#with each of the ten different rings she picked out
Text
now that her girlfriend has wings again, imagining Charlie makes very good use of them, and in ways so sappy everyone else at the hotel wishes they'd just be doing normal weird stuff instead
Charlie: "Vaggie, you know what?"
Vaggie: "What sweetie?"
Charlie: "Sometimes I look out at hell and I just think WOW, I sure WISH I could see something soft and fluffy instead!"
Vaggie: "Really."
Charlie: "Yeah!! Something light... and downy... maaaaybe with the consistency of a feather pillow mixed with the universe's best hug... posssssibly scented like that one deodorant I mentioned liking once and you've mysteriously been wearing ever since..."
Vaggie: (rolls eyes) (smiles)
Vaggie: (summons her wings and drapes one comically over Charlie's entire head) "Like this, babe?"
Charlie: (muffled) (ecstatic) "I LOVE YOU SO MUFF!"
Angel Dust: "Sickening. If you gays keep this up, I'm gonna puke."
Vaggie: "What happened to your non-existent gag reflex?"
Angel Dust: "Your relationship's a bit too long-term even for it, toots. You need to put a ring on it, so's you two can start hatin' each other like a normal fuckin' couple."
Vaggie: (panicking) (dying) "VAYA! Shh- shhh!!!!
Angel Dust: "Oh fuck-"
Charlie: (still muffled) "Did he just say put a WING on it??
Vaggie: "Uh..."
Angel Dust: "Sure did, Charlie horse."
Charlie: (still under vaggie's wing) "She's already doing that though?"
Vaggie: (glaring) (spear out) "... you, are the luckiest damn man in hell."
Angel Dust: "Don't I know it, with a body like this~"
Charlie: (staying snuggled) (yet concerned) "Angel Dust, do we need to get you some glasses???"
Angel Dust: "Naw, but I might need help writin' a will after this."
Vaggie: (sloooooowly... puts away the spear)
#hazbin hotel#vaggie#charlie morningstar#angel dust#chaggie#incorrect quotes#silly headcanons#angels needs to stop flirting (with death)#charlie is NEVER coming out from under those wings (if she can help it)#vaggie has already#probably#spent time rehearsing her proposal in front of a mirror#with each of the ten different rings she picked out#and ended up not liking#someone#help her
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— ✧ isohel
i·so·hel (noun) a line on a map connecting points having the same duration of sunshine
pairing. hong joshua x reader
description. fairytales can be rather misleading, can't they? when you and your mother are ripped away from your life at the castle, you spend over a decade resenting the royalty. so naturally, when you find prince joshua at your doorstep, you’re more than eager to shut the door on him. but as your life takes twists and turns, you happen to find yourself in the arms of a man you never thought you'd have to see again.
genre. slowburn, modern royalty au, angst, fluff
tags. prince!joshua, developing relationships, slut shaming, allusions / references to greek mythology, dialogue heavy, implied se
fic playlist
w/c. 26.2k
a/n. lwk don't like the beginning but i swear it gets better🙄 thank u @cheolhub for beta reading & @jeonghantis & @gyuswhore for reading it over and helping out w this bc i think i was going insane over this story by myself >_<; ... i highly suggest listening to the song isohel by eden! it was a major inspiration for this whole story and i think it encapsulates the vibes really well c: hope u enjoy!
The sound of glass shattering isn’t foreign to your ears.
It’s common in the sweltering heat of the summer when the air is hot and sticky. Maids running around to tend to the evenings balls and parties only for the sweat to breach their fingers and suddenly their stack of fine china goes tumbling to the ground.
A bed of hyacinths sits in front of you as you bring up the hose and spray them down, watching through the tinted glass as two male helpers rush to the woman on the ground, quickly helping her clean up the shards of glass.
Turning your attention back to the plants in front of you, you turn the hose off and roll it back into the corner as you skip to the end of the greenhouse where there’s your mother’s desk space. It’s a measly little space but she hardly sits there anyways, always tending to the gardens in the courtyards, leaving the floral and herbal greenhouses under your care while she’s away.
After all, your mother is a gardener and botanist in the Hong palace, and having been a trusted employee for the past half decade since your father passed, she exudes the little privileges of getting to bring her daughter to work.
At least that’s what you think, because you’re only nine years old and naive.
She teaches you well—you’ve only been accompanying her on the weekends when you don’t have school, but you’ve already picked up on how to tell the differences between an infected plant and an unaffected one, the characteristics of a good caterpillar and the characteristics of a bad one, the exact amount you should water each species, and exactly when you should let the vapor run down.
It’s easy work, and you love it.
You love sitting at your mother’s desk and imagining what it’d be like to be her—successful and working in the castle, doing what you love instead of working some stupid nine to five. You love looking out the glass of the greenhouses every few moments when you pause reading your book. You love the rare moments when you get to lay your eyes on one of the members of the royal family walking by.
You’ve started to pick up on their characters in the small frame of time you get to see them when they pass by. The Queen has kind eyes, the King is a bit intimidating, and Prince Joshua … Prince Joshua has soft features you can’t quite read.
“He’s only a year older than you!” one of your friends from school said when you told her that you stayed at the castle during the weekends to help your mother. “You should marry him and become princess!”
You had to push her away and watch her disappointed eyes when you told her that you hardly get to see him for more than ten seconds, even on the rare occasions that he crosses your vision.
The sound of glass shattering isn’t foreign to your ears, but hearing it more than twice in one hour does have some alarms ringing in your head. When you glance back up at the window, time stops.
Your mother is on the ground. Limbs sprawled out with eyes wide in horror, she scrambles against the rough stone path as a man looms over her. He dons a deep purple robe—the kind that belongs to the advisors of the Court—and your young mind races through the possibilities of what warrants the disgusted look on his face.
“Sneaking around with royal blood. Who do you think you are?”
A man watches, dark and brooding from the corner, and then you recognize him. Advisor Lee. He stops by the greenhouses sometimes—a high advisor of the Counsel and distance relative of the King’s. You’re nine years old and naive, but you are not dense.
Something had happened between your mother and Advisor Lee. Something tells you it’s more than you can understand, but in this moment, you feel you understand perfectly.
“You whore,” the man in the dark robes spits out, punctuating his disgust with a stomp of his feet right by your mother’s leg.
You’re only nine years old, but that is old enough to know that that is not a nice word. Nine years old, and you know that that means a very bad thing. Nine years old and when you look at your mother’s grief stricken face, you are certain that everything is about to change.
Your house was always on the edge of the town. Before the affair between Advisor Lee and your mother, it was because she liked having the space to open a garden in your backyard. The city is crowded and full of bustling roads and buildings—it’s no fit for the small cottage that she wanted.
Now, after the affair, your house is on the edge of the town for a different reason.
The first day after your mother is fired from her position at the castle, you go to school with your head hanging low. It’s in the city, and for the first time in your five years of schooling, your mother tells you to go alone.
“I can’t—I shouldn’t drive you anymore,” she tells you as you pack your backpack. She walks you to the bus station and hands you a paper telling you which stop to get off at and how to walk to school from there.
You’re not sure what you’re expecting when you two walk up to the little stop by the street, but when you approach the small crowd of people waiting for the next bus to come in, their chatter hushes. Sparing glances at you and your mother, they whisper—some hushed, some blatant, some sad, some angry.
That’s where she stops and puts a heavy hand on your shoulder. “You can take it from here, yeah?” she asks, but you know it’s not really a question. Nodding, you slowly walk towards the crowd of people as the next bus parks in front of the stop.
You don’t turn around and look at your mother because you know that’d be a mistake. Instead, you let your neck droop, following the quiet crowd as they pile into the bus, clutching the strings of your backpack.
There aren’t any places to sit, so you reach for a pole but suddenly the bus starts and you lurch forward, falling to the ground. There’s black and brown dust on the palms of your hand as you push yourself up, no one saying a word or bothering to help as you keep your head down and grip onto a pole.
The knees of your stockings are dirtied, and it’s the only thing you look at the whole ride, it’s the only thing you look at when you silently take the walk to school, and it’s the only thing you look at when you make your way onto campus.
It’s the whispers again, and as you quietly sink into your normal seat, you hear them louder.
Did you hear about her mother? She isn’t allowed in the castle grounds anymore. What did her mother do? I can’t believe she showed up, I’d be crying at home. I wonder what she’s thinking—
Nothing. You think nothing when your teacher announces that class will be starting. All you focus on is the board and your notebook. You spend your recess and lunch at the school’s library, and as soon as the final bell rings, you scurry off campus and towards the bus station.
It isn’t like the morning—people don’t hush and stare, but nine years old is smart enough to know that it’s because they don’t know you’re your mother’s daughter. There aren’t any empty seats just like the morning but this time, a nice gentleman offers you his spot.
You can tell he isn’t so sure of his decision though, when you finally get off at your stop and you run off to your mother who’s waiting for you by the bench. From the corner of your vision, you watch the man through the bus window, jaw tight and gaze cold as he watches you slip your hand into your mother’s.
Your mother doesn’t talk on the short walk home. She doesn’t ask you about school and she doesn’t ask you about what the other kids said. You figure that she doesn’t need to hear it anyways, and so you purse your lips together.
You have a lot to get used to.
Your life doesn’t change much, and you get used to it.
School days are spent with your head buried in a new book with every break you have. Your time at home is nothing but studying and your mother teaching you how to tend to the garden in your yard.
Soon you are graduating and moving on with your life as you make the transition to college, although you can’t say much changes. You study, you read, and occasionally you commission a project. It’s usually just renovating a citizen’s yard, sometimes it’s designing a public garden, but it’s never anything too serious.
Right now, you’re perched on a wooden stool, elbows leaning on the counter as you swipe your thumb over your tongue to flip the next page of your book. The paper is worn through, soft under your touch as a show for all it’s been through—bought second hand from your boss.
Your boss is a kind old man who happened to be a friend of your late grandfather’s, and when his little bookstore was teetering on the edge of being forgotten, you couldn’t refuse the offer to step in to work.
You’re around halfway through the book when you hear the familiar ringing of the bell above the door, head snapping up only to see your boss at the front door with a few envelopes in one hand, a plastic bag in the other.
“Holding up the fort, I see,” he greets with a low chuckle as you stand up and walk over, taking the bag from his hand to help out.
“As always, Mr. Min,” you reply, setting the bag of books down on the counter. “Are these—”
“They’re your mothers. I was walking by your house this morning and she asked me to take these and add them to our stock, since she said she doesn’t need them anymore.”
“Huh,” you say softly, taking out the various books about plants. “Not sure how big the market for gardening books is anymore, but I’m sure I can add it to our catalog after hours today,” you mutter, setting them on the table behind the register as he places the letters in his hand.
“Your mother also told me to give you this,” he says, his tone an octave lower as he plucks out one the envelopes and hands it to you. You knit your eyebrows together, wiping your dusty hands down on your pants before taking a look at it. “It’s from—”
“The castle,” you whisper, holding the envelope closer to your face to make sure you’re seeing it correctly. “Oh my god—it’s from the castle.”
“Yeah. Must be important if your mom felt the need to send it through me instead of just waiting for you to come home and take a look at it.”
“A-are you sure this is meant for me?” you manage to ask, flipping the envelope over a few times to make sure you read your name correctly.
“Yup,” Mr. Min replies, pointing down at where the intended recipient is listed. Sure enough, it’s your name listed in dark and bold ink in one corner, and then there’s that stupid royal emblem of the sun in the other corner.
Your heart sinks to your stomach at the possibilities of what could be inside, raking your mind for an answer. Was something wrong? Was it about your mother? Or was this just some big mistake?
Dear Madam,
The Hong Royal Counsel wishes to find you well, as we present a request.
Your reputation with your mother’s work as well as the operation of your own gardens throughout the city, along with your academic achievements at our very own Hong University have reached our ears, and we believe you possess the skills required for a special project we have in mind.
You will have the opportunity to lead this project as you please and earn a notable financial sum in payment for your efforts.
Please indicate your acceptance by replying to this letter at your earliest convenience. We eagerly await your response and sincerely hope that you will be able to grace our kingdom with your talent and presence.
Thank you,
Hong Royal Counsel
You don’t have to read the letter more than once before you scoff, tossing the crisp paper and letting it drift down onto the counter before muttering under your breath, “Who do they think they are?” Crumpling the envelope and letter up, you throw it down into the trash can by your chair.
Knocks on your door aren’t normal. The delivery and mailmen know better than to do that, leaving your packages and mail by the doorstep and doing no more than that.
Knocks on your door usually mean Mr. Min is here for something—picking up some of the veggies your mother grew because the store prices are too high, dropping off a book, or indulging in some pleasantries and casual small talk.
It’s eight in the morning when you hear the soft rapping against your front door. Your mom is in the kitchen and your room, right next to the foyer, has walls thin enough to let the sounds through. You’re on your bed though, and it’s comfortable, warm, and it’s too early to be out and about anyways. You’ve just spent the past nine months laboring away at college, so you’re granting yourself these few moments of peace in the morning.
Pressing your head into the pillow, you try to drown out the noise of your mother conversing with Mr. Min this early in the morning. After you hear the door open, there’s a silence and for a moment, you think you’ve succeeded in plugging your ears well enough.
You’re about to smile to yourself and drift back into a heavy sleep before you hear a loud gasp.
It takes a lot to surprise your mother—you’ve come to learn that in recent years. It takes a lot to stun her, to have her gasp as you just heard. Scurrying out of bed, you press your ear against the wall in hopes to catch a glimpse of what’s going on.
All you hear is silence.
It hardly takes a second for you to shove off your blankets and throw yourself into the hallway, rushing towards the foyer where you see your mother standing in front of the open door. She stays unmoving and you wince for a few moments, eyes still adjusting to the morning light as you make your way closer to the door to see what exactly has her so shocked.
And then you catch it: a glint of that wretched, golden sun emblem stitched onto a purple velvet coat.
“What the f—”
Your mother’s hand flies up and grabs your wrist tightly. It’s the first time you see her move, and as she turns around to face you with dark, warning eyes, you press your lips shut as you glance over her shoulder. In front of your doorstep is a man you never thought you’d get to see in person again, not after that day.
Prince Joshua is just as handsome as the tabloids and social media make him out to be, and his presence in your life also seems to be equally infuriating.
“What is he doing here?” you hiss, pulling your mother closer to you so she’s close enough to hear you.
Her eyes are somber, and you silently wonder how she can be so calm, so docile, so—so tame. “They’re here for you,” she whispers, turning her whole body so her back faces the prince.
“What are you talking about? Why would—”
“The letter sent to you from the kingdom. I thought you told me it was a mistake.”
“It was,” you mutter, eyes glancing at Prince Joshua behind her. His gaze is averted, presumably out of respect for the conversation you’re having with your mother right now, but you can’t find it in yourself to appreciate him for it.
“Then why is he asking for your name?”
You gulp anxiously, eyes flickering between your mother’s eyes and the floor. “I don’t know.”
“Talk to him. It must be important,” she orders, walking forward and toward the kitchen and you grab her shoulder quickly.
“Are you kidding me? Why—why would I talk to him? Why would I talk to any of them?” you argue louder than you intended, and your mother swats your hand away sharply.
“They’re royalty,” she says, voice strained with caution.
“And? It’s not medieval times where they actually rule over us so—”
Your mother sighs heavily and then it hits you that no matter how much logic you try to expend, it’d be futile. “Talk to him. It isn’t quite like you have a choice.”
“You of all people shouldn’t put up with this,” you state and the second the words leave your lips, you regret it. Her face hardens and there’s a cold feeling that sinks in your stomach as she frees herself of your grasp and marches away.
You’re left watching her back fade into the rest of your house as your eyes are wide and you’re becoming increasingly aware of the presence of another person behind you. A person who is very important and very famous and very much a representation of all the things you loathe.
Turning on your heel, you don’t bother to push your lips up into a morning grin facing Prince Joshua with tired eyes and frown etched into your mouth. Taking a deep breath, you glance back at your mother who is in a far off room, deciding that whatever he needs to say to you, she doesn’t need to hear.
Slipping on some slippers, you quickly walk out of the house and close the door behind you, putting you right in front of Prince Joshua who waits for you with bright eyes.
“Hi,” he greets, voice airy and light as he takes a few steps back so he can bow, of which you begrudgingly return. “Sorry to bother you so early in the morning, I was just taking care of some work in the area and was told to stop by and talk to you about something.”
He sounds sincere, and his lips curve into a pleasant expression when he speaks, and you wonder if he’s plain stupid playing dumb to save you the humiliation of the situation—a royal prince speaking to the daughter of ‘a slut who seduced the royal advisor.’
So unable to decipher anything about his true intentions, you ask bluntly, “Is it about the letter I got from the kingdom two weeks ago?”
Prince Joshua chuckles nervously, rubbing the back of his neck and you catch the fancy white fabric of his buttoned up shirt underneath the coat. “I mean, yes it is and—”
You scoff, crossing your arms over your chest. “Why do you guys even bother sending letters? It’s the 21st century, you know? Emails exist.”
His face reddens, looking away before pursing his lips together. “Some things are just kept out of tradition,” Prince Joshua reasons quickly. “But I totally understand that, we’ll keep emailing in mind. But for the meantime, that’s, uh, kind of what I’m here for. We didn’t hear back a response, and I would like to take your answer back to the castle for you.
“Isn’t no response enough of a response?”
“Well—”
“My answer is no, if that wasn’t obvious,” you say, turning back to the door. “Is that all?”
“Wait!” he exclaims, grabbing your arm with his white leather gloves. It’s a bit surprising, really—he seems awfully timid for a prince and you’re a bit unnerved by how he hasn’t reprimanded you yet for being disrespectful. “Is there a reason why you don’t want to take on the job? If there are some specifics, maybe we can adjust the arrangement so it’s more to your liking.”
Your eyes widen, bewildered. “What? No I—I don’t care for anything like that, I won’t take the job.”
“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine,” he mutters under his breath before his eyebrows knit together as he looks at the ground, seemingly trying to figure something out. “Is it the money? We can negotiate your salary,” he offers and you shake your head.
“No, it’s not the money—I don’t care about the money,” you say harshly. “It’s not any of that, I just don’t want to.”
“Can you tell me why? It’s just, I’ll have to report this back to the Counsel and if I’m not able to recruit you, they’d at least want some reasoning for why.”
Inhaling sharply, it takes all your self control to not let your eye twitch and slam the door in his face. “Are you really asking me why I don’t want to?” Pursing your lips together, you glare at him harshly. “You were there that day, weren’t you?” you ask more quietly, and for a moment you see Prince Joshua falter. “Not that I’d expect you to care but surely you can at least understand why I don’t want to.”
“I-I’m sorry, but I really can’t change the past.”
Scoffing, you turn on your heel and open the door. “I’m not asking you to.”
“Wait—just wait a sec’!” he calls out, stopping the door with his palm before you close it. “You’re in your second year at Hong University, right?” He doesn’t wait for a response before he continues. “We’ll pay for the rest of your tuition.”
The air in your lungs seems stuck for a passing moment, and you shake your head to yourself, stepping into your house and turning around one last time with cold eyes and a deep frown. “No.”
The prince looks around hastily before blurting out, “We’ll do all of it!”
“All of what?”
“We’ll pay for all of your tuition—reimburse you for what you’ve already paid.” You don’t care. You shouldn’t care. “All of it, plus your hourly wage,” he adds, and you don’t even have a chance to think before you feel your mother’s hand on your back.
“She’ll do it.”
Your mother chuckles as she helps you tie the lavender colored robe around your waist. You’re not sure what she finds so funny about this, but you bite your tongue when you start to catch on how she ties the ribbons with such ease.
Over ten years of being away from the castle can’t erase the time she spent there, tying her own robe every morning before she was stripped of her title, and in turn, also the life she worked so hard to build up.
As you look down at the smooth fabric sent to you a week earlier from the castle, you’re forced to begrudgingly admire the intricate embroidery. The collar and ribbons are decorated with a darker purple stitching that runs in all sorts of twists and turns and swivels around the curves of your body.
“They’ve made them look nicer since I’ve last seen them,” she thinks out loud, matting her hands down your shoulders to smooth the fabric down one last time before taking a look.
“I don’t understand why you’re still so—” You inhale sharply and press your lips together, warning yourself to not say anything more when she shoots you a cautionary look. “Sorry,” you mutter, turning away so you can glance at yourself in the mirror. You do look pretty nice, if you had to admit.
“Just think about the money,” your mother encourages. “They’re covering the cost of all your schooling—all those days spent at Mr. Min’s can now go towards things you enjoy, rather than paying for your university.”
“I guess,” you grumble, adjusting your hair one last time before grabbing your phone and keys, walking towards the foyer.
“You know the way right?” your mother calls out as you slip on your shoes and walk out onto the front porch.
“I wish I didn’t,” is all you say, low and under your breath as you make your way to the car.
The castle lies in the heart of the city, so it’s quite the drive. You’re careful as you try to keep your robes clean, bunching it up to your thighs as you drive, and once you’ve made your way to the castle, you’re sure to make sure the hem of the bottom doesn’t hit the ground.
Reporting to the entrance that was given in your email (why they send emails for instructions but not the actual invitation to your job still remains a mystery to you), you carefully tuck your phone into a crevice of your robes.
The entrance starts at a gate on the east end of the castle, and you make your way to the little hut that sits at one end where a woman in a lavender polo and dress pants sits at a desk. Knocking on the window, you smile nervously as she looks up from her papers.
“Can I help you?”
“Yes!” you say, holding up your phone and pointing to your first day instructions. “It’s my first day here, and I’m not sure how to get inside and all.”
“Did they give you a code?”
“Uh, yeah let me check again,” you murmur, looking back at your phone to find the 5 digit code you were sent. “It’s, uh—32423.” The lady hums and nods, checking something on her computer before looking up at you with a smile.
“That’s correct. From now on you can just come through the smaller gate on the side—it should be to the left of this big gate, and just put in whatever code you have. It changes every few days but you’ll be notified with the new password every time it does.”
“Thank you,” you say, glancing over your shoulder to look at the gate she’s talking about.
“For now, just follow me. Since it’s your first day, I’ll show you the way to the … where was it you need to get to?”
“Right here it says the Advisory Quart?”
The girl’s eyes widen as she sits up from her seat and walks out of the hut, leading you toward the smaller gate. “Seriously?” she asks as she punches in the code, the gate automatically opening once she’s done.
The gate leads to a narrow pathway that runs slightly uphill in the midst of a lush field of trimmed green grass and sparse flowers that was previously hidden from you by the large stone halls. You remember the scene vaguely, but it’s a lot lovelier in person than you remember. Glancing up the pathway, you catch sight of the large castle in front of you, and the vision has an uneasy feeling floating in your stomach.
“Uh yeah, is that surprising?” you respond, hoping the small talk will distract you, even if it’s only a little.
“I mean the Advisory Quart is no joke. Those people work like crazy dogs—” she says with a laugh before looking at you with wide eyes. “Wait, I’m sorry—please don’t tell anyone I said that, they’ll—”
“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me. But please do continue—what were you saying? I haven’t been in that castle in a long—I’ve never been to the castle before, so I’m not up to speed with all the different Quarts and sectors and stuff.”
“Oh well, it’s just that the Advisory Quart does a lot of work … I swear they’re always running around, talking about some new project they’re working on,” she says as you follow her up some steps, nearing an entrance to a building connected to the castle.
“What kind of projects?” you ask curiously.
“Oh gosh, everything, I tell you, they do pretty much everything. From helping the King with his own decisions to doing absolutely random, huge projects, there always seems to be someone who’s on top of everything. I remember I had a friend whose husband worked up there—they were working on designing a whole new ballroom and no one had any idea why! So what are you going to be doing there?”
Chuckling nervously, you aren’t sure if you should tell this girl that you don’t really know. “One of those random projects, I assure you,” you tell her because you’re pretty sure it’s true. After all, you’re almost positive they won’t have you be doing anything that’s worthwhile.
“Ah, well you’ll probably be swamped either way,” the girl says with a sigh as you reach a large wooden door. “Anyways, we’ll part ways here. Just go through these doors and there’ll be a big hallway. Ignore all the different corridors and doors on the side, and just go straight and you can see there’s an open room at the end of this hallway. That’s where your check-in will be, and the people there will direct you to wherever you need to go.”
You blink a few times, taking in all the information before nodding meekly, bowing and thanking the girl for her time as she walks away. Taking a deep breath, you open the door with a loud creaking noise, stepping into the grand hallway.
The walls are beige with ornate accents lining the bottom and top, intricate designs carved into the ceilings that hang chandeliers in intervals. Your sandals clack against smooth travertine marble as your eyes roam the entrances to different corridors and rooms, doors dark and wooden, similar to the one you just entered through.
There aren’t many people in the long hallways, passing by only a few others who seem to have their attention busied by papers or their phone. Some of them are wearing similar fashioned robes to yours, while most of the others are wearing the same lavender colored polo and white slacks as the girl who brought you here.
Smoothing the fabric below your waist one more time as you near the large open room you were directed to, you glance around and find a desk with a kind looking receptionist talking to a man wearing your kind of robes.
Quietly approaching the desk, you stand a few feet behind him, patiently waiting for them to finish so you can step up. Neither of them seem to notice, being caught up in a conversation that seems a bit of a mix of professional and leisurely.
Twiddling with your fingers behind your back, you rock side to side on your feet as you wait for the two to finish up talking about how they’re excited for the next ball that’s coming up, not bothering to think about who these people might be and why they’re even invited to it.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man at the counter calls out, “I can help you.” He smiles and waves you over before nudging the other man on his shoulder. “Seokmin, go—you’re distracting me.”
The man he pushed is a handsome looking guy, light brown hair falling just above his eyes as he turns around and gives a small smile, stepping to the side but not fully backing away. “Ah, sorry about that. Go ahead, we were just catching up.”
“No worries,” you say quickly, walking up to the receptionist. “I’m here to find the Advisory Quart I think? I was told to report to this entrance, and the lady at the front told me to come here—it’s my first time here so—”
“Your first time in the castle?” the other man asks you with wide eyes.
“Uh, well—”
“Don’t mind him—Seokmin, you know better than to mess with the newbies,” the receptionist murmurs, and you frown at the word. He catches on and looks up at you, holding a hand out. “No offense.”
“N-none taken. So could you help me—I’m really not sure where to go.”
“Yeah of course. Does your email say who you’ll be reporting to?”
“It says here ‘Mr. Park.’”
“Oh okay, his room number’s going to be 77, right down that corridor right there,” the receptionist tells you kindly, pointing at one of the side hallways you saw while walking here. “Since it’s your first day, I’ll let him know that you’ll be coming down so he can be ready. I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Thank you so much,” you say bowing, quickly telling him your name. So caught up in the kindness of these peers, you almost forgot why you were so reluctant to come here in the first place, but no worries, this receptionist does a good job of reminding you.
His lips press into a thin line as raises a brow, asking you to repeat your last name again. When your answer slips from your lips, it’s much quieter. A heavy cloud sinks over you as you realize that even after years away, your family name is still tainted.
“Okay,” the receptionist finally says briskly, and you’re taken aback by how cold his voice has become. “I’ll let him know you’re coming down. You can proceed now.”
He doesn’t give you a ‘good luck,’ or a ‘have a nice day,’ or a ‘do you have any questions,’ despite his cheery attitude from before. Now he’s looking at you with an expressionless face and eyes that won’t meet yours as you shamefully turn away.
So caught up in the disappointment, you hardly notice how the other man—Seokmin—is still watching the scene unfold. As you walk away from the open room, there’s a hand on your wrist. Whipping around, you’re faced with a Seokmin whose face seems unreadable, just like the receptionists. Except something is … different. He seems sincere, and you feel safe.
“You might get lost trying to get there,” Seokmin says rather casually, letting go of your hand and walking next to you. “Come on, I’ll show you the way—I’m working under Mr. Park too actually, I’m his intern—so I know the way pretty well and can fill you in on what he’s like.”
You wonder why Seokmin isn’t acting like the receptionist. Your family name is still somewhat taboo in the city outside the castle, so you were pretty confident when walking into the actual place of the ‘crime scene’ that you’d be even more … generally disliked.
Seokmin seems to be different though, and you can’t quite figure out why.
Seokmin lets you know Mr. Park is mean when he wants, which seems to be always. Direct with his words but also, you have to read in between the lines sometimes if you don’t want to get scolded. You’re not sure what to do with that information, because Seokmin doesn’t tell you much else.
You walk down the corridor with him before stopping in front of a wooden door to your right, labeled with that familiar sun emblem and a golden plated plaque reading ‘77.’ “C’mon, he should be in here right now,” Seokmin says, pressing against the frame and pushing the door open.
Inside is a room unlike the others you’ve seen before. The ceiling is much lower and baskets of plants hang from it, vines lining the limestone walls, and pots and beds of plants sit by the smaller desks that litter the area. There’s a larger desk at the end opposite to the door, and you see a man with grey hair and firm eyes sitting at the ornate chair, reading through a stack of papers.
“Ah, Seokmin,” he says, standing up when he notices the two of you by the door, and it’s not you realize that this man is Mr. Park. Both you and Seokmin bow hastily. “I was waiting for the two of you to arrive.” His gaze then turns to you, and it’s sharp. “What took you so long?” His tone is harsh and you almost wince. “It isn’t your first time in the castle,” Mr. Park says bluntly, and for once you are taken aback because no one has addressed the cloud hanging over your head so directly yet.
“I’m sorry sir, I haven’t been here in—”
“No excuses. Don’t be late again.”
“Y-yes sir,” you reply meekly, faltering in your step a little.
Mr. Park sighs heavily and looks at Seokmin, waving him off. “Go to the Ballroom and ask around to see if they need anything for tonight. Don’t be slow like last time.”
“Yes sir! Right on it,” Seokmin says with a nod, quickly turning on his heel and scurrying out of the room.
“And for you …” Mr. Park mutters as he takes in your figure with an unnerving look on his face. “I need you to lead a project.”
Your eyes bulge out of your head. “Lead a project? I don’t even know what—”
“Word has it that the Prince himself had to bribe you with a whole four years of Hong tuition to get you here. Surely you didn’t think you’d be given light work.” people knew about that?
“Well, I didn’t know much about anything and I don’t even know what work I’m supposed—”
“You’ll figure it out, soon enough,” Mr. Park tells you briskly, walking over to his desk where a large chalkboard sits to its left. Using a stick, he points at a word written in a corner. Garden. “The Queen has a courtyard that she no longer likes the look of. It’s been stripped down, and you’re in charge of turning it into a garden of her liking.”
You knit your eyebrows together. “A-a whole courtyard?”
Mr. Park raises a brow. “Are you saying that it’s too much for you?”
“N-no!” you exclaim quickly. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I don’t get why I would be chosen to do this.”
Mr. Park huffs, and you wonder how such a tiny old man can fit so much sass in him. “If you must know: the Queen loved how your …” he pauses and within a fraction of a second you have a feeling where this is going, “… your mother designed the gardens on the West end.”
Mr. Park walks towards his desk and sits down, not looking at you as he cards through a few binders. “The Queen wants a similar style for this courtyard but since we can’t exactly have her back …”
You wince for real this time as you conclude, “… you tried to get the next closest thing.”
Mr. Park nods, not returning a snarky comment this time, much to your pleasure. “I’m the head of Design & Architecture, by the way, if you have any questions ask me—as long as it’s not stupid. You lead your project—design it and plan it. When you need people to work on it just talk to Seokmin and he’ll assign someone. You have three months to finish it. If you need an extension, you’ll have to get it approved by me.”
“Okay,” you respond quickly, trying to take in all the information at once. “Is there, like, a theme? Anything she wants in particular?”
“That’s a stupid question,” Mr. Park says bluntly and you frown as he points at a desk behind you. “Your desk is there. Any information you need will be there.”
“Y-yes sir, thank you,” you say, bowing and turning on your heel to sit down at your new chair. The desk is dark, wooden, and completely barren except for a thin folder set in the middle. Opening it, there’s a single paper inside with only a few bullet points typed out, and it hardly takes you a moment to read through all of it.
It’s vague—your only real requirements are the adherence to the kingdom’s symbolic purple colors, and inclusion of a general theme throughout the courtyard.
You furrow your eyebrows at the lack of guidance—were you really left to make such major decisions about such a large space in a castle you haven’t been in years? There’s so much room for error and disappointment and rejection, and after the past years of being treated like your family was nothing but a mistake, you aren’t sure if you can handle any more of it.
Closing your eyes, you absentmindedly nod to yourself in a silent promise. Closing the folder, you stand up. “Mr. Park, sir, do you know where the courtyard—”
“There is a map on the wall. Figure it out.”
You huff, glancing at the large map of the castle next to the chalkboard. This is going to be harder than you thought.
You run into Seokmin just as you leave 77, and he helps lead you to the courtyard. “So you’re working on this one, huh,” he says under his breath as you both appear in front of a large plot of land surrounded by castle buildings on all sides. You’re both standing on the East entrance to the courtyard, and there are four adjacent and opposite entrances on all other sides.
“Uh, yeah,” you say steadily, glancing back down at your minimal instructions before looking back up at the courtyard. It’s a square, and if you had to estimate, each side would be around 50 yards long, leaving quite a great deal of space for you to work with it.
“Pretty big project, huh,” Seokmin says, although his tone seems much more lighthearted than your mood. How the hell are you supposed to transform this in three months?
“Yeah,” you mutter, squinting at the bright sunlight as you analyze the plot.
“You know, I can totally help if you want,” Seokmin begins to say, and you take note of how quickly he talks. “I don’t know if Mr. Park told you but you can basically ask me for help on anything and like, I’m really doing this whole interning thing for fun—” Who the hell works as an intern for Mr. Park, for fun? “—so I’d be happy to help.”
“Thanks. I’ll ask if I need anything.”
“Great!” Seokmin cheers, clapping his hands together before looking behind your shoulder and letting his smile brighten. He waves at someone behind you and you purse your lips together, wondering if you should brace yourself for yet another salty interaction.
“Minnie!” a deep voice greets and suddenly, your feet seem glued in their spot. You know that voice.
“Shua, hey!” Seokmin says cheerily, and you silently cringe. “Crazy running into you here, gosh, I haven’t seen you since last week!”
Prince Joshua laughs, and it reminds you of all those years ago when you watched him from inside the greenhouse. You hate how you remember.
“Yeah, my fencing instructor let me off earlier so I thought I might browse around the castle for a bit,” he explains, and when it all goes quiet and you realize that he must be looking at you, but you don’t dare to turn around.
“Oh,” Seokmin exclaims, as if he’s just realized that he forgot something. You feel a tapping on your shoulder, and for a second you debate just running the other way and never letting yourself return to the castle but for something, you’re planted in your place. “Hey, look,” he says quietly in your ear, “It’s the Prince.”
Like you don’t fucking know that. Nodding, you slowly follow his lead and turn around, eyes trained on the ground as you bow.
“Oh, well if it isn’t that little ray of sunshine,” Prince Joshua says, and it takes everything to not let your eye twitch as you finally look up at him. He’s wearing the same royal uniform you say to him when you showed up on his doorstep and his eyes are crinkled as he smiles widely.
Your face burns as Seokmin’s eyes flicker back and forth between you, and your lips are pressed together in an awkward silence. “You know each other?” His face displays nothing but perplexion for a few moments but then it seems that some of the cogs turned and his lips open wide into a large ‘o,’ and Seokmin waves his finger while nodding. “Oh you’re the girl Shua said he had to offer four years worth of—”
“Seokmin,” Prince Joshua interrupts, putting his hand over his friend’s mouth after catching the look of mortification on your face for bringing it up. “Mr. Park was calling you, I’m pretty sure.”
“Ugh, are you kidding me? I thought this would be fun for the summer but he actually has me doing stuff!” As the two converse casually, you wonder how hard it’d be to quickly slip away.
“Not sure what you expected,” Joshua chides his friend before Seokmin groans and you hear the heavy footsteps of him walking away. He calls out your name once and your eyes shoot up as you bashfully wave your hand at him, bidding goodbye.
You’re left in this corridor with the empty thoughts in your head and the goddamn prince of the kingdom. You half expect him to just wave at you and go about his own business, but it seems like you still have a lot of learning to do.
After all, Prince Joshua is a fickle man. “It’s nice to see you again, Sunshine,” he greets, and you think you might pass out from embarrassment. Glancing around, you see a few maids overhear him using the name and murmuring their own whispers amongst themselves as they rush away.
“H-hi,” you say nervously, suddenly aware that much attention is on you now that the prince is speaking to you.
“So this is what you’re working on?” he asks curiously, not paying a single mind to your awkwardness, walking toward the door which leads to the East entrance to the courtyard.
“Yes sir,” you murmur. You could be snappish outside the walls and in the boundaries of your own home but here, you’re bound by royal courtesy and witnesses that surround you. Compliance is all you can manage out in the open.
“Don’t call me sir—you’re around the same age as me, so it feels weird,” Joshua says dismissively, and you furrow your brows at how casual he’s being. “So,” he starts, looking out at the empty yard of dirt, “you got any idea of what you’re going to do with it?”
“Not a clue,” you reply honestly, keeping your answers brisk. Joshua seems to catch on and he pouts at you. How can a man act so childish? The thought lingers in your head for a moment before he starts talking to you.
“So cold. Brighten up Sunshine. I’ll stop in soon to see how it’s going here—I’m interested!” he says cheerily before stepping back and nodding. You bow as he walks away, waving to you one last time before leaving you in the corridor with not a single thought in his mind.
There seems to be a distinct odd air around the prince, except you can’t quite place why that is.
It’s been three weeks since you started working at the castle—time passes quickly when you have loads of work to do and not much time to do it. You spent the first week hunched over at your desk simply raking your mind for ideas, for anything that would give you even a smidge of inspiration.
77 is rather sparse. It’s only really you and Mr. Park actually working in there, with the occasional Seokmin running in and out to tend to everyone’s miniscule needs.
And then there’s Jihoon, who is the only other person who actually works at his desk, even if it’s only for an hour a day. Jihoon is slightly brooding and always has his nose buried in some work, but he seems standoff-ish to just about everyone. He isn’t unkind though, just … just reserved, and you feel thankful that there’s another person somewhat like you here.
77 is kind to you and your heart. Everyone works on their own schedule and is in their own head, and no one seems to treat you extraordinarily different. You wish the same would go for the rest of the castle.
On the second day of your work, the embroidered name on the fabric over your right breast was clear enough for people to start learning who you were and recognize your face.
But you’re used to the stares—both the subtle and obvious ones—and you are used to the whispers, the guessing games about whether or not you’re a slut just like your mother was.
You’re not, by the way, but you’ve had enough experience with these kinds of people to know that they can guess all they want but you know the answer, and the truth will come to light at some point. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, they'll figure it out on their own. Eventually.
By the second week, you figured out a plan and needed to get to work on executing it. Seokmin seemed to be pleased when you asked him for help on that.
“I need people who can build a pathway,” was all you needed to tell him and then he was on the phone, and then the next day you had ten men ready for you by the dirt field ready to work. “I want stone tiles and it needs to curve exactly like this,” you told them, showing them a scaled down map of the area with a long, curvy line running from the North to South ends, and another even more curvy one running from the East to West end.
They didn’t ask questions, which you’re grateful for, because coming up with it was a whole feat on its own. Explaining it would be a whole other story.
As you walk up to the castle’s entrance today, you catch sight of a girl who sits in her little hut in front of the East gate. She’s the same girl who helped you on the first day, you realize. She was kind then, you remember, but now as you meet her gaze, she turns away and pretends to go back to her phone.
You don’t frown or let the gesture sear your heart because in all honesty, that’s exactly what you’re expecting. Sighing, you make your way to the smaller gate and walk the small way up to the actual castle grounds before heading straight to 77.
Jihoon is sitting at his desk but is just about to get up, sending you a quick nod as he stacks his files and walks out of the room. Mr. Park isn’t here, for once, although you did overhear some information about a ball happening tonight so you figure he must be busy.
You’re thankful Seokmin is here, and you catch him watering one of the plants. “Hey, what are you doing?” you ask him hastily, walking up behind his back before grabbing the watering pot from his hands.
“Um … watering … the plants?”
“These are yarrows,” you emphasize, pointing at the white flowers he was just watering.
“Okay … I am really not sure what to do with that information,” Seokmin says slowly as if he isn’t quite processing your words.
Huffing, you tell him, “Yarrows don’t need a lot of water. You aren’t watering them … I think a better word would be drowning.”
“Oh,” Seokmin mutters, looking down at that pot that’s now rich with soaked soil. “Sorry, I, uh, didn’t know,” he apologizes, and you purse your lips together because he does sound sincere.
“It’s okay … sorry for being mean about it,” you add quietly, returning the pot to his hand. “I can send you a list later—of all the plants here and how much water they need.”
Seokmin’s ears perk up. “Really? Thank you, but you seriously don’t have to, you know.”
“I know, but I enjoy talking about plants and stuff. And I’d rather the ones in this room be taken care of nicely, so the least I can do is help you,” you offer before retreating to your desk. “I think I need your help by the way, so can you come with me?” you ask, pulling out a measuring tape from a drawer.
Seokmin nods, dropping the watering bucket by his own desk and following behind you as you leave the room. The journey from the Advisory Quart to your courtyard, which is located near Royal Residence Quart, is quite the walk, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t a little bit pleased that you had someone like Seokmin as company.
“How’s the project turning out?” he asks as you make your way down the long hallways. You catch a few other workers spare the two of you glances and you try to hold your head up and look forward when you respond.
“I’m a little behind,” you admit. “But the construction manager told me that they should be finished with the pathway today, and I asked them to start tilling some other parts of the field so I can get some flora in there soon.”
“Oh really That’s nice—I stopped by the place just the other day and the pathway was looking pretty cool—the color fit in really well.”
“Hm, that’s good … I was worried about that,” you murmur to yourself thoughtfully, pulling out your phone so you can glance at the list of things you need to get done before heading back to 77. Tucking the device back into a crevice of your robe, you smile as you near the East end courtyard entrance. “I gotta get a plaque up here or something,” you remind yourself, looking at the empty space above the entrance.
“You want me to get on that soon?” Seokmin offers and you shrug.
“I guess. I’ll still have to come up with a name for this place …” you say, walking into the courtyard.
“Wow,” Seokmin mutters as he follows behind you. “The pathway looks great!” He pats your back and you throw him a small smile when you look over the two twisting paths that connect the 4 ends of the courtyard. “What was it that you needed my help with again—Oh hey! Shua!”
Oh for fuck’s sake—
“Seokminnie!” that familiar, smooth voice appears from behind you as Seokmin turns on his heel and scurries toward his friend. Slowly and carefully, you tuck your hands behind your back and bow when you turn around and are met with the sight of Prince Joshua. “Sunshine,” he greets with a smile after exchanging his casual pleasantries with his friend.
“Good morning sir,” you murmur as Seokmin bounces up and down on feet from a newfound excitement. How does he have this much energy at nine in the morning?
“I thought I said don’t call me sir,” Prince Joshua tells you, scrunching his face up when you let the word slip from your mouth. “Feels weird.”
“I’m sorry but you’re kind of the prince. I don’t think there’s anything else for me to call you other than ‘sir,’” you huff lowly before slapping a hand over your mouth. You’re not scared of what Joshua might do, per se, but the thought of someone else overhearing your snarky remark has you reminding yourself to be more careful.
Joshua only chuckles. Is there anything that bothers him? “You’re funny,” he comments. “You can call me Joshua, like Minne over here,” he tells you, patting Seokmin’s shoulder affectionately.
Your face sours and you shake your head, “I’m sorry that doesn’t feel right.”
Joshua rolls his eyes playfully, choosing to ignore what you said and instead looks around the courtyard. “Nice pathway. It’s cool that it isn’t straight—is it supposed to be something?”
“Sort of,” you say, turning around to look at the stone on the ground. “It’s confusing.”
Joshua scoffs. “Try me.”
You furrow your eyebrows. Why Prince Joshua—or as he would like you to call him, just Joshua—is so curious about a random courtyard is beyond you. “They’re just lines that follow the movement of sunlight. I guess. I don’t really know how to explain it.”
“That’s cool,” Seokmin chimes in when he sees you pulling out a roll of measuring tape. “Oh yeah, sorry, I didn’t get to hear what you said you needed help with.”
“Oh yeah, I just want to measure a—”
“Sorry for interrupting,” Joshua says, and you frown when he pulls out a buzzing phone, holding it up to Seokmin’s face. “What did you do this time—why is Mr. Park calling me?”
Seokmin’s eyes widen in panic as you watch the scene unfold. “What?! I haven’t done anything wrong recently. Well I don’t think I did and I’m pretty sure—”
He’s cut off by Joshua pressing his finger over his lip, effectively shutting him up. You almost laugh at the way Seokmin complies so quickly, but hold it back as Joshua holds the phone up to his ear. The sounds that come from the call are muffled but you can vaguely make out the voice of your boss before Joshua sighs and ends the call.
“What are yarrows and what did you do to them?” he asks his friend, and this time you actually do stifle out a giggle. Joshua glances at you as you quickly press your lips back into a fine line, both of you turning your attention back to Seokmin whose ears are turning bright red, shoulders tensing up.
“Oh no—I really don’t want another scolding!” he whines.
“Well buckle up, because he’s asking for you back at 77 right now,” Joshua shrugs as Seokmin huffs, stomping off back into the corridor and presumably back toward the Advisory Quart. “Sorry,” he says, turning to you, “I keep sending your assistant away when you need him.”
“It’s fine,” you say gruffly. “I, uh, I can still do this all by my stuff so it’s not really a big deal.”
Joshua narrows his eyes. “Are you sure? I don’t have fencing for another …” He glances down at his star studded wrist watch for a second, “… thirty minutes so I can help out.”
To say you’re mortified by the offer is an understatement. A prince helping out you? He must be fucking with you because—
“Stop giving me weird looks. I know how to help out around here, you know?”
“Duly noted, but I’m not sure how it would look on my end if the prince was helping me out with—” you gesture to the field around you, “—yard work.”
Joshua laughs, and once again you’re left in perplexity. “Weren’t you the one who reminded me that this is the 21st century? I don’t just sit around and do nothing, you know that right?”
“But still,” you mumble.
“Okay fine. If you’re so obsessed with this royal hierarchy thing, then I, as Prince Joshua, am officially requesting you to let me help. Surely you won’t turn that down.”
This man is so weird.
“Fine,” you relent, holding up the measuring tape. “You see that little circle in the middle where the pathways sort of curve around? I need to measure the circumference of it.”
“That’s it?” Joshua asks casually, grabbing one end of the measuring tape as you make your way to the plot. “Oh, I mean I guess it’s kinda big,” he adds, glancing down at the measuring tape. This one only goes up to 15 feet.”
“You’re right,” you mutter to yourself. “Okay here, let’s just use this,” you say, pulling out a roll of thin string and handing one end to Joshua. “If you stand here I’ll just circle it around and measure the length of the string,” you explain, unraveling the roll and walking around the outer edge of the circle, trailing the string behind you.
Joshua just stands in the spot that you placed him, holding the string and frowning. “I feel like I’m not helping much.”
“Trust me,” you reply under your breath. “You’re helping me just enough.” You don’t mean it to come out bitter, but it does anyways.
“What happened to all the royal hierarchy stuff that you were on about?”
Your eyes harden on him as you’ve made it halfway around the length of the circle, pausing to make sure he notices your subtle glare. “If you didn’t know, this is kind of my job on the line, and while you’ve made it clear that what I say doesn’t affect you, I’m not sure the same could be said for what other people see. So I’m sorry if I don’t want people looking at us and getting the wrong idea.”
“What do you mean the wrong idea?”
Huh. And here you thought that with all those royal tutors, the prince would be smart. Too bad for Joshua, but right now, he’s coming off as just about the densest guy alive.
You’ve been working at the castle for five weeks now. Since your last meeting with Joshua (he insists you get rid of the ‘Prince’ and ‘sir’ so diligently now that even in your head, you’ve removed him of those honorifics), you’ve only seen him twice.
The first was three days after he helped you measure the length of your soon to be pond. You were on the phone with a construction contractor in 77 when Joshua popped in to say ‘hi’ to Seokmin (how and why the two are friends, you don’t know, and you don’t care enough to ask). Noticing you were here past the regular working hour of six, he waited for a few moments to let you finish up your call before walking up to your desk.
“You know you don’t get paid overtime, right Sunshine?” he asks, confused on why exactly you were still here.
“Well work needs to get done,” you sigh heavily, taking a few seconds to clean up your desk and throw away a few old designs you sketched earlier.
“Hey, those looked cool, why’d you trash them?”
“They didn’t work,” you tell him, rummaging through more papers to find the few that you actually wanted to keep.
“Told you,” Seokmin comes up from behind Joshua, patting his shoulder. “She’s a tough judge—even on herself.”
“I get what you mean now,” Joshua murmurs, nodding along with his friend.
Your eyes snap up. “Why are you talking about me as if I’m not here—wait, why do you guys talk about me when I’m not here anyways?”
“You’re like the only one that’s nice to me in 77! Well, sort of,” Seokmin reasons with you.
“I mean you do kind of suck as an intern—”
“Hey! I just happened to get distracted a lot. I’m an honest worker, trust!”
You huff, finally finding the paper that you were looking for. It’s a design for a couple plaques that you want posted above the entrances, and you tuck it into a folder.
“Is that in Latin?” Joshua piques when he catches a glimpse of the wording.
“Uh, yeah—you know Latin?”
“He’s a prince. Of course he does,” Seokmin tells you, turning around to nudge his friend on the side. “This spoiled brat has been learning Latin since he was six!”
Joshua scoffs. “Who’re you calling a spoiled brat? You were in those classes with me too!”
You consider wondering about who exactly Seokmin is and why he was in those classes with a prince, why he’s so close with Joshua, and a plethora of questions run through your mind, before you remind yourself that you really don’t care.
“Yeah but—” Seokmin tries to reason with his friend before you stand up and both of their attention are directed at you.
“You’re right Pri—Joshua. I don’t get paid overtime, so I’m gonna get going now.” You bow at him and then Seokmin, grabbing your folder and bag before pushing in your chair and heading to the exit. Awkwardly, the two boys say bye to you before glancing at each other.
“That was weird,” Seokmin says, and Joshua shrugs.
“I guess.”
“Did you actually understand what she wrote or were you just bluffing? I don’t remember shit from those Latin lessons.”
Joshua rolls his eyes and nods. “Yeah, but I only got the second word. Said ‘invictus,’ I think.”
“Huh, cool. Got no clue what that means.”
“It means undefeatable, dipshit,” Joshua groans. “Seriously, how’d you pass that class!”
“Hey, I was a great student—I just have, uh, bad memory,” Seokmin pouts.
“Yeah I can tell … seriously, how did you manage to fuck up the yarrows even after she,” Joshua gestures behind him as if to point at where you exited just a few moments earlier, “sent you all those instructions and all!”
“God, don’t remind me. I actually feel really bad, ‘cause Mr. Park yelled at her too for giving me ‘the wrong instructions,’ but I really just forgot what she told me.” Cringing at the mental image of both you and Seokmin being scolded by Mr. Park, Joshua shakes his head—that is not a pretty scene.
Joshua sighs, the two of them making their way out of the empty 77 and walking down the corridor towards the Royal Residence Quart. “Why’re you even interning for him? You don’t need a job, especially not as one being an assistant.”
“My dad’s pissed at me, remember?” Seokmin tells his friend gruffly, and Joshua purses his lips at the mention of the older man.
“Right.”
“Wanted to punish me for the summer or whatever, but I guess it’s not too bad. The staff are actually pretty funny, and your Sunshine girl is really bossy so she gives me a lot of work to do.”
“I can’t tell if you’re complaining or celebrating.”
“Both, I think,” Seokmin replies, the two of them laughing together. “Why do you talk to her so much? She’s even snappier to you than to me, and trust me, I can be pretty damn annoying.”
“Like I don’t know that,” Joshua mutters teasingly, earning him a punch on the arm. “But anyways, she seems interesting. Like cool, you know what I mean.”
“I guess,” Seokmin says absentmindedly. “Wonder what my dad would say about that.”
“Okay well your dad isn’t the King so I don’t really think it matters what your dad says about it.”
Seokmin raises a brow. “You sure? My dad almost had me transferred out of 77 because he heard I had to work with her.”
“Well that’s his own problem I guess. Just don’t let him bring it up with my dad because I’m not keen on having any more drama in this castle,” Joshua mumbles, stopping in front of the big door that leads to the residence.
Seokmin nods at one of the guards standing by the door, and she presses a code to a small box on the wall and the doors open. “You coming? Dinner’s about to be served,” he calls to Joshua when he walks forward but realizes his friend isn’t by his side.
Smiling, Joshua shakes his head and waves Seokmin off. “I’m gonna take a breather for a bit. Tell them to start dinner without me.”
Seokmin laughs. “You know they won’t do that.”
“I know, I know, but it’s the gesture that counts anyways. I’ll be back in twenty, trust.”
The second time you saw Joshua was yesterday evening just as you were just leaving 77 to head home, your arms full of papers to look through in the night. After getting the pathways cleaned up, you needed to work on adding more structures to the courtyard, but were at a loss of what to make and what to make it with.
With your stack of papers that were littered with different possible materials and architectural structures that you promised yourself to get through by the end of the night, even if it meant pulling a whole damn all nighter.
“Is Sunshine leaving at a normal time for once?” Joshua asks with a faux gasp as he comes across you in the hallway.
With the paper’s digging into your arms, you can only manage to grunt out a short, “Thankfully, I am,” before increasing your pace so you can get all this stuff to your car as quickly as possible.
“Hey, wait!” Joshua calls out from behind you, and you almost whine because your arms are killing you and you aren’t sure how much more of this you can handle. “Do you need help? I can—”
He’s cut off by the sound of your phone slipping from your pocket and crashing to the ground. “Shit,” you whimper under your breath as you try to balance all the papers on one hand while crouching down to pick up your phone with the other. You’re wobbling under all the weight, and you have half a mind to give up right here and now but then a larger hand is pushing itself into your vision.
“Here,” he says, quickly turning over the device to check for any cracks on the scene. In that fraction of a moment, your phone turns on and flashes your very bright and very embarrassing lock screen. Your face burns as you snatch the phone from his hands and tuck it back into your pocket. “Is that Percy Jackson?”
Adjusting the papers in your hand, you shuffle your feet and start walking toward the exit. Joshua follows, as expected. “Uh, yeah—I know it’s embarrassing but—”
“Uh, you did not just say that,” Joshua scoffs, and when you catch the oddly offended look on his face, your annoyance dissipates for a moment. “Percy Jackson is not embarrassing. Those books were like the defining character of my pre-teens.”
You chew on your lip, wondering how you should respond to this. “That’s cool. I used to like the stories too …”
“Seems like you still do, considering it’s like, your lock screen and all.”
“Look, I just have it ‘cause it looks cool,” you tell him bashfully, speeding up the pace of your steps in hopes that it’ll bring this conversation to end faster.
“Uh yeah, sure. Totally believe you.”
“I’m serious,” you huff. “I liked the books ages ago, but now I’m only interested in Greek mythology. It just so happens that the best art of Greek gods comes from Percy Jackson fan artists.”
“Sure. sure,” Joshua says blankly with a smirk teasing at his lips. “Again, totally believe you.” You don’t know why his subtle teasing has you gripping onto your papers so tightly, why it has you gritting your teeth together. And then you remember who this is and it all makes sense.
Joshua is playful and lighthearted, but he is still the Prince, after all.
Your sixth week at the castle, and you’re nearing the halfway mark for your project’s timeline. You’ve spent the past week working on getting some stone benches built into the courtyard, and just this morning you sent in an order to get some plaques engraved.
Mr. Park stopped by when you were checking out your progress earlier, glancing at the pathways and the nearly completed seating. He didn’t say anything, simply nodding and walking along, and you figure that that’s the best you’ll get from him.
Your day goes by fine, for the most part after that. When you take your lunch break at the cafeteria, Seokmin tags along and you’re pleased that for once, you won’t have to eat alone. He has to leave soon after though—apparently Jihoon called for his help, and so you’re left to take care of this afternoon’s work by yourself.
Not that you mind—people let you be in the castle, and it’s actually quite nice for getting work done. When you return to 77, it’s only occupied by Mr. Park who, as always, pays no mind to you. Taking a look at your schedule, you aren’t sure if you feel like smiling or frowning when you see your next activity lined up.
Visiting the greenhouse.
There’s an odd feeling that blooms in your stomach as you walk there. You haven’t been to this side of this castle yet, partly because you don’t need to, but mostly because you don’t want to.
It’s when you leave the walls and take your way out to the Northeastern gardens of the palace that the pathways start ringing bells in your head. The familiar green bushes that you remember your mother tending to. The fields of daffodils, and the little built in canals that lead toward the row of greenhouses—it’s all flooding back to you, and you can’t figure out if you like it or not.
When you first came to the castle, you figured that you could avoid confronting the remnants of your past, but you should’ve known that everything eventually goes full circle.
Which is how you find yourself standing in front of the greenhouse where everything—your life, your mother’s life, all of it—ended on that day over ten long years ago.
Taking a deep breath, you go up to the door of the largest greenhouse ,tentatively tapping on the blurry glass before pushing it open. Peeking inside, you’re met with the familiar sight of flora arranged in neat lines of soil beds.
As you step in, the air is moist and stuffy—when you inhale, you’re reminded of those early Saturday mornings where you sat by your mother’s desk and watched her tend to the plants. The humidity was usually uncomfortable, but you learned to love it. Right now, you learn how much you missed it.
“Can I help you?” a gruff voice interrupts your thoughts, and you whip your head around to find an elderly woman glaring up at you.
“Hi, I called earlier and you said I could take some of the hyacinths. I just wanted to ask which greenhouse they’d be in because—”
“31C,” she says bluntly, immediately turning back around to tend to whatever she was doing earlier.
You watch her for a few seconds blankly, before snapping out of your haze, “O-okay, thank you.” Pursing your lips, you let your head hang low as you start walking toward the door.
“That damned slut,” the woman mutters quietly. You don’t think you want to hear it, but you continue to listen anyway. “Thinks she can just send her daughter over and—”
“And?”
You don’t think you’ve ever been more happy to hear Joshua’s voice.
Looking up, he’s just entered through the entrance you were about to exit through, and while you would usually mull over the possible reasons he would be here, you’re far more focused on watching the bewildered look on this woman’s face
“Nothing sir!” she replies quickly, back straightened as she presses her hands behind her back.
“Good to hear,” he says simply. You watch from the side as Joshua gives her a look that you can’t really gauge before turning to you with a brighter look on his face. “Seokmin told me I would find you here?”
“I—yeah, he was right.”
“Well I can see that Sunshine,” Joshua chuckles and waves your hand in a gesture to follow him. You don’t have any other choice than to follow him out the greenhouse and into the much freer, lighter air. “What’re you doing here anyways?” he asks when you start finding your way to 31C.
“I need to look at some flowers.” Joshua asks you quite a bit about the courtyard, and although you don’t really get it, you’ve learned that it’s easier to just reply to his questions honestly than try to avoid them.
“For the courtyard?” he piques as you finally find the smaller greenhouse, opening the door to thankfully find it empty of anyone else.
Your gaze lands on a bed of hyacinths as you reply, “What else?”
“Okay, you need to stop answering all of my questions like I’m stupid.”
Huffing, you pull up a pot from under the bed and fill it up with soil before digging your hands into the dirt around one of the hyacinth plants. Your fingers search under the earth before feeling against the roots and carefully pulling out the plant.
“Maybe stop asking stupid questions then,” you suggest.
“Seeing as you think I’m dumb … do you want to tutor me?”
“What?” you deadpan, looking up at him with your hands still in the dirt. “Why?”
“I mean like, you’re smart and all, plus we get along—”
You click your tongue, finally pulling the plant out of the soil and pressing it into the pot. “Not so sure about that second part.”
“Okay well we have some shared interests and stuff—”
“Like?” you counter, walking over to a sink so you can wash the excess soil off.
“Percy Jackson. Greek mythology?”
Your ears perk up at that. “You like Greek mythology?”
“Yes! See! That’s like, already two common interests, Sunshine.”
“More like only two. And one of them is a book series I haven’t read in about nine years so I’m not even sure it counts,” you rebut.
“Oh no, it definitely counts,” Joshua counters, watching you pick up the flower pot and head towards the greenhouse exit. “Wait, we’re diverting from the point here.”
“What is the point again?”
“You need to tutor me!” he whines as he follows behind you, up the pathway back to the castle.
“I need to? Uh, sorry, but I don’t think tutoring the Prince is under my job description.”
“This is a different job though!”
You knit your eyebrows together. “Am I getting paid?”
“You might,” Joshua smirks. “I’ll pay you by the hour.”
Pondering, you chew on the inside of your cheek, before you finally respond, “How much are we talking?”
Joshua grins, shaking his head. “Should’ve known money was the way to your heart Sunshine.”
“Money is not the way to my heart. It’s just the way to get me to tutor you. Don’t mix those two up.”
“Don’t worry Sunshine, I wish you all the best in finding your sugar daddy husband eventually.”
Glaring, you chastise him. “Joshua!”
“Why did you ask me to do this again?” you ask, stepping into the room Joshua has just led you to. It’s near the Royal Residence Quart of the castle, and you’re a bit on edge. Joshua assured you earlier that no one would question why you of all people would be here with him, but you’ve also noticed that the boy can be a bit distant from reality.
“Because,” Joshua starts, watching you look around the room (it is a very nice room; bookshelves line the walls and there’s a grand desk in the middle, a rolling chalkboard on one end and a vintage map on another rolling board scattered off to another end). “I don’t like the royal tutor they have, and you’re smart,” he says casually.
“You can’t ask for another one?” you murmur, raising a brow as he moves to the desk and hands you a folder.
“I could, but my mother would get upset if I keep running through them. I’ve changed my tutors far too many times by now.”
“Ah,” you say dryly. “The extreme difficulties of the royalty. How unfortunate.”
“Sunshine,” Joshua grins, ignoring your snarky comment. “Can you at least pretend you want to be here?”
“Um, I’ll think about it,” you reply honestly, pursing your lips together as you glance at his chalkboard which has a list of things he needs to go over. “What is it that you need help on?”
“Well I’m good at math and stuff but Literature and Chemistry are quite literally killing me,” Joshua says with a sigh, sitting down at his desk.
“Literature?” you ask with narrowed eyes. “You’re the Prince—isn’t Literature supposed to be like, I don’t know, your forte?”
“Who told you that?” Joshua asks with a pout, pulling up a packet of papers and letting it down on his desk with a thud.
“I don’t know, I guess I just assumed they’d be having you read Machiavelli or something like that from the age of two.”
Joshua scoffs, holding up the book so you can read out the title. Oh, it’s The Waste Land. “Okay I get that this is a kingdom and all but seriously, who even uses Machiavellianism anymore? That’s from like six hundred years ago.”
“Less than that,” you correct, but shrug anyways and sit down at the chair on the other side of his desk. “But whatever, you need help with The Waste Land?”
“I mean, yeah I’ve read it a bunch but I just never get it and my mom is obsessed with it for some reason and I really don’t want her to make me sit through another read of it so I really need to write up something good on it that will satisfy my Literature instructor and my mom so I can get it out of the way.”
“A paper?”
“Yeah, you know: analyzing themes and stuff.”
“Okay I know what a paper is,” you snap and Joshua rolls his eyes.
“Look now you’re just picking fights over everything I say. Just relax and—”
“I am relaxed,” you huff, but the tension in your shoulders says otherwise. To be honest, you’re still not sure why Joshua decided to choose you of all people, as if you haven’t made it clear multiple times that you weren’t his biggest fan.
You can respect the effort, you guess, but the way he seems so unbothered by your snarkiness is getting a little bit irritating.
“Whatever you say Sunshine,” Joshua says with a shrug, turning the packet and handing it to you. The poem is littered with annotations, underlines, and highlighter marks all over, and you squint for a moment trying to remind yourself of what you remember from the last time you looked at the work. “You read it before? The Waste Land?”
“Uh, yeah, ages ago though. Like back in high school,” murmur, flipping through the pages to jog your memory.
“Why were you reading The Waste Land in high school? Seems like too much, no?”
“Well not everyone was granted the freedom to do as they please with whoever they please,” you tell him, eyes flickering between Joshua’s curious face and the packet in front of you.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Joshua asks, and his voice is slightly whiny.
“It means that people didn’t want to talk to me so I had to spend my time reading. Even if it was ‘too much,’ or whatever you said.”
“Oh,” Joshua’s voice is quiet. See, you remind yourself, clouded from reality is what Joshua is. “Well I—”
“Forget it. I think I’m going to have to go home and reread The Waste Land if you want me to be of any help. What else do you have to work on, or do you just want to do Chemistry?”
“Uh, sure we can move onto Chemistry,” Joshua replies hastily, tucking the paper back into his folder haphazardly before shoving it into a drawer and pulling out a much thicker notebook. “I kinda need help with a lot of it. Like—I’m sorry I just don’t get it—what the hell is an electrophile and a nucleophiles and why the hell I need to know them for alkanes and—”
“Slow down,” you say, sticking your hand out. You grab the notebook from his desk and skip over the contents before looking back up. “If you want me to do this for you, we’re going to have to start from the basics, okay?”
Joshua gives you a look which tells you he doesn’t think he needs to do that, but you open the notebook to a new page, pulling out a pen. Begrudgingly, he nods and leans his head in to see what you’re writing.
He’s oddly compliant when you ask him to be, despite his jumpy and bubbly personality, and for a fraction of a second, you wonder about his potential. Quickly, you push that thought out of your mind.
It’s late afternoon when you reach the courtyard, smiling at the progress. You told the workers to get started on digging up the pond this morning, and you’re pleased to see that there’s already a large dugout in the century.
“Good work!” you chirp to Jungho, the contractor you talked to over the phone. He seemed nice enough over the phone, but you soon realized within the first time that you two met in person that he was just as standoff-ish as the rest. “But we’re going to need to get the insides patted down and compressed so when we put the water in, the soil won’t just soak it up,” you try to tell him casually.
Jungho points his thumb behind him at some of his men. “Yeah we have a guy for that,” he says gruffly, not even meeting your gaze.
“Thanks … maybe have it finished within a week?”
“Okay. Anything else?” Jungho looks around awkwardly, before adding. “Want us to get the water in there too? Then we can get outta … outta your hair and stuff and don’t have to keep coming back.”
“Uh, no—there’s some lining I want to do with the pond, and I’ve got to do that before there’s water in it. But it’s something I want to do myself, so you can just take care of compressing the soil and I’ll take it from there.”
Jungho gives you a weird look but you brush it off. “Alright. We’ll have it finished by tomorrow,” he finalizes, and with that he turns on his heels and walks back to his workers who you can tell were watching him from the corner of their vision.
“Why are those guys looking at you like that?”
You whip your head around, seeing Joshua standing just a few meters away from you on the pathway coming in from the East entrance. He glances around and finds a marble bench that’s just been made, sitting on the edge casually.
“Joshua, you’ve seen people look at me like that before and I think you know exactly why,” you mutter, walking over to where he sits. Joshua doesn’t respond and instead averts his gaze to the ground.
There’s a stray kitten bouncing around at his feet, and he’s quick to drop to his knees on the pathway and engulf her in his large hands. It would be an endearing sight, you think. Sorta, you guess.
“Whatever. You’re still coming in on Sunday right? My instructor prepared this stupid Chemistry exam for me on Tuesdays and I know you can’t help out on Mondays so I kind of really need you to help me on Sunday so I can prep. So please, please, please—”
“You know I’m gonna come in, so you don’t have to pester me so much about it,” you say with a sigh, putting your folder down and crouching on the ground so you can pet the kitten. She’s cute, with wide slanted eyes and soft brown fur, the wet kitten licks feeling warm against your palm.
“But you put up with it, don’t you?” You roll your eyes but Joshua still grins when you don’t disagree.
“I don’t understand you,” you mutter, truthfully speaking your mind as the kitten rolls around in Joshua’s lap. You smile without thinking, and Joshua carefully watches your usually taut face unravel in front of him.
“Are you kidding me? I’m literally an open book. You know Sunshine, you can find my whole life on Wikipedia.”
You giggle. You fucking giggle at that, and it’s hard to tell who is more surprised between the two of you. “You know that’s not what I meant,” you murmur, struggling to hold back another laugh, the kitten jumping out of his lap to play around on the ground under the gentle hands of you and Joshua.
“Not that I would know. You think I’m stupid anyways.”
“What? No I don’t.”
“Oh my god, please don’t even try to counter that. When I told you I didn’t know why helium was named helium, you looked at me like I was the dumbest person to ever live.”
“Okay that’s only because you say you like Greek mythology! How could you not put that together—it’s so obvious! Helium and Helios sound totally alike, and everyone knows helium is like, one of the most abundant elements in the sun.”
“Maybe you know that. You’re also insanely smart,” Joshua counters.
“Whatever you say. But for the record, I don’t think you’re stupid. Maybe a little dense, but that’s it.”
Joshua pouts. “Aren’t those basically the same thing?” You know he’s only being playful, but something about the way he says it makes you think twice. He’s being sweet. So sweet, it feels almost bitter.
“No. You have a smart head, Joshua. Honest. I think you just gotta learn how to use it,” you tell him, more softly this time.
“Thanks Sunshine,” he replies gruffly and you frown, realizing that your attempts to make him feel better haven’t quite worked.
“I’m serious. What? You don’t think I’m serious?” Joshua shakes his head, and you roll your eyes when you pick up the kitten yourself and pull her into your lap.
“You’re mean. So no, I don’t think you’re being serious.”
You gasp, using the hand that isn’t playing with the kitten to place it over your chest dramatically. “I am not mean. I’m just honest. I’m being honest right now.”
“Whatever,” Joshua quips, turning his nose and looking away pettily.
“Okay, are you actually upset?” you groan, cradling the kitten up to your chest. You aren’t sure if you’re more annoyed because you can’t tell if Joshua is upset, or because you might be the reason he’s upset.
“Who knows. Not that you would care.”
“I obviously care, because I’m asking,” you deadpan, letting the kitten roll around in your arms, letting out a squeak of surprise when one of its claws gets caught in the belt of your robe, making a tear in the silk.
Joshua gives you a funny look when he says, “You can be quite pestering when you want to.”
“Congratulations! You now know how I feel.”
“See what I mean! You’re mean. I want the kitten back.”
You clutch the little close to your chest and nuzzle your face into her neck. “No can do. I’m afraid she’s mine until you admit you know I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“Oh my god, is this how it feels when I annoy you?” Joshua grumbles, throwing his head back. “Remind me to never pester you again. Ever.”
“Self awareness is great and all, but like I said, you’re not getting her until you admit it.”
“Fine. I don’t think you think I’m stupid. Happy?”
You hum and shake your head. “Mm, no. Gotta sound more convincing.”
Joshua knits his eyebrows together. “If you’re so insistent on this, then I guess it must be true. I don’t think you think I’m stupid,” he repeats, but his tone is gentler this time.
“Good work.”
Joshua stands tall on a hill. His broad shoulders are sharp with his straightened back and taught jaw. The sky is orange and you watch him from below, the clouds moving slowly above his head in the background.
He’s looking out at something, but you can’t quite tell what. It’s off in the distance, but his eyes are dilated and unwavering for a few long moments.
Wind whistles in your ear, and then the sky grows brighter and brighter until it’s no longer orange and suddenly turning yellow and then white. So white that it hinders your vision and you’re wincing through the light until you realize Joshua is not on the hill anymore.
You look around frantically to no avail—you can’t see anything but white with black spots in your vision and you feel like you’re going blind. And you want to scream but when you open your mouth no sound comes and the blowing of wind grows louder and louder until it sounds like you’re at the beach.
Looking around, you see your legs knee deep in ocean water and you’re no longer hearing the rampage of wind and instead the crashing of waves against rocks. There isn’t a hill anymore, there’s a cliff, but still no sight of Joshua.
It’s still so bright, so bright and you close your eyes tightly again until you feel a shade fall over your figure. A gasp escapes your lips when you see what’s above you.
Wide wings, ornate with white and golden feathers, perched over Joshua’s back as he hovers above you. He’s not looking anywhere else now, only you.
His face glows and then he smiles and you close your eyes one last time but when you open them again, all you see is darkness.
You’ve never been great at remembering dreams. More often than not, you wake up with no remnants of the life you lived in your head the night before, and on the rare occasions that you do happen to recall something, it’s only just random snippets that also hardly make sense.
Last night was no different, although you do wake up with an uneasy feeling, not because of what you dreamed about—you don’t remember that—but because you know you dreamed about Joshua. It’s just the wake up call you need to tell yourself that maybe, just maybe, you’re spending more time with him than you should.
It’s a Saturday morning as you trudge out of bed and to the kitchen, trying to settle the weird feelings that course through your veins when you see your mother brewing a pot of tea. “How’d you sleep?” she asks, not looking up from the boiling water.
Shrugging as you grab a home-grown orange, you respond, “Well enough.”
“Can’t believe they have you going to the palace on the weekends too … I never had to work on Saturdays or Sundays.”
You wonder how she brings up her time at the castle so casually—you don’t know if you’ll ever understand her. “I really don’t have to—I can work on my own schedule basically whenever, as long as I get the courtyard finished by the end of three months.”
“And how’s that going?”
“Behind schedule. Obviously. That’s why I’m heading in again.”
Your mother smiles and walks over, ruffling your hair. “I’m glad you’re working hard on this—I can tell you’re enjoying it, as much as you didn’t want to go there.”
“It’s nice, I guess. I get to be creative, and get paid. Really, getting the money is all I care about,” you tell her casually, taking the peel off the orange and popping a piece into your mouth.
“You don’t talk about it much, but I’m assuming people don’t give you that hard of a time? You always come home fine.”
They do, it just doesn’t happen to be anything you’re not used to. Your mind flashes to Joshua and Seokmin for a moment, and you’re once again reminded of the unnerving fact that you did dream about the former, and you can’t even remember what it was about. “Things are fine.”
You’re three tutoring sessions in with Joshua, and it’s finally the day that you pull out your own copy of The Waste Land. “Oh thank god,” he says with a breath of relief when he sees it. “This paper has been bugging me forever—if we didn’t get started on it soon I might’ve combust.”
“I appreciate the vivid imagery,” you say dryly, “but I really did not need to picture that in my head.”
“Sorry,” Joshua says with a shrug as you sit across from him. “So what’re we gonna do today, Sunshine?”
“Hmm, get through the first part hopefully. We can read it back and forth and talk about it together, so you can take notes. It might be easier that way, so you can get all your thoughts and ideas out, and then it’ll be easier for you to write that paper.”
“Sounds boring.”
“I guess I’ll just pack my stuff and—”
“Okay! Okay! I was just joking. Let’s start, please,” he complies easily, and you smirk as you sit back down.
“Good to hear. Read this part.”
You’re around an hour and a half into the lesson, still working through the first part as Joshua frowns when you finish another stanza.
“Do we have to keep going?” he whines.
“Yes we do. Let’s work with this part now. Read it out for me,” you instruct, pointing out a stanza on your own paper.
“Why—” You give him a look. “—okay fine.”
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could notSpeak, and my eyes failed, I was neitherLiving nor dead, and I knew nothing,Looking into the heart of light, the silence.Oed’ und leer das Meer.
When he’s done, Joshua looks up at you blankly. “If I’m being honest, I have zero clue what this means.”
You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “You’ve said that every time you read a new section, but I know that’s not true, because you literally always come up with something.”
Joshua scrunches up his face and slaps his hands to his cheeks in frustration. “But now I’m being serious! This is making no sense to me—I hate Literature, okay? My brain is dead right now and I don’t think I can do any more Sunshine.”
“We’ve been doing this for less than two hours,” you say bluntly. “Look—you said you like Greek mythology right? Try and draw some connections. Maybe that’ll make this more enjoyable.”
“I hardly think T.S. Elliot could produce anything I enjoy,” Joshua huffs as he tilts the page so he can read it better, “But fine. I still don’t get what about this has anything to do with mytho—oh!”
“Finally! You get it?”
“Hyacinthus!” You nod eagerly, gesturing your hands to tell him to go on. “Uh, it was that story with Apollo. Shit, what was the story again?” He looks up and taps at his chin, but when you open your mouth to help him out, Joshua sticks a hand in front of your face and shakes his head. “No wait, I remember. The one where they were in love but Apollo accidentally killed him when they were playing a game!”
“You’re right. The blood of Hyacinthus was eventually turned into flowers by Apollo to honor his death or something like that. In the context of this poem … the giver of the hyacinth flower is almost like a sign of—”
Joshua snaps his fingers in the air and grins. “Forgiveness!”
“Well, not exactly giving forgiveness, but asking for it.”
“Kind of like … saying you’re sorry?” Joshua smiles brighter when you nod. “Holy shit, maybe I do enjoy T.S. Elliot.”
You roll your eyes and point at his notebook and pen. “Good, now write that down. You are going to have to write about this, remember?”
Joshua pouts, but picks up the pen nevertheless. “Whatever you say Sunshine.”
“Joshua told me to tell you that he thinks T.S. Elliot sucks,” Seokmin says, coming up to you in the cafeteria as you polish off your own tray. It’s a large and grand area—an old ballroom that turned into a commonplace for the workers.
Large mirrors plate the walls, and across from you, you can watch Seokmin’s reflection as he sits down next to you. Rolling your eyes, you turn to look at him, “He’s only saying that because I told him to write the paper himself.”
Seokmin furrows his eyebrows as he places a white box, a little larger than the size of your hand, on the table. Glancing around, you catch people in the mirror watching you with wavering gazes before turning away when they find you looking at them.
Huff lightly, you turn your attention back to Seokmin. “What’s this?”
“Joshua told me to give it to you.”
That’s new. Tentatively, you lift the lid a little to peek inside, only finding a haphazard mess of stuffing paper with something purple concealed underneath. “Would it be a smart decision to open it right now?”
“Oh my gosh, it’s not an explosive or anything.”
“You don’t know that!”
Seokmin rolls his eyes himself this time. “Yes I do. I packed it.”
“Ugh, even worse. I’m not opening it if you’re around. That’s embarrassing.”
“Is not! I think that you should—” Seokmin is cut off by the sound of his own phone ringing, cursing under his breath when he sees the caller ID. For a moment, you consider peering over and taking a look, but Seokmin stands up too quickly. “I gotta go for a second. I’ll catch you before you leave!” he calls out when he’s already pushing his chair in and rushing off into the distance.
You laugh at his hurry, wondering what could possibly ensue such nervousness from the boy, but you quickly remind yourself that this is Seokmin and he gets the jitters when he even has to think about being around Mr. Park for more than twenty minutes.
Soon, you start to clean up your area yourself, putting your trays away and throwing away your trash in the weirdly fancy bins they have scattered around the hall. As your lunch break nears its end, you grab the oddly light box, your phone, and make your way back to 77.
The room is empty, safe for Jihoon who’s got his head buried in his laptop, and you think it’s a good time to check what’s inside. If it is an explosive, you’ll just have to apologize to Jihoon in the afterlife.
Opening the lid, those same, crumpled papers lay on top, but this time you notice a little white card in the middle. Pursing your lips, your eyes flicker to your side to see if Jihoon’s watching (he never is, but it doesn’t hurt to check), and when your privacy is confirmed, you flip the paper over.
There’s a message written in purple pen, adorning a handwriting that you can distinctly recognize as Joshua’s.
Thank you for all the help. I really owe you one.
You aren’t quite sure what he’s talking about, and you make a mental note to ask him about it when you see him later. Right now, you rummage through the papers, hands feeling the space beneath them before they land on a smooth layer of fabric.
Confused, you pull it out, only to see it’s a ribbon, much like the one tied around your own waist. Same color, same material, same emblem, the only difference being …
You glance down at your own robes where the ribbon has a small tear at one end from where the kitten had pawed at you. You have to blink a few times to realize what Joshua’s intentions were, and when you do, you can’t help the warm smile that begrudgingly makes its way onto your face.
Quickly, you tug the ends of the ribbon around your waist and let it unravel, taking the new ribbon and tying it just as your mother taught you. It’s the same thing as the one before, yes, but this is different. This is a gift.
Donning Joshua’s (your?) ribbon, you start to clean up your desk space and tuck your old ribbon back into your bag. You forgot to tell Seokmin you’re tutoring Joshua this afternoon, so as you pack up you text him a sincere ‘thank you’ message, and let him know that you might not be able to see him before you go. You don’t get a response, which is slightly odd since Seokmin seems to always be on top of things, but you shrug it off and remind yourself that he’s busy.
Today, you make your way down the smaller halls with a little skip to your step. Joshua showed you this pathway earlier so it’d be easier to get to his study room without being seen; it’s a nice little series of corridors that are a little dimmer and narrower, but still hold the lavish feel you always get walking through the palace.
You can hear the voices of a few people, but it seems quiet, hushed, and somehow a little heated—in other words, caught up in their own world. Being in the castle for almost two months now, you’ve learned to realize what kind of situations need your caution and which ones don’t. This is the latter.
You smile to yourself, smoothing your palms over the new, not-torn silk ribbon around your waist, as you near the second entrance to his study, about to enter another hallway to the final stretch and—shit.
When you turn a corner, your heart stops.
You turn back and run down the corridor. You don’t know if Seokmin saw you, and quite frankly, you don’t care.
It didn’t take you more than a second to put two and two together and suddenly you’re pushed back into your nine year old body—you don’t really know what’s happening or why it’s happening, all you know is that it hurts.
You’re going to have to apologize to Joshua for flaking on him. Surely he’ll understand that you were just a little bit upset by the sight you had to see.
After all, you did just witness Seokmin, quite literally your only real friend in this damn castle, speaking to Advisor Lee, the man who tore your mother’s life down. And now is when everything starts to click, because you realize that Seokmin is Advisor Lee’s son.
Of course he was close with Joshua—he probably grew up on these very castle grounds. Of course they attended the same classes—his father was the King’s advisor and cousin.
It makes sense now, and in your bleary haze as you make your way back to 77, you’re not sure what to do. You rush past a few other staff members murmuring under their breath when they see you, and you usually wouldn’t be bothered by the sight but now you remember that this is the first time you’ve cried since you got here, and it’s all because of that man who started this all in the first place.
As you lock yourself in one of the staff bathrooms, you catch your disheveled appearance and furiously wipe at your cheeks. Fuck. You shouldn’t be crying. You can’t be crying over this, because god knows you did not spend years thickening your skin for it to be cut open like this.
You should’ve known. Should’ve fucking known.
You try to stop your tears, telling yourself that they’re all the same. That you shouldn’t have expected anything more from these people, that you should’ve picked up on how Seokmin was definitely someone important, that you should’ve never fallen for his and Joshua’s sweet games.
“Shit,” you gasp out as a sob rips from your throat, and you clutch the side of the sink as uneasiness bubbles up in your stomach and spreads through your limbs until you’re trembling.
Maybe you let him get so close because you thought he saw you for something else. Maybe you believed that he saw you as more than a pity project. More than someone who was defined by their past.
Joshua and Seokmin—they knew. They knew everything this whole damn time.
And now you’re angry—you’re so fucking angry. Tugging at your hair, ripping up your clothes, and thrashing your limbs around kind of angry. The kind of anger that poisons your bones and makes your body ache until you can’t take it anymore. The kind of anger that wraps its hand around your throat and squeezes the air out of you until you can do nothing but relent. The kind of anger that has you looking at yourself in the mirror and thinking, what the fuck.
The worst thing is you can’t even be mad at him. You want to be mad at him and you want to be mad at Joshua. You want to have the will to go up to them and slap the smiles off their faces because how dare Seokmin be the own flesh and blood of Advisor Lee, and how dare Joshua know and not have the guts to tell you.
Because after everything, Seokmin and Joshua were your friends and—fuck—they were some damn good friends. Your best friends, maybe, if you ever had the liberty to even know what that means.
And it wasn’t because they were overly nice, or excessively cheery, or because Seokim was always grinning and Joshua was always smirking, but because when they talked to you, they were talking to you, and not some shell of your past.
Finally, now, when you press your face into your hands as your last attempt to calm yourself down, you feel like you can breathe. You’re not sure where your head is at, and something tells you that it’s gonna take a damn long time to figure it out.
You’re a little lost.
You were just trying to get to the South end entrance of the courtyard but you must have taken a wrong turn or something because you’re walking down a corridor you’ve quite literally never seen before. It’s similar to the hallways of the rest of the palace, but it’s slightly taller and a bit more narrow, and the workers walking through wear faces that you aren’t familiar with. You’re a little nervous about where your feet are taking you, and you consider just turning around and retracing your steps when you hear a voice.
Seokmin’s voice is loud when he calls your name, and you press your lips together tightly when it rings in your ears. “What are you doing here? You usually don’t come down to the South e—” he starts to say when walks up to you from a corridor to your left.
“Nothing,” you reply briskly, turning on your heel so your back is pretty much facing him. “I was just leaving actually.”
“What—hey! Slow down! Where’re you going?”
“77,” you mutter under your breath as you speed up your pace.
“Slow down!”
You don’t relent. “Seokmin, don’t you have stuff to do right now instead of following me around?” You can’t see the look on his face, but you can only imagine it’s one of defeat.
“I—” his voice is quieter this time, “Okay.”
The footsteps that were one following you die out, and as you browse the corners of your vision, you conclude that he’s finally left you alone. You should feel relieved—happy that he’s not bothering you now—but sometimes uneasy churns inside of you, and you aren’t sure what it is.
The rest of your day goes as it usually does in a palace. You tend to your work and as it hits late afternoon, you start making your way to Joshua’s study. Once again, you’re not sure where your head is at.
“Is everything alright?” Joshua asks you the second you walk in. “Seokmin told me you looked upset and wouldn’t talk to him so I—”
You inhale deeply before, putting your hands up in a stopping motion. “I can’t tutor you anymore.”
Joshua looks at you weirdly. “What, why?”
“Or talk to you,” you add.
“What—”
“Just—just don’t talk to me. Or ask me to tutor you. Or ask for my help, or ask to help me—you know what just like—I dunno, stay away from me.”
“Sunshine, where is this coming from?” Joshua pinches the bridge of his nose, and you don’t think he’s understanding the weight of his words.
“Why do you even talk to me?” you snap. “Like seriously, if you can bother any worker in the castle, why does it have to be me?”
Hurt flashes in Joshua’s face for hardly a second before he frowns deeply. “I—what’s going on?”
“Do you and Seokmin think this is funny? Being nice to me like—” You throw your hands in the air. “—like I’m some kind of joke?”
“What? No, Sunshine, what are you even talking about?”
“I know who Seokmin’s dad is.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” you scoff. “So if Seokmin still wants to know why I don’t feel like talking to him, maybe consider telling him that I’m not interested in being around someone whose father is literally the reason me and my mom’s lives have been so fucked up.”
Joshua winces at the last statement. You’ve been irritated with him, annoyed with him, and all that petty stuff, sure, but this is different.
“Seokmin isn’t like that, okay? He isn’t—you know—like that.”
“And how would you know?” you snap. “Prince Joshua, what do you know about having people be, quote unquote, above you? You have everything in front of you, and when people look at you and Seokmin it’s not ‘cause of some fucked up scandal which pinned your mom as the kingdom’s slut of the century, it’s ‘cause they literally bow down to your presence and—”
Something tells you to stop yourself. Maybe it’s the fact that you know you’re not actually angry at them. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re so fucking tired of being angry all the time that you can’t take it anymore. Maybe it’s the fact that when you finally look him in the eye, Joshua looks sad.
“I’m sorry,” he finally says meekly. “Seokmin should—we should’ve let you know earlier. I promise we didn’t be your friend just ‘cause of that,” he rambles. “I mean obviously we knew about it but we didn’t wanna bring it up because everyone was bringing it up and—I’m sorry. You know Seokmin isn’t like that.”
“And you?” you quip, but you know your retorts hold no weight. “How do I know you aren’t like—like that.”
Joshua falters and you watch him gulp. He looks tired and his lips are red from how hard he’s been chewing on them as you speak. “Y-you know,” his voice is quiet, “You know I’m not.”
You have your answer before you even have to think about it, but you pause for a few moments, waiting to respond. All that comes out is a shallow breath as you look down and squeeze your eyes shut. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I just—” You sigh weakly. “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.” Joshua doesn’t respond—he knows you’re thinking.
You wonder what to do with yourself. You’re not angry. Not sad either. Uneasy? Maybe. It’s the uncertainty of it all. You don’t understand why you’re not mad, and you don’t understand why you want to forgive him so easily, but you’re starting to realize that you should stop trying to understand the things that might never make sense.
Finally, you nod. “It’s fine.”
“Sorry again. I guess we didn’t wanna make that whole thing all about you. Because like, you’re you, and whatever happened is separate.”
You purse your lips and nod. “Thank you.”
“Was that sarcasm?”
You glare at him. “Dipshit, no it wasn’t!”
“I’m taking this as a sign that you’re feeling better. Am I correct?”
You bite back a smile and shrug. “I guess.”
“Cool, ‘cause I think you’d like to know that my mom stopped by the courtyard the other day.”
“Oh yeah? What’d she say? This is all for her isn’t it—hopefully she liked it.”
“Yeah no, she said it was great. She thought the patterns of the pathway were cool and so she asked me if I could figure out why they were designed like that and I said no. By the way, why did you design them like that?”
“There’s this song I like. It’s called Isohel, and when I first heard it, I liked it a lot,” you explain. “Searched up what it means and stuff and then a few weeks later I was taking some filler class for the credits and my professor goes on some tangent about god-knows-what, and somehow he brings up pictures of an isohel map. An isohel—it’s basically a line which maps out the places that have the same duration of sunshine. Pretty cool, I think.”
“Is that what the pathways are? Are they—what is it—an isohel?”
“Mhm. On an isohel map, they’re not always just lines—they come around full circle sometimes so it looks like these funky, squiggly ovals sometimes,” you ramble. “So I took one of those circle-ish things and broke it up and pieced it together like a pathway.”
“That’s really smart.” Joshua pauses. “You’re really smart.”
It’s not the first time someone’s told you that. Fuck, it’s not even the first time Joshua’s told you that, but it feels different now. He means it, you know it in your bones.
“I-I dunno,” you stammer. “I guess. It just relates to the theme of the sun. My mom taught me about it when I was younger—I loved the sun.”
“So that’s what the theme of your courtyard is? Me and Seokmin have been betting on that for ages.”
You scoff, “You guys bet on that? Seriously, do you have nothing better to do with your time?”
“Clearly not!” he shoots back, causing you to laugh. “Are you really feeling better now?” Joshua asks sincerely, and when you smile and nod, he grins. “Hey, I just realized you talked to me about your feelings—”
“Don’t mention it,” you snap gruffly, crossing your arms over your chest.
Joshua clicks his tongue and chuckles. “There’s the Sunshine I know.”
It’s the next day when you walk into 77. Jihoon’s desk is empty, Mr. Park is just about to leave as you enter and you bow to him quickly as you settle in your desk. Seokmin is in the corner watering the yarrows, seeming to not have noticed you yet.
You watch him closely, smiling softly when you notice he stops before he can overwater them. Quietly, you set your stuff down and Seokmin begins to talk. “Oh, Jihoon, Mr. Park was just looking for you—oh,” he cuts himself flat when he turns around and sees you.
You’re not sure what to do, because Joshua didn’t exactly tell you if he told Seokmin about your conversation and what not, but the look on Seokmin’s face is telling you that he’s just a little behind on the news.
“Hey,” you say casually, throwing a hand up to wave at him as you set your bag down on your desk. Seokmin opens his mouth and then closes it a few times, as if he’s searching for the right words but they don’t quite come out for a few moments.
“Joshua told me that, uh, you know that—” He pauses and glances at you, trying to watch for any hints of anger on your face, but none comes.
“Don’t worry about it,” you say with a shrug, and Seokmin has to blink twice because he’s not sure he heard you correctly at all.
“W-what?”
You narrow your eyes at him. “I said don’t worry about it,” you state again, and then add more softly, “You’re not your father. I get it.” You get it more than anyone. “Anyways, did you get the workers to start planting the hyacinths?”
Seokmin shakes his head once to snap himself back into reality and then shakes his head again a second time. “Wait no, I mean—wait, yes! I mean yes! I did do that—I should go remind them to get on that,” he rambles quickly, clearly a little flustered.
You chuckle. “It’s good to see you’ve been watering the yarrows properly now. Mr. Park finally beat it into you?”
“Y-yeah I guess. I’ve been getting better at remembering them all,” he tells you, starting to fall into a more casual tone. It’s normal, you think. Nice and normal. Nice and normal and just what you need.
“What are you doing here?”
When you turn around with your bag slung over your shoulder, you’re surprised to see Joshua. “Um, working?”
“It’s a Saturday night,” he states, lips pinched together in a funny expression, like he can’t figure you out.
“I think I know that,” you chuckle. “I didn’t know if I could come in on Monday—I need to stop by the university campus for something—so I just came in today to take care of some stuff.”
“You’re a dedicated worker huh … you should just work here forever—the pay is great.”
“Mm, I’m not sure about that,” you say honestly as you look him up and down. It strikes you now that Prince Joshua truly is a handsome man. Dark velvety robes that are even more grand than the ones you’re used to seeing on him, well fit dress pants against his legs and shiny leather shoes that seem to fit his image perfectly. “Anyways, I heard there’s a ball tonight? You’re not going?”
Joshua shrugs as he turns around and starts walking, waving you over to follow him. “C’mon follow me.” You contemplate your choices before telling yourself, what’s the worst that could happen, scurrying on after him. “I left—it got boring, so I got about twenty-five minutes before someone calls me and asks me to come back. My bets are on it being Seokmin ‘cause he’ll get bored.”
You snort at that as the familiarity of this route starts to sink in. “Hey are we going to my …”
“Yeah. Seokmin told me you finally got it named, and I want to check it out.”
“Uh, yeah,” you murmur bashfully—you hadn’t expected Joshua to be that interested in it. You walk through the empty corridors to the hallway that has the North entrance of the courtyard, and Joshua cranes his neck up to look at the golden plaque that rests above the entrance.
“Sol Invictus, huh.”
You nudge him on the side playfully. “You know what that means, Mr. Latin Genius?”
“Of course I do,” he retorts with a roll of his eyes. “Sun god, or whatever,”
“God of sun, but you were close enough I guess,” you mutter as you walk through. The courtyard looks different in the night. It’s nearly done, and as the little warm lights you had placed in intervals along the path light up the scene, you can’t help but feel overwhelming pride with how well you’ve done.
“C’mon, let’s sit here,” he says, pointing down at the circular patch of grass that surrounds the pond in the middle. Joshua sits down first and you watch him carefully before quickly sitting next to him as well.
The grass is cool under your skin, but as a comfortable silence envelopes you and Joshua, you start to think you really don’t mind.
“I think lots of people think I’m stupid or something,” Joshua finally speaks up, and some uncomfortable feeling boils in your stomach at the words. “You know, the only thing people usually compliment me on is my fencing, really. And fencing is one of those things that, if you’ve been doing it as long as I have, you sort of gotta be good at it.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“I know. Thank you.” There’s a silence as he reaches over the stone lining of the hyacinth beds, plucking a few from the shrubs.
“Joshua!” you complain. “I had those planted just last week.”
“It’s fine,” he mumbles, handing the two he plucked to you. You don’t hesitate to keep your palms open for him, his fingers brushing over the skin of your arms as he does so. You rub the smooth petals between your fingers and a thumb, bringing one close to your chest before taking the other and handing it back to Joshua.
He looks at you, eyes clearly confused, but holds it to his own chest anyways. With your hands behind you on the ground, you lean back and look up at the sky, letting your shoulders relax. The night air pinches at your skin, but the soft fabric of Joshua tuxedo is warm as it brushes next to you.
“Why’d you name this pond Eridenus?” Joshua asks, pointing at the plaque by the pebble lining which spells out the word in fancy lettering.
“You don’t know where it’s from?” you sigh, lifting your head so you can shoot him a stern look. Joshua rolls his eyes and nudges your cheek with his shoulder, motioning you to lean back down at him.
“You know I’m a rascal—I’m forgetful. Tell me what it means.”
“It’s confirmed: you’re a fake mythology fan. I’m suing the universe.” Joshua chuckles and pokes you, egging you to go on. “Do you remember the story of Phaethon?”
Joshua hums. “Uh, son of Helios. Didn’t believe that he was his son. Asked to ride his carriage but lost control and almost burned the Earth?”
You shrug. “Well that’s most of it I guess. He’s racing down to the earth and everything is chaos—rivers boiling, forests on fires, people turning to ash—and so Zeus throws his bolt at him and kills Phaethon right in the sky.”
“Kind of like the story of Icarus. But the opposite I guess. Instead of getting too close to the sun, he brings the sun too close to the earth.”
“You could put it like that. They have the same meaning, I think. But anyways, Phaethon falls out of the carriage and as he dies he falls into this river called Eridenus.”
“Oh.” Joshua’s voice is quiet as you both watch the gentle water lap back and forth in front of you. The small waves hitting the stone barriers of the pound is the only sound that permeates the night sky, besides your shared breaths and the occasional whistling of wind.
“It’s kind of like—” You.
“Don’t say it.” Joshua’s words are crisp and short, and he doesn’t look at you. You want to say the words—I’m sorry—but they get stuck in your throat and ripple through your limbs as you scoot closer to him.
“Anyways,” Joshua finally says, but the word is only followed with silence.
“I think you need to get back to the ball,” you tell him quietly, lifting your head from his shoulder. Your skin burns from where it was previously pressed against him and you silently chide yourself for letting yourself get so close.
Joshua finally turns to face you, and you’re surprised when he chuckles. “So eager to get rid of me, Sunshine?” You scoff, pushing him away gently.
“I-I just don’t want you to get in trouble!” you stutter as you push yourself off the ground, Joshua following suit.
“Aw, so you care about me?” His eyes crinkle up in that familiar way when he says it and you can’t help the childish grin that makes its way onto your face.
“More like I don’t want you to complain to me about how you got scolded!”
“Mm, sounds a lot like you care about me,” Joshua counters, returning your smile with one of his own. You roll your eyes and carefully skip in your dress toward the exit on the North end of the courtyard.
When you almost trip over your robes, Joshua catches you and his rough palm presses against the small of your back as you regain your balance, the two of you giggling together as he drops you off at 77 before heading to the ballroom.
It’s almost laughable how happy you are. Silly you for forgetting that fairytales don’t happen in real life.
The walls look brighter, the chandeliers that hang from the ceiling seem to glitter a bit more, the ground seems smoother; you enjoy walking through the castle in a way you never thought you could.
It’s a normal evening and you’re nearing the end of your time at the castle, but you choose to ignore the odd feeling you get when you think too long about leaving this place. There’s still more work to get done, and you don’t want to spend your time focusing on things that you know will only distract you.
You’re in the middle of Sol Invictus today, looking through a paper and phone as you go through some old plans and checklists, trying to figure out if there is anything you should do before you pack your bags and head towards Joshua’s study.
Just as you’re about to unclick your pen and tuck your things away and head back to 77, someone speaks to you from behind.
“A lovely courtyard we have here.” You know this voice. Everyone knows this voice.
Your blood runs cold as you turn around and face the King, neck craning down immediately as you bow down, stepping away while you hold your hands behind your back.
“G-good evening sir,” you stutter, almost tripping over the stone of your own pathways when you stand up and straighten your back. It’s your first time in years seeing him in person, and you tell yourself as your stomach churns that this was bound to happen at some point.
“Care to tell me about what you’ve got going on here?” he asks, walking around the little stone circle that surrounds Eridenus. “You’re the head of the project, is that right?”
“Yes sir,” you reply quickly, bowing again slightly when he finally goes full circle stopping next to you. His hands are behind his back as you watch him look over the almost complete fields of flowers. “I—uh—it’s called Sol Invictus,” you say. “The—”
“God of Sun.”
“Y-yes sir. Apollo and Helios,” you begin to explain. “Which is why I’ve used these flowers—they’re from one of Apollo’s love stories. They’re quite beautiful, if you ask me, and they fit the kingdom’s colors well.”
The King hums in response. “That’s interesting,” he finally tells you, looking down at Eridenus in front of you. You follow his gaze, staring down at the clear water as you feel your heart rise to your throat in anticipation. You don’t really know what you expect, but if you were preparing yourself for anything, it wasn’t the King saying, “It’s my understanding that you talk to Prince regularly, is that right?”
Your breath hitches in your throat and lodges there along with your heart. “Well, I wouldn’t say—”
“I was speaking to Mr. Park just yesterday.” Oh. “You seem to be a very smart, professional young lady, and it shows in your work.” This can’t be good. “However, I am obligated to remind you: there are boundaries within these walls between the family and its staff.”
“Of course sir. I understand.”
The King watches you carefully, and just when you think he's done, he continues. “There are guards around the castle at all times. there isn't much they miss, I’m sure you know.” This isn't good. This really isn't good.
“It's quite impressive,” you agree, thumbs pressed against each other behind your back. You hear the king take a deep breath, and you wonder if he sucked the air out of you doing so.
"I've heard the pond here is named Eridenus.”
"Y-yes sir."
"Interesting," he murmurs. "Phaeton asked for a bit more than he could handle, didn’t he?" the King chuckles but you hardly hear it over the way your heart pounds. "Let mistakes be learned from, alright?"
You feel your knuckle might buckle. Is this how your mother felt? All those years ago?
The King’s words aren’t nearly as harsh as the advisor who berated your mother, but still, your body sways—you can’t tell if it’s all in your head with all the thoughts that race through, or if it’s the sheer weight of his words that has you almost stumbling.
“It was good to meet you. I’ve enjoyed what you’ve done with this space,” he comments finally, and you step away to face him
“The pleasure was mine, sir,” you bid, bowing as he turns and walks back to his assistants who whisk him away. You watch the King fade into the distance and disappear to the North end.
He spoke to you for a reason, and the King was right. You are smart. You are smart and professional, and tonight, you know exactly what you must do.
“We need to talk,” you state firmly, closing the door behind you in Joshua’s study. You’re supposed to tutor him tonight, and he doesn’t look up at you as he writes away in his notebook, a smirk making its way onto his face as he starts to speak.
“That’s all I get, Sunshine? No ‘hi,’ ‘hello,’ ‘how are you?’” he teases, but then he looks up at you and catches the grim look on your face and the sound of him dropping his pen echoes through the room. “What is it?”
He stands up so quickly that his chair falls down, but Joshua pays no mind to it, his hands gripping the end of his table as his eyes bore into yours. “What is it?” he asks again and this time he’s hissing it. You know he doesn’t mean to be harsh, but your heart sinks even further than you could imagine.
“Joshua,” and when you say it, your voice is meek. You shouldn’t cry over this—fuck, you hate crying, especially if it’s because of his people. You’ve done more than enough crying over them in your life—you can’t cry over any of this anymore.
“Sunshine, what’s going on? You’re scaring me,” Joshua eggs you on worriedly, moving away from his desk so he can walk over to you. One hand cups your cheek, and you’re struck by the realization that this is the most intimate he’s ever been with you.
What unfortunate circumstances, you think.
“Your father,” you say, having half a mind to push his hand away from your face, but you keep it there because you don’t think you’ll have the will to keep on talking if he’s not touching you.
“What about him?” Joshua asks hastily, grip on your jaw tightening.
“He knows, Joshua, he knows.”
“What are you talking about?” Joshua furrows his eyebrows and asks the question but there’s that voice in his head telling him that he already knows the answer.
“A guard saw us at the courtyard and—”
“We didn’t even do anything,” Joshua tries to protest and with just one look at his face, you can tell he’s trying to figure out ways to rebut whatever that stupid guard saw that night.
“Joshua, you know we can’t do anything about this,” you say exasperatedly, your voice a little louder now that you clutch the elbow of his arm that’s holding your face. “I overheard him talking to Mr. Park.”
Joshua’s eyes widen. “Mr. Park knows? What about your job? Are you going to get to finish the project? Are you—”
“Joshua,” you choke out, and for once you cannot stop your tears. “I don’t care about my goddamn project, I care about you.”
“You love that courtyard,” Joshua argues, and you wince at the way he’s still thinking about that damn courtyard. You brush his hand off of you and for a second it looks like his heart has just broken in two, but then you reach for his face and hold his cheeks with your own two hands.
His skin is smooth and supple with the light grain of stubble that itches against your palm near the underside of your jaw. “Joshua,” you whisper, and it’s now that you feel the warm drops of water hit your skin. Joshua is crying and you don’t think you’ve seen anything that saddens you more. “Don’t cry, please don’t cry,” you beg, fruitlessly wiping away his tears as he silently cries into your hands.
“Why’re you acting like this is the end?” he hiccups and he must hate the sound because he slaps a hand over his mouth and buries his face into it.
“Joshua, no,” you murmur and pull him into you so that his hands can fall and you can cradle his head into your neck, letting your own tears drip onto the silk of his shirt. “It’s not the end,” you try to reason, but he pulls his head away to look down at you with glassy eyes.
“You—you’re lying to me,” Joshua says harshly.
“What are you talking about, I don’t—”
“I know you. I-I—fuck—I fucking know you,” he spits out, causing you to falter backwards. “Why do you think we can’t work this out? I’m the prince, I can—I can change everything and we can be together—”
“Your father —”
“Who gives a fuck, I’ll be king soon anyways and—”
“What if he does something?! What if he revokes your title?”
You’re met with stillness and you think Joshua might just comply with your silent plan but suddenly he’s shaking his head vigorously.
“Okay, then let him. I don’t care about being prince, I—”
“You can’t throw your life away Joshua, not for me!” you protest, holding his face again so you can focus his gaze on yours.
“It’s my life—why, why not?”
“Because I love you. And you can’t sacrifice this—this amazing life—for me!”
“I-I can’t—I don’t,” he stumbles and searches for words as tears fall from his lashes and roll down your hands, your wrists, your arms, “—can’t do it, not without you.”
“You’ve been doing it for years, Joshua, you’ll learn,” you tell him, using one hand to grip his cheek, the other to wipe away at your own.
“You don’t love me,” he chokes out. “You—you wouldn’t do this to me if you loved me.”
“Don’t say that, please.” You press your forehead against his and close your eyes because you can’t bear to look at his tear-streaked cheeks any longer. It’s quiet for a moment, and you can’t help but think that this is the calm before the storm.
“We’ll work it out,” Joshua finally whispers, pulling his head back and cradling the back of your neck with his hands. You don’t say anything, and Joshua doesn’t give you the chance anyway. “Let me have you,” he begs. “We’ll work everything out and it’ll be okay,” he says over a strangled sob, “Just—just be with me tonight.”
And so when you nod, he wipes his tears and pokes his head out of the study to make sure the corridor is empty before tugging your wrist and pulling you to his room. It’s big and grand, just as you’d expect for the prince but Joshua doesn’t want you to look at the intricate walls or the tall ceilings or the golden furniture.
Joshua makes you focus on his burning touch and lets you explore his mouth, his body. And stripped, your bodies are so hot and with wet lips against sheen skin, you feel you might melt into each other’s bones.
Teeth against teeth, nails scraping against skin so hard it digs into the muscle, bruising holds, and sloppy kisses—the feeling is so intense and it crashes onto you and Joshua so hard that you have no other choice but to grip onto each other as you would a lifeline.
And your bodies move so languidly through the sheets, like waves against a shore, or like the wind whistling through the air, until you're trembling and drifting off in each others’ arms.
It would have been perfect. Perfect, if only Joshua had woken up and you were next to him.
Joshua is lost.
After a frantic hour of running around the palace, asking if anyone had seen you, looking for Seokmin to see if he had any answers, Joshua finds himself in the middle of Sol Invictus. And he racks his brain for answers, for a smidge of anything that gives him a reasonable explanation as to why you weren’t in his arms this morning.
Joshua is lost.
He’s staring at the ground now, and all Joshua can wonder is if it was all a dream. If that moment you both looked out his glass window at the stars before you kissed him on his bed was just a figment of his imagination.
He wonders if you actually did thread your soft fingers through his messy hair and hold him close as both hit your peaks together, and he wonders if your lips really did ghost over his skin as he drifted off into sleep.
Joshua almost doesn’t feel Advisor Lee’s hand on his shoulder. He only hears his voice, really, and when he does, the sound grates against his ears.
“She’s gone.” Advisor Lee’s voice has always been harsh, and Joshua wonders how the same man could’ve produced something—someone—as lovely as Seokmin.
“What are you talking about?” Joshua is good at feigning ignorance, but his voice still quivers.
“I know. Your father and mother know too.”
Joshua is lost.
Joshua’s eyes snap up and suddenly his hands are at Advisor Lee’s collar. When the older man doesn’t seem surprised, Joshua sags. “What the fuck do you know. What—” He inhales sharply as he lets go and steps back, inching closer to Eridenus. “—what did you do to her?”
“She left herself.”
“What are—” Joshua heaves. “What?”
He’s doing it before he even realizes it. Stumbling toward Eridenus with his lungs and heart mushed together so tight he’s got a hole in his chest, Joshua steps over the stone lining and crashes into the shallow water.
Seokmin’s face pales when he walks in on the scene. Coming into the courtyard from the South end, he sees Joshua’s figure before he even recognizes it’s him.
That’s not Joshua, he thinks as he watches his father stand in front of Eridenus where the prince sits. That’s not Joshua.
Joshua’s shoulders are always sharp and his eyes are bright. Joshua’s smile is full and his hands are always ready to love.
This isn’t Joshua, and Seokmin feels it in his gut when he approaches Eridenus.
Joshua sits in the middle of the pond. His knees are bent and the cold water stops at the middle of his chest, leaving the upper third of his body dry. His royal coat and velvet pants, his polished shoes and silk button up, are submerged and rub against the algae coated rocks on the bottom of Eridenus.
Advisor Lee doesn’t speak as Seokmin stands next to him, Eridenus in front of the two with the prince in the middle. Joshua doesn’t say a thing. In fact, it seems like he doesn’t even know Seokmin is here now. His neck is tilted down and he stares at his soaked slacks blankly.
Seokmin is stunned.
This can’t be Joshua, because Joshua’s shoulders are always sharp but now they are hunched over and hardly moving, even as he breathes short breaths through his pale lips.
This can’t be Joshua, because Joshua’s eyes are always bright but now they are dull and dead. Seokmin knows Joshua’s eyes are always bright, but he failed to realize what exactly it was that was lighting them up.
Seokmin thought it was the sun but he was wrong, because even now, as Joshua sits under broad daylight, he is still and his eyes are dull.
Two weeks since you’ve seen Joshua’s face and you miss his smile.
You miss his smile, the one that crinkles up all the way to his eyes when he laughs at one of your snarky comments. The one that shines his teeth and the one that seemed to never leave your sight when you were with him.
You miss his smile, but his laugh still rings in your ear, early in the mornings when you blink awake and late in the nights when you gasp in hearty breaths and try not to cry. When you take the walk through the city to your work at Mr. Min’s bookshop, the ringing of the street vendors’ bells are bright and cheery, and sometimes you can hear Joshua’s laugh in the mix.
One month since Joshua last looked you in the eye and he wishes he didn’t know why you left. He wishes he was oblivious, because then he could be angry at you—he could have a reason to forget, to move on, to stop loving you.
Joshua knows why you left and it hurts more than anything because this is nothing like a betrayal at all. You left because you love him, and Joshua cannot dispute that—not now, not ever.
Sometimes he walks through Sol Invictus and plucks a hyacinth, letting it blow off into the wind. He hopes you’ll find the lost petals one day.
Two months since you’ve been in the castle and your life is normal. Well, as normal as it can get for you.
Your first semester of the new year started a few days ago, and you’ve since moved into an apartment near your campus. Your mother thinks it’ll be good for you, and you understand her sentiment but you don’t think she understands.
Ironic, you think. You’ve gone full circle, really. Maybe it does run in your blood, like all the whispers said.
You realize you’re okay with that. Maybe you made a mistake with Joshua, maybe you didn’t. Maybe you almost royally fucked up your reputation more than it already was (thankfully, the Royal Counsel was better at keeping it under the wraps this time), maybe no one cares. Maybe your life is a little bit more messed up now, but again—you’re okay with that.
You miss Joshua. You don’t think you’ll ever stop missing him. You’re also okay with that. You’re starting to realize that you’re okay with pretty much anything when it comes to Joshua. And once again, you’re okay with that.
Six months since he’s seen you and Joshua’s chest aches. Partly because he was distracted during fencing and took a jab straight in the middle but mostly because he misses you.
He stands on the balcony of the royal dining hall, waiting for lunch to be served as he looks over the palace and the kingdom that spread beyond. Joshua sees the tall buildings, the rows of houses, and the infamous Hong University that lay in the middle of the commontown around the hill the castle sits on, and he wonders.
You told him you’d be taking an astronomy class this semester, which should have started a month ago. Joshua is old enough and smart enough to know that collegiate astronomy is more than just the moon and the sun and the pretty little dots that button the sky, but still, he wonders.
The sun and its sunlight, rotations and revolutions.
Will you think about him?
Joshua doesn’t need to wonder—he knows.
The sun is bright today and even though it’s winter, the clouds are nowhere to be seen. It’s a bit of a rare occurrence for the cold months, but Joshua doesn’t mind. When he looks at the blue sky and briefly glances at the sun, his shadow on the stone floor, the reflection of light against the railing, Joshua breathes in the chilly air, filling his lungs deeply.
He knows.
Eight months and you still hear Joshua’s laugh.
You hear it when wind whistles in your ear as you walk to a flower shop to buy a pot. You hear it when you look up at the sun and imagine you’re in the middle of Sol Invictus. You hear it when you crouch down on your balcony, placing the little hyacinth into the pot and packing soil around the base.
You miss Joshua, you miss his smile, and more than anything, you miss his laugh. Right now, as you bathe in the memories of a man so far yet so close, you realize that you can miss him all you want, but you won’t forget. You can’t ever forget.
Ten months later and Joshua’s chest still aches, but he’s okay with that.
He sucks in heavy breaths as his lungs search for air on the fencing match, his trainer leaving the room, leaving Joshua after his request to take a break. Through the rush of blood in his ears, Joshua hardly hears the door behind him open.
“Mingyu told me you’ve been struggling with fencing recently,” his mother says, approaching him. Joshua shuffles in his fencing gear, throwing his helmet to the side.
“I’ve just hit a stump.”
“Something tells me this is more than just a stump,” she inquires as Joshua kicks off his boots.
Joshua scoffs, “What makes you say that?”
“Joshua, what’s wrong?”
He pauses, about to pull off his gloves when he looks up at the Queen. “Everyone in the Royal Counsel knows. I’m sure you know too.”
His mother sighs heavily when he stands up, and she follows him out the training room and toward the Residency Quart. There’s a silence that gaps the mother and son—not that Joshua isn’t used to it. He still smiles and grins, he hugs and he bows, and oftentimes it is genuine, but there’s a silence that always follows. A silence that he never forgets.
A silence he holds when he watches the same kitten you held cross his path when he walks through Sol Invictus, slightly bigger but just as nimble and heart warming. A silence he holds when his eyes gloss over the set of Percy Jackson books in the shelves of his room. A silence he holds when he sinks into his covers and presses his nose to the sheets, wondering if he’ll ever be able to taste your skin on his tongue again.
“I won’t ever understand what went on between you two,” his mother finally says.
“There isn’t anything for you to understand,” Joshua tells her, heading towards his room, but his mother stops him and he narrows his eyes. “What? I felt bad for her, alright? When I saw her all those years ago when it all happened out in the gardens—”
“Joshua, what are you talking about?”
“That’s what you want to know, right? Why I talked to her? Why I—I love her?” His mother gives him a stern look, but Joshua doesn’t relent. He’s starting to realize he’s been too comfortable with this silence. “I never asked you to understand it, but I’ll tell you anyway. Maybe because I pitied her or felt sorry for her or all the same stuff, and maybe I didn’t think she deserved to be ostracized for something she never did but—whatever. I’m not asking you to understand, but I am asking you to leave it alone.”
“You’re my son, Joshua.”
The Queen is Joshua’s mother and she doesn’t understand. She may never understand, and Joshua is okay with that because if he’s being honest, he doesn't think anyone will ever understand. He’s okay with that too.
You will understand, and for him, that’s enough.
You get two letters from the Royal Counsel in your lifetime. You received the first over a year ago—the one you opened with Mr. Min standing across from you in his little bookstore under dingy lights and over the dusty counter. The one you crumpled up and tossed into the dustbin without as much as a second though. The one that led you down a long, winding path which brought you to Joshua.
You receive the second now, standing in your apartment as you look down, except this time you aren’t staring at a paper, you’re staring at the screen of your laptop. You giggle quietly to yourself; Joshua must have taken the Royal Counsel up on still sending letters.
You’ve only looked at the subject of the email so far. It’s got your name and the word “request” written in bold, and you wonder what they want.
Glossing over the text, a wave of nostalgia washes over you. “The Hong Royal Counsel wishes to find you well, as we present a request.” Same shit, huh? “You will have the opportunity to lead a project as you please and earn a notable compensation in payment for your efforts.” Yeah, pretty much.
It’s the same thing, you realize. They want you back—for what, you aren’t sure, but you have a feeling that it doesn’t really matter. Because signed, at the bottom of the email isn’t the usual, “Hong Royal Counsel,” but instead is, “Hong Royal Family.”
The little sun emblem sits below the signatures of the King and Queen, and you press your eyes shut and hold the screen close to your chest, silently praying under your breath that is not a dream.
You don’t know what happened, don’t know what Joshua told them, but to be frank, you don’t care. You’re smart enough to read between the lines.
I don’t understand, they're telling you, But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.
It’s your first day at the castle. Well, your second first day.
When you park your car at the base of the hill, you smile down at the silk over your waist. You abandoned the new ribbon sent to you by the Court, instead donning the one that came to you in a little white box ten months ago. Sometimes, when you hold it close enough, you still think you can smell Joshua’s skin.
You wonder how long you’ll have to wait for him, but as you look up at the sky, you have your answer.
Something speaks to you when you return to 77. Mr. Park is still gruff and cranky but you swear you see the peek-a-boo of a smile on his lips when you walk in. Jihoon’s there too, he greets you regularly.
And of course there’s Seokmin who is hugging you so tight, it reminds you that he is a full grown man and not a child trapped in a large body. You think he almost cries when he laughs with you about how he almost killed the yarrows again (but he brought them back to life! Trust!), and then he beams and tells you that you gotta check out Sol Invictus.
It’s beautiful.
Bright hyacinths that line from east to west and your heart is happy because Seokmin told you he’d get everyone to finish planting them and he did. The purple petals let wind whistle through its stems and leaves, the rustling echoing off the walls of the castle that surround Sol Invictus.
The water of Eridenus gleams under the sun, the stone of your pathways glows brightly, and as your eyes flicker around, you notice something new. In each corner field of Sol Invictus, sits a medium sized sculpture, each of a pegasus but all slightly different in pose and manner.
And then you see him, his back facing you, standing in front of one of the statues that sits in one of the fields on the west end.
Walk the line.
Tracing the pathways—your pathway—from East to West with your shoes clacking their short heels against the tiles—you know he can hear you, but still, he doesn’t move. His hands are neatly holding each other behind his back as his neck tilts slightly upward to stare up at the pegasus.
“Aethon, Aeos, Pyrois, and Phlegon,” Joshua says when you finally stop next to him, shoulders barely brushing against each other. “This one is Pyrois.”
“Helios’ pegasi,” you murmur, glossing over the fine details and intricacies of the statue.
“I thought you might like them.”
You don’t say anything for a moment and grin, watching his eyes light up from the corner of your vision. “I love them.”
“Thank god. You were taking so long to respond, I thought you were going to yell at me for fucking up Sol Invictus.”
You laugh and shake your head, both of you shuffling as you face each other.
“Hi,” you say so lightly it comes out as a breathy laugh when you both finally look each other in the eye.
“Sunshine.” Joshua smiles, holding out his hand. The light is warm when it hits your skin, and Joshua’s dark hair glints a light brown under the beams. You take his hand and run your fingers over the calluses of his palm; his skin is warm when his fingers grasp around yours and as you look at his eyes, you feel it in your bones.
This is Joshua, this is Joshua, and every path you follow will always lead you back to him.
find an alternate ending here!
edit. thanks 4 making it this far! if ur interested i expand on the concept of an isohel more here and little tidbits here, and it's honestly just a ramble but i hope it makes clear why i made some decisions w the story if ur interested :3
a/n. aaah it's done! as per em's request, i will be posting a one-shot of these two and their lives in the future bc i feel like i robbed u guys of a possibly fluffier ending so keep an eye out for that ... anyways, i hope u enjoyed, comments / reblogs would mean the world to me and >_< thank u for reading!
taglist. @synthetickitsune @ixayjun @leejihoonownsmyheart @dahliatopia @gyuswhore @hoeforcheol @5xiang @hajimelvr @miriamxsworld @blinkjunhui @lixiel0ver @josefines-things @mimisxs @kawennote09 @bbyjjunie @rubyreduji @todorokiskitten @98-0603 @hipsdofangirl @minnie-mouser22 @minhui896 @whippedforjihoon @nishloves @woozarts (strikethrough could not be tagged)
#joshua hong#seventeen joshua#hong jisoo#hong jisoo xreader#hong jisoo x reader#joshua x you#joshua x reader#seventeen imagines#joshua#joshua hong angst#joshua hong fanfic#joshua hong fluff#hong joshua x reader#hong joshua#hong joshua smut#kpop fanfic#kpop fluff#kpop angst#svt fanfic#svt fluff#svt angst#seventeen fanfic#seventeen x reader#seventeen angst#kpop#📝 writing#isohel
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part one | part two | part three
every piece of you wants to stay, especially as abby looks up at you with big eyes and pouty lips, her small fingers holding onto yours like a lifeline.
"i'm sorry, sweetheart. tonight's not a good night."
abby gives you a heartbreaking look but she lets you go, sputtering out a reluctant, "okay."
there's a different look on mike's face (though you suspect it's in a similar strain) but you offer him a smile and a soft kiss on the cheek before he steps back inside and shuts the door behind you.
though regret settles in his chest quickly and only intensifies with each unanswered ring of the phone as he tries to calls max. mike groans as he hangs up the phone, glancing at abby with the realization that he's out of options. abby catches on, too, a glint in her eye as she smiles.
"i will work, and you will sleep..."
it's almost 7 pm. usually, you'd be eating dinner by now. before your few days of solitude, you'd be laughing and talking with abby while you did. now, for the past half-hour, you'd been standing in the door frame of your kitchen, trying to decide whether or not you should eat by yourself or drive over to mike's.
the landline ringing pulls you away from contemplating the very difficult decision.
"hello?"
"hey," mike's voice greets you and you feel your heart flutter. "are you busy tonight?"
you lean against the wall, twirling the phone's cord around your finger. "hmmm, i don't know. are you asking me out?"
mike is quiet for a moment, shocked silence - he'd almost forgotten how easily you make him blush. "not tonight, baby, i'm sorry."
you can hear the smile in his voice and you can't seem to frown.
"no, it's something more... serious. can you come over? it'll be easier to explain."
"give me ten minutes."
mike groans. "ten minutes too long."
you laugh, giving him a sweet bye before hanging up, picking up your keys and giving your kitchen a quick glance. really, at this point you should just move in.
you've barely arrived on mike's doorstep when the door swings open. you're in mike's arms before you can say anything, your arms wrapping around him like it was a natural instinct. mike's face presses into your neck, intoxicating himself with your scent. your presence is a comfort and your arms give mike the sense of safety he's been chasing for years.
mike sighs into your shoulder and you pull away to press a kiss on his cheek.
"something's wrong?" you guess.
mike nods, his arms pulling you close again for just a few more seconds before letting you go (not completely, though - his hand finds yours instantly).
abby's in her room and mike drags you into his. you take a seat on his twin size bed and he follows, making a dip in the mattress that makes your legs press against each other.
there's a book and a tape recorder on mike's bedside table. your eyes wander to the space above mike's bed, where something previously taped has been ripped off.
okay, it hasn't been that long since you'd been in here...
"okay," you nod, ready to listen to whatever it is mike has to say. you're patient as he hesitates, only momentarily, before he finally tells you a few very important details he'd left out from your last conversation. like how he's been reliving his childhood trauma for the past month or so.
you really try not to be upset. you hear the desperation in mike's voice as he tells you that dream... whatever-ing at freddy's has gotten him closer than ever to figuring it all out, finally. his hands shake as he pulls out a folded up paper from his back pocket. you could recognize abby's art from anywhere.
"and look! i... i don't know how, but they're connected, somehow. the kids- they posses the robots and they can talk to abby! they told her about garrett. they know something."
"mike." your hands are on his, urging him to slow down.
"look, i know it sounds crazy." mike's gaze is serious as he looks into your eyes, pleading for you to not think he was a total nut case. "i want you to come with us tonight."
"mike-"
"no, i'm serious. you can see for yourself." and mike is looking at you so desperately.
you sigh. "okay."
mike looks like he’s still ready to convince you, not expecting you to agree so easily.
and then his hands are on your face and he’s kissing you like his life depends on it.
“i seriously-” mike says breathlessly between kisses. “don’t know what i did in a past life to deserve you, but you are… amazing.”
and so you keep your grievances to yourself. you’re really not sure if you’ve gone one step forward or taken two steps back but mike is pulling you into the kitchen to have some of the soup he’s made and there’s really no time to gather your thoughts.
but there is time for the worry you've been feeling for mike to come back tenfold.
abby is somehow more excited than mike to hear that you’ll be tagging along tonight, jumping up and down and thanking you as if you’d just told her she'd won the lottery.
she’s still buzzing in the car and mike’s hand stays steady on yours as he drives. his face is grim as he looks ahead, his eyes occasionally rising to glance at abby and falling on you at a red light (mike would've completely missed the light turning green if it weren't for your hand squeezing his).
but that feeling in your chest only grows and it's starting to make you feel sick. you’re really not sure what you’ve just agreed to.
mike pulls into the front of freddy’s, parking line long since faded. it’s your first time, but even you can point out the cop car not quite fitting in with the rest of the picture.
“vanessa’s here,” abby comments.
"yeah," mike nods, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.
"my friends talk about her sometimes," abby begins softly as you come up beside her, taking her hand.
"really?" you ask curiously. "what do they say?"
"that she's nice."
"abby," mike starts with a huff. "if i asked you to wait in the car, would you?"
"no." abby smiles before turning to you. "come on!" if her legs weren't so small, you're sure she would've lost you as she dragged you along.
"abby, wait!" mike calls uselessly.
"guys, i'm back!" abby announces as soon as she enters the large party room. "and i brought someone special!"
"abby."
"hey, vanessa!" abby is unstoppable, pulling you until you're on stage, right in front of her... friends.
"abby!"
you're frozen, standing there as you watch the giant mascots come to life, seemingly without anyone controlling them. they tower over you, large bodies whirring as they turn towards you. their expressions were limited, but you could tell by the way their eyebrows pointed and their mechanical eyes squinted that they did not like you.
"guys, it's okay!" abby assures before leaning in to whisper something. she giggles, and the animatronics... relax, returning to their normal expressions.
"okay, that's seriously freaky," you admit under your breath, watching as abby smiles and laughs with the mascots.
you stay by abby's side, reaching out to wrap a protective arm around her, eyes never letting any of the animatronics out of your sight.
there's a tug on your sweater and a look in abby's eyes you know too well.
abby presents to you, mike, and vanessa a rough blueprint for a fort made entirely by crayon. when abby reveals that she wants to build a fort for all of you, including the animatronics, you can't help but give her a look.
she doesn't seem to notice, caught up in all the excitement, but you catch mike's eyes and know he's sharing your sentiments.
"abby, look," mike starts, hand on abby's shoulder. "now, this is all really fun and exciting, but these things are big, and they could be dangerous, so i think we need to lay some ground rules, all right?"
"we're gonna watch our fingers and our feet," you add warmly.
"vanessa, what do you think?"
it's quiet as the two of you look up at her - mike has told you that vanessa knows a lot about freddy's (though he suspects she knows more).
"i think we could use the tables for the fort." vanessa smiles at abby, hanging back as abby runs off. mike's eyebrows furrow in confusion, but vanessa only throws him a triumphant look before joining abby.
"everyone, follow me! come on."
it's definitely a unique experience, building a fort with animatronics possessed by dead children. but they lift and build alongside you and soon enough, they're more endearing than terrifying.
you catch vanessa trying to bring a table over by herself, quickly placing yourself on the other end and helping her lift.
"thanks," she says quietly, tight smile over her lips. "so, you and mike...?"
"together," you confirm with a nod. "for a while." there's a bit of awkward silence and you really can't tell if there's something you have to clear. "if you were interested-"
vanessa laughs, but you don't give her a chance to confirm or deny.
"-he's pretty... clueless when it comes to those things." you offer a smile and vanessa shakes her head, mouth open to say something when a stray chair catches your eye.
"hey, careful," you stop abruptly before vanessa can trip. she looks to her right and kicks the chair away with her leg.
"thanks," she smiles.
"yeah." you smile right back.
"okay, they're kind of cute," you quietly admit to mike after bonnie's little fall.
"seriously? you too?" mike frowns and you can't hide your laugh.
"what? i'm just saying, i get why abby likes them so much."
mike shakes his head, disbelief in his face as abby waves the two of you over.
"i mean... they're still just kids, right?" you whisper to mike, voice holding a hint of sadness that you try to shake off, tugging mike along to congratulate abby on her genius engineering.
"i like it in here," vanessa calls from her spot on the other side of bonnie.
"me, too," you admit, fingers lightly interlaced with mike's.
"me, three," abby grins. "but... i think it's gonna rain soon."
"sounds like we need a roof," vanessa smiles as she sits up and you can't help but appreciate how she got along with abby. "i'll go see what i can find."
"we'll, uh... we'll come with you," mike calls, pulling you up from your spot so suddenly you almost fall on bonnie. "sorry!" you whisper, patting his arm gently.
"yeah, i take it back, this place is creepy again." you shudder as you enter the storage room.
"what are you looking for, exactly?" mike inquires as vanessa begins digging through a bunch of boxes.
"tablecloths!" she responds like it's obvious. "they used to keep 'em back here for big events."
"right. and remind me how you know that?"
"mike." you warn.
but vanessa won't answer the question and you can feel you start to suspect her knowledge of the place, too.
"found 'em." vanessa smiles as she begins digging into a box and pulling out some fabric.
"god, what is that thing?" your gaze lands on a very creepy looking piece of metal slouched in the corner.
"one of the older models," vanessa comments casually. you stare at her, watching her fold the fabric to make it manageable, barely even glancing over. no, that definitely wasn't common knowledge.
"don't!" vanessa's urgency makes you jump, your head turning to see mike almost stick his hand somewhere it definitely didn't belong. "i wouldn't do that. they're spring locks. they're on all the older ones. they were designed to keep the animatronic parts in place, so that, uh, a person could safely wear the suit. they tend to be pretty unstable. let's see..."
vanessa picks up a broom to demonstrate, sticking it right where mike's arm would've been.
the metal snapped it in a split second. the visual makes you and mike both cringe.
"like i said. unstable."
"is there anything else you'd like to tell us about, vanessa? cause you seem to know everything about this place." mike's words throw no direct accusations, but his tone does. "and what'd if abby'd come in here? what if she'd found that thing?" mike's voice rises and he's on vanessa's tail, forcing you to follow.
"you're the one who brought her here, mike, not me," vanessa spins around. "what i can't wrap my head around is why."
and mike has no choice but to share what he'd told you earlier. e sighs, glancing at you as he begins his confession.
"all right, look. i think that they know who took my little brother. i can't explain it, but when i'm here, i feel closer to garrett. my dreams are more vivid, and it... it's like i can almost..."
"change what happened?" vanessa offers and you're positive she knows something. not even you reacted this calmly.
mike nods.
"did you ask them about this?"
"yeah, i tried. i don't think they like me very much. but... they do like abby."
and that's when it all clicks. you remember your phone call with abby, how mike refused to take her with him. how something about that conversation with mike hadn't sat right. you'd thought it been the whole dead children possessing giant robots then, but you realize what it is now.
"so that's what this entire thing is about? using abby to solve this?" your arms cross now, eyebrows furrowing as you turn to mike.
"okay, i'm not using her, i just asked her to ask them-"
"mike, you said yourself this place is dangerous-"
"yeah, and we're watching her."
a silence settles on the three of you as you realize that, no, you aren't.
you lead the way as the three of you pick up the pace on your way out of the storage room, vanessa and mike picking up their discussion.
"mike. you need to drop this."
"i don't really see how that's any of your business."
"i'm tellling you, you need to let it go."
"who the hell are you?"
"just someone who's trying to help."
you burst out of the dark storage room, eyes trying to find abby in the dim light.
"abby!" you cry, watching her get closer to bonnie - a hand coming up to string his guitar.
"wait, abby, don't!" vanessa cries, but all of you are too late.
sparks fly and abby's on her back, unresponsive when you get to her.
"abby? abby!"
her eyes finally open as she coughs and you breathe a sigh of relief.
"what happened?"
"it's okay, abby. you just had an accident. you're okay." vanessa pulls abby up into a hug - away from you and mike and you watch as his face falls. "i'm so sorry."
vanessa helps abby up and you take abby's hand. "alright, princess, we're gonna get you home."
you have a feeling the argument between them isn't over, so you open up the backseat for abby and get in with her, letting her wrap her arms around one of you and use you as a pillow.
you were right - it wasn't over. though it really wasn't an argument as it was mike getting yelled at and it makes you guiltily reminiscent.
but you don't move into the passenger seat even as mike gets it, already letting him know you're gonna have your own talk once you get home.
"she looked so angry," abby comments tiredly, her head resting against you as you soothingly run your fingers through her hair. "why does everyone always look at you that way?"
mike sighs quietly and you swallow thickly. "let's try to get some sleep, abs." you say quietly, a hand coming up to rub her shoulder.
really, all you did was blink. your eyes flutter open and see the sun has risen during the short drive from freddy's. you're warm, whether it's from the sun's rays or mike's gentle hand on your leg. you're still half-asleep, not really hearing what he's saying, only able to notice how beautiful he looks with the sun shining on him like that.
you almost forget you're upset with him.
mike carries abby in and you let him tuck her into bed (something tells you he needs it more than you do). your feet quietly drag on the carpet, turning into mike's room and pulling on something cozier (and that doesn't have the dingy, lingering scent of freddy's).
you're lingering in mike's door frame, only a few feet away as mike exits abby's room and closes the door quietly. your arms are crossed and you might be frowning as mike bites his lip. you know he knows. you don't trust yourself to even sit on mike's bed, the temptation almost impossible to resist even out of the corner of your eye, so you make your way down the hall to the dining room and mike wishes he could watch you walk around in his clothes under different circumstances.
you sit in the sunlight, silently, and mike thinks he'd rather you yell at him than this. he picks at his cuticles, ripping at a hangnail until it's gone, a little red spot slowly taking its place.
birds chirp brightly outside as you gather your thoughts. you don't want this to be like last time and you're trying really hard to be patient with mike. you can't imagine what it's like to lose a sibling, but he could've lost another last night. wasn't that enough to snap him into reality?
"mike," you begin and mike hopes he never hears you say his name like that again. "i would never ask you to let something like this go," and mike sighs at the familiar request. "but it's becoming... too much."
mike looks up at you now, eyebrows furrowed, ready to be angry. "'too much?' what does that mean, 'too much?'"
you're careful with your next words, taking mike's hand softly, reminding him that you do love him.
"i mean, we got lucky. abby... abby could've gotten seriously hurt."
"okay, it wasn't like i forced her, she wanted to go."
"and you were against it until you realized those... things liked her!"
mike pulls back, his jaws clenched.
"you don't understand."
"so help me, mike. help me understand, because i'm really trying to."
"finding the man who took garrett is the only thing that matters to me!"
"so abby doesn't matter?" and mike falters. "i don't matter?"
mike's heart churns and his head drops. "that's not what i..."
"yeah," you sigh, crossing your arms. it's quiet again and mike can't manage to look at you.
"mike," there it is again. "this is becoming an obsession."
mike scoffs. "it's not-"
"yes, it is! tell me mike, how many nights have you been going there for the past... month?"
mike can't answer. he truly doesn't know. he's still trying to think of a response when your hands are on his face, forcing his eyes to look at you. your fingers sweep over the bags that have taken the spot under his eyes for a while now, wishing you could rub away the dark hues. you thumb over the hair on mike's face - he hasn't shaven in a while, but he hasn't taken care of himself in longer.
"you haven't been yourself, mike. this was the problem the first time. i'm just.. worried, alright?"
mike's heart sinks as he starts to see all of the stress on your face, too. your tired eyes and the small frown on your face. something in him aches and he regrets ever dragging you into this.
your eyes catch the time and you sigh as your hands drop mike's face.
"i have to get to work."
"w... work?" mike stammers. why would you agree to tag along if you had work in the morning?
"call me if you need anything. please." you press a kiss to mike's cheek before taking off, leaving mike to sit there in silence.
he sighs, rubbing his eyes. his body is exhausted but he can't rest. not until it's finished.
"hey, it's mike. i need your help."
that night, you linger in the living room. mike hasn't called, but you just can't shake the feeling that something's not right. you take a seat on the couch, that awful sense of dread in your stomach keeping you from doing anything else.
you're not sure when the exhaustion catches up, but when you wake up it's dark outside and you're not sure if the ringing you heard was just in your head.
and then your answer machine begins to play a bright voice you could recognize anywhere.
"my friend's taking me to freddy's! i don't know where mike went but i'm mad at him... what? okay! i have to go-"
the message ends abruptly and your hands feel clammy as you replay it.
it takes a few more minutes and more than a few deep breaths before you race to your car, fingers fumbling as you get in and hit the gas.
something's wrong. you can feel it.
you're barely in the parking lot of freddy's before you're out of your car, panting and having no idea how you'd made it without getting pulled over.
you approach the entrance and consider yelling out mike and abby's names on the off chance they'll pop out and assure you everything's okay. but before you can get too close, a figure is running out towards you, pulling you towards the side of the building and out of sight of the cameras.
"vanessa?" you're surprised to see her outside of her uniform, holding something that looks dangerous and with a frantic look in her eyes. "vanessa, what's wrong?"
her eyes fall on you as she tries to even out her heavy breathing and she looks wild.
"they've got abby."
"w... what do you mean? they like her, right? they won't hurt her?"
vanessa shakes her head quickly, her eyes teary and her voice quivering. "mike, he..."
"vanessa, please."
"they want to make her like them."
your heart's in your throat as you follow vanessa through the vents, dust and anxiety making it hard to breathe. you feel like you're going to be sick and you would push vanessa if you weren't sure that she was going as fast as she could. the vent cover is already off, making it easier for the two of you make it to the party room. bonnie and freddy are down on the stage, but you and vanessa are crouched and quiet, trying to listen for where abby could be over the sound of your own heart pounding.
foxy doesn't notice as you come up behind him and vanessa electrocutes him, your arms immediately fishing for abby as she screams.
"it's okay," you assure quietly, pulling abby in tightly, the relief you feel so intense tears almost slip out of your eyes. "you're okay."
"foxy!" abby calls out as she backs out of your arms, eyes sad for her friend.
"we're gonna get you somewhere safe so we can go help your brother, okay?" vanessa says worriedly, eyes checking over abby as her hand rubs her shoulder. her eyes fall on you and you nod, picking abby up and listening to vanessa's directions towards somewhere safe.
though there's not much you can do but chase after abby once she spots her brother on the floor, unconscious. you're on your hands and knees, eyelashes fluttering hazily, not quite able to process seeing your boyfriend bloodied and bruised. not quite able to fathom what it'll mean if he doesn't wake up. abby's screams don't quite reach your ears as her small hands try to shake him awake.
"mike, please." you don't even recognize the sound of your own voice, so desperate and shaky.
at last, mike stirs, weakly twisting onto his forearms.
"the drawings," he chokes out. "the yellow rabbit hurt your friends. show them what really happened."
mike's weight is on you as the two of you stumble through the dank hallways, lights flickering and mike panting. "here, here," mike directs and you pull him into a control room. mike stumbles as he reaches for a box, steadying himself against the dusty wall as he grunts, flipping the switch from off to on. you're not sure what it does but your arm is around mike again, pulling him out of the room as quickly as you'd gotten in.
there's a layer of sweat on your face as you push past a door, the last door that finally leads you back to abby.
she calls your names as she runs over, away from the man who's been behind it all. you let mike catch his breath for a second as you pull abby close, the three of you watching as the yellow rabbit is finally punished.
lights begin to fall, shattering the instant they hit the ground.
"alright, we gotta go." you scoop abby up, mike using you as support as you try to navigate your way out safely. you bite back a gasp once you see vanessa on the ground, pale and unresponsive.
"okay, okay." you set abby down and you and mike crouch down to each sling one of vanessa's arms over your necks. mike stumbles, almost falling as he tries to stand and your face tightens with worry.
"hold my hand," you instruct abby. "hold tight. don't let go."
the animatronics are dragging the yellow rabbit somewhere, but you can't spare any attention, focusing on not dropping vanessa and making sure mike is still upright. you're almost at the exit when the ceiling starts to come down, your own panting mixing with mike's pained grunts as the four of you finally make it outside.
"abby, i need you to open up the car for me, okay?"
abby nods and grabs your keys, running up ahead to click the button on your keys. the lights blink and she opens up the back for you and mike to sit vanessa in. you strip yourself of your sweater, laying it over vanessa as abby climbs into the opposite side. "hold her tight, alright?" abby nods, clicking her seat belt before holding onto vanessa's arm. good girl.
you help mike into the passenger seat, kissing the top of his head as he continues breathing irregularly, holding his side and gasping.
you're not the best example for abby as you skip your seat belt, shoving your keys into the ignition and turning them quickly. you peel out of freddy's, trying to remember the quickest route to the hospital. you're way over the speed limit, but not an ounce of you cares.
"keep putting pressure on it," you manage out, hands sweaty against your steering wheel. mike holds himself steady against your dashboard and your eyes constantly bounce between the road and mike, so distracted you almost drive on the curb as you pull into the hospital. it's okay, it's okay, you repeat to yourself as you head straight for the emergency room.
it'll be okay.
mike is cleared first. it's been a few hours and abby's asleep in the chair next to yours. the pounding of your heart kept you awake, tired eyes waiting expectantly each time a staff entered the waiting room.
finally, someone called you over.
"he's awake," the lady with the clipboard says with a smile and you gently shake abby awake. she's still half-asleep as the two of you are led to one of the hospital rooms, bright daylight shining in from the window making your eyes hurt.
but then you spot mike, raised up in his bed and awake and breathing and the weight on your shoulders is gone.
"mike!" abby cries happily, running over to throw her arms around her brother.
"careful, abs," you say softly, though you're barely containing your own excitement.
"no, no, it's okay. i can barely feel a thing," mike assures, pulling abby up into a tight hug.
you come up behind her, the tears you've been holding for hours finally finding their way out, relieving some of the pressure in your chest.
"hey, come here," mike says softly, his arms, still so strong, pulling you close. abby digs her way in again, head resting against your back until you pull her in, too. "i'm okay," mike whispers just before you all let go.
"yeah," you nod, wiping your face before abby can see. "you're okay."
the ride back home is exciting, the three of you making a stop for abby's favorite fast food before you make it home. abby is reluctant to let go of mike as you all trudge in, but her little eyes are closing and she'll wake up with a sore neck if she falls asleep on the couch.
you go straight for mike once she's tucked in. you're pressing him against the wall as you kiss him, careful not to hit any of the bruises on his face. there's no argument from him as his hands find your hips, his thumbs pressing softly into your skin. the both of you are trying to articulate your feelings through the desperate kisses you share, lips swollen and breathing heavy by the time you're finished.
but mike's had something on his chest for a while now, too.
"you were right," he breaths out, chest still heaving from the kisses. "about everything. i was stuck in the past and i wasn't focusing on what was right in front of me," mike's hands are on your face now, making sure you're looking at him (as if you could tear yourself away). "you and abby are the most important things in the world. and i... i love you."
your eyes are wide as you glance from one of mike's big brown eyes to the other, watching him watch you desperately. his eyes stay steady on yours, his fingers slowly thumbing over your face.
"i love you," he whispers again, reveling in the feeling of the phrase slipping off his tongue. "i love you." one more time, just for good measure.
and then you're grinning so wide, your face suddenly warm under mike's hand. your hands are on his, pushing them a little to catch mike in a kiss, completely different than before - this one's slow, the two of you dragging it out as long as you can, each trying to engrave the other in their memory.
but that's not where you want to live. so you pull away and cup mike's face in your hands, forcing him to be present with you again.
"i love you, you idiot. and i'm gonna make sure you know it every single day."
mike nods as he buries his face in your shoulder. he thinks he's crying and you might be, too. there's so many words he wants to say, but he can't quite figure out how to string them together. there's promises to for him to make and to see through, but for now, mike settles on one phrase, repeated into the material of your shirt. he's not even positive you can hear him, but he knows you know.
"i love you. i love you. i love you..."
final part!!! yay!!! i'm still not sure what to call this little mini-series, so let me know :p. & if you want any bonus content for them... requests are open! <333
(also, i am ignoring aunt jane because i have NO IDEA what happened to her in the movie)
#mike schmidt#mike schmidt x reader#mike schmidt x you#mike schmidt fluff#mike schmidt angst#fnaf x reader#fnaf#fnaf movie#five nights at freddy's#v + mike#v writes
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☾₊ ⊹ reaching for the moon (18+)
pairing: steve x fem!reader with afab anatomy
contains: smut and a dumb amount of world building that was not necessary for this. set in 30s nyc, no hawkins. old money!steve; husband!steve; art historian!steve; not rich whatsoever!reader; they’re married your honor; steve’s parents (they’re the worst <3); slut shaming; allusions to bisexual steve; brief homophobia; soft!steve!!! he’s so damn soft!!!!; period typical everything lol
you might want to know: steve smokes and reader takes a drag; heated arguments which lead to some implied homophobia; reader wears an evening gown with a corset; car sex (info on said car here, for clarity sake)
author’s note: this is very heavily inspired by titanic 1997 (obviously) because it’s been rotting my brain. it’s very self indulgent but i’m hoping others like it!!
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It’s always the same. A party, an invitation in the mail, embossed with gold foil. Steve fuming because they could have walked over instead of paying for postage, or called him on the telephone. Each time both of you thinking it’ll be different, each time leaving with Steve’s wounded ego or anger levels at an all time high. You don’t know why you torture yourselves other than the fact that his mother will make a tremendous deal out of it when you don’t show up. She’s not above telling guests gossip of your marriage when you’re not around, just so it can get back to you and hurt you again.
Your issue lies with both of them. Steve’s issue lies with his father. Old, rich, stupid. Too well-known for being a lawyer for companies that should be shuttered and closed for violations and accidents. A union buster. And Steve’s biggest critic.
He never wants to hear about Steve’s studies or projects. His mind appears to me hyper-focused on Steve’s shortfalls - no military experience, no investments, married to a poor girl he met at a bar in Manhattan. Steve is everything his father detests, and vice verse.
To his credit, Steve tries, even when he doesn’t want to. He talks to his mother first while she stares at you like you’re venomous. She’s good at reeling in her disappointment. Steve’s her only child and you figure she doesn’t want to lose that. His father, on the other hand, is closer to Steve’s cousins - successors of big oil, engineers, military men.
You smile at her while Steve tells her about his recent trip to Florence, about the chapels and art. You’re wearing her diamonds around her neck. You know she wants to strike them from you. You’d say you clean up well, wearing one of the tens of dresses Steve’s purchased for you, custom made and tailored. Satin and lace and silk, only the finest. His mother thinks she can still smell alcohol and cigarette smoke on you. She detests your miserable background, how unladylike and uneducated you are, that you’ve worked where women shouldn’t and have done things she’d consider unforgivable sin.
“They’d mix pigments with egg -“
“Egg?”
“Right, yes, they called it tempura. And the pigments - Jesus, should’ve been there to see Giotto’s blue, so rich and -“
“Are you talking about those paintings again?”
Steve tenses and turns to face his father. Your face falls slightly.
“I am.”
“How much was that trip, anyway?” his father presses. He gives you a wink as if you’re in on the joke. “Certainly more than your engagement ring?”
You clench your fist within its satin glove. The gold, Art Deco band digs into your ring finger. Steve’s jaw tenses.
“Not a penny more,” he says cooly. He adjusts his suit coat. His adams apple bobs under the stark white collar of his shirt. “Not that it’d matter, right?”
And Steve’s now doing your favorite thing, where he’ll pretend he actually agrees with his parent’s ridiculous world views until they pick up on the sarcasm. Your eyes meet and the corner of your mouth lifts slightly, but you’re back to being stone faced a moment later.
“Of course not!” his father bellows, hitting Steve on the shoulder like he’s a long time friend and not his son. He looks at you now. For reasons unexplained, his father likes you. Probably for some perverted reason, you figure. “And how’d you fare without him at home?”
“Probably enjoyed company downtown,” his mother says.
“I did.” You look at Steve again, speaking to him with a language only you two understand. It’s okay. “Don’t worry. I hardly had ten glasses of beer.”
His father laughs loudly again, making guests crane their necks to look. His mother narrows her eyes at you but smiles curtly.
“How wonderful.”
“And you’re all right with him going off overseas?” his father presses. “To go look at crumbling paintings and enjoy boat rides in that dirty canal?”
“Not any dirtier than the city, I’m sure,” you say, now taking Steve’s arm in yours. His jaw is set. “Besides, I like hearing about what he’s seen.”
“Pity he couldn’t take you with him,” his father continues. “Surely there’s a reason for that?”
You tighten your grip on Steve to remind him to not talk. “I’d be too distracting, don’t you think?”
“Certainly,” his mother says.
“Not as distracting as your friends’ headlines, though,” Steve says suddenly. “I heard about your latest union bust. How many fatalities did the factory have? Ten? How noble of you to save them from equity.”
You bite your cheek and squeeze his arm again. His father’s mouth twists like he’s tasted something sour.
“Steven,” his mother lulls, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. It’s the only thing you both have in common, trying to keep him cool and calm. It never works.
“And who’d you hear it from if not me?” His father’s tone has shifted. It feels suffocating in the small circle you stand in. “Oh, those dirty men you fraternize with.”
His father’s preoccupation with dirty things is ironic.
“Did they accompany you to Italy as well?” He looks at you now, eyes boring into yours. “Did you happen to see the Statue of David? I heard Michelangelo had an interest in the bodies of men.”
You can feel the heat radiating off of Steve, the implication making him see red.
“Ah, of course, yet another thing you’d rather refuse to understand than empathize with.”
“We should -“
“I’d love to talk to you about sexuality, actually, father. How many half-brothers do I have again?”
His mother looks like she might faint, but his father smirks. It’s as if he lives for arguments with his son. Loves seeing how far he can push him, for no other reason but to be a bastard. It might be the only time he’s ever fond of Steve.
“We’ll get going,” you say weakly, tugging Steve along, and he’s happy as long as he has the last word. “Always a pleasure.”
“You’d know much about pleasure and vices, wouldn’t you?”
It’s the first time John Harrington has ever made a verbal slight towards you. You pause, just barely, and continue moving, but Steve whips around, eyes wild. “I’m sorry?”
His voice is rigid and loud. Guests crane their necks again but this time, they keep staring. You and his mother both grit out “Steve,” but he strides towards his father. You fear he might actually strike him, so you lunge forward, putting your arm between them.
“Surely something we have in common, then, Mr. Harrington.” You glance up at Steve, his jaw clenching and unclenching, face red. “Good night.”
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It’s cool outside. There are people on leisurely walks despite it nearly being so late. Steve’s still fuming beside you, toned arms flexing underneath his suit coat. He’s mumbling under his breath, then quickly whips around, heading back towards the door.
“I’m gonna-“
“Please,” you beg, grabbing onto his forearm. “Let’s leave it.”
“How?” he huffs. “How can I leave it? He was - he was - awful to you!”
“And he’s awful to you, too. What else is new?” You tug him, beckoning him with pleading eyes. “Follow me.”
He rolls his shoulders and tilts his head as he looks at you. He’s still fuming, nostrils flaring slightly, but all it takes is another little please? and he’s sighing, pulling out his cigarettes and a lighter as he follows you.
"The garage?” he asks, the white building coming into view. A billowing cloud of smoke follows. “What on earth do you want in there?”
You rip your gloves off and flex your fingers. “Indulge me.” You bump his hip with yours, trying to get him to smile.
Steve chuckles, easing up slightly, flicking the ash of his cigarette. "I don't know if committing vandalism is going to make me feel better this time."
“We aren’t vandalizing anything,” you promise. You reach for his hand and take a deep inhale of his tobacco. A needed stress reliever.
Steve seems a bit more giddy as you approach his father’s security detail. Steve’s known him since he was a boy. All he has to do is give a salute and a smile and you’re inside of the garage, door locked behind you, alone now with at least a dozen collectible cars and carriages.
"What do you have in mind, then?” he asks, leaning against the door. “Maybe we can use your heels to carve out some paint."
You step forward, taking the cigarette and throwing it on the ground before stomping it out with your shoe. You lean against him, hands pressed against his chest as you straighten his shirt. You’re looking at his neck as you speak. “Your father seems to think I’m somewhat of a whore.”
You don’t mean for him to get mad again, though it’s delicious when he is. “My father doesn’t have a clue -“
You interrupt, “So I reckon we make me one.”
His eyes widen, cheeks blooming red. "Oh?"
"Mmhm," you hum, and press your lips to his. He grabs you around the waist, fingers digging into your flesh, hidden by the satin and lace of your dress. Your lipstick smears as you move to the corner of his lips, then the stubble on his jaw, then up to the shell of his ear. "Pick a car and take me in it.”
“You - hold on,” he forces out, grip tight on you. “You aren’t a - a whore.” He says it like it’s scandalous, the worst word that could be uttered from his lips. It’s been thrown at him before, too. “You know that, right?”
You look up at him through your lashes. You can feel him starting to harden against your thigh. “Would it be such a bad thing if I was your whore?”
He swallows hard. “Do- do you want to be?”
You smile. “Pick a car before someone finds us.”
"Um." Steve forces his eyes open to look around. You begin unbuttoning his shirt while sucking a bruise into the delicate skin by his throat. He swallows hard. "Uh, the - the Renault.”
Your lips leave his neck so you can follow his gaze. You don’t know much about his father’s insane car collection, but you’ve always liked this one. Powder blue, gold accents. It’s like an upgraded horse and buggy, a large, enclosed carriage in the back with a bench for a driver at the front. It’s not very old, maybe twenty years, but it’s valuable and big and shiny and something his father prizes more than anything, including his own son.
“Plenty of leg room,” he explains sheepishly, and you smile, pulling him towards it. “Now, wait - wait - what’s the plan here?”
He’s so dense sometimes, but it’s because he wakes up everyday in disbelief that you’re laying next to him. The idea of undressing you and touching you seems so far fetched that many times he’s had to stop and think about it before engaging.
“The plan,” you say, swinging the door open and shoving him inside playfully, “is for you to have your way with me. And quickly, darling, we don’t have much time.”
Steve half-sits, half-lays down on the large bench, watching you as you duck inside and shut the door. He watches you with wide, adoring eyes as you climb on top of him, taking his hand gently. You pull it to your lips, kissing the pads of his fingers while he watches you intensely. When you look up at him, your stomach flips.
“My way with you,” he says evenly, “is to treat you like the angel you are.”
You smile and lay his hand gently on your chest. “Show me.”
His lips connect with yours softly. Despite the rush you’re both in, he still wants - needs - to take his time with you. He hikes your dress up as he kisses you, big hands caressing your thighs and ass. He sighs happily, pushing you down enough that you catch on the front of his dress pants, his cock pressing against your core. You gasp and giggle. “Excited?”
“As ever,” he promises.
You hold yourself up with a hand while the other struggles with the belt and buttons of his pants. He kisses down your neck, hot, open-mouthed. He latches on to a certain spot and you moan, breathing heavily into his hair.
“Need some help?” he murmurs, noticing your pause.
“Yes,” you breathe, eyes closing as he continues kissing along your exposed collarbone. You should be careful with your dress, taking it off and hanging it up, but Steve will just buy you another one. And another one. And another one. Anything your heart desires. Rich silk from Egypt, lace from Italy, hand embroidered and luscious against your skin. His life’s purpose seems to spoil you, as intended right now.
Steve finally frees himself, but you don’t have any time to stare. He’s quick to change places with you, laying you down on your back, pushing your dress and underskirt up. The material and color on your skin make him blush and growl lowly. The sliver of your corset that’s showing has him growing hard, too. They’re not always so comfortable for you, so you tend to wear them only on special occasions. And he’s keen on devouring you in only it after.
Neither of you are really expecting him to dive head-first between your legs, but you would never complain. His wet, warm tongue laves up your folds a few times before finally plunging in between them. You gasp and grab onto the seat, knuckles growing white. “Steve!” you cry, a hand curling into his hair, tugging on it.
“Worship you,” he mumbles into your skin, before forcing himself to pull back, chin slick. “I worship you.”
Your heart pounds. You’re at a loss. So lucky that you cannot possibly verbalize it.
Steve leans right back in, taking his sweet, non-existent time. “I- I hate to re-remind you, sweetheart,” you moan, fingers curling again, “but a-anyone could h-have! Have seen us com-coming in here.”
He hums, your back arching. He’s reluctant to pull away, but he finally does, coming back up to perch a knee on the seat below you. He’s quick to roll his sleeves up, muscled and toned forearms on view. Then he rubs his cock along your folds, both of you moaning. You tug at his shirt, now not so pristine, pulling him down to face you.
“Isn’t the idea to ruin the car?” he asks, smiling a little smug.
“Yes?”
“Then I’ve got to make a proper mess of you, don’t I?”
You burn. “You already have me melting.”
“Hmm. Let’s see what else I can do.”
When he pushes into you, it’s like the world stops. The only thing that matters is him above you. His hair tickling your forehead, eyes hazy and hooded, lip caught between his teeth. “Honey,” he groans, pulling a leg up over his hips to open you up, give him more access. His fingers dig into the fat of your thigh and he shivers at it. He always makes love like it’s the first time you’ve been together. Even during this quick romp, he’s taking his time, hearts in his eyes. “You’re incredible.”
“I love you,” you whisper, pressing your forehead to his. He slides in a little further. You wince and he kisses you gently, fingers moving towards your clit to take your mind off of it.
“I love you,” he mumbles. “So. God. Damn. Much.”
He’s sheathed fully in you now, both of you panting, sweating. The car’s windows are fogged. You can’t keep your lips off of each other as he sets his pace, languid and long, filling you up so completely it numbs your mind. Each thrust makes you gasp. His whines are low, but slowly become more high-pitched as he thrusts into you.
“Give yourself to me,” you whisper. “All of you.”
He would never deny you that.
Hips picking up, his thrusts get harsher. He’s chasing your high and his. Chasing away the thoughts of his father and his mother, of work, of anything except you. You, his angel, his promise that not all things in the world are so bad. Not when you’re with him. And certainly not when you’re writhing under him, your dress pulled taught over your tits, your lipstick smudged, mascara running.
Over and over and over, the thinks, The Divine is real. The Divine is real.
Your eyes catch as he’s pulled away to look at you. He’s soft, despite his thrusts. “I love you,” he groans. “God, I love you.”
“I love you,” you whisper, reaching for his face, cradling it. “My world.”
“My muse,” he moans, twitching within you, handsome face twisted in pleasure. His fingers work steadily on your clit and you reach up for your breasts, wishing desperately that you were wearing a nightgown instead. One that Steve likes, all pastel pink and blue, a ribbon of purple silk on the waist. It’s much less restricting and much more revealing. We can always continue at home, you think, your stomach tightening.
“You are….” you pant, eyes rolling back, leg tightening around his hips. “You are more th-than enough.”
His trusts slow. “As are you.”
“Sweet boy,” you laugh breathlessly, rolling your hips towards him. “Please keep going.”
“Oh!” he says, genuinely shocked, like he was truly so lost in your words that he forgot what he was doing. “S-sorry.”
“Just wa-want to show you how much I - how much I love you.”
“You show me,” he promises. “E-every. Day. And - and at these stupid p… oh, Christ - these parties.” His hips angle up towards your sweet spot and you’re gone, unable to hold back, brows marrying and face tightening in a lewd show of pleasure.
“Steve!” you moan, so loud you’re sure anyone walking by could hear. His hips move furiously and you have to reach up with your hand to steady yourself, making a handprint on the window. “Oh, my God!”
“Now it’s time to show you,” he groans, and his lips are back on yours. Half to consume you, overwhelmed with love and lust, and half to keep you quiet. You all but scream into his mouth, hand sliding off the window to clutch his shoulders while he works you into oblivion. “Close,” he chokes, a hand once again cradling your cheek. “With me now.”
You pant into each other as you cum, the car filled with sex and sweat and your crass noises. So unladylike, so perverse. You giggle mid-orgasm at the thought of his mother walking in on such a thing. A son raised as a level below royalty fucking his street-rat wife into a stupor, all in a thousand dollar car, would make her heart stop.
“What’s - so - funny?” Steve pants eventually, resting his head on your chest, his cock softening inside of you.
“Nothin’,” you promise, combing his hair with your fingers. “I love you.”
“Don’t leave me out,” he smiles.
You shake your head. “Tell you later. We should -“
“Uh-huh,” Steve says, pushing off of you and tucking himself back into his pants.
“You’re trembling,” you frown, reaching for him.
“I’m alright,” he promises, taking your hand and kissing it. “I’m happy.”
“So am I.”
He helps you fix yourself and slips your feet into your shoes for you, a kiss pressed into your knee. It turns into another, then another, and then his lips are creeping up your thigh.
“Stevie,” you whisper, the pet name making him blush. “Let’s finish at home.”
“Home,” he sighs dreamily. “Sounds wonderful.”
You’re proud of the stain left on the leather as you get up, your dress falling back down to your ankles. His father won’t check this car for weeks, if not months. You hope it’s fully ruined by then. But, for good measure, you let your heel scrape the paint on the way out.
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send her my love (boxer!steve x fem!librarian!reader)
summary: a series of letters written after your recent breakup with steve, recounting your time apart.
uses she/her pronouns and female anatomy.
♡ the king of the ring ♡
main masterlist
tags: angst, hurt/comfort, fluff, mushy-gushy-lovey-dovey love letters.
a/n: pretty self explanatory, but libby’s letters are in pink, steve’s are in black ♡
“…how it hurt so bad to see her cry. i didn’t want to say goodbye. send her my love, memories remain. send her my love, roses never fade.”
—send her my love, journey
december 1992—march 1993
♡ ♡
12/05/92
Dear Libby,
Dear god I hope you open this. My hands are shaking so bad around the pen that I’m sure it’ll be all scratchy and shit, but I hope you know that I’m trying. I know how much you love letters, and after you stopped picking up my calls a few weeks ago…I figured this was the best way to reach you.
It’s been almost a month since we last saw each other. I hate thinking about that day. I hate thinking about you crying, and crying because of me. Because of something I did. I want you to know that I take full accountability for what I did, my love. That’s a word they said I should use more often. Accountability. “They” would be Big and Mikey. When they heard about what happened…I don’t think I’ve ever seen either of them so mad. I think, for a moment, Big thought about coming out of retirement just to kick my ass into next year.
I patched up the wall myself. It was my mess to clean. The house seems so big and empty without you. I never realized it echoed before.
I don’t blame you for going home, baby. I know you’ve been wanting to go for a while. I know I drove you away. Pushed you away. I was so terrible to you and I see that now. I’m so sorry it took something so awful for me to see it. But you were right. I’m just like my father. And I needed someone to tell me that so I could realize how fucking stupid and awful I’ve been.
I hope you don’t mind that I used some of your stationary to write this to you. You left it on the desk downstairs. The shelves came in for your books and I put them up. Maybe when you come home, we can fill them up. I’ll buy you all the books in the world, my girl.
I’m sorry. Please know that.
Love,
Steve.
♡ ♡
12/10/92
Steve,
I was surprised to receive your letter. When I stopped answering and your calls stopped coming, I assumed we were done for good. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Despite my every want to feel the opposite, I’m still so terribly in love with you that my head hurts every waking moment of the day. I ache with it. Now that we’re apart, it bleeds. It has nowhere to go. I have nowhere to put it. But this was your doing, Steven. I don’t want you to forget that.
We both said terrible things that day, but what you did was unforgivable. You promised from the start to never raise a hand against me in anger. You promised to never become the thing you hated. I took your word as bond, and perhaps that was my mistake. Perhaps that’s my grievance to regret.
I miss you terribly, but this time apart will be good for us. It’s what we need. I’ve been away from home since I was 19. My brother stands taller than me. His voice is so much deeper than when I left. They’re getting computers at the library soon. Everything is so different, yet it all still seems the same. But even these tiny differences make me realize how long I’ve been away.
It’s snowing here in Hawkins and I helped mom put up the Christmas lights. Nick and I had a snowball fight. I felt ten years old again. Mom made hot chocolate and we watched Charlie Brown. I know how much you love Charlie Brown’s Christmas. But in that moment, I felt wonderfully calm. I felt okay. I felt happy.
And it made me wonder…were we happy, Steve? Or have we been pretending for too long?
I’m glad my shelves came. Use them for your trophies.
XO,
Libby
♡ ♡
12/14/92
Libby,
I can’t tell you how happy I was to get your letter in the mail. I’ve been scared to open it for the past two days. But the thought of going a moment more without knowing what you said would kill me. I can hear your voice so clearly when I read your words.
I’ll never forget what I did that day, Libby. It will always be a reminder of how awful I’ve become. And it will always be a reminder of who I don’t want to be ever again.
I know it doesn’t mean much now since I’m a few months too late, but I’m talking to someone. A shrink or whatever. Big recommended him. Apparently he specializes in “anger issues.” You know how I feel about sitting down and whining about my problems, but…I don’t know. Maybe it’ll help. If it turns me back into the man you loved then I’ll sit on that couch and talk for days.
You asked if we were pretending, and for me at least, I never pretended for a moment. There wasn’t a second that went by that I didn’t love you with every ounce of my being. I’m sorry if you felt you had to pretend. I’m sorry that you weren’t happy, and if you give me the chance, I’ll do my best to make you happy this time around.
No amount of trophies or champion belts in the world could make up for the loss of you, my angel. Please know that and believe it.
Yours,
Steve
♡ ♡
12/22/92
Steve,
I hate the way your words make my heart pound. All that love is still so strong, and it’s all still festering in me. But the heartache is just as powerful. The heartache is just as real.
I cannot give you a second chance just yet. I don’t think we’ve quite earned it. I don’t think we’ve yet reached a point where we’re both okay—on our own. I want to be okay even without you. I fear I’ve become so reliant on you to tell me where life will go, because my life has revolved around your own. I’ve never found my own path to wander. I want that opportunity now.
I went to the Hideout tonight. A Christmas party with some friends. I haven’t felt that young in years, Steve. I’m only 22.
Merry Christmas, Steve. And happy New Year.
XO,
Libby
♡ ♡
1/3/93
Libby,
Christmas was lonely without you. Mikey invited me to his "bachelor pad" in L.A for a "booze fest" (all his words). Gargling gravel sounded like a better time. For a minute, I thought maybe it might be good to get out. To be my own person, like you said. But everything just feels so dull now.
I thought about mailing your present, but I figured you'd just get upset. I want to respect your space and our time apart. My shrink says I have to find more time for other people's wants and needs instead of just prioritizing my own. Is that what I've been doing, Libby? Is that what I've always done?
I guess I kinda did. Took you away from the library and your home. I just wanted you with me all the time. I couldn’t imagine getting through that first string of fights without you. I don’t think I’d be the fighter I am today if I didn’t have you there.
I guess I’m talking about “me” a lot again. I’m sorry I do that.
I hope your Christmas was nice. Hope it snowed the way you like.
Love,
Steve
♡ ♡
1/28/93
Libby,
I haven’t heard from you all month. I thought I’d reach out again. For a few days, I had myself convinced my letter got lost in the mail. I waited for a “return to sender” to come. I think I would’ve preferred the honest rejection to your silence. It’s been so quiet here, my girl. I miss the sound of your voice in our home.
The fights mean nothing anymore. I won the Russell fight last week and felt nothing. Ever since you left, victory tastes stale. The referees declare the winner and I just hear static. Jesus, I miss you so much I started reading some of your sappy literature last week. It’s clearly having an affect.
I hope you’re okay. I hope you’re good. I miss you more and more with every passing day. I miss you more than I thought was ever humanly possible for one person to miss another. I never thought this deep of a feeling could exist. This “break” has taught me a lot.
Been talking to the shrink more too. He says I have an issue with authority and always need to feel in control because of how my dad was. Big fucking brain on this guy, huh? Must’ve went to school in Dumb Fuckville.
Sorry. I’m trying to be kinder. Not swear so much. Wish they made patches for anger like they do for nicotine. Something to ease the ache. But it’s hard to quit something you were born into. The Harrington rage doesn’t just disappear over night. But I swear I’m trying. I promise, cross my heart and hope to die, baby. I’m doing my best to be better.
I hope I hear from you. I hope you’re alright.
I love you.
— Steve
♡ ♡
2/3/93
Steve,
I meant to write. I’ve been so busy now that I’m at the library full time again. I forgot how taxing it can truly be, but it’s like riding a bike. The smell of the books, the feel of the paper, the conversations you have with readers who don’t know where to look, or the ones who do and are searching for more. I forgot how important I feel between those stacks of books.
My girlfriends and I have been going out. They never got to celebrate my twenty-first with me, so we had a belated celebration a few weeks ago. We went to a bar in Indianapolis, took a bus the whole way there. The bar was loud and hot and sticky, and someone spilled beer all over my purse. I know you would’ve hated it, but part of me wished you were there. Bodies were pressing against each other on the dance floor, touching and smearing sweat—but all I wanted to feel was yours. Your familiar frame, right next to me. Only with you have I ever felt so secure.
Anyway, I got my first hangover, and that wasn’t fun. Especially because I’m still staying with my parents and they still think I’m seventeen. Nick tried to get me to buy him beer for his friends. I wish I could be this ‘cool’ older sister for him, but right now he doesn’t like me very much.
I watched your fight last week. There’s something so different in the way you move now. Your punches seem heavier, harder. You take more hits before you hit back. I wish you wouldn’t do that. You know I always worry, Steve. I worry about what might happen if you take too many hits. All those concussions can’t be good. I’m no doctor, but I figure eventually, they’ll catch up to you. I don’t want to see that happen. I can’t fathom the idea of losing you like that. No matter what happens between us, I always want to know you’re well. Selfishly, I always want to know you're out there if I need to call.
I’m glad to know you’re trying, and that you’re still going to therapy. I think it’s very healthy, Steve, and I appreciate and value your honesty. And….I miss you too.
Yours,
Libby
♡ ♡
2/12/93
Libby,
There hasn't been a moment that's gone by since you left that I haven't wished I was with you. In whatever way that might be, all I've wanted is to feel your body next to mine. I miss your touch, your smell, your smile. I never want to know another kiss but yours. I never want to hold another body in my arms that isn't yours. I don't think I could stomach the thought of never having that again.
The longer the time between us lasts and the further the distance grows, the worse I ache for you. God I sound like a fucking dope. It's all those novels you left me, I swear I'm not this sappy. But I guess with you I am.
Please forgive me. Please come home. All I can do now is beg, and show you how hard I'm trying.
I love you, angel. There's nobody and nothing but you.
Love,
Steve
P.S. You're the best big sister. Nick will see that one day when his brain isn't full of beer and Playboy.
P.P.S. Happy early Valentine's Day, baby. I hope the flowers are okay.
♡ ♡
2/17/93
Dear Steve,
I loved the flowers, and I loved the sap. Reading your last letter brought tears to my eyes, and for the first time in a while, they were blissful. I cannot begin to describe the size of the welt in my chest. It feels bruised by your absence and my longing.
Despite every bone in my body yearning for you, I cannot come home. Not yet. I'm not ready. I don't think you are, either. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and while it pains both of us to endure it, I think they're right. Whoever "they" are.
In the spirit of all this honesty, I have to admit: Tom Marrow asked me out for Valentine's Day. And god damn you, Steve, I said no. I said no because I'm wilting without your sun shining on me, and I'm lost without you by my side. I said no because I'll never be able to look into the face of another man without wishing it was yours.
I said no because I know, one day (maybe soon, maybe not), I'll come home to you. Don't let that get to your head.
Love,
Libby
♡ ♡
2/22/93
Libby,
My heart has never suffered as many palpitations in all my high-risk athletic career as it did reading your letter. I hate the way the paper crumpled in my fist when I read about fucking Tom. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to abandon the jealousy that fills me when I think of you with another man. But I can admit, it reached a point even I don't like to think of. I was letting it control me. I'm trying not to do that anymore.
The paper smelled like you this time. You don't know how badly I've missed that smell. I sort of feel like a hound-dog, tracing for more of it in the ink. That's what you've reduced me to, my love. An animal searching for you in the earth.
Please come home. Please come back to me.
Yours,
Steve
♡ ♡
3/2/93
My darling Steve,
I'm coming home to you. Please unlock the door.
Yours always,
Libby
♡ ♡
#rolly!#boxer!steve harrington#steve harrington#steve harrington fanfic#steve harrington au#steve the babysitter#steve harrington fanfiction#steve harrington x fem!reader#steve harrington x you#steve harrington x reader#joe keery fic#joe keery fanfiction#joe keery#steve harrington fic#steve harrington fandom#steve harrington angst#steve harrington hurt/comfort#steve harrington fluff#king steve#steve the hair harrington
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just imagine cbf!Gaz seeing you again after ten years. Last time he saw you was when you guys finished your GCSEs. somehow you still looked the same even after all these years. the loud laugh that you barked out in the midle of the supermarket made him do a 160 degree turn.
he knew that godawful laugh, and it belonged to a snarky mean girl he knew as a kid. she was awful, always making fun of him in some way or another, showing up at his house like she owned it, eating his snacks and staying for dinner that his ma prepared. you were a nuisance at first. just some kid that moved in two houses down. then you became a thorn at his side when you caught him staring at your old my little pony dolls.
that very day, under the hot summer sun, napes sticky with sweat and lips tugged into smiles while you and Kyle played with your dolls, a beautiful friendship was born.
both of you started school, as fate would have it, you were conveniently placed as classmates. always going to and coming back from school together. never once did you grow apart. during those eleven years in school you and kyle both got new friends, different friendgroups but never lost sight of each other.
but then he joined the military. he finished his exams and got his acceptance letter into bootcamp the same day. his excited expression fell from his face when he saw how you clutched the letter he gave you a bit more tightly. your eyes looked up into his, with white molten rage simmering in your irises.
' I will be protecting you! protecting the whole country' he was screaming. nervous hands running to run his fingers through his hair, small puffs of air heaving out of kyle's chest.
' Yes by killing other people who are doing the same thing Kyle! don't you get it? you are just a body to them, you will be replaced by some other idiot kid who thinks he can be a hero' your yell tore through his room. you two have been at it for hours now. his whole room was a mess, things were thrown in the heat of the moment, some old football trophy lay broken next to a sweater of his that you threw at kyle's head.
'please, just stay' you were much quieter, your tone pleading, begging him to reconsider. ' just stay with me, be safe with me'
next morning he took his bags and left for bootcamp.
it's been ten years since that. turns out you still live in the small town you guys grew up in, or maybe you're visiting our parents? kyle's mind is running a hundred miles per hour, looking over at your form, trying to notice what had changed.
the first thing he noticed was your hair. it was no longer styled in the edgy way you liked to keep it during your rebellious teenage years. it was your natural hair color, a few strands framed your face and shook round as you laughed with your shopping partner.
the next thing he noticed were your hands. your fingers more specifically. kyle was looking each of your fingers, trying to notice even the smallest flash of metal. of a ring. he came up empty handed.
before he could choose another part of you to analyze, the loud sound of glass breaking got him to look up.
the jar of pickles you were holding slipped from your hands. your fingers were shaking, eyes trained on him, frozen in stupor. kyle saw the gears turn in your head, he could almost see the memories of your fight flashing by your eyes. your friend placed a hand on your shoulder but you ignored it, staring kyle down with a cold gaze.
a few beats of silence streched for far longer than kyle would have liked, so he broke it.
'hey there! its been years' he tried to sound casual about it but it came out a bit forced, his voice sounded like there was soemthing lodged in the back of his throat. he outstretched his arm and moved closer to you, but was left frozen mid action as you turned your back towards him and just picked another jar of pickled from the shelf in front of you.
you did not dignify him kyle with a response, hellbent on acting like he was not even standing there. you shook your head and turned to your friend, a smile graced your lips again as you pushed your trolley past Kyle, never looking at him again.
' did you know that guy?'
'i dont think so, can't remember him' kyle felt his heart shatter.
-----
idk where i was going with this. it was supposed to be a smutty one at first and then i was like hmmm... haven't written agnst yet. so yeah.
#call of duty x reader#cod headcanons#cod#cod mw2#cod mw3#kyle gaz garrick#kyle gaz garrick x reader#gaz x reader#cod x reader#angst#cod drabble#call of duty headcanons#kyle gaz garrick angst#gaz angst#cod angst
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Hi!, I hope you’re doing okay I know Finals can be stressful, but I hope everything going great :).
I saw that you were doing requests again so I was wondering if we can get a fluffy fic with Buck and Reader having their wedding and Reader also announce at the wedding that she’s pregnant!
Also can you make Bobby the father of Reader :)
la vie en rose - e.b
summary: request :)
evan buckley x nash!reader
a/n: thank you for the request, you guys are wicked creative and i love reading them 🩶 were 1/7 finals done so we’re getting back in the groove 💪
y/n’s hair fell down in light curls on her shoulders, her face done in light makeup. a veil fell down her back and on her white, luscious dress. the time, the money, and love put into this day had finally come to a start. and y/n and buck couldn’t be more excited.
buck could jump up and down at the thought of her having his last name. his last name will on her license, her cards, their kids, next to hers. he could explode from excitement when he looks at the stupendous ring that he picked out. y/n looked at hers the same way, the silver band with minute gems on the middle screamed bucks name. she didn’t want to see it anywhere else but on his left hand.
marriage is a vast milestone in one’s life. the second buck, who proposed in an incredible buck way, got down on one knee, he knew he made the right choice. the rest of his life was meant to be with this woman. and he knew the rest of his life with her would be the best of his life.
standing in front of each other at the ceremony, being an emotional man who just can’t get enough love, bucks eyes welled up with tears the second he saw her flashing smile and radiant eyes. she looked absolutely heavenly, as always, but something was particularly different this time. the bewitching scenery around them and the aesthetic venue has perfectly made the night. watching y/n walk down the isle with her father, bobby, linked arm to arm with her made bucks already massive heart grow ten sizes.
bobby was always buck’s second father. he was there for him always, giving him proper guidance and acceptance that buck always needed growing up. when his own dad couldn’t do that for him, bobby picked up the pieces. bobby couldn’t be happier. his daughter was so happy with buck, and that’s all he wanted for the both of them. having bobby as a mentor made buck a better person, and bobby as a father made y/n the perfect daughter.
y/n’s own tears begin to rise into her eyes when she sees buck, dressed neatly in his black suit. eddie was standing next to him with christopher and a few of bucks good friends. maddie had stood in her alluring bridesmaids dress. y/n and maddie connected so well, and seeing buck perk up whenever she came into a room made maddies heart soar of happiness and delight.
they stood before the officiator, who was reading off things to buck that were almost nonsense. he had memorized everything, as he knew that her beauty would capture him and he couldn’t process anything else.
“i, evan buckley,” buck says. “take you, y/n y/l/n as my lawful wife.”
“to have and to hold, for better or for worse,” y/n speaks gently, locking eyes with her soon-to-be husband.
“in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish.”
“until death do us part,” they finish off their traditional vows and look to the guests. maddie is bawling her eyes out, trying not to make a peep. bobby is better at hiding his tears, hand in hand with athena as he sits in front row, watching his little girl become a wife. eddie and chimney have a smile wider than the horizon and hen and her wife watch in admiration of the couple. ravi, had been quietly cheering in the front row as well, cooling down his ‘life of the party’ personality until the end of the ceremony.
before the priest can finish his sentence about the first kiss, buck grabs the back of y/n’s neck and pulls her into a deep kiss, placing his other hand on her hip. they’ve kissed more times than they can count, but sparks will forever fly every time. this one is particularly special, for it commemorates the rest of their lives together.
the newlyweds step down and walk back down the isle while holding hands and sniffling shamelessly.
the after party was sick, open bars and decor with the live band. the first dance was magical, everyone feeling the love from buck and y/n radiate through the huge room. the circular tables were placed throughout the room, with the entire 118 at one table. they’d formed one table, and the buckleys had intentionally put all their friends name tags around one table. the caterers at the wedding had set up everywhere, and they couldn’t imagine a better night.
chimney came back with ravi and bobby, all of them hauling several drinks over, handing the biggest ones to y/n and buck. “for the husband and wife!” bobby says, placing the cocktails down in front of them. y/n stared at the drinks in front of her, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation. she’s never been one to back out, which kind of alarmed the rest of the team.
y/n had been experiencing extreme fatigue for the past few weeks, and the concern of her health was so important to her. she wasn’t sure if her dad could take the loss of another child. she had been the only one to survive the fire, and the two of them were left to fend off of each other. her pregnancy was quite random, her and buck were getting married in just a few weeks. y/n didn’t know how she was going to hide it, but eventually, the anxiety was drowned out by excitement. they knew they wanted a family, it just happened sooner than they thought.
“oh, i’m alright, ravi,” she politely declines, causing confusion from her husband and her friends.
“c’mon, y/n! it’s your wedding day!” hen cheers on, pushing the drink back closer to her.
“yeah, you ok?” buck asks, quietly to not make his new wife overwhelmed.
“guys, really,” y/n smiles, looking down at her hands. “i’m fine, just not in a drinking mood.”
“you’re allowed to have a drink, y/n. you never get this day back,” bobby encourages her to have one to celebrate the new chapter in her life, but the new addition is more important.
“no, i’m not allowed to.”
everyone looks at her like she has ten heads, surprised that she’s not going all out on her wedding night.
“i cant because i’m pregnant,” she finishes, looking at buck first. his mouth was wide open, his chin on the floor.
“s-sorry, what?” she looks at bucks nervous face and nods. “oh! oh, my god?” he kisses her again, not knowing any other words to describe how he feels. hen let’s out a sharp squeal, before jumping up into y/n’s arms, almost knocking her out of the chair. maddie, who no one thought could cry so much, starts sobbing even more because her little brother became a husband and a parent in one day. y/n makes eye contact with her teary-eyed father, clutching hands with his own wife.
hen pulls away, and y/n says, “dad?”
“i, i don’t know what to say, y/n. other than i’m proud of you. and you’ve been the perfect daughter, and you’re going to be the perfect mom.”
“to your grandchild!” chimney pokes fun at bobby, who sips his club soda.
“don’t remind me, chim,” he says jokingly pointing out his age.
y/n and buck can’t peel their eyes away, and buck finds his hand migrating to her current no-bump stomach. “i love you so much, thank you, thank you!” buck says, over and over again.
“i love you to the moon, darling. i picked the best man, and i know you’ll be the best dad,” y/n grins, her cheeks becoming sore from the repeated smiles. “i still can’t believe you’re not a dream.”
#911#911onfox#bobby nash#eddie diaz#evan buckley#evan buckley fanfic#athena grant#henrietta wilson#evan buck buckley x reader#evan buckley x reader#maddie buckley#howie han#911 chimney#may grant#evan buckley x y/n#evan buckley fanfiction#evan buckley one shot#evan buck buckely
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Hii how are you today?
Could you write Millionaire Reiner that is obsessed with his wife and could she be plus-size?
hiiii my sweetness! I absolutely can (and I’m totally not living vicariously or anything)
themes: black plus size reader, fluff and some freaky stuff mentioned
so I am a firm believer that Reiner made his millions off of playing football. He was a star quarterback in the NFL for years, where he won a plethora of championships before retiring. The last thing he wanted to do was be far too broken down to function so he decided to bow out gracefully after ten seasons, five of which were winning Super Bowl ones. He went on to invest his fortune in several different businesses including farming, auto sales and even the cannabis industry. But his true and most priceless passion was his gorgeous wife of ten years, (y/n) (l/n). A woman who had been by his side since his high school and D1 days back in college. A stunning and equally smart young lady; a pathology major with a minor in physical therapy, whom he first met in his math class after getting your help to pass an exam. He was equally smitten then as he was now. Infatuated with your intelligence and looks, Reiner didn’t stop until you were his and it didn’t take much because you were crushing hard on the shy ball player. Many people would say that the two of you brought the best out of another, including your shells. When you were around, he never stopped smiling and when he was away at games, interviews..he couldn’t wait to get back! Now the two of you spend your days traveling the world, working on the farm and enjoying the perks of married life that you missed out on during his glory days. Picking up and taking trips, being spoiled endlessly and just showered in love and praise by your man. Your walk in closet looks like an entire boutique, your fashion sense is envied and all you have to do is bat those pretty eyelashes and he opens his wallet. He gets so happy to brag on you, tell everyone how amazing you are and that you are his entire world. Reiner is so in love with you, constantly posting you to his Instagram and showing off his girl! Granted, as a bigger woman, people have had their fair share of nasty insults, but none of them compare to the love that you receive for how hot of a couple you are. You’re so spoiled, it makes no sense.
or the even nastier things he does with you! When you’re on vacation, strutting around in your bikini with those thick thighs, tummy (stretch marks and all baby!) he gets so excited. Like big daddy can barely even contain himself (side note: he posts you with the vaguest yet freakiest caption, saying things like ‘my meal’ or ‘my beard warmer’. He definitely whisks you away from all those fancy dinners and hall of fame ceremonies to eat you out in the front seat of his McLaren or Maserati. Plunging those fingers right to the brunt of his championship rings. Laying his forehead against the fat of your tummy and devouring that pussy until you’re shaking. Keeping this man off of you is a full time job in and of itself but you don’t mind it at all because lord is he down bad when it comes to you and the feeling is mutual. Y’all will go rounds until neither of you can stand and the obsession grows more and more each day.
#cherry’s asks 🍒#aot x black reader#black fem reader#reiner aot#reiner x chubby black reader#black reader#shingeki no kyojin reiner#reiner headcanons#reiner braun#reiner x black fem reader#reiner smut#attack on titan reiner#reiner imagine#reiner braun x black reader#snk reiner#black reader smut#reiner x reader#reiner braun x reader#reiner brainrot#aot reiner#need to fuck on him on an island
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Unlovable
Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reider
Warnings: angst, canon death, cheating, implied infidelity, whump, angst, spoilers for Season 8 of Criminal Minds, mentions of shooting/ murder/ suicide/ general case facts.
Summary: A stalking case brings back some bad memories for the BAU, but as the newbie, you're not sure why until you start recalling past case files you've read through.
A/N: I wrote this as part of @tobias-hankel 's Pre-Whumptober Challenge, so it's short and sweet because I'm not great at angst, but it was a great challenge! I think this will probably be my last fic that mentions Maeve for at least a while because I'm getting a bit bored of writing around her lol, but let me know what you think with a like, comment, reblog, or message in my inbox!
It had been a few months since you’d joined the team, and you’d really thought you’d settled in well. After all, you’d worked on enough of their paperwork in your prior desk job to think you had a good grasp of everyone on the team’s working styles.
Until this case. They’d all been tense since the stalking case was called in, and you couldn’t figure out why. A girl had been taken captive by her stalker, whose identity had been so far unknown to the police department. As you sat talking through the possible suspects, you’d realized suddenly that you were the newcomer, an outsider in the team.
“Why is everyone so tense, we’ve worked cases like this one before, we can do this and save her.” You were hopeful of course, looking around the room to see if anyone else would agree.
“Each case is different, Y/N, you know that.” Morgan was the only one to reply, the others shooting careful glances around the room.
“But everyone is so tense for this one specifically, and I just don’t get it.”
“You read our case files, right?” Reid spoke up from the other side of the room. He’d been particularly tense on this one, and it was really his attitude that was worrying you the most. You’d become fast friends with him when you joined the team, and he was always happy and engaging with you. But there was something about this case that made him cold and distant and it was really rubbing you the wrong way.
“Yeah, I read all of them, but I don’t have an eidetic memory, so please, catch me up.”
“Maeve Donovan, does that ring a bell?” He almost spat the words out, but you were so thankful that he was even talking to you that you responded enthusiastically.
“Oh, of course, I read that case file. She was killed by her stalker, right? But we can’t base every case off our bad experiences, especially since that case had unforeseen circumstances.”
“Y/N,” Morgan gently warned you, but you were deaf to him as your eyes locked on Reid.
“Unforeseen circumstances?”
“She engaged in a relationship with an FBI Agent to help prioritize her case despite the fiance she had, which made her hard to track down to help. And her stalker was experiencing some serious delusions so you couldn’t stop her from killing both of them, but that’s a single case, and you’ve all worked at least ten other stalking cases in the past.
The air was sucked out of the room as Spencer stormed out, not bothering to tell you where you’d gone wrong. JJ trailed behind after him, going to pick up the pieces as the rest of them stared at you pityingly.
“Did I- Did I say something wrong?” You asked, but most of them just shook their heads and walked out.
“The agent she was dating was Reid. He offered to die instead of her, but that set her stalker off and that’s why she killed the both of them.” With each of Morgan’s words, you felt your heart drop.
“I didn’t-” You started but he cut you off with a pat on your shoulder.
“None of us were the greatest fans of Maeve after our investigation, but you weren’t here after she died. The kid was in pieces, and he still can’t really talk about it without some of those emotions creeping back in. Just… be a bit more understanding.”
You spend the rest of the case trying to apologize to Reid, but he avoids you like the plague, frustrating you to no end. You corner him one night on the way to his room, but he snaps at you with such violence you have to turn and run away before you let yourself cry in front of him.
Your resentment for Maeve grows as you watch him work though, seeing him become an empty shell of a man as he gets lost in his memory trying to save the new victim. You’re angry that she died, angry that she put him in that position, angry that no one forced him off the case, that no one foresaw the negative effect that this would have on him when it ended badly. You’re angry that she loved him first because your heart aches without his company.
Thankfully, the case ends well, and you manage to save the girl who has been abducted. You don’t even want to think about what that would mean for Reid, having to see the dead body of another girl knowing he couldn’t save them either. He practically runs off the jet when you land back at Quantico as you try, once again, to apologize.
Penelope comforts you at your desk as you cry, desperate to make things right. She’s the one who slips you his address, and not even an hour later, you feel like a shell of a person driving directly there, not stopping to worry about whether he’ll even see you.
When he opens the door, he doesn’t look surprised to see you. He doesn’t look anything at all, emotionally drained from the last week. You thought you would apologize right then and there, and leave, but he turns back into his apartment and you have to follow him in, saying nothing as he sets himself beside a chessboard again.
“Spencer…” you start, but you have to stop to swallow the lump forming in your throat. “I didn’t know you were the agent. I wouldn’t have said what I did had I known.”
“Would you still think it?” He asked sharply, and you can feel the anger in his voice. He’s trying to control it, but he’s never been the best at masking his emotions with his team members.
“Spencer, please, I’m trying to apologize.”
“Would you have looked at me with pitying eyes? The FBI Agent who couldn’t even save his girlfriend from a stalker. The girlfriend who probably didn’t even love him either because what is there to love about-”
“Spencer! Stop putting words in my mouth.” Your tone is harsh but it gets him to finally look up at you. His tone was angry, but his eyes were all despair, shining with tears as he tried, so hard, to pull himself together. He’s failing.
“Why am I so unlovable? What about me is so difficult to love?” Your heart breaks at his words. The way he says it sounds like he is genuinely searching for an answer, his eyes darting between your own as his body sinks in on itself, and you sink with him, wrapping your arms around him and pulling him into you.
“Nothing. Nothing, Spencer, you are so loved. You need to know that I love you, that we all love you, Spencer.” Your voice breaks a little at your confession, as you suddenly realize how true those words are.
“But she still died. I had to have done something wrong, but I play it back again in my head, every conversation and-” he breaks down in sobs then, his entire body shaking with the weight of his grief. The wound isn’t new but it runs deep, and you quietly sob beside him, knowing no matter how much you love him it won’t be enough to replace the love he lost with her.
#spencer reid#criminal minds#spencer reid x reader#spencer reid fanfic#criminal minds fanfiction#criminal minds fandom#spencer reid x self insert#spencer reid x y/n#maeve donovan#spencer reid x you#spencer reid angst#criminal minds angst#whump prompt#spencer reid whump#criminal minds whump
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Car Crash || Charles Leclerc
Pairing: Charles Leclerc x (Y/N)
Warnings: Language, mentions of hospitals and car crash, idk what else
Summary: (Y/N) gets into a car accident, and Charles all but turns the world upside down.
Word count: 2280 words
Authors note: 1. I GOT A BUNCH OF LIKES AND FOLLOWERS??😭😭 THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH 2. Inspo from this Prompt by @creativepromptsforwriting 3. Pls request stuff idk what to write
Xoxo Art
Charles couldn’t even remember what they were fighting about. It was probably something stupid, anyway. He had been stressed about the upcoming race -and the fiasco that was his team’s strategy-, and (Y/N) had been worried about some upcoming deadlines that she had at work. They were not in the greatest moods, was the point, and it was late at night, and they were a tad hungry. So, at the first opportunity, they both snapped at each other. One thing led to another, and (Y/N), always the reasonable woman that she was, got up and slammed the door, grabbing her car keys and setting off for the Monegasque roads to clear her head.
So, here he was, sitting on the couch, no longer fuming, just glancing at his phone every two minutes to see how much time had passed since his girl left. Charles was literally worried sick, calling and texting her, but she was still not replying. She had been gone for five hours at this point. Where on Earth could she be?
For the first hour, he tried to distract himself. He tried to start a race on the simulator, but he saw (Y/N)’ hoodie thrown over his chair, and he got mad again. He tried to take a nap, but every time he closed his eyes, his brain filled with thoughts of her. He thought about going for a walk, but he decided against it, because he didn’t want her to find an empty house when she came back.
The second hour, he spent pacing around the house, peeking through the window, in case that her car pulled in the driveway. He was still far too stubborn to call or text, not ready to admit defeat in the argument that seemed continuously stupider and stupider. As he paced around, his anger started to evaporate and started to be replaced with worry. (Y/N) hadn’t been living in Monaco for a while, and even though she had been around the city, it had only ever been with Charles on the driver’s seat. What if something had happened to her?
The third and fourth hour were spent being paranoid. Charles made up a billion different scenarios of what could have gone wrong. What if she got lost? What if she ran out of gas? What if she stopped somewhere and she got mugged? What if she was hurt? What if she was so mad, she never came back?
At about the four hour and ten minutes mark, Charles’ worry seemed to completely overpower his anger, so much so that he called (Y/N). He decided to push all his catastrophic scenarios to the back of his head. Nothing would have gone wrong, he decided. She would just accept the call, reassure him that she still needed some time to cool off, and that she would be home soon to talk.
All this positive energy shattered when the phone kept beeping, and beeping, and beeping, and then went straight to voice mail. His heart kept getting faster every time the phone beeped. He called her again. Maybe she had her hands full at that moment, and she would answer this time. She didn’t. And he felt his heart sink to his stomach.
So, for the past fifty minutes, Charles kept calling, and texting, and calling, and texting, with no reply. He called some of her friends, but none of them knew where she was. She called her gym, her hairdresser, her nail salon, and her favorite restaurant, and still, (Y/N) seemed to have disappeared from the face of the Earth.
Charles was ready to get in his car and look around for his girlfriend when he heard his phone ringing. He all but lunged himself at his phone, picking it up immediately.
“Ma chérie? Are you okay, I’m so sorry for everything…”, he started to apologize, but he was immediately cut off.
“Charles?”, (Y/N) said, and the tone of her voice almost made him drop her phone. Her voice was shaking, she sounded like she was on the verge of tears, and it made Charles’ heart shamble.
“Chérie, where are you? I’m coming to get you”, he bolted to the door, grabbing the keys to his Ferrari, rushing to the car.
“Charles I’m sorry, don’t get mad, I didn’t mean to…”, she interrupted herself with a sob, which made Charles wince.
“Baby, please don’t apologize, just tell me where you are”, he was already in the car, turning it on and waiting for her instructions.
“I- I’m not sure, it just hurts a lot, Charles, it hurts”, she cried. Charles immediately pushed his foot down, not even caring that he had no idea where to go. Monaco was small enough, he’d find her.
“(Y/N), please breathe, take a deep breath. What happened baby, what hurts?”, tears filled his eyes as he thought of his (Y/N) being in pain.
“My hand, I was just trying to… and then the other car… and he keeps yelling at me… I don’t know what to do”, she was hyperventilating, interrupting herself by sobbing, and Charles was ready to throw up.
“My love, you’ll be okay. I’m coming right now, everything will be okay, just please, please take a deep breath and tell me where you are baby. Please”, his vision was blurring by his tears, and he was thanking God for the high speeds that his car could reach.
(Y/N) managed to give him her location, and Charles, reaching speeds that were in no way legal, reached her in no time. He spotted two cars, one of them undeniably (Y/N)’, and he ran with all his might to reach her.
Just like she had said in the phone call, there was a man outside the driver’s window, which was now cracked. He was yelling at his girl in French, making him see red.
“Eh!”, he yelled at him, gaining his attention. “Va te faire foutre, qu'est ce que tu crois faire” Go fuck yourself, what do you think you’re doing?
“Cette salope a totalisé ma voiture”, he yelled back without turning his attention away from the car, hitting the window, and making (Y/N) flinch. The moment Charles saw that, he lost all self-control. He grabbed the man and slammed him down on the hood of his car.
“Tu as de la chance qu'elle soit blessée, sinon je te ruinerais!”I, he growled in his ear. You're lucky she's hurt, otherwise I’d ruin you.
He left him there, not even caring if he hurt him or not. All he cared about was whether his girl was okay. His legs couldn’t move fast enough to get him to her door, he almost broke the door trying to open it. Charles finally got to her, weaving his hands around her waist and bringing him close to his body in a front piggy-back ride. (Y/N) hid her face in his shoulder, soaking his shirt with her tears.
“It’s okay, baby, I’m here. All is well now”, he whispered in her ear, stroking her hair, and kissing her gently. The whole world seemed to dim. It was only the two of them in that moment, glad to finally be in each other’s embrace. Everything seemed to be okay in that moment, when (Y/N) had her Charles’ arms around her, and Charles had his (Y/N) tight in his hands.
He didn’t know how much time had passed with them just holding each other, but Charles remembered that she said she was hurt, and immediately set her down. He stole a glance to her car. The front of it was totaled, but it was nothing he couldn’t afford to fix. The guy who was yelling at her must have recognized Charles, and his face whitened immediately. He gave him one of his business cards with his contact information, got into his car and left, but Charles could not care less. All that occupied his mind was (Y/N)’ tear-stained face, and her hand that she was clutching to her chest.
“Chérie, please let me see”, he kneeled next to her, feeling his heart break for what seemed like the millionth time tonight at the sight of his girl so fragile and broken. He noticed bruises and scratches up and down her legs, and a huge bruise right on her cheekbone.
Hesitantly, (Y/N) showed him her arm. Her wrist was swollen, her entire hand was red. It was definitely broken. Charles gently grabbed her in his arms again, guiding her to the car and showering her with kisses.
“My love, we have to go to the hospital. You’ll be okay. Everything will be okay. Everything will be okay”, he kept repeating, more to himself than to her.
They both got to the car, and after a quick call to the police, they made their way to the hospital. (Y/N) was now totally relaxed in the presence of her boyfriend and felt guilt wash over her at the argument. Charles kept his hand in hers the whole drive, glancing at her every so often to assure she was well. She tried to apologize three times, but Charles kept cutting her off, kissing her hand and telling her that all would be well.
When they made it to the hospital, Charles all but carried (Y/N) to the Emergency Room. He got her a private room, forced the doctors to double and triple check everything, made them run every test, even if they assured him that it was not needed, and almost yelled at every single doctor and nurse that was on call. (Y/N) couldn’t help but laugh at her boyfriend’s behavior. She kept having to hold him back from being rude to the staff- she knew he was never rude to working people and that it was just the adrenaline, but it wasn’t the poor nurse’s fault that the pillows weren’t fluffed to his liking-.
Finally, (Y/N) got her diagnosis- a fractured wrist- got treated, and was left in her room, as the doctors decided – after some pressure from Charles- to keep her in overnight to monitor her. So, the young couple made themselves comfortable on the hospital bed, cuddling into each other after what was a super stressful day.
(Y/N) was cuddled into Charles’ side, with her head on his chest, as he ran his fingers through her hair.
“How can you look so beautiful in a hospital gown?”, he mumbled into her hair, making heat rise to her cheeks.
“You’re the best boyfriend ever, have I told you that?”
“Yes, once or twice”, he cuddled into her.
“Thank you, honey. For everything, I mean”, she spoke softly.
“Stop it, Chérie, you don’t need to thank me. If anything, I need to apologize. It’s all my fault”, he said, and (Y/N) immediately clapped her broken hand over his mouth to shut him up.
“It’s not your fault that guy ignored the stop sign. You did more than enough today. Don’t feel guilty. You heard the doctors, it’s just a fracture and some bruises, in 6 to 8 weeks I’ll be good as new”
“I think that we should go to another doctor tomorrow, just to be sure…”
“No! No more doctors! I’ve seen enough doctors to last a lifetime”, (Y/N) exclaimed, and they both broke out laughing. “Just promise me that you won’t force me to see any more doctors”
“As long as you promise me that you’ll never leave home like that again. I’ll drive you around everywhere, I promise”
“I promise I’ll never leave. I’m sorry”, she looked up to see him already looking down at her with a small smile.
“I’m sorry too”, he kissed the top of her head, and they slipped in comfortable silence for a while, just enjoying each other’s presence. Charles hugged her tighter to his side. He never wanted to experience the kind of feelings he experienced today. The thought of anything happening to (Y/N)… he couldn’t even fathom it. He was too thankful to have her at his side.
He looked around the room, the largest room in the hospital, as he had specifically requested. It was filled with flowers that he had ordered, which he knew was a bit excessive, but he wanted his girl to feel as beautiful and comfortable as possible after the shock that she went through today. On the nightstand that was next to the bed, amongst the vase of peonies-her favorites-, was a red marker that probably one of the doctors had left. He immediately smiled at the idea he got.
He leaned over to grab the marker, gaining (Y/N)’ attention.
“What’s wrong baby?”, she asked, and instead of an answer, Charles just shushed her.
“Give me your hand, Chérie”, he cooed, grabbing her broken hand with his left one. As his non-dominant hand traced soft circles on her fingers, his right hand uncapped the marker and started scribbling away with a goofy smile on his face, which made (Y/N)’ cheeks rise. She stole a quick kiss from him, but he kept his focus on her cast.
When he was done, he showed her the cast, like a proud kid showing off his drawing, and she immediately burst out laughing. Her previously white cast was now decorated with messy red handwriting spelling out “This is proof Charles Leclerc is the better driver in the relationship” “#16”, “Je t’adore”, and other little doodles. What made him proudest, though, was the sketch of his formula one car that he had made on the palm of her hand, which was terrible, but it made her smile so hard her cheeks hurt.
“You’re an idiot”
“I love you too”
#charles leclerc#charles leclerc fluff#charles leclerc x reader#charles leclerc x yn#charles leclerc x you#charles leclerc angst#f1 angst#f1 fluff#f1 imagine#f1 fanfic#charles leclerc fanfic#charles leclerc fic#Ferrari fic#Ferrari#Ferrari fluff#fluff#angst#creativepromptsforwriting#cl16#cl16fanfic#fanfic#x reader
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I shouldn’t have called | jegulus microfic | word count: 293
Regulus will never admit it out loud but he is thankful that growing up he was allowed to be around his cousins.
Since they all had a similar childhood with the same type of expectations they were able to understand and support each other. Even now that they are adults they still talk frequently.
So…when he finally figured out that he did not hate James Potter and instead was unfortunately in love, he immediately called Narcissa.
Thankfully she picks up on the first ring and without even saying hello he goes into a long rant about James.
This leads to her laughing at him for almost five whole minutes. Really he should have expected this response. No one in his family is known for being nice or empathetic.
Just as he was about to hang up she finally took a breath and started talking.
“90% of our calls revolve around you talking about him”`
“I don’t talk about him I complain, there’s a difference”
“If going on a ten-minute rant about how his new glasses look and how many times he switches stories when talking counts as complaining then yeah sure.” He can tell that she is trying to stifle her laughter but if you ask him it’s working horribly.
“He has a very annoying way of talking of course I will notice”
“What about when you complained about him switching hair products so now his halookooks even more ‘annoyingly good’?”
He should have hung up.
“I called you for support not to make fun of me.”
Silence… and then she starts laughing again. At least she now has the decency to cover it up but before she can answer he hangs up.
Really this was his own fault for calling her.
#this might be a little ooc#but i love the idea of narcissa and regulus having calls and meet ups#regulus black#narcissa black#james potter#jegulus#starchaser#james potter x regulus black#marauders#jegulus microfic#sunseeker
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Demi Demon || Alastor x Reader, A2 part 5
Synopsis: It’s been over a year since we were brought under Alastor’s watchful eye. We’ve unlocked our Demonic powers, discovered our own talents, and began building the Safe Haven with Charlie and co. Alastor seems increasingly interested in the power we hold as one and intends to use it properly.
Previous part
Part 5: protect and defend
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"Alastor, sweetheart, you did the exact opposite of what I told you to do." Rosie planted her hands on her hips. Alastor was staring out the window with his hands clasped behind his back.
"She stepped out of line. I've been overlooking her abrasive behavior for too long."
"That's the whole point of a soulmate. Respect has to go both ways. You can't just tell her you're in charge. Where's the respect for her?"
"Providing everything she needs. Giving her the most freedom I could possibly allow."
"Ya know, for such a gentleman, you're really bad at this."
"I didn't pick her," each word was sticky like glue, "I got stuck with her." He stared at his own reflection, no longer interested in the busy streets of Hell.
"You're digging your own grave, my friend." Her tone dropped to a more somber one. "As your soulmate, she's the only one who can speak to you differently than others. And if you respect and care for her, she'll probably pay it back ten fold."
He looked down at the window ledge. His teeth were hidden behind his lips this time and his eyebrows were furrowed. He let out a short sigh through his nose.
"Is there something you're not telling me, Alastor?" She stood from her chair and slowly went over to him, stopping an arms length away and watching his reflection in the window.
For awhile he was silent. Rosie wondered if he was looking for the words or deciding not to answer. Though she kept quiet and waited for him to decide.
"I suppose..." His voice was low and the radio filter gone. "I don't feel ready."
"Ready for what?" she asked softly.
"For...I don't want her in my mind."
"That's what your soulmate is for. The one and only person to ever be allowed there."
"I don't know if she would even be able to handle it all." He turned to look at Rosie.
"This is a process my friend," she laid a light touch on his arm, "and it'll take some time. Don't rush this."
"I do not want to care about her." He sounded like a petty toddler.
"I think it's about time you find someone to care for. And hey," she leaned her head down so he'd make eye contact, "we've already seen how quick she learns. You two can handle it. Together."
"I don't know if I'm ready," he said again.
"You may never feel ready, sweetheart. And that's okay."
****
I sat on the roof of a building with Reagan beside me. Althea had told me that she was having a lot of mental trouble, and Vivian had noticed the teenagers outcasting her and her friend. So I brought Regan with me to the next execution rescue. We came early enough so that the two of us could chat and she could focus on something other than the haven.
The sun was setting and the main street was gradually growing less crowded. I was using an illusion to keep us hidden from any onlookers, keeping us warm from the late fall wind, and staying in my Human form. It was the most magic I had used simultaneously. She and I had been talking for an hour already.
"I feel so useless." She leaned her head on my shoulder. I tried to stay as still as possible. "At least in the rings I was good at something."
"You're fourteen," I replied, "And it hasn't even been a year since you were free. You don't have to be good at anything right now."
"But the others at least have magic or a Demon form. I'm just a useless...magicless...human."
I put an arm around her shoulders and she leaned further against me. I felt warmth spread through my chest at how comfortable she felt with me. "I think you ought to talk to Ms. Vivian more. She doesn't usually show her Demon form and I know for a fact she hardly uses magic. You don't need any of that stuff to be useful or have worth."
She wrapped her arm around my torso to squeeze me in a hug. She leaned her head further into my chest and I felt like she was trying to merge with me. I tightened my grip in response and gently rubbed my hand over her arm. I could remember my mother doing this from visiting my memories.
"I'm so glad you're here," she said. A heavy aura fell over us and I could guess she was close to or already crying. Did she actually care about me like that? Was I having a good influence on her?
My thoughts were interrupted by a quiet conversation. I strained to hear the snippets that sounded geared towards me and Reagan.
"She's on a different continent...do deals this far...come here to see for yourself...teleport her? She's not alone..."
Reagan felt me tense. She sat up and asked me what was wrong. I motioned for her to be quiet as my magic sense stretched out further. I was bracing for something to happen soon. This person was trying to get to me. From where, though? I couldn't pinpoint them.
The roof gave way. Reagan and I fell backwards and landed hard on our backs. We both rolled on your stomachs and jumped up. My Demon side came through as a man stood in front of us with a phone to his ear.
"Yeah, see you soon." He ended the call and slid his phone in his back pocket. "It's nice to finally meet the famous Snake Demon. Though you look more like a dragon if I say so myself."
"What do you want?" I demanded. I side stepped so Reagan was against my hip. I had my wings extended behind me and my claws in front of both of us. My lips were pulled back in a snarl.
"Oh I want nothing to do with you. It's someone else that wants you. I'm just the deliverer." He was wearing black dress pants and a blue vest. His brown hair was slicked back and a wide, charming smile glinted in the red light.
We were in Hell. I didn't know where exactly but this wasn't a good place to be with Reagan. I could feel magic flowing through my veins much easier here, almost as if there had been a blockage of some kind that I hadn't noticed before.
At the very least I knew we were outside. We were in some kind of courtyard surrounded by vastly tall buildings. There were lines of clothes spiderwebbing overhead.
"Have you really been kidnapping ring fighters?" the man asked. "That's quite an impressive feat."
"What's it to you?" My eyes were looking all over for an escape. There was an easy alley behind him or the spiderweb of clothes above. Though I could run through the buildings to make it confusing for both of us.
"Who is he?" Reagan asked quietly.
The man heard and put a hand proudly on his chest. "Finn Hartley, at your service." He gave a short bow before snapping back up. "So tell me, are you really the Radio Demon's soulmate?"
I was trying to get a read on this man. He was obviously a Demon and has enough power to teleport from the surface to Hell. I needed him to do something other than talk so I could figure out how strong and skilled he was with magic.
"I think we'll be leaving." I stood up and moved Reagan to my other side so I was between them.
"Am I asking too many questions? I'm sorry, I just heard a lot about you. If I had known you'd be in town I would've tried to schedule coffee with you."
"I don't drink that stuff." I took a few steps towards him, eager to push him out of the way and run. His calmness was unnerving. At least Alastor was calm and terrifying. I had something to work with when it came to him, unlike this man.
"But you haven't met my boss. Well, 'a boss'. At least for now until he pays me for bringing you here." He put both hands on his hips and I felt him drawing up energy to use magic.
"Who is it?"
"That would take away the impact of his arrival would it not?"
I couldn't figure out whose smile I preferred. His white, clean, smooth smile or Alastor's yellow, sharp, and jagged one. This man sounded like he used his wits but I wondered how skilled he was with magic.
"I don't intend to meet him."
"You already have," a voice came from above.
I covered Reagan with a wing as my head snapped up. The figure jumped down from a pipe by a window and landed between me and the man. I instantly recognized the tail, clothes, and hat of Striker.
My hands were immediately sweating and my legs felt cold. I backed Reagan and I into the wall. He casted a glance over his shoulder before handing Finn a clasp of metal credits.
"Good doing business with you sir." Finn tipped his head.
"Give Blackwater my regards," Striker said. Finn promptly teleported himself away, leaving the three of us alone.
"Run," I whispered to Reagan. "Find the big white palace and run there. Tell him I sent you." I casted a tall wall of fire between us and Striker before shoving her into the closest doorway. I closed it behind her and turned to face my old master.
He came lunging through the fire, the flames avoiding him at all costs. I ducked so his claws sent sparks along the wall. I went on all fours and ran down the alley. My eyes widened as I saw him slipping into the doorway after Reagan.
I flew across the clearing and up the stairs inside. I casted wind like crazy so his body was thrown off balance left and right. I landed on his tail and he whirled with sharp claws extended. He caught my face and the force slammed my shoulder against the wall. I casted fire towards him as I was momentarily blinded.
The pain was pulsing through my face and into my neck. I pressed on the wound to lighten it and fight back. But Striker was running up the stairs again. I morphed into my Dragon form and took the stairs in two strides.
I slammed a claw down on his back. He stabbed my palm with something sharp and lunged at my face again. I went back to my Demon form and watched him fly over me and all the way back down the stairs.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Reagan nowhere in sight. I hoped the palace wasn't far and she could get there alright. Would Demons try to mess with her? She obviously looked human but not all Demons stayed in their true forms here.
Please just run.
Striker casted wind from behind and sent me sliding down the stairs. I stopped halfway and brought two stairs up to the ceiling. I ran back up and whisked around the corner. The ceiling cracked open and debris fell on top of me.
Concrete took my shoulder to the floor. I used wind to shove it all off me, a white lasso falling over my face and snapping tight around my neck. I was bent over backwards as he pulled it hard. He kicked open the nearest door and dragged me through. I grabbed the white rope to resist from my knees.
He opened the window and jumped through. My stomach dropped as the rope stayed tight. I went with the pull and jumped through the window before his force took my head clean off my shoulder. I hit one of the wires and it threw off my landing. I felt a horrendous snap in my knee as I landed awkwardly, screaming from the pain and digging my claws into the pavement.
I put a hand near my knee, too afraid to feel what had happened to it. Striker stalked over and shoved my shoulder with his boot so I was flat on my back. He let out a deep chuckle. "I told you, you may be a champion fighter but you'll never best me."
Tears clouded my eyes as I continued to cry into the concrete. My face and knee were in so much pain. I could dull it but there was only so much I could do with this much pain.
He knelt down and pulled the lasso up so my head came an inch off the ground. "And your dark prince ain't here to save ya either."
I threw my claw up and caught his chin. He reared back up and I used all my strength to dig my claws into his knee. He grabbed my wrist but I casted a huge gust of wind to send him flying back. He hit the wall and I brought the hard stone of the floor up so it covered him like armor.
Rolling over, I casted a huge gust of fog over the courtyard. I used magic to pull myself to the side and into another doorway. I dragged myself up the stairs, still keeping the fog heavy around Striker. I crawled through the hallways as I listened to him scream and curse my name. I got rid of the fog and put an illusion over myself to stay camouflaged against the walls. He ran right past me.
My entire bad leg was tingling and all other limbs were burning from overexertion. I made my way down the stairs and back to the courtyard. Tears were steaming down my face as I half hobbled half crawled down the alley. I heard Striker yell that he was going to find Reagan.
Help. Need help.
I pushed myself to my two feet once I was at the street. I was barely able to take a step before I collapsed on the sidewalk.
"Are you okay?" someone asked. My illusion was gone. "What happened?" They had long black hair surrounding an owl-like face and dressed in basic brown and dark green colors. "Do you need help?"
I didn't want to risk it but Reagan was in trouble. I got up on my elbows and good knee. "Cannibal town. Where?"
"Right down the street. What's wrong with your leg?"
"Help me there." I extended an arm and they immediately took it. They pulled me to my feet and let me lean half my weight on their narrow figure. I hobbled down the street with them until we reached the entrance to Rosie's territory.
"Rosie's Emporium," I said next. They asked the closest cannibal and they directed them the right way. I was dragged all the way until we got to the front door of her store. The door flew open in a frenzy and she helped me through the door. I instantly felt safe as she and her cannibals carried me to the back room.
I gripped the chair arms as pain bolted through my spine. Rosie tried to talk to me but I couldn't think clearly. "Reagan...Human girl...Lucifer's palace. Please."
Rosie sent out a few people in search of her. She came back to me and examined the injury. I continued to cry and yelp at the pain that even the slightest of movement caused.
She put a hand on my forehead, the pain gradually melting away until it became much more bearable. I let out a sigh and leaned back into the chair. She didn't take her hand from my sweaty face.
"You'll need an actual healer, but I can make it easier for you," she explained. I was finally going to be grateful for our tough Healer, Althea. I hoped the cannibals could find Reagan. I was worried another Demon might've gotten to her first.
I waited impatiently for what felt like an hour. I would never forgive myself if her cannibals came back empty handed. I couldn't lose her because I couldn't handle one Demon. I had fought my entire life, so why could I never beat Striker?
My heart dropped in my stomach when her men and women came back with no Reagan. I covered my face with both hands as I let out a cry. She was gone all because of me. She had just told me how grateful she was for me and within the hour I had sent her to her death.
Rosie was instantly at my side. She put a hand on my back and tried to keep my claws from piercing my own head. She tried to reason that she had made it to Lucifer's palace but I didn't believe in good consequences.
"Rosie do you know where-" Alastor took three steps into the room before realizing I was there. "Never mind. What happened?"
"Reagan's gone," I cried. "She's dead because of me."
He cocked his head to the side. "She's back at the Haven."
"What?" My head snapped up.
He moved to stand in front of me, hands resting on his cane. "Lucifer brought her back. He said you had told her to run to him."
"So she's safe?" I clarified, earning a simple nod from him. I leaned back in the chair covering my face again. Now the tears were relief.
"Care to tell me happened?" he asked.
"Her knee is broken. She needs a Healer first," Rosie said.
"Good thing we have one," he reassured her. He moved to me and snaked an arm behind my back. I wanted to protest but I knew I couldn't walk. I was still angry about our last conversation.
I put an arm over his shoulder as he hoisted me out of the chair. I yelped and held on tighter as the pain made its way to my brain. He had his arm under my legs but used his hand to keep my bad leg from bending too much.
"Thank you Rosie." He nodded to the Overlord. She held the door for us and he teleported through the scorched symbol on the ground. He carried me past the house and into the Haven. I hoped he wasn't going to get mad when he found I had gotten blood on his clothes. My face was still bleeding and I had been leaning it on his shoulder.
Althea worked quick as soon as she saw me. Alastor carefully laid me on the 'medical' bed she always had in the common space. My back arched from the pain and I punctured holes in the sheets from gripping them with my claws.
"The hell did you do to your knee?" Althea asked, not looking for a response.
Alastor put a hand on my forehead to help ease the pain. Althea cut the fabric of my pants so she could work. Even with his magic, the pain of healing still made my body contort. She was moving my bones around before actually beginning the healing process. That part hurt worse than moving my bones.
Alastor's hand never left my forehead as he quieted my yells with magic. I was in and out of consciousness, each awakening hoping that was the last time. How was healing taking so long? I felt naesous and tried to roll over to get sick. Althea was quick and pulled a bucket over just in time.
I fell unconscious again after that. This time, when I came to, she was walking away from my normally colored knee. I let out a sigh of relief. It was quickly taken away from me as she went to my face.
Alastor removed his hand and it felt like he was taking part of my soul with him. A shiver ran through my body and I suddenly felt very cold.
She took a damp rag and soaked up the blood on my face. It had dropped down my cheeks, past my chin, down my neck, and soaked the top of my shirt. She wiped my face and neck clean before healing another broken bone. This one wasn't as bad but it still made me wince and cry from the sharp pain. Why was healing so painful?
When she finished, she took a step back and sighed. She announced me healed and wanted to keep me in the bed with a new pair of clothes overnight. I desperately wanted new clothes and a thick sheet to stop me from shivering so much.
"What happened?" Alastor asked, coming back into view.
"Striker found me," I said through a gasp. I was trying to catch my breath. "Someone else did. They...he paid them."
"He's becoming a nuisance."
I wasn't sure how to take that comment. I closed my eyes and let out a heavy sigh. Althea opened the door to let Reagan come sprinting in. She wrapped her arms around me and leaned her weight on my chest. I returned the hug as tears fell down my cheeks.
"You're okay." I put a hand on the back of her head. She was real and in front of me. She was safe.
"I'm so sorry!"
"No. You did exactly what I needed you to do. I'm so glad you're safe." My other hand was rubbing her back. Alastor's presence around my shields turned noticeably warm, replacing the usual cold chill I felt from him. He turned on his heels and walked to the door.
"Alastor," I called. It still felt strange to use his name. He stopped and turned his head to acknowledge me. "I need...I want to learn how to fight with magic. No more discovering other things, I just...I need to be better at it."
I needed to learn how to use magic offensively. I barely managed to get away from Striker. This made it three times I had escaped him. His next move might be more dangerous and deadly. I needed to be able to protect my people from more than a single threat.
"I can work with that." He disappeared into his shadows.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author's Note:
Gosh I missed writing these interactions with Alastor. More are coming, I promise!
Welcome OC Finn! There’s a couple mentions of some other OCs but we’ll get to them soon :)
#alastor the radio demon#alastor x reader#hazbin alastor#hazbin hotel#soulmate au#soulmates#hazbin husk#reqs open#hazbin hotel husk#demi demon
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young fidelity
「 wanda maximoff x gn!reader 」
tags: smut, angst, fluff, mentions of trauma, depictions of violence, blowjobs, degradation, some slightly boring avenger mission details, sub!wanda maximoff, dom!reader. MINORS DNI.
word count: 10 872
summary: Even months after Ultron's death, you haven't forgiven Wanda despite her attempts to become close with you. You plan to get by with little interaction when you are partnered together for a mission, but she has other intentions.
“We’ve received signals of active HYDRA technology in northern and eastern Nunavut. There are approximately two bases north and two in the east,” Steve announced to the conference room. “But because of the nature of the province, it’ll be much easier to split up into pairs — take down each base together, separately.”
“Nature of the province?” asked Sam.
Steve pulled up an image of Nunavut’s map onto the projector. About a third of the province in the northeast was dispersed up into dozens of distinct sections of land.
“North can mean this,” he said and circled about twenty different patches of land before doing the same for the right-hand side of the province, “and East can mean this.”
He continued, “It would consume too much of our time to travel between each patch of land to the other. Fortunately, what we can tell for certain is that these bases are small. The signals they’re sending out are from HYDRA technology nonetheless, but the signals are weak and the technology is outdated.”
“A base of about ten or less,” Natasha noted, leaning back in her seat with her arms crossed and facing the projector screen.
Rhodes added, “Or much less.”
“Exactly,” Steve conceded. “We’ll head out in two days, give ourselves enough time to pack for the climate. Here are the pairs I’ve outlined…” He continued to announce the mission’s partnerships, but the back of your neck prickled with the feeling of being watched.
You looked over your shoulder to see Wanda’s eyes on you. She looked away quickly when your eyes met and she shifted in her seat, crossing a leg over the other and looking up to pay attention to Steve.
“Then lastly, Wanda and Y/N.”
At Steve's words, Wanda’s head lifted slightly in piqued interest and you looked back at him.
“Why do we have to pair up at all?” you questioned immediately. “Each of us could easily take ten or more on our own.”
“I know that’s right,” Rhodes agreed cockily before exchanging a nod with Tony, who considered your commentary comedic.
“These areas of Nunavut, of Canada, are unexplored territory,” Steve answered. “The weather conditions are extreme up there, and the terrain may not be safe or predictable enough for us to go out in it individually. This will be a quick mission, three days and no more, during which a portion of it will be trying to map out the province. The actual overtaking of the bases will take much less time.”
You weren’t able to find a way to object to that, so you sank down in your seat, something bitter brewing in you at the thought of having to work alone with Wanda.
“We’ll be picked back up the same way we’ll arrive — by the Quinjet in an isolated area at the edge of Nunavut where the land is much less dispersed, closer to the centre of the province but not nearly as populated,” Steve said, and with that, he concluded the meeting.
When Wanda stood from her seat, she spent a few extra moments tucking her hair behind her ear, adjusting her rings, and playing with her sleeves as an excuse to wait for you to walk ahead first so she could approach you.
But Vision met with her first and she looked over at you hesitantly, worried that she’d miss you leaving the room.
You began heading forward but instead of leaving, you started a conversation with Steve.
Now sure that she could spend a few moments talking with Vision without losing sight of you, she entertained his commentary on the upcoming mission despite not being included in the list of Avengers that were going.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” you told him, leaning back on your heels nonchalantly as you attempted at repressing what felt like a raging wildfire set ablaze in your chest.
Steve turned off the projector and started storing away some of the wires. “Two days isn’t enough to prepare, is it?” he questioned suddenly.
“No, two days is fine, I think,” you said.
You continued with a quiet tone, aware of Wanda and Vision conversing only a few feet away, “Wanda isn’t trained to go out with only one other person yet. She’s not ready for this.”
“She’s been doing just fine during training and other missions,” he reasoned.
“But she’s always supervised, and always with people who can support her if she screws up.”
With a smile of slight inexplicable amusement, he replied, “Then you can train her.”
Your fingers twitched at the mere suggestion.
Then, a voice chimed in from behind — Wanda’s. “No, I can fight. I’ve been training for months,” she insisted.
From the corner of your eye, you could see that she’d stepped away from Vision and was now standing by the edge of the table, only two or three feet away from you.
Wordlessly, you left the room, overcome by her very proximity.
Wanda followed after you, initially silent. She spun her rings around her fingers, watching the back of your head as she trailed behind you.
“So… when are we going to start training?” she eventually asked.
You walked through the hallways, heading straight to your room and avoiding having lunch until you were sure Wanda was no longer following you like an aimless puppy.
“I thought you said you didn’t need training.”
Suddenly filled with joy because you had actually answered her instead of ignoring her like you often did, Wanda sped up and joined your side.
“No, I never said I didn’t need training,” she corrected. “I just said that I could fight. But I would like to train with you. Before our mission. I think it would help. When can we start?”
“Not now,” you replied.
“Then when?”
You reiterated stubbornly, “Whenever I feel like it.”
Wanda bristled and she said wrapped her hand around your forearm. You tore it out of her hold and she looked at you, shocked at your resistance to be touched by her.
She swallowed and straightened in spite of herself then said, “I’m just trying to do my job”
“It’s not your job to bother me.”
“I’m not trying to bother you, I’m just trying-"
“To do your job,” you interrupted. “Right.”
She stared at you silently, unsure what to say yet not wanting to walk away from you.
“Is that how you rationalise things?” you inquired, your eyebrows furrowing together. “Is that how you rationalised what you did?”
Now feeling desperate for your validation and worn from the way you’d been avoiding her since the battle on Novi Grad, Wanda opposed, “I know that you’re angry, but everyone has forgiven me for what I have done. You are the only one who hasn’t.”
“You want to train?” you asked out of the blue.
It took a moment for Wanda to realise what you were asking and to decipher if you were being sincere in your question. When she supposed you were, she nodded cautiously.
“Then let’s go,” you muttered and turned to walk the other way, down to where the gymnasium and training room were.
When both of you changed into the proper clothes for training, you met Wanda in the middle of the holopad. You programmed a few rounds of holographic HYDRA members to attack her, and a few other adversaries the Avengers had previously fought to fill the time.
Wanda strapped on her sensory gloves, designed by Tony to signal to the holopad where she directed her powers and with what magic she used for the holograms. It had been helping her with her training to a great extent as it allowed her to use the technology in the training room as every other non-magic-wielder did.
She stepped onto the ten-by-seven metered platform and you set the tablet down by the staircase.
You noticed her looking over at you before the holopad flashed white once, signalling the beginning of the training session, and Wanda then looked away from you.
It began slowly at first, several scientists running at her from different directions and Wanda’s red magic flowing out of the centres of her palms and darting out from the tips of her fingers. Her magic made contact with the holographic foes, Wanda’s sensory gloves connecting the direction and intensity of her magic to the location of each moving hologram. They scattered into tiny pixelated squares when her magic came into contact with them, floating up and dividing into smaller geometric shapes before disappearing entirely.
The speed of the enemies quickened and with it Wanda’s reflexes.
This was the first time since the final battle against Ultron on Novi Grad that you’d seen Wanda’s fighting. Several months have passed since then, and she improved substantially. You’d never say it aloud, and you looked away from the brunette to avoid even admitting it to yourself, but she would be the perfect partner for the mission to Nunavut.
Eventually, the holopad flashed white, indicating the end of the training session when Wanda defeated the enemies you programmed her to fight.
She stepped off of the platform and stood in front of you, a glistening sheen of sweat on her body. She was panting softly and you blinked inquisitively for a moment at the grin on her face. “Come on,” she said and took your hand before pulling you up onto the holopad with her.
Wanda positioned you on one side of the platform and she stepped back from you. “So, what will you show me?” she asked.
“I don’t know how to train someone with magic.”
“We can go hand-to-hand,” Wanda suggested, running her palms down her sides. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
When you did nothing but stare at her, perhaps out of scepticism or curiosity at her mood switch, she added with a laugh, “What? Are you scared?”
There was not a single person in the compound but you who knew this side of Wanda; a playful side of her, one that was presently unburdened by the weights of her losses and the solemn monotony that cast over her like a stagnant shadow when she was with anyone other than you.
There was a feeling of laxness that settled within her in your company, a freedom she felt with you that she hadn’t been familiar with since her time with Pietro.
You chose to think little of this lest you fall victim to Wanda’s deceptions as you had when you first met her. The very recollection of that moment of weakness awakened chills up your spine and formed a terribly large pit in the centre of your chest.
“Okay,” you said. “Fine. A quick skirmish, that’s all.”
If she was lucky, she’d sometimes walk in on you training and watch you for as long as possible while being as inconspicuous as she could manage. She’d watch the way you fought and moved your body, the confidence in your strikes and flexibility of your limbs. You were nothing less than inspiring.
In many ways, Wanda idolised you.
The corners of Wanda’s mouth tugged upwards before she made an attempt to repress her giddiness to have a serious one-on-one with you. She raised her fists and bent her knees, eyes darting down your form to correct her posture accordingly. She took notes from you where she could.
In training skirmishes, the objective was to take the other down, get them off their feet and cause them to lose balance.
You watched Wanda’s footing, the way she rounded and approached you by subtly cutting away at the inches of space that lay between the two of you.
Despite the sternness of her brow, there was a vague outline of a smile on her lips.
Your attention on her incomprehensible smile sullied your focus on the skirmish; Wanda extended her leg and in one swift movement, rounded your body so she stood outside your line of sight. Her knee lifted to nudge your thigh forward and throw you off balance but you turned quickly, a hand wrapping around her hip.
Before you could push her back and move your legs out of her range of contact, Wanda’s foot raised and she knocked the back of your knees forward with the length of her shin. You tumbled backwards, and with your hand gripping Wanda’s hip, you pulled her down with you.
Her arm extended past the side of your head, a wispy lock of red magic coursing out of her palm. The burst of magic slowed the speed at which you fell, breaking your fall and letting your back meet the ground softly.
It was only when the brief panic of falling backwards abated that you heard Wanda laughing. Stands of dark hair were falling in her face, her expression light and free of the burdens that normally followed her around like a shadow.
When her laughing settled into a fit of giggles, she opened her eyes and looked down at you, her gaze flickering between your eyes and your parted lips. She pushed her hair back and she lifted herself up with the heel of your hand placed on the platform by the side of your head.
Her chest parted from yours but her hips stayed pressed against your own, your legs intertwined and her other hand resting on your stomach.
You removed your hand from her hip and let it fall to the floor underneath you, damning yourself for the way you watched every movement of her soft lips.
“Come on, you’re not even trying,” Wanda teased. She used her hand by your head and the other on your stomach to prop herself up, slipping off of your body and getting on her knees by your hip. She then proposed, “Let’s go again.”
“I promise I’ll go easy on you this time,” she jested and extended a hand to you.
You sat up on your own, Wanda’s hand dropping into her lap. “I said we’d only do one,” you reminded her and stood up. “We’re done.”
Following you, Wanda got onto her feet. “You’re such a sore loser,” she joked with a laugh and trailed behind you as you stepped off the holopad. She unstrapped her gloves from around her hands and set them by the tablet.
“What will we do next?” she asked.
“Nothing,” you told her, picking up your things and heading to the gym exit.
Wanda’s smile fell as she heard your stern tone. “But we’ve only just gotten here. There’s still so much I want you to show me before we leave,” she reasoned, speeding up and trying to get your attention as you walked ahead without regard for her trailing behind you.
You told her with finality, “Get someone else to show you.”
You exited the gym and Wanda decided to stop following after you. She watched you speed away, hands by her side as she stood alone in the training room.
Dejectedly, she wondered if she had done or said something wrong — something to drive you away. It seemed she couldn’t do anything right around you when it was you she desired companionship and intimacy from the most.
You exchanged not even a word with Wanda for the remainder of the day, though dinner was filled with yearning stares from her across the table and never any words, partially because Vision filled her time with endless conversation. He was fond of her, and you often wished she would’ve glommed onto him instead.
The following day, you saw Wanda for a short time during a meeting in which Tony outlined the rest of the mission.
Deliberation between Tony, Agent Ross, and the provincial officials of Nunavut resulted in the Avengers’ permission to enter and explore their grounds granted they limit any destruction of the land and would provide the required funding necessary to repair any damage otherwise caused.
After the events on Sokovia, it was also decided that it would be best if the mission went as smoothly and as covertly as possible. This meant that the Quinjet would only take them as far as the edge of the northeast to lessen chances of being seen in the air, and would be stationed in an isolated space until everyone returned from their respective missions.
Additionally, government action would be taken to set a seven-mile radius around the Quinjet prohibiting any public access and ensuring the mission stay entirely under wraps.
Comms would stay open during each individual operation and after three days or less, they’d all meet back up at the Quinjet to depart as simply as it had arrived.
Everyone was working on their preparations for the rest of the day — going over Nunavut’s map and geology, Tony refining communication technology to guarantee they work throughout the mission despite the distance that would be between the team throughout it.
The evening before the morning of departure, you were preparing for bed when a quiet knock came at your door.
Wanda was at the door holding a saran-wrapped dish of some type of pastry in both hands. “Hi,” she greeted with a tiny smile when you opened the door. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, I’m just getting ready for bed,” you answered.
“I made blinis,” Wanda said, holding up the plate of what looked like a small stack of thin pancakes.
You stared at the dish for a moment then questioned, “At eleven in the evening?”
“Ever since moving here I’ve developed a bit of a habit of cooking when I’m nervous,” she explained, fingers tapping against the rim of the plate.
Then she continued, “You can save these in the fridge if you aren’t hungry.” It was a kind gesture, though you were convinced she hadn’t made them with you in mind.
You hadn’t spoken with Wanda since her training session. You wondered how she was doing with her practice and wanted to ask what was making her anxious. But you withheld your questions, having learned from experience the faults of coming to Wanda’s aid.
“Thank you,” you uttered and took the plate from her. Wanda seemed grateful that you accepted her dish and smiled at you when she transferred the plate to your hands.
An awkward silent moment passed between both of you. Wanda inhaled, her shoulders raising as she readied herself before asking, “How are you feeling? Are you nervous?”
“No,” you answered. “I’m sure it’ll be like any other mission.”
There was a strange look of despondency that struck momentarily across Wanda’s face at your response. She smiled at you then nodded.
“You have always been so strong,” she said, her gaze softening as she ventured through your eyes with her own. “I knew it from the moment we met. You’re different from them. Strong-willed. That’s why it was harder for me to-”
She cut herself off, her mouth closing to ensure she doesn’t slip up and let the next few words out: ‘That’s why it was harder for me to take over your mind.’
You looked at the floor between the both of you and took in a breath, then nodded. “Thank you for these,” you told her, lifting the plate of blinis up.
“O-Of course,” she replied and tugged at the hem of one of her sleeves. “Then, goodnight.”
Wanda headed back to her room in deep remorseful thought, tugging at her necklace and going over her conversation with you. She hadn’t meant to bring up bad memories, let alone the one that caused the divide between you and her, one that could not be crossed or mended no matter how hard Wanda tried.
She had only intended to compliment you, to offer to you in her hands what she stored so close to her heart — an affection and admiration for you.
But she failed to reconcile things with you.
Again.
That night you dreamt about your time with Wanda, before the fight between Ultron, the twins, and the Avengers.
You met Wanda before the rest of the team had even heard of the twins, a few weeks before their retrieval of Loki’s sceptre.
It was a strange series of events.
As was typical before the sceptre’s retrieval, you monitored any signal of its usage, any similar waves of power or sighting reports. After detecting a faint ring of energy in a mountainous plain of isolated land in Sokovia, you chose to go out on your own. What you saw on the monitors was a completely empty plot of land, but upon arrival you discovered a heavily-guarded compound stationed at the foot of a mountain and reaching an astounding height, and a young girl sitting by the edge of it, near the still water and under the waxing moon.
You never told any of the team about her nor her twin brother whom you never saw before the Avengers travelled to the HYDRA research base to retrieve the sceptre.
Wanda knew little of Loki’s sceptre, only that it was kept in a heavily protected sector of the compound. Despite the time you spent together, which eventually ended up being every night after the base’s scientists retired for the night and you were on your own in the lab, you couldn’t avoid telling your team about the sceptre’s location.
Retrieving it was part of something larger than your budding friendship with Wanda, though you still refrained from telling them anything about her and Pietro and their enhanced capabilities.
When the Avengers breached the HYDRA research base, you held no ill will to Wanda. The both of you were simply on opposite sides of a conflict that was long-running and complicated. You continued seeing each other though things became largely difficult once Ultron found the twins.
Though for a moment before the Maximoffs teamed with the android mastermind and they were unsupervised and not experimented on for the first time in several years, everything was blissful with Wanda despite everything else that had been going on between Ultron and the discourse within the team.
You saw her for hours at a time instead of a few fleeting minutes. You could travel anywhere with her rather than having to stick to the research base for the entirety of your time with her. You talked about anything that came to mind, sitting by a remote riverbank or under an evening sky discussing everything from Wanda’s childhood to your time with the team.
You cared for her and Pietro where you could, organising for them to stay in an unoccupied safehouse the team owned and keeping their activity there off the monitors.
When you returned to visit her one morning, their place was cleaned out and you found no trace of either twin. It was only until the Avengers made contact with Ultron that you realised where they had gone, who they had aligned themselves with and on what side of the battle they chose to fight for.
The team took a hard hit, each one of them falling victim to Wanda’s mind tricks, yourself included. She knew what specific memories to conjure, what fears to incite, what nerves to press on. She knew it because you’d told her all of it. She asked you for the best way to take the Avengers down and you told her — willingly.
You could never forgive her nor yourself for becoming the weak and unsuspecting piece in her game.
None of your teammates blamed you for what happened and made an effort to convince you that you had no hand in the Avengers’ collective loss. But you blamed yourself in spite of that. It was your fault.
You skipped breakfast with the team in the morning, your dream weighing heavily on you and the recollection of your blunder from months ago eating at you again as you recalled you’d have to spend the next three days with Wanda. Your mistake did not bring you as much guilt as it had months ago, but rather it made you angry. It made you bitter.
Despite having missed breakfast, you met up with the rest of the team by the foot of the Quinjet as planned. You packed a single bag full of your things, making sure to pack light to make sure travel wouldn’t be so tiresome.
Natasha recapped everything that happened while you were gone in the morning, which wasn’t much. Steve took some of the bags into the Quinjet while everyone else buckled themselves in.
Wanda, who was yet to be seen, finally arrived.
“Y/N, I’ve been looking for you,” she said, slightly breathless when she stood beside you. “I thought you were still in your room, so I was going to get you.”
You weren’t sure what to answer her with and you considered ignoring her and boarding the jet. But if you wanted anything from the mission, it was to come back to the Quinjet successful and to have minimal conflict with her.
So you answered with an acknowledging nod, “No, I just got here.”
“Are you okay?” she asked, placing a hand on your upper arm. “You skipped breakfast.”
“I’m fine. I wanted time to myself.”
“But-”
Natasha intervened, beckoning the two of you over and saying it was time to leave.
Wanda looked over at you, concern still drawn across her expression. But you ignored it and walked ahead, boarding the Quinjet with Wanda following silently behind you.
The high speeds the jet could reach allowed for the trip to Nunavut to be no longer than three hours, which wasn’t all too strenuous as trips often were before the latest Quinjet models that now incorporated several rooms and even a kitchen.
Despite the room on the jet, Wanda stayed in one place for a majority of the journey. She got up twice for the kitchen, but largely sat around the main seating deck where you were. No conversation took place between the two of you though you did catch Wanda looking at you several times.
As planned, the Quinjet landed in its designated spot.
Comms were secured and designed to reach the very northern tip of Nunavut to the very east, though bases were expected to be no further than six-hundred kilometres out, allowing for the team to exchange updates throughout the mission.
After double-checking each other’s supplies and going over the mission plan once more, you each set out for the HYDRA bases.
High-speed snowmobiles charged for week-long usage were supplied for travel. You drove the vehicle while Wanda clung onto you from behind. You had the company of Rhodes and Tony for the first forty minutes before they branched off, following the signal of their assigned base.
Though it was snowing heavily and there was nothing but blinding white plains and mountainous terrain in the distance for as far as the eye could see, the tracker Wanda held grew stronger as you travelled further into the snowy Nunavut.
She fed you directions from behind every so often, arms wrapped snugly around your midriff.
You couldn’t see the way Wanda laid her head against your back, often forgetting to give you directions as she hugged herself close to you, feeling the most secure since the two of you last spoke before she partnered with Ultron, even if you didn’t converse very much. It’d been quite a while since the two of you spent so much time alone together.
“It’s ahead, Y/N,” Wanda told you after fiddling with the tracker and ensuring it was working properly.
“Ahead?” you repeated. “Already?”
Wanda replied after a moment, likely adjusting the antenna of the tracker and double-checking the screen wasn’t broken. “It seems like it,” she said finally.
You sped ahead, eager to get the mission over with and head back to the Quinjet.
“There’s something strange about the signal… It’s getting stronger. Stronger than the signal back at the compound.”
“I know visibility is pretty low right now, but I can’t even see it. How is the signal that strong?” you told her. “Are you sure it isn’t picking something else up?”
Wanda assured, “It has the same signal impression, so it’s definitely the same base they picked up. But the technology they’re using is a lot stronger than what the compound detected.”
“Stronger… So, modern technology?”
“Which means more scientists,” she figured. “And the signal is only getting stronger. There’s maybe a lot more than ten scientists, Y/N.”
You looked ahead, letting the sound of the blowing wind and snow null things out momentarily as you considered the options. “How many more?” you asked Wanda.
She estimated, “If I were to guess and assume that the signal was only to get stronger before we arrived, then maybe thirty of them. I think we should wait for one of the others to finish. I don’t want to go in without knowing what’s waiting.”
“You said thirty of them.”
“But that’s only what I think. I’m not Tony or Steve, I don’t know how to read this as well as them. I’m not as experienced either.”
You heard the twinge of self-criticism in her words but you kept quiet about it, looking ahead and focusing on driving forward when your mind couldn’t detangle itself.
When several more moments passed without a response from you, Wanda’s arms squeezed gently around your waist. You felt the reassuring pressure of her embrace through your layers of winter gear.
“What are we going to do, Y/N?” she asked.
You gnawed at your bottom lip. “It’s only been about two hours since we left the Quinjet,” you uttered, shouting above the noise of the wind. “Even if we waited for help, it’d probably be at least eight hours until even Stark and Rhodes could meet us, and they’re the closest to us right now.”
“So we meet them instead? Come back together?”
“No,” you answered. “There’s not much else we can do but power forward for now. We’ll map out the base, try and get an estimate of how many scientists we have to deal with, and if things seem to be in our favour we’ll continue with the plan. If not, we’ll wait.”
There were several small safehouses scattered around northeast Nunavut built covertly by SHIELD decades ago. The plan was to clear out the HYDRA bases, avoid casualties if possible, rest in the nearby safehouses whose coordinates were also programmed into the tracking devices, then head back to the Quinjet as soon as the journey could be made. If you had to wait for help, you’d have to do it in one of the safehouses.
The both of you chose not to alert the team of the base you were approaching for fear that it might distract them and take them away from their respective missions. They would be updated only in the case that the base would be too much to handle without help. There was nothing to gain in telling them what wasn’t absolutely necessary.
Wanda guided you forward for the next thirty minutes, her arm squeezed even tighter around your waist then it previously was. “We’re approaching,” she told you then looked past your shoulder.
You squinted through the thick blanket of snow, looking for a light or an outline of a building, anything for you to pinpoint where the base was visually.
“Can you see it?” Wanda asked.
“No, I can’t. Are you sure we’re close? Maybe we’re still a few miles out.”
Then in an urgent demand that made you break the snowmobile so hard that you nearly fell out of it, Wanda blurted out, “Stop, stop!”
After catching your breath to calm your thumping heart, you looked back at her. “Holy shit, what?” you gasped.
“The HYDRA base should be right here,” she said. At the sight of your mistrusting expression, she lifted up the tracker and showed you the blinking red dot representing the base and the smaller blue dot that represented the snowmobile. They overlapped each other, meaning that it should’ve been right in front of you.
You got off of the vehicle and walked ahead, squinting and looking around at the snowy plain. Greys and whites stretched on for as long as you could see, and it was all you had been seeing for the last three hours.
Wanda got off of the snowmobile too, wrapped up in a heavy layer of winter gear and walking up to you as a circular ball of jackets and scarves. “Do you think it’s really out here? Maybe the tracker got water damaged or something.”
“I don’t think so,” you replied, stepping through the blinding white sheets of blowing snow.
The young witch ran up beside you, afraid to lose you in the hurricane-like winter. She buried her face further into the shelter of the scarf, leaving her eyes uncovered to allow herself to follow you closely.
“The signal and… now this,” you continued apprehensively. “There’s something that isn’t right with this base, and not just because we can’t see it.”
In the white expanse of snow that went on for kilometres more and mountains that lined the horizon, there was a single outlier.
You approached what looked like a metal pipe coming out from the ground, uncovered by the snow despite the way it had been coming down for the last three hours. A steady release of steam bellowed out from the pipe. You removed your glove and steadied your hand on top of the steam, only for it to be warmed. The snow that fell on your hand melted on-contact.
“Look how strong the signal is now,” Wanda mentioned, pointing to the edge of the screen.
You lifted the tracker up again, looking back down to those overlapping red and blue dots.
“The base is underground,” you told her, your eyes running across the snow you were standing on, then further down where you were sure the building stretched out below.
Eventually, an entrance was found after wandering through the shadowed tundra — a snowy stone walkway and a metal door rusted from years of usage and neglect.
“Should we… go in?” Wanda asked you, clinging to the sleeve of your jacket with both hands. “Is it safe?”
In concealed irritation, you took your arm away from her and opened the door. A warm burst of air hit your face and you kicked away the inches of snow behind the door to allow yourself enough space to step inside.
Wanda followed after you, her cheeks tinting a soft pink when the door closed behind her and the two of you were immediately developed in the warmth of the underground bunker. She pushed her hood back and removed her gloves.
The entrance den was small, giving off the illusion that one had found a storm cellar instead of a research base of an underground terrorist organisation.
You walked forward despite Wanda’s quiet whispers of forewarning, across the slotted floors that made visible piping from below and a leaky cement foundation that made you wonder how old this base must be.
As you walked deeper into the bunker, the tracker’s coordinates of the technology that was sending out signals became more precise. It was stronger, quicker, and indicative of transmitting hundreds of gigabytes of data every few minutes. It wasn’t nearly as fast or efficient as the monitors Stark found in Sokovia’s research base where Wanda and Pietro were stationed, but perhaps only a few models behind.
Voices could be heard from around the corner, and the tracker specified that their primary monitor was but a few metres away.
Wispy tendrils snaked around Wanda’s fingers as she readied herself for any sudden attacks.
Carefully, you unzipped your jacket and pulled out a thermal camera. The base didn’t seem to be well insulated, which was likely why they had to make up for it with the amount of heating they used. Fortunately, this meant that the thermal camera could detect individuals through the wall you were hidden behind with ease.
They were positioned poorly around the lab, as if not under any suspicion that someone might intrude their base. There were six people walking on a levelled platform a few metres up by the ceiling, rounding the room’s perimeter and doing nothing in particular. Five people circled around the southern area of the large room, and there were seven in the centre where the lab monitors were.
You expanded the thermal camera’s range until it reached the outer borders of the bunker and found no outliers.
“Eighteen of them?” Wanda whispered, looking over your shoulder as she stayed close to the wall. “Why so few of them for such advanced technology?”
“For somewhere so far out and underground, maybe they had to overcompensate,” you supposed.
Wanda looked around, then at the details of the ceilings and elevated levels. “It looks like this used to be a bomb shelter repurposed for HYDRA,” she observed. “Pietro and I were experimented on in something similar.”
You bristled at the mention of their experimentation. You recalled the hours spent with Wanda as she talked about what Strucker did to her and her brother, the inhumane treatment and the trauma she received from it.
“If I go from up top and bring them down, we can move in on them in the middle of the lab,” you proposed, fidgeting with the thermal camera and looking up at the elevated floor above the staircase ahead.
“Wh- We’re going to separate?” Wanda whispered.
You reasoned, “We’re not going to take on eighteen of them coming in from one direction.”
“But where will you go?”
“Stay here and wait until you see me come through right there,” you said and pointed at the wall wherein the entrance to the lab’s elevated walkway could be seen beyond it.
Wanda stared at you as if to survey whether you were being sincere and looked away when you met her gaze. “Okay. I’ll wait here,” she uttered and stepped back, away from the view of anyone in the next room while having a clear view of the walkway.
Without another word, you turned and went back up the staircase you descended. You took a left and followed the path down to where the other side of the room became visible.
Wanda watched you intently, ready to come to your aid if you were to suddenly need her help. Her eyes darted between you and the walkway in the other room.
You weren’t much for combat, so you helped Tony design weapons similar to Natasha’s Widow’s Bites. Vial-like ammo were ejected from small silent guns, attaching to a target’s exposed skin, preferably the neck, before releasing a toxin and attacking and incapacitating a target’s nervous system for up to an hour. From complete stupefaction to a remarkable loss of one’s senses, they were perfect for a swift in and out.
The first four people went down quickly with the other two fleeing for the stairs. They made to escape through the exit Wanda was waiting in but were quickly paralyzed with a wave of her fingers.
At the sight of you jumping down from the walkway, Wanda kept the scientists in the lab from escaping while you stunned four of the ones by the corridor and knocked the fifth unconscious.
You quickly disposed of the empty gun and switched to the other, landed two vials on two different scientists while Wanda clouded the minds of the last five.
You eyed them when they dropped to the floor.
“They’re just in a trance,” Wanda explained suddenly when she saw you looking at them. “I haven’t done anything to their minds.”
She hadn’t used her magic to brainwash anyone since her and Pietro’s fight with the Avengers, and certainly not after her argument with you.
Ignoring her, you moved to the monitors and took out a USB before extracting data from the primary console. The parts were easier to navigate because they were older, but there was a lot of data to extract. You’d get data out first then corrupt what the base had left.
Wanda was flipping through their files as you did your own work, looking up at you occasionally and eyeing your body for any sustained injury.
The monitor screen flickered on when you moved the mouse accidentally, and on it was a file that caught your eye. Though it was in Cyrillic, it was easy to read — The Enhanced.
A gasp came from Wanda that startled you and you looked over to her to see she was holding a file in two hands.
“What is that?” you asked.
Her words were firstly a jumble of stutters, but she eventually answered you. “It’s information on me and Pietro. They were studying the experiments on us.”
You looked at the file on the monitor.
The Enhanced.
She read from the file and thought out loud, “Underground and in an old bunker like this, they were trying to replicate the experiments, make new weapons and reuse the progress that Ultron made with the Mind Stone.”
After making the connection, Wanda looked around at the research base then at the scientists on the ground. Her hands trembled and she dropped the file, running her fingers through her hair and scratching at her palms to ground herself.
“I cannot be here. We have to leave,” she told you.
“Just a few more moments, Wanda, this is almost finished.”
But she insisted angrily, “No, we have to go now! You do not understand the kinds of things these people do. I cannot be an experiment again. You cannot.”
She suddenly reached her hand out and placed it on top of the USB. The progress percentage on the console boosted up rapidly. Its internal wires glowed a dim red, an advanced version of Wanda’s neuroelectrical manipulation.
Within seconds, the data finished extracting and Wanda ejected the drive and placed it in your hand.
“Let’s go now,” Wanda told you hurriedly and took your hand, rushing the two of you up the stairs and down the walkway.
You left the way you came, but when you turned to get onto the snowmobile parked just outside, Wanda was still standing by the exit.
“Wanda, what are you doing?” you called down to her, the loud blowing wind encapsulating the two of you once again.
“We need to get rid of this base. Forever.”
You walked back over to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Limited casualties,” you reminded her.
When she turned to you, her eyes were filled with tearful fury. “Let me do this,” she said sternly.
You stared at her for a few moments before nodding and letting go of her.
A gas pipe was snapped in half, so it blew out into the bunker.
With shaky hands, Wanda sped up the release from the heating pipes, bundling them up into a focused ball of hot steam so its temperature rose.
It continued to rise until the metal from the pipes and walls distorted from the heat, and you were sure Wanda’s wrath on its own contributed to that ball of heat’s temperature.
At the first sight of a spark and a quick lick of a flame, Wanda shot the ball to the side at the expelling gas without warning.
It happened within seconds; the bunker filled with purple flame and rushed right up to Wanda’s face.
You reached over her shoulder and shut the bunker door before wrapping your arms around Wanda and moving her away. Her back made harsh contact with the stone wall adjacent to the door when you pushed yourself against her body, protecting her from the explosion.
The purple flames cooled into orange, bursting out from the frames of the door and turning the snow on the ground to water.
“Holy shit,” you breathed out, your heart racing.
You looked back over to Wanda, whose face was flushed pink with parted lips. She was no longer crying but her eyeliner was smudged beneath her waterline. She was looking at you though you could see the reflection of the flames in her green eyes.
“Are you okay?” you asked.
Her mouth closed and she swallowed. She blinked and simply nodded in response.
You nodded and said, “Okay. Good, okay.”
You stepped back from her and zipped your jacket up then put your gloves back on.
“We should head to the safehouse now,” you advised. “Update the team then get some rest, and we can leave for the Quinjet tomorrow morning.”
Wanda only nodded again. She watched you as you ascended the steps and mounted the snowmobile. She fitted her hat back on and then her gloves, and caught her breath as she followed after you.
She took her seat behind you on the snowmobile and wrapped her arms around your waist.
“Ready?” you asked.
She nodded, feeling the back of your jacket against her cheek. “Ready.”
You held the tracker in your other hand as you drove to the nearest safehouse. Tony and Rhodes wouldn’t be there, for their nearest one was thirty miles south. But you didn’t dread being alone with Wanda as much as you did before.
A part of you that hadn’t been awoken since the last you spent those evening hours awake talking with Wanda sparked a modest flame. Recollections of your time with her spread out during the last few months came to you in the blinding white plains of the Nunavut tundra.
On the way back to the compound after a mission a few months ago, Wanda had stayed with you in one of the rooms and tended to your injuries. She was surprisingly proficient in bandaging you up and keeping you elevated, and while you sat in quiet disdain for her, she reminisced aloud about how she and Pietro had to care for themselves for most of their life on their own and how caring for someone else often made her think of him.
The journey to the safehouse was a twenty minute drive. The building was larger than you envisioned.
You dug through the depths of your jacket for a key safely stored for the safehouse and opened the garage. It was miraculous that it still worked.
The team was reassured that the buildings were safe from being built with any malicious intent during SHIELD's active operation, and were nearly forgotten until the exploration of Nunavut was proposed.
You stepped off of the snowmobile and had Wanda unlock the door and take the bags in while you pulled the vehicle into its proper storage inside so it wouldn’t be frozen outside by the time you left in the morning.
Locking the door behind you when you stepped into the house, you shedded off your layers and hung them from the hangers, moving your boots to the side beside Wanda’s.
The place felt brisk the moment your jacket came off so you wandered around looking for a thermostat. From what you were all told, each safehouse came with three bedrooms and bathrooms, a common room, and a kitchen.
You found the kitchen first, then a hungry Wanda who was standing by the counter with canned tuna and a glass of tap water.
“Are you hungry?” she asked you, offering you the can of tuna.
Looking around, you took the fork from her. “Where did you find this?” you inquired with a laugh.
“There’s some food here, but they’re all raw or canned. Made to last, I would think,” she noted and took out another can from the pantry before peeling the top open. She took a fork from the counter.
“I turned on the heat when I came in,” she told you. “It should get a bit warmer in a few minutes.”
You looked through the pantry and took out a box of macaroni and cheese, then turned on the oven, feeling the prongs heat up. “Do you want to share some pasta?”
“Yes, please.”
Within forty minutes, you’re sitting on the common area couch with Wanda in silence, eating cheesy boxed macaroni.
For the first time, you felt strange looking back at your history with Wanda before Ultron. It twisted something in your stomach and made your shoulders tense.
Looking at her docile expression, unsuspecting and delicate as she sat across from you, legs crossed on the couch as she ate with you. The dim lamp from the corner of the room beside the broken television cast the silhouettes on her face you often used to follow with your eyes when she laid beside you in the plot of grassy land in front of the hideout she and Pietro used for a period of time after Strucker vanished. It was warm – the last few weeks of summer.
It was March now, months since the battle on Sokovia and even longer since the last time you spent this kind of time with Wanda.
Wanda put her empty bowl down and took a sip of water. She wrapped her fingers around the cold glass, her thumb running over the ring on her index finger.
“I know you don’t like me,” she uttered suddenly, “so I would understand if you never forgave me for what I’ve done to you.”
You looked up from the bowl in your lap and at Wanda, who was looking down at her fingers avoidantly.
“But I will always look up to you,” she continued. “You are so brave and kind. You are what I had wished I was becoming when I worked with HYDRA, and when I allied with Ultron. But I made a mistake. And I keep making mistakes.”
“You’re doing okay,” you told her suddenly before you realised what you were saying.
Then you added, “Everyone thinks so.”
Wanda looked at you, studying your face for what felt to you like quite a while. “When I looked inside your mind,” she said, “I saw something pure. I feel the same for you as I did before, if not with more gravity. I want to know more about you and these things I can feel that you love.”
“What do you want to know?”
“This Shakespeare — I have read him and understand very little of what he writes about, or rather how he writes. I made my own way through several acts of Hamlet but found I could not pretend I found any sense of enjoyment in his writing. His works are enjoyable to you?”
And then you were laughing a kind of laugh that made you place your bowl on the coffee table to avoid spilling it over.
Wanda smiled as she watched you, the crinkling of your eyes that she found pleasing to look at and the unrestrained sound of sincere joy that came from you, especially when it was because of her and no one else. She laughed, quietly and with a few chuckles.
“That was funny?” she asked, still smiling.
You nodded and answered, “Yes.”
But she continued to look at you, anticipating an answer.
“He writes strangely, but because he lived from quite a while ago when the English language was different,” you said. “But also because he was an artist, and like any other artist, his work can be interpreted. Overtime, it’s become easier for me to understand his age of English, but the poetry of his works have become no less interesting to me.”
“What’s interesting about it?”
“There’s an eloquence to his style of writing, I think,” you thought aloud. “And for certain works like Hamlet, for example, it’s tragic and ironic, with beautifully written characters, all within a bound book of one of the most artistic styles of writing I’ve come across. He’s-”
Wanda leaned over, the sudden act making you halt your words and look over to her, only for her hand to find the side of your face. Her lips met yours in one swift movement and her eyes fluttered shut.
Her nose was decorated with freckles.
You stumbled back in your seat and Wanda’s hand lifted to your knee.
She parted from you, looking down at her hand on your knee and her fingers slowly retracting from your cheek.
“I-I’m sorry,” she stuttered, her cheeks flushing.
Carefully, you took the glass away from her and placed it beside her empty bowl. Wrapping your hand around her wrist, you pulled her closer to you until her other hand was forced to remove itself from your knee and lay itself down on the couch by your hip.
You kissed her with a sudden ferocity that made her breath hitch.
“Wanda,” you breathed.
She moved closer to you so she was sitting up on her knees in front of you.
Your hands moved down her body, arching her back with your fingers pressing into her sides so you could kiss up her stomach then between her clothed breasts.
With a pleasured sigh, Wanda’s hands came up to the sides of your head, her fingers playing with your hair and urging you to kiss her body.
Now irritated by the distance between you and her bare skin, your fingers hooked around the collar of her long-sleeved white shirt and yanked down.
Wanda hid a grin in your hair and kissed the top of your head.
You kissed the swells of her breasts, burying your face in her chest and nipping at her delicate skin. You craved more and your fingers pulled down her bra, exposing rosy nipples. Your tongue ran up one of them and they hardened at your contact.
“I like that,” Wanda said, an arm wrapping around your neck and pulling you closer to her.
“Yeah?” you answered, looking up at her from between her breasts. You kissed up her chest and neck, running your tongue up her pulse point and making her squirm. “What else do you like, pretty girl?”
She blushed at the pet name and hid her face against the side of your head.
“Anything, Y/N,” she answered. “Anything from you.”
You wrapped your arm around her ass and picked her up from the couch, making her giggle and wrap her legs around your hips. Your other arm was wrapped around her waist.
Wanda kissed your forehead and your temple while you peppered kisses against her throat.
You carried her up the stairs and towards one of the bedrooms Wanda pointed at. You flicked on the lamp on the nightstand and lowered Wanda onto the bed.
She pulled your shirt off when you leaned over her while you unbuttoned and slipped her jeans off. Her legs were smooth and you couldn’t help but run your hands up the sides of them, gripping at her soft thighs and her hips.
Her shirt was pulled off next while you took your pants off.
You tucked your hands under her ass and you lifted her further up the bed, which made her laugh. You leaned back down when she was laid in the middle and kissed her.
Her hands ran up your stomach and undressed you until you were bare on top of her. You unclipped her bra and wrapped your lips around one of her nipples, kneading her other with your hand.
Her back arched up against you and she wrapped a hand around the back of your neck, pulling you close.
“Gods, you’re beautiful, Wanda.”
She shuddered when your hand ran down her bare stomach and you grinned against her cheek when you realised how sensitive Wanda was.
Your free hand pinched one of her nipples between your thumb and index finger and she yelped before burying her face in your hair.
You slipped her panties off and dragged your fingers through her folds that were already slick with her anticipation.
Wanda’s cheek warmed your lips when you kissed them for she was flushed, overwhelmed and embarrassed being exposed for someone like you. She idolised you, regarded you with high praise and adoration.
To have you kiss breasts and call her beautiful, to touch her in a way she hadn’t been in years. But even her first time had been rushed, a decision made at the snap of her fingers.
Your fingers were brought to your lips and you licked her juices from them. Wanda’s eyes widened at the act and you grinned down at her. You ran a thumb over her bottom lip and kissed her, her flavour melding between your dancing tongues.
You reached down between your stomachs and jerked your hand around your stiff cock. Wanda’s eyes followed your hand and her lips parted at the sight of you. You pecked her lips, amused at her awe.
A hand ran up her cunt, collecting her slick and coating yourself in it.
“Are you ready, Wanda?” you asked, looking up at her.
She nodded eagerly, hugging her arms around your neck tightly. “I’m ready.”
You entered her with a long groan, feeling her soft walls squeeze around your cock. Her eyes were squeezed shut, shaky whimpers leaving her.
“Y/N,” Wanda groaned. “That hurts.”
“You’re so tight,” you told her. “I’ll be careful.”
She opened her eyes and pulled you down to her so she could kiss you. “No. I want you, please. Harder.”
You wrapped an arm around her waist, lifting the lower half of her body from the bed and angling her hips down against your thighs.
With two hands on either of her hips, you pulled her up and down, fucking her on your cock as Wanda’s mouth fell open, broken moans and cries of pleasure singing from her throat.
She reached a hand down to you and you took it, interlacing your fingers as you dug your other hand’s nails into the side of her ass.
Her ass slapped down against your thighs and you could only stare at her in admiration, watching her breasts bounce on her chest with every thrust into her, the sounds that came out of her that were for you, the sound of your name on her tongue that was moaned in a way that no one would ever have the pleasure of hearing for their own names.
Your hand moved between Wanda’s hips and you laid your hand flat against her lower stomach while your thumb began drawing circles around her clit.
“Oh my, Y/N!” Wanda cried. “Oh, I feel so strange.”
She was quite sensitive, nearing her climax so soon. You kissed up her stomach and let go of her hips, laying her flat down on the bed and mounting yourself over her. You kiss her and massage one of her breasts.
“Let me see you, Wanda. Come for me.”
Wanda buried her face in your neck, her hot breath panting against your chest while your thrusted into her and grasped harshly at her hip to maintain a strong hold on her delicate body while you fucked her.
She babbled out a mess of half-finished words and her walls tightened around you.
You lifted your head to see her and Wanda’s head was thrown back, her fingernails digging into your upper arms as she came. Her orgasm washed over her in heavy forceful waves, making her shudder and tighten her knees around your hips.
There was a certain pride in making Wanda come, a young girl so often taken by timidity and whose inner feelings were unshared with those she did not find solace in. To have her shudder under you, hands grasping desperately at your body while she cried out your name sent bursts of warmth up your chest.
She took your head between her hands and pressed shaky kisses to your face, up the bridge of your nose and against your cheekbones, to your forehead and finally back down to your lips. “Let me get you off,” she whispered.
You switched positions with you now laying on your back, Wanda on her knees by your ankles. You reached down and ran your fingers through her hair in admiration, then down her cheek. Wanda smiled at you and kissed your hip.
She firstly took your cock with both hands, flicking the tip of her tongue against your tip. She ran her tongue through your slit gently then wrapped her lips around you, hands jerking you slowly.
When she had you with your head thrown back and your cock stiff in her hands, Wanda let go of you and kissed up the length of your shaft.
“Y/N, you’re so beautiful,” she said, looking up at you from below. “The most beautiful person I’ve ever been lucky enough to know. I haven’t treated you as I should. I do not deserve your patience, and certainly not any permission to see you this way. But I hope to show you how much I adore you. Because I do. I truly do.”
“Wanda…” you uttered quietly, ready to protest before she wrapped her lips around your tip again and bobbed her head down.
She took a few inches at a time and you felt her throat open up for you as she moved her head down. One hand rubbed at your thigh and the other was placed atop your hip. She adjusted her position, kneeling and arching her back to get as low as she could, her ass stuck up in the air. She inched further down, relaxing her throat until her nose brushed your lower stomach.
She took your hand with hers and placed it against the back of your head.
You took hold of her hair and pulled her up along your cock and back down. You could hear Wanda’s mouth attempting to accommodate you with every entry into her mouth. She breathed through her nose, her grip tightening around your thigh as she drooled around your cock.
You pulled her up further occasionally so her lips reached only your tip, allowing her space to breathe before pushing her back down.
Wanda never protested, only looked up at you with sheer determination to bring you pleasure. She did gag at the depth you were fucking her throat in, though still that seemed to please you and Wanda was satisfied.
After ten minutes, you pulled Wanda off of your cock, wiping the drool from her chin and uttering, “Good, Wanda. That was good.”
But she was drunk on the taste of your cock, the pre-cum she was treated with occasionally when she curled her tongue around you a specific way and sucked at you with a certain velocity.
“I want more,” she objected and kissed up your cock again, her tongue running up your veins and kissing your tip, running it through her lips and sucking at it teasingly. She rubbed her cheek against your wet cock then ran her tongue up it.
So you took her head between both hands and positioned her over your cock. She parted her lips instinctively and you jutted your hips up into her face, thrusting her throat down onto your dick at a speed vastly different than before, your speed having increased tenfold.
Wanda grasped the blankets and scratched at your hips while she tried her best to take you as deep and fast as you wanted, using her for nothing but your own pleasure. Her eyes filled with tears and her saliva coated the base of your shaft.
Your hips bucked up into her face and Wanda looked up at you, studying intently the line that formed between your eyebrows and the way your eyes squeezed shut. She flattened her tongue and wrapped it around your cock, flicking it side to side where it could fit.
“Wanda- Fuck, I’m coming!”
You shot your cum down her throat, your hands on either side of her head pushing her back gradually to fill her mouth with your cream, then finally you pulled out altogether to cum onto her face.
With the tip of your cock, you rubbed your cum against her lips and cheeks. Wanda smiled and kissed your shaft proudly.
You wiped it off her face and ran your coated fingers through her messy hair while Wanda swallowed what she could, licking your cum from her fingers too.
“God, you’re fucking filthy.”
Wanda grinned and climbed up.
You wrapped your arms around her body, kissing each other’s tired faces.
She twirled your hair around her fingers and with her cheek pressed against yours lazily, she whispered, “I’m tired, Y/N.”
“Sleep,” you answered and put a hand to the back of her head, letting her rest her head on your chest. You kissed her hair damp with sweat, and rubbed her smooth bare back as she dozed off.
You muttered confessions of your adoration of her against her head, kissing her forehead in her sleep and eventually covering your bare bodies in thick blankets.
For now, she wouldn’t know how you admired her, her intelligence and her kindheartedness, her strength and her beauty. The green of her eyes and the softness of her smooth curves, the feeling of her lips and the smoothness of her skin.
But perhaps she would know at some point or another, and that brought you joy – a future you could imagine with her.
You pulled Wanda against your chest and kissed the top of her head.
A future with her.
The very thought comforted you, and you fell asleep soon after her.
#wanda maximoff#wanda maximoff smut#wanda maximoff x you#wanda maximoff x reader#wanda maximoff x y/n#wanda x reader#wanda maximoff fanfiction#marvel fanfiction#marvel smut
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I LOVE THE WAY YOU WORK AND I'M SO GLAD QUESTIONS ARE OPEN! Can I order one where Eddie and Reader are married and have a daughter called Seezy (I took any name for the kid if you want to change that's fine!) who is around 9/10 years old, Reader got the idea to hire a babysitter, as she is very busy at work and so is Eddie, but one day Reader and Seezy are making a cake for Eddie for his birthday, then Seezy says something about seeing Eddie and the nanny doing things they shouldn't (kissing, so no it's too heavy for a child to see), moving on, reader discovers the betrayal, Eddie tries to explain himself and regrets the betrayal, happy ending for Reader and no happy ending for Eddie (I'm a bitch for anguish) I'm sorry it's so long ? I get excited..
I'll gladly write an angst story for you :) I hope you enjoy it and thank you for requesting
⚠️ no part 2
Not proofread
~~
Marriage life with Eddie Munson is everything she dreamed of and more. They weren't high school lovers or had a fairytale of meeting as children. She met Eddie when he was just a mechanic down the road. He was older, mature, and had a way with words. He was charming and funny. Y/N hated car trouble, and trying to figure out how to pay for the damage. But suddenly, car trouble led her to the love of her life. And now she kinda loved the piece of shit car she drove for years.
Eddie didn't want to be a mechanic, it wasn't his dream or what he felt like his calling was. Until he met her. She was gorgeous and flirty. She was confident and toyed with him. Suddenly working at that job wasn't too horrible. He didn't expect to meet the love of his life covered in oil stains and overalls. But it happened.
The two were madly in love. Wayne adored her as his daughter. He stood proudly behind Eddie as got married. Wayne will deny that he cried at the wedding, but his eyes were wet ever since he helped Eddie pick out the ring.
She didn't have much family and neither did Eddie. They vowed to be each other's family and provide everything they would never need. Provide love, support, and a partner forever and always. Eddie wasn't afraid to show her who he truly was, all the broken parts of him. All the ways he's messed up in the head. He showed her all of his ugly, and she took it all in with love in her eyes. The man in the tuxedo across from her was the only family she ever needed.
Twelve years later, the couple was still happily married, with a daughter named Seezy who was about ten years old. Two dogs constantly were running around. A house with a white picket fence. Marriage life was excellent, and being parents became their new favorite thing.
But the two were struggling with watching their daughter and having full time jobs. Eddie now owned the mechanic shop and was always on call. Y/N was the head manager of a large corporate business and was on call for flights to different states at any given moment. Neither were reliable to be home at every second their daughter may need them. So Y/N hired a nanny. Someone to pick up Seezy from school and bring her home. Watch her for the evening as Y/N and Eddie tried their best to get home before bed.
The demand their jobs had at the moment was taking a toll on both of them. There wasn't much alone time with each other. Each free second was spent with Seezy since they missed her so much in the day.
Y/N missed her husband. Laying in his arms at night was the closest she got to him in months. With Eddie's birthday coming up next month, she planned a small getaway for the couple. Their nanny, Lauren, agreed to stay at the house for a weekend and take care of Seezy.
Y/N was excited as she planned it all out. Staying late at her office to make sure Eddie couldn't watch over her shoulder.
~~~
Eddie loved his wife, but he didn't feel connected anymore. Their jobs were tiring them out and they never had time to be together. He hasn't touched his wife in months or felt her skin. She was busy and he was busy. They needed to be there for their daughter and that just left no time for their marriage.
Eddie struggled without physical touch. He grew up lonely and now he doesn't know how to handle it since he's been used to having someone. He didn't know how to ask his wife to be there for him physically. He didn't know the right words.
He knew his wife loved him, but he didn't feel needed by her. She was so independent and was always away on a business trip. And because of her distance, she hired Lauren. Lauren was a few years younger than the couple, and Eddie hated to admit he found her attractive.
Then Y/N began staying late at the office, she was never home when Eddie arrived. He always came home to Lauren sitting on the couch, flipping through a magazine.
"Seez sleeping?" He asked as he yawned, taking off his shoes as he walked through the living room.
"Yes, she was pretty tired so it wasn't much of a fight. How was work?" Lauren asked, throwing down the magazine as she watched Eddie enter his bedroom.
He pushed the door, leaving it slightly open as he began to take off his work clothes, unaware the crack left room for Lauren's wandering eyes. She took in his pale skin, lightly hairy chest, tattoos, and his thin frame. She always found Eddie attractive, who wouldn't?
She watched as he struggled to undo his belt, noticing that his hand was wrapped up in bandages.
"What happened?" She asked, opening the door fully
"Jesus!" Eddie jumped, startled by Lauren's presence. "I sliced it on a tool while I was fixing underneath a car. Should heal fine." He shrugged it off. He was used to hurting himself, he'd always come home with a cut and Y/N would clean it for him, and place a gentle kiss on the wound.
Lauren watched as he continuously struggled to undo his belt. Coughing as she walked toward him, moving his hands out of the way. Eddie froze as her nails scrapped across his stomach, inches away from the band of his boxers. Swallowing as she began to undo his belt, yanking the leather through the loops.
Once she had the belt fully off, she placed it on his bed, stepping back. Eddie tried to control his racing heart. She shouldn't have touched him like that, he was married and that was not a friendly touch. It was wrong, so why did he like it?
Eddie stared into her eyes for what felt like hours, neither saying a word. Breathing hard as they stared into one another. Eddie was weak, alone, and craved to feel wanted again. So when Lauren wrapped her arms around Eddie's neck and slowly placed her lips on his, he didn't pull away.
~~~
A month passed since Eddie kissed Lauren back and he hasn't slept since. The guilt eating him alive. He hasn't been alone with Lauren since, it was a mistake and a mistake that he needed to make sure he never did again. He wasn't man enough to tell his wife either. Swallowing harshly when he kissed Y/N goodnight. The betrayal on his lips.
Today was finally Eddie's birthday, Y/N requested to get the weekend off. Spending her Thursday night with Seezy, she hasn't spent a second alone with Seezy in forever. So, together they baked Eddie a cake. The chocolate batter was mixed in the bowl, music playing on the speakers as the girl's danced around the kitchen.
"Okay it will be done in a few minutes so let's give the dog kisses and head to bed," Y/N said, cleaning a few dishes.
"Do kisses always mean I love you?" Seezy asked, kissing the dogs, then standing up to face her mom.
"Usually yes, a way to show affection to someone you love," Y/N explained.
"Does Daddy love Lauren too?" Y/N froze as the words left her daughter's lips.
"Love Lauren? Why would you say that?" Y/N asked, staring at her daughter, watching her expressions.
"I saw Lauren and Daddy kiss when he got home from work one night. " Seezy explained, unaware of how much her words were tearing Y/N apart.
Y/N had no idea what to say, she felt like her heart crumbled to her feet. Her husband kissed someone else, and her husband kissed the woman who was taking care of their daughter.
~~~
Eddie walked through the front door, exhausted after his long day but looking forward to having a weekend off. He didn't know what his wife had planned for the weekend, he was just told to take it off and let his employees know he was off call.
He yanked off his shoes, walking towards the bedroom. He was surprised to see the light still on.
"I didn't think you would be awake," Eddie smiled, stripping off his dirty clothes, and digging for pajamas.
"It was hard to sleep, I found out some news today," Y/N said, watching as Eddie turned to look at her, curiosity in his eyes.
"What's wrong, baby?"
"My daughter asked me if you loved her nanny as we made your birthday cake," Y/N said, her tone sharp and cold.
Eddie could feel his forehead start to sweat.
"Why would she ask that?" Eddie chuckled, nervously pulling up his pants.
"Why don't you tell me, Eddie?" Her arms were crossed and her eyes blazing in anger.
"I don't know," Eddie tried to play off
"Don't lie to me. I deserve at least the truth from my husband." She snapped. The way she spat out husband caused Eddie to shiver.
"I...I'm sorry," Eddie cracked out, he could feel the wetness collecting in his eyes. He knew she knew, she knows he betrayed her. He disrespected their vows and the marriage they spent building over the years.
"You fucking kissed her Eddie!" Y/N exclaimed, throwing her arms in the air as she stood up from the bed.
"She kissed me!" Eddie tried to argue
"But you didn't stop her, did you? Because I know for a fact if she kissed you and you pulled away that Seezy wouldn't have been the one to tell me. You would have because you wouldn't have felt guilty since nothing happened. But that's not how it went down, right Eddie? She kissed you and you kissed her back. You cheated on me and didn't have the fucking balls to even look me in the eye and tell me. You didn't care to apologize the night it happened, not even the day after. You just sat here and acted like we were fine!"
"BECAUSE I DIDN'T WANT TO LOSE YOU! I knew I fucked up the second I didn't pull away. You're right, I couldn't look my wife in the eye and tell her I betrayed her. You have to believe me when I say that I am so sorry." He pleaded, dropping to his knees in front of her. His heart broke watching as she began to cry.
"I never thought I would lose you, Eddie. And I would have never thought I'd lose you to someone else." She sobbed, covering her face with her hands.
Eddie reached up and held her hands, their grip against her stomach as he looked up at her.
"You didn't lose me, I'm right here. We can fix this, I will fix this. I haven't spoken to her since, I haven't felt anything but guilt eating me alive. It was a mistake and I love you."
Y/N shook her head at his words, she knew she would never love him the same way again.
"I lost you the second she offered something new. You can't fix this. I just can't look at you the same anymore. You are someone so different to me, I fell in love with you and I don't see him anymore. All I see is someone who I wasn't good enough for, someone I didn't love well enough, and someone who promised to never hurt me but yet, on his knees begging for forgiveness." She unlocked their hands, taking a deep breath as she ran her fingers through his hair. Maybe if she kept her eyes closed, and just felt him, she could pretend he was who she wished he was.
"Don't do that. You are enough, you love me more than enough. You, you are fucking perfect. You saved me and gave me a life of love. Granted me a blessing of a daughter. You gave me a family, and that will always make you perfect. I'm the one who is flawed. I had the world right in my hands, I had your fragile heart in my grip and I let you down. You don't deserve this and neither does Seez. Is there anything I can do to keep you?" Eddie sobbed out
"No, I want you to suffer with what it feels like to lose me," She cried out, removing her body from his, accepting how her body will feel without him.
"Please pack and leave," she added as she walked out of the bedroom.
~~~
Two months would pass and Y/N was feeling better every day. Stepping away from work to spend more time with Seezy. Choosing to be a mom first, and a manager later. She signed the divorce papers and agreed on shared custody.
She kept the dogs and the house. Eddie lived in a small apartment a city over. A photo frame next to his bed, a picture from his wedding day, and the day Seezy was born.
Y/N wanted him to suffer, and he was.
He lost the two most important girls in his life. He doesn't have a hand to hold anymore, nobody to grab as he slept through the night. He used to see his daughter daily, and now only sees her on selective days.
She was healing
He was falling
Tags!
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#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson#eddie munson fanfic#eddie stranger things#eddie munson request#eddie munson x female reader#eddie munson angst#eddie munson angst x reader#ashwhowrites#dad eddie x mom reader#dad eddie x reader
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Love Grows - Part 4
This one is a little shorter than the last, because I liked what I had and didn't want to drag it out. The next part will be a little different, so keep an eye out for it sometime next week!
Ao3 | Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 5
July '85
Something is wrong when Steve drops off Rosemary. Eddie takes the ten-month-old baby with a cheery "Hiya, Rosie!" earning him a delighted giggle from the girl, but Steve seems out of it as he sets down the diaper bag.
"Everything okay, Stevie?" Eddie asks as he settles Rosie on his hip. She reaches out and wraps a hand around his guitar pick necklace but he barely notices, his attention focused on Steve. The younger nods and pushes a hand through his hair, and Eddie silently clocks the nervous habit.
"Yeah, just- just tired. I, uh, might be late picking Rosie up tonight. I'm closing, and it could take a while."
Eddie tips his head to the side, he knows there's something Steve isn't saying, but he lets it slide. "That's okay. If you want me to keep her overnight, just give me a call, okay? It's not a problem."
Steve gives him a tired smile and says "Thanks, Eddie. I really- I really appreciate you. What you do for Rosie. It means a lot to me."
Yeah, something is definitely wrong. As much as Eddie wants to dig, he doesn't. If Steve doesn't want to talk about it, then he'll leave it alone, but it doesn't erase the worry that settles in his stomach.
"Well, I care about you guys. You and Rosie. I just want to make sure you're both okay."
A soft blush settles across Steve's face and he takes a step back. "Thanks, Eddie. I'll see you tonight, yeah?"
"Yeah. Um, stay safe, Steve."
Steve nods and gives a soft “I will," before heading out of the trailer.
That was July 2nd, and it's now the 5th, and Eddie hasn’t heard from Steve at all. He's had Rosemary for three days, and he would be angry at Steve for abandoning his baby if he wasn't absolutely wracked with worry, the initial low-grade panic only increasing with each passing day.
The only time he can even start to relax is when Rosie gets fussy, and he carries her around the trailer singing 'Love Grows' into her hair, needing to be calm so she can be calm. He can tell that she misses Steve, that she knows something is off, and it breaks Eddie’s heart that he can't do anything about it.
Wayne has taken over Rosie's care this morning, is on the couch with the baby sat up against the cushions as he feeds her bits of plain cereal, and Eddie has only just stopped pacing long enough to eat his own breakfast (the same plain cereal, because he doesn't think he could stomach anything else).
They both freeze when the news cuts to a story about Starcourt, and Eddie's ears start ringing as the news anchor describes the sudden destruction of the mall late last night.
He feels a heavy hand on his shoulder and looks up to see Wayne suddenly in front of him. "Calm down now, son. You got that little girl over there who needs you to keep it together until we can find out what happened to her dad, got that?"
Eddie nods, just now realizing how tight his chest feels, and he takes a few deep breaths until the panic evens out. "Yeah. Okay, yeah."
So Eddie puts on a brave face and pretends like nothing is wrong. When Wayne leaves to run some errands, he works to keep Rosie distracted and happy and for the most part succeeds, until naptime.
Rosie is being extra fussy and Eddie is doing his best, carrying her around and singing softly, but just before she falls asleep she jerks herself back awake and starts crying again, and the cycle repeats a few times.
Eddie rubs soothing circles into her back, tries to get her calm enough to go down, but he freezes completely when she starts to babble sadly, and the soft “Dada dada…” coming from her little mouth is enough to send silent tears streaking down his face.
His breathing is shaky as he continues to sing, and eventually, finally, Rosie falls asleep. Eddie lays her on the bed and tucks a pillow in next to her so she doesn’t roll off in her sleep, and he barely makes it out of the room before he collapses to the floor.
He's gasping for breath, panic wracking his frame as he thinks about Steve. Did the guy just cut and run on Rosie? No, there’s no way that’s possible, Steve loves her far too much to just abandon her. Maybe he was caught up in the shit at the mall? Oh god, what happens to Rosie if Steve is… If he’s…
A knock sounds on the trailer door and it takes Eddie a long moment to pull himself together and get up off the floor, and he scrubs his hands over his face before he goes to answer it. He almost starts crying again when he sees Steve on the other side, still wearing that fucking uniform, his face beaten and bruised.
“Hi Eddie,” he says softly, and fuck, he sounds wrecked. “Sorry I didn’t call.”
"Fuck the phone call, Steve, your face!" Eddie grabs him, one hand clenching in that stupid sailor shirt as the other hovers over Steve's swollen cheek. "What the fuck happened to you?"
"Got beat up by some Russians," Steve replies, and Eddie can’t believe he’s cracking jokes while Eddie is trying his best to not have a breakdown. "I'm okay, though. I'm fine."
His hands come up to grab Eddie's wrists and, oh, Eddie is shaking. He pulls out of Steve's grip and throws his arms around the younger man, pulling him into a tight hug. "Fuck, when we heard about what happened at the mall, we were so fucking worried."
Steve hugs Eddie back, arms wrapping around him and holding him close, and Eddie relishes in the fact that Steve is here, that he’s safe. “I’m okay, Eddie. Doc said I’ll be worse for wear for the next week or so, but nothing serious.”
Eddie hums in disbelief and they just stay there, wrapped around each other, and Eddie isn’t quite sure who is comforting who at the moment. They break apart after a few minutes and Eddie pulls Steve inside the trailer.
"Where's Rosie?" Steve asks as he glances around, and Eddie nods towards the bedroom. "She's taking a nap, and I think you should do the same. No offense, Steve, but you look dead on your feet."
The younger chuckles softly and pushes a hand through his hair, and Eddie vaguely registers the bandages covering a few of his fingertips. “I feel like it. I think we’ve overstayed our welcome, though, so I’ll just get Rosie and go-”
Eddie shakes his head and starts pushing Steve towards the bedroom. “Nope, no, absolutely not. She literally just went down like ten minutes ago, and it took me half an hour because she was crying for you, and you’re not going to ruin my hard work. I’m gonna get you something to change into and you’re gonna take a fucking nap, okay?”
There’s a mutter of resignation, and when they enter the bedroom Steve melts when he sees Rosie on the bed, tears fill his eyes and he takes a shaky breath. “Fuck, I thought I’d never get to see her again.”
He steps over and brushes his fingers over her little hand, and Eddie looks away from the tender scene to dig through his dresser. He pulls out a pair of sweatpants and an oversized band shirt that he passes to the younger, who gives him a soft "Thanks."
While Steve is changing, Eddie grabs a spare blanket and pillow and drops them onto the floor by the bed. It won't be the most comfortable, but he doesn't want to risk accidentally waking Rosie from her nap, not when Steve needs some time to just crash.
He sits down on the pillow with his back propped against the bed, and then drags Steve onto the floor with him. The younger moves easily, lets Eddie bully him into laying down with his head in Eddie's lap, and Eddie drapes the blanket over him before brushing his fingers over soft but dirty hair.
"You don't have to baby me," Steve says, voice soft from exhaustion, and Eddie hums as he gently scratches at his scalp.
"I'm not babying you, Steve. You're hurt, and I just… Just let me take care of you, okay?"
Steve makes a soft noise in response, and everything is quiet for a while. It’s just long enough that Eddie thinks Steve has fallen asleep, when the younger speaks again, voice quiet.
“I watched Billy Hargrove die last night.”
Eddie feels like he’s been drenched in ice water, his gaze snaps down to the boy in his lap. “What?”
“He was there last night, when everything went to shit. It was… fucking awful, Eddie.” His hand grabs at Eddie’s pant leg, and he can feel that Steve is trembling a little. “What’s terrible is that I can’t even feel bad about it. Like, I feel bad that someone died, but not that it was him, if that makes sense.”
Eddie feels a little shell shocked at Steve’s admission, and he takes a deep breath. “Billy Hargrove was a piece of shit, Steve. It’s okay to feel empathetic that a life was lost, but that life did a lot of shitty things.”
He’s glad that Steve isn’t looking at him, that he can’t see the way that tears one again well up in Eddie's eyes. “But it’s still really fucked up that you had to go through that. Like, really fucked up. There’s no way I can understand what you’re feeling, but if you want someone to just talk to, I’m here for you, yeah?”
Steve nods a little, and there’s a brief pause before he says “Thank you, Eddie. This- Just being here, being with you helps a lot.”
And that. That creates a whole new wave of emotions that Eddie is severely unprepared to deal with at the moment. He cards his fingers through Steve’s hair again and does his best to keep his hand from shaking. “Glad I could help somehow. Just- get some sleep, Stevie.”
Tag list:
@luciana-rowan @bidisastersworld @little-gae-shit @thehumblefigtree @lifeisnotsobadonceyoustopcaring @estrellami-1 @shrimply-a-menace @anaibis @livelaughlexa @vampireinthesun @zerokrox-blog @mackdaddyofheimlichcountyy @idea-less-author @thegingerrapunzel @fantasyfr3ak @stevesbipanic @electrick-marionnett @tuesdaycats @seths-rogens @flustratedcas @qomrades @artiststarme @death-the-elf @itsanarrum @linkydinky06 @jaywhohasthegay @aboredowl @maya-custodios-dionach t @eerielake @smolbasilboy @freyaforestafay @gleek4twd @gayngerthings @newtstabber @lucasrightarm @huskysarelife @i-must-potato @thegingervulcan @novelnovella @ryebread375 @stardustonpages @trensu @otaku-bell-livemotto @thev01dd @demolvr @hellfireloserclub @beenovel @anzelsilver @f1ct1onwh0re
#it's july 🙃🙃🙃#i've had this part written for three weeks lol#so glad to finally get it out there#love grows#teen dad steve#steddie#steddie fanfic#steve harrington#eddie munson#stranger things#joey writes#those of you who read this far into the tags get to know that the next part will be july v2 with steve's pov
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dr spencer reid one shot
𝓲𝓶𝓪𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓮 - prehaps one day
𝔀𝓪𝓻𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 - literally none, it's fluff, it's cheese, it's cute and it's love
𝓭𝓮𝓼𝓬𝓻𝓲𝓹𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 - five times the bau think spencer has proposed to reader + the one time he actually has
𝓪𝓾𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓻'𝓼 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓮 - the title is horrendous but if anyone has any better name, please tell me cause this name gives me all the cringe. also, i've seen so many of these but my favourite one is from the blog fromeden and you should def check it out!
masterlist
---
one
penelope was certain, absolutely sure, completely convinced that spencer, your boyfriend, popped the question. she was like, ten million percent sure. although she wasn't a profiler but the techncial analyst, she started to pick up what she thought were tell-tale signs that gave her the impression that spencer had put a ring on it.
the technical analyst was so sure of herself that, she told derek and david. telling them both that the proposal must have happened over the public holiday. the public holiday that, obviously, everyone but the bau and rest of the fbi had off.
"...just look at them, derek! i swear to god, 187 has proposed," penelope squeals, watching the way you two were all over each other
"come on now, penelope. you could be overreacting--"
"--in fairness, look at her left hand, she's clearly covering it. it has to be a ring," david inserts, causing a slight scare for derek and penelope, worrying that you and spencer could have overheard
"and how would you know, mr three wives?" derek sassed, penelope's eyes widening as david chuckled
"isn't it obvious, derek? her left hand is hidden because she wants to tell us rather than us finding it out beforehand," david touches his nose which makes derek and penelope giggle
however, it wasn't until jj walked past that shut down the rumours of a potential bau wedding on its way.
"you guys are crazy. the reason why she's hiding her left hand is because, if you guys were good at profiling each other, you would know she has always rested her right hand over her left one. she isn't engaged and spence hasn't proposed to her. y'all are crazy sometimes i swear," jj chuckled, shaking her head which made penelope and derek down in the dumps whereas david just chuckled
it wasn't until after you and spencer finished the paperwork that you realised that the entire time, derek, penelope, david and jj had all been bickering. bickering about what they thought was your proposal that they had completely missed because it was done in secret.
in which, to clarify, did not happen. jj was right, the "tell" of you being engaged because you were hiding your left hand was false. you have always hidden your left hand by covering it with your right hand if you leave it resting on a table.
two
it was a wednesday, middle of the week and the team were all getting ready to finish up their work day. pleading for at least a full three-day weekend of rest. although spencer was normally always flustered, this wednesday, he looked even more flustered then usual. it felt like he was running around like a headless chicken looking for something.
"you good, reid? whatchu looking for?" derek questioned, his head poking out from a wall as he was leaving the office
"uh, yeah, i...um...i'm taking y.n for a weekend trip and i printed off our booking for it but, i can't seem to find it," he mutters as he continues to look for it
"ooh, that's exciting. where to, any particular reason why?" derek teases as he moves to lean against the wall
stopping his search for a second, spencer sighed in agitation, "down by the mountains cause i know she's always wanted to go there for ages. i booked a loft, i printed the booking info like moments ago and now i can't find it!" he was getting angrier and for once, derek didn't want to instigate him
derek smiles, noticing it was at a completely different printer, "this booking info?" he says as he picks it up and hands it to the younger agent who breathes a sigh of reliefe
"thank you so much, morgan! i l...you are my favourite person in the world right now other than y.n!" spencer feels himself calm down which is when, of course, derek instigates him with hints of a marriage proposal
"sooo, with the holiday getaway this weekend, what's it for...you know, anything special other than just because y.n's never been before?" derek teased as spencer turned back around and gave derek what would be classified as a "stank face"
"umm, no...no...we're going because y.n's genuinely never gone to the mountains and i thought, we have the time and the money so, we're going for the weekend...why are you asking?" spencer gave a look of confusion as derek just nodded his head embarrassment
derek started backing away when spencer ran after him, the booking for the holiday in his hands, "why are you asking, morgan? stop running away!" thankfully, derek hadn't run too far as he laughed slightly
"umm, i just thought you guys were gonna come back with a special announcement but, don't worry, it's clearly not that and i apologise for jumping to a conclusion that is obviously not happening. have a great vacation you two. make sure you send us some photos after knowing that you won't be texting or calling us at all," derek chuckled as that seemed to satisfy spencer and he smiled back, nodding
"will do, derek. the photos will be sent from y.n's phone not mine. have a good weekend yourself, don't do anything i wouldn't do," spencer smiled, his bag across his body as derek smiled back
"i will, thanks. see you monday, hopefully tuesday but, we shouldn't be too sure because, as we know from past situations, criminals and serial killers don't typically like to take vacations!" derek chuckled as spencer nodded his head before leaving whilst derek didn't
and that was because, hidden away behind the wall where derek was leaning against, was penelope and david, all waiting to see if derek got the information about the "proposal".
"and, derek? what did he say? will there be a ring on y.n's finger when they come back?" penelope tried, a look of hope in her eyes as derek just shook his head, david chuckling
"nope, sorry baby girl. just a vacation in the mountains because y.n's never been. and, before you ask, yes, i did subtly ask but, no, there will be no ring on her finger when they get back..." derek trailed off as penelope growled in annoyance as derek and david's eyes grew wide in shock
"...oh come on! i really thought it would be this time!" penelope was truly devastated that her best friend wouldn't be getting proposed to as derek and david, again, giggled
"sorry baby girl but, i think pretty boy's waiting for a specific day if he has even thought about it," derek shrugged as david nodded his head and left, leaving derek and penelope with one last thing
"and if he is, we shouldn't be pushing it or hounding him over it. he'll do it when they are both ready for it!" david says whilst walking out of the office
penelope and derek share looks of, even though they hated it, they couldn't help but agree with david's statement. if it hadn't happened this time and the time before, it's clear that it's not happening just yet. because, one, either spencer and y.n haven't talked about it yet or, they simply aren't ready for it.
three
by the third time that derek, penelope and david thought that spencer proposed, jj, emily and now aaron was even watching, looking for any new tells. new tells that could possibly tell them if spencer had proposed yet or not. and, obviously, because it's the bau, there is at least three different bets going on all at the same time. which makes no sense clearly but, to them it makes sense.
this time it was emily that noticed something that could have been possibly a little off for spencer. he had a little bag on his desk. whilst it wasn't out in plain sight, it wasn't being hidden either. so, emily just decided to go for it and straight up ask him what it was.
"hey, spence, what's in the bag?" emily questioned, a little giddy glint in her eye
spencer smiled, making eye contact with emily, "oh, um *shy chuckle* it's just an anniversary gift..." he trailed off nervously, hoping she wasn't close by
emily felt her shoulders deflate. she knew she should have felt a little sad that it wasn't likely an engagement ring but, she still couldn't believe that it had so quickly got to their anniversary.
"what is it? some jewellery? what number anniversary is now, spence?" emily no longer cared about the bet or the possibility of an engagement and wedding
she just cared that spencer and y.n were still so head over heels in love with each other. even though she knew they'd never fall out of love with one another.
"oh, just a matching necklace and earrings set. we've been dating. for like, four years now. i remember overhearing from someone, it may have been jj or even will that you never gift a partner a ring unless you plan to marry them. so, i decided to get her a matching emerald necklace and earrings because y.n's already got so many rings, not just her own but also ones that my mom has gifted her," spencer smiled shyly as emily's face lit up
"aw, that's so sweet. and happy four years, spence. four years is amazing. you and y.n should be so proud of that. and, good on you for deciding to not get a ring as i know so many people at the four year mark who would have gotten a ring and it turn out that they weren't ready to be married. you're really a smart man, spence. i'm sure y.n'll love the present," emily smiled, ruffling his hair in pride for the young boy genius as spencer chuckled, fixing his hair as emily walked away
curious, of course, derek and penelope, gave her the look. and, emily, with a sense of pride, shook her head no. again, derek and penelope were saddened but, when emily explained, they felt a sense of pride wash over them. the same pride that washed over emily that he knew not to gift y.n a ring if it either wasn't a promise ring, engagement ring or a replacement ring for one that broke.
however, it was at this point, the third time that the team thought that spencer was going to propose that, he actually started planning it. obviously, it doesn't take long before rumours start to travel throughout the office. so, it wasn't long before spencer and even y.n began to hear of the rumours of the two young agents getting engaged. and, that was when the couple started to talk about it. because, like thought of as one of the reasons why it hasn't happened yet, spencer and y.n just hadn't spoken about it. not because they didn't want to marry each other, they just hadn't spoken about it in proper detail. until now when they did start a conversation on it after a day of paperwork in the office on their four-year-anniversary and they were each gifted four gifts each. and now, with the knowledge of his girlfriend's ring-size, he decided to ring up hotch, because, like most people, spencer would not have guessed that hotch was in on all the rumours and the bets so, he asked him for advice.
let's just say that it was a struggle for hotch to keep a straight face when spencer asked him if at some point during a free day of work that he could help him in finding an engagement ring for y.n. yet, hotch managed to keep his cool and, obviously, didn't tell the rest of the team who were in on the rumours and bets about it because, one, he didn't want to break spencer's trust and two, whilst he did participate in team rumours and bets, he would never rat out to the betters if he was on the other side.
four
it's a quiet and slow day when out of nowhere, like, complete nowhere. everyone, except for spencer and y.n, rush into penelope's bat cave. worrying that something bad had happened like someone had been killed or arrested, it was confusing when they just all saw penelope basically hyperventilating.
"...are you alright penelope?" jj questions with worry, wondering why penelope was literally hyperventilating if no one had died or been arrested
"i...i think it's the day!" she struggles to say as the team all look at each other in confusion
"what? you think it's the day? what day? it's a monday, penelope, what could be so exciting about a monday?" emily then questioned as penelope bursted with another round of excitement which scared everyone
"but that's just it! i think it's happened! i really think pretty boy and pretty girl are engaged!" penelope screeches with excitement as emily shakes her head, derek, jj, david and aaron smile
"and why do you think that, baby girl?" derek speaks up as penelope squeals yet again
but, she doesn't say anything and aaron's eyes widened, "what did you do, penelope? what did you hack into?" he was worried that she had somehow found out about the conversation he had with spencer about him helping spencer out with finding an engagement ring
"the hotel that they will be staying in for their belated three-year-anniversary..." penelope backs up, trailing off of her sentence as no one notices the breath of relief that aaron breathes out
"...wait, so you think he's gonna propose to her at a hotel, baby girl?" derek questions in confusion
however, that was when you walked in and let's just say you were beyond confused.
"umm, who is going to propose to me where?" you blurted out as everyone's eyes widened
and no one spoke up. that was, until david did and let's just say, he truly saved the day here, "oh, no one darling. we're just talking about the time i proposed to my second wife in a hotel however many years ago it was..." he trailed off and everyone just hoped you believed it
and...you did. you didn't even question it and you should have cause you're a profiler but an amazing one at that. so, it confused the rest of the team when you didn't question it.
"...oh, okay, cool, sorry, my bad. well, umm, if anyone's interested, spence has bought all of us some coffee so, we'll be waiting for you guys in the conference room with it when y'all are ready!" you smiled as you left penelope's bat cave to spencer who waited in the conference room
as soon as everyone knew you were out of sight and out of hearing range, they all let out the heavy breaths that they had no idea they were holding on to.
"holy...lord jesus christ, how on earth did she believe that lie, rossi?!" penelope bursted out as giggles followed as did head shakes of shock and wide eyes
"i truly have no idea but, well done me i guess!" david chuckled as everyone shortly followed after him as he left for his morning coffee that was waiting for him in the conference room that for once, he didn't pay for
"yeah, well done you, david! i seriously thought she wouldn't believe it but it shocked me more that she didn't question you," aaron chuckled in bewilderment as david patted his unit chief's shoulder
afterwards, the team realise that, whilst penelope did "hack" into the hotel that you and spencer were booked into for that night and the following weekend, that it wasn't because he was proposing to you. it was genuinely because you guys didn't get to celebrate your four-year-anniversary that was the third time that they thought a proposal was happening. so, instead, you guys were going to celebrate it on that friday and saturday instead.
five
it's this day, the fifth time that the team thinks a proposal is gonna happen that it's hotch that teases the group. sending the team back at quantico his location that he was in with spencer.
"you guys will never guess where i am!" hotch sniggers cheekily which earns some confusion from the team who were basically bored out of the minds
with so much paperwork to fill out, derek almost groaned at his unit chief, "oh, i don't know, hotch, are you by any chance, bullying a spoilt child?" he replies which earns a laugh from aaron but also from the rest of the team, including y.n, although it's obvious she wasn't paying attention
only laughing because everyone else was, hotch knew it was the perfect time to tell the rest of the team, "i'm at the jeweller with spencer, and it's a fancy one," he smiles over the phone
"gold thanks, hotch, silver makes me look discoloured," emily jokes, shockingly not realising the situation after she started to pull away from the bets of wanting spencer and y.n to get engaged
"good to know prentiss but, i'm here with spencer because ages ago, when you guys thought for a third time that he was proposing to y.n for help in my opinion on a certain piece he was looking to buy,"
that was when it clicks in emily's but in everyone else's heads, penelope slipping out of the chair, "wait, is this finally the day that it happens?" she just about whispers with her eyes wide and her hands already starting to perisperate
"i seriously think so guys. well, reid's walking back over and i can tell that y.n's attention is turning back to you guys so, i'll talk to you all later," aaron hangs up and focuses back on spencer
seeing that aaron was about to uncharacteristcally freak out, spencer spoke up, "and, yes, it's the time to do it hotch. it's why i asked you back those few weeks ago when everyone thought i was gonna do it for the third time i think *chuckles*..." spencer trails off as aaron's eyes nearly fall out of his socket
he nearly chokes on his own saliva, "wait, you weren't joking when you were asking me for advice on an engagement ring?" hotch whispers, realising just how honoured he suddenly felt to be given this opportunity
"yes...i want you to help me and give me advice on an engagement ring for y.n. i was being serious that day when i came to you and asked. i know she loves emeralds because of the emerald necklace and earring set i gave her for our four-year but, i don't know if that's her style in rings too..." spencer trailed off, suddenly feeling overwhelmed and stressed, grateful that he had hotch with him
overcome with emotion and seeing spencer overcome with emotion, hotch had to fight himself to not give the boy genius a huge hug. resisting however, hotch takes in some deep breaths which causes spencer to watch and copy so he could calm himself down as well.
"well, whilst y.n loves to wear emeralds on necklaces and earrings, do you know if she has any emerald rings? cause that's a start and if she does have emerald rings and wears them quite often, then, yes, that would be the choice of engagement ring you'd buy. but, if she usually wears a different stone more than the emerald then go for that one, alright?" aaron advised as spencer smiled and nodded his head, feeling more confident
as a smile overcomes his face, he pulls out his phone and goes straight to his photo album of you. majority of the photos you are wearing a specific ring with a specific stone and whilst it wasn't an emerald, it was a green sapphire ring that you got given by your mother that you always wore on your ring finger. you would wear it until the day you would then change it for the real life green sapphire engagement ring you'd get when you'd eventually get proposed to.
looking at aaron's pride-filled face of how, just like figuring out an unsub, spencer quickly figured out that the type of engagement ring you wanted. and how it was the exact same as the one you had been wearing ever since your mom had given it to you. except, whilst it would be similiar, it would be different because spencer made sure that whilst the stone was sapphire, he still made sure that there was obvious engagement ring bling on the ring so it was obvious it was an engagement ring. and not just a replacement for the one you already had because, that sapphire ring hadn't broke, it was just being replaced for the real deal.
and, of course, spencer didn't really need aaron's opinion on the actual ring itself, he just needed the help in figuring out what stone and whether it was emerald or sapphire. so, when aaron helped him in figuring it out by asking him if there was a specific stone that you wore more often then the other then, that was the stone of choice.
"hotch...thank you for coming with me and helping me. i'm glad you were able to come with me," spencer thanked his unit chief, pure sincereity seeping from not just his words but his body language
and aaron smiled, "my pleasure spencer and, don't be thanking me, it was an honour to help you find the right one for y.n," aaron replies, not stopping himself from hugging the boy genius this time. making the young agent sincerely chuckle, he welcomed the hug wonderfully
feeling pride and like a father to the young agent, aaron couldn't help the urge of a sudden flood of tears that had started to well up in his eyes as the two agents reached the suv.
the one
"...hey guys, what are you all doing on the 30th of june?" spencer asks, completely out of nowhere since it was another paperwork day
"that's like, nine months away, you really think i plan that far in advance, spence?" jj questions, nevertheless checking her calender at the same time, her concentration from her paperwork fleeting for just a second
"to be fair, i was not expecting for that reaction," you smiled devishly, clearly hiding something, smiling at spencer, "let's go once more and if they don't get this, i think i'm just gonna throw it at them. penelope, emily, jayje, would you like to be apart of my bridesmaids?"
just when you thought you were going to have to throw the ring at them, a delayed and very loud gasp falls through the room as everyone turns to stone. it's penelope that is the first one to regain her composure, "wait, what are you saying?"
with a joking roll of your eyes, you hold up your left hand and wriggle your fingers...oh and the new, upgraded sapphire engagement ring, "aren't you gonna ask where i got the new upgraded sapphire ring?" you pretty much cackle like an evil witch, surprisngly enjoying the reactions
aaron then stands up, since he wasn't in his office and pushed his chair away, "you actually did it?" he's soft in his question to spencer
"i did it," the boy genius nods, his smile wider than ever before
"you've broken the team, spence," emily chuckles, looking all around her to see everyone still frozen in their tracks on their seats
however, not for long as penelope, jj and emily jump out of their seats and rush over to you, "why didn't you tell us the second you asked her, spencer?! of course...of course i'm free that day and even if i'm not i'll make myself be free! and, excuse me, how dare you ask me to be your bridesmaid with the insinuation that i'd say no, I'D LOVE to be your bridesmaid!"
nearly toppling over you, penelope smashes into you for a hug as you couldn't help the laugh that erupts from your throat. after penelope's over the top reaction, the guys, derek, david and aaron stood up out of their seats and also crowded around you and spencer. of course then came all the congratulatory hugs and face squishes and wanting to take a closer look at the upgraded sapphire engagement ring.
and, obviously, the next day and then actually the next couple of weeks, penelope and jj and emily, everyone really, starts to bring in little cakes and muffins and things to keep the celebrations of the new bau engagement up and continuing. because, now that the engagement had happened, that meant it was now time to plan the wedding. but, you and spencer didn't care, you just loved that after waiting for so long, the team that is, they finally got their moment to celebrate their two little bau babies be engaged because not only were you even more in love with your now fiancé but you just felt like you were being attacked with love at every angle and you loved it and you embraced it.
oh, and, remember that bet that was going around? yeah, it was actually hotch that won all of them so, he got all of the money. shockingly, he managed to correctly predict the exact date of the proposal without even being given the date from spencer. because, even though aaron helped spencer in figuring out the ring was a sapphire and not an emerald, that didn't mean he asked nor was given any other information about the day of the proposal. only that the ring was a sapphire so, it was pretty funny and a shock to the system that hotch predicted the exact date without knowing it. and he didn't get the day before or the day after, he got the exact day on the dot. for a while, certain team members were a bit suspicious (derek and penelope) but a couple of days later and they just found it amusing and amazing that hotch was such an amazing predicter and was then asked to predict the day that the bachelorette party was going to be on. but, that was obviously when hotch drew the line and made his team go back to their paperwork. because, crime unfortunately doesn't stop just because two federal agents get engaged.
---
this was so much fun to write and i have always wanted to do one of these but have always been too scared to but i'm glad i finally decided to just do it.
ok bye ily xx
wc; no idea soz
#criminal minds#fluff#spencer reid x bau reader#jennifer jareau#derek morgan#emily prentiss#david rossi#aaron hotchner#penelopegarcia
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