#to simply absorbing it all and it doing nothing more to her figure than she wants it to
Note
(( As opposed to Fef who does it because she's too big to really move. Not that Sol minds ))
//Haven't given overmuch thought to what Fef is like here beyond having some capacity to take on the results of her overenthusiasm with relative ease. She is the Witch, the controller Class. More easily able to adapt herself or change up the effects of having too much fun with her customized cute captor cream dispenser. Obviously I'm me I like bigness as a solution to things but it could just as easily be her doing some witchery to metabolize things away perfectly.
#by which I mean there's a difference between say#her being huge enough that it's just a normal load#to simply absorbing it all and it doing nothing more to her figure than she wants it to#Ballux
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She couldn't simply surrender what had been the very essence of her life, the one thing that no one was supposed to have the power to take away from her. Her freedom? Nobody was acutally free. Her love? She could find a way to cope with it. Her child? A heart-wrenching sacrifice, but she could endure it.
Yet, this vital part of her, this very core of her being – she would never allow anyone to snatch it away.
And that marked the tale of a parasite.
Of a Patron and Its Chains is a 18+ interactive fiction in a fantasy and steampunk setting inspired by the worlds of The Witcher Series and Fullmetal Alchemist. You are a seasoned hunter tasked with tracking and eliminating dangerous supernatural threats. However, your story takes a turn when you decide to become also a pactbearer.
In this realm where the intricate dance of magic and technology creates a canvas of possibilities, one could easily envision an idyllic existence.
The ability to traverse into other realities, though often at a steep cost, promised rapid advancement that could border on madness. Yet, amid these innovations and developments, lurking dangers remained ever-present. The very act of opening portals to other realms could inadvertently usher in creatures not meant for this world, seamlessly intertwining them with reality.
It was a world where the choice was to either be the hunter or the hunted, and most succumbed to the latter fate. However, your father instilled a different path in you. As a hunter of those creatures, he ensured you absorbed all the survival knowledge you needed before eventually got wrongfully accused and executed, a tragic turning point that reshaped your plans. Rather than simply following in his footsteps to become a hunter, you decided to become a pactbearer.
Summoning a Patron, a legend from diverse worlds and realities, your mission was to unite with fellow pactbearers. Together, you would confront an encroaching evil, all while seeking the fulfillment of a cherished wish granted by a god. Yet, even with the support of numerous companions and your trusted Patron, each victory over a monstrous foe revealed a looming threat waiting just beyond the horizon...
You are the hero... right?
This is an 18+ interactive fiction that is being written on Twine.
be a hunter that kills monsters or embroils into unwanted drama
fully customizable mc from appearance, pronouns and personality
several sidequests to develop your skills as a hunter (includes: Possession, Witches, Ancient Beasts and more)
a beastiarium with further information to every creature you meet on the way
the big world of Vestria & Co. with a lot of lore that you can all uncover - or not!
a cryptic voice inside your head that occasionally breaks the fourth wall
meet the other pactbearers and their patrons and decide what relationship you want to have with them
choose what animal-form your patron is going to have
a total of six companions (including your patron) who will be with you a majority of your journey
all of them are romancable, plus a hidden romance option for those who can be patient
lots of parental issues!
figure out the truth of your world, or fail to do so - there is no right or wrong
and a... cow?
CONTENT WARNINGS: depicitons of death, violence, mental illness, gore (in the territory of body horror), animal cruetly and death, abuse, pornographic content, strong language
More might follow
DEMO TBA
CURRENT WORD COUNT: 21000+
but nothing demo ready yet
The RO's include:
✸ Cú Chulainn (M/F)
In ancient tomes and tales, Chulainn stood as a formidable legend — an indomitable hero whose laughter echoed in the face of enemies and even death itself. They reveled in the thrill of combat, never yielding without a proper battle. Yet, such was the image you held dear until the moment you summoned them into your realm, making them your esteemed Patron.
The being before you shattered the illusion you once cherished. No longer did they exude the vigor of a warrior; instead, bitterness clung to their spirit, entwined with a profound disdain for the world and all its inhabitants. Longing for the solace of death they once fervently evaded, Chulainn relinquished their ardor for combat, dismissing it as a hollow pursuit devoid of significance. As a consequence, their role as your Patron proved less than… helpful.
Nevertheless, a flicker of optimism lingers within the depths of their desolate heart. Perhaps, against all odds, you possess the power to reignite the flames of purpose within them, offering a renewed sense of hope and the chance for a remarkable new beginning.
✸ Lysander/Lysandra (M/F)
Within the illustrious court of the High Queen, there exists a figure of great repute: Lys, a distinguished servant renowned for their unparalleled ability to fulfill any given task. Their name has become synonymous with perfectionism, as they consistently meet and surpass the lofty expectations placed upon them. The mere mention of their name evokes awe and respect throughout the courtly corridors.
Alas, despite their esteemed standing, Lys remains a figure of divisive sentiment. Whispers and murmurs abound among their colleagues, swirling in a ceaseless cycle of gossip. Tales of their rigid and occasionally insolent demeanor dominate these conversations, yet there is another facet that elicits both awe and envy in equal measure. Lys possesses an unparalleled loyalty to the High Queen, a level of devotion that others find almost unattainable.
Yet, the reality surpasses the worst of these rumors. Lys' nature transcends the bounds of mere unpleasantness, particularly in their interactions with you. Adding fuel to the fire, they perceive you as a sort of rival, amplifying the tensions between you. One can only wonder if it is merely a facade in an attempt to hide their weakness or the reality of their identity.
✸ Holographic Entity "Holly" (F)
Holly, the Patron of Lys, assumes the guise of a long-haired housecat, but her true essence hails as a revolutionary from a distant reality, a realm of unparalleled advancement far beyond the scope of Vestria. For Holly, her presence in this foreign world feels akin to embarking on an elaborate holiday excursion plucked from the very pages of historical books she once heard of. Her insatiable curiosity serves as the driving force behind her existence, propelling her to seek new experiences and infusing every interaction with a buoyant energy that suggests no challenge is insurmountable.
Unafraid to vocalize her thoughts and opinions, Holly fearlessly shares her insights, even when they clash with those of her companion, Lys, particularly when the subject of her candid musings centers around you. Or at least, that is the impression you choose to hold. Her unabashed honesty may lead some to believe that she is a simple, unassuming creature. However, the more time spent with Holly reveals that there is much more to her than meets the eye.
After all, one cannot lead a revolution based solely on a smile and an unfiltered mouth.
✸ Elli Agilulf (M)
The Blessed Ones, the esteemed right and left hand of the Night Church, are figures known to all who have ventured beyond the confines of ignorance. Cloaked in an aura of mystery, their veiled faces lend an air of both authority and enigma. Among their ranks is Elli, who strives to embody the idealized image of a Blessed One. He adheres to a code of silence, speaking only when necessary and responding with a detached aloofness. True to form, he carries himself with an air of subtle intimidation.
However, beneath his carefully crafted facade, Elli is easily rattled by even the slightest inconvenience or a quick-witted remark, his frustration and anger palpable despite his hidden face. He is short-tempered and stubborn, a nature that clashes with the expectations of his position. As a Blessed One, he is expected to be a mindless automaton, devoid of thoughts or personal desires, but Elli's mind is a swirling vortex of thoughts and emotions, overflowing with complexity.
Perhaps it is this contradiction, this clash between his true nature and the expectations placed upon him, that makes Elli an actual enigma. You do feel yourself challenged when he decides that you are a criminal to-become.
✸ Irydion (F)
Irydion holds a perspective that challenges the notion of victory being achieved simply through diplomatic agreements and signed papers. To her, a war is not truly won until she has exacted revenge to those she deems responsible for the suffering inflicted upon her country. As a member of the militia, she is fueled by a desire to fight, her hands trembling with the power of her magic, ready to unleash it upon her enemies on the frontline.
While others may perceive an undisturbed silence on the battlefield as a sign of these so called peacetimes, Irydion remains vigilant, recognizing it as a deceptive tactic used by the enemy to lure her into dropping her guard. Too bad she is always a step ahead of those who seek to harm her people! Her selfless dedication to protecting and caring for her fellow countrymen is unwavering, even if it means being seen as misguided or paranoid by those who don't fully understand her.
Irydion's allies may acknowledge her kind-hearted nature, but they also recognize her single-minded determination and unwavering belief in the necessity of fighting back against an enemy that is just a shadow. Irydion does not care for these rumors, knowing that regardless of how many may stand against her, they will eventually come to understand the truth of her cause. She remains steadfast, believing that time will prove her right in the end. After all, you believe her… right?
✸ "Junius" (M)
Even as Irydion's patron, the line between their roles blurs, with Junius' approach to her and other humans carrying an arrogantly nonchalant air. His actions, delivered with ease and naturalness, ridicule or charm one without noticing. With a mere lazy wink or a mockish bow, he effortlessly asserts a sense of superiority, deliberately refraining from putting genuine meaning or depth in his antics. Maintaining an elusive detachment, he keeps others at arm's length, preventing them from ever truly getting close to him. Despite his mysterious past, he carries himself as if the weight of secrets hold little significance to who he is.
Junius' personality dances on the edge of daring, akin to playing with fire, drawing allure and enticement from the very act itself. He fearlessly indulges in flirting with married women and engaging in challenges with those of higher social standing, defying conventional norms and embracing a provocative existence. There lies a subtle irony in his guise — a wolf rather than a lion — his pride speaking for another form.
And even in conversation, he adeptly maintains the facade, never allowing his act to waver, leaving you to question whether it is indeed a carefully crafted performance or indeed the reality of his character.
???
If it wasn't the work of gods, maybe it was fate that brought you together.
And several other characters you meet on your way across the country; other pactbearers and their patrons, tragic lovers, a noisy priest, ill-ridden villages (there is only two but it's weird it happened twice), two twin-rulers who don't seem to get along, a talking book, and more.
#twine if#twine game#twine wip#interactive novel#if game#twine#wip#i was kind of forced to post this#interactive fiction#oapaic#im not a native english speaker pls be nice#of a patron and its chains
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Star-crossed | Lo'ak x fem!human!reader part 3/?
A.N: Omg part 3 finally, thank you for all your patience my lovelies, this story is still ongoing and yeah, I'm back baby. Also shh, shh, I've been reading a lot of Goethe, okay?
Warnings: once again, both Lo'ak and the reader are 20y/o, , MINORS DO NOT INTERACT with this or anything on my accounts. NSFW!!! mentions of smoking (don't do it, I'm begging), brief mentions of a/b/o dynamics (nesting), intense making out, heavy petting.
words: 3.3K
summary: reader is a human left behind on pandora, she grew up with the remaining humans who'd been aloud to stay on the planet after the war and has been friends with the Sully clan her entire life. She and Lo'ak were best friends until he began to pull away from her in their teen years for seemingly no reason. This story is about them reconnecting on the day of her twentieth birthday, and dealing with the feelings they have for each other and the obstacles that come with them being from two different worlds.
part 1 part 2 part 4 SEND ME LO'AK REQUESTS
tag list: @aleromania , @ghostjoohoney, @cherry-blossom34, @stephenandfiveswhore , @neteyamforlife, @mochi-yu , @halibanana @notquitehero @vanillacoffeeaddict @kitsune0077 @mara-brekker @sully-stick-together @luthien-naenderthal @phantomalex14 @vanillawhale @omiivr @barbii04 @grierpilots @itszzmoon @wavyteals
Na'vi words:
Ngaytxoa= I'm sorry
“I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
Lo'ak had gotten himself into an infinite array of stupidly frightful and dangerous situations in his lifetime. He was more than used to the feeling of his life flashing before his eyes. But nothing, not even the very real threat he'd just escaped of being mauled alive by a Thanator had scared him quite as much as what y/n had just done. Eywa was the keeper of all life on Pandora, and that life hung on a very precarious balance. Everything that was taken will eventually be given back, and vice versa. What was the price that now hung over his own life?
"What have you done?" He hissed at y/n as she got up and turned away from him, her arms crossed over her chest. "Is everything a joke to humans? Eywa is not a friend you can simply ask a favor from-"
"I saved your life!" She snapped back at him, livid from being compared to the rest of the Sky people. But of course, y/n knew by now that was all she was to him. "I don't need you to lecture me, I knew exactly what I was doing and I'm ready to pay the consequences, whatever they may be. I'm not a child, Lo'ak. I can make my own decisions, I figured you of all people would understand."
"Understand?" Lo'ak almost laughed, completely dumbfounded by her words. "Understand what? That you're on a path to destroying yourself? Don't think I don't know what you were doing outside before." He gave her a hard stare, now standing up to tower over her. Y/n felt herself go very pale. She had never intended for anyone to find out about her smoking, and even though it was none of Lo'ak's business, she still felt deeply ashamed.
"So that's what you were doing out there. Spying on me-" Y/n decided to accuse him back, but Lo'ak wasn't going to let her get off that easy. "Nah, nah, we're still talking about you here. Kiri told us her mother was addicted to those things. You might think I'm some dumb savage and try to lie to my face, but I know exactly what they are and what they do to your body!"
Y/n was taken aback. Lo'ak was seething and physically shaking. She knew how much he loved his family, and understood why her vice would have been a slap in the face to his sister, but his reaction was still out of order. Little did she know that her already shorter life span compared to his own weighed on him more and more with each passing day, and discovering she was actively cutting her own life short was a blow to the heart.
"Oh look who's talking! When have you, Lo'ak Sully, ever stopped yourself once from being reckless?" She retorted. "You're right about Kiri, and none of them know, so let's keep it that way. As far as my well-being is concerned, I can hardly see why that would be any of your business." Lo'ak was about to cut her off again, but she continued. "And don't you ever put words like 'dumb savage' in my mouth again. I know we haven't seen each other in so long... but how could you-" A small sob escaped her lips and she was quick to wipe a tear from her cheek. "How could you think... that I see you in such a way...?"
Lo'ak looked down at his hands in shame. He'd just gone and made y/n cry. And he didn't even have the guts to look back into her eyes, which were now brimming with tears. Why had he come? Why couldn't he have just kept himself away like he'd promised himself he would have all those years ago?
"Lo'ak, you were my... entire world. Then you left, and I accepted that you had to grow up and take on your responsibilities. I always knew you had bigger things in your future, way beyond your friendship with me..." Y/n hugged herself, holding her arms around her middle. "And if somewhere along the way you decided to hate me, I accept that too. But I won't... I won't let you turn me into this demonized version you have of me now. I don't hate you. I will never think of you as a savage. I don't care if you're here trying to start an argument with me as a way to make you cope with your sudden guilt-"
"Then what else can I do?" He snarled, finally looking back at her. "Because I've tried staying away, and somehow, I'm shit at that too."
Y/n was at a complete loss. Lo'ak wasn't making any sense. He was the one who'd made the decision to walk away from her, not the other way around. She was certain she had never given him any indication of wanting him gone from her life.
"You still don't get it, do you?" He shook his head, an awkward grin taking over his features. Though, y/n noted, she had probably never seen him in so much pain. "I need you to tell me to stay away. I need you to tell me how much you hate me, how badly I make you sick." As he said this, Lo'ak began to make his way over to where y/n was leaning against the wall, her eyes wide and glued to his.
Y/n shook her head, forgetting about why she'd been so upset, now that Lo'ak genuinely looked like he was on the verge of sanity. "No. Lo'ak I'm not going to do that. Whatever it is, whatever's going on, it's going to be-"
"No?" He asked sardonically, a frown crossing his features again before he wiped a hand down his face. "How about I tell you the real reason why I had to keep myself away from you all this time? See if you don't hate me then..."
Y/n held her breath. Not because she was scared of Lo'ak or what he was about to say, but because he was so close she was forgetting how to breathe.
Here goes nothing, thought the Na'vi. Sure that it was the last thing he was ever going to say to y/n before she chased him out of her home.
"My stupid, useless heart... made me fall for you... from the day we first met..." Lo'ak shook his head again, almost as if he was telling y/n something shameful and disgusting. Meanwhile, y/n was certain her own heart had stopped beating in her chest. "And by the time I was sixteen... I realized... there is nobody else for me... and no matter how much I tried, I couldn't-I couldn't stop myself from thinking of you in a way that was... wrong." He got down to his knees, unable to keep holding up his weight on the low ceiling above him.
"Wrong?" Y/n managed to ask in a whisper. Lo'ak was telling her all the things she could only have hoped to dream of her entire life, but he looked like he was nothing but sick to his stomach as he was saying them to her. She reached out to him, trying to touch his face as she got on the tip of her toes. "Those are the most beautiful words anyone has ever said to me. And I'm hearing them from you, Lo'ak. How could any of this be wrong?"
Lo'ak retracted from her touch almost as if he'd been burnt and all of a sudden, his anger back with a force.
"Look at me!" He cried out, tail whipping back and forth, while his ears were drawn back and his fangs were on full display. "No, really look at me, y/n. Because I know you're smart, so please don't pull that naive bullshit on me..."
Of course, y/n knew what Lo'ak was talking about, but she'd always felt like the one who was wrong for him and not the other way around. "I'm-I'm not being naive, Lo'ak. I'm just saying... that I've waited my whole life to hear you say those words, even though it's selfish of me to even think you could be with me... I'll never be able to keep up with you physically, I'm the one who will never understand what it's like to make a bond. I can't give you a family nor will I ever pass all the hurdles to be a true Omaticaya."
Listening to y/n words made Lo'ak realize how wrong he'd been in thinking he was alone in his heartbreak. He pulled y/n in his arms, mindful of how small and frail she was compared to him. She laughed a little through her tears and held on to him, knowing that was his way of apologizing to her. "The way look has nothing to do with this... no actually, maybe if you weren't such a handsome skxawng, we wouldn't be in this mess right now..." She giggled and he hissed at her playfully, but his somber mood quickly returned.
"I don't care about all those things you just said... about the clan, about having kids..." He said, his voice now sounding raw. "And you're wrong... the way I am physically, compared to you, has everything to do with this. Y/n I can't even fit in your home without having to get on my knees..." Y/n pressed her forehead against his chest, listening to his heartbeat steadily rise. "You know, I hated when dad used to measure our height... every time it felt like I was getting further and further away from you-"
"But that's not true Lo'ak-"
"How are you not afraid? I could easily break you in my hands as you are now without having to try..." Y/n looked up at him, her face showing no signs of worry. Only absolute trust. "You don't know what it's like... I live with the fear of accidentally slicing your skin open with my fangs, of hurting you when I want nothing more than to be the one who makes you feel good and safe..."
Y/n felt her face go red, and she noticed Lo'ak's cheeks livening up with color too at the sound of his own confession. She felt somewhat guilty, seeing as he'd just confessed a very real and damaging fear to her, but now it was almost impossible to get certain scenarios out of her head. While she was aware the Na'vi mated for life, she'd come to know from Neteyam and Kiri that sex before 'bonding' forever with someone was pretty common. She was certain Lo'ak had already had his fair share of experience and being with him was not going to prevent him from someday finding his true mate. Y/n was safe in the knowledge she wouldn't be taking anything away from him if they tried, and she was willing to be a distraction in his life for as long as he would let her. It was more than she could have hoped for anyway.
"Ngaytxoa, forgive me, t-that was..." He rambled. "I shouldn't have-"
"Yawne..." Y/n cooed, immediately leaving him at a loss for words. "I know you're scared, but maybe you should let me decide what I can or cannot handle." She said, letting her small hands run down his neck and over the expanse of his chest as she gently pulled away from him to stand up.
Lo'ak gulped. Audibly. His eyes never leaving her once.
Y/n placed both of her hands on his face and leaned in to peck his lips softly.
Lo'ak felt at that moment as if he were floating on thin air. Everything that had been worrying him up until that moment simply ceased to exist. He hesitated, hands hovering at her sides as he wasn't quite sure what to do with them. No one had ever wanted to be this close to him before, and to be completely honest, he was touch starved. His tail, however, had a mind of its own, and it came to wind itself tightly around y/n's ankle, making her pull away slightly and giggle. "Old habits die hard, I see."
He gave her a bashful look and scratched the back of his neck nervously as he willed his tail to free y/n from its vice. "Sorry... I'm not- I'm not really used to this..." She frowned at his words, gently running her hands through his braids. "What do you mean?"
"I'm not exactly... considered to be attractive... by the rest of the clan, I mean..." Lo'ak fumbled awkwardly with his hands. "The only people who ever wanted to get close to me did it as a way to get to my brother, and... I could never bring myself to see them the way I see you anyway..." This came as a shock to y/n. How could nobody else see Lo'ak? He was a true warrior, through and through just like his brother. He could have flown circles around anyone else on his ikran. He had a good heart, one completely devoted to his family and clan.
And even more shockingly...
"But you're so hot!" She blurted out, genuinely confused and immediately regretting her words. The cocky look on Lo'ak face made her understand he was going to take his way out of having a serious conversation by teasing her. Some things never changed.
"Ah, is that so?" Lo'ak goaded her, before striking a pose to show off his biceps. "This doing it for you?" He asked, raising an inquisitive brow at her. Y/n shoved him, barely even making him blink. "You are so stupid." She huffed, leaving the room.
"No, wait, hey!" Lo'ak laughed. "What happened to me being so hot?" He called after her. Lo'ak never thought things between him and y/n would ever have gone back to being so simple, but somehow, at that moment, it felt like they'd never stopped being friends.
He followed y/n, stepping into her room. Lo'ak hadn't been there in a long time, but not much had changed. Y/n was in the middle of dragging two mattresses down to the floor to make a makeshift bed Lo'ak could fit in, and his immediate instinct was to help her. The scene before him stunted him, however. He knew Y/n was no stranger to having Na'vi guests over, but watching her neatly sort out a bunch of pillows and blankets she'd woven into a quilt for him, immediately made him of one thing: nesting.
Lo'ak had to immediately shake that thought out of his head before he seriously embarrassed himself just from having uncovered a new way of seeing y/n in his dreams. He was more than certain that she knew nothing of heat or rut cycles since they were pretty rare and something that his siblings probably hadn't told her about since it was a rather private matter.
"Oh please, just keep standing there looking pretty while I make your bed for the night, jerk face." Y/n teased him when she caught him staring at her. Lo'ak got a running start before jumping into the 'bed', pulling her down on top of him and making the walls of her bedroom shake in the process. "Skxawng! Do you want my entire house to come down on our heads?" She laughed with him, shoving at his chest playfully.
"You called me yawne." Lo'ak said out of the blue as he stared up at y/n, carefully running his fingers through her hair. "Before."
"And you've only just realized? My, I guess it's true what they say about beauty-" Y/n pinched one of Lo'ak's cheeks and he retaliated by giving her a not-so-convincing hiss. "Smart-ass." He name-called her, before softly pinching one of her thighs, making her yelp in surprise.
He snorted at her cute little sound, but y/n had the last laugh when she decided to shut him up with a kiss. Lo'ak was quick to respond this time, and everything felt different. Y/n's body melted against him as she lay across his chest, and his arm were quick to wrap around her: one of them securing itself around her middle while the other reached down to her thigh. Everything about her felt like a dream to him, and his hand roamed her body with nothing except the upmost reverence for her. "You know..." Lo'ak mumbled in between kisses. "I was actually... trying to say something..." He sighed against her mouth when she dragged her teeth across his bottom lip. "Just now..."
"I know..." She smiled against his lips, not really intent on stopping. "It just takes you... so long... to get to the point..." she mused, taking her chance when Lo'ak opened his mouth to protest, and dragged her tongue over his fangs. The Na'vi felt himself go cross-eyed, knowing for sure he was now sporting an obvious erection.
Y/n looked back up at him when she felt his excitement brush up against her, and Lo'ak didn't know what to do. Kissing, he'd just discovered, was more than okay. They could do it, and safely too. But mating was out of the question, it didn't matter how persuasive y/n thought she was, he would die before hurting her like that.
The human girl couldn't help herself, scooching back all the way down Lo'ak's torso until she was finally sitting up in his lap, her thighs straddling him at both sides as she let out a whine of relief at the friction.
Lo'ak's eyes almost bulged out of his head in arousal and alarm, hastily pulling y/n back to where she'd been lying on top of him originally with a grunt of frustration. "Nah, ke-he, we are not doing that." He tried to be firm in his words, but he definitely heard his voice break at least twice in that single sentence.
Y/n knew Lo'ak was only saying it because he was scared for her well-being, and while she wished to someday change his mind, her yawne had just told her 'no' and she was certainly not going to ignore his feelings, nor would she have ever questioned him in this particular scenario. "Okay, yawne, I'm sorry." She spoke to him lovingly and kissed the knuckles of his right hand.
"You called me yawne again." Lo'ak said, those deep feelings of inadequacy hitting him back in full force. What kind of lover even deserved that title if he couldn't even make the person he cared the most about in the world feel good? "And I can't- I can't even-" He couldn't even make love to her.
"Lo'ak, we don't have to go all the way right at this second if you don't want to... " Y/n placed both of her hands on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart as he sat up and looked down at her, not entirely sure what she was talking about. "Honestly, just rutting down against you felt... well, you felt big and-" She got flustered and momentarily forgot what she was supposed to say. Lo'ak looked like he was going to have a heart attack if she was ever to repeat the words 'you' and 'big' in the same sentence ever again.
"W-what I mean is... you can touch me, i-if you want." Y/n removed her top, exposing her top half to him. "And I want to touch you. If that's okay..."
Lo'ak realized then he might have stood a better chance outside with the Thanator.
#avatar way of water#avatar the way of water#avatar 2#avatar x reader#avatar x you#avatar x y/n#avatar x human reader#lo'ak x reader#lo'ak x you#lo'ak fluff#lo'ak fanfiction#lo'ak smut#lo'ak imagine#lo'ak x y/n#lo'ak sully#lo'ak headcanons#lo'ak x human reader#lo'ak x fem reader#atwow#atwow smut#atwow imagines#atwow x reader#atwow loak#avatar 2009#avatar x reader smut#avatar fanfiction
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the twelfth house
when Alice Sparkly Kat wrote about the twelfth house she said "The best way to work with the twelfth house is to follow ghosts". viewing the twelfth house through this lens resonates with me as someone with twelfth house emphasis and an interest in the paranormal.
when I think of the twelfth house I picture the black lodge from twin peaks. it seems ominous and scary at first but it ultimately is something happening behind the scenes, much like how I view ghosts. being haunted by a ghost, like the twelfth house, is scarier than it seems. ghosts are malleable; you can make ghosts go away by simply asking them to. in this sense, the planets in the twelfth house are the ghosts we are haunted by. twelfth house is where all things begin and end. it isn't life and death, that is the eighth house. once something has happened it is over and it cannot hurt us anymore, like a ghost.
I'm currently reading the twelfth house by Karen Hamaker-zondag where she analyzes the twelfth house through a jungian viewpoint. she writes about how babies spend at least one year in the unconscious world during infancy as their brain develops. we absorb the energies and emotions of our parent and the collective through our unconscious minds because our infant brain has no repression mechanism. in other words, our brain cannot protect itself during the first few years of life.we have no memory of what happened during this time but on some level, we know the truth.
the sun in the twelfth house can represent a missing father figure early in life -- the father may have been absent mentally emotionally or physically -- in worst cases the father dies or is separated from the child due to a divorce, in other cases he is disinterested or doesn't have the energy for the children. maybe he comes home from work late, too tired to offer the child any attention or affection, or he avoids responsibility of the child, filling his time doing odd jobs about the house, not contributing much to the household. in many cases the sun can show a very dominant mother figure to devalues and demeans the father.
the result is a deep longing to find oneself. you dont know who you are, what you like or who you want to be, or you are embarrassed of or ashamed of who you are and what you like especially if mercury is involved or there is a link to the fifth house (ex fifth house ruler in twelfth house).
moon in twelfth house indicates an emotionally or physically absent mother figure. she could have spent some time in the hospital for a significant time after childbirth, or suffered postpartum depression preventing her from offering the child warmth and closeness it craves. other times the mother has a difficult relationship with her own mother, or struggles to accept her role as a mother.
in this case the child is hyperaware of others emotions so much that it surpasses its own. you could feel out of touch with your own feelings or not feel anything entirely. sometimes you feel everything and nothing all at once. the emotions of your mother/mother figure are subconsciously tied in with your own so much that you are unable to separate them. you long for the sense of security you have been missing all of your life.
one is not required to fend off the ghosts of their past. in the case of Neptune in the twelfth house the individual is highly attached to their ghosts and learns to live with them. Neptune in the twelfth house, on the ascendent or a connection between Neptune and the twelfth house can show a person who is more likely to suffer from paranoia, phobias and obsessive -- many find it necessary to stay connected to the spiritual realm through spirituality, religion, hellenistic/alternative medicines, yoga, dream work etc.
#twelfth house#astrology#12h#astro notes#astrology thoughts#astrology observations#astrology readings#zodiac#alice sparkly kat#astrology community#moon in 12th house#sun in 12th house#8th house#12th house#neptune#neptune in 12th house
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baby don’t go (i’m bad at being alone)
genre: bff2l, idiots to lovers
warnings: as slowburn as it gets for 25k words, jk is an idiot and oc is so mean to herself AND to others occasionally. religious themes [Bible verses], mentions of alcoholism, unrequited love (not between jk and oc), mentions and themes of death, resolving trauma, bad childhoods. smut: vaginal fingering, marking kink, ily kink, kinda breeding kink, unprotected sex which is BAD
wc: 25k (this is hefty IM SAWRY)
listen to a playlist for this here!
When Jungkook was seven years old, his mother had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He'd answered, way too confident and much too quickly, that his ultimate passion in life was to be a ninja. His mother had laughed fondly, serving him a plate of fruit that she’d cut up for him, and ruffled his hair
He’s positive that she had convinced herself that he'd figure it out eventually; that she’d probably taken it in stride considering the fact that he was seven, but the memory remains clear as day in Jungkook's head in his senior year of college.
Computer Science. That had turned out to be his actual ‘ultimate passion’ in life, though Jungkook always finds himself hesitating when he says it out loud. Perhaps his younger self had thought that he would figure it out eventually too, shoving the concept of a future deep into his mind until he was nearing the end of his gap year and had to choose something tangible to study, and perhaps he’d made the right decision considering his knack for coding and the outrageous starting salary for his major, but his voice always waivers when someone asks what he’s studying.
After all, Jungkook is nothing like you.
Enter character: his childhood best friend, whose umbilical cord had only freshly been cut when they met, much too young to comprehend what he was even looking at. You were a year younger than him, but always a few grades ahead, thanks to your insane amount of academic aptitude (that came with the burden of being afraid to fail at all, but only Jungkook truly knows that), and you’d always, always, known what you wanted to be when you grew up.
You’d answer, voice too strong and vocabulary too poise for an elementary school kid; “My passion is to study law, like my mother.”
You stayed true to it, as well, and if Jungkook wasn’t too absorbed in being impressed by you, he would’ve been sad that you never had a true, silly dream — a princess, or a ballerina, or an astronaut, or anything that didn’t require you to be so stringent at such a young age. But you’d skipped 3rd grade, skipped senior year, went straight to Columbia, and then to Columbia Law; by the time you had graduated college, Jungkook was about halfway done with his gap year. Simply put, being impressed by you wasn’t difficult.
But back to the point he was making, Jungkook is nothing like you, but he misses seeing your face at the frequency he did when you lived next door. And he misses getting you your ridiculously overpriced iced white mochas from a very specific New York-based small business. And he misses you.
The thought of you makes the aforementioned memory with his mother run through his head a bit more persistently than usual, and it’s hard to ignore on an otherwise quiet Wednesday morning. That is, however, until his roommate pops his head into the bathroom.
Enter character: Jungkook’s roomie, Kim Mingyu. Ripped, tall, extremely attractive, and at any given point, either drunk off his ass, or high off his ass, or hungover as shit.
Today, it’s the latter, if the exhausted lily in his voice is any indication.
“Hey, JK.”
He blinks, and the man in question nods from the edge of the bathtub.
“How the hell do I kick this girl out.”
Jungkook’s toothpaste drips onto his wrist, and leans across the commode to spit it out.
“I don’t know, man. Ask her to leave, and give her breakfast money.”
He is not speaking from experience, but Mingyu nods as though he’s been given profound philosophical advice. Jungkook turns the tap on, and wonders how much his friend has had to drink when he visibly grimaces at the rush of the water.
“Thanks man. See you around.”
We live together, I’ll see you in literally one minute.
Jungkook nods, and lets Mingyu shut the door before he’s rinsing his mouth and tending to the very strict AM skincare regime he’s curated. The memory he was stuck on has taken another path to the back of his brain, and he’s thankful that he doesn’t have to think of it, think of you, or think of how much he misses his mother any longer.
He doesn’t, however, exit the bathroom immediately. The girl Mingyu had over is causing a ruckus in their living room, demanding to know why she’s being kicked out and simultaneously letting Jungkook know that his advice was definitely not taken into account; he’d be a bit offended if he couldn’t practically hear Mingyu’s head pounding as she steadily gets louder.
He decides Comp.Sci is a good option; he’s definitely going to get paid enough to not have to deal with this roommate bullshit once he’s out of this college, but he can’t help but feel bad for the girl, and feel worse for Mingyu.
Jungkook walks out when he hears the front door finally lock, and looks up a sobriety program on his phone as his roommate walks past him to his own room.
“Hey JK?”
He turns around, sheepishly hiding his phone without considering the fact that Mingyu is definitely seeing double and definitely didn’t make out his search.
“Yeah?”
“Do not do this one-night stand thing.”
Hey Mingyu? Do not do this alcohol thing.
Both pieces of advice are a bit too little too late, considering that the two of them are in their final years and are confidently past the stage of needing such freshman-esque tips, but Jungkook chooses to stay quiet so as to not rub salt into Mingyu’s wound, though he’s positive the latter is barely aware of this metaphorical wound.
“Yeah, thanks man.”
Mingyu nods again, this time affirmatively, as though he’s given some profound Kantean counseling before shutting his door. Jungkook copies the cheapest and closest sobriety program he finds, and pastes the link in his notes app for future reference.
—
When you were 17, late in your first year of college, your boyfriend had died.
It’s a horrible note to start off on, and it’s worse to have to think about it on a Wednesday, seeing as you reserve these deep delves into trauma for long weekends and bank holidays, but the thing about grief is that it presents itself in weird ways.
Today, you remember the wake. Specifically, you remember the coffee you’d drank afterwards, and how you’ve ended up with the same drink today. It wasn’t your fault, no, a shaken espresso is a common drink at the coffee shop next to campus, and there’s no way AJ would’ve known, seeing as it’s a detail you’ve quite literally never mentioned.
Enter character: AJ, or Alex Jacob Lee, your closest friend at law school, and barista of another overpriced coffee shop you frequent, not to be mistaken with the one further into the city from where you buy those sinfully good white mochas. He has a game going on with you, where he’ll conjure up a different drink for you every Wednesday after your last class, which aligns with his shifts there.
And today, he’s chosen a shaken espresso. Again, not his fault. Again, not a bad drink. It’s the way the bitterness sits on your tongue, and the first greetings of summer in the evening air that have you thinking of your boyfriend — ex-boyfriend, that is. You think of his smile, the closed casket he was laid to rest in because his body was pretty wrecked from the car crash, and you think of Jeon Jungkook.
You remember his arms around you, and you remember refusing to cry. You remember him buying you the drink, and you remember breaking down in front of him, showing any semblance of weakness for the first time in all your 17 years of knowing each other. You think of how much you miss him, how it’s been a good few weeks since you’ve seen him in person, you think of how you never actually fell in love with your boyfriend, and how broken you’d been after he passed.
You still feel the ebbing pain in the left side of your chest, but that’s not something you’re willing to admit. After all, it’s been a good 6 years since then, and you laid him to rest in the tresses of your mind the second you had left the cemetery after his wake.
When you’re done with the drink, you’re done with the memory, and you decide to return to the shop; that way, you can convince yourself that you’re fine, and you can convince AJ to get dinner with you. The coffee lingers in your mouth, though, and take a quick detour to the vending machine to the left of the shop to pick up a bottle of water and think about how horrible the placement of this machine is.
“Hey, you. What’s wrong? Drink not good enough today?”
AJ’s right next to you when you pick up the water from the slot at the bottom, and you find yourself smiling up at him instinctively.
“I think you’ve lost your touch, honestly.”
He laughs, you laugh with him, and your heart feels just a bit lighter after the thought you’ve just had to throttle out of your brain physically, which reminds you of why you returned to the shop in the first place. He looks down at you, gaze so fixed that you look away for a moment before you even open your mouth to speak.
“Wanna grab some dinner? I’m kinda winded, we can get pizza.”
He looks back at the shop, and then at you. The silence is comfortable, and you can hear the music from within the business as someone opens the door to enter. AJ’s expression is a bit hard to read, but the little furrow of his brow, and the way he’s avoiding eye contact tells you that he’s about to say no.
“Can I take a rain check? I’ve gotta finish up at the shop, and I have an early morning tomorrow.”
I’ll wait, and we won’t take long. We can just take it out, we don’t have to sit and eat.
Your mouth feels dry, tastes little like you’ve just thrown up bile, and your eyes shake just a bit as you think of what to say, think of where to look.
“Oh, yeah? No prob, Jakey.”
The nickname slips out, and his mouth droops into a lopsided grin. You don’t notice the twinkle of his eyes, because you’re too busy unscrewing the bottle of water, eager to finally get the tinge of coffee out of your mouth.
He doesn’t say much more, just tells you that he’ll see you around, and takes a quick jog back to work. Pulling your phone out of your pocket is a bit hard because of how hard your hands are shaking, and you clench your fingers together to stop them from doing so, though you’re not sure why you’re acting like this in the first place. Maybe it’s because you’ve just remembered one of the worst days of your life, maybe it’s because you needed company, maybe it’s because you know AJ doesn’t have classes early tomorrow, and maybe it’s because you miss your old best friend.
You decide it’s the latter, and when you finally, finally unlock your phone, you decide to call Jungkook.
The phone rings, and you can’t stand to hear the way AJ’s voice travels outside the coffee shop occasionally, so you walk onto the pavement, trying to focus on the obnoxious rings of the phone. You let it go to voicemail when he doesn’t pick up, and decide that you won’t deal with rejection today, so text him to get dinner with you instead
[to JayKayz] hey, you down to get some pizza tonight?
[to JayKayz] i’ll take the train to NYU and you can meet me at 2 bros?
You figure he’s either in, or finishing his last class, hence the lack of response for the first ten minutes or so, which severely dampens your mood on the way to the train station, but he replies soon after, and you’d be lying if you said your mood didn’t do an entire 180.
[from JayKayz] this is fucking insane cuz I was literally just thinking about you this morning
[from JayKayz] yes to pizza btw.
[from JayKayz] sorry I didn’t pick up I was dealing with Mingyu who’s fucking drunk again.
[from JayKayz] text me when ur on campus and I’ll pick you up.
You have to physically fight yourself from smiling like a psychopath, which is awkward since you don’t really know why you’re smiling. Maybe it’s because he was thinking of you, maybe it’s because he said he’s, or maybe it’s because it’s funny how fed up he is with his roommate who definitely needs to attend a sobriety program. You decide it’s the latter, and your heart isn’t on edge the whole time you make your way to Jeon Jungkook’s university.
—
The thing about you and Jungkook is that there’s nothing awkward about the silences that tend to ensue between the two of you. It’s not uncommon for there to be no words spoken, especially in the past few years — Jungkook has always been an introvert, and school tends to tire you out of being able to carry the conversation. It’s okay, it’s normal, and it’s happened a lot since you moved out to be nearer to campus, but you’re different today.
Jungkook notices the shift almost as soon as you sit down across from him and slide him his coke, hands otherwise empty, saying absolutely nothing else. Typically (read: every single time the two of you eat at 2Bros Pizza, which is not rare), you make fun of him for ordering the Meat Supreme slice, and you always get a coke float for yourself, which reminds him of the time there was a new employee working the Night Shift, and you, in your drunken stupor, almost jumped the counter when he didn’t know how to make one for you. He tucks the memory aside to ask you what’s wrong:
“No float today? Finally saw the light?”
It comes out wrong, less empathetic than he’d like to be, seeing as you’re visibly struggling with something, but it seems to break you out of your own head, and you look up at him. Your eyes shine under the streetlight just a couple inches away from the table the two of you sit at, and the way a smile breaks across your face sends something akin to a shiver down his spine.
“Yeah, I had a coffee earlier. AJ and I have a game going, so - uh, yeah, I’m not that thirsty right now.l
Jungkook remembers this guy, but he also notices the way you’ve started to chew on the right side of your lip as you think about him. He hums quietly, opening his mouth to speak when you beat him to it.
“How’s Mingyu by the way? Day drinking again?”
He laughs out loud, taking a bite out of his pizza. You do the same, eyes a bit less dazed as you listen intently to whatever he’s about to say, but he doesn’t speak for a while again, and the silence that ensues this time is more comfortable than before.
It’s something about Jungkook that’s routinely, and you don’t hate it at all. You’ve been a stickler for organization, for schedules, for routine for as long as you can remember, and while you and him are quite different, you can tell that Jungkook appreciates the stability you bring.
You remember being a child and coming here with your family, Jungkook with his. Your mom would share a cheese slice with you, and his mom would share the abominable Meat Premium slice with him. You’d get a coke float, and his eyebrows would furrow as he animatedly talked about how good everything tasted, almost looking upset because it was delicious. You’d stay quiet, sharing an exasperatedly fond look with the two women who sat across from each other, and then you’d look at Jungkook.
And then, you look at Jungkook.
He has the same pinch in his eyebrows, but he’s been eating here for over a decade so the comments about how good the food is have dwindled, and he just slurps obscenely at the cheese, occasionally stopping to take an equally obscene swig of his drink. You’d be disgusted if AJ ate that way, but it’s Jungkook, so you just laugh, and the question you asked about his roommate dissipates from where it was hanging in the air.
“So this AJ guy, what’s his deal?”
You pause mid-bite, looking a bit confused; the timing is scary, and it’s almost like Jungkook's managed to read your mind in the past minute. You answer with a question of your own.
“So this Mingyu guy, what’s his deal?”
“Touché.”
“No like, actually, though,” you let out a laugh at the way Jungkook goes back to devouring his food. “He needs to get to a sobriety program.”
“Dude, for real. I was literally looking one up for him this morning, like it’s an actual fucking problem and he refuses to acknowledge it.”
“Have you actually tried to get him to acknowledge it?”
Jungkook is many things; he’s smart, capable, strong, his eyes are bright under the streetlights, and he’s compassionate, but he’s never been confrontational. Though you don’t doubt he’s concerned for his friend, you also don’t doubt that he’s never brought it up in front of Mingyu, at least directly; you reckon there’s been a lot of beating around the bush, a lot of surreptitious monologues about ‘seeking help when you need’, etcetera. The thought makes you laugh, and Jungkook looks at you quizzically.
“I mean, I made him watch a TED talk about sobriety last week, and he seemed intrigued…”
You raise a brow. Jungkook would bully you relentlessly for watching those videos, and you doubt he’d watch them even with someone’s best interest in mind.
“We were both high.”
The two of you laugh, looking away so as to not break entirely, and then accidentally making eye contact, breaking almost immediately after.
His laughter is loud, bright, and it brings you back to when you were kids.
You laugh silently, taking in large gasps of air whenever you feel the need to, and Jungkook can’t help but think of how you’ve had this habit since you were a toddler.
When a few tears slip inevitably, Jungkook doesn’t let you use the collar of your shirt to wipe them like AJ typically does, using the pads of his fingers to gently flick them off of your cheeks. (It’s another thing he’s done for years now, but you don’t think about it in the afterglow of laughing so hard that your ribs sting a bit.)
Thinking of AJ reminds you of the question Jungkook asked you before you grilled him about Mingyu. You wonder why you avoided it so desperately, and you wonder why you’re thinking so much about AJ today, when Jungkook is right in front of you.
He’s pretty like this, the pizza parlor’s sign lights up a little after 21:30, and the green and red hues make the dewy skin of his face look softer. He’s chewing at his straw, and has a lazy grin on his face, occasionally giggling when he undoubtedly remembers the outburst the two of you just had.
It’s simple, routinely, laughing with Jungkook, being with Jungkook, and your mind is no longer clouded with the wake, with how much your Tort Law professor hates your whole class, with how AJ lied to you, but you don’t suppose it’d be the worst thing to not leave Jungkook hanging.
“What about AJ, by the way?”
He looks up, and his eyes are just as big as they used to be when he was a toddler.
“You asked what his deal was, what’d you mean?”
Jungkook’s lazy grin is back as he stares at you, reaching across the table to push back a strand of hair that you hadn’t even noticed fall into your face. His touch is warm, and you hope the bright red light of the sign masks the soft blush that warms your face when he strokes the underside of your jaw before pulling away.
“I meant, like, you know,” he pauses, but you shake your head, still confused. Jungkook breathes to regroup, and continues. “The Wednesday drink thing, and how he’s the homescreen of your phone, and how you’re blushing right now after bringing him up? I know dating’s a bit tough but like, maybe there’s something there?”
The realization dawns upon you; Jungkook thinks you’re into AJ, and vice versa. You don’t know why it makes your stomach turn, so you attribute it to the pizza you’ve just had and the coffee from earlier.
The ridiculous urge to defend yourself like Jungkook’s accused you of something fights it’s way up your throat, accompanied by bile. You swallow it down, clearing your throat before you start your rebuttal statement. (You don’t think about how you’re thinking of this like a case, when it’s quite literally just your best friend talking about who you’re dating).
“The Wednesday drink thing’s only because he has a shift there after I’m done with classes, and it’s not like he gives them to me for free.”
Jungkook can’t tell why you look so serious now, back straight and face cold, voice icy. It’s a sharp contrast to the way you were speaking only a mere 10 minutes prior, and he wants to tell you that it’s nothing serious; that he wasn’t accusing you.
“He’s the homescreen of my phone because I look good in the picture, and also because it’s from my 21st birthday, which was just a good day in my life —“
“I think y-you misunderstood me?”
He doesn’t sound confident, but you stop speaking, unable to tell him that you weren’t, in fact, blushing because of AJ.
“There’s nothing there, Jungkook.”
He looks down, and then back up at you, the prickly feeling of discomfort crawling across his chest. Jungkook isn’t sure why he feels cornered, why he feels upset at the way you responded to something innocent he said.
It makes him think of another time, back in your first year of law school when he’d asked you why you hadn’t called him for a week; you’d straightened up, basically recounted every assignment you had due, every other engagement you had, went to hell and back to justify yourself when he was just asking a question.
It makes him think of countless other times, when you’d dissect questions like he was a prosecutor in a courtroom, when you’d pounce at him at the slightest indication of being cornered, when you’d feel the need to justify and self-assess even if he wasn't even in a 100 mile radius of asking you to do that.
He wants to tell you that you don’t have to feel like he’s forcing an answer out of you, that you have a life and you could’ve just laughed it off, that you don’t have to be afraid to have human instincts and relationships and that you’re his best friend.
Instead, he ignores the way your eyes look glossy, ignores the clear indication that you’ve had a stupidly hard day, ignores the screaming cries for someone to tell you that it’s okay, for someone to just ask what’s wrong — something he’s been on the fence of doing for the whole evening. He ignores it all, and gets up to throw his plate away.
“I’m sorry —“
“Need me to walk you to the train station?”
“Uh, no. I got it. Thanks.”
You follow with your own plate, picking your bag up from the seat beside you, and wave at Jungkook a bit awkwardly. He waves back, still not making eye contact with you, and lets you walk away without saying a word more.
Jungkook tries not to think about how pretty you are, tries not to think about how you’re going to cry in the solitude of your room which is how you’ve always dealt with emotions, tries not to think about whatever you could’ve been thinking of that had you on the edge the entire evening. He tries to think about Mingyu, sobriety, and a fraternity party he has to go to tomorrow. He tries to think about skipping his last class, and ends up thinking about how lovely your smile is.
You text AJ to pick you up from campus despite the fake excuse he’d thrown at you earlier even though you don’t really want to think of him, and you hope the person sitting across from you on the train doesn’t notice how you’re crying. It’s your boyfriend, it’s Jungkook and how you lashed out at him for no reason, it’s fucking AJ, and how Jungkook thinks you’re dating him when he’s just lied to you — it’s how AJ lied to you about a morning class — it’s Tort Law, and it’s the shaken espresso you had that seems to still linger on your tongue. You try to think about a party you’ve been invited to tomorrow, try to think about how badly you need to get laid, and end up thinking about Jungkook’s pretty eyes.
—
AJ ends up picking you up from outside the train station, and if he notices your red-rimmed eyes, he doesn’t say anything.
Jungkook’s words, the cause of you snapping him, his insinuations all come to mind when AJ’s this close to you. You can smell his deodorant, you can feel the thin hoodie he dons on your sleeve, you can hear the small breaths he takes; I know dating’s a bit tough but like, maybe there’s something there?”
Is there? You wished you would’ve asked Jungkook to elaborate on this theory of his; he’s observant, and as aforementioned, not one for confrontation of any kind — the thought makes your head hurt with guilt because you’ve just shown him that he shouldn’t, in fact, confront people lest they give him a reaction anywhere similar to yours — and it’s apparent that he was probably sitting on the thought for a while.
Is there? AJ looks at you warmly, the Wednesday drink thing is a bit intimate, he knows your schedule, knows your professors and how you feel about them, knows your apartment even when he's drunk and it’s dark, and you know all of these things when it comes to him. You think about it for a moment, and when you look up at him, he’s already staring down at you. It’s kind, a bit far away like he was doing some thinking of his own, too, and you’re grateful he doesn’t look away immediately.
AJ and you make sense together, if you were to put it logistically. Met in Law School, were friends for years before potentially getting together, and you’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel like a puzzle piece fitting into place. But logistics aren’t the game you play, and the longer you look at him, the more it settles in that there isn’t really much there. With Jungkook, for example, you’d notice the pretty doe shape in his eyes, the scar above his cheek, the slope of his nose and how when he blushes, the pink spreads from the tips of his ears inwards — with AJ, all you see is a handsome face.
Jungkook is your best friend, though, and again, it makes more sense to notice these nuances with him than with AJ and fuck, why are you even thinking about this?
AJ continues to look at you, and you’re thankful, not for his eerie silence as much as for the fact that he’s walking you home at night after you’ve had such a rough day. If being with Jungkook is routine, AJ is the soft of your sheets after a long day — he’s always there, always with you, even if he doesn’t really say anything to you.
(You fight this thought from appearing in your head, but evidently fail.)
Even today, he didn’t question where you were coming from, didn’t say that he couldn’t come get you because he had this supposed ‘early morning’ (which he didn’t, which you could not get over), didn’t say a single word, at least it until you did.
It’s a quiet question, one that has lingered in the back of your mind for the whole evening: “Why’d you lie, Alex?”
He looks startled, both at the rare use of his first name, and by the question itself.
“What… what do you mean, exactly?” His laugh is a bit forced, and he steps away from you, looking away.
“You said you have an early morning, but I know your Crim. Justice class starts at 2. You could’ve just said you didn’t wanna have dinner with me —“ you laugh at the end, hoping to lighten the atmosphere but it doesn’t work.
There is seriously something wrong with you today, but AJ breaks through that thought with a laugh.
“Early morning for work, ___. Internships don’t start till June, but doesn’t Cravath ask you to come in sometimes? It’s that. Some petty admin work.”
Your heart stops trying to commit suicide, and your shoulders relax for the first time since AJ handed you that damn drink this morning. You’d both landed top internships; you with Cravath, AJ with Watchell Lipton, and he was right, because you have gone in to do ‘petty admin work’ for them in the past month since you were accepted.
It’s a happy reminder of how well you’re doing, a happy reminder that your friend didn’t just lie to you, and you can’t help but laugh. It’s a sheepish one that turns genuine when you realize how accusatory you’d been, and you’re grateful again that he starts laughing along with you.
(You don’t notice his laugh the same way you did with Jungkook, but you also don’t dwell on that too much.)
“Fuck, man. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”
He throws an arm around your shoulder, pulling you into his upper body so he can plant a loud kiss on the crown of your head. It’s something he does with everyone, but the conversation you had over dinner remains at the forefront of your mind and you close your eyes to really take in the proximity, the ease with which he just touches you, the way it feels natural, and the way you don’t mind.
“Maybe you should ask questions on the spot instead of working yourself into a frenzy about them, huh?”
“Maybe I should. No yeah, I definitely should. I don't know why I’m being slick about it —“
He laughs at that, taking your hand to spin you in front of him, and then around.
If AJ notices the way your hair frames your face when he stops puppeteering you, if he notices the way your laugh echoes in his mind after you’ve stopped, if he notices the way you’ve remembered his classes, he doesn’t do anything about it. He had, however, noticed the way you were so obviously crying, and though he refuses to pry lest he invade your privacy, lest he finds out that he might’ve been the reason.
He stays quiet about it, though, all the way till he reaches the lobby of your apartment complex, which is when he repeats what Jungkook had done just about an hour prior, fixing a strand of your messy hair.
(You don’t blush like you had when Jungkook had done it, but AJ also doesn’t touch the underside of your jaw as gingerly as Jungkook had, so you convince yourself that it’s nothing)
“If it was hayfever, I know a great remedy, but if not, you should know that whatever you had to cry about, that it’s okay. If you can do Tort Law with Henderson, you can do anything.”
His assurance, paired with the fact that he hadn’t lied, paired with the fact that he’d kissed your head, paired with the way he’d spun you around like he was starring in some Glen Powell rom-com, paired with the way that he’d come and pick you up in the first place — all of it settles your heart fully, and you don’t even really remember why you’d cried in the first place.
“Thank you. For picking me up, and I’m sorry that I was so, you know —“
“Don’t worry about it, it’s literally going to be your job to be ‘so, you know’ okay?”
You nod, chuckling lightly, and watch him wave you goodbye. If you pronounce your own wave a little extra so he laughs at it and isn’t even slightly worried about you being upset, nobody has to know. And if you still can’t stop thinking about Jungkook and how you need to apologize to him, nobody has to know.
—
Jungkook despises his schedule on Thursdays. It’s class after class, a shift at his job, another class, and another class — typically, by the end of the day, his brain is nothing but mush, he’s frazzled; exhausted, and passes out for a much simpler Friday, but as it is, there’s been a lot more unconventional breaks in routine than he’s used to, and he ends up going to a party after his final class on this particular Thursday.
Mingyu invited him, but he’s not thinking about that, because thinking of his roommate makes him think of his conversation with you, which makes him think of how abruptly your manner had changed, which makes him feel bad for you, and also a little upset that you spoke to him that way, which makes him think of the notifications on his phone that he’s definitely not ignoring right now.
[from Elle Woods] jeongguk
[from Elle Woods] im sorry, i don’t know what that was or why I got so defensive about aj, and you didn’t deserve it
[from Elle Woods] i really missed you, it’s been weeks since we’ve talked
[from Elle Woods] actually, can i just call you?
[2 missed calls from Elle Woods]
He’d feel a little bad, because he knows that if you owe each other something, anything, it’s communication — you’ve been friends since you were literal infants, and he should know that there’s probably a very reasonable explanation for yesterday but he shuts his phone off, and recites the excuse for whenever he decides to get back to you.
___ie, I’m sorry, I was just busy — you know how Thursdays are, right?
He’s sure you’ll understand, and he can’t bring himself to continue thinking about it lest he breaks and gets himself into a longer-than-necessary phone call with you when he could be getting shitfaced to forget about the day he’s had; either that, or protecting Mingyu from throwing himself into premature liver failure as best as he possibly can.
Jungkook finds himself shoveling any remaining thoughts of you to the back of his head, another thing he’s being doing unconventionally often, and his short commute to the fraternity house Mingyu’s typo-filled message points him towards — another thing that should debase him, but the promise of alcohol (with a borderline frightening amount of emojis) keeps him going.
He realizes soon, that senior year is an absolute bitch, because it’s been months since he’s seen half of these people and it’s like nostalgia’s kicked him in the mouth, followed by the pungence of miscellaneous alcoholic drinks that you can only drink half a cup of before blacking out, followed by the familiar twinge of the fraternity party patented sweat.
He’s broken out of this haze, watching people pass by him as he slumps against the doorframe of the kitchen by the vaguely familiar voice of somebody he used to know very well —
“Jungkookie? At a party? As I live and breathe!”
Enter character: Lim Nayoung, Jungkook’s ex-fuckbuddy, ex-situationship, near ex-girlfriend. Though the first two are terms exclusively used by high school students, there’s really no other way to describe the relation he has (had) with her, and even as he hears her voice, there’s a rush of emotion that he had to swallow down before he gets a good look at her.
She’s, well, a sight to see; though Jungkook told her he liked her long hair a lot (especially when she styled it like yours, which isn’t something he’s willing to say out loud), she has it cut short. He thinks it suits her, and he makes a mental note to let her know as he tries his best to take a once-over of her subtly, but gives up shortly when he notices her gaze on him; expectant.
“It’s been a while, huh?” A soft grin makes its way up his face, and he fights the urge to pull her into a hug. “I love the hair.”
“What happened to liking it long? In that weird 90s blowout?”
(Your ‘weird 90s blowout’. The same hair you’ve been wearing since junior year of high school, but Nayoung doesn’t have to know, and Jungkook doesn’t want to tell her.)
“I actually still like that look, but this is working for you, baby,” the pet name slips from his lips, force of habit, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t notice the way her eyes lit up for a second. “Where’s everyone else?” It’s a quick attempt to salvage his slip-up, but it doesn’t seem like Nayoung notices the deflection. She doesn’t point him to the group of friends he’s so familiar with, though, instead dragging him by the forearm into the kitchen.
He catches sight of Mingyu by the drinks as Nayoung pours him something from a punch bowl, bright red with fruits strewn about the top, and Jungkook’s sure just a smell of it would kill a medieval peasant. He does, in fact have an incentive for being here, and is reminded of that by his aforementioned roommate’s loud shriek of his name.
Nayoung gets to him before Mingyu, passing him a solo cup that she so graciously garnished with an orange slice, and he strokes her hair as a silent thanks, and a preemptive apology for what’s about to hit her, vis-à-vis Hurricane Mingyu;
“Yo, JK? You came, man!” The side hug he gets is sloppy, and Mingyu’s voice is so slurred that Jungkook can’t help but assume he’s been pre-gaming this for a while. The thought is cut off violently when his jaw is grabbed, forehead pressing against Mingyu’s in a manner too intimate for Jungkook to deal with without alcohol in his system. “You’re the man, I can’t believe we haven’t partied at all this year!” He shoves Jungkook away, while the latter looks dazed (read: disgusted) at how strongly Mingyu’s breath smelled of alcohol.
He takes a sip of the concoction in his cup, wincing just a bit as the gasoline-y aftertaste fully settles in, right before the realization that it has, indeed, been way too long since he's last been to a party at all. He downs the drink, trying not to let his aversion show immediately before he looks down at Nayoung, nodding towards the drinks again.
“Down like water, huh? What happened to my whiskey addict?” Nayoung’s voice is bleary over the terrible EDM drop that’s just played over the speakers, but Jungkook laughs anyways — whiskey’s been his drink of choice ever since you managed to get away with buying a bottle at 17, and he thinks about you every single time he drinks it; more specifically, the way you’d all but hurled it in front of a bodega, and then the way the two of you had drunkenly ran off.
Whatever was in the drink is working, apparently, because Jungkook can feel the buzz of the drink in his veins, and as he pushes aside the memory of the two of you, there’s a burst of confidence that pulses through him. It isn’t anything forward, just the personality so many of his friends were well acquainted with — cocky, a little egotistical, a little too hot for his own good — fighting it’s way out of the somber senior he’s been playing for a good few months now.
He leans against the punch table so he’s eye-level with Nayoung, who shies away from the sudden proximity, and if she’s blushing just a bit, he pretends like he doesn’t notice in favor of grabbing the drink out of her hand and drinking it all in one go. It stings on its way down, and she stares at him, mouth agape at what she’s just seen him do twice in a row.
“There’s like, an entire bottle of vodka in that.”
Jungkook smiles, a little lazy and a little lopsided.
“Is there another full bottle somewhere?”
/
The catastrophic thing about Jungkook isn’t that he makes bad decisions, it’s just that he refuses to admit when he’s made a bad decision.
To set the scene, think of Jungkook, on the lawn of the insanely big glorified fraternity mansion, 7 shots of vodka in and drunk enough that his equilibrium is fully askew and he’s slurring his words in the dialect only you’re familiar with, one he’s grown out of years ago.
Nayoung is still by his side, reasonably sober compared to him, and a couple of his friends — both close and those who he all but neglected in favor of computer science senior year — surround him. They’ve chosen the surprisingly well kempt area because EDM and copious amounts of alcohol stop making sense when you hit your twenties, and as it is, Jungkook’s previous attempts to keep you out of his brain are failing horrifically.
They talk about the time Nayoung and Jungkook got drunk, called Namjoon and told him the only identifiable landmark was the moon, talk about Seokjin throwing up at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, talk about their lives, Mingyu talks about his endeavors in bed (which is weird because he definitely doesn’t know half the people in this vicinity) and Jungkook thinks about you.
He thinks about feeling bad that he’s not replying, thinks about how you don’t drink a lot because drunk driving killed your boyfriend, thinks about how smart you are and how he wishes you had an easier childhood, how he wishes you weren’t so hard on yourself, wishes you were here and that you hadn’t moved out, wishes he could see you everyday, and wishes that he could just get you out of his head.
He thinks about you, uncharacteristically quiet until Nayoung calls him on it —
“What’s got you all worked up?” Her question is really just a figure of speech, but he wants to tell her everything because if anyone knows Jungkook even a smidge close to the way you know him, it’s Nayoung.
“N’thin, nothing,” he takes a pause to breathe out, regroup and look down at Nayoung. It takes him a while to really gather that the group has split up, all going their separate ways after getting shitfaced, presumably to find themselves another drink or a hookup. He wonders if you’ve ever hooked up with someone at a party, wonders if you’d say yes if he were to ask —
“Wanna go upstairs? I hate this fucking music.”
[In retrospect, he should’ve known, at that point, that he was making a horrible mistake, but again, he’d never admit it]
“Yeah. Not because I wanna sit in a fraternity kid’s bed, but because I wanna shoot Avicii right about now.” It takes Nayoung a while to comprehend his slurred words, but she laughs at the sentiment before telling him that Avicii’s very much not alive. It makes Jungkook grin morbidly, and he finds himself grabbing her hand to pull her back into the house.
In the essence of wanting to be a good friend, he looks around to catch a glimpse of Mingyu anywhere, and finds him near the kitchen. He’s, surprisingly so, not drunk outwardly, but Jungkook figures that’s bound to change soon; the party is nowhere near being over. His roommate catches Nayoung’s hand in his, and shoots him a horrifically confused look, which Jungkook pays no mind to.
It doesn’t take long for them to make their way upstairs and into the only bedroom on the floor that isn’t locked or mysteriously producing obscene pornstar-esque sex sounds, and even though the bed is horribly unkempt in a way that would become the butt of your jokes for months on end, they settle.
Fuck, Jungkook has got to stop thinking about you. It’s becoming dangerously apparent that you’re becoming the forefront of his thoughts this evening, and he just can’t figure out why. It’s happened before, too, every time he’d go out to get lunch or dinner with you, every time you’d force him to come with you to The Met or every time he’d force you to come with him to a Yankees game, you’d just plague his brain for the next couple of days. He thinks it because you’re his best friend, that it’s normal to think about someone who’s entire childhood has been riddled with yours, but he can’t exactly focus on that thought when Nayoung pulls her jacket off.
It’s one she bought when they used to… be involved, and Jungkook smiles ever so lightly when he remembers the day.
“That from our little detour to Jersey?”
She looks up at him, and the light of the room is a bit too dim to properly make out her features, but it reflects off of her collarbones, gets his mind all fuzzy when she reciprocates the dopey smile he has on.
“Yeah, yep. I always keep the memorabilia.”
“I mean, the other memorabilias,” he quotes the word, still feeling really fucking buzzed, “were just tattoos. Bit hard to get rid of those, huh?”
Nayoung laughs, and Jungkook feels the claws of past intimacy scratch down his back. It’s familiar, being like this with her, and he values that. Values her, even if she never really gave him an actual reason for breaking it off — ‘we’re in different places, clearly’ she’d told him, and if he sat down to really think about it, he might be able to decipher her words in the context of their relationship but Jungkook literally cannot think of more than three things at once right now.
She lies down flat on the bed, and he has half a mind to tell her off about frat boys and their abysmal hygiene, but he thinks it’s a good idea, and readjusts himself so he’s laying right next to her. She tilts her head to look at him, and he finds the ceiling to be the most interesting thing in the world as soon as it registers in his mind what might be happening.
“What happened with you?”
“Huh?”
“Just… how you disappeared after senior year, how you were dozing off even when you’re definitely drunk. It’s so unlike you to not be like, the one keeping the conversation going.”
I can’t stop thinking about my best friend. I’m worried about her, and senior year is ruining my life because I’m not sure I even want to do computer science and my roommate needs to be put in a sobriety program and I need to talk to my best friend right now but I’m ignoring her.
“Yeah, it’s just — work stuff, ya know? ‘S been crazy this year. You know.”
Though his intentions aren’t to give her the wrong idea about this ordeal, he can’t help himself from turning his head to look at her. He laughs, and she doesn’t wince even when his (presumably) vodka-smelling breath hits her face. Nayoung’s giggle is quiet, and she lifts a hand to his head to push back his hair.
If Jungkook keens just a bit, nobody has to know.
“I don’t know, really. I mean, I don’t have a sick internship, so work’s not that bad for me.”
Jungkook’s pupils are blown out, and when Nayoung’s eyes meet his, he sobers up enough for him to realize just how close they are. With a portion of his brain suddenly not inebriated, he should realize what’s happening, he should pull away, but he also realizes that you haven’t crossed his head for a good couple of minutes, which is good enough of a sign for him to stay put.
“Your thing with ___ not work out?”
He’s confused at why you’re being brought up, but he shakes his head as best as he can manage; there’s no way she remembers you, and there’s no way she thought there was a ‘thing’ between you and him. That would be weird, but he can’t help but think of what she’d said — we’re in different places, clearly.
Different places.
“There was… no thing.”
“So there’s nothing with her and you?”
“No, Nayoung-ie. Never was.”
Different places? Was there a thing?
When she kisses him, he doesn’t stop her.
(And when she asks him to fuck her; delirious, eyes wide, skin dewy, he doesn’t stop himself.)
It’s messy, limbs tangled as he’s basically bent her over in half to plow his cock into her, more drunk off the pretty sounds she makes — familiarly, intimacy — than the copious amounts of drinks he’s had. She’s moaning his name out like a prayer, and he’s leaning over her like a god, and Jungkook’s stopped being religious, but he thinks it’s sin, the way she envelopes him and gives herself to him. The way he doesn’t have to ask, the way she’s meeting his hips halfway.
Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4 — You shall not commit adultery, But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself, Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
He remembers these verses, and he remembers your pretty eyes, and you’re all he can think about when he looks down at Nayoung. Does that make him an adulterer? Does that make him a cheater, dirty, sinful? He fucks into her deeper, inevitably hits the spot — familiarity, intimacy — and drinks her moans in. He remembers the slope of your nose, and how you’d laughed together over dinner a day ago, how your eyes had looked under the streetlights. Nayoung tears up, tells him it feels so fucking good, and he thinks of the tears in your eyes. His hips stutter, and it makes her dig her blunt nails into the clothes expanse of his shoulders, but he welcomes the pain better than he welcomes the guilt of having let you walk away.
Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4 — You shall not commit adultery, But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself, Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
He feels wretched, feels horribly for Nayoung and feels the vodka in his system crawl its way up his throat but he keeps it down. He’s close, she’s close, and if this was a bad decision, nobody has to know.
Jungkook feels her lose herself over him, and he lets his mind drift to you one last time, biting his lip so he doesn’t groan out your name as his hips lose their rhythm. When he pulls out, one hand lazily pumping his cock, he tries to picture Nayoung, her tits bouncing pretty under her shirt, how she’s trying to regroup all because of him, how she laughed and how it felt when she touched his hair but all his brain can manage is you.
Fuck, he feels wretched. Disgusting, like it’s incestual to think about you the way he is but he welcomes it, let’s you into his mind after fighting it for hours, and when he spills all over Nayoung’s stomach, there’s some sick gratification that coats him.
And that’s the thing about Jungkook. This was a horrible decision, down to every last detail. Fucking your ex-fuckbuddy in a random frat boy’s room after getting shitfaced because you haven’t drank that much in months, and ending up thinking about your best friend even if the goal was to not do that? Bad, bad decision.
But he takes it in stride. Thinks of this as a silver lining, a distraction from you as though you haven’t clouded his head like a stupid wet dream while he fucked somebody else.
And that’s the thing about Jungkook. He refuses to admit that he’s messed up.
/
Jungkook doesn’t take much time to recuperate from sex. He has incredible stamina coming from the insane workout regime he absolutely has to keep up with, and he can definitely go multiple times in one night, thank you very much, but he can’t bring himself to even think of agreeing to fuck Nayoung again.
He hopes she’s on the same page when he looks at her, the pacing of her breath slowing down as she sits up slowly. He reaches out, stroking her arm right above her elbow where the matching tattoo she got with him sits. Jungkook distracts himself from deciding on what to say as he recalls how they’d gotten it together, how he’d called you right after to show —
Fuck, he hadn’t even thought about you. Granted, you don’t fit into the situation very well, but he doesn’t doubt that you’ll be impartial to telling him off about what he’s just done. He thinks about what to tell you, and remembers the unread messages on his phone, and remembers what he should be doing, which is somehow getting the idea of ever doing this again out of Nayoung’s head.
“Well, you’re never gonna be bad at sex.”
He laughs sheepishly, shuffling to pull his boxers over his still exposed dick. He has no idea what the hell to say to that, and it seems like it’s about to lead to a monologue about how since he’s never ‘gonna be bad at sex’, that they should continue — or return — to be fuckbuddies.
Fuck.
“But we aren’t doing that again.”
Jungkook’s neck snaps up and he lets out a breath of relief he had no idea he was even holding. Nayoung looks incredibly beautiful, and he would lay everything at her feet out of gratitude because she’s just made this whole ordeal inexplicably easy for him. Her face is bright, like it always used to get after they fucked, and Jungkook feels a bout of familiarity catch in his throat, this time accompanied with a sick rush of guilt.
“Uh, w-why do you say that?” His voice is gentle, coaxing the answer out of her, though he can predict what she’s about to say.
We’re in different places, clearly.
“I mean, you were shitfaced just half an hour ago. This was like, a drunken rebound,” Jungkook laughs at that, quiet and low, reaching up to rub at his nape. He doesn’t feel as drunk now, but Nayoung’s next words definitely do the job of sobering him up. “You’re fun, but I want a relationship before I graduate and I honestly don’t think you even like me.”
His world pauses for a split second, and his heart breaks for her; because he made her feel unloved.
Jungkook thinks of Nayoung. Sitting in front of him, face tinged a bit pink from the incredible sex (Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4), hair cut short and hair long in a blowout (the one you sport all the time) (he thinks your hair is the prettiest shade of brown, and he remembers running his fingers through it). He thinks of Nayoung, matching tattoos and drives to Jersey and how she kissed him with so much fervency and how he tried so hard to match it.
“Your thing with ___ not work out?”
He thinks of calling you after getting tattoos, thinks of how your laugh echoed through his phone in the empty street. He thinks of texting you (shit, he has to text you) for ideas of things to give Nayoung. He thinks of Nayoung opening those gifts and throwing her arms around his neck. He thinks of getting drunk with Nayoung and telling her about childhood memories with you — he thinks of the house you grew up in and the one next to it, where he grew up.
He thinks of you telling him how hard school was, how young you were in high school. He thinks of you crying when your boyfriend died. He thinks of your overpriced white mochas and 2Bros Pizza and fucking AJ. He thinks of how you told him to date Nayoung about two years ago, he thinks about how you’ve always been under this multitude of pressure to excel, and he thinks about how he loves you, and how he loves (fuck) Nayoung.
“Of course I like you, Nana.”
Jungkook remembers how she’d lay down on his bicep after he fucked her one night, telling him about the silly nickname. He remembers thinking then, about how you never had a silly nickname because your parents were too focused on getting you into the top ranking kindergarten in all of the Upper East Side. He remembers laughing at Nayoung’s story, and then making a note to give you a stupid nickname.
And then, Jungkook realizes she’s right.
He doesn’t like her, at least not enough to date her. He thinks of his best friend more than he thinks of her, and Nayoung probably already knows this, hence her little comment earlier.
“Your thing with ___ not work out?”
“But I think I like you too much to fuck you and let myself leave it at that. So you’re wrong about that. But I also think that I can’t give you that relationship. I’m busy, and I think I need to figure out like, my future job and stuff and fuck, I’m sorry if I led you on.”
The look Nayoung gives him reaches down into his stomach and tugs at his gut. She looks pitiful, like he’s the one who’s being hurt in this situation. He looks equally as confused as she does woeful.
“I don’t think your job is all you need to figure out, Jungkook.”
“Your thing with ___ not work out?”
Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4
He doesn’t ask her what she means, and she doesn’t elaborate.
Jungkook watches her redress, and he chooses to do the same as the reality of being butt naked on a random frat boy’s bed nearly gives him whiplash.
He feels the weight of his phone in the back pocket of his jeans, and realizes how desperately he needs to talk to you, to let you talk to him. To let you tell him what went wrong yesterday. He thinks he won’t tell you what just went down with Nayoung.
Nayoung.
She’s beautiful in her clothes again, a little messy, but Jungkook feels the urge to never let anyone hurt her, including himself. It’s love, he knows immediately, when the dim lamp hits the apples of her cheeks and he can see the flutter in her eyelashes when she blinks. But it’s not romantic, and he’s a bit relieved when he realizes this. (It feels nothing like how he does when he looks at you). This love is platonic, not brotherly but friendly, like he’d pick her up from a club and remember her restaurant orders and be the one to haze any of her boyfriends.
And he tells her just this.
“I love you, Nana. You know that, yeah?”
She looks over at him, and it must click in her head what he's implying, because her eyes brighten just a little.
(If they’re glossing over because she’s about to cry, Jungkook will pretend he doesn’t notice.)
“I love you too, Jungkook. You know that, yeah?”
He nods, and he feels the taste of his love for her heavy on his tongue. This love is platonic, not brotherly but friendly, like he’d pick her up from a club and remember her restaurant orders and be the one to haze any of her boyfriends.
(He thinks he loves you platonically as well.)
(If the love he feels when he looks at you is entirely different than the love he feels when he looks at Nayoung, even though he cites them both as being platonic, nobody has to know.)
—
[from JayKayz] im sorry baby, i didn’t check my phone all day.
[from JayKayz] you know how thursdays are.
[from JayKayz] dont apologize. i don’t wanna talk over call, twll me when you’re free
—
It’s about a month after the small reconciliation that Jungkook tells you about how he’d fucked Nayoung.
The last couple of weeks have been incredible; works dwindled down over the past couple of weeks for the both of you, finals are in their last bow before summer, and after a brunch at one of Manhattan’s finest rooftop bars where the two of you had drank a shit ton of margaritas, the guilt of potentially offending Jungkook no longer eats you alive.
It reminds Jungkook of, funnily enough, his freshman year of college — going out as he came in — when the grief of losing your boyfriend wasn’t eating you alive any longer. The two of you had done every cheesy New York tourist thing; ice skating at Bryant Park down to lunch on top of the Empire State Building, and you’d laughed, learned to ballroom dance from YouTube videos only to botch it horribly in the streets; it was the first time Jungkook felt that rush down his throat, and he’s begun to feel it again recently.
It’s like the montage of a romantic comedy where the main characters get to really know each other: a part you savor, and a part Jungkook tends to skip so he can get to whatever conflict awaits. The two of you have done everything together, continued to get weekly pizzas at 2Bros, where you’ve openly made fun of him for his order choice, gotten white mochas at the small business you love too much (he thinks it’s not that great but spends $18 anyways), rewatched the first 5 seasons of Friends (he’s realized you can literally quote it), gone to every Yankees game you could get tickets to (you make him explain all the plays even if he’s done it a million times), spent too much time and too much money at the Statue of Liberty, gotten pictures together at random photo booths in the street, slept under the stars, slept tangled in each other’s arms, drunkenly made out once only to never talk about it —
It’s going better than it ever has, and Jungkook can count on one hand the memories he has that beat out any of the ones that he’s spent with you.
However, as a callback to the Glen Powell rom-com plot curve, there has to be a conflict. So when Jungkook tells you about that drunken memory that still is very much in his mind, you really think you should’ve seen it coming.
It happens over lunch, another sick foreshadow you should’ve seen barreling towards you, and it hits you in a way you can’t exactly explain. He doesn’t take it as seriously; doesn’t think you’d care because it’s not like any of this is inherently romantic. It’s not like he cheated on you; the two of you were just best friends who hadn’t even seen each other in a while when it happened.
(If the Bible verses are at the tip of his tongue when Jungkook thinks of it, he leaves that part out of the recollection.)
He laughs when he tells you, and you savor the sweet sound, the one that’s low and tugs at your heart in an inexplicable manner.
It starts off as a conversation about how he cannot drink vodka anymore, and you immediately wish you hadn’t asked when he speaks: “You know that time, when you got really pissed at me for saying that AJ shit to you?”
The memory sends something queasy down your stomach. It shoots down your legs for a split second before you remember his words from a month back.
You don’t have to explain yourself, I get it.
It must’ve been a hard day, huh? That fucker got you a shaken espresso, Jesus.
Yeah I know he had no idea, but still. I do. And it makes me feel so shitty for you.
You don’t have to explain yourself.
“I’d say pissed is an overstatement.”
“Overstatement for you, you have the best attorneys in the country teaching you on random Tuesday. For me,” his hands reach to rest dramatically over his heart, and you laugh unironically, making a note to yourself to only order mocktails from this moment forward. “It was like getting bitchslapped.”
That genuinely makes you laugh.
“But whatever, the next day, I went to a party and got shitfaced to deal with the pain.”
That reminds you of how you’d dealt with snapping at him the day after — how you had hyperventilated in your room when he didn’t reply, how you had to skip a class because your heart wouldn’t stop beating at the prospect of losing him.
You don’t have to explain yourself.
“And I fucked Nayoung. So no more vodka for me.”
“Lim Nayoung?”
You don’t know why you ask, obviously it’s her.
Obviously it’s Lim Nayoung. The girl who has a matching tattoo with Jungkook on her arm. The girl who has gifts you told him to get for her decorating her shelves. The sweet girl who never stopped Jungkook from speaking to you even if the ‘girl best friend archetype made perfect sense. The girl who has a jacket from when Jungkook and her had almost had a Ross/Rachel wedding after getting drunk in Jersey. His ex-fuckbuddy, hell, his ex-girlfriend because who does all of that with someone who’s supposed to be strictly physical.
Obviously it’s Lim Nayoung.
Obviously you shouldn’t be this fucking surprised.
Obviously your heart shouldn’t sink to the tresses of your stomahc.
Obviously this wasn’t meant to be romantic.
“Yeah, her. It was fucking crazy, I don’t think I’ve ever drank that much.”
His voice is fuzzy in your ears, and you can’t look him in the eyes properly. You take a sip of the drink that’s next to you, willing yourself to suddenly get wasted so you never remember this moment.
Why does it make a sharp pain go through your left side? Why do you have to clench your palms into a fist to subside said pain. Why did you think this was going somewhere, why did you think Jungkook wasn’t still hung up on her.
You think of AJ, and how he doesn’t even know about your ex-boyfriend. You think of your ex-boyfriend, and shaken espressos, and wakes, and how Jungkook’s the only person who’s been through all of that with you.
You think of how you graduate in less than a month, and you think of how Jungkook will have attended six of your graduations by that point. You think of Nayoung, how pretty she is, and how much you think she deserves him.
You wonder why you think you would ever deserve him, and you wonder why you thought it would end in anything but an eternal friendship; beautiful, intimate, but forever bound by the jagged cuffs of platonicity. You wonder if he, even for a fleeting moment — when you were tangled in his sheets, when you laughed at his stupid king-kong jokes at the Empire State Building, when you reached for his hand during the climaxes of horror movies, when your lips were fervent on his in that back alley — thought that this would go anywhere.
“Maybe we need to get you in that sobriety program, huh?”
If your voice cracks, you pray he doesn’t notice. You pray the laugh you get out of him is genuine, and you pray that he didn’t look at Nayoung so warmly, only to feel just as guilty as you had a month prior.
/
AJ has no idea why you’re at his apartment, nor does he have any idea as to why you’re drunk. It’s way too early in the day for you to be wasted; in fact, he distinctly remembers you telling him that you and Jungkook were going out, which is why you couldn’t make it to the lunch he had proposed.
Were you getting drunk at noon? He knows you like margaritas, but he also knows that you have an insane tolerance; how many did you drink to get you this —
“H- he doesn’t love me.”
You interrupt the tangent of his thoughts with a hiccuped, slurred out sentence, and his entire face contorts trying to decipher what you’re saying, and then why you’re saying it.
“Hey, hey — wait, come in, what are you saying? Who doesn’t love you?”
Your skin is warm under his touch as he gently tugs at your arm to pull you past the threshold of his door, and he tries not to look too hard at the way your lips glisten under the dim light of his entranceway. He tries not to notice the way your hair is a little messy, undoubtedly from the wind, and how pretty your collarbones look under the small top you’re wearing —
Jungkook.
You’re talking about Jungkook, and he knows this not because there’s literally nobody else you could be talking about, but because there’s nobody who could get you this upset by ‘not loving you’.
(Do you love him?)
He sits you down on one of the barstools he keeps in front his kitchen countertop, and you slump your head down onto your arms, mumbling incoherently.
(Do you love him?)
He pours out a glass of water for you, and pats your head gently, touch lingering for a second to give you even the slightest inkling of comfort in this outwardly distressed state.
You lift your head, eyes red-rimmed and glossy with tears.
AJ doesn’t feel like this often. He jokes about how the two of you grew up, devoid of the privilege of showing normal emotions, bottling them up and spilling them over textbook pages and only ever being allowed to feel happy upon seeing numbers scribbled in red at the top of test pages. He jokes about the two of you ending up in Ivy Leagues at the cost of having normal human feelings; he knows that he’s perceptive and sharp and he likes to think that he has you all figured out, but when you look at him like that, he knows that he doesn’t.
He doesn’t know why you told him to never make you a shaken espresso again, he doesn’t know what relationship you and Jungkook even have, he doesn’t know why you’re this upset over him not loving you.
He does, however, know that even if Jungkook doesn’t love you, he might.
AJ met you in your first year of law school, and he remembers thinking that you were the only person in the whole class who was fit to be his rival; you’d been only person other than him who’d gotten through the cold calls, the only person who’d read all the way to the end of the syllabus, the one person he would accept as a ‘rival’, like he was in a Viola Davis drama, if you may.
He’d spoken to you after class — a little cocky, a little smug — and you’d been nothing but sweet. Soft voice, pretty smile, quips that had him looking away to stop himself from laughing, he liked you immediately.
The two of you had really done everything together — studied at ungodly hours, called each other drunk to drive the other home, you had inside jokes and three years worth of memories, you’d helped him through breakups and he’d gotten you free coffee every week for a year now — the rapport he had with you was one he’d never ever expected, and the way he looked at you, felt about you, was something he’d never ever expected.
He had his girlfriends, and he told you about them while you’d answer with a curt joke about never having dated anybody, but he’d never ever looked at them like he looked at you. Never noticed the furrow in their brows when they read something hard to understand, never noticed their lopsided smiles and the way they’d drink, but never enough to really get them wasted. And the thing is, AJ hadn’t cared that he saw all of these things, because perceptive as he was, all you’d ever been to him was a brilliant girl who he’d be sure to keep up with after law school.
Right now, though? He knows. He knows why he noticed, he knows why it bothers him that you might love Jungkook back, he knows that you graduate soon and that he doesn’t have much time, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter because you might love Jungkook back —
“AJ, Jungkook doesn't love me.”
“Yikes.”
He wants to say more. Wants to tell you that it doesn’t matter what Jungkook thinks, because I love you, and I think you’re incredible and I’ve spent the past 3 years ignoring it but I’ve never ever ignored you and I love you.
“He fucked Nayoung.”
AJ has no idea who that is, but he wants to sock Jungkook in the face for having this girl, this amazing girl with him for his entire life and fucking somebody else.
“I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry he did that, and I’m sorry you don’t know that I would never do that.
“He —“ you pause to sob: a soft, strangled noise that makes AJ’s stomach turn. “He doesn’t love me.”
“Do you love him?”
Say no. Say no. Say no. Say no. Say no.
“Fuck, AJ. He doesn’t —“ you don’t again, shoving your head back into your arms.
“Do you love him, though?”
AJ’s not sure why he’s asking, because he knows that there’s no way you’d be upset if he didn’t love you back. He thinks of it like a prosecution case; he’s gotten enough out of you on the stand that everybody can draw the conclusion but he has to get it out of you.
A surefire kill.
“Hm?”
Your eyes are bleary when you look up, half from crying and half from being the drunkest you’ve ever been. Your hair is still messy, and your lips are bitten red from all the quiet crying you’ve been doing. He can’t cry in his kitchen, not when you’ve been here laughing, not when his granite countertops hold years of your touch, not when you’re unraveling a foot away from him.
“I think I do, AJ. I really think I do.”
“Fuck, baby. I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry that I thought I could have you, when Jungkook’s always been the one you wanted.
“He used to be like, the one person —“ pause to hiccup. “I never thought I’d love like that. But we got closer after the fucking, shaken espresso day last month. And I guess the proximity j-just set it in.”
He can’t tell if the reason your words are so mangled in his ears is because the sound of his own heart crashing into his stomach is so loud, or because you’re slurring your words that much.
“Drink some water, please.”
Say you’re lying, please.
—
Jungkook doesn’t exactly know why you ordered another 3 margaritas in the middle of your lunch detour, and he doesn’t know why you stopped looking him directly in the eyes right after he told you that he’d had sex with Nayoung. He doesn’t know why you insisted on drinking when you never get to a point where being wasted is even an option, and he doesn’t know why you so fervently denied him walking you home.
He doesn’t know why he stays awake at night thinking of you, either.
Jungkook is surprisingly introspective for somebody who zones in and out of conversation so much, who is typically dazed and doesn’t have much to offer when it comes to picking up obvious hints thrown at him, but he knows himself quite well.
Better than you, he’d argue.
The sheets are warm around his waist, and he has one arm propped under his head as he stares at the ceiling, eyes wide without even a hint of sleep in the tresses of them, which is unusual for it being the middle of the night. He remembers how a month prior, all you’d ever been was his best friend. He remembers the little fall-out and how you’d gotten together for dinner, how pretty you’d looked and wonders why he’d focused on that when he simply never had done that before.
He remembers the day after, and how he’d taken another girl to bed. Jungkook remembers faint Bible verses about adultery, how he couldn’t get you out of his head, and he remembers what Nayoung had told him that night, as long as what she’d told him when they broke it off.
“I don’t think your job is all you need to figure out, Jungkook.”
“Your thing with ___ not work out?”
“We’re in different places, clearly.”
He never thought about what she meant when they’d split; the pain of losing someone who’s memory he had literally etched into his skin was too imminent for him to even think about the ending scene. He also never thought about what she meant when she’d walked out of the fraternity room that day; he’d made up with you right after, and the following month was you, you, and more you. Focusing on Nayoung’s words and the small sliver of conversation they’d engaged in hadn’t even been an afterthought, at least until he’s brought her up today and you, like similar poles of a magnet, quite literally repelled him.
But really, what was she even talking about?
Why would there be a thing with you? Sure, the two of you were close, and sure, he’d probably talked about you and called you and FaceTimed you too much for her security, but he’d always thought the concept of him having a ‘girl best friend’ was what annoyed her, and not the notion that the two of you would have a ‘thing’.
Why would there be a thing with you? Sure, he idolized you and told her how smart he thought you were, but him and Nayoung were never official, and he’d only ever assumed that she was confused as to why he was always talking about some other girl after literally sleeping with her -
Oh.
Oh.
It hits him like a shot to the heart, and he physically sits up to grab his phone because he has to confirm this sudden realization.
The look Mingyu had given him at the party shoots to the forefront of his brain, Nayoung’s words echo, and the way your resolve has crumbled when he told you about her suddenly makes a lot more sense.
In fact, it all makes sense.
I don’t think your job is all that you need to figure out.
She was talking about you. About how he was hung up on you and never even realized it —
We’re clearly in different places.
She was talking about you. About how she was willing to be invested with him, but the place he was stuck at, was you.
The ringing of his phone as he calls Nayoung seems louder than it usually is. It’s daunting, like he’s hoping she doesn’t pick up with each ring so he doesn’t have to face the reality he’s been unknowingly ignoring for… fuck, he doesn’t even know how long.
“Jungkook? It’s 2 in the morning. Are you okay?”
“Why did we break up, Nayoung?”
His voice is hoarse, and if he wasn’t so fucking stressed, he thinks about how proud you’d be for putting on the ‘interrogation voice’ you’d introduced him to in your second year of Law School.
“What?” Her laugh is quiet, laced with sleep, and Jungkook wonders if she should hang up and say sorry for waking her. “We weren’t really together, so I wouldn’t call it a break up —“
Her pause is long, and Jungkook doesn’t correct her, doesn’t bring up the tattoos and leather jackets and how they’d nearly eloped and the fact that they just had sex a month prior. She’s right, and he needs her to continue now.
“But I always assumed that you had something going on with __”
“You mean the time I called her after we got matching tattoos?” He can’t fight the urge to make the joke, even though it just dawned on him that you were, indeed, the straw on the camel’s back that broke him and Nayoung up. It just dawned on him that he might be in love with his best friend, and that he’d hurt Nayoung because of it, and that you might love him back.
Maybe.
He ignores that, and laughs wryly at the silly anecdote, thanking every religious figure he can think of when she also laughs.
“Yeah, that, but also just… your relationship. The way you obsessively talked about her and were literally always on call with her was one thing, but…” she pauses like she’s thinking about what to say next, how to describe the end of it all to him in a way that won’t flip his entire world around, not knowing that she’d already done that. Not knowing that you’d already done that.
“She came over once to pick us up when we got drunk. It was the same night I was talking about at the party, when we told Joon the closest thing to us was the moon? Yeah, ___ came and got us that night.”
“I knew right then, honestly. The way you looked at her was fucking insane. When you used to look at me, my friends would say that it was like I’d done every good thing in the world for you. But when you looked at her, it was like she’d saved you from every bad thing that could’ve ever happened to you. It was like, relief. Like you could let it all down in front of her. And I’d never been on the receiving end of that look; not ever when you were sober. Being like that and looking at her like that completely shitfaced? I knew I couldn’t stand in the way of the two of you, even if it literally killed me.”
He doesn’t process it immediately, choosing to focus on the last sentence, because feelings for you aside, he felt like the most massive douchebag in the world for making her feel that way.
“Nayoung, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I honestly — I had no idea, I really didn’t —“
“Jungkook, I know. And I know you’re probably trying not to drive yourself insane thinking of whether she loves you back.”
He definitely is, but he doesn’t tell her this in fear that it’ll just hurt her more.
“No it’s not like that, I’m just, so incredibly sorry that I put you through that, you deserve so much more, you deserve the relationship you want and I feel like shit —“
“What do you mean it’s not like that, Jungkook? You’re not thinking about whether she likes you back?”
“Huh?”
“You don’t think she loves you back?”
Do you love him back? Do you look at him like he’s saved you from every bad thing that could’ve ever happened to you? Do you? Will you ever?”
“I don’t… know?”
“When you called her that night, you tripped over your own feet. She knew exactly where we were based off of that.”
Summer of 2006.
The field he’d gotten wasted with Nayoung, except he only remembers you.
Remembers how you’d just gotten promoted up to the fourth grade, remembers how you were licking down the side of your ice cream cone; vanilla with sprinkles, as always. He had his mint chocolate chip, and your mothers were on a bench a couple of feet away from you.
The sun had made your hair look golden, your eyes were bright, and your smile was so pretty that he couldn’t hold your gaze for longer than three seconds. He remembers this, because he’d physically tripped over his own feet when you looked at him just a couple of seconds too long.
The small ‘oof’ that he’d let out when he’d fallen, damp grass and soil under his tender palms, knees tickled by the summer green just seconds later, the way you’d gasped and abandoned your ice cream cone on the ground to come tend to him, and your mothers rushing over too, laughing at how much you cared for him.
He’d always, always tripped over his own feet at that spot, always fallen with that little ‘oof’ and soon realized that it wasn’t really because he couldn’t make eye contact with you, but because there was a little hump in the ground at the spot he’d been standing at.
And you remembered.
You remembered even if the first time it happened was more than a decade and a half ago, you remembered even if you had grown out of visiting that field when you went to college.
“She remembered.”
“Yeah, Jungkook. Obviously she remembered. Because she loves you back, and it’s honestly making me more upset that the two of you haven’t worked it out yet.”
“Fuck, Nayoung. Fuck. Thank you. Thank you — I have to think about — fuck, I’m sorry it’s so fucking late and I’ve just called you and went on this weird self discovery path —“
Her laugh is bright when she cuts him off, and Jungkook feels part of his heart ease when he realizes that she’s not angry with him.
“Go to bed, talk to her tomorrow. I love you, Jungkook. And you love her and she loves you in a completely different way, but I love you. And don’t say sorry, I was up anyways.”
She hangs up after, not giving Jungkook space to even say goodbye, and simultaneously giving him a million different things to think about, but only one that he can really focus on: how he’s in love with you.
And how, apparently, you’re in love with him as well.
—
The beauty of New York City is the anonymity it provides, even amongst 8 million other people. Street bustle, skyscrapers kiss the clouds, floods of people drown you in the street, and even through all of that, you have the privilege of being alone. Solitude; a lighter flickering in a Brooklyn balcony, and the drip of water down in Harlem.
Tonight, you and Jungkook have the privilege of being alone, just 20 minutes away from each other, staring at the same film photograph of the both of you from the photobooth you’d stopped at a couple of weeks prior.
The grainy picture features four shots; your hair is damp, and Jungkook can still feel how it felt on his neck, your lips are a dark maroon, and Jungkook can still feel them hovering right above his. Jungkook’s in his leather jacket, and you feel the goosebumps on your arms from when the fabric brushed against your skin. His hair’s also wet from the rain, but the gel he still uses had kept it together surprisingly well; you remember the way you’d made fun of him for his incessant usage of the product.
The picture on the top right is a glamour shot, if anything. You’re smiling, and when he looks down at it, his chest blooms with a warmth akin to spring’s first bloom. He has a softer look; sporting the lopsided grin you’re so used to seeing, and it makes your stomach coil enough to make you physically look away and laugh.
Top left is a lot less serious, you remember he’d made a joke about the two of you being mafioso heirs, and it hadn’t even been that funny, but the picture features bright, childish, innocent grins. Your eyes are shut, smile spreading all the way across your face as you lean forward. His head is thrown back, lip piercing caught between his bottom lip when he laughs. The both of you hear each other’s laughter, echoing in the photobooth and across the empty, rain stricken streets of New York.
You think of how much you miss this, about how this day had inevitably been when you fell face first, defenseless with your guard all the way down. You think of the bottom left picture, not having the courage to look at it fully; you remember how you’d leaned into his body, and how he’d let you do it, how your lips had been just millimeters from touching when the flash had caught you off guard and you’d looked up straight into his eyes like something out of a Glen Powell rom-com.
Jungkook thinks of how much he misses this, about how this day had been one of the ‘moments he knew’, a collection that grows the more he thinks about how irrevocably in love with you he is. He thinks about the bottom right picture, how he’s looking at you and you’re fixing your hair, how he got the picture developed and still didn’t see the stars in his eyes, still didn’t realize that you were always the one.
The four photos are pressed to your heart. You haven’t had it in you to fall asleep, there’s still a full ache in your head from the alcohol and you make a note to thank AJ for getting you home safe today. A tinge of embarrassment shoots down your body when you think about the conversation you had with him today, the conclusion you’d reached, what you’d learned about Jungkook and Nayoung, what you’d learned about yourself; that you loved him, and he didn’t love you back, and how it made you want to die the more you thought of the month the two of you had.
The four photos are pressed to his heart. He wonders if they’ll soothe the ache or not knowing whether you love him, too. The phone he’s just put down should provide him with silence; fuck , he craves silence, but Nayoung’s words just echo in his head. Talk to her tomorrow, but he has no idea if you feel even remotely the same. He has no idea if he’s completely off base, he has no idea if he’s gotten the wrong ideas based off of the last month, and the guilt of potentially having taken your platonicity and genuine friendship as a lead eats him alive.
[But it can’t all be platonic, you think.]
[But it can’t all be platonic, he thinks. ]
No, you think. Because the alcohol might’ve made it easier, but you remember the way he tasted on your lips a little too well. The way his hands traveled down your shirt, sodden and soaked in the rain, caressing the curve of your waist. The way your own fingers had explored the figure of his shoulders, pressing into the hard plains of muscle as he moved his lips against yours too languidly to be a drunken detour.
No, he thinks. Because the drowsy haze of Sunday might’ve made it easier, but he remembers the way your leg was thrown over his thighs, the soft cotton of his own shirt hardly covering any of your legs, the rasp in your voice when you’d mumbled out his name, looking over you as he cooked. The way you’d laughed at his stupid dad jokes, and the way Mingyu had slapped his back after you’d gone, talking about the ‘way she looked at you’ — there’s no way it was just platonic.
There was nothing platonic about the way he’d held you in line at Liberty, the way he’d looked at you when you went up the fire escape when Mingyu had another girl over, the way you’d spoken, hushed into his skin the night you fell asleep at his place. Maybe falling in love, for the two of you, was like having your eyes closed while standing on the shore; maybe it was a wave that came crashing, rushing up your legs and soaking the two of you entirely before you even realized it. Maybe all the two of you had been doing, was enjoying the crashing of water ahead of you, ignorant to the receding waves and how dangerously close you were to being caught up in the mess your ignorance would inevitably bring.
And there you are —
Present day New York City, staring up at empty ceilings with full hearts, itching to reach for your phones with nothing but apprehension holding you back; what if he doesn’t love me, what if she doesn’t love me, what if I’m off-base, what if everything changes, 23 years down the drain, I have to tell her, I have to tell him. Alone, anonymous, lovers amidst millions others, feeling so much that you taste it on your tongues, feeling so much that you want to rip your beating hearts out; alone, anonymous, in love, in pain.
And there you are —
Begging the other not to go, because you’re so bad at being alone, but not being able to tell them why.
—
Cravath asks you to work in their London office after you graduate. It’s one of the perks of
consistently being at the top of your class, one of the perks of having an internship at the best law firm in all of New York, and it’s an opportunity you can’t say no to.
You figure it’ll help you get over this Jungkook fiasco, considering the fact that it’s basically a dead-end for you; you wonder if Watchell Lipton can refer AJ to a firm in London so you won’t completely be alone in a new city, you start to think about how wonderful it’d be to get some time away, to get space away from where you’d suffered such a big loss just a couple of years back — away from where you’d been pushed beyond every limit of yours since the first grade.
There’s nothing loss has taught you other than to put up walls, to close people off and to shut them out at any waking moment that you even come close to vulnerability. It’s not healthy, nor is it a quality you’re proud of; your stricken body’s last attempt at cushioning any further blows, any further losses from even those you claim to be the closest to you. It’s the reason you never told your parents about the intense stress their expectations put onto you, it’s why AJ doesn’t know about your ex but you know about all of his, and it’s the reason you’ve been ignoring Jungkook for a week now.
The realization that you were, in fact, madly in love with him had might as well carved through your skin to make its way into your system judging by the pain you’ve gone through since it’s hit you. You’re a rational adult, and loving someone is human nature, but loving your best friend and knowing that he doesn’t love you back should be something God implements in hell as punishment. You haven’t been able to look at the photo booth picture, have turned every photograph that reminds you of him around to avoid seeing it, have turned to sticking your head in your ridiculously heavy textbooks so you have a way to save face should Jungkook ever text you, and you’re sure that this game of shutting him out is going to be successful when you accept the job in London.
But you don’t.
For some reason, the drafted email accepting the position sits on your laptop, in a minimized tab that you open and contemplate hitting ‘send’ for hours on end, but never do. There’s a sliver of yearning — stupid, human yearning — that you wish you could just turn off, that tells you there’s a chance Jungkook might love you back. That tells you this situation will end with him running to you in the rain and kissing you under the stars, a grandiose recreation of the kiss you’d had almost a month ago now; the little voice in your head is your biggest vice, and you stare at the email over and over everyday, telling it to just shut up, telling you to get over yourself because he’s always loved Nayoung and you will never be her — never be that pretty, that put together, that kind or compassionate — and you tell yourself to just send the email.
Send it, burn this love you have with the littlest flicker of emotion you have left in your heart, move to London and start over. Reinvent yourself and learn to love properly, learn to love things that will love you back, learn to feel properly and not be so stringent on goals, learn to be human because it seems like you’d forgotten how to, until the realization that you love Jungkook barreled towards you like an avalanche of everything you never wanted to be.
Send it, and tell Jungkook. Take his little display of sadness and walk out of his life with the bitter taste of a confession that’ll never leave your lips still heavy on your tongue. Watch him in pictures like he’d watched you sleep, watch him fall in love with Nayoung eventually and move out because Computer Science has a killer starting salary, watch him pursue something he wants to do —
(“I think I really wanna do art. Sing, paint, do something that doesn’t involve binary code.”
“I think you should go for it. Stick it out till graduation and work for like a month because your starting salary is totally gonna support you even if you fail, and take the leap. Kierkegaard.”
“No idea what the fuck a ‘kira gard’ is.”
“Shut up.”
“You think I’ll be able to do it?”
“I think you’re the most talented person I know. If anyone can be an artist, it’s you.”)
If you love someone, let them go. And you want to do it so badly, a part of you craves the final sweet release of pain that New York City will give you before you escape it, but there’s another part that’s screaming in agony because you cannot do this to yourself, like your body fears that giving up someone you love so much that it physically hurts you to think about will be the final straw, that you’ll drop dead at JFK airport if Jungkook doesn’t tell you that he loves you, too.
If you love someone, let them go. Let them go, let them go. If you love yourself, let yourself go. Leave, and enjoy London and free yourself from a city that’s so beautiful that all you’ve done is loved it and the loneliness it’s handed you on a platter. If you love New York, let it go. If you let Jungkook, let him go.
/
You’re staring at the email again, and you can’t tell if you’re tearing up because of how long you haven’t been blinking, or if it’s because you know that when you finally click the send button, it’ll all be over.
You’ll be putting the fear of shaken espressos behind you, you’ll be putting Jungkook, New York, your parents, your entire life behind you; you’ll graduate in two weeks after finals, and you’ll grab nothing but your passport to go to London. It’ll be over, which is a thought that’s as daunting as it is relieving, but not because of your ex, not because of New York, or your parents —
It’s hard solely because you don’t want to put Jeon Jungkook behind you. The first person you’d ever talked to about how burnt out you were, the first person to sleep under the same sheets with you, the only person to eat a meat lovers pizza at 2Bros, the only person you let your guard down with, the only person who’d ever seen you cry, the only person you’d ever been in love with. The photographs you’ve turned around, the permanent imprint of his lips on yours, the way his hand found purchase on the small of your back, his heartbreaks and your biggest loss, the strum of his guitar back in middle school when you’d blushed under his gaze for the first time, the way he rubs at his nape when he’s embarrassed, his smile, the way he trusts you with his life — you’d sooner die than call it quits on those memories, but it’s even harder to imagine living with them, knowing that he’s never going to feel the same way about it.
Your heart is heavier than it's ever been, even if you’ve been carrying the weight of your own world for the past 17 years at least, without putting it down even for a second. You’re sure you’re crying, if the way the words on your screen blur is any indication. Your left side aches the same way it had a month ago when he told you about Nayoung, and you wonder if that pain will ever go away if you leave.
Your fingers tremble when they clasp the mouse, and you decide that the pain is something you’ll have to live with. It’s the melancholy it’ll leave in your eyes that’ll make strangers fall in love for you and never quite forget; it’s the edge of having to walk away from something, from the only thing, you’ve ever loved, that’ll make you a strong lawyer. Unattached, a bit desolate, and incredibly strong, but only when working. It’ll be this mistake that’ll prevent you from making others, it’ll be this mistake that’ll make you fall harder for whoever will come next; that’ll teach you to cherish those who love you back.
(You fall back onto your bed and break down.)
(You send the email minutes after you’re done crying.)
(You figure you’ll tell Jungkook the day after. That you’ll apologize. For everything.)
(You figure Jungkook’s going to cut you off for not telling him before sending the email.)
(You figure it’s for the best.)
—
Jungkook feels like his heart is being torn from his chest, inch by inch so he feels the surface of his skin ripping, so he feels the blood dripping down his chest and soaking his shirt, so he can feel the poison in his veins, can feel the thump of the organ when it’s pulled out of his body.
You’re leaving.
“You’re leaving?”
You’re leaving.
He loves you, and you’re leaving in two weeks and he’s trying so hard to not look like he’s in unfathomable, unspeakable, unrelentless pain that leaves him wanting to get on the floor of his apartment and claw at his chest so he can scrape some of the ache away.
He clenches his fingers into fists and refuses to look at you.
“I’m sorry, Jungkook, I thought I’d tell you but finals had me busy —“
You’re fucking lying to him, too. You’re leaving, and he loves you and you’re lying. You weren’t busy with finals, you were ignoring him for whatever godforsaken reason, you were cooped up in your apartment overthinking and fixating on whatever he’d told when the two of you had brunch, and you were doing it on purpose.
Fucking finals.
Your go-to excuse for shutting people out and putting up walls that nobody will ever be allowed to break down. He thought he’d be the first to, he thought he’d already broken them, plowed through the cement when he’d kissed you in a back alley, when he’d held you in his arms after the wake, when he’d bought you your coffee and gotten the order correct, when he had you in his bed. He thought he’d broken them, but he’d been wrong; he hadn’t done shit to stop you from holding yourself away from the world, he hadn’t done shit to help you face vulnerability instead of ignoring it in favor of not facing anyone at all, he hadn’t done shit to get you out of your stupid fucking law school shell, and he was in love with you despite this one tiny flaw, and he knew everything about you, so he knew you were lying.
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“You’re fucking lying to me.”
Your scoff is incredulous and it makes Jungkook want to pull his hair out and drag his blunt fingernails down his face until he’s bleeding out to show you; I care, stop pushing me away, why are you leaving, you don’t know I’m in love with you, why, why, why, why —
“I’m not lying, you know I have finals — you have my planner!”
“No. No, you’re not fucking doing this again. In sophomore year, you were upset because of something your dad said and locked yourself in your room for three days straight. You said you had finals back then. After your fucking boyfriend died, you locked yourself in your room and said you had finals. Whenever you’ve been scared, or humiliated, or had any semblance of fucking human emotions, you’ve said you have —“
“Jungkook, you have no fucking right to bring that up now, what the fuck is wrong with you.”
“What’s wrong with me is you! You decide you’re leaving the only place you’ve ever lived in within the week I last saw you and didn’t even think to discuss it with me? Even after the month we’ve had — even after the life we’ve had?”
You stare at him, and he can see the redness in your eyes like he had seen before you broke down at the wake.
He wants to get down on his knees and put his forehead to your feet and apologize, hold you and never let you go.
You’re leaving.
“It’s my life, not yours.”
“It’s my life, too. You know this.”
“No. I don’t fucking know this, because I’ve worked my ass off for the past 17 years to get to law school and graduate and work at the best fucking law firm in the country. It’s not your fucking life —“
“You’ve killed yourself for all this—”
You stand up from his couch, and turn away so he doesn’t see your tears fall.
“You’ve fucking killed yourself. You worked like a dog since middle school to get into that pretentious private school, and you worked even harder to get to Columbia. You never had a fucking dream, you never had a childhood because you killed yourself to get to this point. You never had time to have a fucking ‘life’ or whatever you call it because all you’ve ever done is work for some stupid fucking goal.”
You sob once, twice, and Jungkook has to put a hand to his heart so he doesn’t die on the spot.
“And you can’t tell me that I don’t know this because I’m the only one who knows this! I’m the only person you’ve ever told about this and it fucking hurts because I love you, and it fucking hurts because you’re leaving me —“
“Because my best friend is leaving me,” he backtracks.
Best friend. Because you don’t know, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to have the heart to tell you.
“And it hurts because my best friend is leaving me and she didn’t even think to mention this before.”
“You didn’t think to mention Nayoung even once in this aforementioned ‘month’ we had,” the quotes you make with your fingers do nothing but show him how much you’re shaking. He wants to grab your hands and tell you that it’s okay; that you don’t need to cry and that he has you.
That he’ll always have you.
(But he won’t, because you’re leaving.)
You’re leaving, and you’re talking about Nayoung for some reason.
“Yeah, because we had sex one fucking time! I don’t even like her, why the fuck would I bring her up — and why are you bringing her up like fucking a girl is anywhere similar to moving halfway across the world.”
You sob once, twice, and when you turn around to face him, he feels like he’s holding his dead heart in his cold hands and watching it try to come to life.
“I’m bringing it up because you love her, and you didn’t even bother to tell me.”
“I don’t fucking love her.”
I love you. I love you, why do you think I love her —
Why do you think he loves Nayoung, and why does your face fall when you say it, and why did you start to ignore him the day he told you that he’d had sex with her?
“You do. She’s the one that got away, and she’ll be here so it doesn’t fucking matter —“
“Stop saying that it doesn’t matter. Stop saying that you don’t matter.”
“Because I don’t, Jungkook,” a sob breaks your sentence and it feels like his world has just come crashing down when he realizes how you feel about yourself. “I’ve lived here for 23 years and nobody knows shit about me and you’re right, it’s because I shut myself away, but nobody bothers anyways and I’ve worked so hard to get here so I’m gonna take the chance to leave, so I don’t have to not matter anymore, so I can like… change.”
“You don’t have to change, ___”
Your name on his lips is a prayer, a silent hope to the god he only remembered when he was fucking somebody, a plea and the final chance he gets to have you.
“Don’t change, __”
Don’t let her leave me, God. Don’t let her change, don’t let her go.
“How can you ask that of me?”
He hears his mothers laugh from when he told her he wanted to be a ninja. He decides that he doesn’t want to be a ninja, or a computer science major, or an artist. He decides that he wants you to know how madly in love with you he is.
“Because I love you.”
“I love you too, Jungkook.”
“No — fuck, I’m in love with you.”
Your stare is dumbfounded, like he’s just told you that he’s a vampire hybrid or something else completely unorthodox. He would laugh at the look typically, but he feels empty, like the compression that had been a steady pressure on his chest for the past few days had lifted, only to be replaced with a pain unlike any other, because what if this messes it up more?
What if you would originally go to London and keep tabs with him and be in his life, and what if he’s told you this and turned you off the idea of ever even looking in his direction again.
What if you don’t love him back?
“You’re in love with me.”
He nods, silently swallowing as he tries to whisper a prayer to whatever god is listening that whatever you say won’t end in you leaving for good.
“You’re in love with me?”
“I am. I have been. I am. I’m in love with you, I’ve been in love with you, and I don’t even remember how long it’s been since it first happened.”
“Jungkook —“
You chuckle, and it should break his heart because it seems like you’re on the road to mocking him, but he feels his heart rejuvenate in his arms when he hears the sound of your laugh. It sounds like a metaphor he’s been trying to write down for ages. It sounds familiar, it sounds intimate, and his name rolling off your tongue is a balm he presses over the open wound of his chest to soothe it.
“Jungkook — you’re in love with me, and not Nayoung?”
He can’t speak, isn’t used to the lightness in his chest.
He shakes his head, and he swears he sees the world light up behind your eyes. He swears you’re the prettiest girl in the entire world, even when tears track down your face and even when you’re red-eyed and have a snotty nose from crying.
(Especially then.)
“Fuck.”
“Fuck, Jungkook, I’m in love with you too. I am. I have been. I’m in love with you, and I’ve been in love with you for as long as —“
You won’t finish that sentence, he decides, taking one long stride towards you to close the distance between your bodies. Your face in his hands is warm, a little sticky from the tears, and your lips are chapped. He doesn’t doubt that he’s in any better of a condition, but you look up at him through your wet eyelashes and he’s had enough.
He’s had enough of yearning, and pleading, and wondering if you love him back because you do. He’s had enough of waiting and wondering why he keeps thinking of you because he wants to think of you.
In fact, he thinks he’s open to thinking of you forever.
So he kisses you, and he thanks his lucky stars when you kiss back, for blessing him with the embodiment of them in the form of you, a girl who shone so brightly that he couldn’t see the love cooped up in her eyes until she cried, told him she was moving to London, and kissed him in his living room.
He thinks he could die happy, but he doesn’t want to die when he finally has you.
Finally has you.
(Except, you could be leaving.)
Jungkook ignores this because you tilt your head so his lips slot against yours better, and he can barely focus on anything other than the way you feel and the fact that he’s kissing his best friend — kissing the love of his life.
He bared his heart and walked through hell for this, and if the way he feels right now is redemption, he’d do it all over again.
—
It starts with you on a table, umbilical cord freshly cut, wrapped up in a pretty pink fluffy blanket. Jungkook, just a one year old, stares blankly, and starts crying in his mothers arms.
It starts in the suburbs of New York City, where you lose yourself between textbook pages and Jungkook wonders what he’ll ever amount to being.
It starts with your boyfriend dying, and the way shaken espressos feel on your tongue. It starts with Jungkook seeing you cry for the first time, and it starts with you wondering if you can ever love someone.
It starts with law school, and a three week gap in your final year during which you and Jungkook don’t talk. He finds himself thinking of you, and you text him, asking to meet up for dinner.
It starts with him asking you about a friend of yours, and you getting vigorously upset, uncalled for and downright appalling on Jungkook’s part.
It starts with you calling him to apologize while he makes a drunken mistake. It starts with you meeting him to apologize and promising to do better; it starts with him telling you that he doesn’t need you to ‘do better’ like it’s a standardized test — that he just needs you to talk to him.
It starts with an amazing month, trailblazing and falling for each other, starts with drunken kisses and getting soaked in the rain and the ruse of being ‘best friends’ and drinking margaritas even though Jungkook doesn’t really like cocktails. It starts with the city of New York, and the anonymous back alleys where millions walk, but nobody lingers long enough to leave a mark.
It starts with him telling you about this drunken mistake, starts with the both of you realizing how madly in love you are with the other. It starts with you accepting a job in London, and it starts with Jungkook calling his ex and figuring out that it’s always been you.
It starts with an argument encased in the walls of his living room, where you empty your heart out and he empties his, starts with accusations that he loves somebody else and utter silence because he can’t tell you that he loves you.
There’s a million beginnings to this story, thousands of waking moments that could’ve been the moment both of you knew, hundreds of little sparks that ignited into the brilliant flame of the love between the two of you, but there’s only one ending.
This is the end of yearning; his lips are on yours, and his warm hands are holding your body like if he lets go, you’ll really be gone. His hands find purchase on every inch of you like he’s trying to map your very existence out with his ten fingers, and you lose yourself when he licks into your mouth, your own hands flying to his face, tracing the little scar beneath his eye, scratching over his sideburns, on an excavation of your own; to discover him and to never let go.
He has you pushed up against the kitchen counter, large hands groping you through your jeans, soft squeezes at the flesh, quiet moans coloring the air when you move your tongue in tandem with his.
Jungkook promises himself to take it slow, but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to honor that thought when your manicured nails play with the hair at his nape, when he feels you pull away so you can get a better look at him —
Fuck, are you a sight to see. Red rimmed eyes, swollen lips, cheeks dusted with the slightest hues of pink; you wear a smile so pretty he thinks he could fall for you all over again, and your warm breath hits his face with every exhale.
You think he’s never looked better, either. His lips are bitten from kissing you, tear tracks down his soft skin, jaw tight and eyes dark when he looks at you as though he’s trying to drink you in like you’re a glass of fine scotch. You rub your thighs together, desperate for some friction to provide even a fraction of relief from this innate need Jungkook’s instilled in you with just one kiss, and he catches your lips in another, clearly wanting this to go the same way you do.
Jungkook encases your face in his hands, he feels you keen against his lips and releases yours to curse lowly. Your hands travel down his chest, toned and warm from hours at the gym, and trace down the trail of hair you know leads down into his underwear. It has him bucking his hips against you lightly and you can barely hold back a moan, readjusting your focus so you can trace the denim of his waistband, letting two of your fingers slip beneath the fabric, rubbing at the elastic of his boxers —
You’re a fucking tease, and Jungkook should’ve known this about you after 23 years but he’d be lying if he said that it wasn’t thoroughly enjoyable. It’s barely been 5 minutes of you fervently making out with him, though, that he realizes how badly he wants you. The bulge in his pants is one indication, but he’s utterly surrounded by you — your cologne, your soft sounds, breathless whimpers, incredulous gaze like you can’t really fathom this; he gets it, he’s horrified that he’ll wake up in his bed and you won’t love him back and you won’t be kissing him and feeling him up like this, and he needs to feel you, needs the reaffirmation, needs you to fall apart between his sheets. He needs everything you have to offer, needs to smell your shampoo on his pillowcases and your perfume on his shirts and he might as well should just die if he’s waited this long to stall some more.
Two hands trail down your back, pads of his fingers pressing into the little dimples at the bottom of your spine before they land on the junction of your thighs. His eyes are stuck on yours, like he’s too afraid to even look away, and you smile against his jaw.
“Jump, baby,” it’s a whispered order, too silent for anybody but you to have heard it, and the thought makes your brain go numb for a second — it’s you and him now, your whispered secrets and hushed tales, it’s the two of you and this space you’ve curated, even if it was out of your own heartbreak. You can’t do anything but oblige; fuck, you might as well should just die if you don’t hang on to every word that leaves the tip of his tongue.
Your legs find home around his waist, and he carries you to his room, telling his high school self and college self and every single past existence of his that you’re his. He’s mapping out this floor with you in his arms, and though they’ve been around many women, he doesn’t think any one of them have fit like you do. It’s simple intimacy, you can see sunlight pouring into the living room as he carries you out, you see the art he has framed, and you see traces of his roommate strewn around the apartment. You wonder what his and your apartment will look like, wonder if he’ll like the interior design you do, and decide that if he doesn’t, you’ll let him choose whatever.
The door to his room shuts behind you, and you notice the only photo frame he has contains a picture of the two of you.
Your eyes tear away from the glass frame in fear of breaking down again, and you choose to look at him. You choose to look at his eyes that hold all the stars in your skies, you choose to run your finger over the curve of his face and the slant of his nose and his Cupid’s bow. You choose to bask in his presence, feel all of his body pressed against you and feel him uncomfortably hard against your thighs — it’s a bit filthy, but you’ll take anything when it comes to Jungkook, and you let that thought linger when you lean forward to kiss him again.
Jungkook closes his eyes because he doesn’t think he can look into yours without going insane. He hasn’t shut his curtains, so the sunlight lands on your face and highlights all the angles and all the slopes and he thinks that he should memorize the planes of your face, that it’ll give him a reason to stay alive. Your lips smack softly, and he readjusts his hips so he can grind the clothed bulge in his jeans against your own, and his thighs stutter just a smidge when you let out the sweetest moan he’s ever heard in his life.
His fingers trail their way down from your waist, pulling gently at the hem of your shirt, a silent final exit just in case you want to back out, but you don’t let him even consider the thought of you leaving when you pull your own shirt off your head. It’s an aggressive jerk, one that catches him off guard and following you, abandoning the piece of clothing somewhere in the corners of his room.
Even when you’re just in your bra, he can’t stop looking at your eyes. He can’t stop thinking of you, how you’re in his bed and how he has you with him now and how he’ll have you with him forever if he has anything to do with it. Jungkook never doubted that you were attractive, not even for a slight second, but he doesn’t dare look at you, near naked and in all your glory in front of him — he wonders if this is what Icarus felt like, wanting to fly so close to the sun because he loved Helios too much, and he vows that he’ll be careful, he won’t look too quickly and that he’ll be gentle because he cannot stand even the idea of losing you, even if he’d be the one crashing and burning.
You pull him closer by the name, and his hands go to cradle your bare shoulders. Before he can even process the proximity, your lips are on his neck, and they’re soft, warm: they’re everything he’s ever wanted and he feels like he’s been set aflame because he’s lived his whole life not really knowing what he wanted, but he knows now. Your lips on his skin are the tantalizing fruit that's been dangling behind his head the whole time and he can see it, can feel it and he can feel it; all he’s ever wanted is you, and he lets himself go, voice breathy and untethered to his own self as he moans, incoherent pleas for you to keep going.
Jungkook prays he’ll see marks tomorrow, if this is even real. He prays that you leave a tangible sign, a purple bruise on his golden skin as a reminder that this was once real. If you leave after he’s made love to you, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to recover from it, but if you leave your mark; the indent of your teeth and the faded stain of your lipstick, he thinks it’ll be enough to satiate him.
You’re not one to waste time, apparently, fingers tracing down his abs agonizingly fast before Jungkook can process the touch, reaching for the button on his jeans so he can be free, get inside you, because it’s been way too fucking long and you need him sheathed within your body like you’re entwined, like you’re one entity. You reckon the thought is one of the filthiest ones you’ve ever had, but it doesn’t matter, because you can feel yourself soaking through your panties and you run cold like ice, wanting him to melt you — needing him to melt you.
This will be your new beginning; fuck London, you decide. Fuck London if it means you have him like this, the pads of his fingers running like feathers over your skin, leaving chills in their wake. This will be your new beginning, his lips grazing over your collarbones as he grinds his hips into yours just hard enough for you to feel through your jeans. This will be your new beginning, desperately bucking your hips up to meet him halfway, to gain some much needed friction until he decides to stop giving you the tantalizing guise of what you need, until he decides to unbutton your jeans with daft digits,, pulling them until you lay before him in all your glory.
Jungkook has never known religion until he sees you like this. The curves of your body and the slope of your waist and the way your bra just barely covers your breasts and the way your panties sit on your hips and your collarbones illuminated by the sun that desperately laps at your soft skin like it, too, wants to have you wholly. He has never known a God until he thanks Him for you, thanks his lucky stars that he has you in front of him, fights the urge to sink to his knees and pray that you don’t disappear into a brilliant beam of light like you were nothing but a figment of his imagination.
His cock strains, and he reaches out to stroke the lace of your panties so gently, almost like he’s afraid to leave a mark, though he yearns for yours on his skin. You want to ink the calluses of his fingers so they leave permanent imprints on your body, so you feel the rough drag forever, but it's only an afterthought when he begins to rub at your clit through the fabric. The added friction feels like heaven on your tongue, like you can taste the waning of yearning on the tip of your tongue –
“Fuck, Jungkook,” your voice sounds dazed in your own ears, and he shifts your panties aside to rub your wetness all over your sex, thumb rubbing slow circles over your clit as his fingers tease your entrance. If there was a way to put the bliss, the desperation into words, you’re sure that you could talk for hours. You hear his breathing, heavy like he’s incredulous, in utter disbelief, and you hear the unrecognizable keens of his name.
“I know, baby. I know, I love you. Lemme have you.”
He repeats it like a prayer, those three words running like water off his tongue as he rubs tight eight-figures of your clit. Eyes raking your figure, he drinks in the tilt of your head backwards, a tattoo on your shoulder blade that he makes a note to ask you about, the bend of your elbows and the way your stomach tightens. Jungkook tries to take his time, but his fingers are drenched in your arousal and he deems you wet enough to slip his index finger in.
You moan, high and unadulterated, and he moans, low and throaty; it feels like you’re complete, and he can’t help but wonder how your walls would feel on his cock. You suck him in, pussy greedy for something to fill it, and he does his best to affirm this when he bends down to catch your lips within his again –
“Shit, doll, you’re soaking me… look at your sweet cunt, look at how she’s taking me,” he uses his free hand to tilt your chin downwards, and the pink of your bitten lips distracts him for just a second before he pushes another finger in.
“Jungkook – ah, fuck, more please, more,” you let your mind go adrift, thinking about how good you feel and then thinking of nothing at all when he curls his fingers in an upwards motion, rendering you speechless and fucked silly. The thought of what his cock would do is lost among a myriad of unsullied pleasure, and you don’t know whether it's because you haven’t cum in so long, but you’re dangerously teetering over the edge of your release, continuing to beg him to just throw you over.
He tells you he has you, eases another finger in until the tears that prickle the corners of your eyes finally spill over. He licks them away, rutting his hips up into his free hand like it gets him off, seeing you cry for him, seeing you writhe under him. He knows it's too much, knows that you’re close like he’s done this a million times before, like your body is his own.
“I’m f– fuck, so fucking close,” you can feel the coil in your lower belly so close to snapping that it makes you want to run away from the feeling. It’s all too much, because his thumb feels rough on your clit and his fingers are jackhammering into you like he has a point to prove, because he’s calling you his and his voice is echoing somewhere in the back of your mind, because all you can do is squirm and push your hips up to get yourself over the precipice of pleasure –
“Fu- fu- uck, Jesus –”
“I gotchu honey, let go for me, just let go, ‘m always hare, let go for me –”
What you expect to be a wave, crashing into you like the realization that you loved him had, is nothing but a soft roll of ecstasy taking ahold of every inch of your skin. It starts in your head, numbing your senses and then heightening them, makes its way down to your arms until you’re clawing at Jungkook’s because it’s so fucking good, rolls down your legs until you clench your toes, grapples at your throat until your voice is choked out and all you can do is pant helplessly. What you expect to be a wave is a slow pulse that leaves you breathless and staring up at Jungkook who seems to be mesmerized by the expression you’re wearing, fingers slowing within you as he helps you ride it out.
“Fucking hell, baby. You’re stunning,”
You laugh, out of it and incredulous as he presses a kiss – too chaste for the mind-blowing orgasm he’s just given you – to your temple.
“Gonna make me do that everyday, Jeon?”
“You can count on it, angel. I’ll make you do that every single day.”
The two of you move in tandem, knowing that this wasn’t nearly enough to satiate you both; your hands fly to his jeans, pulling his zipper down and yanking the fabric off of his legs. Jungkook’s laugh is breathy, pupils still blown out as he watches you try to get him naked and he lets you.
He lets you strip him until his skin is bare, watches you rake your eyes over his figure and pause at the ink of his arms. He vows to tell you about all the secret tattoos he’s gotten that remind him of you; that he got because of you, but all he can focus on is the way your eyes go dazed and glossy when you push down his boxers to pull his cock out.
You’re well aware that Jungkook is beautiful, and he’s never doubted his physical appearance for more than a split second since college, but he never thought that his dick would be the center of said attention. Fuck, he has a pretty cock; it’s thick and your mouth waters at the angry vein running down the underside of it, desperate to get your mouth on him and savor the weight of him on your tongue. It curves up, pretty mushroom tip having been rendered a dark red from when he was getting you off, the pearly beads of pre-cum that spill over the sides of it when you rub your hand over his length a stark contrast.
He buckles over, hand splaying over your stomach as he lets out a choked groan at the contact, and you can feel the wetness of the sheet underneath you as you see him lose himself underneath your touch. You could do this forever, and the inexplicable urge to just get him in your mouth takes over your body reflexively, but Jungkook doesn’t let you act on it; his warm fingers press down on your skin, and he lets his free hand replace yours on his cock.
“Gonna fuck you real good, darling. You’re gonna feel it all the way — shit — all the way up to here,” he pumps his cock like he’s trying to deprave himself of your pussy on purpose and your eyes desperate search for his, no longer trusting your brain to form adequate words to explain just how badly you need him to fuck you.
He knows, he knows you like the back of his hand, and he knows how much you need and crave this. Just as quick as he’d gotten your hands off of him, he presses himself to your entrance, rubbing the head of his cock up and down your embarrassingly wet slit. The squelching would typically have you curl in on yourself, but it’s Jungkook, and you’ve let every wall down around him and it feels so fucking incredible when he rubs his dick against your sensitive clit that you just cannot bring yourself to care;
“Please, please Jungkook —“
“I know, I know baby, shhh… just relax for me and I’ll make this so good, ‘kay? That’s my girl,” the hand on your stomach goes lax when you exhale, letting him align himself with your entrance and ease himself in.
He gets his tip in with surprising deftness, rubbing over your torso when you tense your body. He knows you’re not a virgin, he’s done this before and so have you, but with each other? It feels holy, like you’re coming back to earth and coming back to the person each of you is meant to be with.
His inked hand goes to cradle your face, pushing your hair away from your tear-stricken skin, kissing away at the new tears that threaten to slip from your eyes. You breathe out at his touch, and he pulls out all the way to thrust back into you, slipping in and filling you all the way to the brim.
A choked moan leaves you, and your simultaneous gasps color the air, mingling and dissipating as the two of you mold into one entity. Jungkook forgets the Bible verses about adultery, things of new beginnings and redemption and how you’re the Holy Grail he tried so hard to find when you were right there. He curses himself for not doing this earlier, for realizing so late, but it’s all so worth it when you give an experimental roll of your hips, bucking upwards to get him to move.
Jungkook thinks he would give you anything, take chunks out of the moon if you so looked at it with desire, and he thinks that he’ll lay his body down for you if you even implied that you wanted him to. He thrusts into you, a gritty moan leaving his throat when he feels your walls, warm and wet and fluttering around his cock. Your pussy is greedy for him, milking his every drop and he knows you can feel him, knows you feel everything.
He’s right, too, because the veins of his cock, every ridge and every edge of it is fully sheathed within you. When his shallow thrusts get longer, deeper, when he bucks his hips upwards to fuck you just right, when you look down at his hand and see the bulge of his cock in your stomach — fuck, it’s exhilarating, and he seems to notice it too, following your gaze and letting his hips lose their well adjusted rhythm for just a split second.
“G-god Jungkook, so fucking full — shit.”
“Yeah, you are. Fuck, fuck, I told you. Told you I’d fill your greedy little cunt up.”
You think this is the only side of Jungkook you haven’t seen, so when he continues to talk, confidence and this natural allure of dominance absolutely dripping off of him, you thank whatever deity is up there for letting you have him.
“Look at you, tsk tsk. Baby, you kept this pretty pussy away from me for so fucking — shit — long?”
His moans are nothing compared to the high keens, pornographic breathy whimpers that leave your throat. It’s like he’s ripped off every barricade you put up in front of you, has you naked and bare and begging in his sheets like you were made for this, fucks you like your pussy was made for this.
“How’d you keep her satisfied without me, darling?”
He leans down, hands still playing with your hair and holding onto your face in a way that you know will leave pink fingerprints — in a way that makes you wonder if he even believes this is real, grasping onto you so he can reassure himself that you’re tangible. You see the knot in his brows, feel the murmur of his words against your jaw when he presses his lips to the bone, catch the tension in his abdomen as he tries to keep his rhythm.
You’re sure he won’t have to, though, because there’s something about the way he’s leaning down into you, the way he’s thrusting into you so deep, never slow but never too fast, the way he snakes one hand between your bodies to rub at your clit, knowing he won’t be able to last long inside of you. All of it has your head spinning, and you’re not sure if you’ll ever experience anything this riveting, this revitalizing before. It feels like you’re closer to being born again with every thrust, with every bit of the coil in your stomach tightening —
He presses his forehead to yours, thumb rubbing circles onto your clit, cock prodding against just the right spot like he’s practiced this only for you, only for you. Your eyes meet, and you see tears in the corner of his own eyes, you feel his hand trembling in your hair as he tries to leave traces of his prints on every inch of you — you lock your legs around his waist, and the new angle is like the straw on the camel’s back as you’re thrown so violently over the edge that it catches you off guard.
This one is a wave, drenching you and drenching his cock and the sheets and the miles of skin that connect the two of you. He lets out a deep groan, lips connecting to the column of your throat when you throw your head back, nails digging deep into the skin of his shoulders so as to lessen the blow.
Fuck, he wants you to leave his back scratched and bloody, needs a reminder of this rebirth; needs the sting of you permanently imprinted if it on his body, then in his brain.
You get the memo, clearly, running the sharp acrylics up and down the toned expanse of his back as you just barely catch your breath — it comes in pants, the achy pleasure of overstimulation creeping its way up your spine.
If he doesn’t come inside of you, it’ll be his biggest regret. You’re smart, he knows you’re on the pill and he knows you would’ve told him to pull out, wouldn’t have had your legs wrapped around his waist if you didn’t want this just as bad as he did, but he opens his mouth to ask anyways.
“Come inside, baby. I — fuck. I fucking love you, I’ll love you forever, come inside of me, please.”
The deliriosity of your orgasm, along with the continuous sensation of being fucked senseless as Jungkook loses his rhythm and resorts to jackhammering into you, chasing his high like you’re nothing but a toy to do it; all of it pushes you into overdrive and you babble, begging for him to finish inside like it’s the only thing you can think of.
He doesn’t dare look away from your face, mapping every second within his brain, feeling the familiar feeling of an orgasm washing its way up to shore. He’s sure you’re on the same page, too, recognizing the face he’s seen twice now etch itself back onto your features —
You cum for a third time when his hips stutter and he buckles over your body, hand never moving from your head, cradling it like the contact is keeping him grounded. You feel the warm ropes of his cum paint your insides, and the third orgasm is nowhere near as intense as the others, just a gentle pulsation of pleasure and a bout of love that you don’t think you’ve ever felt before blooming over your heart.
Jungkook collapses next to you, dirty sheets be damned when he throws his inked arms over your body. For a while, neither of you find it in yourselves to talk — it’s barely even the orgasms, more so the fact that the two of you are best friends who are madly in love with each other, the fact that you’ve just told each other this and then proceeded to have the most mindblowing sex the either of you could even imagine, all within the span of an hour or so.
He’s first to make a move, lifting your chin so you look at him, smiling down at you so gently that you feel every bit of insecurity — every worry that’s already clouding your mind about the future, London, all of it — disappear.
You match his gaze, trying to read what is so clearly written in his eyes. I love you, they say, twinkling brighter than the golden rays of sunshine that pour through his poorly strewn curtains. It’s hard to speak so you don’t, opting to reach up and slot your mouth against his.
Jungkook swears he’s been given a second chance at life when you kiss him, and he decides to plan it out better this time. The thought goes away quicker than he’d like, though, because you slip your tongue into his mouth and his brain short circuits for the umpteenth time that day. It’s hard to imagine anything being difficult if you kiss him like this, it’s hard to imagine struggle, hard to imagine dissatisfaction, hard to imagine not being in love with every waking moment of his life when he’s this madly in love with you.
You pull away.
“I’m not worried, by the way.”
He grins, leaning into your smaller frame to press a kiss against the junction of your shoulder.
“I know. I’m not either.”
“We‘re gonna make it work?”
“Yeah. Of course. It’s us, ___. We’ll make it work.”
—
Jungkook doesn’t like summer, but he thinks you make it better. You graduate law school a week after he graduates college, and he’s in the front row watching you give your high honors speech before getting your degree. You tell Cravath that you can’t work in London, and ask AJ if he’s willing to quit Wachtell Lipton and take your place.
He tells you that he thinks he’s in love with you, that he’s happy you’ve found love with Jungkook, and takes the job.
You decide to give New York a second chance that summer; decide to give yourself a new beginning as you start to work and don’t immediately take immense bouts of stress upon yourself. Jungkook thinks about what he really wants to do, and though he takes a job that is gratuitously well paying – bless the Comp Sci starting salary – he thinks he wants to freelance art on the side.
–
When fall rolls around, you stand in the kitchen with your mother. The two of you look out at Jungkook and your father turning pages of old photo albums, and she tells you that she’s proud of you. You wonder if this is what it feels like to be avenged. It gets colder, and Jungkook gets you all the white mochas you want to drink, especially when you drive up to the cemetery to see your ex in early October. The two of you lay down orange roses, and you tell him that you’ll always love him in a way nobody else knows – Jungkook is proud, you’re proud, and for the first time in years, your heart doesn’t feel heavy when he drives around that part of town.
Jungkook paints portraits of you in the living room of the apartment you share. The two of your extremely well-paying jobs had let you buy a penthouse in Greenwich Village, and you’re just grateful you can find someplace to call home. Speaking of living together, Mingyu had enrolled himself into a sobriety program when Jungkook had forced him to watch that TED Talk, only this time neither of them had been high.
You tell Jungkook’s parents, too, and their excitement is nowhere near as gentle as your parents’ had been. His mom cries, and his dad tells you that he’s been rooting for you and Jungkook for ages.
(As it turns out, Jungkook had been rooting for him and yourself for ages as well.)
–
Winter follows, encasing New York in an icy chill but your heart has never been warmer. You have a classic NYC Christmas, doing all the insanely cliche tourist activities that are manageable. Nayoung moves out of state as well, and Jungkook cries into her shoulder at the airport. You’re there with him every second of every day – baking cookies, forcing him to take notes when the two of you watch Die Hard together for the first time, in his sweaters, in his sheets, in his heart.
Jungkook’s art sells well, he loves this city, and he still loves getting 2Bros with you – he even forces you to get the meat pizza he’s devoured for years, and you decide that while it’s not so bad, that you’ll continue to make fun of him for it. A tradition, just like the coke floats you still buy in sub-zero temperatures.
He makes you a shaken espresso in February, and you tell him it tastes incredible.
You stop putting walls up, and he learns to actually talk about his feelings, and you’re still the same toddlers from two decades ago; a bit immature, bound to end up together, and totally susceptible to throwing your ice cream cones on the ground if the other shoes any semblance of an injury.
–
New beginnings are for spring, though. Months after his birthday and yours have passed, months after new years, right when the first flowers bloom and the cold starts to whisper it's goodbyes, right when he realizes it’s nearly been a year since the day he’d randomly thought of you and set lose this insane chain of events – right in the middle of April, he decides he’s going to marry you.
It won’t be anytime soon, but seeing as how you’re steadily progressing in your career, and he’s earning more with his art than with his job? The budget for a wedding is definitely on the table, and he vows to officially make you his one day.
Some day.
(He already has the ring in his cart on the Cartier website.)
(Mingyu comes out of the program a few weeks later, and Jungkook asks him to be the best man.)
(You’re on the same page, if the wedding themed Pinterest board he sees you shut with insane speed is any indication.)
–
You love infinitely, filled to the brim and overflowing with it; so much so that it gets overwhelming at times, but neither of you go. You choose him, and he chooses you, and seasons go by and Jungkook figures out the direction he wants to go in this new life, and you learn to be gentle with yourself, and neither of you go.
And so it goes.
You and Jungkook, two kids grow into two adults in the most marvelous city in the world. A million possible beginnings in the span of two decades, but one conclusion; one ending: the both of you aren’t flawless – it’s hard to be – you’re just bad at being alone.
—
a/n: U GUYS ITS HEREEEEE. I’m sorry for the incessant word vomit and unnecessarily long smut scene it was important for the plot development hehe. and if u feel bad for AJ and Nayoung… so do I! this is also a birthday fic for my love jungkook and I hope he has the bestest day in the entire universe I love U my little virgo sweet boy I should Kiss u a million times
taglist: @bumblerebbee @brownapsara @smolbitchwithcakes @allfryou @carmen-j @1316s @yoonjinsyy @bishuthot @ahundredtimesover @readingfavorites
#jungkook#jungkook smut#jungkook drabbles#bts#jungkook x reader#bts jungkook#jeon jungkook#jungkook/reader#jungkook blurbs#jungkook angst#happy birthday jungkook#jungkookday#bts smut#bts fics#jungkook fics#jungkook oneshot#jungkook oneshots#jungkook au#jungkook fic
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Can't have this day go by without a little Anidala love, so here's a little snippet to celebrate my fave ship of all time!
Nothing explicit mind you, but also adding a forewarning of just a little spice to be found under the cut. 😏 Happy Valentine's Day! ❤️
The day after our wedding was a steady waterfall of warm summer rain.
Anakin and I didn't care.
Truth be told, I'm not sure we would have even noticed had Naboo blessed us with another temperate day. Our itinerary likely would have remained the same.
In the twenty-six hours immediately following our sunset ceremony, we were completely and totally absorbed in each other. Part of me thinks we were trying to even the playing field after having navigated so much of our fledgling relationship dealing with emotional walls, mental anguish, and societal constraints. For one standard day, we let our bodies figure out how to catch up.
Now I know what you're thinking. How can two newlyweds experiencing the thrill of physical intimacy for the first time possibly know what they were doing?
For most beings, at least of the human species, the first time is usually woefully subpar at best, and cringingly awful at worst. At least, my sister would agree with you on this point. After her incessantly haranguing me for the details, I told Sola that Anakin and I only left our bedroom for actual sustenance and to retrieve new sheets - one of our spontaneous excursions to the veranda ended up soaking the bedding with rain water and sweat. Eyeing me dubiously, she laughed with amused pity.
"Oh Mé-Mé" she said, smiling and thinking my perspective still naive and bordering on exaggeration. "No one is that good the first time"
Smirking right back at her, I had simply shrugged, my eyes shining with their own brand of knowing.
As I told you before, Anakin was a very quick learner when the task before him aligned with his own desires. Believe me, physicality is something he excels at.
Later, he would confess to using the Force. Not to unfairly influence my experience or perception of our "aggressive negotiations", but more as a guide.
It whispered to him the secrets of my body like a road map, telling him when to press his advantage, where to send a fleeting touch or kiss, how to stoke the flames of my desire until I was burning for him, aching for him. It told him what angles worked to dissolve me into a puddle of nothing. It told him exactly where to be when, something I myself in those early days didn't even understand I wanted, let alone know how on Naboo to communicate those wishes to him.
But once he learned those sacred routes, he never forgot them.
Anakin showed me the stars, and I became a Skywalker in more ways than one.
#anakin skywalker#padme amidala#anidala#star wars#fanfic writer#snippet#sugar and spice#valentines day
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Dressing for Revenge
Ghostface!Ethan Landry x ghostface!reader
Not my gif
Warning(s): scream VI spoilers, canon typical violence, mentions of blood, mostly fluff tbh
Word count: 2.5k words
Request: Could you do a Ethan x reader where they are both ghostface? Maybe the reader got cut while trying to kill one of the core 4 and they get suspicious when they see the reader limping or something and then Ethan and the reader talk about it after?
masterlist
It was supposed to be easy. Surprise the group after a night out, get them to freak the fuck out so they would rely more heavily on Wayne, and then act like nothing was wrong.
But of course, when did things go your way?
You had it all planned; the core four, as they called themselves, were having dinner out in a restaurant to rekindle after a few stressful weeks of college and work— nothing out of the extraordinary. What you had planned for later, however, was.
Ethan had told you they had been tense recently, ever since the new ghostface attacks had begun to pop up on the news. Chad would flinch whenever you closed a door too loudly, hands going to the phantom wounds on his stomach as if to stop a bleeding that was no longer happening; Sam would look at everyone in the street with a deathly stare that had even made a girl freak out and cross the street; Mindy spent most of her nights locked in her room, trying to figure out who the new killer was, and their motive, to the point she canceled date nights with Anika, too absorbed in her mysteries; Tara simply pretended nothing was wrong, too focused on wanting to live a normal life to truly allow herself the time to realize in just how much danger she was really on.
Tension was palpable in the apartment, Quinn summered up. You could tell Chad was tense as well, what with almost living with him, since you spent more time at Ethan’s than your own dorm.
It was the perfect moment to attack.
So you waited, waiting outside their apartment complex. Your mask covered your face, just like Ethan’s— your breathing was starting to get heavy, and you were thankful for the cold breeze, because the robe was starting to make your hands sweat. You had been in the alley for a good fifteen minutes, waiting for them to appear. It was your first time doing this, but you were ready. You wanted to make them pay for what they did.
You never met Richie, and if you were asked, you would say you really didn’t care about him— how could you, when you didn’t know of his existence until Ethan showed up one day in your dorm, crying about his brother? No, you couldn’t care less about Richie and his stupidity to get himself killed, but the look on Ethan’s face as he mourned his brother, the man who taught him how to ride a bike and chew gum without swallowing it, it broke your heart. It made you wrap your arms around him, allowing him to cry into your shoulder for as long as he needed.
In a macabre way, you were glad Richie was dead. His death brought Ethan and you together, so close you felt like you were made just for him. So when he knocked on your door one night, hair sticking out as he told you about his father’s plan, you grabbed his hand, looked into his eyes and said “I’m in.”
Wayne had been mad at Ethan for telling you about the death plan, as Quinn so inconspicuously called it, but with time he had realized you were truly willing to be part of everything.
Which led you to where you were now: holed up in a dark alley, eying everyone as they walked by, patiently waiting for the right time.
“How are you?” Ethan asked. His voice was strange, so unlike him that you almost asked him to turn off the voice changer. You didn’t, however, not wanting to risk him getting caught. Instead, you slipped your arm around his torso, resting your head carefully on his shoulder.
“Fine,” you said. A chill went down your body at the sound of your own voice. Once all of this was over, you promised yourself you would destroy every voice changer you had the misfortune of running into.
“I can’t believe you did that.”
Ethan and you immediately straighten up at the sound of Tara’s laugh. “Of course I did,” Chad said. He had an arm around Tara’s shoulder. Behind them, Mindy was giggling alongside his twin and his girlfriend, and Sam was looking at her phone, relaxed.
It was the perfect opportunity.
Ethan and you moved almost in perfect sync, exiting the alley before they could enter the apartment complex. Your boyfriend was fast, probably blinded by the anger fueled by the sight of the happy family as he stabbed Chad’s arm. They were taken by surprise, the black of your robes melting with the shadows casted by the lack of light. Ethan pulled out the knife as Chad screamed, and he moved towards Sam, throwing himself at her as he cut her collarbone, close to her neck.
You didn’t hesitate for long, going after Mindy in a slow and well rehearsed walk. She backed away, searching in her pocket for something, but you didn’t give her time, stabbing her right in the stomach once, then twice, and once again before she fell to the ground.
It scared you how much you enjoyed her gasp of pain.
Chad threw himself at you, but you managed to avoid his grasp; had you not, you knew your cover would be blown— Chad was too big for you. Thankfully, you managed to stab him in the back, which made Tara scream. Chad fell to the ground, coughing. You were momentarily surprised by how easily he had been taken down, almost wanting to stab him again just for the pleasure of it, but Tara slammed her purse against your head, disorienting you. It was a miracle the mask hadn’t fallen to the ground.
“Bitch,” Tara said, kicking you in the leg. For someone so small, she surely had strength. Not enough, however, to stop you as you grabbed the knife out of Chad’s back and swung it at her, cutting her across the chest.
“Tara,” Sam said. She was still struggling with Ethan, but judging by the blood seeping into her shirt, you knew Ethan had managed to stab her at least once. She pushed Ethan away, making him trip and fall to the ground. Within seconds, Sam grabbed your knife hand and turned it around, trying to align the weapon right into your heart. Ethan was up quickly, pushing Tara into the ground as he watched the two of you struggle.
You knew it was pointless; Sam was stronger than you. So instead of pushing her away, you moved the knife to the side, and let go. She stabbed you on the arm, making you groan and cry in pain. The movement was smart (or stupid) enough to take Sam by surprise, which Ethan took advantage of; Sam was the last of the core four to fall to the ground, and Ethan’s arms were wrapped around you soon after.
“Are you okay?” He asked. You could only nod as he moved you away from the scene, hiding you as Quinn pretended to hear the noise and scream, calling her father with shaking hands. It was all going as rehearsed, beside your knife sticking out of your arm.
“Perfect. Can’t you tell?” You answered sarcastically.
“I’m taking you back to the apartment,” Ethan said. Police sirens were already breaking the silence that the attack had left.
“Okay.”
━━━ • 𖥸 • ━━━
The knife was removed by careful hands as soon before you made it back to Ethan and Chad’s apartment. You had taken off your robes and mask next, and once you were in Ethan’s apartment, he had taken off your shirt to look at the wound.
“Does it hurt?” He asked. His hand was wrapped around your arm, turning it around to look at the injury.
“Take a wild guess,” you said. Ethan blushed and looked away, and you instantly regretted using that tone. “Sorry, sorry. I’m just— it fucking hurts. I didn’t mean to talk to you like that.”
“It’s okay,” Ethan said, smiling softly at you. “I’m going to cure this, okay?” He got out of the bed, kissing you on the forehead.
“Okay,” you said, sitting up in bed. As Ethan went to his closet to pull out his first-aid kit, you thought of him back in that alley, stabbing people and overtaken by his need for revenge; he felt like a completely different person now, soft and delicate as he disinfected your wound. He apologized everytime you hissed in pain, kissing your shoulder, close to where the cut was.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he wrapped the bandage over your arm. “I should’ve been more careful. You got hurt because of me.”
“Don’t say that,” you murmured, climbing into his lap. You kissed his cheek, running your hand through his hair. Ethan sighed, letting his forehead rest against your shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“It was,” Ethan said. “I dragged you into this. You did all of this just to help me— this is all my fault. You are hurt because I’m a coward.”
“Ethan, baby,” you said, forcing him to raise his head. You looked into his brown eyes. “It isn’t. I’m a grown woman, I’m part of this because I chose to. Don’t say otherwise or I’ll kick your butt.”
Ethan chuckled, looking into your lips. You kissed him, wanting to feel him close to you. You could have died— he could have died. It had been a nerve racking experience, even if you were aware you had brought it upon yourself.
Ethan’s phone vibrated in his pocket. You got off of his lap and watched as he answered the call.
“Hello? Yeah,” Ethan said. “Shit,” there was a small pause. “Yeah, she’s with me. Yeah— totally. We’ll be right there.”
“Who was it?” You asked when he hung up.
“Sam,” Ethan said. “They’re at the hospital. Chad is in pretty rough shape.”
You hated how excited that information got you. Instead you nodded, not letting anything show on your face as you got up and grabbed one of Ethan’s sweatshirts. You put it on carefully, hyper aware of the wound. “Let’s go, then.”
━━━ • 𖥸 • ━━━
“Sam,” Ethan called when he saw the tall brunette. She turned around, and you stopped for a moment, feigning surprise at the state of her clothes. The shirt she was wearing was dirty and covered in blood, and as she got up, you could see a bandage covering her torso.
“What the fuck?” You said, rushing to her side. “Are you okay?” You eyed the blood.
“It’s not mine,” Sam said. “At least not the majority. I used it to cover Chad’s wound. He was stabbed— he has a punctured lung.”
“Stabbed?” You asked, still looking at all the blood. Had you gone too far? “As in…”
“Ghostface,” Sam nodded.
“What about the others?” Ethan asked.
“Tara is okay. A few stitches, but nothing too serious. Mindy is under surgery.”
“Fucking hell,” you said, stepping away from Sam to look her in the eyes. You could see it then: the mistrust, the hesitation to continue talking with you.
“Where were you?” She asked, just as you had predicted.
“At Ethan’s.”
“All night?” She asked, eyebrows frowned.
“No,” you said. You needed to speak before Ethan began talking and messed things up; as much as you loved him, he talked too much when he was nervous. “He came to pick me up at my dorm, and we took a walk before going home.”
“How convenient,” Sam said, crossing her arms.
“Chad told Ethan he’d be out all night. We decided to take advantage of having the apartment for ourselves,” you said, mirroring her posture. You cringed in pain at the fresh wound— it was a small enough gesture, but Sam still noticed. She eyes your arm, and you were aware of what exactly was going on through her mind. “What are you implying?”
“Nothing,” Sam said, shaking her head. “Sorry. Stressful night, that’s all,” she reached over, grabbing you by the arm exactly where she knew ghostface had been stabbed. She squeezed, feigning a sweet gesture, but you knew what she was aiming at. So you let her, eyes on her as you put your hand on top of hers, squeezing. You held your ground, nothing in your face showing the pain that had almost given you away before. Sam pulled away, seemingly satisfied.
“It’s okay,” you said, backing up until you were resting your back against Ethan’s front. “I get it. We’ll be in the waiting room. Call us when you know something.”
“Sure,” Sam nodded. You walked away, giving her a small smile. You could feel her stare burning into your skull— both apologetic for doubting you and hesitant, not willing to drop you as a suspect just yet.
━━━ • 𖥸 • ━━━
“She suspects me,” you said. You had dragged Ethan into one of the bathrooms, ignoring his burning cheeks as he noticed it was the ladies bathroom. “She saw it— I cringed when I crossed my arms. She knows.”
“She can’t know,” Ethan said, watching as you paced back and forth.
“She can’t yet,” you said. “We still need your father to check the wound to see if it needs stitches. If it does—”
“It doesn’t,” Ethan said softly, walking towards you. He grabbed you by the arms, kissing your forehead. “It wasn’t deep enough. We removed it carefully after some time, and there was barely any bleeding. It just needs a few weeks to fully close.”
“Still…” you shook your head, trying to come up with something to make Sam’s suspicions go somewhere else. “She’ll keep an eye on me, and if I suddenly pull away she’d think it’s because I know she knows. Fuck.”
Ethan grabbed your face, kissing you on the nose. “You’re worrying too much,” he whispered. “She’ll notice if you’re so tense around her,” he began to massage your shoulders, and you almost moaned in pleasure— you hadn’t noticed you were so incredibly uptight. You laid your head on his chest, closing your eyes. “So we’re gonna go buy her some food, and we’re gonna act normal. And then we’ll go back home, and my dad will check your wound. Okay?”
You smiled against him, greedily taking in his smell before pulling away. He smelled amazing, like freshly chopped wood on a stormy day, his cologne; you were thankful you had managed to convince him to stop using axe deodorant, because you hated that scent.
“Okay,” you whispered, pulling away from him. You kissed him, allowing him to grab your hand and pull you away from the bathroom and into the hospital cafeteria.
tags: @bob-the-tomato
#ethan landry#ethan landry imagine#ethan landry x reader#scream vi#scream 6#ethan landry x you#ethan landry fluff#scream franchise#jack champion#jack champion x reader#tara carpenter#sam carpenter
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𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 | part one
summary: after absorbing america’s multiversal power, wanda sets out to find you and the twins, but what she finds isn’t what she expected.
warnings: violence, swearing, kidnapping
word count: 1473 (yeah, i got carried away)
view series masterlist: here
Finally, Wanda felt peaceful.
As she stepped through the star-shaped portal, peace filled her for the first time in a long time.
She was finally going to get what she fought so hard for.
Her family.
You, Billy and Tommy hadn’t left Wanda’s mind since she lost you. You three were a constant motivation running through her mind and she was determined not to let you go.
Not again.
When you first appeared in her dreams, Wanda was starstruck that you were real in another universe but full of envy for her alternate self. She was envious of how close you were with 838 Wanda, how you looked at her and she envied how 838 Wanda had you but she didn’t.
But that was all about to change.
Soon she was hit with the cold night air of the new reality and she made her way towards the familiar house.
⊹
You knew something was wrong with Wanda.
Even though it had been weeks since Wanda had mysteriously disappeared only to reappear hours later with blood splattered on her face, You couldn’t help but notice how out of it she seemed. She had assured you that nothing was wrong and that the reason behind her disoriented appearance was that she simply had fallen off of her bike while coming back home from a “late night cruise around the neighborhood”, you still didn’t believe her story. However, for the past few weeks, she seemed more stressed than usual, so you decided to leave it alone, at least for now.
It was around 9PM and Wanda had come down from putting the boys to sleep. After taking notice of how distressed Wanda was, you decided to surprise her with dinner when she came home from picking up the boys from school. She was surprised, to say the least, as she had forgotten that she gave you a house key but that fear was quickly replaced with heartfelt gratitude and adoration once she saw you.
“Tired?” You asked, although you already knew the answer.
She flopped onto the couch with a smIle. “Tired is an understatement”
You grin. "Well, at least," You grab two wine glasses from off the counter. "Today is over." You stroll over to the sofa and hand one of the glasses to her and sit down next to her.
Once you’re both comfortably cuddled up on the couch, she turns to you.
“I, uhm,” She starts, seemingly nervous. “I never got to thank you for dinner”
“It was no problem Wands,” She smiles at the nickname. “That’s what friends are for.”
Of course it is. Friends help each other. But Wanda didn’t feel like the platonic word fit your relationship. Ever since you helped her out of her grief all those years ago, she couldn’t help but feel drawn to you. You were there for her whenever she needed you and that didn’t go unnoticed. Plus you had voluntarily become such a prominent figure in her boys’ lives so it was impossible for her not to feel the way she did towards you.
However, she had no idea if you reciprocated those feelings. But unbeknownst to her, you do.
Wanda was there for you after your parents died, just as you were for her after her husband died. And she is just as much of a comfort to you as you are to her. But she was still grieving her husband and you were afraid that it was still too soon.
“Yeah,” Wanda looked down at the wine glass that was now a quarter full. “Friends.”
You furrowed your eyebrows as you concentrated on her dropped facial expression. “I mean that’s what we are, right? Friends?”
“Yeah, Yeah,” She answered quickly before looking back up at you. “Of course.”
You slowly nodded, as if you were trying to convince yourself of her words.
If you were just friends, why are your faces getting so close?
Before you knew it, the wine glasses in your hands were on the coffee table in front of you and all you could focus on was the woman sitting beside you, your noses millimeters apart. Despite the pleasantness of the moment, you couldn’t help but feel a strange darkness loom over the atmosphere, but you were adorned with Wanda to pay attention.
However before either of you could make a move, screams were heard from upstairs.
You and Wanda sprung from your seats almost immediately, running upstairs while yelling the boys' names. When you got upstairs, Wanda opened the door to Billy and Tommy’s bedroom, only to find two empty beds.
Fear spread onto your face at the realization that the twins weren’t in their rooms and quickly rushed out the door, Wanda following right behind you.
As you got closer and closer downstairs, however, you noticed something abnormal.
There was a portal of some sort and a woman with flowing red hair dressed in a red costume.
This made you stop abruptly, almost causing Wanda to run into you. However she didn’t have time to ask you what was wrong as she saw it.
She saw her.
When the woman looked up the two of you, you recognized her immediately. It was Wanda…only it wasn’t your Wanda.
“No…..” Your Wanda muttered, as if she too recognized the woman but for a completely different reason.
Billy and Tommy were trapped on the other side of the portal, calling out to you and their mother. But the woman or the Wanda standing in front of the glowing star portal had no intent on letting you save them.
“Let them go.” You demanded, without realizing you had stepped in front of your Wanda. The witchy woman in front of you appeared to notice how you instinctively protected the other Wanda and glared between the two of you for it.
“I’m sorry, Y/N,” She says, her voice was different, it was darker and tired. “But I can’t.”
Before you can question anything (and you have a lot of questions), your Wanda steps up. “Yes, you can. Let my children go and we can talk about this.”
You knew your Wanda wasn’t calm, even though she appeared to be. But you were confused as to why she wasn’t trying to hurt the woman that was holding her children hostage and it seems as though she was holding you back from doing so as well. There was definitely something going on that you’re missing.
“No,” The other Wanda said, darkly. “I don’t think we can.”
Before you could comprehend what was happening, the witchy Wanda conjured up red energy from her hands and pushed it towards the two of you. You both jump out of the way quick enough so that it didn’t hit you and you see your Wanda counter the witchy Wanda’s attack with her own, conjuring up her own red energy and throwing towards her.
You, however, were immensely shocked. Since when could Wanda do that?!
Your Wanda eyed you for a second, seeing your shocked expression. She didn’t want you to find out like that, but there was nothing she could do about it now.
The portal had closed behind the witchy Wanda as she fully focused on fighting you two. Although your Wanda had the same power (or so it seems) as the witchy Wanda, you could tell that the witchy Wanda was more skilled (as well as more powerful) with her abilities. This gave your Wanda a major disadvantage when the fighting became more physical.
Knowing that you had to act fast, you grabbed a nearby floor lamp and charged at the witchy Wanda with it. The strike caused her to get a little unbalanced but was able to keep herself steady, surprisingly.
She looked toward you, her dark glare softening. She could’ve killed you by now but she didn’t, it was like she didn’t want to hurt you. She did, however, send a major blast of energy towards your Wanda, flinging her to the wall, immediately knocking her out.
You cried out to her but she couldn’t hear you.
“Don’t worry about her love, it’s just you and me now” The witchy Wanda spoke, possessively. You try to run to your Wanda but you realize that the other Wanda had already tied your hands together using her energy.
“Let go of me you bitch!” You yelled when Wanda opened the portal, trying to pull you through.
She stared at you for a moment, complete shock washing over her features. You had never spoken like that to her in her universe.
You watched in terror as the shock on her face is replaced with violent anger. She then grabs your shoulder and forcibly pushes you through the portal, not even giving her alternate self's house a second glance before walking through the portal and shutting it.
#wanda maximoff#wanda maximoff x reader#wanda x y/n#dark!wanda maximoff#dark!wanda x reader#dr strange in the multiverse of madness#fanfic series#838 Wanda#838 Wanda x reader
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ALWAYS ON MY MIND
chapter five: a lot on my mind
ships: sasha/milla
characters: milla, sasha, agent 33
word count: 4135
ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53435410/chapters/137321758
[chap 1] [2] [3] [4]
-
At least a dozen nightmare creatures surrounded them, not including the three or four dozen further back, held in rocking cages. The room they were in was circular, but it seemed to never end as the rows and rows of cells went back. The nightmares that were closest to them stood eerily still, the fire in their bodies pulsing and glowing, but they remained where they were and didn’t attack. Even more notable than that, though, was the most important element in the room, the pivotal piece to the puzzle that was Lucius Rehm’s mind…
…Lucius himself, levitating above a throne of pink, glowing crystals.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he snarled and glared at them.
Milla felt the hairs on the back of her neck stick up and returned the glare, one hand on Sasha’s back to keep him steady. “What’s the point of all of this, Lucius? What did Ferndale ever do to you?”
“Absolutely nothing!” he sneered. “They were simply in the wrong place at the right time.”
Sasha looked around them, taking note of the unmoving creatures. “How are you still functioning with all these nightmares?” He almost sounded impressed, if not for the circumstances.
“You haven’t figured it out?” Rehm titled his head and smirked. “I thought you Psychonauts were supposed to be smart! These aren’t my nightmares - they’re the nightmares of all the idiots in this one-horse town!” As he said that, Rehm motioned towards a nightmare creature and it slid across the floor, closer to him. He floated towards it and reached one hand down, latching onto the creature’s mouth - its fangs digging into the skin of his hands - and in just a few seconds, Rehm absorbed the essence of the nightmare, leaving a dry husk in its place.
Milla and Sasha stared at one another. She’d never seen or heard of anything like this, and judging by Sasha’s reaction, he hadn’t either.
Rehm laughed and swiped his hand upwards - immediately, Milla felt the ground underneath her and Sasha open up. Before the demonic tendrils could come out to attack, she grabbed him by his arms and levitated them way up into the air, just barely avoiding the strikes. Sasha immediately started PSI-blasting, and Milla dropped him back to the ground so she could join him in their attack.
She wanted to talk more, to try and understand why Lucius was doing the things he’d done, but Milla found it difficult to talk and PSI-blast at the same time. Especially not when Rehm was still shielded and had begun to absorb another nightmare right before their eyes.
Sasha turned his attack towards the nightmare that Rehm was working on, and both Psychonauts were satisfied when the attack didn’t just end Rehm’s absorption, but also seemed to hurt him. He screeched and turned to glare at the two of them, murderous rage in his eyes.
Milla and Sasha looked at one another and smiled, then changed their tactic to fire at the unmoving nightmare creatures around them instead. After significantly injuring six more and listening to Rehm’s agonized screams as they did, they were suddenly squeezed and lifted by a pair of giant, red, telekinetic hands.
Rehm pulled both agents closer to himself, squeezing them so tightly that they could barely breathe, let alone concentrate on attacks.
He was breathing heavily and sweating, looking much worse than he did a minute earlier. “I can always replenish them. You two are wasting your time!” His gaze moved to Milla and lingered on her for a moment, then he smiled. “I can feel an endless supply just waiting to be plucked.”
Milla kicked wildly at him, trying her best to do something while he was squeezing the life out of her. “What…what is your goal here, Lucius?”
“With all this power…” Sasha paused, catching his breath. “...where will it lead?”
In a burst of angry psychic waves, Rehm pulled the both of them even closer. “The power is the goal! With this…with all of these creatures by my side…”
He looked right at Milla, pulled her even closer and smirked evilly at the fear that crossed her face. “...I will never be powerless again.”
Using his telekinetic hand, Rehm tossed Sasha to the side and placed his left hand on Milla’s face. His shield continued to protect him from Sasha’s PSI-blast assault, and Milla’s screams of confusion and pain did nothing to deter him as he pressed his fingers harder against her head.
Sasha didn’t even have time to shout “Get away from her!” before Rehm’s psychic presence was immersed into Milla - and the two of them promptly disappeared from Rehm’s mind. Sasha stared at the space they’d previously occupied and, as the seven remaining nightmares surrounding him started to move, he grabbed the smelling salts from his pocket and narrowly avoided getting attacked again.
X
“I've never gotten to properly try that. Never had anyone in my head before, so when would I have had the chance?”
Milla slowly opened her eyes, surprised to find herself in the familiar space of her own mind. The music was quiet and the atmosphere was dreary, a little bit dark, but it was still home. She was sitting on one of the benches she kept on all of her platforms, but none of her fellow dancers were around. It was eerie to be in her space with no one else there.
No one but her and Lucius.
“Is this how you see yourself? Seems kind of dowdy considering the bright colors you had on before.”
She closed her eyes and scrunched her eyebrows, feeling a headache coming on. She felt loopy - the experience of being forced back into her own mind by a potentially murderous villain was unpleasant, to say the least. It was hard to focus on anything, let alone his words. But she did finally open her eyes again and looked down at herself. It was an outfit she hadn’t worn in a very long time - white button-up shirt, dark blue dress over top. When she gave it a bit of thought, she could feel her hair was tied back and there was a cap on her head.
“...cala a boca,” she muttered, trying to find her voice again.
Lucius tilted his head and leaned down into her personal space. “Good, she can speak.”
Milla glared at him, his face finally coming into focus.
“I could take a few minutes, destroy your little dance party here, and then find your nightmares. Or you could just tell me where they are and save us both the trouble.” He spoke with so much confidence, like he truly believed there were no other options. The arrogance oozed out of every word.
“...não estão aqui,” she answered slowly.
“Hmm…” Rehm rubbed his chin. “Except that I can feel them nearby. I know they’re here, and I know they’re powerful.” He stepped to the edge of the platform and looked around, spotting a darkened platform against one side of the wall. “Huh. Maybe this’ll be easier than I thought.”
He jumped and Milla turned her head, the light coming back to her eyes just as he took a step into the hellish room that she couldn’t get rid of even if she wanted to. She quickly followed him and managed to arrive in time to see him jump inside the toy chest - too late and still too out-of-sorts to stop him from seeing the chamber inside.
She didn’t want to follow him further, but Milla had a duty as a Psychonaut - and a duty to herself - to prevent him from using her traumas to make himself more powerful. She wouldn’t forgive herself if he used her nightmares to hurt people.
So she jumped in after him.
Rehm reached into the bars, smiling wildly and ignoring the sound of Milla’s footsteps landing behind him. He grasped the head of one of her nightmares, just as he did to the ones in his own head, and began to absorb.
“Para!” Milla shouted, running towards him and grabbing onto his arm. “Stop! Let go!”
He ignored her still, and once the nightmare was fully absorbed - a weight of pain suddenly fell onto Milla’s shoulders and she was properly knocked to the ground. The nightmare he’d absorbed disintegrated into a pile of ash and then was quickly replaced by a new, identical nightmare.
Milla’s headache got worse.
Rehm’s smile got even wilder and he turned to Milla, leaning down and grabbing her chin with his hand to pull her face closer to his. “This is spectacular! Your nightmares aren’t just whims of fear…they’re endless howls of anguish! You know…I’d love to keep you as a pet - enjoy the unlimited supply you could offer me,” he said with a smirk. “But after the way you Psychonauts have been stalking and harassing me, I’d much rather release these creatures back into your head. Let them have their fun.”
He tossed her to the side and moved to the door of the nightmare cage, grabbed the lock, and just as he was about to shatter it to pieces - a telekinetic hand grabbed him and pulled him so quickly away and out of the room that he was stunned silent as his back hit the wall of the dark nursery.
Milla floated up to join him, a fiery rage giving her back the focus she needed to take control of her mind once again.
“Perhaps I was too hasty!” Rehm said after collecting himself. “We could work together, Milla.”
He said her name just the way the orphans had - the same inflection, the same tone, it was clear he’d gained knowledge about her history from the nightmare he’d absorbed. Which made her even angrier.
Rehm stood up and walked closer to her, trying to look compassionate. “You’ve known the same powerlessness that I have. You know how much it tears a person apart. We don’t need to be powerless. Your nightmares can make you powerful.”
She took a long, deep breath - then used a telekinetic fist to punch Rehm so hard that he flew out of the nursery and back out to one of the many platforms that were floating aimlessly nearby. He landed with a loud thud! and Milla quickly followed him out.
“I don’t need your kind of power,” she shouted, grabbing him with her telekinetic hand and slamming his body back onto the platform repeatedly. “It doesn’t heal! It doesn’t help anyone! Not you, and especially not me!”
Milla levitated closer and stood above Rehm, who was struggling under her telekinesis, unable to move. He was trying to concentrate on his breathing, just like she and Sasha had earlier.
Imitating him again, she leaned down into his personal space. “Coming into my mind was a mistake, Lucius. You can’t take control here.”
He glared at her, still trying to break free, and chose not to say anything in response.
She was about to say something else when she felt a new presence enter her mind. Milla took a deep breath, kept a tight hold of Rehm, and turned around to find Sasha Nein levitating nearby - staring at them cautiously. The vision of herself quickly transformed back into the livelier, brighter outfit she was sporting in the real world, and she flipped her hair over her shoulder and smiled at her guest. “Hello, Sasha!”
“...Milla,” he said softly, landing next to her. “It looks like I wasn’t needed here.”
“Nonsense, darling,” she responded happily, not caring that it wasn’t really appropriate to call her coworker darling. She was too excited to see him to stop herself. “I’m always happy to see a friendly face!”
Sasha gave her a small smile at that, but it was pretty obvious that he’d been worried sick. She had no idea what exactly Rehm did to her - forcing the two of them from his mind to hers in one quick attack - but it probably looked terrifying from Sasha’s perspective. He would’ve had no clue what was going on.
“It’d probably be even nicer to get rid of an unfriendly face,” he muttered, grabbing his smelling salts and kneeling down by Rehm.
“Get away from me, Psychonaut trash!” Lucius snarled, shaking around under Milla’s telekinetic hand. “You won’t-!”
He was cut off by Sasha’s smelling salts opening right under his nose, and in only a moment - he was gone. Sasha sighed and turned around, frowning at how exhausted Milla looked. “Are you alright?”
Milla fell to her knees and hung her head, taking a long deep breath before responding. “Not really. I think I need a minute. My mind feels…violated.”
After a moment of hesitation, Sasha came over and sat next to her. He didn’t say anything, but he hoped that being there would offer some level of comfort.
They sat together silently for a minute and Milla appreciated every second of it. Then her music started to play, and her dancers re-appeared, and everything started to feel normal again. The break was nice, having Sasha around was nice, but nothing was nicer than her home being her home again. She took a deep breath and tugged some hair behind her ears. “That’s better!”
Sasha nodded at her and stood up. “I apologize for coming in here without your permission. I just…wasn’t sure what else to do.”
Milla levitated so her head was right in front of his, but she looked a few inches taller. “It’s fine, darling! I know you were just worried. But I’m sorry the party in here isn’t as fun as usual. Lucius did a number on the place.”
He looked around the room and shoved his hands into his pockets. “It’s different from what I expected. But it’s nice. Very…you.”
She laughed at that and levitated back down so her feet were on the ground. “Such a flirt!” she joked, lightly hitting his chest.
At that, Sasha’s face turned bright red and he got all sweaty and nervous - a complete 180 in less than a second. “I-I’m sorry, no, that…that was not my intention at all. I was just, um. Trying to say, uh-”
“Sasha, Sasha, honey,” Milla cut him off and laid her hand on his chest, leaving it there for a moment while she spoke. “I was kidding. You haven’t done anything wrong.” She couldn’t pretend she didn’t find it charming how nervous he got - she had a feeling he didn’t have a lot of experience with women, and outgoing women even less so. It might’ve been a little mean of her to joke about flirting, but she couldn’t help it. He was just…so cute.
“Ah. Right. Of course.” Sasha adjusted his sunglasses and cleared his throat, the redness fading from his cheeks. “I hope that means you’re feeling better.”
She smiled at him and combed her long fingers through her hair. “I think I’m ready to go back now. Is 33 waiting for us?”
He nodded. “We moved you and Rehm to the jet before I entered your mind. 33’s got him in a trance so he won’t cause any more trouble. If everything went according to plan, we’ll likely be back at the Motherlobe soon.”
“Oh, that’s so good to hear. I could go for a coffee right about now.”
Sasha grabbed his smelling salts and held them in front of him. “I’ll get out of here. Then all you need to do is…wake up,” he said softly, then opened up the salts and exited her mind.
Milla took another deep breath, staring at the space he’d just occupied. She decided to take a moment for herself before waking up and floated over to the nursery that she wished wasn’t always taking up space in the corner. But she needed it. She needed to remember the children, and how important they were to her, and how she’d never completely forgive herself for what happened. She had to move on with her life, but she never wanted to forget them. Every face, every name, every voice - would stay with her forever.
She closed the toy chest, drowning out the sounds of pain that came from inside. Then floated up to her favorite dance platform and tried to concentrate on waking up.
X
Milla opened her eyes to find Sasha and 33 discussing some of the things they’d seen Lucius do while inside his and her own mind. She distinctly heard the words study and experiment, but couldn’t focus on the entire sentence just yet. She sat up straight and groaned, cradling her head.
“You’re awake,” Sasha said quietly, stepping closer. “How do you feel?”
“Like I was hit by a bus,” Milla answered, opening one eye to see that Sasha was leaning down and looking positively chivalrous. “But it’ll pass.”
“We were worried about you, Vodello,” 33 added. “Nein said Rehm forced you from his mind into yours…that’s some scary shit.”
Milla nodded, not sure how else to respond. It was scary. It was something she’d never heard of before, and she certainly didn’t like that a man so new to his psychic powers could develop such a skill. The prolonged exposure to psitanium seemed to make him powerful, but also seemed to warp his mind. Though he had a lot of dark, troubled times in his life, there was no criminal history to speak of or any interest in groups seeking power. Everything came so suddenly. She wondered if he’d be able to help himself after they separated him from the psitanium.
“You were very impressive, Milla,” Sasha said, taking a seat next to her. “Allow me to buy you that coffee when we get back to base.”
She smiled at him and blushed a tiny bit, feeling a wave of appreciation radiating off of him. Milla wasn’t sure if she’d ever known a man that felt so honest and genuine - when he said a kind thing to her, she really, really, believed it. “That sounds lovely.”
“You guys can head to the Noodle Bowl,” 33 said, standing up. “I’ll take Rehm to lockup.”
“We’re already back?” Milla stood up, looking out the front window. Not surprisingly, the Motherlobe was right there waiting for them. She’d definitely thought Sasha was exaggerating when he said they’d be there soon.
“Thank you, Agent 33. I’ll try to do some work on him later today,” he said with a nod, levitating out of the top of the plane.
Milla followed him, though she still felt a little unlike herself. She couldn’t tell how much time had passed - no idea how long they’d been in Rehm’s mind or in her own, and she still didn’t fully understand what had happened to her. Everything in her mind seemed just fine, the mental barriers preventing her nightmares from escaping were in place just as always. But there was that sense of violation, the feeling that someone unwelcome was scurrying around inside her head - it left her with an icky sensation.
She stayed quiet while they made their way into the Motherlobe, even while Sasha was grabbing the coffees. All she could think about at that moment was how much she wanted to redecorate.
“Camilla?” he asked softly, handing her the cup. “If you need to rest, you can come to my office. I won’t mind.”
“That would be great, actually,” she answered, enjoying how warm the cup was against her palms as she took it from him. “Agent Forsythe is supposed to be in meetings all day, anyway, so it’s not like I can update her.”
“Agent 33 is already on her way to the Grand Head’s office. They’ll discuss what to do with Rehm from there, though I’d really like to see him in my lab first.” Sasha sipped at his own coffee and paused for a moment in front of the hallway fish tank. “I think Agent Mentallis and I could gain some valuable insights from him.”
They entered his office and Milla immediately moved to take a seat on his long, orange couch. She smiled and sipped her coffee - she didn’t respond to his previous statement, but she didn’t think he had any expectation for her to do so. She wasn’t a scientist like him or Agent Mentallis, she was much more interested in helping Rehm heal. The remnants of doubts they’d seen in his mind gave her hope that the golf-loving Lucius Rehm was still in there somewhere.
There were a few moments of silence before Milla felt a presence join her on the couch - she opened her eyes and saw that Sasha had taken a seat next to her. Not too close, of course, but not too far, either. Which was a little surprising, but not unwelcome. “Your office is really nice, Sasha. Very calming.”
He nodded and reached a hand to his inner coat pocket, looking like he was about to grab a cigarette, but then he stopped and clasped his hands together in front of him instead. “Milla…I want to ask you something. If you don’t want to answer, I won’t be offended, but I’d like to know why Rehm was so interested in your mind.”
“Ah.” She had a feeling the question would come up sooner or later. Well, Milla felt like she and Sasha had a good friendship and she knew he wouldn’t judge her for what happened. It was still difficult to talk about, but after everything she’d been through that day - there was no reason not to explain. “I…have nightmares. A lot of them.”
“Currently?” He looked at her, a little confused. “I was under the impression that you used to have nightmares and overcame them.”
She tugged at her hair awkwardly. “I did. Technically. Truman helped me build a…prison for them. Almost like the one in Lucius’ mind. But the nightmares are still there. They’re just…hidden away. They can’t get out and hurt me or anyone else, but they can’t be destroyed, either.”
Sasha frowned and stared at her. “Is it alright if I ask why? Psychonauts destroying a person’s nightmares isn’t unheard of.”
“They’re not just nightmares, though. They’re…they’re my memories.” Milla had never had to explain her situation to someone, though she’d tried to prepare herself for the day she would. It was a difficult thing to get someone to understand when they didn’t have the same experience. “I used to work at an orphanage, a few years ago. There was a fire one day while I was out and all the children died.”
He squeezed his hands tighter and took a deep breath. Something told him she wasn’t quite done.
“That was the day I learned I was psychic,” she continued quietly. “I could hear them, feel them - their screams, their agony, everything. Even from down the street. The nightmares are just…that. Over and over and over again.” Milla ran a hand all the way through her hair, messing up her part. “So I can’t get rid of the nightmares. Not really. I just had to learn to…compartmentalize. That’s all.”
Unexpectedly, Sasha reached out a hand and placed it gently on top of hers. “Camilla…I’m sorry you went through that. No one should ever have to experience something like that. But…the fact that you’re here today, and after such a short amount of time…that shows tremendous strength and focus. You’ve overcome more in the past few years than most people do in their entire lives.” He squeezed her hand for a second, then pulled back in a haste that felt like he realized he was in her personal bubble. “Sorry. I just, um. I’m…proud. Proud to work alongside you.”
Milla felt her heart racing faster and faster inside her chest, and she hoped that didn’t become a problem some day. It wasn’t her fault that Sasha Nein was incredibly, impossibly charming and comforting. “That’s really nice of you to say. I…I still feel like I have a long way to go. But I’m happy with where I am.”
“I can’t say this is true for everyone, but it’s likely you’ll always feel that you have a long way to go,” he added, tapping his fingers on his leg. “It’s been twenty-six years and I’ve still not gotten over my mother’s death.”
There was a jokey lilt to his statement that caught Milla off-guard, and she chuckled despite the situation. Deciding to take a little risk, she scooted closer to him on the couch and leaned her head onto his shoulder, taking a long, deep breath. “I really enjoyed working with you today, Sasha.”
He went ramrod straight for a moment, two moments, three moments…then relaxed. “I enjoyed…working with you, too. Milla.”
Both of them felt a serenity fall over the room and had to admit - after everything they’d just dealt with - it was a nice way to wrap up the day.
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Factor of Feeling ; A Parable Progression
Shiloh was generous enough to grant themself this moment of silence. Although it was just another out of what felt like thousands, this moment was different. They slipped their cap from their head and tried slicking the messy frays of their hair back into place. The gel was dry again.
It was always so quiet when they returned to the house. Moving between here and the busy environment of the station was enough of a contrast to put a man into shock. Shiloh was no exception. Even Archie had stopped rushing forth to greet the officer in their arrival. There was nothing that was worth anything anymore.
Not since Donatello’s disappearance.
Shiloh could marvel endlessly at the bizarre and undivulged way of his vanishing-act, but no answers came from the stream of questions they might have asked. This was a mysterious case, and one that bugged Officer Pamello to the ends of the Earth. Nobody held enough of a grudge against Donnie to flat out kill him, and if any quarrell of the sort existed, Shiloh hasn’t come across a single thread of evidence yet. As far as they knew, their best friend had simply slipped off the face of the Earth and left no traces to track back to an answer that could have offered solace.
It absolutely broke Shiloh.
They had enough energy to hang their hat by the door and make their way to the living room, where they sat themself for what would probably be the rest of the night. They’d tried day in and day out to stop the grief from getting to their head, so that they might better focus on their job, but this calibre of pain rivalled that of duller extremities, and became too hard to fight. But why? Shiloh did this kind of work for a living. They have seen things that eyes should never fall upon. They have dealt with horrific cases that humankind should never be crazy enough to commit. Why is it that, out of their entire line of work, this was the hardest case to break, but the quickest to break them? It all felt impossible to understand. Donatello could still be out there. He could be hurt. He could have been abducted. Shiloh couldn't do anything about it. They felt so...helpless.
Every possible scenario in Shiloh’s head made their eyes sting until they could hold the dam no longer. They fell in on themselves, slouching over on the couch with their face cupped in their hands. Every tear was absorbed into their gloves. Every sob was muffled in the fabric. In any normal situation, they would have been disgusted; touching their face with these filthy accessories. But right now, nothing mattered. Sorrow was so much stronger than they were. It only took a healthy 5 minutes of ugly sobbing for Donatello’s collie to come creeping out of the shadows, staring upward at Shiloh with round, worried eyes. Shiloh flinched and sat up at the rough-furred figure that moved into their vision, but they were smart enough to recognize Archie with ease.
“Oh– Archie, I’m so sorry,” They apologised, and they scooted over when the hound hopped onto the couch beside them. “I’m probably stressing you the fuck out.”
Archie lowered her head onto Shiloh’s lap, resting her paws out in front of her. She understood better than any other human-being just how hard this loss was to get around. Donatello was her owner. Shiloh knew that they were rather close.
They ran a hand along her back and used the sleeve of their opposite arm to wipe their face. “I promise we’ll find him, okay?” They took off their gloves to cradle Archie’s face properly in their hands.
She licked Shiloh’s nose. They smiled. A little.
“I promise.”
Teller found such joy in looking through all of the different hardcovers along the bookshelf. Each one felt like a different memory to him, and while some might have been more sombre than others, every recollection got a small grin out of him. He set certain books aside on the desk at the end of the shelves so he could sort, clean, and file one section at a time. He wasn’t usually granted many visits to the in-office library in between work hours. Coming back to it was nice and all, but it was filthy. There probably wasn’t an inch of the room that wasn’t coated in an asthma-inducing layer of dust. Teller glanced down at the tail of his coat. Just as he suspected, the very end of it went from a deep brown to an ash-grey. He scowled.
“Well, that’s just dandy.”
He’d definitely need to wash it when this was all over with. A lint roller would have done fine, but Teller would’ve felt dirty without giving it a proper cleaning. User called him “nit-picky” once. He was starting to see it now.
He lifted a book from the shelf and blew on the surface of its cover, revealing brilliant shades of red and gold beneath the horrendous layering of grime. He regretted his previous choice in an instant, because that exact grime flew into the air around him, and he inhaled just about half of it.
“Oh b– ack!– bugger.” He wafted the debris from his face and stepped back, using the cuff of his sleeve to clean his glasses. “You’d think this place was abandoned.”
He opened the book and flipped through the pages, trying to remember what this scripture was about. He could tell a lot of the books by heart, but there were a few of the bunch that needed a look-through to jog his memory. In his scanning over the text, someone’s finger moved tauntingly up the back of his neck, and at first it had startled him, and he yelped before clapping an embarrassed hand over his mouth.
Teller shook his head and laughed in spite of himself. There was no coworker of his that would’ve done that. It made the identity of his visitor so obvious. “Hah hah. You’re very funny, User.” He fixed his glasses back into their correct placement. “You can’t scare me. But I applaud your valiant attempt.”
The suspect behind him leaned over and took a breath before speaking, and with the sound of their movement alone, the elder man could tell that this person was taller than him. His eyebrows knitted together. Strange. User wasn’t taller than him, that was for damn sure. Who on Earth? The voice that came from behind him was low and close, hovered just over his shoulder. Teller shuddered at it.
“Are you scared now?”
There was also no coworker of his that sounded like that. He turned his head quickly, and he froze up in the shadow of something nonhuman with a figure that blended perfectly into the darkness, except for its brighter, yellow details that were enhanced by the lights. It didn’t have any arms. . .or legs. Or a face, for that matter. Teller mouthed the words “what the hell”, but he couldn’t find his voice to say them aloud. That’s when whatever hand that’d grazed him earlier struck him, and the whole of his sight went to nothing but flashes of black and white. He hit the bookshelf behind him and fell to the ground with a flickering and torturous pain that was making quick and easy work of his head. The pounding of his own heart filled his ears alongside a nightmarish ringing. He tried to scream- to call for any kind of help- but the initial shock of seeing that thing completely stripped that ability away from him.
He wondered if User would break his silence to scream if the other really had to.
For now the elder man could only writhe on the ground in one of the most extreme feats of anguish he’d ever experienced. Every conception in his head fell to pieces. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t even move on his own will. Through the blood in his sparkly vision, he could see that mammoth of a monster coming toward him. He couldn’t ask himself how it managed to walk without any legs while still being in contact with the ground. One of its hands extended toward him, and Teller felt himself get dragged- none too gently, mind you- across the floor. That gnawing ache in his head was starting to drive him to numbness. Fear was no longer worth his perception. That scream that he tried to belt earlier escaped him as a meek groan; the first sound that he’s been able to make since this started.
The earth-shaking thud of the bookshelf collapsing from his impact fell on deaf ears as he slipped into a very comfortable blackness.
User’s panic was loud and alive when he ran into that library. Finding Teller in some sort of trouble was a given- even if it was something stupid- but User had prayed that it wouldn’t actually be anything serious.
Seeing his friend in a puddle of blood beside a fallen bookshelf could certainly be labelled as “serious”. The red smear across the tile told User that Teller must have dragged himself away in time before the bookshelf landed on him. It was lucky that only the end of his coat suffered the gravity of the fall. User worked the other out of the trench for now- he could come back and get it when the time was better suited- and hauled him to the room that they were in before. He should have gone looking for help, but if nobody showed up after the walls shook from the shelf, then what was the point? That’d be a waste of time, and time was always of the essence.
The ground will have to do, User thought to himself while he tried putting Teller back down, gently, but with haste.
He knew Teller would despise him for it, but he removed the jacket loaned to him on his arrival and used it in place of a towel to stifle the bleeding. The jacket belonged to Teller, after all, and he knew that blood was a tough stain to scrub out, especially on white fabric. This jacket was probably going in the trash, after this.
Hopefully he won’t mind.
…
Hopefully he lives.
User patted the unbruised side of Teller’s face for any sliver of a reaction. What even happened? What the hell kind of organising was Teller doing for this to be the outcome? User didn’t see a ladder…did he? Maybe Teller fell off of it. But that didn’t explain the shelf coming down with him. The elder man was a mystery that carried more mysteries with him, and all of them were endless.
Please wake up.
This couldn’t be it. It was too soon. It was too sudden.
Tears were burning in his eyes. Crying felt like absolute battery acid. User always hated it. He hated how it felt. He hated how it looked and how it sounded. And all of the reasons that a person might start crying.
He hated it.
But he couldn’t even choke it down. His heart was bigger than his body. He wasn’t as tough as Teller was. Not a single version of Teller ever cried in front of User, not even as they were dying. How did he do it? How was he so effortlessly…himself? User could rack his mind for answers for every eternity that he was stuck in, but he’d probably never find a good one.
What would the next Teller be like if this one died? User didn’t want to lose him so early on. But the jacket was already soaked, and Teller was paler than he was when User found him.
This wasn't working.
…Please wake up.
#the stanley parable#tspud#narratorverse#bootleguser#tsp stanley#tsp narrator#bootlegstoryteller#bootlegentity(:#bootlegentity#bootlegshiloh#writing#writer
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Don’t feed people delusions Elain is not fit to rule any court, both of Feyre’s sisters have done absolutely nothing to deserve that title be real 😂 she can be a lady beside someone who is ruler though!
Hello! I'm a little torn with the way I want to respond to this anon but I'm going to stick with facts rather than giving in to the feisty side of me that's begging to take center stage.
In the TOG series, SJM took a 19 year old girl who had been running from her birthright for over half her life and turned her Queen by the end of the series. A 19 year old who was an assassin and about as far away from court politics as you could get.
And made a hundreds of year old Fae warrior who worked for someone in a position of "power" her "consort."
In the Crescent City series, SJM has taken a party girl who had done nothing of real importance in her life prior to the start of the books and is turning her into the savior of all, a true descendent of the Starborn Fae. I don't know exactly what will happen by the end of the series but Bryce is already more "special" than she probably deserved for what she had been doing.
Tamlin never wanted to be High Lord:
I never expected—never wanted—my father’s title. My brothers would have never let me live to adolescence if they had suspected that I did. So the moment I was old enough, I joined my father’s war-band and trained so that I might someday serve my father, or whichever of my brothers inherited his title.” He flexed his hands, as if imagining the claws beneath. “I’d realized from an early age that fighting and killing were about the only things I was good at.”
He actively turned his back on learning how to be a ruler yet low and behold he was made High Lord (only for the time being I think). He's obviously not fit to be a ruler considering he gives f*ck all concern for his people right now.
In the ACOTAR series we have a 19 year old human queen who is queen simply because SJM decreed it so yet we have no proof of what she'd done to earn that title.
Elain has been noted as observant from book 1 and raised in a household where her mother raised Nesta on political aspirations. She didn't need to focus on Elain for those lessons for Elain to absorb the information and observe her mother and Nesta's behavior. She grew up surrounded by the political games too. She has been noted to enjoy taking care of people, something which started in book 1. In book 2 we're reminded she can convince anyone to do anything with a few smiles. She's noted to enjoy making friends, talking to people. In ACOFAS Feyre is left amazed at the wisdom Elain spoke and her observations over what something meant to the people of Velaris. In SF Cassian is impressed with how much Elain saw and observed. Elain has actively gone out to help the people of Velaris and she found a way to get humans to safety during the war. There are hints of her being loving and kind, a gentle soul who grows beautiful things (but as Rhys said, can get her hands dirty if necessary) and we know Spring in general has fallen into disrepair and it's people need hope and faith and someone to believe in. They also currently believe Lucien complicit in the lies Feyre told. Elain, who can convince anyone to do anything with a few smiles could be someone they follow and believe her when she restores his good name.
Can Elain lead an army or command generals? Probably not but could Elain help restore a people's faith and become their figure head? Why not if SJM wills it as so. And if Lucien were by her side, he could easily help her navigate. They would be a team just as Rowaelin were however Elain could still be given the title of power.
I'm not quite sure what it is about theories that confuses you. Maybe you'd prefer I use an ACOTAR hypothesis tag? We don't have one of those so unfortunately that's not the way to have a post seen but regardless, I'm not claiming anything as fact. My theory is simply my guess as to what might happen and will only be proven wrong or right when we get the next books. So I'm allowed to "feed" people delusions theories all I like. They can agree, disagree, keep it on the back burner just in case but what no one should be doing is coming into anyone's blog and telling them they're not allowed to come up with their own ideas of what could happen.
I'm not smarter than anyone in this fandom. I don't have SJM insider info. But by now, I'd like to think most followers understand that I'm not pulling my theories out of my ass with nothing to back them up and I also have read enough books by SJM to know that the females are the ones who are meant to shine. I am taking things that are actually in the book to build these ideas so you claiming I'm delusional when the text supports it as a real possibility is quite confusing to me. Could I be wrong? Definitely. But there's enough that if I turned out to be right, we have thinks to look back on and say, "ohhh! Those were possible hints!"
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Cold Hunt
A girl was tossed out into the bitter cold, unable to return home until the basket no longer carried any matches. She was now alone in an alley, trying to gain a semblance of warmth from a single lit match. Only thing is, the girl didn't know someone was hunting her through the darkness…
I watched Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and am now hyper-fixated on the wolf that only appeared in the movie for about 7 minutes. This isn't a ship story, but more of a retelling of The Little Match Girl story. I haven't decided if I'm going to make another part of this piece or not, but wanted to share the small snipet I did make while doing some writing practice.
That being said, The Wolf in the story doesn't belong to me but belongs to DreamWorks and the respective owners of the Puss in Boots: The Last Wish movie. I also don't claim the original Little Match Girl story, which was written by Hans Christian Andersen. I don't claim any ownership other than the words that I write.
I hope you enjoy, and be aware that this does have minor spoilers for The Last Wish. :3
Please be aware that there is mention of child abuse in this story. There are no direct scenes for this topic, but I believe a warning is necessary considering it's a sensitive topic. You have been warned, I hope you enjoy.
--"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." -- From a headstone in Ireland
There was nothing but darkness, masking out all figures on that cold dead of night. But within a moment a flame is lit, illuminating the dirty face of a teenage girl. She cups the small match close in her hands, trying to absorb the small semblance of warmth that she could from it.
Snow drifted around her in the dark alley, small piles building on her shoulders and hood. Her body trembled, her fingertips and toes blue from the blistering cold. But her father gave her no time to dress properly for the weather, he simply gave her the basket and tossed her out into the streets.
"You are not allowed back in this house until all those matches are gone!"
Those were his last words to her.
She didn't care anymore.
And he wouldn't miss a few of those bloody matches.
A chime in the wind caused a new sort of goosebumps to form upon her cold skin, the chill of the soft tune running up her spine. At the end of the alley stood a tall hooded figure, his features shrouded by the darkness. The girl looked at him until her match burnt out, enveloping her in darkness once more.
So she quickly lit another match.
And the alley was slightly illuminated again.
But this time... the figure was now a foot away, and the girl could make out a muzzle of a wolf beneath that dark hood.
She dropped her newly lit match, racing out of the dark alley and back into the empty streets. The whistle seemed to drown out every other sound as her bare feet disturbed the newly rested snow, the only light being the dying flames of the street lamps. Her breaths came out in deep puffs as her feet padded against the snow.
Her house came into view and she wasted no time running to its door. Frozen fists banged on the wooden planks, but there was no answer. Not even a light was on within the windows. Tears began to brim the girl's eyes.
The whistle grew louder, the eerie song so close to her now. She raced away from the place she once called home, hurrying back down the snowed streets. The flashes of happier times racing through her fear muddled mind. There was a warm smell, one of baking bread and Christmas dinner. Why was she thinking of such things now, when something was hunting close behind her?
She dipped into a new alleyway, listening to the terrifying chime begin to fade. The girl sighed softly, grabbing another match with shaking blue fingers and lighting it. She needed to stay warm, and she knew her father wasn't planning on her returning home for the night. This time, the darkness was replaced with a warm room. A fireplace burned brightly, a warm loaf of bread cooling on a table near it. She knew this place, and had never thought to ever see it again.
The match flame burned out, taking the image of the room along with it. The girl blinked in the darkness, grabbing another match and lighting it. The room reappeared, but this time it was decorated for the holidays and the savory smell of a cooking goose wafted through the small room. A rocking chair could be seen by the fire, an elderly woman humming a soft tune as she crocheted. But then the match went out once more, the humming melding into the whistling tune of the girl's hunter.
She ran down the alley frantically, bumping into random boxes and debris. The skirt of her dress caught on something in the darkness and caused things to crash behind her. Hot tears streamed down her frozen cheeks, the other end of the alley coming into view. The girl raced out, recognizing the street the alley exited out of. She turned towards the small cathedral, wondering if where she was running could truly hide her.
The whistling was too close, the girl had no choice. She ran past the cathedral, pushing open the metal gate that led to the cemetery beside the building. Its chime followed, but she pressed onward past the various headstones and statues. Walls of dead greenery surrounded her when stone mausoleums didn't. But she knew there was nowhere to hide. Especially when the whistling now seemed to surround her, drowning all her senses.
Her legs collapsed to the ground, cold palms covering her ears. Sobs began to escape her throat, fear gripping her lungs as she waited for the attack.
Only it never came.
And then there was simply silence.
She slowly took her hands away from her ears, taking in desperate breaths. The only things she could make out were the outlines of the statues and mausoleums. So she took out another match from her basket, striking its flame to illuminate the headstone visible before her. She stared at the name, barely covered by the snow.
A warm smile flashed through her mind, a soft elderly face offering comfort with welcoming arms. The girl teared up at the image, the flame burning out and shrouding the headstone in darkness once more. She lit another match, but she was now back in the room. Her grandmother's living room, and her grandmother smiling towards her.
The flame began to die again.
But the girl didn't want the image to disappear just yet.
So she lit the rest of the bundle of matches in her basket, staring at her deceased grandmother's friendly face until the flames all burned out.
And with nothing but the cold and darkness surrounding her, the girl dropped her used matches and began to weep. Crying out for a time when Christmas Eve nights were spent in a warm home. Her body wrapped in a soft crocheted yarn blanket, and sitting in front of a fire to scare away the bitter cold. Warm, soft bread cooling on a table where a pine rocking chair didn't sit empty.
She grieved for the times where she never went the night hungry.
She grieved for the times when there were no fingertip bruises on her arms.
She grieved for the touch of warmth that another gave.
The whistle began to chime through the wind again, but it seemed softer now and not as menacing. She felt a presence close to her, but was too afraid to remove her hands from her face. She gasped for air softly, her shoulders tensing when a hand laid gently on her back. That hand then pushed her back, forcing her face into the chest of her hunter's cloak. He was not warm, and his embrace seemed even colder than the night air.
But for some reason... she felt a sort of comfort...
"Hush now, little one. You no longer need to fear..." The gruff voice spoke softly in the darkness, his words rumbling against the girl's cheek. "She is waiting for you. Let me bring you to her."
She looked up into the face of her hunter, making out the features of a wolf with red eyes that seemed to glow. The girl didn't know what he meant until he helped her to her feet, the darkness seeming to dissipate into a soft glow. The wolf made her look past her grandmother's headstone, where she saw a woman standing a little bit away. The girl smiled weakly, watching as her grandmother smiled with open arms.
The wolf helped her walk towards the elderly woman, who embraced the girl once she was close. The girl held onto the elderly woman back just as tightly, tears streaming down her face once again. Only this time the tears weren't of sorrow, but of happiness. Whistling began to fill the air again, but instead of fear only a warmth filled the young girl.
And then the wolf was standing alone in the darkness, his gaze looking down towards the girl now laying curled against the dead greenery. A smile was on her face, and it honestly reminded Death of what angels were meant to be.
'At least someone will find her in the morning...'
But Death's thoughts then began to turn bitter, his gaze turning back towards the direction of the girl's so-called home.
She wasn't the only soul Death was coming for that night...
-----
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little snippet that I wrote.
I haven't decided if I'm going to continue this, which would mainly be Death hunting down the girl's father and giving some more backstory of the girl's situation. I also haven't decided if I'm going to write more regarding this movie or not, but I would kinda like to. Maybe a short story involving Puss and Death? I don't know yet.
As for the inspiration for the story, other than the movie, is from The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen. I do suggest reading this short fairytale, mainly because it's a nice piece of writing.
That's it from me for now, I hope you enjoyed. Stay safe out there, my lovelies!
#puss in boots#puss in boots the last wish#death the wolf#retelling of the little match girl story#dreamworks#the little match girl#my fanfic writing
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It's a bit of a random question, but I'm simply curious, how did you start falling in love with the Horned King/what's your origin story with him? Only if you want to share it of course^^ Feel free to also just generally gush or ramble about him!
(also btw I think it's awesome that we share him as an f/o now, I think subconsciously I already knew for a while that I'd fall for him eventually, it was just a matter of time he's just too gorgeous💕)
Ok this ask has given me the warm fuzzies for several weeks so thank you and I guess I should probably answer this now huh -
(also every time someone else pops up who f/o's him I'm Absolutely Delighted and am so glad I helped facilitate your decent into lich simpery)
I'll do IRL and self insert shenanigans, so IRL first:
- the first time I watched the black cauldron I'd be ...about 8 or 9?
- one thing you sincerely must understand about me is that I am, unapologetically, unequivocally, unexpectedly....a weenie.
- much as I adore the spooky and the strange, any film that veers into remotely scary territory, or horror in general, that shit scars me down to the cellular level.
- Power to everyone who can disengage/absorb that stuff healthily because I sure as fuck don't and doubt I ever will. Anyway.
- mum buys me the black cauldron and thinks nothing of it. It's Disney, right?
- anyway yeah uh suffice to say boy golly gee I'd never seen *that* many skeletons animated before. Think my little brother started crying at some point.
- but honestly, something about the films mad dichotomy of attempted cutesy fantasy with grim dark backdrop and off kilter humour enamoured me. And I found myself wanting *more* of the dark parts of the film.
- (still early the full cauldron born scenes were cut. So goddamn salty)
- the Horned King became a lynchpin of fascination, something about his eerie voice, his apathetic yet menacing mannerisms and his degraded appearance really drew me in. Esp his summoning and death scenes.
- I think I started drawing skeletons soon after and they're still the easiest thing for me to draw.
- over decade later when I was depressed as all fuck, I rewatched the film and found myself only really enjoying his scenes, in part because he was the only relatable villain to me at the time. (Eternally tired, quietly dramatic, quick to anger and dismissal. A smorgasbord of things to distract myself from feeling like I was actively decomposing too at the time. Brains are wild.)
- now I like to imagine quietly helping him get to a better place same as I've managed to do :) who needs therapy when you have imaginary lich time.
As for self insert funky times:
- rather than imagining myself in the dark ages, mostly because despite living in the UK my knowledge of that time period is just awful, I imagine a modern setting
- crucially tho the events of the film still happened exactly as shown.
- in this setting my s/I has moved to Wales and accidentally rediscovered the -broken- cauldron, and the remains of the castle. Time itself rusted the old thing and it cracked, letting HK's disheveled soul slip free.
- my S/I is an amateur ecologist, with interest in geology and paleontology and history. (So just me. Straight up me. I can't even pretend here) Once she figures out she's effectively haunted, HK's presence is akin to a field day.
- will she attempt to resurrect him properly? Eh who knows. Maybe. I'm a real fucking sucker for ghosts, esp partial possession or soul bonds.
- magic exists still in this setting, it's just mostly forgotten and thus dismissed. Of course my s/I has latent magic because of course, and I love the idea of HK teaching her as a pseudo bonding activity.
- love just watching HK be bamboozled and overwhelmed by the modern world too. Show this lich a toaster someone-
- very low stakes very chill, just two lonely fools trying to rebuild their 'lives' together. Probably the most weirdly cottage core of my selfships if I'm honest. With more dead things.
So yeah that's pretty much it! Thanks again for the lovely ask, and feel free to tag me in anything lich related 🥰
#thalassa responds#disney villains#the horned king#selfshipping shenanigans#not my first f/o but probably my most consistent!
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BIOGRAPHY. julya kyburz.
Name. Julya Kyburz
Occupation. Assassin for Hire
Species. Pillar Men
Age. 23 Years Old [73 Years Old]
Height. 180cm
Place of Birth. St. Moritz, Switzerland
Date of Birth. 11.28.1940
Residence. Canada
Parental Figures. Lara Kyburz[biological mother], Caspian Sable[adopted "father"]
Siblings. N/A
Skills. excellent marksmanship, loose weather manipulation[only snow/cold weather], able to detect weather events, immediate regeneration, enhanced senses, absorption of living material, protective stone shell.
Appearance. Julya has long wavy blond hair that is generally tied into a low pony tail. She has milky white eyes with barely a distinction between her irises and her sclera. Julya usually wears a large scarf that covers the lower half of her face, but she can also at times be seen wearing a basic white button up and tie. On her left eye is a red triangle-like mark that points upward and on her right is another that points downward. Additionally, Julya has two horns that resemble screws. They are above her ears and point slightly backward.
Biography. content warning: Parental Neglect, Alcohol Abuse, Suicide, Abandonment, Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse, Mental Abuse, Grooming, and Self Harm.
Julya was born in St. Moritz, Switzerland, to Lara Kyburz and no father. They lived in a remote cottage and due to Julya being blind, Lara began to isolate her from the rest of the world. This got worse with time; due to Julya being half pillar at the time, Lara couldn't touch her without risking having parts of her flesh absorbed. Not only that, but Lara began to struggle with earning money and feeding not only herself but also Julya.
Julya struggled to eat most things, so Lara began to draw her own blood to give to her daughter, which only made Lara's mental and physical health degrade faster. Julya herself, as she grew, would wander off whenever Lara wasn't home--usually her mother went drinking for long periods of time--into the snowy woods around their home. Given Julya's high tolerance and immunity to most damage, she would stand out in the snow for hours, listening to the wilderness, growing to it enjoy it more than being in her home. By the time Julya was 7, she began to worry about her mother and why she was alone all the time, since Lara would leave for hours and hours, even days without feeding her. Though she was always reassured then everything was fine and Lara was very happy.
This eventually spiralled completely on Julya's 10th birthday, where her mother decided as soon as Julya fell asleep that it would be better to simply end her own and Julya's life. Neither would suffer that way. Lara set a fire that burned the entire house ablaze, though while Lara burned and her screams soaked the air, Julya remained untouched, awoken and unable to do anything as she smelt burned flesh and heard everything till it came to silence in the morning. Later on, she would have an intense phobia of fire and due. Rather than dying, Julya fell into a deep slumber, turning to stone for 50 years within the wreck of her burnt home.
She was awoken by a man named Caspian Sable, using his stand--which had the capability to give any stone/statue life--[HEY JUDE]. Julya was still mentally and physically 10, and Caspian took it upon himself to "take her in." At first, their relationship was wonderful. He taught her to read, taught her english, history, everything someone her age could need. Soon, however, Caspian learned that with a simple touch, Julya could kill someone; leaving nothing in their tracks. No evidence. He also learned that if he let her starve or standing out in the sun, she would revert back to stone. With his abilities, he could turn her back but when she would awake she would have a hunger, so intense she would kill whatever was nearby her without hesitation. Caspian used this to his advantage, using her to kill whoever he wanted. This was when she was around 13.
The first attempt to try this was a failure, as he was nearly killed. Though it was a learning experience to Caspian and he soon learned how to better path and control the hungered frenzies Julya falls into. He would manipulate and throw niceties at Julya to keep her under check, not to mention doing his own little 'loving activities' to assure she was under his control. In her mind, he knew what was best for her, and she had no home or anyone that loved her aside from him.
This would change when Julya would meet a boy named Jovanni Joestar and over the next few weeks, Jovanni would convince Julya that what she was doing might not be a good thing...this lead to them getting close and her relationship with Caspian to grow not only more distant but also tense.
Due to this distancing, Caspian saw this as an opportunity to remind her of her place and who she belonged to through both physical, mental, and sexual abuse. An almost "culmination" of all of his supposed good treatment of her. However after it had finished, she snapped and went to kill him, giving a slow and painful death as she ate away at him with her skin. All throughout the process, Caspian would beg and yell and scream at her about how she needed him, and that he cared, and everything he did was for her.
Julya would spend the next week doing nothing, sitting in a corner of the Caspian's mansion and starving herself. At first she thought she was alone, nobody left--then she remembered Jovanni. Who throughout the week had moved his stuff into the mansion and had tried to not only feed her but give her comfort. Julya never argued or protested this, and soon decided it would be best if he lived with her.
There will be some times where Julya feels like she has to punish herself for what she did, mostly by poking her own eyes out--which would so quickly regenerate. Though a majority of the time it was peaceful. With time she adjusted. Julya is large on saying that she hates people with the exception of Jovanni.
Julya would grow hungry and eventually decided that she should take her life into her own hands, rather than sitting quietly and starving in a dark corner. She began to look for jobs, and eventually lead to her leaning that she could earn money for assassinating others or even just tracking them down.
#study ;; 𝔴𝔢𝔦𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔫 𝔄𝔱𝔢𝔪𝔷𝔲𝔤#i forgot how fucking depressing julya's origin was holy fuck#i mean i remembered but reading out and rewriting is Yeah.
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The Enemy of my Enemy is ALSO my Enemy, Part 6
First<Previous<Masterlist
If nothing else, Jason would like to put on the record that he had tried.
He was so close to being happy, to being revived and having everything be fine, he had watched his own papers drop into his lap and had nearly cried out of sheer joy. It was the first set of paperwork he had done in quite a while – he had joined Melisande and Bucky in giving Gabriel all the things he didn’t want to do, which just so happened to be pretty much everything – but it was worth it. He was going to come back, he was going to be able to see his family again, be able to touch Marinette and Adrien for real. It was amazing.
Which, really, should have been a warning sign for him.
Because, before he had even finished the first page of his stack, a bell had rung.
He glanced up as the hatch in the ceiling opened, more out of habit than anything, and his eyes landed on a familiar face.
He practically fell out of his chair in his haste to get to Marinette, his hand snatching her file out of the air as he went. His free hand landed on her shoulder, shaking vigorously.
“What the hell?” He hissed the moment blue eyes showed a sign of opening.
Marinette blinked blearily at him, her eyebrows drawing together as if she were struggling with a particularly difficult puzzle, and he knew that her consciousness was still not quite tethered to her body yet, but he couldn’t bring himself to care as she shook her harder.
Finally, the final piece of her mind snapped into place, and her own hands came up to rest on his shoulders. Whether this was to get her balance, make him stop, or if she was just that shocked by seeing him, he would never fully know, but as blue eyes peered back into his own, he figured it was probably the last one.
Arms continued on to wrap around him and he gave a tiny gasp as he was pulled into a tight hug.
And he knew he should go back to grilling her, should be screaming about how she was supposed to be done – safe – and that she shouldn’t be here, should question what had happened…
But he indulged himself for just a moment. How could he not? Usually, the hugs he got from her were somewhat hesitant, tainted by the fact that her soul was just barely hanging back with its hands not touching him. They were both there now, for a reason he would get back to soon, but at the moment he was going to enjoy being crushed into her chest, her hands gripping the back of his suit so tightly he could feel her fingernails pricking his skin even through the fabric.
And it had been so long since he’d been able to touch her.
He pressed his face into her shoulder, giving himself a moment to just breathe. She smelled like blood. He hugged her closer. Some terrible part of him wanted to absorb her into his chest, to give her a place within his ribcage where he could make sure she wouldn’t be able to get hurt again.
Every hug has to end eventually, but neither of them seemed all that intent on doing so any time soon.
Which, he supposed, must have been why fate decided to break up their unfortunate little reunion:
“Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng?” A voice said from behind him.
Marinette went tense in his grip.
She slowly picked her head up, peering up at Gabriel Agreste for just a moment.
“It was you,” she said, recognition flickering behind her eyes. “I thought the timing of your heart attack was suspicious, but… it was really you…”
Jason was still close enough to hear her take a deep breath. It was strange, breathing when you were dead because it wasn’t actually necessary, it didn’t feel bad if you simply forgot and you wouldn’t have to gasp for air when you realized you had stopped, so he knew that the breath she took to steady herself was more out of habit than anything.
But, perhaps, because breathing wasn’t something that their bodies needed, the air didn’t have any kind of calming effects for Marinette.
She pulled away from Jason, got out of the chair, and flashed a too-bright smile.
And then she lunged for Gabriel’s throat.
Jason grimaced at the sound of a fist crunching against the man’s skin, definitely breaking something important.
Melisande eyed the fight that had broken out. “Aim for his penis.”
Bucky didn’t even look up from the papers he had taken from Jason’s desk to pick up the slack. “Too predictable. Go for the eyes.”
Those two never had gotten over the whole Hawkmoth situation.
But, to be fair, neither had Jason, so…
He hummed absently as he thumbed through the pages of Marinette’s file. His eyes found their way to the stats that he almost never paid any real mind to, and he grimaced.
She was set to be brought back within the hour. That was good.
What was less good was the way that she had died because of the League of Assassins. He narrowed in on the fortunately not too-graphic description of her bleeding out from several injuries.
He took a deep, steadying breath. The fact that she was there meant that she was set to be revived soon, so, really, no harm done.
Except for the harm that he was going to bring to the League. He was going to be revived soon, he would be perfectly capable of getting his revenge.
… actually…
“Hey, Marinette,” he said.
Her shoulders tensed at his tone. Her fist stopped in midair, still cocked by her ear. She slowly turned to look at him.
“I’m about to be brought back. You got killed at the League. Care to tell me whether that was a coincidence?”
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
She grimaced and looked back down at Gabriel, who was currently a mess of broken limbs and blood and rattling gasps for breath. She sighed and pushed herself off of him to face Jason properly. “Maybe.”
He groaned a little. “When we see Adrien again, we’re having a talk about risks.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Hey, we’re bringing you back. I think it’s worth it. You’re worth it.”
Jason did not know how to respond to that. He sighed and reached out, pulling her into another hug. “So are you.”
She giggled and wrapped her wings around him – her hands were very much covered in blood, so this was probably for the best – and he took a moment to appreciate them. He had expected the ladybug wings he had seen on all of the akuma victims, but he supposed it made sense that they would be different. She couldn’t very well revive herself. So, she had been given whatever wings the universe thought would fit her. Apparently, the universe thought she was a bird. One with bright pink wings, so perhaps a flamingo.
He opened his mouth to tell her about it, and perhaps ask why she had ended up with a flamingo being her animal, only for water to fill it.
And then his head was breaching the surface of the water.
He struggled for air, his body automatically starting to go through the motions needed to keep his head above the churning green, his eyes darting around desperately. He knew, logically, what had happened, but his heart pounded in his chest regardless.
Green light bounced off the cave walls. Shouts echoed around him, but they were muted, as if he was still under. The water frothed around them, churning as he worked to pull himself back together in a very literal sense.
There was a frankly alarming number of assassins standing by the edge of the water, refusing to go in on some vague idea that it was too sacred for them to touch, and certainly too good for them to throw weapons in in fruitless hopes that the three of them might somehow manage to die faster than the Pit could heal them.
Adrien stood over both of them. Water crept up his legs like snakes, twining its way up his body, seemingly searching for things to heal. A frankly worrying amount of throwing knives were tucked between his fingers like claws. His usual staff was slung across his back, but he didn’t seem all that interested in using it at the moment.
He heard a gasp nearby and looked over to find Marinette, her hair stuck to her face and blood sloughing off of her in literal waves.
Jason stretched out an achy limb to grab her arm and hook it over his shoulder, kicking back in the water to try and get them both to float while their injuries were forcibly healed.
For a moment, she leaned into him, her face coming to bury itself in his shoulder. She made a strange, wordless whining sound. He squeezed her as best he could.
And then she pushed off of him, groaning a little as she forced herself to stand in the water that, really, was only up to their waists, and yet the act of getting out of it was almost painful. He could feel tiny hands trying to drag him back under by his clothes.
It wasn’t until he was fully standing that his ears popped and he was allowed to hear all of the yelling in full.
“Weapon,” she said.
He blinked at her.
“What weapon do you want?” She clarified.
He glanced back at the assassins. They were yelling something that he was pretty sure meant ‘traitor’. It wasn’t aimed at him, but that only made the anger that had been curling in his stomach since he’d realized Marinette had been killed grow.
“Gun,” he decided. The assassins would get their wish, he would make sure that they wouldn’t touch the Lazarus waters, and if he had to use a gun to forcibly push them back then so be it.
Marinette grinned and pointed a finger gun at him. She flicked her hand upwards like she was shooting it, and, between blinks, he found a red and black gun had appeared in her hand.
He stared at the gun she shoved into his hand for a couple of moments. No matter how many times he might have seen it, he never did get used to the idea of things just popping into existence when she willed them to.
“Infinite ammo,” she said, apparently misinterpreting his silence for wondering how to use it.
He grinned regardless and lifted the pistol.
“So, do we have a plan of escape? Or are we just waiting for Ra’s to get here so he can fight us? Because I’m going to be honest, I don’t really want to fight him.”
Marinette snorted. “Of course we have a plan. Speaking of…” She inclined her head towards Adrien.
He tucked away half of his knives without saying a word and then lifted his hand. Inky blackness danced along his fingertips.
“Are we ready, M’lady?” He asked.
She hummed lightly and reached out, wrapping an arm around them both. She twirled her yoyo once.
And then she launched her yoyo at the nearest stalactite, only giving it a half second to grip the slippery stone before pulling on it.
They were launched through the air.
The people below them screamed, but it wasn’t quite an angry one, not the kind that meant they were going to be attacked. Not yet, at least. They just sounded panicked. Jason glanced back and found that the same inky blackness that had been curling around Adrien’s hand was now spreading through the water at a rapid rate, making it look somehow, impossibly, cracked. The assassins finally streamed into the Lazarus Pit, their need to preserve the sacred waters just barely outweighing their belief that it was not meant for them.
Meanwhile, their group of three touched down on the banks and took off running.
Marinette grabbed him by the hand and dragged him along behind her as she and Adrien sprinted through the halls of the base. Jason knew from the many briefings he had gotten from Bruce and Dick that the place was supposed to be a labyrinth, and he could see dozens of halls whizz past him as they sprinted, and his eyes caught on several tripwires, but neither of them hesitated at any forks in the path. They simply continued on, following a map that was just a little too perfect for him to think that they hadn’t done, at the very least, heavy infiltration to get to this point.
But before he could really think about that too hard, his eyes caught on a group of assassins streaming down the hall after them. Now they were definitely angry – and gaining on them, their weapons raised.
“Alright, I think the Pit should be destroyed now,” Adrien stated the obvious, flexing his fingers once before starting to trail them along the wall as they ran. The stone began to crumble beneath his hand, but the assassins pushed forward regardless, likely hoping to beat the inevitable cave-in.
Jason wasn’t particularly interested in letting that happen.
He picked off the assassins at the front with his gun. He hadn’t used one before, not really, but they weren’t particularly difficult things to use, and he wasn’t really concerned about being accurate. All he needed to do was slow them down, anyways.
He told himself he didn’t get a bit of a rush when he watched them keel over backward, blood and guts and viscera spraying from wherever he had hit. That he didn’t enjoy watching them get buried under rubble. That it was a bad thing that people were dying.
But, really, should you really expect someone that had been surrounded by magic for years to not pick up a few quirks?
And they had killed Marinette.
A strange grin spread across his face as the last of the rocks settled, dust sticking to skin that was wet with water and sweat and blood and who knows what else.
But they continued running. There was no telling how many assassins were stationed around the place and, even if they might be somewhat distracted, they didn’t want to test it.
Their fears were for nothing, it seemed, because they came upon a door.
And, well, he probably should have wondered why things were going quite so smoothly. Honestly, it should have been a larger red flag. That never happened in the field, especially not for him.
A hand grabbed him by the back of his shirt and he gasped as the front of it dug into his neck. He wasn’t given much time to recuperate, though, because a knife was quick to replace the fabric. It wasn’t pressed down, certainly not enough to strangle him like his shirt had, and yet he still couldn’t find it in himself to breathe.
Marinette and Adrien jerked to a stop as well, though they weren’t exactly forced to in the way that Jason had. Honestly, the way that they paused was somewhat unnatural. There was no loss of momentum, no skidding of shoes against the ground. One moment they were running, the next they were not. He wondered, idly, if the magic they wielded might be having just as much of an effect on them as it did on the rest of the world.
Could you tell that Jason was trying very hard to not think about the sharp point currently pressing against his skin?
“You’re traitors,” the assassin said, and apparently she was female. Whoo. Diversity win. The person about to kill Jason again is a woman.
He was going to cry.
Marinette rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we are. Congrats on figuring it out. Do you want a prize?” she said, moving to raise her hand in sarcastic jazz hands.
“Don’t move,” the assassin hissed.
Something akin to frustration flickered across Marinette’s face momentarily, but she didn’t move. It was then that Jason noticed that her fingers were surrounded by some kind of strange, gooey substance.
Adrien tilted his head to the side, his eyes narrowing just slightly. “How about we all let everything we’re holding go? I’m sure we can talk this out.”
The assassin seemed unimpressed. “You first.”
Adrien hummed a little, and then raised his hands, letting his knives clatter to the floor.
Marinette showed off empty hands.
The assassin seemed to realize that their being empty-handed meant nothing. Or, perhaps, that it did mean something – that their hands were now free to warp the world as they wished.
The knife dug further into his neck. He didn’t realize how much he liked the cold gleam of the metal until he could feel warm blood dripping down his skin.
“Disappointing,” Adrien sighed, giving a smile befitting of the model he once was. It was perfect, but there was nothing genuine about it, and his eyes flashed coldly.
“You were both talented. Fix the Pit and let me kill this boy, and you just might not make an enemy of the League.”
Marinette hummed, her head tilting to the side at a just slightly unnatural angle. She turned her head to look at Adrien, who seemed, remarkably, even less enthused than she did.
The assassin gave a theatrical sigh that didn’t quite cover up the cold smile starting to play across her features. “I suppose I’ll just have to make you fix it, then.”
Jason tipped his head back to rest against the woman’s shoulder. The knife followed him, but that wasn’t why he’d done it.
He pressed the gun against her side. Tilted at a careful angle that would, at the very least, puncture her lungs upon firing.
“Sorry. I don’t negotiate with terrorists.”
He pulled the trigger.
Pain seared through him and he bit down on his tongue to stifle a scream.
And then he was on his ass, groaning and cursing as he hit the tile. The world had transformed. His eyes darted around desperately, as if he somehow still wasn’t sure that he was dead even though he knew what a slash across the throat meant, but he was disappointed to find the same office walls that he had practically grown up in. Two people leaned over him, and tears began to sting as he recognized Melisande and Bucky.
“What, kid, did you forget something here?” Bucky asked, his expression somewhere between mildly pained and amused.
Melisande gave him a cold look and jabbed him in the side.
Bucky didn’t even seem to notice. He caught a file with a green tab sticking out of it in a practiced motion and, after giving him a tiny pat on the head, went back to work.
Jason scrambled to his feet, drawing red and black wings close to try and comfort himself. But he couldn’t. He was dead. Again. How long would he be there this time? Did he even want to know?
Fuck.
Everything he did brought him back here. His original life. Dealing with Hawkmoth. And now he couldn’t even escape properly. Every road always led to death, that was the price of living, but this was different. Every road for him led him back to purgatory. He strangled a sob. At least, if he died, things would be over, but now he had to go back to waiting. Until Marinette and Adrien were able to get back to the Pit, or maybe even later. Maybe he would have to wait for someone else to revive him, and surely that was worse. What if the face he saw when he was brought back wasn’t friendly? What if he got sent right back here again?
Damn it.
He curled in on himself, ignoring the fact that he was doing so in a public space and that everyone could still see him.
Melisande grimaced as she looked down at Jason. She pulled the boy to his feet and he simply allowed it, unable to muster the energy to really stop her. He wanted to cry, but that, at least, was too far for him. He could handle having a breakdown in the middle of an office building, but crying was worse.
But understandable.
Too bad he didn’t feel like understanding much at the moment.
He groaned and looked around. He was somewhat pleased to find Gabriel Agreste still on the floor. He was moving, but just barely. After a couple of moments, he walked over and stomped on the man’s neck. It didn’t matter, he was 99% sure people here couldn’t die, but the wheeze and wide eyes that he got from the man were more than a little relieving.
At least, if he was back here, he would be able to rag on Gabriel again. Fuck that guy. He deserved every punch and kick and extra file Jason was going give him over the next however many years.
He tried to laugh. It came out a sob.
Melisande reached a hand out for him, and then stopped, apparently thinking better of it.
Maybe she shouldn’t have, because the hand would have done him quite a lot of good. He nearly fell to the floor again, his hands coming down to rest on a nearby table were the only thing that kept his knees from buckling fully. He took a few deep breaths, matching the desperate gasps he could hear Gabriel make as the man clawed desperately at his throat. He couldn’t help but smile a little at the sound.
The smile, like his life, didn’t last very long.
He groaned and let himself sink toward the ground.
He closed his eyes.
And then the world around him tilted on an axis and he cried out.
Something rough, but not wholly terrible, dug into his back. He flung his eyes open, but it didn’t do him much good. Red and black danced in his vision, moving so fast that he wanted to be sick.
All at once, it all disappeared and he found himself staring into brilliant green eyes.
He stared uncomprehendingly for a few moments.
Oh.
Relief flooded into him.
Ladybug had summoned the gun he’d been using. Which meant that a miracle cure was more than possible. And, now that he thought about it, his wings had been black and red.
Maybe, later, he would feel embarrassed about his little freakout. He had been trained better, really, he was supposed to pay attention to his surroundings, and most certainly himself, but…
But, for now, he grabbed Adrien by the front of his shirt and dragged him into a hug.
Adrien made a quiet squeaking sound, throwing his hands out in front of him to stop himself from unwillingly tackling Jason further into the grass, but he recovered quickly. He looped his arms around him and tucked Jason’s head under his chin. The hug wasn’t quite as tight as the one he had gotten from Marinette, it was looser, softer. More of a hand carding through his hair and the faint smell of something floral on the breeze and slotting in perfectly against a slightly-too-thin frame.
“Guys…” Marinette said after a few moments. “We really should be going.”
Adrien didn’t even move, though his hand twitched like he was about to make a rude gesture but thought better of it. “No. You got a heartfelt hug or whatever, I get one, too.”
She rolled her eyes, but her expression was nothing but fond. “Fine. I’ll stand guard.”
Adrien gave a little hum, and Jason’s nose scrunched just slightly when his throat vibrated by his ear, but that just made the blond laugh a little and press closer to him.
Jason was pretty sure that they could have stayed there forever but, eventually, his stomach growled and his face flushed pink as he drew back. “Right. Revived. I have to have food now.”
Adrien gave a tiny grin and carefully got to his feet. He offered Jason his hand, and he didn’t even hesitate before taking it.
“Alright, Mari, you can relax now.”
Marinette popped out of a bush. Jason did not see her get into the bush, but she was out of it now. He has chosen to just accept this.
She grinned at him and stretched her arms over her head. “Where are we gonna eat?”
“Could you make something at the house?” Offered Adrien. “I’m sure Plagg and Tikki want to get out and eat, too.”
Marinette hummed lightly. “Fine. I’ll whip up some food before we abandon the place. Can we –?”
“No, we’re not going to burn the house down once we’re done with it.”
Marinette sighed and looked at Jason.
Jason hesitated before shrugging. “I mean. As long as its a controlled fire and there’s no one around to get hurt, I don’t see why we can’t...”
Adrien groaned. Marinette whooped.
There weren’t any hard feelings, though.
They started off towards their house. Their house, because this was home. Jason took them both by the hand, and neither of them so much as flinched. Marinette intertwined their fingers. Adrien swung their arms back and forth.
After a few moments, Marinette huffed. “I’m offended that you’re taller than me now.”
He, too, hated that he was so large. It was throwing him off more than he’d ever admit out loud.
However…
“Yeah. That’s because you’re my baby sister.”
“Listen here, you little shit –.”
“I spent years in the afterlife, so I’m older.”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, biologically, I’m older –.”
“We don’t even know that for sure –.”
Adrien sighed. “Guys, we just got the gang back together… or whatever the Americans say… can we just enjoy being together for a couple of minutes?”
Marinette and Jason glared at each other around Adrien for a moment before settling. He was right, after all…
Adrien’s eyes gleamed. “But, for the record, you’re the youngest.”
“Ha!”
“Oh, you conniving bitch –!”
#the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy#enemy of my enemy#and thats all folks#i love them all so much#special thanks to izzy bc she influenced like half of this#and betaed#hell yea izzy the beloved#platonic jasonette#maribat#adrien agreste#chat noir#marinette dupain cheng#ladybug#jason todd#robin#red hood#got into a cheesy mood at the end#but it ok#also i feel the need to say that joker is dead in this#mari and adrien got rid of his pasty ass
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Lord Dominator propaganda!
In a show where a BIG chunk of the characters you get to meet are all villains trying to conquer the galaxy, Lord Dominator is far more evil and feared than all of them, even by the villains themselves.
She arrives at the show's galaxy after impliedly having already gotten completely rid of others with nothing but one goal in mind: destroy every single planet on her path for her own amusement. She admits it several times: she doesn't care about others and doesn't want to give anyone the time of day, all she wants to do is watch them suffer and laugh at their pain. Wander, nice, intensely patient and full of kindness and hope, tries to welcome her to the galaxy only to end up—for the first time in the entirety of the show—frustrated and angry that she doesn't care. Then he gets thrown against a wall and imprisoned there, almost falling unconscious from the hit.
Her main element is lava. Setting things ablaze and using her lava skills not only to melt and burn, but to imprison in obsidian as well. She enjoys the lava powers well, using it as her primary source to attack and destroy everything whenever she doesn't just use her ship to drill a hole on a planet and tear it into a million pieces while she absorbs all capacity of life on it through it.
Along the entire season, the cast tries to stop her several times with extremely mixed results. The closest they ever get is by freezing the core of her ship and so, reaching her and her armor and freezing them as well. This ends up just being another success for her, as her armor absorbs the ice and she gets both lava AND ice powers now to torture and do as she pleases with.
Also worth mentioning that, with over 100 villains around, she is classified as the most evil one from the list the very second she starts killing everything. She then captures all the villains in the galaxy except for one (the dumbest, but at the same time most powerful one. It's a fact that Lord Hater is not as feared only because of his attitude, but all the villains are aware of how horrible he could truly be if he put his mind to it) if only because she thinks he's too pathetic to put up an actual fight and simply asks him to surrender. He IS as well captured, right after she laughs in his face for the hopes he had being destroyed right in front of her eyes.
Even by the end of the show, the only reason she's stopped is because she is left with no other choice. Her ship and armor explode, and she is left with nothing to her name but a deep fury while she retreats to figure out her next move. In a show that is all about care and compassion to its very core, this girl is the antithesis to all that the main character represents and CANNOT be convinced to do good; killing and destroying is fun, it fills her soul and the tears and screams of agony send her into a giggling fit.
She is incredibly fitting for the Desolation, following after nothing but destruction for the sake of it, being represented by the powerful sensation of lava and fire, enjoying the pain and destruction she is able to cause solely because she has the ability to, and because she's simply bored of anything that isn't causing massive, agonizing horror onto others
.
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