after a long pause. Nyx watched as his mother's jaw hit the floor which caused Isa to giggle. It seemed so out of character for the intimidating looking female that Nyx decided to make a game out of it. How many times could he get her to giggle like that in one evening?

"I was not aware you had a daughter, Tam." His mother tried to recover and seemingly failed. The nickname that slipped so easily from her mouth had the high lord's face hardening. Nyx stifled a groan at that. His mother wondered why this high lord did not prefer her company? Perhaps she should stop insinuating that they have known each other intimately at one point or another.

"That would be by design." The woman answered with a slight accent. He didn't hear it when she first spoke, but he could hear it now as the last word was sharper. He couldn't place the accent though. It did not sound like a spring court one, but it could be an eastern accent. It did not make much sense for her to have lived in Hybern or any of the other eastern countries, but he was not sure where else that it would come from.

"What do the tattoos mean?" Violet quickly changed the subject. She was too curious for her age and asked the first thing that popped into her head often enough. She was clearly as intrigued by Isa as he was.

"They protect me from the evils of man." The accent was heavier, but Violet was clearly in awe. Nyx would not be surprised if Violet came home with face tattoos tomorrow. The table became unusually quiet. His mother and father studied her with identical cocked heads. Lucien cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Witch." Amren accused from her spot at the head of the table. Isa's lips twitched into a half smirk, but Rhysand and Feyre were clearly unnerved. Nyx contemplated this new information. It would explain the accent. Young witches grow up in their coven completely isolated from the outside world. Most of the witches he had run into had a variation of this type of accent.

"Tamlin, I want this meeting to broker peace between our two courts," Rhysand started wearily. "But your daughter may not practice any witchcraft here. It only brings chaos and destruction."

Tamlin seemed unphased which put Nyx at ease. If her father was unworried then was she truly a threat? Only if Tamlin wanted her to be, Nyx supposed.

"You will find my daughter more accommodating than myself. If you want something from her, I suggest you ask her."

Rhysand looked towards Isa with raised eyebrows.

"Your lack of knowledge and ignorance of witchcraft is insulting at best. However, I suppose I shall limit my abilities to that of my natural magic for the remainder of the evening." She gave a shrug and finally made eye contact with Nyx.

She sent him a quick wink before turning back to Rhysand with the look of pure innocence on her face. Nyx knew in that moment that she would be trouble, and unfortunately for him, he loved trouble. Nyx looked towards his parents and began to feel unnerved by their expressions. They must know something about witches that Nyx did not.

Nyx had discovered quite a bit from them as he often liked to share a bed with them. They proved to be up for anything with no expectations or strings attached. He would not be surprised if they had a bad reputation though. He rarely paid attention to his history lessons and the witches he interacted with seemed innocent enough.

"My husband meant no offense." Feyre interrupted before Rhysand could say anymore. "We would love to learn more. Perhaps you could give our son lessons on your culture." She gave Isa a wide smile and offered her the first bowl of food. None of the food had been touched even though it sat ready to eat. Nyx guessed tensions were too high for anyone to think about eating.

He narrowed his eyes at his mother. If he were to take lessons from Isa, it would not be to learn her culture of witchcraft, but an excuse to spy on her and learn her strengths and weaknesses. His mother was more cunning than the fae gave her credit for. Isa seemed unphased by this offer, but accepted the bowl of food nonetheless. She was the first to begin eating. Once she took her first bite though, everyone else joined in.

"I would be much more interested in a marriage proposal than a cultural lesson." She said so nonchalantly that most of the table just stared at her blankly as Nyx spit his wine out.

"Sorry." He spluttered, quickly trying to wipe away the wine that dribbled onto his chin. Nyx looked to Tamlin to see that the High Lord was vaguely amused and his daughter was giggling. He noted the giggle in his head as one point in his game to get Isa to giggle. He was still counting it even if it was unintentional this time around.

"We are not arranging political marriages for our children." Nyx's father quickly recovered, only to watch Isa warily as he spoke. "We are allowing the children to marry as they see fit."

Nyx wished his dad would shut up. A beautiful female basically throws herself at Nyx and his father is shooting her down for him. He groaned internally. Nyx could have his pick of females. It was not as if he was lacking in that realm, but he wanted this particular female who was bound to cause chaos. Not that he wanted to marry her, but he had a feeling that she did not want to truly marry him either. After tonight, he had a feeling that the new rule would be that Nyx could marry whoever he wanted to as long as it was not Tamlin's daughter. Though it did seem like a smart move politically. Ever since his mother left Tamlin for Nyx's father, there has been bad blood between the courts. A marriage would be a good way to heal that after all these years.

"Does it appear that my father speaks for me?" Isa smiled as she asked the rhetorical question. Nyx could tell his father did not exactly know how to take that. Was she disrespecting him or being genuine? Nyx couldn’t truly tell either. Although, he had a sneaking suspicion it was the former.

She smiled more than he initially would have thought. Grant it, most of the smiles were sarcastic, but he assumed she would be more like Nesta just based on looks. From this small interaction, she already seemed more like Elain.

"Isa can marry whoever she wants." Tamlin waved his hand as if to say none of it really mattered. Nyx found it interesting that Tamlin would not seem to mind if she were to marry his ex-lovers child.

"Isa is a very odd name." Azriel noted. He had been observing the entire conversation, but had yet to speak until now. Tamlin rolled his eyes. It surprised Nyx how casual the high lord seemed. All the stories he had been told painted Tamlin as someone who demanded proper manners at all times. Isa giggled once again and Nyx was annoyed that he was not the one to win the sound from her.

"Her mother thought it was funny." Was the only explanation he gave. Isa, however, felt the need to embarrass her father.

"It is short for Isabelle and Belle means beauty as does Feyre. My mother thought it amusing to name me after the lover that jilted him."

Now it was not Nyx choking on his wine, but his mother. Violet began laughing at that.

"She sounds like a peach." Amren muttered while sipping on a glass of red wine. He would never have spoken back to the small, scary female, but it appeared that not much frightened Isa.

"She never took life too seriously. Everything was something to laugh at. She was good for dad." Her accent was heavier and her words sharper. Azriel's shadows began to change as if seeking more information on the mysterious mother.

The mother was a point of contention clearly. Nyx kept that thought bookmarked in the back of his brain for when he may need it next. Tamlin cleared his throat and sat up straight in his chair. He looked every ounce a high lord as he started to speak.

"We did not come here to discuss her mother." A tough topic for him as well it appeared. "Some day my throne will be hers and I do not want to leave her with shambles. I was hoping that not only could we come to some sort of alliance, but that if Isa were to find herself needing guidance, then you and your court might aid her in that."

"Why would we need your alliance? Other than a unified Pyrinthian, I see no reason for us to help clean up your messes." Feyre narrowed her eyes at the male. For all her talk about bringing peace between the two courts, she was quick to antagonize the High Lord. Nyx thought his mother was more petty than she ought to be considering the circumstances.

"My court still suffers from your petty vengeance. I would not be so quick to forget, Feyre."

"It is not my fault that your lack of leadership has led your court astray. Perhaps if it was so easy for me to wreck your court, it was not strong to begin with."

Nyx cleared his throat as a signal to his mother that she was getting off topic. He could see his father squeezing her hand as well.

"You will find," Isa interrupted Tamlin and Feyre's back and forth, "that you might prefer me as an ally rather than an enemy." Her tattoos started to glow as if to emphasize her words.

Nyx could not remember ever experiencing glowing tattoos with previous witches, but Isa was also part High Fae which made her more dangerous. Their lack of knowledge coupled with her obvious strength made her someone he did not want to make an enemy out of. At least not yet. He would want to discover the scope of her abilities first.

"Would your coven aid us in war if we were to be allies?" Nyx said instead of allowing his parents to continue to antagonize them. Despite his parents ignorance, Nyx actually did know a few things about witches and where there was one there was many. Best to have them on their side in any sort of issue.

His parents gave him identical glares that cause Violet to muffle a laugh. Azriel and Isa stared at him with curiosity though.

"Would you beg for it?" Her words were heavy with insinuation. It had Violet and Lucien laughing hysterically while every other fae at the table gave disapproving looks. Nyx's eyes widened. She was much too bold for a princess. He needed to assert his authority once more. She had the upper hand against everyone too many times tonight.

"A witch has never asked me to beg before."

"There's a first for everything."

"Unlikely."

"I do not speak for my coven, but if it was found that aiding in war pleased the spirits, then perhaps." She answered seriously as she took a bite of her chicken.

"Or if it prevented extinction of your kind?" Nyx knew their numbers were dwindling which was a point of contention for many of the witches.

"Yes. Or that." She pursed her lips. Obviously displeased that Nyx knew more than his parents. He did not know much more than that, but he would never allow her to know that. He kept the upper hand as long as she was unaware of how far his breadth of knowledge went.

"We would not be able to return the favor. If your coven ever needed help, we could not give it." Nyx cringed as his father continued to insinuate that the witches were less than.

"We would never ask for your help." Her nose crinkled in disgust. "You have no respect for magic and therefore would never be able to help us with our own conflicts."

"I respect my magic."

"No. You feel entitled to your magic. You think you are owed magic because you are a high lord. Witches understand there is a balance to all life. A give and take. We would never take something we were not willing to give. My own father is proof that you do not view your magic in the same way. He was willing to align himself with the enemy for Feyre, only to not get Feyre in the end and be stuck in a deal with the enemy."

"Do not lie to my face. I am too old for that and I know that witches deal in blood magic all the time." Rhysand finally switched to his High Lord voice. It demanded the respect that Isa did not want to give.

"Because they are willing to give what is needed. It is not without consequence when we invoke blood magic. High fae, however, can use their magic for good or evil with no consequences either way. Do you view your death lords as better than us? Your own sister could have ended the world and still reaped the benefits, yet you view my kind as evil? Tell me, where is the justice in that?"

"Enough, Isa." Tamlin snapped.

"They sit here and disrespect my culture, Mom's culture, and yet you reprimand me?" She was incredulous that her father was not defending her. Nyx did not think it would help any even if he did.

"We meant no disrespect-"

"You have done quite enough." Tamlin glared at the High lord of the Night Court.

"We will use this as a learning experience. Ignorance is stupidity. If they choose to be stupid, allow them. Never lose your temper during a diplomatic meeting."

After a very tense pause, Feyre gave Isa a curious look before asking a question.

"What do you shape shift into?"

The question would have appeared to come from out of nowhere if Feyre did not know that Tamlin was attempting to keep his daughter from lashing out. Whatever she shape shifted into was dangerous. After a moment of stiff silence and a staring contest between father and daughter, Isa turned to me.

"I think I need some fresh air. Mind showing me the gardens?"

"It would be my pleasure."

#nyx acotar #acotar #tamlin #feyre archeron #rhysand #feysand #Tamlin’s daughter #acosf

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emmy-writes-sometimes · 3 years

Text

They'd Bring You Back

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x daughter!reader

Summary: You’re an unsub’s latest target, but your personality is way more than he bargained for.

Warnings: Blood/descriptions of stabbing and cutting, typical CM drama, fluffy dad!hotch

“And what about me?” You’d asked with a puffy lip, arms crossed, pouting as you sat on your father’s lap. He’d just laughed.

“What about you?”

“If I got kidnapped.” He rolled his eyes.

“You’re so annoying, they would bring you back. And that-” He said as he stood up, taking you with him before setting you on the floor. “Is a promise.”

Things had changed since you had that conversation. Drastically - back then you were only eight and your dad was a prosecutor for the DA. Your mom was alive. Your brother wasn’t even a thought in their minds at that point. And nobody could fathom what would happen when you were a little older.

You went off the rails when your mother died. The trauma was enough that you ended up living with Rossi for a few months while your dad figured out how to juggle Jack and the job and all of your issues. That further fractured your relationship when you felt like he forgot about you. But since you moved back in with him, you had started to feel like things could be normal again. Like things could be good again. You were getting into a routine - Jack would stay with your aunt while your dad was on a case since he went to a school on the other side of town from yours, you would watch Rossi’s house while he was gone since you were old enough to stay by yourself, and you’d go pick up your dad when he got back from a case.

They’d spent a week in Reno and really just wanted to get back to the house after mountains of paperwork. The holidays were coming up and your dad wanted to spend as much time with you as he possibly could, promising to take off some time to go on a day trip with you and Jack. You had made his favorite snack and walked out of Rossi’s front door, locking it and making sure it was locked, before going over to your car.

You held the covered bowl of food in one hand, trying to get the right key in the other hand. You got as far as unlocking the car before you heard a shuffling noise behind you. You turned, seeing nothing alarming, but when you turned back there was an unfamiliar person in front of you.

“Hotch, I think you need to accept that she was taken because...” Rossi started the next morning as they walked into the briefing room. The worst part of it was that they were being briefed on you. The police had determined that you’d been kidnapped, obviously, because there was no way in hell you’d start running away when things had just started to get better between you and your dad.

“How could they have known?” Hotch asked. “How could this unsub have known it was my daughter walking out of your house?” Rossi shrugged, not quite having an answer, and the two sat down.

“I’ve been thinking that the unsub must have been watching for a while. Long enough to know that she stays at Rossi’s when you’re both gone. They have to know who she is, Hotch. It doesn’t make sense for this to just be a random kidnapping,” Morgan said.

“And if anyone can get through it, it’s her,” JJ offered. “She’s a strong-ass kid. She just needs to hold on until we can find her.”

“Uh, guys?” Garcia walked in the room with a remote in hand, switching the large TV in the room over to what looked like a livestream. Of you.

“Holy-” Morgan started. Hotch’s eyes widened in shock, and as if he couldn’t see he walked up to the screen. “It’s a snuff film.”

You were tied up in a chair, a rope around your throat and your body so you were forced to sit up with your spine to the back of the chair. Your mascara was running down your face in silent tears.

“My dad’s going to find me!” You yelled to the unsub, looking around the room. They were watching the same camera that your dad was, but you didn’t know that. You didn’t know that you were the star of your very own snuff film. Suddenly the unsub’s voice came over the loud speaker in the dark, cold room. A cellar - you had to be in a basement or a cellar or something. You came to that conclusion at the same time as your father did, and you also came to the conclusion that he was watching you. This unsub was using you to get to your father, and somehow that pissed you off more than the idea of someone kidnapping you just for kicks.

“He’s using her to get to me,” Hotch determined. “We need to find out how to contact this unsub. Get what he wants. Garcia, do everything you can to track them down. We need to figure out what he wants before he hurts her.”

“My dad’s going to find me!” You yelled again. “I bet he’s already profiled how small your dick is!”

“Okay, sweetheart, now’s not the time,” your dad mumbled as if he was speaking directly to you. He rubbed his pointer finger against a scar on his thumb, one you’d given him shortly after your mom died.

“Although impotent might not actually be that bad of an observation,” Rossi suggested. You struggled against the hard ropes that were holding you down, only getting angrier and angrier at the unsub for not at least facing you.

You finally huffed and looked at the camera in front of you, then around the room. You were definitely in a cellar or a basement of some kind - maybe even an old nuclear bunker or something. The walls were metal, but they looked home-made almost. The white paint was peeling off of said metal walls, revealing a rusty red color that looked like dried blood. Then you were there, in an antique-looking wooden chair. So it was probably an estate of some kind, you thought. Who else would just have this kind of shit sitting around unless they were older, and it had definitely been a younger guy that kidnapped you. You could only hope your dad made the same observation as he watched you on the other side of the camera. Because who else would that camera be for, right?

“You know, your walls give off a lot of information about where I am!” You called throughout the room, looking at the green door. Just then, someone walked in. The same guy who kidnapped you, or at least the same body. But he was wearing a ski mask so you couldn’t identify him.

“Really?” The man asked. He actually seemed curious.

“This chair is antique. So is this room. So you’re keeping me in some kind of family home or estate. I’d guess your grandma’s or your mom’s house because you don’t seem like the type of guy who would ever make it out. And because you’re leaving the mask on, you’re probably not going to kill me. Only people who plan to kill show their faces because they’re scared of being visually identified,” you rattled off. “And we were only in the car for about fifteen minutes, three minutes off of the highway, so there’s no way you took me too far. I take back the impotent thing, at least so far, because you haven’t tried to assault me yet. Anyone who was impotent or had that issue probably would have already.” The man stood there, his arms crossed over a black hoodie. You could vaguely see a shape within the hoodie pocket to know that it was a knife of some kind.

“Good job, kid. Maybe you are your daddy’s kid. I’ve been watching you, you know.” You spit onto the floor out of pure disgust. How long had this creep been watching you? And how?

“Yeah, and if you know who I am then you’re planning to ask for ransom money. Which, you should know, you’ll get. If the FBI won’t pay it, my dad will. But if you’re streaming this to him like I think you are, then you’re planning to do something to me until you get that money.”

“You are smart. I don’t have the letter ready yet, so I figured I’d come have a little fun.” The unsub noticed how calm you were and it kind of scared him a little bit - like who the fuck was calm in this kind of situation? He figured you would be scared, beg your dad to save you, but you were actually holding your own. Huh.

Your dad noticed that, too, and his chest swelled with pride at the same time his stomach ached with fear for you. He kept asking himself why the unsub was sharing it, but he realized. He wanted your father to see what he was doing to you, he wanted your dad to see that everything that happened to you was a reflection of him.

“He’s not a sexual sadist,” your dad said. “The motive isn’t sexual. At all.”

“Good,” Morgan muttered. “But what do you think he wants, then?”

“He wants me to see my actions as a reflection of what happens to her,” he concluded. “He’s going to hurt her. Every time I give him something, it’s going to stop. And then he’s going to start again until I give him what he wants. I’m going to assume it’s money. She’s right about the location, at least from what I can see, so I would assume that money is the main motivation for this.”

“Maybe bail money?” Rossi suggested. “It would make sense. If we put someone away, he would want to see them out. And bail would be a large amount of money.”

“I’ll go tell Garcia to look for people we’ve put away who would be eligible for bail,” Reid said as he stood up. He shuffled away from the table toward Garcia’s office, leaving them to watch the live stream.

“I’ll go make sure SWAT is ready when we have our guy,” Morgan said. “I’ll lead. You don’t need to go in there, Hotch, because for all we know he wants to actually hurt you as well as her.”

“I’ll watch some of the initial footage back. See if we can figure anything about the location,” Prentiss volunteered. Everyone left the table except for your dad, Rossi, and JJ. Your dad had barely even paid attention, too busy looking at the screen as the unsub creeped around you. He had since drawn a knife, twirling it between leather-gloved fingers.

“If you’re going to hurt me, there’s literally no reason to wait,” you pointed out to the unsub.

“You’re annoying. No wonder your dad doesn’t love you.” That hit a nerve in both you and your father, but you didn’t show it. You just sat up a little bit, adjusting your cold, frozen ass on the seat.

“If you’re trying to turn him against me, it’s not going to work. I know he loves me, even in his own twisted way. So stop trying to make it seem like he doesn’t. Psychological torture isn’t going to work on someone who watched their mom die right in front of them.” Your dad’s heart fell thinking about all of the trauma you’d already been through, and how little of it you’d even discussed. After your mom died you just shut down to everyone, including the therapists who tried to help you get through it. You had just pretended like nothing was real and nothing was wrong. This, though? This was fucking real. And you couldn’t block it out no matter how badly you wanted to.

Your father watched as the conversation shifted from just that to actual events that had happened, indicating just how long this guy had been watching. He talked about the fight you had three weeks ago about you accusing your dad of being too overprotective. Then he brought up a fight that was so bad that Jack literally ran down the street to get away from you two. And by then you were crying, begging your dad to just come get you and prove that he loved you. You had been effectively broken by the time the unsub left and he hadn’t even used the knife that he had.

Your father watched absolutely helplessly as the man hurled abusive, and untrue, thoughts at your brain. He watched as the unsub untied you before leaving, allowing you to curl your legs up to your chest and cry on your own. You were doing so well a few minutes ago, so well that you thought maybe your dad might even be proud of you. But now?

“Okay, I have a list of everyone eligible for bail that had anything to do with us. Cases we’ve consulted on, ones we’ve actually worked, all that jazz,” Garcia said over the phone speaker.

“Can you cross reference that with men?” JJ asked.

“Honey, that takes one off the list of fifty,” Garcia answered. JJ sighed.

“What about family issues? Garcia, check any cases that revolved around families. Where they were the target, the motivation, anything,” Rossi said. Everyone could hear Garcia typing, the sound fading out as everyone watched the screen to see what was going to happen next. Reid came back in the room carrying what could only be a ransom note.

“It’s addressed to you, not the BAU,” Reid said as he handed it to your dad. He sighed, taking the letter, and sat down.

Aaron Hotchner:

You can see I have your daughter. You will deliver two installments of fifty thousand dollars. I will be live streaming to your organization as well as a chatroom. Until I receive funds, from this moment on, your daughter will be the star of her very own film. When you can acquire the funds, deliver them to the P.O. Box below. The installments must be in full, or I will not hesitate to kill her. The installments must be delivered over the course of twenty-four hours. For example, you may not deliver one hundred thousand dollars at once. Thank you for your cooperation.

- X

“So he’s trying to get money in two different ways. On the chatroom and from you. This is serving more than one purpose,” Rossi said. He took the note. “Garcia, look and see if any of the bail amounts total one hundred thousand dollars. And look to see if any of them are cash only.”

“Nothing. I’m sorry,” Garcia said after a moment of silence.

“We’ll give them the first fifty thousand,” JJ determined. Everyone in the room turned to look at her as if she was crazy except for your dad. He was visibly shaken, eyes glued to the camera.

“What?” Rossi asked.

“We’ll give them the first fifty thousand as soon as we can get it. We can go ahead and trace the P.O. box, find any connections, and hopefully get our guy before it even gets delivered.”

“And if not?” Your dad asked.

“If not, then we sincerely hope he’s bluffing about hurting her before he gets the second one. Twenty-four hours is a long time.”

Hotch turned back to the screen to see that you were sleeping until the unsub came into the room again. He slammed the door open, carrying a knife in his hand, and walked toward you. You jumped, but didn’t move. You had nowhere to go. You couldn’t leave, so you just sat there with nervous eyes.

“I sent them the ransom note,” the unsub said casually. You swallowed.

“Okay, and? We don’t have that kind of money, and federal funds aren’t going to be...”

“I don’t care about federal funds. Someone better give me my fucking money. Isn’t it taxpayer dollars anyway?”

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

“Oh, I’m so hurt,” the unsub said, “boo hoo. You’ll be the one crying before too long. Sit back in the chair.” You didn’t try to run as he tied you up. You didn’t cry. You didn’t say anything. You just looked at the camera, eyes pleading for someone to fucking do something. If you knew your dad as well as you thought, he’d already made the connections about where you were, hopefully why the guy needed money, and they were already going through the ransom note.

But, no. Your dad was watching as the unsub started by lifting your chin with the silver knife. Then he brushed your hair behind your ears. And then, out of nowhere, he dug the knife into your skin and dragged it down your arm.

“Dad, please,” you said, knowing fully well that he was watching. You didn’t want to seem like you couldn’t handle yourself, but you were getting scared that maybe this guy was actually going to kill you if he didn’t get what he wanted.

“Your daddy’s due to give me some money in a few hours. I figured I’d let you bleed until then.” The unsub was casual as he wiped both sides of the knife on your jeans and then walked out of the room, leaving you tied up.

Garcia tried to had into the livestream and say something, but it didn’t work - there was no way to get a message to you. Your dad just had to sit there and call the bank, telling them that he needed to withdraw everything from his savings. He felt helpless as he watched you cry and bleed.

The P.O. box turned to nothing. The guy had paid in cash and given them a fake name. Garcia’s search came up with four possible matches. Then she looked at property records, and then it was time to give the profile of the unsub. Your dad’s eyes were glued to the screen in the conference room, not even listening to the profile that he would usually be concerned about. He just sat there and watched, hoping that you knew he wouldn’t leave your side even then.

The bank came through and let him withdraw the money, but not before the unsub came back and cut another gash into the same arm. Your dad went to the P.O. box and peeled his eyes away from the screen long enough to deposit the money. They had cops waiting to see who collected it, but nobody did. Nobody even tried to get anything from those boxes.

“You should get some rest,” Rossi said later that night. Your dad shook his head, refusing to leave the screen. “He got his money.”

“And he said he’s going to hurt her still,” your dad insisted. “I’m not leaving her, even if it’s just a screen.” Rossi sighed. The rest of the team agreed not to leave you, either, and they sat there for most of the night, watching as the unsub cut you like a piece of paper.

You had told the unsub numerous times that your dad was coming to get you, and those words haunted the entire BAU as they watched you on the screen. They weren’t coming because they didn’t know where to go. And then the unsub talked you up again, mentioning that he knew you were quiet enough that you wouldn’t scream.

“Garcia, check for neighborhoods. Widen the search again, maybe it’s not bail after all,” Morgan instructed. Garcia started typing again.

“There’s a Joshua Robinson, he lives twenty minutes from Rossi’s house. It looks like his father was one of our unsubs who didn’t make it four years ago. And it looks like he’s over that amount of time in missing mortgage payments. I think this could be our guy,” she said.

“I’ll get SWAT ready again,” Morgan said. He stood up and left the room. Everyone went their separate ways except for your dad, who sat there and watched as the unsub full on stabbed you. Fucking stabbed you - you actually screamed at him instead of starting to cry. You called him impotent. A bitch. You called him slimy. You called him everything in the book and it only aggravated him more.

Morgan drove as fast as he ever had over to the house. They raided it and found nothing - no basement, no nothing. And then they found the reason why the guy was so behind on house payments. They owned the land next to the house, too. It was only a matter of time before they found the bunker and the unsub trying to get away.

Garcia had stopped the stream as soon as she could and called EMT’s to the scene, knowing how hurt you were and how much blood you’d lost. But it was up to your dad to go down to the creepy bunker and get you. He sighed as he descended the stairs and opened the now familiar green door, seeing you, untied but still in the chair. You were so bloody that he barely even recognized you.

“Dad?” You asked as he walked in. He nodded, kneeling in front of you.

“You’re safe, sweetheart, come with me,” he said softly. He threw the ropes off of you and reached underneath you, picking you up and being careful not to hurt you any more than you were already hurt. He took you up to the surface, holding your hand as the EMT’s worked their magic on your arm to try and keep you from bleeding any more than you already were.

They figured out that the unsub had been living at his father’s property, so behind in mortgage payments that he needed almost a hundred thousand dollars to pay for that and for property upkeep so he could sell the place and get a fresh start after attempted murder and kidnapping. You were right about almost every observation you’d made, down to the chair, and when your father looked around the room after loading you into the ambulance he realized just how smart you actually were. And how he hadn’t been paying attention to it.

The next few hours were a blur - they wouldn’t let your dad come with you for anything at the hospital so he just sat there, waiting, with the rest of the team. The unsub had done quite a bit of nerve damage to your arm, leaving you unable to feel any pain in it for what may be forever, but at least you still had your arm. Rossi bought you a guilt gift of a new phone, too, since you’d dropped yours on the concrete, and said he was adding extra extra security to his house if you ever wanted to go there again.

“You were watching the whole time, weren’t you?” You finally said to your dad, shutting your new phone off and putting it in your lap. He was going through some folder before he turned to you, nodding.

“I wouldn’t leave you if I was there. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner.”

“I’m sorry that anyone thinks I’m worth a hundred thousand dollars.” That made him laugh, if only a little bit. “You always said that they’d bring me back if I was kidnapped.”

“Because you were so annoying!” He laughed. “I think the guy almost did. He was getting pretty fed up with you.” Joking about it, it seemed, was the only way to not cry about it. At least in your family.

“Yeah, I think telling him he had a small dick was a lot for him.”

“I’m really proud of the way you handled that.”

“I had nowhere to go if I tried to run,” you shrugged. “You always taught me that if I’m in a bad situation, stay in it unless I have a way out. You said that’s how you always get through things. Because you don’t just walk out on them.”

“You don’t feel like I walked out on you, do you? And you don’t think that’s why we are the way we are?” You looked down, thinking about it for a minute, before you shook your head.

“No. But-” Your eyes lit up when Rossi walked Jack into the room. He was holding another guilt gift, too, and ran up to you. You picked up your brother and put him in your lap, making him laugh.

“What happened to your arm?” Jack asked, poking at a bandage. You tried not to wince, smiling instead.

“Just a bad guy. But I worked the case,” you told him. He smiled.

“Just like Daddy?”

“Yeah,” your dad said with a smile as he walked over to the two of you. “Just like me.”

A/N: Just some good ole classic Dad!Hotch for y’all... I hope you like it as much as I do!!

#criminal minds #aaron hotchner x daughter!reader #hotch x daughter!reader #hotchner x daughter!reader #criminal minds x reader

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katsukisbayy · 3 years

Text

The Wrong One (Eijirou Kirishima x Female Reader)

Hi all! This is my contribution to the BNHArem servers villain/hero swap! Special thanks to @unbreakablekiribaku for listening to me vent about this piece!

This is the masterlist for the collab! Go check out everone else’s work!

Warnings: slight cussing, reader is pregnant, Kirishima slits someone’s throat

No beta read cause this was due Saturday and I literally just finished it so if there’s typos, my bad.

Word Count; 3,620

“Ms. Y/N, you’re pregnant.”

Ever since those words were spoken to you in front of your boyfriend, one of the most notorious underground villains since UA collapsed, you were constantly followed. Whether it was by your boyfriend Eijirou, his best friends Bakugou and Kaminari, or one of the underlings who followed those three around you were never alone. Except for this particular moment when a massive job had been thrown their way.

“We’ll be gone for less than a day Y/N, don’t leave the house. Don’t answer the door, don’t answer the phone for anyone other than me, Kaminari or Bakugou. Only those who need to know know that we’re leaving to do this job. Do not, for the love of god, do anything that could hurt you or our daughter okay?” Eijiro sighed, pulling you into a hug and resting his head atop yours.

“Ei, I know the drill. Whether you like it or not, I know how to take care of myself. I’ve been with you three long enough to know how to kill someone if I need to. We will be fine.” You told him, wrapping your arms around his waist. He held you a moment longer before removing his arms from around you, kissing you softly, and walking out the door. He called out “Love you!” as the door swung shut. You glanced around your apartment, debating on cleaning the damn near spotless living room before deciding to watch a movie instead. You put on your favorite, grabbed a blanket, and laid down on the couch. Mind wandering to what the boys were doing, you barely paid attention to the movie before sleep found you not even twenty minutes later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eijirou Kirishima was 6’2 on a bad day, 280 pounds of pure muscle and extremely lethal to everyone but you and his two best friends. He and Bakugou tried their hardest to keep you out of that part of their lives, especially now with you pregnant, but you’d caught glimpses into just how lethal the three of them were. You’d seen Kirishima nearly behead a man using his quirk, and Bakugou AP shot a person’s head off. Kaminari had electrocuted someone to the point where it smelled like seared flesh for three days afterwards, maybe longer. Not many people, villain or hero, wanted to mess with your three boys. But some people are just stupid.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A loud noise from right outside the apartment door jolted you out of your sleep. Pulling your phone off the coffee table, you checked the time. 6:35pm. There was no way the boys were back yet, and you knew that anyone else would’ve called before coming over. This was bad. Quickly, you shoved your phone into your sweatpants and ran to your bedroom. As soon as your foot crossed the threshold, the front door slammed open.

“What the fuck Tsukasa? Did you need to kick the door in?” A man’s voice yelled out.

“Did you want to get into the apartment or not?” another voice, Tsukasa you assumed, responded.

“We could’ve used a credit card to get in. That normally works for me and DOESN’T ALERT THE WHOLE DAMN NEIGHBORHOOD!” You heard rustling and assumed that the men had made it into the apartment. Making your way to the closet which had a hidden door in case something like this happened, you slid the fake panel out of the way and shimmied inside before sliding it back like nothing had happened.

Your phone was still tucked into the pocket of your pants. You knew you had to call Eijirou, or at least Kaminari because if Eijirou didn’t answer that meant Bakugou wouldn’t either. Sliding it out and unlocking it was as far as you got before you heard the men come into the bedroom. Your breath caught in your throat and you hesitated, debating on not moving or breathing until they left the bedroom and you could call someone to help you. As you move to put your phone back into your pocket, your ringtone alerting the men to your presence.

“Shit shit shit shit shit.” You mumble under your breath, quickly moving to decline the incoming call. Kirishima’s name popped up on your phone screen, more than likely wanting to let you know that they were on their way home and to check on you and your daughter. You declined the call and shoved your phone into your pocket before crouching into a corner as far away from the panel as possible.

“Find where they are now.” Tsukasa said calmly. The door to the closet slammed open and clothes were shoved around as they tried to find you. You hoped that they wouldn’t notice the false panel in the back of the closet. Those hopes were dashed as you felt a hand clamp onto your ankle and drag you out. Your hands scrambled around for the bat hidden in your closet and finally closed on its handle. Taking a deep breath, you swung the bat as hard as you could against your captor. The sound of metal hitting could be heard and you hoped you’d swung hard enough to do some damage.

Pain radiated through your cheek and it took a few moments to realize you had been slapped.

“Stupid bitch. You thought you could hide didn’t ya?” A tall, dark haired man chuckled.

“Easy for you to say Kizuki, you did not get hit with a bat.” The other man was stocky and tall, with long dark brown hair glared at you.

“What do you think Tsukasa, should we kill her or keep her?” One of the men, Kizuki, asked his partner.

“She may be useful. And if not, we can dispose of her later.” Tsukasa responded.

You reached for the bat again, hoping to strike them when they were distracted, but it was taken from your hands just as fast as you had reached for it.

“No, no. You’re not pulling that again. Go to sleep, little bitch. You’re in for a rude awakening when you wake.”

The last thing you saw was a fist flying towards your face before the world turned black.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kirishima tried your number for the fifth time since leaving the job.You hardly ever declined his calls after jobs, wanting to make sure the three of them were fine and wanting to know the exact moment they would be home so you could have the first aid kits out and ready. If you ever did decline, you would always shoot him a text letting him know why. That didn’t happen this time, and he had a bad feeling settling into his stomach. He clicked away from the phone app, clicking Find My Friends instead. Thankfulness settled over him that he had talked you into downloading it shortly into your relationship so he could make sure nothing happened to you while you were out or for instances like this.

“Shit.” He muttered, noticing that your phone didn’t pop up onto the screen, just a Last known location popping up.

“Guys we might have a problem.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pain was the first thing you felt before slowly cracking your eyes open. Well, eye. Your right one was swollen shut. You tried to rub your face and noticed that your hands were tied behind your back and to a chair. Surveying where you were the best you could with one eye, you noticed you were in a bare room with nothing in it except a light, a table with an ashtray, and another chair across from where you were sitting. Your head was throbbing.

“Well, well. Look who’s awake.” Kizuki stated as he walked into the room and sat across from you. A cigarette hung from his lips, ashes falling onto the floor.

“Why am I here? Why didn’t you just kill me when you saw someone was home?” You glared at the man, subtly eyeing him up and down. He was tall, not as stocky as your boyfriend, and you’d yet to see him use his quirk. Eijirou will still take him down in about two seconds. He was in for a rude awakening when Kirishima arrived. It was basically a death sentence for anyone who messed with you before, but now that you were pregnant with his child he was extremely overprotective.

“Why else would I keep a beautiful woman alive? There’s too many men around here. None of us can unwind after a long day and we needed someone to take care of us sweet cheeks. That’s where you come in. Now, you can either agree and this can be the start of a wonderful partnership, or you can fight back and I can give you some scars on that pretty little body.” He chuckles, standing from his chair before caressing the side of your face.

A slow smile spread across your features.

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” You asked sweetly.

“Why would I? You’re nobody important in the hero world that I know of, and someone living where you do had to know something like this could happen. You don’t exactly live in the best area.” He smirked at you.

“Did you ever think there was a reason why someone like me was living there? Like maybe I had connections to villains and not heroes?” You saw his face go white for a split second before he regained his composure. He removed his hand from your face and slid it into his pocket.

“Why would I care if you had ties to the villains? Besides, you couldn’t have been that important to them if they left you there all by yourself.”

“Have you ever heard of Red Riot? Maybe Dynamight or Chargebolt?” You noticed the minute the dots connected in his head.

“No, there’s no fucking way. I would know if any of them had a bitch.” Kizuki sputtered.

“Yeah, no you wouldn’t. Riot’s really good at keeping me hidden from the world. Especially when he has Dynamight and Chargebolt helping to keep me hidden.” You chuckled seeing the color drain from his face. He knows they’re in trouble now. Hopefully Tsukasa is here too so Eijirou can kill them both and we can move without anyone knowing about me and the baby.

Kizuki opened his mouth to say something before shutting it tightly and walking out of the room. You sighed, collapsing in on yourself slightly. Exhaustion settled over you like a heavy blanket. Eijirou where are you?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Days had passed and you were still tied to the same chair. The only times you were allowed to be untied was when you had to use the bathroom. Kizuki or Tsukasa fed you, and as far as you could tell they were the only two in this area with you. You were unsure if it was a house, apartment, or just some random building that they were using as a base for the time being. Kizuki had alerted Tsukasa that you were “property of Red Riot” as he had worded it, and neither one of them spoke to you unless it was absolutely necessary. You were going crazy.

“Can’t you guys just let me go? I won’t tell Riot that I know who kidnapped me. I’ll tell him that I never saw anyone, my head was constantly covered. You can let me go in some alleyway and I’ll find my way home.” You plead for what felt like the thousandth time.

Tsukasa let out a low grunt and shook his head. Knowing that was all you’d get from him, you turned your attention to the TV they had brought in for you while they tried to figure out where to go from there.

Breaking news: We have yet another report to add to the slew of attacks this month, this comes just days after we broadcast rumours of villains running rampant over the city. This spate of attacks has put the entire metropolitan area at a standstill, road closures and damaged property making it difficult for commuters to get to work in the morning. Road maintenance endeavour to do its best to keep the city running, but it seems futile when these attacks continue to increase. The entire city was brought to a standstill by the mysterious villain who has still not been named, but reports show they are nothing like we have ever experienced before.

Where are the heroes now? Who will save us from the terror overwhelming our city?

Every day the crime toll continues to rise and we have no one here to protect us. The Hero Public Safety Commission assured us earlier in the week that the crime rate would go down, that the top Heroes are out there protecting our city, but if so, where are they? Is it really safe to go out anymore, who can we trust? Would you put your life in the hands of a Hero today? When they have proved our streets are no longer safe. We still have no information on what is going on, or who is involved but we must remain observant. We will continue to report the latest news as we receive it, but for now, we must implore you to heed the warnings of the city-wide curfew that is soon to be implemented. If anyone has any information on these occurrences in the city please send them to us or contact the police, you can remain anonymous. The safety of our citizens is what is most important, stay vigilant and don’t go out unless it is absolutely necessary.

One thing we know for sure: we can no longer rely on Heroes to protect us. The streets of our once-great city are no longer safe, we are no longer safe.

It was safe to say that Eijirou knew you were gone, and you knew that he would tear down every building in the city until he knew that you were safe in his arms. The crime toll had risen drastically in the last few days and you could tell what of the damage shown was Eijirou, Bakugou and Kaminari. The buildings and areas destroyed by the three of them were always left collapsed and on fire, with the power grid having been overloaded right before the attacks. Eijirou was looking for his girls and it was only a matter of time before he got to you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ten days after your abduction Kizuki ran into the room looking terrified.

“I passed someone on the street saying that Red Riot was in the area. We have to lea-” A loud explosion cut him off and threw him against the wall. Small slices of pain spread across your body as debris hit you. Smoke filled the room, blocking your vision and making you cough. Groaning filled the small space as Kizuki tried to move. A blonde headed figure flew across the room and picked him up by the throat.

“You think it was smart to take one of the most feared villains girl? Do you have a death wish stupid fuck?” Bakugou’s voice growled out. Relief flooded your senses. Eijirou had finally found you, now he just had to get to you.

“I-I-I didn’t know! We had just picked an apartment to ransack and she happened to be there! I didn’t know she was Riot’s girl, please don’t kill me!” Kizuki had tears streaming down his face as Bakugou pressed into his throat tighter.

“Where. The fuck. Is she?” A more familiar voice called out. The calmness in his voice was terrifying. You had never heard him talk like that, and it both turned you on and terrified you.

“Ei! I’m right here.” You called out, trying once again to break the rope holding your hands behind your back. You felt wind fill the room, clearing the smoke in a split second. Rage overtook Kirishima’s face as he took in your disheveled state. Your black eye, though fading, was still prominent on your face. Bruises and dried blood were covering your wrists from trying to break your restraints, and you looked almost emaciated from ten days with little food. You noticed his pupils dilate slightly before he rushed to your side. He quickly cut the ropes from your wrist with his quirk, careful to not cut you while doing so.

“It’s okay baby. I’m here now okay? I’m gonna get you out of here and we’re gonna go home I promise. I just have to take care of a few things first. Can you go through the hole Bakugou made and go out there with Kami?” Kirishima asked. He slowly rubbed his thumbs over your wrists and you relaxed, leaning your body weight against him. Ten days being tied to a chair and only being allowed to walk to the bathroom had taken its toll on you. Your legs were weak and Kirishima had to wrap his arm around your waist to help you up.

“Ei, I don’t think I can walk out there to him. Can’t you carry me?” You whined in his ear.

“No baby I can’t carry you. I have to find the other fucking idiot who decided it would be smart to kidnap my girls. I’ll yell for Kami to come grab you okay? And do not move from his side. I’ll be out as soon as I get done with these idiots.” Kirishima kissed your forehead and you wrapped your arms tightly around him.

“I don’t wanna leave you baby. Can’t I just stay here until you’re done with them? It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and the baby can’t see yet anyway. Please don’t make me leave you. I went ten days not knowing if I’d see you again. Please don’t make me leave.” You whimpered. His arms tightened slightly around your waist.

“Go sit back down okay? It won’t take long for me to take care of them.” He kissed you softly on the lips and helped you sit on the chair you’d been tied to five minutes ago. As soon as you sat down, a flip switched in Kirishima.

“Where’s the other one?” He growled out.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about man I’m the only one here. It was just me.” Kizuki gasped out. Bakugou’s hand was still pressed against his windpipe making it hard for him to breathe. Kirishima hardened his hand and slammed it into the wall next to Kizuki’s head making him yelp.

“I don’t like being lied to. I know there were two of you involved, now tell me where the fuck he is so I can kill you both and get on with my life.”

“You better do it man. We can make your death swift or painful and drawn out, it’s really up to you.” Bakugou shrugged casually. The sound of water hitting the floor hit your ears and you realized that Kizuki had pissed himself.

“That’s disgusting. Shitty hair just kill him now, we can find the other one after.”

Kirishima grabbed Kizuki by his hair and pushed him down to his knees. Hardening his arm again, he pressed it tightly against Kizuki’s neck before glancing up at you.

“Don’t watch princess.” He told you. You looked up at the ceiling before the sound of blood dripping and gagging hit your ears. A loud thump alerted you that you could look again. Kizuki’s body laid in a crumpled heap at the feet of your boyfriend and his best friend. Blood surrounded him, and you figured that Kirishima had used his quirk to slit the man’s throat. You sighed and cleared your throat.

“The other man’s name is Tsukasa. He’s the one who hit me and knocked me out when they came into the apartment. He’s in here somewhere, but I don’t know where. Eiji, please let Bakugou find him and let’s go home? It’s just those two. I’m positive he can take him on his own.” You begged. Bakugou shrugged.

“I mean I can just demolish the place with him inside if you want me to shitty hair.”

“No. This dumbass hurt my girls, make him suffer.” Kirishima responded. Bakugou smiled and turned to search the rest of the building. Hands wrapped themselves around yours and Kirishima hoisted you up onto your feet.

“Are you two okay?” He asked, his right hand grabbing both of yours and his left hand moving to rub your belly slightly.

“As good as can be, I guess. I’m starving though, and I just want to go home and shower.” You sighed contently, wrapping your arms around your lover once more and leaning your head into his chest.

“We’re not going home. We’re gonna go to a hotel, Kaminari and Bakugou are gonna grab anything you want and need from the apartment, and when you feel better we’re gonna go look at houses. I know it was just a fluke, but we need to make sure that no one else knows who you are or where you are. I can’t lose the two of you.” He glanced into your eyes and you noticed the unshed tears covering his. A massive explosion from somewhere within the building drew your attention away from each other.

“Sounds like Bakugou got a hold of the other guy.” Kirishima chuckled. He knelt down slightly, grabbing the back of your thighs and wrapping them around his waist. You followed suit, wrapping your arms around his neck and burying your face into it.

“Oi, you two coming or are ya gonna wait for the police to get here?” Bakugou yelled out. You looked up at him, noticing his soot covered face and smiled.

“Yeah yeah Blasty. Let’s get out of here.”

#bnharem collab #kirishima #kirishima x reader

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miss-kittys-magical-library · 3 years

Text

Don't Leave Me This Way

Word count- It's a doozy at 3500

Warnings- language, oral sex (m!receiving), fingering, penetration (vaginal), angsty romance

A/N- After a decade together, Honey and Leon have come undone. But on the anniversary of the day their lives changed Leon decides to mend them. For @forenschik 💋 Part One

Part Two:

Leon wasn’t quite sure walking was the best choice. Lightning lit up the sky every few minutes, and Honey’s silence as they strolled at a leisurely pace worried him. He knew, if anything, she was contemplating what he had said about traveling.

After a block, she finally looked at him and took a sharp breath in. Then all she could exhale was the damn kids.

“We still need to decide about Sunny going to school! Can he control himself around other kids, or should he be homesch-”

“HONEYYY!” Leon let loose his familiar whine. He stood firm so that as she kept going he yanked her backwards. “Enough about the kids! I love them, but please. Can you even make it back home without talking about them for one bloody minute?!”

Honey turned to face Leon. She planted her fists on her hips. This was a move he had watched Selina make a hundred times, but thought she swiped it from Wonder Woman. Now he knew it was from the bad ass chick he lived with. His wife popped one hip out to the side and curved a brow.

“Is that a challenge, Kostas? Care to wager.”

“Whot? No. I suck at gambling.”

“Bingo! Whatever you’re going to say, if I win, I get to sleep with Klaus.”

It was as if she had been thinking about this for ages. Just waiting for an opportunity to ask her husband, or maybe bait him. Spurned on by the heat and mundanity she never believed would settle in her marriage.

Leon wouldn't bite. Not really. “Even if you win, that'll never happen. You'll take one look at the bloody stupid problematic tattoo on his stomach and get unnerved.”

“Whatever. Either way, top that bitch.” Honey only had a hint of seriousness in her voice. Her smile reached her eyes.

Leon made a huff noise and rolled his eyes. Like he was disgusted. He threw his arms up and shrugged. “If you lose, ANYTIME or ANYWHERE, no matter what is happening, when I ask? you've got to kiss me.”

“That's not a punishment. I kiss you all the time.”

“But do you really, love? A nice one before work or when we get home or before we go to sleep. I'm talking about deep, passionate kisses like we used to.”

Honey’s shoulders sagged. Here she was wagering a night with a knock off, literally, of her husband. And all he wanted was that fire they once had. Both of them worried it had become embers just begging to be stoked and lit ablaze again.

Honey held out her hand, “Deal.”

Leon took it and turned it over. He raised it up to his lips and kissed her wrist, “Deal.” His hand encompassed hers and they started to walk as the wind picked up. They, however, strolled leisurely down Mulberry Street.

Honey was rather quiet, and Leon smirked. His wife would rather keep her mouth shut than risk mentioning the kids if she opened it. He didn't mind talking about them, not really.

Leon joked to Johnny once that his “Littles” were like acid trips that had come to life. Except they needed emotional guidance. He was glad that they had at least a few more years until they had to explain Sunny didn't just resemble his father, but his mother had her suspicions.

“Leon, where have you gone off to?” Honey was snapping her fingers in his face. “I asked you why a week isn't enough to reset?”

“How often did your parents go on holiday without the six of you?”

Honey was silent for so long as they sauntered along that Leon thought she was either worried she would mention Selina and Sunny in her answer. But she was thinking and couldn't recall. She responded with, “It's more like WHEN did my parents go on vacation without the six of us.”

“Alright.”

“1969. Wait no. That was the holiday you paid for to see me. Oh.. I don't know!”

“Exactly. My parents never went away without us and then not alone until my dad got sick. I don't want to wait until it's our last holiday together. So we go home,” he put his arm around Honey's neck and pulled her close to kiss the top of her head, “and just close your eyes and pick.”

She let her hands enclose around his as it hung down over her chest. “And we go there.” Honey brought Leon's hand up to her mouth so her lips just brushed his knuckles.

Leon’s instincts took over when she let him go. He slid under the fabric of her dress between her breasts. His fingers traced a lazy circle over Honey's nipple then teased it pert.

He went around. Quicker. This time he pinched it gently. When her breath hitched, he did it a bit harder. His eyes on the people milling about the streets of Lower Manhattan. His touch never waned.

Honey looked up at her husband. She studied the way his lip curled a bit like Elvis. How his nose curved subtly to the left because of a youthful accident near Kensington Gardens.

“Never trust a boomerang. They bloody well do come back!” he declared one night during their first years together.

Present Honey let her nail trace over it, and snickered unexpectedly. She watched Leon's eyebrows meet in the middle with thoughts of what was on with his missus. His eyes shifted a sideways glance at her, but his lip turned outwards in the tiny pout that preceded a smile.

“Whot?!” he exclaimed when Honey retraced the old break. She giggled a little more. “I WAS SEVEN! I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS GONNA WORK!” Leon shouted. “Dad told me I ruined my Greek face with a Roman nose.”

Honey stopped dead and gasped. Her jaw fell open in feigned shock. “Excuse me!? Romans took the Greeks, and we made them better!”

Leon reached his hands down over his wife’s ass. Their bodies flush with each other so he could knead it. “You certainly made this Greek better.”

Honey raised up on her tiptoes (despite her four inch heels) to throw her arms around Leon's neck. He was taken aback when Honey did a little hop so her lips could meet. He lifted her off the ground while her mouth opened enough for him to slip her his tongue. Hers fought back.

Back and forth their tongues went while they kissed on Bleecker street across from the apothecary. A few cars drove passed and whistled. Honey let go enough to flip someone off. Leon laughed in her mouth.

His oxygen became hers, and Honey remembered what it had all been like. When was the last time she and Leon sparred with their mouths? Were desperate to be inside of each other?

She was the first to break the kiss. Back on the ground. She took Leon and led him off the street in a doorway to a shuttered bodega. Honey pushed him up against the brick wall then began undoing his dress pants. She delved in to grab his cock which easily hardened in her grip.

“Want a blow job?” she purred at him. Her touch stroked along his shaft.

“We're.. We're not that far from the flat. I.. can,” Leon moaned. He glanced down to see Honey lowering herself to her knees. “You'll ruin your dress.”

She had freed his cock to lick at the head. “I'll buy another.”

Honey took Leon completely in her mouth so that he hit the back of her throat. She gagged a little; his hips shuddered. He bucked and she created a vacuum with her mouth. She let go before letting the tip of her tongue run the length of his erection and around the tip. She looked up at him from where she knelt while spreading the foreskin to lick at the sensitive part inside.

“People know us around here,” Leon whined. His hold on the back of her head tightened and twisted up in her hair.

“Oh no! Local sexy Columbia professor gets sucked off by his goddess-like wife and East Village club owner.” Honey punctuated every few words with a swipe of her tongue on his cock. This was followed by soft sucking motions over the head and further down. “Wait until they find out we met making a porno.”

She stopped suddenly and stood to lead her husband back out onto the sidewalk towards home. Leon whimpered; Honey laughed. “Now that's for the restaurant! But you're right, a few more blocks and we're home. Then we're gonna fuck good and hard all over the flat.”

Leon picked up the pace.

----

Honey stumbled backwards into the stairwell up to their apartment. Leon invaded her space as he bent over to mesh his mouth with hers. He blindly fumbled for the zipper to her dress as she unbuttoned his shirt. He kicked his shoes off, then his pants and tugged the dress off his wife's body so she was naked in the foyer except for her wedged heels.

Honey took a step back to catch her breath. She pushed the shirt back off Leon's shoulders and kissed them. Once he stepped out of his boxers, she let her mouth hurry along his collarbone. She stopped only to nibble and bite at the base of his neck.

He sighed letting his hands run up and down her bare back. They settled where the small of her back curved inwards. Leon held her to his chest when Honey reciprocated.

Another instance lost to their busy schedule. Neither could remember the last time they embraced like this. Not just a hug. Luckily they were affectionate with each other if only in passing. But not like this. Just touching one another in their nakedness.

Leon backed Honey onto the stairs where he sat her down on his shirt. Like her dress, he could buy another. He just wanted a clean place for her to rest. He lifted her ankle thanking the gods her shoes had laces around it instead of those damnable straps even she had a hard time with.

Honey sat forward to stop him. “I want to leave them on.”

Leon frowned, “Whot?”

Honey laughed and got up to face him as she made her way up the steps. She bit her lip as he followed. The light in the well helps her see every inch of her partner.

The erection she created out on the street as it strained and twitched for her. His muscular arms couldn't quite catch her because she remained out of his reach the further up she climbed. His sly smile with the curved top lip. A smile that reached green eyes that transformed from indescribable colors to a shade darkened by desire.

Honey wasn't paying attention to the pile of troll dolls that were set up just outside their door. She was too busy squealing when Leon finally caught up to her. He growled and snapped his jaw at her thigh from a few feet down. She couldn't see anything but her 34 years flash across her eyes when she tripped and toppled and cried out.

“DAMMIT, SELINA!!”

Leon practically flew to snatch her up in his arms before she could properly fall. She had opened the door at least and instead of down the stairs they tumbled on to the front hallway floor. Leon cushioned her as best as he could when they landed.

“I told her if she left those creepy things out there someone was gonna get killed! OOOO!” Honey let out a frustrated scream.

“Are you alright?” Leon pretended to inspect his wife’s body. “No lumps?” He distracted her by capturing one of her breasts in his mouth while they laid side by side on the hardwood and throw-rug. He crawled on top of Honey and snuck a hand inside of her thighs. His fingers dove inside of her like back at the restaurant. “No bruises?”

Honey felt her sex throb. Her back arched with one leg thrown around Leon's waist. “If you finger fuck me harder, I'll forget all about it.”

Leon complied. He slid them easily in and out; she had grown so wet for him already. His wife twisted and dug her nails into his back. Her hips bucking now like his had outside.

“Your ego is going to bruise,” he said low in her ear.

“Whhhhyyyy?!” She replied in a high pitched moan.

“You mentioned our daughter before we got home.”

“WE WERE IN THE STAIRWELL!”

Leon rolled off of his wife and got to his feet. He helped her up and made like he was going to kiss her. Honey ducked out of his way. “We don't live out on those stairs do we?” He wiggled his eyebrows. “You lost, and I want my first snog.”

Honey dodged him once more and slithered out of his arms. “Cheeky bastard. That's cheating!” She moved towards the living room.

“That's not! It's called tactical. One again, WHO’S CIA TRAINED NOW?! NOW COME BACK HERE AND SNOG ME, WOMAN!”

“BUGGER OFF!” Honey screamed but launched into hysterical laughter as she gave chase through the apartment.

“Minx!” Leon shouted. He ran after her out on to the fire escape where she was out of his grasp once more.

He chased Honey to the roof. Once up there he looked around the garden they had built. Their own secret away from Manhattan created by the two of them, The Littles and Klaus. Ivy and wildflowers and a patch for vegetables and fruit. It wasn't much, but wildflowers always blossomed where they were planted and the bees that followed made honey tended to by his own sweet, sticky woman.

“Grazia, dove sei? Te voglio, ma donna selvaggia.” Leon called out to his wife in Italian. Then Greek: “Μου χρωστάς ένα φιλί”

Gracie, where are you? I want you, my wild woman. You owe me a kiss!

“Sono qui amore mio!” Honey called back from under the Bougainvillea covered arbor. “Say te voglio bene, Leo.” A nickname her father teased him with. “I want you always.”

“I DO want you. From the moment I saw you. Your hair was all plaited up around your head with this crown of daisies in your hair. Like Khloris, the goddess of flowers.”

Leon finally found Honey laying on the bench under the wooden structure. She was twisted at the waist with one leg curved, the other stretched out. She was propped up on her elbow. Her long black hair covered her breasts down to her sides almost. The rest of it splayed out on the seat.

He stood by her side now. “Now you're Aphrodite, aren't you?”

Leon let his touch trace over her olive skin curves. He studied her dark pubic hair between the softness of those curves. Brushed his fingers through it before sitting down next to her. He kissed the thickness of his wife’s hip.

Honey rolled on to her back. Her fingers in Leon's hair encouraged him to move his lips to her stomach and chest. He captured one of her nipples in his mouth and sucked till it hardened. Then he bit it gently until she cried out.

Leon laid on top of Honey. She drew his mouth to hers when he attempted to head back down her body. She craved the battle their tongues waged before. So they did.

Honey locked her ankles to Leon's hips and begged for him to push inside of her. She took the head of his cock to guide it inside of her slick entrance. “Please?” she beseeched.

Leon pushed up so he could look at her. “You don't want me to go down on you?”

“I do. Later. We can reenact that scene from our film debut. I just need you inside of me. I want to remember what we used to be like. Before we raised the moon and the sun and became mortal.”

Leon kissed Honey. Then again. And again. Small, quick, innocent kisses. He took her wrists and pinned them to the bench above her head. His free hand did with his cock what she had been doing moments before. He taunted her entrance with the first inch or so of his cock.

Honey pleaded for Leon to just do it already. He pressed his forehead in the crook of her neck just as he buried himself in her walls. “We are the pantheon wrapped up in human bodies. We will never be mortals.”

Honey cried out. She dragged her nails over Leon's shoulder blades as he lost himself up to the hilt with each thrust. The friction and movements grew steadily faster. Harder. Not quite violent, but their bodies crashed together repeatedly. As if the pain of Leon's pelvis slamming into Honey’s reminded them of who they are.

“Leon.. Stop,” Honey said breathlessly.

All movement ceased. “Am I hurting you?” he looked down at her apologetically.

She pushed the sweat soaked hair back from his forehead. The smell of sex and sweat and rain in the air coursed through Honey’s veins. She littered Leon's chest and neck with tiny pecks.

“No, I feel really good. I want to switch positions?”

The way she asked was almost sheepish. It made Leon smile as he pulled out of her and helped her up. Now he laid down so she could straddle him. The bench wasn't wide enough for her to kneel like she usually did, so Honey would quite literally treat Leon like a horse.

She positioned herself over his cock. Used the head to caress her slit. Honey watched Leon bite his entire bottom lip. His chest heaved with heavy breaths that only quickened when she finally sank down on to him. His fingers dug so deep into her curves, he was practically up to his first knuckle.

Honey found a pace that was slow and steady. She balanced herself with palms flat on her husband’s chest. She drove forward so that he filled her totally. Then back until only the head stayed inside. She thrust forward swift and vigorous until every inch was covered by her sex Honey felt herself pulsate around Leon.

She let herself be physically manipulated by her husband now. He rocked her back and forth until their rhythm was breakneck.

Neither of them realized the skies had opened up and it started to pour. The rain cascaded through the arbor on to them as they discovered each other on the bench in the middle of their own Garden of Eden.

And Honey understood as she arched her back and anchored herself on Leon's thighs. Her body was undulating with abandon. The two of them fucking; their bodies crashing together like the thunder. She understood what it meant to gain knowledge from the forbidden fruit.

Somewhere, in some ripple in time, or flip of the coin, she and Leon had been split in half. Honey was made from him. Pulled from his soul and fashioned for him. He had been taken from HER soul and fashioned for her. This was what she meant the night Selina had been born: their stolen pieces would always mend together in every generation.

He spilled into her, crying out her name. Her real name. She threw back her head and released a cry a few minutes later drowned out by the sound of a storm. They twitched and sighed and smiled in that lazy post orgasmic way.

Now they stood, Honey a bit off balance and giggling as Leon righted her. His hair a matted mess stuck to his face and neck which she tried desperately to manage. But he kissed her instead like the night they met and the night they fell in love. How they would kiss for the next fifty years.

“I think a hot bath is in order!” he bellowed over the noise.

For the second time that night, Honey couldn't resist.

Tag: @magic-multicolored-miracle @love-is-dirty-baby @a-ghoulish-tale @elliethesuperfruitlover @neuroticpuppy @nightmonsters @super-unpredictable98 @duck-noises @falloutby @vonkimmeren @bisexualnathanyoung @rob-private @maerenee930 @messengeronthemoon @frogs--are--bitches @firstpersonnarrator @feed-davis-and-steve

#robert sheehan #robert sheehan character fic #leon x honey #moonbrella universe #robert sheehan fluff #robert sheehan smut #100+ followers event #klaus hargreeves

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writeofmind · 4 years

Text

a ghost?! (pt. 1)

Genre: fluff, slow burn, multi-shot <3

Pairing: College!Rosé x Reader

anon: Hi! If possible could you make a master list of all the fics and scenarios you have posted? 😅 I’d also like to request a blackpink college AU focused on Female Reader x Rosé 🥺 lots of fluff and maybe some slow burn and smut? I’d be happy with any Rosé fluff or blackpink fluff though 🤍🤲🏻 thank you 😊

A/N: hi, j anon! this is part 1/? of your slow burn college!au. :D I will try to make this as slow and fluffy as possible. i don’t have a specific plot that i’m sticking to rn, but i have general ideas that i’m very excited to write. that being said, feel free to send in suggestions as to how you want this story to go! (or you can leave it up to me, and be in for cute surprises >:) )

a ghost?! | caramel lattes | your favorite regular

There were two things that you learned from living your college life. One, you definitely weren’t a morning person, and two, your roommate was a ghost.

Not literally. The thing was just that you had never formally met them; when you moved in, they weren’t home, and when you would wake up in the afternoons, they would already be long gone and out of the house. Your schedules never lined up with each other, so for the past few weeks, you’ve just been barely missing them, not even knowing their name.

You didn’t mind, really. The apartment was kept clean at all times, so it really did feel like only you lived there sometimes. But, you can say: if your roommate was a ghost, then they were the loudest ghost. Ever.

It was just your luck to be paired with them, too; they would be up at the crack of dawn, most times even earlier. You’d often wake up in the mornings to music playing or their (you’re sure you can say her) voice singing along. If you were being honest, the latter was your preferred way of waking up. She did have a wonderful voice, and you wished you could get yourself out of bed to tell her that; but she just woke up way, way too early.

Today was another one of those days. Music was blasting in the background, yet another replay of “Call Me Maybe.”

Ugh, god... you raised your head at the rude awakening, squinting your eyes at the door. Not this song again.

Based on what little you knew about your roommate, you had an image in your head of what she may look like. To put it short, you imagined a sorority girl, in a way. The type that dance and sing along to pop songs, dresses in tank tops and jeans, partying everyday, that sort of thing. You figured that maybe she didn’t party a lot though, considering she was already home and sleeping when you would walk through the front door.

You let your head drop back into your pillow. You were too groggy and beat from work the night before that you blocked out the song, blocked out your roommate’s singing, and fell soundly asleep once again as her music faded out the front door and into the hallways of your apartment. Jeez, that girl needed some headphones.

When you woke up a few hours later, the apartment was silent. There was a sigh of relief from you, and you groaned as you stretched your entire body out. Class started in about an hour and a half, so you decided not to laze around in bed and instead get ready for the day.

When you walked into the kitchen to grab something quick to eat on your way to campus, you smelled something delicious. Sniffing the air, you smelled... something spicy?

Sure enough, when you walked inside, there was a pan of tteokbokki sitting right on the stove. The aroma of the spiciness itself made your mouth water the closer you got to it- then, you saw a note next to it, sitting right under a bottle of water.

Good morning, roomie! I heard you come home late last night, (not that I was trying to be a stalker, but I couldn’t sleep so I was still up when you got back. Crazy, right?) Anyway, I figured you didn’t eat because I didn’t hear you in the kitchen, so I made extra tteokbokki this morning for you to take with you. I made it a little too spicy, so make sure you grab the water too!!

- PC

Your eyebrows raised higher the further down you read the note. She made you breakfast? And packed you a water?

How sweet of her, you smiled. You wasted no time in scooping a whole bunch of the delicious rice cakes onto a plate and devouring every single piece. (She was right, though, it was super spicy.)

That was really sweet of her. I should do something for her, too. I feel bad that I haven’t thought to even leave a note. And PC, huh? I wonder what that could stand for. I should make a mental note to ask.

After eating and cleaning everything up, you realized that you wasted a little too much time in your own head and was running a bit behind schedule. You grabbed the water bottle quickly and ran as fast as you could out the door, into the elevator, and out the main lobby of your apartment. You didn’t even notice the blonde haired girl you almost ran into along the way.

When you were finished with your school day, you always dreaded having to go to work afterwards. Not that it was a terrible job, you were just a barista at a café near campus, after all- but you would be tired and drained after pulling afternoon to closing shifts.

So there you stood, leaning against the counter top at your job as you sipped away at a small cup of espresso. You and your coworkers chatted absentmindedly. It wasn’t too busy tonight, except for a few straggling students that stayed to study. Your manager had even offered to let you go home early, but you decided you needed the money- you were practically getting paid to stand around, anyway.

The bell on the door jingled after what seemed like hours (and maybe it was). Your coworkers, all clowns, hid away from the incoming group of customers and shuffled behind the counters, leaving you to take care of them all. You glared at them and groaned internally, but that was the rules of a college student barista. If you’re not fast enough to hide, you face the consequences.

“Hey, guys,” you put on your smile as you approached the register, “what can I get for you tonight?”

When the girls got closer, you were glad that your hat was a bit too big for your head. It covered the burning read at the top of your ears at the sight of how pretty they were— all four of them, to be exact.

One of the shorter ones smiled back at you. “Hiii,” she greeted, “do you guys know what you want?”

The redhead of the group spoke up first. “Yes, can I just have a tea, please?” She turned to the other girls, “I noticed that my voice has been kind of raspy from rehearsal. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

You minded your own business as you punched in the order. “Of course, and for you?” You looked at the tall brunette, who was squinting at the menu board. You had to hide a laugh as you slid a smaller menu to her. “Here you go, our menu is printed kind of small.”

“Oh my gosh, thank you,” she laughed and took the menu in her hands. The shorter one that spoke earlier laughed too and simply pushed the brunette’s hands down.

“Can we just get two large white mochas, please?”

You smiled as you punched in that order too. “Of course.” You now turned to the final girl of the group, who stood silently, staring back and forth at the pastries in the case and the menu board. “For you, miss?”

When she looked up at you, you froze.

Wow, she was cute.

She smiled at you so sweetly, brushing her blonde hair behind her ear. “Um, yes please, can I get all of the vanilla scones that are in here? Oh, and a caramel latte, please.”

Just from eyeballing the case, there were at least 10, if not a couple more scones in there. You glanced at her with a humorous smile and nodded. “Yeah, no problem.”

As you punched in the order, you made sure that you only rang her up for four scones. It was almost near closing time anyway (you told yourself that, but really you still had a couple hours left), and you didn’t want to have to waste any pastries.

“Can I have your guys’ names for your drinks?” You popped the tip off of your sharpie.

The redhead, again, spoke first. “Jisoo.”

Then went the brunette. “Lisa,” she then pointed to the shorter one, “Jennie.”

Lastly, you turned to the blonde. Again, she smiled, and nodded when she spoke. “Rosé.”

Such a pretty name, you thought to yourself. You made it a point to draw a little flower next to her name, just for funsies. You let them know that their drinks would be ready soon, and you gathered all the scones in the case for the girl to have.

The girls didn’t notice the price difference at first when they paid. After calling out their names for their orders, it wasn’t until they sat down at their table with their drinks and snacks that they realized something was off.

It was Rosé who came back up to the counter as you were wiping it down.

“Um, hi,” she spoke softly as if not to surprise you, “I’m sorry, but I think there may have been a mistake?”

You looked up at her from the counter with raised eyebrows. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was your drink wrong?”

“No, not at all! It’s great,” she shook her head and showed her bag of scones, “but, um, I think you mischarged me for these.”

Ah, so she did notice. “No miss, that’s okay,” you laughed at her innocence and honesty. Her face even looked worried just from you saying that. “We’re going to be closing in a couple hours anyway, and to be honest, the scones can be a bit overpriced when you buy a lot. Don’t worry about it.”

Her eyebrows were furrowed in the cutest way possible. “But— are you sure? You won’t get in trouble?”

“I’m sure, I’m sure. It’s fine, really miss.”

“Aww... well, thank you—” she beamed and squinted at your name tag, “Joy.”

Aw, shit. You internally slapped yourself in the face, I put on the wrong apron.

Of all days to be talking to a cute girl, you weren’t even wearing the right apron with the right name tag. You really didn’t want to have to explain yourself and essentially embarrass both you and the girl right now, and you were quite frankly a bit shy already from talking to her for as long as you have. So you just smiled back. “It’s no problem, Rosé.”

With a giggle, the girl turned back around and hopped over to her table, where you could hear her recounting your conversation. You chuckled.

As your shift went on, the students inside the café began to disperse and pack up their bags to head home. One of the last students to leave was the group of girls you served earlier, and they even made sure to call out “bye, Joy!” as they left. Your coworkers looked at you funny but ended up laughing at your awkwardness once they realized your mistake.

“Oh, come on, y/n!” One of your best coworkers, Seulgi, laughed, “Now you’re gonna be known as Joy to them! Joy is not going to be happy.”

“Look, man, I didn’t wanna correct her, alright??” You sighed and palmed your forehead, “I got nervous!”

“Ah, well,” your other coworker Yeri shrugged, “at least you may not see her again. So you don’t have to be too embarrassed.”

Your shoulders dropped at the sound of that. You may not see her again? Boo.

Your closing shift went by smoothly and before you knew it, you were walking through the threshold of your already dark apartment. You saw that your roommate’s door was closed and her light off, but her shoes were on the shoe rack, so you knew she was already sleeping.

You almost went straight to your room to knock out before remembering what your roommate did for you this morning. You didn’t want to just leave her hanging and make yourself seem ungrateful, so you grabbed a post-it note and a pen.

Hi there, roomie, you began, thank you for the tteokbokki this morning! It was delicious, actually, and I only needed a few gulps of water between each bite. (lol, i’m just teasing, it really was good. i love spicy food.) i’m not sure if you like flavorings in your coffee, let alone if you like coffee or not, but here’s some for you for the morning, since you’re usually up earlier than me. you can use any of my coffee cups, i have way too many.

- y/n

After setting up the coffee machine to brew in the early morning, you stuck the note on top and dragged yourself into your room to get ready for bed.

The next morning, you woke up to silence. No music, no singing, nothing. And it wasn’t early in the morning- it was the usual time you yourself would get up and out of bed.

Huh? you wondered, This feels... unnatural.

You got yourself out of bed and ready for your day as you normally would. You walked into the kitchen for your usual breakfast of coffee and a single granola bar, when you saw yet another note waiting for you on the kitchen table.

it’s no problem at all! i almost thought you hated the tteokbokki when i didn’t see any feedback when i got home. TT TT it’s so funny that we haven’t even met yet. btw, i’m sorry i’m loud in the mornings, i never realized how late you got home every night. i’ll let you sleep in more. :) and you’re so sweet, thank you for letting me use one of your cups, and thank you for the coffee this morning :)

p.s, just so you know a fact about me too, i love caramel in my coffees.

- PC

#rosé #blackpink scenarios #blackpink #gg scenarios #kpop scenarios #rosé x reader #girl group scenarios #park rosé #park roseanne #park chaeyoung #rosé fluff #rosé fic

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writingsfromhome · 3 years

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Bad Timing I(.5)

A/N: This is the sort of backstory to Harry and you, I think it can be read on its own if you want, or before you read the first part too. It’s angsty af, but it has some death and sensitive topics jsyk. I tried to keep it concise but it got a little wordy as angst does. xx

Part 1

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

About 12 Years Ago:

“So are you coming to that party or not?” My roommate asks. She was one of the first people I’d met last year when we started uni and even though we came from different backgrounds we remained friends over the last year, even choosing to room together again. She got me to open up and find the extroverted part of me that was able to enjoy uni outside of academics.

“Ugh, I’m volunteering for the voting booths for the rest of the week. Maybe if I can make it?”

“You’re actually doing that?” She scrunches her nose. “I don’t get it. You’re just way too nerdy to be my friend.”

“And yet you loove me,” I squeeze her against me and she laughs. “It’s my mom, she said I had to do at least one extracurricular so I could meet friends this year.”

“You already have friends,” she points to herself, and with her came her group of friends that’d quickly taken me in last year.

And my mom doesn’t like that I hang out with you, I think. She thought we partied too much even though my grades stayed decent. “She wants me to have nerdy friends too, I dunno. They’re helping me pay my tuition until I get a job so I kinda have to play nice.”

“Parents suck,” my roommate flicks through her closet. I agreed, this was just something I would get through to get through. Then they would leave me alone for the rest of the year.

Little did I know the person they’d partner me with at my polling station was someone who would be in my life for the next decade.

“I’m Harry by the way,” he’d said after we received our orientation and assigned the building we were going to babysit the votes in. “Second year.”

“Me too! I’m Y/N. What’s your major? I’ve never seen you around.”

“Law--well I haven’t decided if it’s law but that’s what I’m in right now.”

“Really? Law?” I was openly judging, he just didn’t seem the law type.

“Well what are you in?” He demands.

“Business,” I cringe.

“Really? Business?” He has a cheeky smile on, one that would become familiar to me.

“Well, you just don’t seem like the law type. They’re usually more uptight, dress way too smart for me.”

“I know, it’s like, we’re not even in the courtroom yet,” he joins in and it makes me laugh--how he could poke fun at his own people. That’s when I knew we would get along fine, and I actually looked forward to the next few days getting to know him better.

“I’m definitely telling my mum about you, she’s been begging me to make friends outside of my circle. I’ll tell her I’m friends with a law student.”

“So we’re friends already?” We’d reached our booth and began setting up the partitions. He takes over when I set it up wrong.

“Obviously,” I say. “I actually like you which means you’ll have a hard time getting rid of me.”

“I’m alright with that,” he grins and I notice the laugh lines that are brought to life as he does. It somehow made him seem more genuinely.

We spend the rest of the time swapping stories, classes, rants. We check student IDs and hand out voting cards in between but it doesn’t feel like a drag anymore. At the end of the day, I invite him to the party my roommate was going to with our friends. If he was going, maybe I would too. He seemed like he might be fun at a party.

“Er,” he suddenly seems nervous. “I’ll have to ask my girlfriend, she wanted to hang out tonight.”

“Well bring her too!” I say excitedly. “Is she law as well?”

“No, she’s in the arts.”

“I like her already,” I push. “Bring her, my friends are fun you’ll learn how to have a good time.”

“I know how to have a good time,” there was the flash of his dimples again. “Text me the address.”

And thus began a friendship for the next four years, partying together, studying together (trying to), and hanging out in each other’s rooms. We would set each other up with other friends, double dated, went out for sunrise-hikes, and took long drives at night when we had to blow some steam off from being over-stressed, over-studied uni students. Our friend circles overlapped, the fabric of our lives eventually bleeding together. We were made of the same fibers, sticking together even after uni, when our friends got more serious about their careers. When they moved out of the country or to another city, we made sure to rent places close enough that we could still see each other often. And somehow, in the new chapter of our lives, without the partying and our other friends to buffer, we became closer than before.

We cared for each other--we didn’t deny that ever. And somehow that platonic love turned romantic as we depended on each other while we navigated adulthood. I can’t exactly pinpoint where things changed, but one evening our relationship was changed forever.

7 years ago:

“She literally wants me to stay until 7, and she was offended when I said no! I’m not even getting paid for that!” I was bitching to Harry about my shitty job.

“That’s bollocks” Harry shrugs. “Just say you’ve got family obligations or something.”

“I said that the one time she wanted us to come in on a weekend and she gave me shite work the following week! I just...I can’t afford to lose this job Harry.”

“That’s shitty, I’m sorry.” He takes the last swig of his beer. “Want another one?”

“I haven’t even finished this one,” I moan at my now warm beer that I’d been nursing for the last hour, too busy ranting to drink it. “It’s getting late though I should head home before it’s dark. Don’t want that nutter that hangs around my building to harass me again.”

“I’ll walk you home,” Harry suggests. He lived a 15 minute walk from me.

“No no,” I get up and take our dirty dishes to the sink. “I didn’t even ask about you, how was your day?”

“Same old,” he sighs against the counter. “I feel like I don’t fit in, everyone my age is finishing their law degree but I don’t think I want to.”

“I knew from the day I met you, you weren’t destined for the courtroom.” I pull him into a comforting hug. “Do what makes you happy, or what doesn’t make you want to say fuck it and quit your job to hibernate.”

“You really know the perfect thing to say,” Harry chuckles but he pulls me tighter against him. I stroke his back, reassuring him he’d be alright in the end.

“Y/N-” he pulls away to say something but freezes mid sentence. I raise an eyebrow but he’s still, staring at my face.

“Harry?” I ask, but he continues staring. “Hello? You alright?”

“Yeah,” he breaks into a sudden smile. That was weird--I make sure he’s okay before letting go.

Before I leave, I kiss Harry’s cheek goodbye--I was never shy in the affection I gave my friends and Harry’s bummed mood needed extra affection tonight. But what I don’t expect is for him to catch me before I pull away, staring intently into my eyes. The lighthearted energy between us disappears instantly as it dawns on me, how close we were, the unspoken feelings in his eyes, the hesitation before he presses his lips to mine.

I kissed him back then, barely understanding what was happening, before pulling away. I give him a smile but that’s just what he sees at the tip of the iceberg, underneath my mixed feelings churn away. My best friend just kissed me, and I wasn’t totally mad about it.

“It’s getting dark I-” I say as Harry says, “Sorry was that okay?”

We laugh awkwardly, neither of us sure what to do at this point. We decide to ignore it instead.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Harry lets me go and opens the door for me. “Watch out for the neighbourhood nutter yea?”

I stand in place, feeling the fibers of our friendship unraveling but feeling hopeless in mending the tear. “Take care Harry.”

I high tail it out, my thoughts going at an impossible rate as I sort out what happened. And we try to ignore it the next couple weeks,

We hadn’t made it official then, too nervous to face what this meant about our friendships. It was only at my sister’s wedding, that I realised what was wrong between us. I’d been mourning our old friendship, and avoiding him in the weeks since the kiss. But what I didn’t realise was that our friendship had been changing over the last year anyway, and getting drunk on champagne and dancing with Harry, while my sister celebrated the happiest day of her life, made me realise there was a cause for celebration here: a new chapter in our lives.

A couple days later, after a stressful day at work, I’d taken the tube to his flat and waited for him outside. He was surprised to see me there, not saying much except to open the door and let me in. As soon as he’d closed it, my lips were attached to his and we’d let our bags drop, coats, and any piece of clothing between us. After that night, we didn’t even try to deny how we felt about each other.

“I didn’t think I could ever be this happy,” he’s whispered to me after. I thought he’d fallen asleep but his whisper in the dark made me grin to myself. “Are you awake.”

“I am. Awake and happy.” I turn to face him, giggling. “Who knew this could feel so right.”

“Our first kiss was quite wrong though wasn’t it?” Harry says and it makes me laugh.

“That’s why I needed to do a redo,” I tease. “Can’t leave you to plan anything.”

“It wasn’t planned I swear, I was trying to be spontaneous.”

“Let’s not try ‘spontaneous’ again then,” I kiss him in the dark. He pulls me snug against him, I never knew how safe it felt. The safest I would ever feel, wrapped in the warmth with my best friend and now something else.

It was a good few months, testing the waters as our relationship underwent a transformation. All of our friends were supportive, but we never missed the glances between them. Apparently, they were waiting for this to happen. But as sweet as those first few months had been, finding out my mum was sick with a timeline was devastating. I came apart at the seams but Harry stayed through it all, holding me together. He’d proposed then, wanting my mum to be part of the ceremony. We had a small wedding, intimate but still magical. It was bittersweet, the amount of love and happiness I felt towards Harry and our loved ones around us as he said I do and as he took my arm and swept me across the dancefloor. But the amount of sadness crushing my chest kept me from being the weightless bride I always thought I would be.

Through it all, Harry stayed by my side. While we were hopeful, the day our hopes were dashed, the days and weeks I mourned. When my sister and her husband came to stay with their crazy toddlers and Harry kept them entertained giving my sister and I time together. I thought he was perfect, that I’d lucked out.

That lasted a few years, 3 and a half to be exact. There were months leading up to our split and we could point to a bunch of things that could’ve led to it. a) him wanting kids, and me wanting to wait or b) long hours we worked as we changed careers and tried to make our way up or c) how hard getting pregnant actually was. Maybe I pushed him away, or he didn’t love me enough to try and make it work.

I think I lied to myself, avoiding the tension creeping into the relationship. The tired excuses and time spent apart, the lack of usual affection, or casual conversations. I was an idiot, I realise every time I think about the end in retrospect. Maybe if I caught on earlier I could have fixed us before we fell apart. Maybe I could have saved us.

“There’s someone coming in Tuesday morning to fix the broken washer, will you be home?” I ask, still in bed and scrolling through my phone. I hadn’t meant to be up this early but Harry woke me as he got up and I couldn’t fall back asleep.

“No,” Harry responds, his back to me as he ruffles through the dresser. “I’ve got a thing that morning.”

“Well I’ve got to go in early Tuesday-I thought you might be home.” I say. I hear an edge to Harry’s voice but I try not to focus on it. He’d been a little cold all weekend and I was scared to think what it meant.

“You couldn’t be bothered to check in when you confirmed the date?” Harry asks harshly.

“I...guess not.” I put my phone down and wait for Harry to turn, maybe I could read his expression. Maybe he was stressed. “Harry?”

“What?” He turns, but he looks at me with no emotion. No stress, no frustration, not even anger. It’s the lack of emotion in his face that cause my eyes to prick with tears. Harry raises his eyebrows and I shake my head, untangling myself from the sheets so he doesn’t see any tears. I rush to the bathroom but forget to close the door out of habit.

“Y/N,” a kinder Harry appears by the doorway. His face has smoothed out the harsh lines, his eyes hesitant and cautious.

“What’s happened with us?” I blurt out. “Why are you so cold all the time? Am I doing something wrong?”

Harry’s face falls and he walks towards me but doesn’t touch me. “It’s nothing like that. It’s...I don’t know. We should talk.”

He reaches his hand out but I flinch away. “Did you meet somebody new or something? What are we talking about?”

“Let’s not do this here. Right now.”

“Why not!” I finally had enough. “I’ve been walking on eggshells for months Harry! I don’t know what’s wrong and I keep waiting for you to bloody tell me!”

“This isn’t working!” Harry raises his voice to compensate for mine. I’m immediately silenced by the volume, and then the words sink in.

“Is there someone else?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, his gaze on the hanging vines by the window. My heart drops into my stomach like a boulder, and I find it hard to breathe. I clutch the porcelain sink and ask in a surprisingly even tone, “Harry. Answer me.”

“What we have, Y/N...it’s dysfunctional.” He says quietly, meeting my eyes. “It doesn’t matter if there’s someone else, we’ve been fighting for months. Things aren’t the same between us-”

“Who is she?” I ask. I needed to know.

“That’s not relevant,” he shuts my question down quickly. ��I’m sorry Y/N, I...I don’t want to hurt you. I care about you, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t,” I’d pleaded. “We can go to counseling, talk it through-”

“I can’t Y/N.”

“Because of her.”

“No, because this isn’t good for either of us.” He’d walked up to me, cradled my face. “We’re not good for each other, not like this.”

“Who is she?” I yank his hands away.

“She’s...it doesn’t matter, I swear nothing happened between us Y/N. Knowing who she is isn’t going to help this situation--”

“It is! If it weren’t for her, you’d be willing to work on us--to see a future. You...Harry how could you do this to me? To us?” The tears come with no control. “You’re moving on before we’re even over. How are you giving up on us like that?”

“I’m not!” his voice booms in the tiled bathroom. “I’m not bloody giving up on us! I tried Y/N, so many times. I tried! You just keep pushing at me to be someone I’m not and-”

“I can say the same thing about you!” I throw the brush in my hands into the sink. “We were good! And you got it in your head you wanted a baby even though we’re young, oh my god Harry you kept pestering me to change my mind even though I told you I needed time!”

“It’s not like we could have a fucking baby anyway,” Harry says bitterly before realising what he’d said. “Shit-”

“There you go,” I mock. “I knew it. I knew you were holding that against me. And that,” I jab my finger into his chest. “Is what’s made you so moody, so mean and why we’re always fighting. You held it against me.”.

There was absolute truth to what I said. Last year, Harry had brought the baby topic up. I’d told him we were only in our mid-20s, we had a lot of time, and we still had a career to establish. But he would bring up the topic often enough that I’d given in.To make him happy. And months went by, trying for a baby. Went we finally went to our doctor, she’d told us why it was so hard, it could take us years she’d said.

Harry came home that day dejected, and left me feeling like a failure. I think it tore us up.

“You wanted a baby so fucking bad and when I couldn’t, it made me feel like a complete failure. And I told you that! And you did absolutely nothing to make me feel better. You held it against me, Harry! You didn’t even try to tell me it was okay.”

“It’s not so fucking simple,” he says, his cheeks flushed pink. Maybe it was anger, or maybe it was embarrassment from being confronted with an ugly truth.

“It is. And now you’ve upgraded to a newer model, maybe her version comes with a fertile womb.” I take the cheap shot.

He doesn’t say anything though. And I don’t know why that hurts more than knowing he’d fallen for another woman while he was still married to me. My best friend in the whole world had just broken my heart into a million irrevocable pieces.

“It’s a bunch of things Y/N,” he finally says. “That’s just part of it. We’re not...we’re just not working!”

“Did you even try to make it work?” I ask, swiping my sleeve across my face. “Did you ever think how I felt? How you made me feel Harry? You’ve been slipping away from me without talking to me-” I break off. I couldn’t speak through the heartbreak, the thunderstorm of grief threatens to consume me and my sobs are the only thing that manages to come out.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Harry tries to place a hand on my shoulder but I jerk away, moving to sit on the edge of the bathtub. “Y/N...”

“Just go,” I say through the tears.

“We can talk more about this later-”

"Just go,” I say louder.

Harry’s phone rings again from the bedroom and he sighs. But he leaves me, crying on the bathroom floor. The sadness that was always in my peripheral consumes me. I’d carried this sadness for a long time--ever since I found out my mum was sick, the sadness plagued me. I’d neatly packed it up once I decided to move forward with my life like my mum would want me to, but now it comes back tenfold, marrying the grief of losing Harry like this. And I stay on the floor crying my grief away for hours, eventually crawling into bed and sleeping the daylight away.

When I wake, it’s 6 and Harry isn’t home. I take that as a sign and get up to pack up a few things. I call my sister who still lived in London then, and crash on her couch, staying there for a few weeks and ignoring any call or text from Harry. When I need to go back, for my things, I find him sleeping on the couch with the TV on, something I always found endearing. But I can’t afford to dwell on how much it hurt seeing him like that.

He must have woken from the noise because when he finds me, he tries to stop me and tell me that we still needed to talk.

“About what?” I ask, just tired now. Too many tears shed and too many hours laying awake thinking about the exact moment we went wrong.

“Us,” Harry looked tired too. He was probably throwing himself into his work with nothing like me to hold him back, I think bitterly. His girlfriend had probably already been to our house--his house.

“What about us?” I barely look at him as I begin folding away all my clothes.

“I don’t know,” Harry sits on the bed. “Don’t you want to talk?”

“I’ve got nothing to say, do you?”

Harry sighs, “I don’t know.”

“Nice talk then,” I say, shoving the rest of my things in just so I could get out.

“I just want you to know I care about you Y/N, I don’t want to hurt you.” He says as I pack.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. If you cared about me, and you didn’t want to hurt me you wouldn’t have done this to us.”

“I wasn’t trying to--I didn’t mean to go and fall for someone else-”

“Just stop,” I cut him off. I couldn’t hear it, how the man I loved fell for someone else. I couldn’t break down here. Again.

He said he cared but it didn’t feel that way. It hurt more than I wished to admit. He knew what I’d been through and he still betrayed me, tossed my heart like it was replaceable. The cut he left in me ran deep.

As I leave he tries to talk to me, but I barrel past him. He still reaches for me and pulls me into a hug, I struggle against him but he’s too strong. He wraps me in his arms until I go still but it’s too much. A sob escapes me, and this time he lets me push him off and leave, my bag banging into my hips every time I take a step. As soon as I got into my Uber, I can’t stop crying. There was an infinite pool of tears where Harry was involved.

3 years ago:

My trust and my heart had been been lost in the war between Harry and I. It only took him a month to mail my divorce papers which sat collecting dust on my dining table until he showed up at work one day and demanded I sign them by the end of that week. I’d taken the day off the day I mailed those in, mourning the end of something that was once so safe and beautiful.

When a close friend calls me on a warm July afternoon, I don’t consider her warning that I shouldn’t check Instagram. That I still had Harry’s friends on my list. I open Instagram before she can tell me why, and see it. Harry was getting married, again. To the woman he gave up on us for. I try to zoom in on a picture without liking it, she was pretty...and blonde. She looked familiar--probably from his office. It didn’t take him long.

It was like someone had taken a retractor to the wound I thought had finally scabbed over. The physical proof that Harry had moved on is just the salt on the wound.

I cry myself to sleep that night.

2 Years ago;

The guy in front of me drones on about his job, mansplaining to me how a mortgage worked as if I wasn’t in finance myself. I excuse myself to use the restroom, checking my phone to see a text from my sister. She’d moved to Scotland this year, to where her husband was from, and I’d missed her terribly in the last year.

A little birdie told me your demon-ex just got divorced 🥂

I stare at the screen, chest feeling tight. I felt vindicated somehow, but I also felt a small bit of sadness. What a fuck-up.

Good for him I had texted back. A part of me wanted him to hurt the way he hurt me.

I went back to my date with a renewed enthusiasm. I’d ordered more wine and got so drunk he was actually interesting enough to take home.

About 1 year ago

“Y/N,” a voice from my past says, one that haunted me some nights. I turn as I exit the shop I was just in. I blink at the sight before me, Harry in a vest and hat. He realises what I’m staring at and laughs awkwardly. “I’m in uniform.”

“You’re...police?” I look up to his face finally. He hadn’t aged a day, although the hat he wears makes him look a little silly.

“Yeah I joined the force uhm...almost 4 years ago now...law didn’t really suit me.”

I know what he was doing, trying to find a baseline to have a conversation. But he was dead to me, and I didn’t want to invite him back in when I was finally forgetting about him.

"Seems like you dropped a lot of dead-weight four years ago.”

I watch his face fall as he realises I wasn’t going to pretend to be friendly.

“Seems that way to you,” he says cautiously. “But that’s not how it happened.”

I shrug. “So. I heard about the divorce. Must’ve been hard being put through that.”

I knew I was being petty, obviously I never got the closure I want (according to my therapist) and I wasn’t over him hurting me the way he did (also according to my therapist). This was how I got my peace, and it wasn’t the best version of me but it was the only one I knew how to be right now.

“Yep,” he crosses his arms over his chest. “So, are you seeing anyone?”

He knew I wasn’t, I don’t know how but the way he stoops to my level I know he knows I hadn’t had a long term relationship since him.

“Not at the moment,” I say awkwardly. “Just focusing on my job...trying to get this promotion.”

“Sorry,” he seems to shake off whatever had come over him. “That was...nosy, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Having him be the bigger person sets something off in me, like there was an anger-bomb inside my mind where he lived and knowing that he was doing okay enough to be able to be the bigger person disrupts this calm I was trying to keep.

“Maybe you shoudn’t have stopped me to ask anything at all. We don’t have anything to talk about anyway.”

I turn around and start to walk away but he catches up, “I wasn’t trying to upset you-”

“Well you have a way of doing that. Please just leave me alone Harry.”

He huffs beside me, “After all this time, can’t we just bloody talk like two adults?”

I freeze and turn to him slowly. He seems to sense this was the wrong thing to say because he takes a step back. “After all this time? Are you serious? I was the one you left behind Harry when you went off to lives your best lift Harry. We’re not living the same life, and we’re not coming from the same bloody place. Don’t fucking patronize me and ask me to talk to you like an adult when you bring out the worst part of me. I meant what I said: I want you to leave me alone. And you know what, if we ever run into each other again, just don’t even talk to me. Pretend you don’t know me. I want nothing to do with you.”

He opens his mouth but his partner calls him from the shop’s entrance. He stays silent, letting me go. As soon as I turn the street corner I rush the rest of the way to the tube, collapsing into a seat and trying to sort out my breathing. It was a shitty feeling, knowing someone was going to be in your life forever because you shared so much history that even when that part of your life ended they were still there. There was so much apart of me, around me, that reminded me of him. And it felt so lonely carrying that around. I wanted to be done with him, I wanted my heart to purge him out. But it couldn’t stop carrying him around everywhere I go.

#Harry Styles #harry styles fic #harry styles angst #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfic #fic #writingsfromhome #harry styles x reader #harry styles series #detective!harry #backstory #this one made me sad to write #but ALSO #if there are any errors #no there is not

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nakedmossy · 4 years

Text

Depth Over Distance - Part One [Rudy x Reader]

[A/N: I haven’t found a hometown Rudy fic yet soooo I wrote one. I have no idea where this story is going to go and I’m honestly finding it hard to get out of writing JJ and get into writing Rudy, but here we go anyways. I wanted to write something where the reader and Rudy were hometown friends before he moved to LA, and to explore the idea of how that would change/what it would look like when he comes back. Get ready for a S L O W. B U R N. my dudes. Peace and love, Mossy x]

The sky was grey and the air was wet - it had been raining for 4 days straight. You sat in your car with the heat cranked, your window down slightly so that the humidity didn’t fog up your mirrors. Living on the Alaskan coast was beautiful most of the time but horrible some of the time, especially when you had to waste gas just keeping warm and dry at 6pm in the beginning of ‘Summer’.

You had never lived anywhere else aside from the summer you spent in Vancouver with your cousin when you were 19. Now, at 23, you were working full time at the local bookshop that was an 8 minute drive from your house in the winter and a 20 minute walk/skate in the summer. Your car was parked street side, waiting for your friend Lizzy to finish her shift at the cafe. The smell of the rain and the Ben Howard song on the radio made you nostalgic about the times you and your friends from high school had spent hours skating down these streets, beers in your backpacks, no helmets, dirty shoes and clothes, no pressure, no responsibilities, no cell service...no worries.

Since graduation a lot of your friends had moved out of town, either to Anchorage or down to Washington, or further south. Your best friend Lizzy had stayed close to home, helping run her families business and working part time at the cafe. You had stayed local too...your dad owned a fishing guide business and your mom was an admin assistant for the MD in town, but neither made enough to cover all the medical bills you had racked up over the last few years. You figured once the debt was paid off you might leave...but you had no idea where you would go.

You missed all of your friends, but you missed the boys the most, aside from Lizzy you didn't have a lot of female friends, and your boys had been like brothers to you. You spoke to most of them every few weeks on FaceTime, except Rudy. He had gone to LA for awhile and had kept in touch loosely, but after the first few months he started to drift.

You felt the loss the hardest for Rudy. He had been your closest friend the longest, you had spent nearly every day of every summer together since you were 9, and every school year you worked the same part time job at the seafood restaurant on the water. Now, the last you heard, he was coming back for the summer to ‘reconnect’. You had low expectations and tried not to let yourself get excited, but truthfully, you wanted him to spend some time at home and be around his own kind again - he had always been a homebody and you were worried that being gone for 4 years would go to his head or change him.

Lizzy tapped on the glass, causing you to blink out of your reverie and smile at her. You rolled the window down and let her reach in and open the door from the inside (the handle had been broken since high school). She threw her backpack and skateboard in the back seat, climbing in and closing her door.

“Ugh.” She grunted as her teeth chattered and she rubbed her bare legs.

“You know its only May, you shouldn’t even be wearing shorts yet. The snow just melted.”

Lizzy glared at you playfully and put her hand out to do your handshake. You did it, then put the car in drive and started slowly down the street, windshield wipers moving rhythmically.

“How was the shift?” You asked as you checked your mirrors and wiped some humidity off the rear view.

“Same old” Lizzy leaned back in her seat and pulled the visor mirror down to fix her hair. “That old man Collins from the cannery keeps coming in and harassing me.”

“Jack? The one with the eye patch?”

Lizzy nodded dramatically as she held the bobby pins in her mouth and started to twist her straight black hair off her face.

“That guy-“ She finished placing the final pin and slammed the visor closed “-Is an absolute creep.”

You snorted a sarcastic laugh and rolled your eyes.

“He’s like...70. And widowed. Don’t be rude.”

“I’m not being rude. Im just...asserting my boundaries.”

“You literally have a 3 foot counter between you at minimum, at all times.” You looked over at her and raised your eyebrows.

“Whatever. All I’m saying is we need hotter men in this town. Like...soon.”

You nodded in agreement and felt your eyes wander all over the road, remembering the time you and Rudy had taken your longboards down it after a torrential downpour and you had crashed and gotten such bad road burn that he had to call his dad to come pick you both up because you couldn’t walk.

“Hey, Y/N, are you listening?” Lizzy cut back in, staring at you.

“No, what?”

“I said, speaking of hot guys, I heard Rudy is coming back for a few months.”

You pinched your face and looked at her then at the road, then back at her.

“Rudy is not hot. Rudy is....Rudy. What are you talking about?”

Lizzy looked at you disbelieving and closed her mouth, trying not to smile.

“What!” You repeated, smacking her arm.

“Hey!” She laughed, then shook her head and looked out the window. “Whatever you say man, I just think....” She grabbed her water bottle and began to screw off the lid “I just think...he’s not gonna be the same Rudy that left 4 years ago. He’s like...a movie star now.”

You couldn’t even begin to touch that one. You knew what she was doing...she was always harping on you about going on dates or taking trips with her to the mainland to hook up with the pilots during their layovers. You never went, and always insisted that you were just fine and were not interested. She never listened. Part of that was true...you were fine, and usually not interested. But sometimes, when the water was calm and the sunset was colourful and the fish were jumping and your beer was cold...you wished you had someone to share it with.

“I’m going up to Skagway this weekend with my dad” You said, changing subjects. “He’s short a guide and needs someone to drive the boat.”

“Lucky you” She said sarcastically, screwing the lid back on her bottle. “Another weekend spent with men twice your age who have zero ability to catch a fish and even less ability to smell nice.”

“It’s good money.” You said flatly, annoyed that everything seemed to revolve around men with her. “And in case you forgot I’m kinda in need of that at the moment.”

Lizzy licked her lips and put her hands up, dipping her head.

“Alright...noted. Chill out Kemosabe.” She giggled under her breath and looked out her window, drawing a small penis in the moisture on the window.

“Babe, seriously. You need to get laid.” You said, shaking your head.

“I know” She replied, working on the veins. “Trust me. Im in a state of national emergency by this time of year.”

Lizzy was absolutely one of the girliest girls (and most beautiful girls) in the south of Alaska, which was ironic considering the house she grew up in. Her dad was an overweight German restaurant entrepreneur who had opened a world class seafood restaurant in Juneau back in the 90s and had shacked up with her mother who was this drop dead gorgeous Haida warrior woman who you had literally seen kill and skin a bear with her own hands.

They had forged this chain of restaurants local to Alaska that people flew hundreds of miles to eat at, but still lived in an off-grid cabin that hadn’t been insulated since 1960 and used wood heating. Not really the type of family that screamed southern belle femininity - yet somehow Lizzy came out of that union with a pink bed set, refusing to ever wear camo or sweatpants, and still had never shot a gun - which her mother reminded her of weekly.

Lizzy had hit puberty at 10 and had used her breast advantage over every girl in your class for the next 3 years like some sort of distinction of better genetics, as if she needed boobs to prove that. Unlike you, she was naturally thin and tall (6ft to be precise), had long, thick straight black hair and olive skin, and perfect hips. You felt like a prepubescent boy standing next to her, with your uneven complexion and your frizz and your awkward thigh fat distribution. You were envious of her genetics - her mother graced her with the body of an athlete and the thick black hair, and her father had given her height and cheekbones that could slice through glass. You looked down at your arms, covered in freckles, pasty white from lack of sun, and cringed, looking back at the road.

You turned the corner leaving the main road and starting on the dirt road that led to your favourite part of beach access. Lizzy pulled her hoodie out of her backpack and took off her seatbelt, leaning forward to pull it down over her head. You leaned forward and looked up, this was your favourite part of the drive. The dirt road which was lined with moss and ferns and other foliage wound along the base of the snow capped mountain that was at least 1000ft in elevation. The mist and fog from the coast was thick and creeped through the tall cedar trees, black ravens and falcons flying overhead stark against the white mist. This was the most idyllic picture of northwest coastal living you could find.

When you parked at the trail head Lizzy slipped off her work flats and into her Teva’s, you grabbed your yellow Vans out of your trunk and slipped them on. You usually drove bare foot, a habit you had started in high school after Rudy had thrown your shoes off the dock at the restaurant and you had to drive home without any. You grabbed your sweater and your backpack which had the beer in it. As you were both gathering the rest of your things...beach blanket, hats, and rain cover, you heard a car pull up behind you. You stood up out of the trunk and squinted to see the car through the fog. It was a black ford pickup you had never seen before.

“Who’s that?” Lizzy chimed in from behind you.

“No clue” You said as you lifted your hand to wave once.

The truck had tinted windows and looked brand new. When it pulled up beside you, the drivers side window began to unroll, revealing Junior - your high school (ex) sweetheart.

“Holy” You said, eyebrows up, nodding. “Nice truck - where’d you steal it from?” He rolled his eyes at you dramatically.

“Whatever kid - its a rental. Got it to drive to the airport in.” His chest puffed out and his expression read so proud.

“Airport?” You said inquisitively. “Since when does Alan pay you to drive new trucks to the airport?”

“Since Rudy hired him for the pick up service and apparently is incapable of driving his own ass around anymore” Junior snorted and waved at Lizzy.

“Or he doesn’t have a car here anymore” You noted, rolling your eyes at him.

“Either way, I get this bad boy for the next 24 hours and I intend to give her the royal grand tour of our humble town.” He ran his hand up and down the steering wheel, stroking the new leather. “Wanna go for a rip?” He said, winking. You shook your head and crossed your arms over your chest.

“Well I do” Lizzy piped up from beside you, walking closer to the window. She smiled at Junior and began to put her hair in a pony tail. She nudged your arm as she began to walk to the passenger side door. “Come on, granny. Let’s go!”

She laughed as she climbed up into the truck, but you shook your head again.

“I’m good...you kids have fun. Say hi to Rudy for me” You said to Junior, who shrugged his head and muttered ‘definitely wont do that’ under his breath.

Lizzy blew a kiss at you and waved once before Junior put it in drive and started to go up the dirt road north of you.

Junior and you had ended on okay terms, but he had concocted a theory that you had broken up with him because of another guy, and the unspoken suggestion was that that guy had been Rudy. Small town guys had a heck of a time with the idea of girls and guys just being friends.

You sighed and watched as the truck disappeared around the corner, and turned back to your own car. You grabbed your backpack and slammed the trunk closed, walking down the path alone. You weren’t mad at Lizzy for going with him - she was flighty and bailed on you at the bar all the time - but you were mad the beer was going to go warm before you could drink it all. Not that you should even be drinking 6 beers alone by the water when you had to drive yourself home. Doubtful the 2 cops in this town would even be awake to see you though. Whatever.

You reached the end of the path and rounded the corner, revealing the coast line and the rocky beach. It was your favourite place to sit and think, sit and smoke, sit and be yourself. The beach curled in a U shape, giving you a private spot where the rest of the shoreline was blocked from view and all you could see was the ominous cedar forest that stretched up the mountain, the snow caps at the top, and the horizon over the cold pacific.

You had intended to share the joint you had in your pocket with Lizzie, but...well, her loss. You spread the blanket out on the softest patch of sand and rocks you could find (which still meant you were guaranteed to get at least 2 rocks in the ass) and placed your bag down, kicking off your sneakers. You took a deep breath for the first time in a few days and lit the joint, taking one long, deep inhale. You felt it tingle through your chest and your arms and legs almost immediately, relaxing you. Being here alone always sent you into a spiral of memories and thoughts that you worked hard during the day to suppress. Most insistent lately had been thoughts about your health problems. You called them ‘health problems’ but in reality it was just an eating disorder. You could go 2, sometimes 3 days without eating anything, and never felt hungry. It started after graduation.

You had lost weight, dramatically, going from a stable 120-125 to 95 at most and 90 at worst, in the span of a month. And for the next three years you had never gained it back, you had stayed at a relatively stable 95, which still left you looking sickly and too thin at 5’3”. Your frame wasn’t built for that kind of weight drop, you were Scottish and Cree, sprinkled with a little bit of German and Irish. A classic northwest cracker mix. You weren’t naturally small, you always had a bit of something to grab onto, but it was normal to your body, healthy.

Some part of your brain knew that it had something to do with leaving school...and the pretence that came with that. The expectation...the responsibility. You were never that kind of person, and it never really bothered you, but suddenly it had. You never planned to go to University right away, but you had no back up plan. It wasn't something you and your friends really talked about. But suddenly Jacob had gotten into U of Washington, Dan had left to backpack Europe, and Rudy had not so graciously announced he was deferring his acceptance and scholarship to culinary school because he wanted to be an actor, and flew to LA the next month. You had been left behind, with Lizzy of all people, and it had hit you hard.

You looked around the beach, dragging on your joint quicker than normal, trying to knock the thoughts out of your head. An Eagle screeched above - scaring you - and you laid back on the blanket, closing your eyes. You needed to chill the hell out. This was the first time in a few weeks that you had gotten a night off from helping your dad with his guide business and you didn’t plan on wasting it riddling your brain with anxiety and worrying about your body.

You looked up at the sky and watched the mist and fog kiss the clouds, the sunset colours dancing across them. As it usually did, the rain had stopped just as the sun was going down, the clouds parting briefly and letting the smallest sliver of sunlight through, just enough to burn the grey light out of the sky and allow the pink and orange hues to fade along the horizon. You sat up and cracked a beer, enjoying the fresh smelling air and the rhythmic sound of the waves licking the shore line.

Two beers in you had put on your jacket and placed your Bluetooth speaker next to you on the blanket, blasting a playlist that Rudy had made you for your graduation party.

Three beers in you took the jacket off, standing up and dancing by yourself on the beach to the music.

Four beers in you laid down on the blanket, balled your jacket up and used it as a pillow, and started looking for shapes in the stars.

Five beers in you fell sleep.

———

Many hours later, as the sun rose and was bright on the water and the early morning bird feed was in full swing overhead, you were drifting in and out of sleep to the squawking when a shadow came across your face, alerting you to groggily open your eyes.

“What’s up, Little Fern?” His voice had gotten deeper. Wait, what?

You opened your eyes and blinked, raising a hand to block the sun. There, in your very awake and very not dreaming state, was the unmistakable silhouette that you had spent the last 18 years dreaming about and 18 years being a friend to.

Rudy.

#rudy pankow #reader x rudy #depth over distance #nakedmossywrites #jj maybank #outer banks #obx

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five-miles-over · 3 years

Text

Blackout (Willie Gutierrez x Reader)

(image source: pinterest.com)

Summary: The reader is Willie Gutierrez’s new neighbor, and the two of them accidentally meet during a power outage when the reader wants to borrow a lighter for some candles

Word Count: 1,588

Warnings: mentions of weapons and murder, as well as references to the plot of ‘The Yards’

They'd only been apart for a week and already he had a new lover hanging off his arm.

For most people living in the run-down apartment complex, situated in the darkest, grittiest section of The Bronx, tonight was just like any other Friday night. After another day at their miserable 9-to-5, minimum-wage jobs, they’d saunter on home and either drink away a large portion of their paycheck or fall asleep in front of their television with a frozen dinner.

But for Willie Gutierrez, it was a night for celebration…a celebration of survival. This Friday marked his first week since he’d been released after 5-year-long sentence that he swore permanently took a part of his sanity. Even though there would be a parole officer visiting him twice a week, Willie was finally free to get his life back and live in society. As soon as the rays of the setting sun caught his eye, Willie cracked open a Miller beer and began scrolling through his cell phone.

I guess he finally got over his thing for Erica, Willie grunted as he looked at the photo. In an effort to be courteous, Leo Handler - Willie’s friend from grade school - sent a picture of himself with his arm around a blonde girl wearing a slip dress and Doc Marten shoes. He really had no need to try maintaining their relationship, visiting Willie in prison and calling him every week, especially not after all the trouble Willie had gotten him into. Maybe it was Leo’s mother who encouraged her son to let the past remain in the past.

Though for Willie, following that advice would be a task much easier said that done.

On the night he killed Erica, Willie remembered hearing a story from Leo’s step-uncle about Leo and Erica being in love despite their relationship as cousins., and how those two were caught having sex once. Even though it had been a while since that fateful night, it still made Willie cringe to think of them doing it. He wouldn’t have felt as bad if he’d found out one of his friends was Erica’s ex, but the fact that it was her cousin and his best friend - who’d taken jail time for their gang - made Willie want to vomit even now.

“Fuck.”

The lightbulb fizzled out like a dying fly, and the heating suddenly stopped, leaving his entire apartment completely dark and cold.

As he took in the view from the twentieth floor, the lights seemed to go out all over the city. Swearing under his breath, Willie slumped onto the couch and tried his best to take another swig of beer. He didn’t exactly have the wildest plans for tonight, but it’s not like he wanted to be stuck in a blackbox with no means of any entertainment.

A few moments later, Willie perked up when he heard a knock followed by an unfamiliar voice.

“Hello, is anyone home?”

Willie remained silent, wishing that his gun were here right now in case the voice belonged to a robber. Unfortunately, concealed carry for had a bit too much red tape for Willie’s liking. Not even getting in touch with Frank, his ex-boss, would help him get a gun for self-defense. Frank probably wanted nothing to do with Willie at this point, even if he was released for good behavior.

“I’m not a telemarketer, or anything. I’m your neighbor.” The voice added. "And I'm not armed."

"What do you want?" Willie muttered under his breath.

"A lighter would be nice," You replied. "Or some matches - could you open the door please? I swear I'm not here to hurt you."

Covering his eyes, he was blinded temporarily by the flashlight you held up so he wouldn't bump into you "Geez, you don't have to point that fucking thing at me!"

"Sorry…just wanted to make sure that you knew what I looked like." Sheepishly, you introduced yourself to him, telling him your name and how recently you'd moved into the building.

"I'm Willie, yeah…I'm new too. Why did you need lighters?"

You gestured to your other hand, which held a few candles. A flashlight probably wasn't going to last you all night, and even though your apartment was a literal shoebox, some candlesticks would provide enough brightness until the power came back on.

"Oh."

"So…may I borrow your lighter, please?"

"I would, but this is my only one."

"…And you don't trust me because you think I won't return it to you?"

After a moment of silence between the two of you, you invited Willie over to your apartment just so that he could take the lighter when you were done with it. And you secretly were hoping that Willie would turn out to be good company.

He internally debated for a few moments before accepting your proposition. On one hand, you seemed like a decent person…a decent person who probably just ended up in this place because you couldn't afford a nicer building, not because you had just gotten out of prison. On the other hand, you probably didn't know that he was a criminal and a murderer - how could he completely trust you, let alone accept an invitation into your home? He didn't even want to tell you his last name, just in case you'd seen it in the newspapers. Then again, it wasn't like he knew anybody else here except for his parole officer, and taking a chance might just be the thing he needed to get back to his old extroverted, adventurous self.

"So, what floor do you live on?"

"The same one as yours, Willie. The twentieth," You answered with a chuckle, leading him inside your home. "Can I get you something to drink - water, beer, or something?"

"Beer sounds fine."

You lit the candles in your apartment before heading to the fridge and handing him a bottle of hopefully-still-cold beer. Gladly accepting the drink, Willie sneakily tried to get a better look at you while you poured yourself another round of your favorite alcohol.

Amongst the candles, you actually looked quite pretty, maybe someone he wouldn't mind seeing more often. He'd most likely never seen you before because he rarely left the apartment over the past week, let alone his room.

On Monday, he could barely get out of bed because of how overwhelming it all felt - starting over from scratch with no friends, no family members, and no former acquaintances. He kept thinking about where to begin, and whom to ask for help. Tuesday and Wednesday, with a little help from his parole officer and prison therapist, he was able to enroll himself in some economics classes from a local college, and a part-time thing as a cashier at a drugstore. Thursday was spent mostly in bed again; it was a 'relapse', as Willie called it. And on Friday, he went out grocery shopping for the first time. Even though most of the stuff he picked out was instant, ready-to-eat food that required little to no preparation, it was still a good start.

"Power outages suck," you muttered, taking a sip.

"Yeah, tell me about it. I remember getting them sometimes when I lived in Queens."

"You lived in Queens?" "My whole life, yeah."

For almost three hours, the two of you continued to make some small talk. You eventually told him that you had recently graduated, and now working somewhere in the Bronx. It wasn't the greatest job in the world, but at least it got you a place to live and paid the bills. You told him a little about your home town, along with a silly thing or two about your childhood.

Willie felt himself relax a little more, hearing you talk about your life. He wished that maybe someday, he'd be able to talk about his past with the same ease that you seemed to have. In addition, you had a really great voice that was nice to listen to, though he wouldn't say that out loud. He didn't want to seem like he was coming onto you too suddenly. Plus, he didn't know if you were even looking for a relationship, or if you were already taken.

Just when you were almost finished telling a story, the lights buzzed back on with a crackle. "Look at that." You sighed, a part of yourself wishing that the power would not return for a while just so that Willie could be over for a bit longer.

"Yeah…power's back. I should probably head back. Besides, it's really late."

"Don't forget your lighter," you joked, reminding him why you originally invited him over to your place. Willie thanked you for your company and laughed a little, his jade-green eyes bearing a slight twinkle.

You walked him over to his place, a mere few steps away from yours, and the two of you discussed the possibility of maybe having dinner together sometime. It wasn't meant to be a date or anything, but just an opportunity for you to hang out as neighbors. You were both alone in a new city, and agreed that it would be great to have at least one familiar face to depend on.

"Good night…neighbor." He disappeared behind his door with a smug wink, proud of himself for taking a chance with you. Just like a poker player with a royal flush, he'd undoubtedly won this round.

"Good night, Willie."

#willie gutierrez #the yards 2000 #Joaquin Phoenix #willie x reader #willie gutierrez x reader

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