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mostlycompetentwriter · 4 years

Text

Streetlight

F/M Pairing: OC x Seo Changbin (Stray Kids)

Warnings: Angst (this is kinda sad at the beginning); fluff; mild language

Genre: Family AU; Haven Sequel; Strangers to Lovers

Word Count: 7.8K

Summary: For a long time, Changbin’s priorities were centered around the need to take care of Y/N and the rest of his adopted family. However, as their dynamic has continued to evolve, he starts to feel like they no longer really need him. So, maybe Changbin feels a little bit lonely these days, but that all changes when he meets a mysterious stranger who wants to take care of him instead.

A/N: Like Haven itself, I really love this one. Special thanks to the anonymous user who requested this! I wish I could tag you.

Whenever Changbin found himself questioning why he was forced to endure the monotony of a 9-5 desk job with no reprieve, including outrageous weekend hours and overtime, he was always reminded of his family and a persistent desire to take care of them. It was a sound justification for putting up with the rude customers who took one look at his superintendent badge and immediately targeted him as the subject of their endless complaints. For example, they might say something like, “The packaging is all wrong!” or, “The shipment label should be 152 instead of 151!” and, his personal favorite, “Do you actually know what you’re doing?”

In those instances, Changbin would paste on his best fake smile and kindly tell those customers that, yes, he did have some inkling of what he was doing, even if he sometimes doubted himself. After all, his job wasn’t that hard, but it was demanding of his time and efforts, and Changbin was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he wasn’t meant for a customer service position. But quitting would mean jeopardizing the success and good-fortune that had befallen his family during recent weeks. It would mean risking their overstock of food and secure funding for Felix’s college classes. It would mean forcing the younger members to work, or exposing Minho to more hours at the warehouse.

That certainly wouldn’t be fair to Y/N who had come to form a very strong dependency on Minho, even if their relationship had been a major shock for the rest of the family when it was first discovered. The circumstances surrounding the revelation weren’t exactly ideal, and Changbin had been a little hurt that Y/N felt the need to hide something like that from him. She had come a long away from the shy pre-teen who would snuggle next to him at night and tell him about her dreams for the future.

His heart would sometimes ache for those days because it was nice to be needed. Changbin had a people-pleasing personality, and he often formed strong bonds with those that he cared about. But his love for Y/N was especially strong, and Changbin wondered if Y/N ever missed those nights when she would crawl into Changbin’s bed and ask him to protect her from those horrible nightmares.

It sometimes made him sad when he realized that Y/N didn’t need him like she used to when she first arrived at the house. In the same way that most of his family members had outgrown their childish stages, maturing into young adults who were starting to become independent. Even Jeongin and Seungmin had reached that stage where they could handle themselves, attending school during the day before coming home and isolating themselves away from the others.

In fact, when he really thought about it, most of his family members would spend the majority of their time according to whatever fascinated their current whims. Thankfully, Chan had decided that Friday nights would remain exclusive, and Changbin might be lucky enough to have Y/N crawl into his lap, or one of the other members cuddle close to his side - where he would like to have them for the rest of their lives because it felt nice to keep them safe.

“Excuse me, young man, but is this really the best you can do on stamps?”

Changbin sighed at the interruption, studying the elderly woman who had disturbed his thoughts. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. “We don’t sell anything else.”

The old woman scoffed at him before walking away, and Changbin wondered what Y/N might be doing at that moment...

It was late when Changbin found himself trudging down the hallway, ignoring the sound of Jisung whining about how Changbin had bought the wrong kind of snacks. He really wasn’t in the mood to deal with Jisung, especially when the younger seemed to have forgotten that Changbin took the long way home just to buy those snacks for him in the first place. Instead, Changbin just wanted to curl up in bed and go to sleep because he had another early shift tomorrow, and it made him feel extremely unmotivated to endure another day of his shitty office job.

In fact, what Changbin really wanted was Y/N, but when he paused outside of the bedroom that she shared with Jeongin and Seungmin, he could hear the sound of laughter coming from the other side. Changbin took a deep breath, cracking the door open just enough to see Minho and Y/N lying in bed together, watching some sort of video on one of the laptops that belonged to the older members. Changbin swallowed hard, closing the door again before he walked up the stairs and found his room at the other end.

He paused for a moment, looking back at the empty staircase, and wondered what the others were doing since nobody else bothered to greet him when he came home except for Jisung. Consequently, there was an unpleasant sensation swimming around his heart, and Changbin tried to ignore it as he walked into his bedroom, shrugging off his jacket before falling into bed still dressed in his work uniform. For a moment, Changbin was perfectly quiet, even while his mind was loud and refused to give him a moment of peace.

But then he eventually identified what those unpleasant feelings really were, and he hadn’t felt it this profoundly since before his own father kicked him out of his house: it was loneliness. Changbin felt alone in a house full of 8 other people, and when the realization finally settled, Changbin felt a stray tear fall down the side of his face. Because it hurts to feel alone.

It was a struggle then, when he glanced at his alarm clock, vision blurry from the salty wetness that continued to steadily leak from the corners of his eyes, and he could barely perceive the time displayed on the screen. Nevertheless, Changbin had been experiencing a lot of trouble falling asleep in recent weeks, and tonight seemed like it would be another restless plight of tossing and turning. But when had this started? Changbin couldn’t really pinpoint the exact moment when his life started to feel like it was falling apart - like he was losing everything that he had once treasured.

Honestly speaking, even before his stupid job, Changbin had felt like shit because Chan was constantly on his ass about staying at home all the time. It wasn’t even his fault, but it felt like Chan was determined to break him - to pressure him so far that he would literally split in half from the constant push and pull. Then again, Changbin had always experienced moments when he felt like there was nothing he could to prevent his most depressing thoughts. Maybe it was really because of his past - his terrible childhood and his rotten excuse for a father who decided that Changbin didn’t deserve his love or affection.

Yeah, maybe he had some daddy issues, but he also had to watch his own mother die when he was eight-years-old. For a while after her death, Changbin felt like there were huge parts of him that was left empty, and it had taken an awfully long time to fill those places again. But his family living with him at their precious Haven helped a lot because he was able to occupy his time with taking care of others. But Changbin had also learned how to put on a mask of indifference and pretend that he was okay when he felt unusually sad. Maybe he had gotten so good at pretending that he had started to fool even himself.

Perhaps it was finally catching up to him.

Changbin shook his head, wiping away the tears as he rolled onto his side. His eyes explored the darkness of his room until they settled on his nightstand where he paused on the little stuffed Munchlax that sat next to his lamp - a gift from Y/N after he had stayed up with her for an entire week when she had the flu. “I’m beary grateful,” she had said, giggling with childish delight when she first offered him the gift.

It seemed inconsequential at the time, but Changbin had always treasured the little gift, and when he brought it next to him in bed, he could pretend like it was Y/N. He could remember the nights when she curled up next to him, sharing secrets that she never told anyone else. He could feel a little bit better when he was feeling down, and Changbin savored the beautiful moment of peace that the stuffed plushy brought him before he closed his eyes to sleep.

The next morning, Changbin slept through his alarm, and there was a small part of him that desperately wanted to just ignore his responsibilities for one day and remain warm beneath his bed sheets. But life had different plans for him, especially with Bang Chan in charge of the house. “Get up,” Chan said, and Changbin grunted when he felt the older pull the sheets into the floor. “I thought you had a morning shift.”

“I do,” Changbin grumbled, and he cursed under his breath when Chan finally left the room.

Changbin sighed when he realized that the potential for more sleep was completely gone, and he was forced to shower and dress himself before walking down the stairs. It was too early for most of the members, but Changbin greeted Chan and Minho as he dropped down into one of the kitchen chairs. “Coffee?” Changbin asked, looking over at Chan.

“Hyunjin broke the damn thing,” Chan said. “We’ll have to wait until this weekend to go shopping.”

“What an asshole,” Minho remarked, and Changbin nodded his agreement.

“We’re making a list,” Chan said. “I get my bonus check tomorrow, and we can decide on what needs to be replaced.”

“The hot water heater should be a priority,” Changbin said. “I only had enough for a ten-minute shower.”

“How long do you need?” Chan asked, and Changbin snorted because he knew that Chan would only agree to make expensive purchases when he decided that they were, indeed, absolutely critical. “What do you think, Minho?”

“Y/N and I usually take showers together,” he said with a suggestive raise of his eyebrows.

Chan immediately voiced his complaints, explaining to Minho that neither he nor Changbin wanted to hear about their exploits. Changbin especially was still not used to hearing Minho or Y/N talk about the explicit parts of their relationship. But Minho was always perfectly willing to share.

“Add condoms to this list,” Minho continued. “We’re almost out.”

“Come on, Minho,” Chan muttered, but he still wrote down the request. “I’ll think about the hot water heater.”

“You two decide,” Changbin said, rising from the table as he grabbed his keys off the counter.

“You’re not going to eat?” Chan asked with a worried tone, but Changbin chose to ignore him as he walked outside onto the porch, inhaling the fresh, morning air before approaching his car.

The old van was unreliable, but Changbin didn’t have much of a choice when it came to his preferred choice of transportation. They were lucky enough to find the van on sale at a price that they could afford, but it was still hard to find used cars these days that satisfied their budget. And Changbin spent ten minutes jostling his keys in the lock before he managed to open the driver’s side door, turning over the ignition three times before the van offered a half-hearted rumble.

On most days, Changbin was forced to cross his fingers that the old van would get him to work and back without falling to pieces. Changbin rolled his eyes at the thought of bringing it up to Chan because the least he could do was allow Changbin to bring it to a mechanic. There was definitely a problem if the check engine light stayed on 24/7.

“Please don’t leave me stranded,” Changbin said, easing backwards out of the driveway before gently navigating the van along the back roads that he had plotted out since he couldn’t handle the highway.

He briefly recalled when he first got the van because it was a “shiny” new toy for the younger members to savor, and both Jeongin and Seungmin used to beg Changbin to take them for rides at night. And he could never refuse them, gliding up and down the roads while playing their favorite music over the terrible sound system. But the younger boys loved those occasions, and they often talked to Changbin about any sort of worries or concerns that plagued their minds.

Like the time Jeongin had a problem with another kid in his class who picked on him for the clothes that he wore. At first, Changbin tried to satisfy Jeongin’s insistence that new clothes would solve everything, and he dug into his savings account to buy him new jeans and shirts. But, of course, the bully only found something else to tease him about, and Changbin couldn’t stand the way Jeongin would start crying when he told him about how much his feelings were hurt. Which is why, on an unforgettable spring morning, Changbin defied Chan’s orders to stay out of it and drove Jeongin to school only to confront the bully in person. Apparently, the kid was so upset by Changbin’s words, that he told the school officials, and Changbin and Chan had to apologize to the kid’s parents for the mishap.

However, that little shit certainly never bothered Jeongin ever again.

Changbin smiled at the recollection. Even if Chan had been furious with him, he had never regretted his actions. It was just one story that he had of many concerning the members of his family, and the lengths he was willing to go to ensure their happiness.

Even at the cost of his own.

“Excuse me, but I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes!”

Changbin sighed, shouldering aside the poor customer service aide who was clearly out of his league trying to help the middle-aged woman who was seconds away from demanding to see the manager. “Hi,” Changbin said, hoping that the frustration that he felt wasn’t evident in his tone. “I’m very sorry, ma’am. Can you tell me what you’re looking for?”

The woman crossed her arms over her chest, cocking out one hip in a posture that clearly screamed privileged. But Changbin didn’t have the authority to throw this woman out for causing a scene inside the post office; instead, he’s forced to listen to her complaints for another ten minutes before he finally offered a compromise that satisfied her audacious demands and allowed him to keep his rational sanity.

“Have a nice day!”

“We’ll see about that,” the woman muttered, and Changbin quickly made the decision to take one of his mandatory breaks even though he only had an hour left on his shift.

“Bitch,” Changbin grumbled, walking into the back room and sitting down on one of the chairs surrounding his office’s snack machine. “Who the hell ate all of the M&M’s?” Changbin whined, and he wondered, not for the first time, if the universe was conspiring against him.

He settled for a candy bar, checking his phone for any messages, but he wasn’t surprised to see that nobody had reached out. The only people who would try to contact him were his family members, but they knew that he was working. But it still made Changbin feel sad for reasons he couldn’t totally figure out, and he didn’t have enough time to wrestle with complex feelings that made him question whether he really wanted to go straight home after work.

However, when his shift finally ended, Changbin was driving down the same backroads that he always endured, shuffling through the three radio stations that the van managed to pick-up including some sort of EDM station, Country Music Today, and the Classical Hits. Yeah, it wasn’t the best selection, and Changbin distinctly remembered having more options when he first bought the stupid thing.

But he also should’ve known that having such negative thoughts would never lead to anything good, and Changbin was already cursing when he felt the van start to shake and refuse to budge over 25-miles-per-hour. Consequently, Changbin was forced to pull over on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere with questionable cell service. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted, slamming his hands against the steering wheel before he opened the door.

At that point, Changbin was fed up with everything, and his emotions were bordering on the edge of volatile as he kicked the driver’s side door, growling when he realized that he had left a dent behind in the metal. “Stupid fucking piece of shit!” he yelled, slamming his hands down on the hood before he unlatched the metal piece keeping the damn thing from flying into his windshield.

Immediately, a huge cloud of smoke erupted in his face, and he failed to waft the offending spray away from his eyes which started to burn as a result. “What the fuck?” he grunted, squinting as he tried to figure out where the smoke was even coming from. He wasn’t a fucking mechanic, and his limited knowledge made him doubt that he should be messing around with the little black lid that, perhaps, had something to do with the engine...

“Are you okay?” a gentle voice inquired from somewhere behind him, and Changbin turned around in surprise.

For a moment, Changbin was rendered speechless, looking the unfamiliar stranger up and down before he realized something quite profound: she was beautiful. “Uh...” Changbin trailed off, pointing at his van. “I broke down.”

“I can try to give you a jump,” she offered, and Changbin nodded his head while the woman smiled. “Has this happened before?”

“Not like this,” Changbin said, watching her return to her own car, and no, Changbin was not staring at her ass.

“It’s probably the radiator,” she explained, wrapping the battery cables around her arm. “But I can look at the engine for you.”

Changbin nodded, watching the kind stranger sit down behind the wheel, attempting to turn over the ignition with no luck. “It’s not the battery,” she said. “Believe it or not.”

Changbin shrugged. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“That’s fine,” she said, giving him one of the most genuine smiles that he had ever seen. “I can help.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Changbin said, and he stood aside to allow her access to the van’s plethora of interesting offerings under the hood.

“My name is Sara by the way,” she said. “I’m a mechanic downtown.”

“Really?”

“My brother actually owns a shop,” she explained. “I can have it towed there for you. Free of charge.”

“F-free?” Changbin stuttered because he knew that those kind of services cost more than a pretty penny, but Sara seemed perfectly indifferent.

“Yeah.” She laughed, raising her arms above her head and exposing a sliver of skin at her stomach. “Is that okay? I can also take you home.”

“Oh!” Changbin remarked like the intellect that he was these days. “There’s no need for that, I can call someone.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, fetching her own phone from a loose pocket. “I’ll call the office and send for the tow truck. My brother does work for pretty low prices, and I think he can save your car for you. As long as you’re okay with that?”

“That would be great!” Changbin said. “I mean, it’s been a while since it’s had anything done.”

Sara nodded, holding out her phone for Changbin. “Just give me your number. We can call you and keep you informed, and we won’t do anything pricey without your permission.”

“Thank you,” Changbin said, quickly adding his phone number under the new contact option. “You’re literally a lifesaver.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said, leaning against the side of the van. “Do you live around here?”

“Just down the road,” Changbin said, dialing Chan’s number before holding the phone up to his ear. “But, seriously, I’m really grateful for all of this.”

“Please, don’t mention it,” she said. “You looked like you were having a rough day, and I know how that feels. Like, when the whole world seems like it’s falling down around you, the last thing you need is something like this to happen.”

Changbin chuckled, finding himself enamored with the way Sara liked to chew on her bottom lip as if in deep thought. “Yeah,” he said, hearing Chan’s voice reach out to him from the other end. “But it’s not always bad.”

Changbin called Chan to come pick him up after Sara made arrangements with her brother to tow the van to their shop downtown. She smiled at Changbin and reassured him that everything would be handled. “I just want to make sure that you’re okay,” she said, and Changbin didn’t know how to respond to that because it had been a long time since someone wanted to take care of him.

She eventually left after Changbin reassured her that Chan was on his way, but he could still see her lingering around her car until Chan finally pulled over to the side. “Hey! Get in already!”

Changbin closed his eyes, and quickly made himself comfortable in the passenger’s seat after Chan’s embarrassing comment. “Just drive,” Changbin muttered.

Chan obeyed, pulling back onto the road before letting out an irritated sigh. “You said on the phone that you took care of the van,” Chan said. “How much will it cost to have it towed?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing!?”

Changbin smirked. “I met someone who offered to have it towed for free. She’s bringing it to her brother’s shop downtown.”

“A mechanic’s shop?” Chan asked. “We can’t really afford anything outrageous...”

“She said that she would call when they found the problem,” Changbin said. “We don’t have pay anything unless we have the work done.”

Chan scoffed, reaching up to adjust his mirror. “If it’s something to do with the engine, then we might as well have the damn thing sent to the junkyard. We’d have more luck buying something else.”

“Yeah,” Changbin agreed absent-mindedly because he couldn’t stop thinking about Sara. “Did you buy the stupid snacks Jisung asked for?”

“I bought what you sent me,” Chan replied, and he sent Changbin a look that said: if it’s wrong, then it’s your fault!

“Thanks for helping out,” Changbin muttered sarcastically, and he resigned himself to looking out the window for the remainder of the trip home while Chan continued to talk on and on about possible options to replace the van. It wasn’t that Changbin was ignoring him, but he had heard enough about their troubles to last him a lifetime. Chan also liked to take everything to the extreme, and Changbin was usually left to deal with the repercussions.

In any case, the sight of the house was an enormous relief as Changbin all but threw himself out of Chan’s car, escaping another needless lecture. He could see his bedroom window from the front lawn, and he longed to escape to his room and pass out in the quiet darkness. However, Changbin should’ve anticipated that the rest of his family would all be downstairs after catching wind of his incident with the van on the side of the road. And the first person to speak out was Jisung, who called Changbin into the living room, eyes glowing with the reflection of the TV screen.

“I heard the van finally gave out,” Jisung said, sitting up on the couch and dropping the remainder of his potato chips into the floor. “Shit!”

“Jisung!” Chan snapped, propping his hands on his hips like he was some kind of middle-aged mom who was about to reprimand her son. “Clean up that mess!”

“Fine,” Jisung groaned, and he followed Changbin into the kitchen. “Ya! Are these my snacks?” he asked, snatching the bag from across the counter.

“That’s all I’ve been hearing about for an entire week!” Hyunjin remarked, and Changbin realized that the kitchen was almost completely full of his house mates.

Y/N smiled, standing next to Minho as she reached out to tug on Hyunjin’s sleeve. “You’ve been complaining just as much.”

“No, I haven’t!” Hyunjin protested, and Changbin despised how loud it was while he grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. Especially when Jisung’s displeased whine managed to overwhelm all of the other white noise.

“You brought home the wrong snacks again!” Jisung whined, and Changbin must’ve worn out the last reserves of his patience at the post office and on the side of that stupid back road when he abruptly turned around to confront the younger man.

“Why don’t you drive your own lazy ass to the grocery store and buy whatever the fuck it is that I can’t seem to find!”

“Changbin!” Chan gasped, and there was an immediate silence that followed his outburst as most of the members looked at him with matching expressions of shock.

“I’m tired,” Changbin excused himself, even knowing that it was a lousy thing to say in place of an apology. But he didn’t need to hear Chan speak another word, and hadn’t Changbin endured enough drama for one day?

Instead, Changbin walked upstairs, and he could finally breathe again when he re-discovered the solitude of his bedroom, and there were already tears forming at the corners of his eyes when he collapsed on top of his bed. It had been a while since he really cried, and Changbin rarely showed any kind of weakness around the other members because he was the second oldest - and there was an expectation that he should be strong for everyone else, even when he was screaming on the inside.

But there was only one other person in the entire world who had ever truly seen him break down - and she was standing in the doorway, looking at him with eyes that reflected her understanding. “Changbin?” Y/N whispered, closing the door behind her as she crawled into the bed next to him.

“Yeah?” Changbin murmured because his voice was muffled by the pillows. Even so, Y/N didn’t hesitate to lay down next to him on the bed, pressing herself as close as possible considering the limited space.

“You’re not okay,” she remarked, and Changbin shook his head as one arm wrapped itself around his waist.

“I didn’t mean to snap at Jisung,” Changbin said, and Y/N simply nodded as she held him even tighter.

“It’s not your fault, okay?” Y/N whispered, and Changbin nodded, looking at her fondly while he managed to prop himself up on the bed.

“It was a long fucking day,” Changbin said. “I hate that stupid van.”

Y/N smiled. “At least Chan has no choice but to fix it, right?”

“Or buy something else,” Changbin remarked, and they were both silent for a while. But Changbin didn’t mind the quiet. After all, it was everything that he wanted ever since Chan had picked him up on the side of the road.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Y/N eventually requested, and Changbin’s stomach twisted at the thought of opening up and exposing his darkest feelings - the loneliness that he felt these days, and the stupid reason why he missed having the younger members want something more from him other than cheap snacks.

“I don’t know,” he said, deciding to settle on a different version of the truth. One that still made him look strong without having to reveal the weaknesses clawing away at his insides.

“Well,” Y/N said, “when you figure it out, you can always talk to me.”

Changbin nodded again. “Are you staying with me tonight?”

There was an intolerable level of desperation in his tone that made him wince, but Y/N wasn’t the kind of person who would judge. “Yeah,” she said, rubbing her hand along his stomach. “I’ll be here.”

Changbin sighed because Y/N would never understand just how much those simple words meant to him. Because sleep suddenly came much easier, and Changbin allowed his eyes to close while wrapped around Y/N.

Later on, Changbin woke-up without much warning to an empty feeling in his stomach, and he realized that he had skipped dinner. Subsequently, he managed to make his way downstairs to the kitchen, finding the leftovers from dinner waiting inside the fridge. His stomach growled, and Changbin reached for the bowl, examining the contents inside before he walked over the microwave.

“You want to tell me what your little tantrum was all about?”

Changbin sighed, glancing up at Chan as he stood behind him wearing a familiar scowl. “Not really,” Changbin replied, punching the buttons on the microwave.

“Jisung wanted me to let you know that he’s sorry,” Chan said. “But I don’t know why he’s the one apologizing.”

Changbin shrugged, sliding a hand through his hair while forcing himself to meet Chan’s stern gaze. “What do you want me to say?”

“Is it because of work?” Chan asked. “Do you need to take less hours?”

“No,” Changbin lied, startling when the microwave began to beep in succession. He grabbed his food and held it against his chest. “I don’t really think work is bothering me.”

Chan’s shoulder dropped as his expression softened. “Did Y/N talk to you?”

Changbin nodded. “Look, I’ll apologize to Jisung when I come home tomorrow.”

“He’s sensitive,” Chan said, even though Changbin already knew that. “Did they say when the van would be ready?”

“I think Sara said something about this weekend,” Changbin responded, and he took a bite of his food without really considering what he had just told Chan.

“Sara?”

Changbin winced. “Yeah, the girl who helped me earlier.”

“Ah!” Chan acknowledged. “I guess she made an impression.”

“She was really nice,” Changbin said, and Chan sent him a look that Changbin couldn’t quite decipher. In fact, it almost made the atmosphere between them awkward, and Changbin cleared his throat. “I’m going back upstairs.”

“Okay,” Chan said, and Changbin quickly retreated from the kitchen before he was asked any more questions.

On his next day off, Changbin received a voicemail from Sara that told him the van had been inspected. He was invited to the shop so that he could hear the full report for himself in person. It was a seemingly mundane business exchange, but Changbin found himself bursting with excitement when he walked inside the main office, discovering Sara standing behind the counter.

“Hey,” Changbin said, trying to act cool by stuffing his wandering hands into the pockets of his leather jacket.

“The van might not make it,” she replied with an apologetic look. “When’s the last time you had it inspected?”

Changbin cleared his throat, looking at the ground when he shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

It was a sheepish response, and Changbin expected to hear some kind of lecture about the importance of vehicle safety. Instead, she laughed at his disregard, leaning against the wall with a wide smile. “I kinda figured, but that’s okay.”

Changbin drew in his bottom lip, chewing on the raw skin as he thought about something cool to continue their conversation - maybe something that could allow him the rare honor of hearing that beautiful laugh again. “Its not something we prioritized,” Changbin explained.

“We?”

“The people I live with,” Changbin elaborated, studying the interesting way that the sunlight managed to form a halo of sorts around Sara’s soft brown hair.

“Oh? Kinda like housemates?” Sara asked, and she pulled a file from the heavy stack of folders waiting on top of the counter.

“You could say that,” Changbin agreed.

“I think it’s interesting,” Sara told him. “Do you wanna see the van? We can talk about it inside the garage.”

Changbin nodded without hesitation, and Sara led him out the side door which brought them to the attached metal building. It smelled like gasoline and rubber - plus an assortment of other scents that he could only associate with a place like this. And he spotted the van in the very last spot, looking worse for wear with its peeling paint and general abuse.

“So, you definitely need a new radiator,” Sara explained as they paused next to the van. “But I also found a lot of things that need replacing: tires, battery, back-up lights, windshield, and maybe some of the plugs inside...”

“Really?” Changbin asked, and he didn’t need to know a damn thing about cars to understand that all those repairs would cost way too much money.

“I can give you a discount,” Sara said. “I don’t know if it’ll help much.”

Changbin sighed, pulling up the sleeves of his t-shirt as a nervous habit. “I don’t think we can afford it right now.”

“Well, there’s always other options,” Sara said, perfectly understanding. “We actually sell used cars across the road. I’d love to offer you something at a good price. Maybe we could set-up some payment plans to help with your budget.”

Sara may actually be a literal angel, Changbin thought to himself. “Can I see them?”

“Of course,” Sara said. “It’s just across the street, and if you want, we can stop inside the convenience store for some drinks. My treat, of course.”

Changbin looked at her like she had just solved all of the world’s greatest problems. Because he couldn’t remember the last time someone had treated him, nor could he think of a moment in time where he felt the peculiar tugging on his heartstrings. Almost like something completely novel was opening up right in front of his eyes.

“Sure,” Changbin agreed, and that’s how he spent the rest of the day next to Sara’s side, perusing a wide selection of perfectly suitable replacements for the van while talking about anything and everything that had nothing to do with cars or the predicament of Changbin’s financial situation. Instead, Sara surprised him by asking about the things that most people wouldn’t care about - which do you prefer? Long walks on the beach or an overnight stay in a mountain cabin? What do you fear the most? Do you have an opinion on the toxicity of celebrity culture?

That last one surprised Changbin, especially when he realized that Sara was basically a living and breathing genius. It made him realize that they were a lot alike in that regard - judged because of their occupations, but they were actually so much more than what people might perceive. He was only rapidly coming to the conclusion that he really liked Sara. A lot. More than he ever thought possible considering their brief introduction.

Maybe it was some kind of fated connection - the type that everyone wanted to experience. It wasn’t exactly love, but then again, Changbin knew that love could be felt in different ways. For example, the love he had for Y/N wasn’t comparable to these foreign feelings that he only expressed around Sara. In the same way that Changbin’s love for his mother was nothing like what he had for his family members.

Ultimately, Changbin thought that there was, at the very least, a possibility of something with Sara, but was he willing to pursue it? Because this something might take a lot of his time and attention, and would his family be okay if he wasn’t giving them 110% of his effort and dedication? More importantly, was he brave enough to even try? Did he deserve it?

There was too much to think about, and Changbin left Sara at the mechanic’s shop with a simple promise that he would talk to Chan about buying another used car to replace the van. In the meantime, Changbin could only think of one person who might help him sort through these confusing feelings.

Likewise, Changbin made sure that he beat Minho home, finding Y/N in her basement bedroom reading alone. He knocked once on the door, alerting Y/N to his presence. “Hey,” Changbin said.

Y/N smiled. “You were gone a while.”

“There was a lot to discuss,” Changbin said, schooling his expression before meeting Y/N’s gaze. “Will you take a nap with me?”

Y/N glanced up in obvious surprise - because she wasn’t used to hearing Changbin ask for things like this, especially after the revelation of her relationship with Minho. “Okay.”

Changbin was relieved by her easy, and unquestioning, compliance. But that was one of the best things that he liked about Y/N - she always knew when she needed to ask questions versus when the moment called for contemplation. And in this moment, Changbin needed Y/N to have a lot of patience with him, curling up together on their sides as he met her gentle gaze somewhere in the middle.

“I met someone,” Changbin said, looking over at Y/N as she gazed at him with a complete look of understanding. “We’ll, we’ve met before, but today was different.”

“Binnie,” she cooed, leaning in close so that their foreheads were touching. “Do you have a crush on the mechanic?”

Changbin scoffed, moving away while Y/N giggled at the rosy color decorating his cheeks. “I don’t have time for crushes.”

“Why not?” Y/N asked, and her smile was gone in exchange for a far more serious tone.

“I don’t know,” Changbin said. “I’ve got to help take care of the house.”

Y/N was quiet for a moment, and Changbin closed his eyes because he was suddenly exhausted. “Changbin,” she finally said. “I hope you don’t mean that you can’t have someone special in your life just because of us.”

“No,” Changbin said, but there wasn’t much conviction behind that one simple negative, and Y/N definitely knew that he was lying.

“Hey,” Y/N said, forcing their gazes to meet. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Changbin shivered. “Noticed what?”

“You look really sad these days, Changbin,” Y/N whispered. “I don’t know why, but you keep trying to hide it from us.”

Changbin studied the raw intensity in Y/N’s gaze, and it was a powerful force - capable of knocking down all those cruel walls that he had built around himself. “I just want to keep you safe,” he said, feeling the promise of tears sting the raw skin around his eyelids. “But nobody really needs me anymore.”

“Changbin,” Y/N said, but it was just a simple intonation of his name, free of judgement. It said so much with so little, and it let him know that Y/N was shocked by Changbin’s confession, but she wanted him to elaborate and explain himself without interruption.

“For most of my life,” Changbin said. “I was pushed aside and treated like shit. It happened with my father, and I’ve had to face criticism from my bosses and those assholes I lived with before coming here.”

Changbin sighed, closing his eyes. “I just wanted to be accepted, and I never felt that until Chan let me stick around. Instead of being pushed away, everyone welcomed me with open arms, and they genuinely liked having me around because they needed me. I didn’t even have to pretend to be someone better.”

Y/N nodded - her only acknowledgement - before Changbin continued. “I knew you guys would grow up one day, but it started to feel like I wasn’t really needed anymore. I guess it might sound stupid, but I really do feel lonely sometimes when I come home from my shitty job and there’s nobody around to really say anything.”

And there it was - his true and honest feelings were exposed for Y/N, and he laid perfectly still as she ensured that he was finally finished with all that baggage that he had been carrying around on his shoulders. “Binnie,” Y/N finally said. “I’m sorry that you felt that way because you don’t deserve it, and I would never invalidate your feelings and tell you that you had no reason to feel a certain way. It actually makes sense to me, which is why I’m really glad you said something. Because you like to keep your feelings bottled inside, and I hate to see you suffer when you do.”

She sighed, reaching for his hand to connect their fingers. “Just because we’ve grown up,” Y/N said, “it doesn’t mean that you suddenly matter less. I mean, without you, we wouldn’t be this happy, and you contribute so much to that happiness. And I’m not just talking about your job.”

Changbin swallowed, placing his hand over his chest because his heart was suddenly beating so fast. “I miss the people that I live with,” he said. “How is that possible?”

“You’re feelings don’t have to make sense,” Y/N said. “But they matter because it’s you, and I want to do everything to help, and I’m sure the others would feel the exact same way.”

Changbin nodded, slowly, and he wasn’t sure what to make of all those feelings just sitting out there - raw and vulnerable, but he was also quite certain that he could trust Y/N. “I’ve never felt like this while living here,” Changbin said. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Let’s just start by talking like this whenever we have problems,” Y/N whispered. “You might think I’m pushing you away, but you’re still one of the only people who understands everything that I went though before I came here. Nobody can replace the level of comfort I feel with you.”

Y/N’s words were heavy, but not in a suffocating kind of way. Instead, it felt like a warm embrace, and Changbin just managed to hold back his tears at the sincere expression. “Thank you, Y/N,” Changbin finally said. “You have no idea how much that means to me.”

“I might know something,” Y/N said, and her voice suddenly took on a teasing tone. “Is she pretty?” Y/N asked, and Changbin couldn’t fight his smile.

“She’s beautiful,” Changbin said, and Y/N laughed with her usual playful inflection as she leaned in closer.

“We could go on double dates,” Y/N whispered, and Changbin laughed at the innocent smile stretching the corners of her lips. “But, seriously? Don’t hide these feelings from any of us, Changbin. We all care about you, and maybe it’s time we return the favor after all those years of letting you protect us.”

Changbin nodded - it was all that he could manage. “That might be nice.”

“Yeah,” Y/N agreed. “I think so too.”

And then they were both quiet after that - resigned to these new and confusing feelings. But they had each other to figure them out, and that was enough for Changbin to feel completely unburdened.

Changbin called Sara on a Sunday afternoon - the only day of the week when he wasn’t required to work at the post office. He knew that the mechanic shop was closed, but Sara was perfectly willing to meet him. “I think we’re interested in the SUV,” Changbin told her over the phone, and Sara was just fine scheduling an appointment.

That was over an hour ago, and Changbin hesitated at the sight of Sara waiting near the entrance to the main office. Because, unlike what he suggested over the phone, there was something else that Changbin planned to ask her, and it was scary to think about what might happen. Especially if she told him no.

But Changbin was an adult, and he didn’t plan to spend all day cowering in Chan’s car, so he met Sana outside with a smile that he hoped wouldn’t give away his nervousness. “Hi,” Changbin said, holding up a hand in greeting.

“There you are,” Sara said, and she looked nothing short of elegant in her dress pants and blouse - like she had gotten all dressed up for this occasion. “Are you ready?”

Changbin nodded, and he spent the time that it took for them to make their way across the street to reorganize the chaos of his rampant thoughts. Meanwhile, Sara had grabbed the keys to the SUV that he wanted to buy, and she was busy opening all the doors to air out the stuffy interior. “It’s fairly updated,” she told him, demonstrating the power windows and bluetooth radio system. “What do you think?”

“It’s better than the van,” Changbin admitted, and it was nice that there weren’t stains all other the leather upholstery.

“I think it’ll make a worthy substitute,” Sara agreed. “We’re selling it for $4,500, but I’m willing to negotiate the price, especially for you.”

Changbin glanced up at that because his heart had skipped several beats at the idea of Sara doing something for him. “It would really help us out,” Changbin said. “You’ve been amazing considering everything that’s happened.”

“Yeah, well, I can tell that you’re worth the extra effort,” Sara said, and Changbin couldn’t believe his ears because it sounded too good to be true. Almost like Sara was flirting with him.

But maybe this was the opening that he had been looking for...

“I’d really like to make it up to you,” Changbin said, and he hoped that those words sounded sincere instead of something akin to a business deal.

“Really?” Sara asked, flashing him a warm smile. “What do you mean?”

“If you want,” Changbin said, pausing for a moment to exhale. “I’d like to take you out sometime.”

“Oh?” she grinned, leaning against the SUV next to him, and Changbin could feel her soft breath since they were suddenly very close together.

“I’d really like that,” Sara replied, and Changbin’s shoulders fell at his relief upon hearing her confirmation.

“Are you sure?” Changbin asked because he was always doubting himself. “I mean, you don’t have to-”

“Changbin,” Sara interrupted, taking another step closer to the point where it felt like they were sharing the same air. “I want to be with you, and I’m glad that you asked me because I don’t want this to be nothing more than a mechanic helping out a customer. Do you understand?”

Of course, he did, but that didn’t stop Changbin’s stomach from doing somersaults while he desperately tried to compose himself. “How do you feel about double dates?”

Sana laughed at that, and, for the first time since before he could remember, Changbin felt completely at ease.

#stayverse #stray kids #stray kids fanfic #skz #skz fanfic #stray kids changbin #stray kids changbin fanfic #seo changbin #seo changbin fanfic #seo changbin fluff #stray kids fluff #stray kids angst #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #stray kids writer

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skzluvs · 4 years

Text

Phobia; Han jisung

Genre: angst, fluff (if you squint)

Warnings: mention of nightmares

Word count: 1.8k

A/N: Hi! I’m back from my hiatus with another angst fic inspired by the drama it’s okay to not be okay combined with a little bit of phobia I hope you guys like it!

The girl who fed on nightmares

there was a girl who woke up every night by the nightmares, demons that haunted her dreams. She was twisted inside, held back by the painful memories of her past.

panting breath, irregular heartbeat, a cold sweat dripping from her forehand. she opened her eyes to meet with the darkness of her room. Terror washed over her. frightened.

"it's just another nightmare" she said trying to calm down the thoughts that were messing up her already deranged head.

a familiar setup, you might think she grew accustomed to the feeling after the third night but that's was not true the lingering feeling of numbness grew by the time she realized there was no escape from the chains that still cuffed her up.

the morning came earlier, with very few hours of sleep, she got up and got ready for work. the days turned into a monotone.

she arrived to bookstore, pure silence made her mind feel content. A moment of peace in the torrential rain.

"excuse me" a soft voice called her, almost as quiet as a whisper that's being shared between lovers.

she looked up to meet with a boy, with black hair and a mischievous smile, he looked cheerful with an undeniable strong aura that surrounded his slender figure, definitely not the type you would see in a library at 8am in the morning.

"yes" she replied politely to the boy who carried a handful on books on his arms.

"i want to check all of these out please" he placed the books on the counter.

As she took a look at the pile, she got intrigued by the peculiar selection.

children books.

but not the kind that you read to a child unless you want them to have nightmares, and she knew damn well about that.

"you like this gruesome stuff ?" she was never the kind to question other people's interests but for some strange motive she wanted to know.

" it's a children's book how can you call this masterpiece gruesome" the boy seemed rather offended by her words.

" the pictures make me want to cry my eyes out and I'm an adult, there's no way this book was targeted for such audience" she said

" it seems like you know nothing about this books not the author , therefore I won't be engaging in a discussion, you can continue to be ignorant later just let me borrow them so I can go" he said annoyed, taping with his finger on top of the dusty cover.

The girl refused to give out response and rather continued to do her job. she sure didn't get paid enough for that.

"here" she said handing him the books along with the returning slip. "you have 2 weeks to return them unless you want more time come before the deadline to extend the borrowing period"

"thank you" he left not sparing to look at her for the last time before exiting through the door.

the browned eyed boy who just happened to be named han jisung, she found out his name through his library card. Was all she could think about, not because she was interested, but because of the of his actions. Usually she evaded social situations, she found people not worth of her time, but there was something about that boy that made her wanted to crush him like a fragile butterfly with broken wings.

another meaningless night, it was tiring to get emptied out like that. Every time she closed her fears shaped into a reality. she was stuck with the phobia.

days passed by, a body that walks through the streets without a soul. There was nothing she wanted nothing she desired more but to fall asleep. So she lived her life longing for that moment.

going through the bookshelves placing them correctly by alphabetical order. A pair of eyes stuck to the back of her head.

a boy who watched her carefully from the other side of the room, and he probably thought he was being precautious, but she knew she was being observed.

Jisung. Who came everyday just to sit as far back from the main entrance as possible, hiding in a corner reading the books he so much loved. After the first encounter with the girl he could no longer sleep the same way. His thoughts circled around her small frame and the sound of her broken voice.

there was this thing about her, he called it despondency and he was drowned right into it. like the tales had taken over a human form.

by the end of the two weeks he stood there fidgeting, over the course of the last couple of days his little instigating got him nowhere. She repeated a daily routine, there was nothing to analyze in her vague movements and worn out expressions. However he knew she hides more than the human eye can perceive behind that weary facade.

The moment she clocked out he followed her outside.

"why are you following me" the girl stopped her tracks and made a spin over her ankles, just to meet with him.

"I needed to ask you something" He said rather shy. all the courage he build up over the weeks disappearing at the strong gaze that confronted him.

"I'm not obligated to respond, do me a favor and get lost" She turned around and continued to walk.

It was an expected reply exactly what made jisung decide it was better to come up with a different plan.

every day he would put a book of his collection on top of her desk hoping she would get interested enough to read it.

but instead she would just eye the cover and place it back to its shelf.

Not until one day she meet to something different, the book had a folded edge, opening the page carefully, her fingers ghosting over the words printed on the glossy paper.

"bad memories from the past that he wanted to erase from his head"

"were replayed in his dreams every night"

"and haunted him nonstop"

"the boy was terrified of falling asleep"

a creeping feeling went down her spine, and her trembling hands made the book fall. Her own monsters greeted her with a grin. Collapsing with the wooden floor.

jisung got petrified by the loud sound. He hurried his way to find the girl unconscious on the ground. it was all his fault.

a disturbing sound came from her mouth. She woke up in an oddly unfamiliar house. Her body covered by a thin blanket, the walls were closing like the screams that got caught up in her throat.

jisung who was downstairs making dinner ran through the stairs and opened the door alarmed at the high pitched noises.

"Are you okay?" He exclaimed trying to recover his breath.

"what am I doing here? where am i ?" she asked not trying to panic even more. She felt so dizzy the room kept on spinning.

"you're at my house, you passed out at the library" He said scratching the nape of his neck with guiltiness.

"I remember now, this was your deed, you and your stupid nauseating books" by the looks of it she had been gone for a while. Not to mention the longer she was in a slumber the longer the suffering.

"not my fault you got scared by a book for 5 year olds" He said shrugging, with an unprovoked expression.

"And you dared to call me an ignorant" she deadpanned.

"Do you fear anything?" He asked out of the blue.

what is the real meaning behind fear?. Fear is tangible. Is the anxiety, the desperation to run away and hide forever where they can't find you, it means to want to stab your eyes with a safety pin to blind the pain. Is the captivity of oneself.

"You're scared of yourself aren't you?" it no longer sounded like a question but more like an affirmation.

he had figured you out in no time. You couldn't let them see the vulnerable side, not to anyone and most definitely not this stranger.

"You said it yourself you know nothing so leave alone before it's too late" She threatened.

"Anyways I'm sorry for being so persistent, never intended to make you feel uncomfortable, I'll be downstairs if you need me, dinner is ready if you want to come and have something to eat before you leave" He knew it was better not to push it if he wanted answers.

But why was he so desperate to understand the world inside her head ?

Jisung felt the loneliness of her being. He came up to the conclusion that he wanted to be the person who brought the girl back to life.

After some time he grew a step closer to her, not to the point she would stop pushing him away but at least his efforts had made a very insignificant change.

She would let him read the books to her once in a while, she fed into the words, relating to every single one of them. But things were still the same at night, she would break down to the horrifying sight.

"Jisung why are you still here ?" she asked him unable to understand why the boy remained by her side even when she treated him like a piece of trash.

"Because im trapped under your spell" he confessed.

"You’re e going to end up in so much pain" she said looking into his eyes.

"You can't go to heaven before crossing the flames of hell" He responded with certainty. “ and If I have to burn I rather do it while still holding you”

"Would you still like me if you knew the kind of monster I am, not the one you read in books but the kind that hides behind a mask and transforms at night"

" I would still like you if you were the devil himself"

" The devil wont tear your soul apart like I would trust me" She knew she would drive him into despair. But she had warned him multiple times, from here she no longer take accountability, he would meet fear. She would make sure of that.

I'm stuck with the phobia although I want to stay with you I'm scared that you might disappear in between the shadows. How can I hold you when I was made to destroy you.

there was a girl whose world was a pitch black hole and her insides were dark and twisted, and a boy who fell in love with her repulsiveness swore to never leave her, but her darkness overshadowed the fugacious happiness of a spur moment and the voices in her head claimed that she was all alone. but the boy sang to her a lullaby that lulled her into a deep sleep and for the first time in forever there were no painful memories in her dreams.

She was the girl who fed on nightmares. The one he once read about and the one he was now holding on his arms.

#stray kids imagines #stray kids fics #stray kids au #hwang hyunjin #bang chan #kim seungmin #han jisung #seo changbin #lee felix #yang jeongin #lee minho #stray kids fluff #stray kids angst #stray kids #stray kids scenarios

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rafivadafreddy · 4 years

Text

When You Were Mine.

A Rafael Barba One-Shot

So I’ve been obsessed with Hamilton lately, cause come on. Its amazing. So, I took three songs... Congratulations, First Burn and Burn annnnnd I made THIS! I hope you enjoy this. much love!!

Warning: Spanish, its sad. Our Rafi is a cheater. SMH

Looking at the pictures in her hands, she walked towards his office, wanting to get to the bottom of this whole thing. Hoping that it was all a lie, a silly and idiotic lie that someone came up with. Surely, Rafael wouldn’t cheat on her. Not like this. He wouldn’t do to Adeline what Yelina did to him.

As she neared the office, she froze. Carmen wasn’t at her desk. Walking over to the office door, Adeline stopped when she was about to knock.

“What am I gonna do Liv? Surely Adeline saw the paper already.” She heard the voice of her fiancé. “I told him he had nothing on me! But he did… this guy has been following me around for almost a year!”

Looking down at the newspaper in her hand, Adeline felt her eyes tear up.

“Well… clearly, you have invented a new kind of stupid, Rafael.” Liv spoke up. “A damage you can’t undo, kind of stupid…” Adeline could practically hear the smirk appearing on Olivia’s face. “Truly, you didn’t think this through… kind of stupid! I mean you told the people threatening you and your position here to go ahead and post whatever they had on you? You should have sent it to the post and written it all yourself.”

“Look! I made a mistake! Ok? I know that!”

“Yeah well, we all begged you to take a break, Raf. You refused to.” Liv sighed and stood up.

Adeline quickly turned around and rushed out of the building. Keeping her head down the whole time as she made her way home. It was half an hour later when she arrived at the Brownstone the two had bought together.

Walking to her living room, Adeline shed off her coat and pressed a few buttons, so the fireplace lit up. Going to grab a glass of wine, she brought the bottle with her as she sat on the couch.

Almost two hours later, she heard the door open and Rafael come inside.

“Carino?” his voice called out before stopping short when he saw her in the living room.

“You know, we’ve known each other for so long Rafi… since high school.” Adeline spoke softly, her eyes sad as she watched the fire dance before her in the fireplace. “I saved every single letter you wrote me. From the day I saw you in school and you were helping me find my class… I knew you were mine… You SAID you were mine…” her voice broke and she closed her eyes. Tears slipping down her cheeks. “I thought you were mine.” She whispered.

Standing up and wiping at her cheeks, she turned to face the man she was supposed to marry, “Do you know what Olivia said? After I told her what you’d done?” she asked and took a step forward. “She said, “Ade, you are going to marry a sarcastic, asshole! He is way too obsessed with his job.” Ironic isn’t it?” she scoffed and set the wine glass done. Cursing when some spilled out onto the floor.

Seeing him try to take a step forward, Adeline pointed a finger at him. “DON’T!” she snapped. “Do not take another step in my direction! You understand? I can’t be trusted around you. Just don’t! You think you can talk your way into my arms? You won’t!”

“Adeline, please…” Rafael pleaded, and she just shook her head.

“I’m going to burn everything you wrote me, every picture we have… everything.” She told him and frowned. “You can stand there if you want. I don’t know who you are… clearly I still have so much to learn!”

“That’s not true, mi alma! You know me, you know I love you...”

“I was re-reading your letters… now I’m going to watch them BURN!” with that she tossed a few papers into the fire.

Rafael took a step forward, but he couldn’t find the right words to say.

“You let them publish the letters between the two of you? The pictures of the two of you?!” she turned her head, Rafael taking a step back when he saw the red eyes and tear stained cheeks. “You let the WHOLE WORLD know how you brought this girl into our HOUSE! Our BED! You have RUINED our lives!”

He shook his head. “No… no, I’m the one who’s going to get ruined! They were after me…” he said in a small voice.

“Are you so paranoid? How they perceive you… You, you, you! ONLY YOU?” she was yelling now, her chest felt tight like someone was holding her down. “Do you think this won’t make ME look bad? YOU EMBARRSSED ME RAFAEL! Clearly, I’m not women enough to satisfy her man! So, he has to go out looking for someone else to sleep with!” she practically hissed at him.

Pushing him away when he tried to step closer to Adeline. She felt her breathing quicken. “Honestly… Heaven forbid someone whisper that you aren’t good enough or try and talk you down… your enemies whisper, and you have to SCREAM! Prove them ALL wrong!” she wiped her cheeks with both hands.

“It’s not like that, mi alma… I love you. I’m so sorry.”

Adeline just shook her head again. “I see how you look at Olivia, Rafael.” She whispered, only to cover his mouth when he went to say something. “Don’t. I’m not naïve. I see the women around you at the events we go to. How you put on your charm, they all fall for it! All your charms…” she laughed humorless.

“I’m leaving, erasing myself from your narrative. Let everyone wonder and think and come up with their own conclusions of how I reacted when you went and BROKE my heart!” She frowned, the tears finally stopping. “You have thrown it all away, Raf… and for what? A few nights with some exotic lover? I was supposed to be your legacy, built it together… a family.” Shaking her head, Adeline sighed.

When Rafael grabbed her hands, dropping down to his knees in front of her. Adeline had to try to stay strong. “Mi amor… por favor. Lo siento mucho. Por favor mi alma… perdóname.” He was crying now as he held onto the fabric of her long dress. “Te quiro mucho. No me dejes.”

“Rafael… you forfeit all rights to my heart and the place in our bed...” she said in a soft voice as she watched him, begging and crying into her dress. “You’ll sleep in your home office instead. With only the memories of when you were mine and I was yours…”

After untangling herself from his hands, she quickly moved to the stairs and rushed up them. Locking herself into her bedroom, Adeline fell onto her bed in a mess of tears.

Rafael was down in the living room in the same position. On his knees on the floor. Head bent down as he cried. How could he do this to the women he loved? How could he cheat on Adeline like Yelina had done to him? How could he be so stupid.

How did you like it? I KNOW I HAVEN’T BEEN ON BUT MY OTHER STORIES WILL BE UPDATED SOON. I’ve been having some... mental health problems. But i’m slowly getting in a better place<3

If you think I should do a part two, tell me! Other than that, heart and share this story! Much MUCH love from me to you! xoxo

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kmomof4 · 4 years

Text

Of Darkness, Vampires, and Soulmates Ch. 2 Emma

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!! Y’all’s reaction to the last chapter was everything that this writer’s heart could have asked for!! HUGE INTERNET HUGS FOR YOU ALL!!!

TREMENDOUS love and thanks and all the good things I can possibly give to @profdanglaisstuff for her beta services, @hollyethecurious for her encouragement and listening to me whine, the CSSNS and CSMM discord ladies for their encouragement and help with the title, and to @spartanguard for her PERFECT artwork!!!

Chapter Summary: Today we meet Emma for the first time, in 1650 London.

Rating: M (Violence and smut)

Words: 4.4K of 41K total

Tags: Vampires, Soulmates, Reincarnation, Prophecy, Black Death, French Revolution, Magic, True Love’s Kiss

Prologue | Ch1 | Ao3 chapter link | Ao3 fic link

Tag list: @hollyethecurious @winterbaby89 @snowbellewells @stahlop @resident-of-storybrooke @jennjenn615 @kingofmyheart14 @profdanglaisstuff @branlovestowrite @thisonesatellite @ultraluckycatnd @flslp87 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @let-it-raines @shireness-says @kymbersmith-90 @darkcolinodonorgasm @bethacaciakay @searchingwardrobes @ilovemesomekillianjones @teamhook @aprilqueen84 @qualitycoffeethings @superchocovian @artistic-writer @donteattheappleshook @doodlelolly0910 @seriouslyhooked @tiganasummertree @lfh1226-linda @nikkiemms @xsajx @klynn-stormz

Please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed.

Under the cut, unless Tumblr ate it.

1650 London

With a final agonized scream, the raven haired woman collapsed against the pillows piled at the head of the bed as the cries of a newborn filled the room. Granny smiled down at the scrunched up face she held in her hands. The rest of the child’s body followed. “It’s a girl, Mary Margaret.”

The young woman laughed weakly as Granny held her daughter up for her to see. “You were right, Granny,” she breathed.

“Well of course, I was right,” she replied, indignant. With quick, efficient movements Granny cleaned the baby up and wrapped her in a soft blanket that she had just finished crocheting a few days before. “That charm has been handed down in my family for generations and it’s never been wrong.”

The strong blonde man who had been waiting outside came running into the room just as the old midwife handed a small bundle wrapped in the white blanket to the exhausted but smiling woman reclined against the pillows. Making his way over to the bed, he placed a tender kiss on her temple. He reached around her shoulders to draw her into his side and looked down into the cloudy gray eyes that stared back at him. “It’s a girl, David,” his wife whispered, smiling up at him.

Granny’s normally no nonsense exterior melted at the sight of the young family as she took in the tender moment. Mary Margaret sat reclined on the bed with her husband’s arm around her as he stroked the crown of the nursing baby.

“Oh look,” whispered David in surprise, “Look at the birthmark. On her neck.”

“It looks like a swan in flight,” Granny said, nodding. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen a birthmark with as clear a shape as that.”

Mary Margaret raised herself slightly from the pillow to look down at her daughter before flopping back again, her eyes glazing over with weariness. “Wow,” she said on a breathy exhale as she lost her battle with fatigue.

“Certainly appropriate, with our name.” David chuckled then leaned in and again kissed his wife’s temple. “Thank you for everything Granny. I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

Granny scoffed, waving aside his sentiment. “You would have been fine, David,” she asserted, “You’ve got yourself a fine, strong woman there and a good, level head on your shoulders. You would have figured out something.” She came closer and watched fondly as the baby continued to suckle, oblivious to her worn out mother. “Now, the room is yours for as long as you need it.” She waved away his objection just as he was opening his mouth. “David, I have work for you that will more than adequately compensate me for your room and board. Mary Margaret needs to rest. It’s no easy feat to bring a child into this world.” She turned her attention to the dozing woman. “See?” she questioned him. “She’ll need to stay right there taking care of this little one for several days, at least. Once she’s up and around, I can use her too. I’m getting too old for this, and Ruby isn’t old enough to take over for me.”

David closed his mouth, stunned, as he realized exactly what Granny was offering him and his family. “Are you saying that we can stay here? Permanently?” he asked, incredulous.

“Of course, I am,” the matronly woman acknowledged with a smile. “Harold, God rest his soul, would never forgive me if I put your family out on the streets. Especially this little one.” She bent down and pressed a kiss to the baby’s forehead.

David’s shoulders slumped in relief and acceptance. “Thank you, Granny,” his voice caught with emotion, “I can’t tell you how much that means.”

“You just take care of your family,” the old woman gruffed, “That is payment enough.”

Granny looked fondly at the sleeping mother and baby before slipping out of the room.

~*~*~

Pirate captain Killian Jones entered his cabin, weariness hanging about him like a cloak. It was the first time in three days that he had seen the inside of his quarters. Ever since a storm the likes of which he had never seen came upon the ship that he had called home ever since Rumplestiltskin had murdered his brother and turned him into the cursed creature he was now. He had little doubt that the monster was behind the storm. The suddenness with which it blew up and the ferocity he and his men had battled for days all spoke to the magical, dark magical, attributes of the storm. Ever since Rumplestiltskin left him alone on the floor of this very cabin over 60 years before, he had delighted in returning every so often, taunting and tormenting him. The only reason Killian could come up with is that the monster just wanted to remind him of their connection and that, so far, he had failed in his vow to destroy him.

They had now, finally, left the storm behind them. Killian stripped down to just his leather pants, hanging his coat, waistcoat, and shirt on various furnishings in the cabin to dry. Sitting down at his desk, he pulled off his boots and socks. Once he sufficiently dried himself, he pulled down his logbook to record the battle with the storm. As he flipped to the next empty page, his eyes and thoughts skimmed over previous entries covering many years.

The attempt, at first, to hide his new nature from his crew, until the overwhelming bloodlust took over and he attacked and killed one of his men.

The mutiny that was spawned because of his lack of control. When faced with the anger, and yes, fear, of his once loyal crew, Killian’s rage at his helplessness against his fate and their perceived audacity completely filled him until he attacked them, leaving the entire crew dead at his feet.

Killian sneered as the next entry and memory paraded itself across his mind’s eye. Watching from afar as his parents frantically searched for not only their beloved sons, but also the Blue Fairy. He would assume, given her magic, that she was aware of what had happened to him and his brother. She apparently couldn’t reveal to the king and queen just how utterly and completely she had failed in her duty to protect the family from Rumpelstiltskin. So when she left their presence and saw what had happened to Liam and Killian, she disappeared as well.

Finally gaining enough control over the bloodlust that he was able to take on a new crew.

The ensuing decades that were his darkest, both as a pirate and as a vampire. He refused to feed on his crew, that could get expensive quickly, but his own self-loathing and impotence in the face of his nature were enough to unleash the, literally, bloodthirsty pirate that was always just under the surface, the bloodlust licking at his veins. When they captured merchant ships, Killian led his crew in wholesale slaughter, gorging himself on the still warm blood of their adversaries, as his men transferred the loot to the Jolly. Once he was sated, he used his powers of compulsion and persuasion to make his crew believe that when they were dumping the drained corpses overboard, they were simply disposing of rotted food.

Watching as his parents grew old with no heir until they passed and the throne went to the son of Brennan’s younger brother.

Finally turning to the last entry, his eyes drifted over lines that he knew he didn’t write.

The Dark’s minion’s downfall is foretold

When True Love’s Kiss doth unfold

Between soulmates unbound by time

The blue eyed prince and his golden haired Swan

Their True Love will break the hold

And Dark magic will be no more.

Killian’s brows furrowed as he read the lines again. Dark’s minion? Dark magic no more? Is it talking about Rumplestiltskin? The blue eyed prince and his golden haired Swan? Soulmates? What does all this mean? The confusion he felt as he pored over the words yet again continued to grow. Who wrote this? How did it get here? Would one of my crew dare to enter my cabin without my knowledge and permission, much less write in my logbook?

His last entry was from three days before. So someone had made this entry at some point during the storm. But no matter how many times he read the words or tried to figure out answers to his questions, he couldn’t make any sense of the entry in his journal. Shaking his head, he determined to put it out of his mind and concentrate on the recording of the storm.

Many hours later, while Captain Killian Jones slept, the Blue Fairy materialized in the cabin and waved her wand over the sleeping man. With the white magic that settled on him, she knew that when he woke, he would have no memory of the prophecy recorded in his journal. Not until the proper time. Not until the blue eyed prince met his golden haired Swan.

~*~*~

Killian Jones entered the inn and stamped his nearly frozen feet on the threshold as he shivered under his traveling cloak. Anger licked his veins as he made his way over to the blazing fire in the hearth to warm himself after his trek from the London Pool where his ship was docked. He was chasing down a lead that was supposed to give him information on a possible way to destroy Rumplestiltskin. Whispers and rumors had reached him about an instrument that might be capable of killing the monster and freeing him from the Darkness that coursed through him. Unfortunately, that lead had proved fruitless.

A young woman with sunshine in her hair hurried over to him at the hearth with a pint of ale. “May I take your cloak, sir,” she asked.

“Aye, lass,” he replied. “Thank you.” Too distracted to take real notice of the young woman, he handed her his cloak and sat down at a nearby table. She returned moments later with a bowl of hot stew that smelled divine. The months at a time being out to sea made fresh, hot food all the more welcome when making port.

He looked up into the girl’s face and was captivated by the green eyes that skittered away from his once he caught them. As she turned away from him and headed back towards the kitchen, something came over him. Something that he hadn’t experienced in decades. The bloodlust that he had under control for over 70 years completely took him by surprise. He felt his fangs snap into place and a red haze descended over his sight, telling him that his pupils were red as blood. He bowed his head toward his meal until he had himself under control again, eyes blue as the summer sky and fangs retracted.

He looked up again and scanned the room he found himself in. Just like every other tavern he’d ever frequented, he found a large and cheerful hearth keeping the frigid cold of the freak London snowstorm at bay. Over to his left, he saw stairs leading up to the rooms for rent for weary travelers. The door opened again with more pushing their way through, seeking the warmth the inn offered. To the right of the door, the counter with the kitchen behind was bustling with the girl going back and forth between the counter and the blonde man behind it and the tables that the newcomers settled at.

Unfortunately, they had settled only a single table away from him and every time the girl came to attend to them, the bloodlust washed over him again. He concentrated even harder on the meal set before him, wrestling himself back under control when she approached him again.

“Is everything alright, sir,” she asked, “Would you like some fresh bread to go with the stew? Granny is just taking some out of the oven…” she trailed away as his eyes met hers again. He was gratified to see that there was nothing but curiosity and openness in her gaze. He had obviously been successful in keeping his true nature hidden from her.

“Aye, lass,” he answered her, “that would be lovely.” She turned away from him and as she did, he noticed the swan birthmark on her neck. A swan in flight.

The blue eyed prince and his golden haired Swan

A completely forgotten line from a completely forgotten journal entry he had found many years ago. Could this girl be the golden haired Swan? And he could only conclude that he must be the blue eyed prince. He sat, completely gobsmacked as he watched the girl approach his table again with several hunks of freshly baked bread on the tray she carried. She stopped at the other occupied tables, lightening her load every time, before she carried on toward him. Arriving, he couldn’t help but take a deep inhale, noting the aroma of the bread as well as the scent of her, just to make sure that the bloodlust was firmly back under his control.

“Thank you again, lass,” he drawled. “Please conduct my sincere compliments to the cook of this delicious meal. Whom should I speak to about procuring lodging for the night? I’m not inclined to go back out into that until it clears up a bit.”

Her eyes shot toward the door as it swung open yet again, letting in the largest crowd yet, along with the blustery wind and snow. “That is very true, sir,” she acknowledged. “The weather is fit for neither man nor beast. My father is behind the counter. He’s the one you should speak to.”

“Thank you. I shall do that as soon as I finish my meal,” he declared, tucking into the food before him yet again.

He used the last bite of bread to soak up the last of the broth from the stew before rising from his table and making his way toward the counter with the blonde man behind it. “Good evening, sir,” Killian called as he approached.

“Good evening,” the man replied. “I hope you enjoyed my wife’s stew and Granny’s bread.”

“Undoubtedly, sir,” he rejoined, “It’s been many a month since I’ve partaken of a meal as satisfying as the one I just enjoyed.” He leaned across the counter with his hand extended toward the man. “Captain Killian Jones.”

“Ah,” the man exclaimed, taking Killian’s outstretched hand. “I wondered if perhaps you were a seafaring man. David Swan. How else may I help you?”

It was all he could do to keep his face from showing his complete and utter surprise at the confirmation of his earlier thoughts. “A pleasure to meet you, David,” he answered, pointing back toward the door of the inn. “I’d rather prefer to not have to leave until the weather clears up. Might you have a room available until it does?”

“We do indeed,” he affirmed. “Emma?”

“Yes, Papa,” the girl answered, approaching the counter again.

“Would you please see that room 2 is ready for Captain Jones here,” he asked his daughter.

Killian reached out toward Emma, palm up, in a gesture of invitation. She lay her own hand in his own before he lifted it to place a small kiss to her knuckles. “Thank you for the excellent service and meal tonight, Miss Emma. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Yours as well, Captain,” she replied, with a slight curtsey, “I’ll just go see to your room. I’ll return shortly.”

Killian watched her walk away, his thoughts in complete turmoil. Shaking his head and returning his attention to her father, he scratched behind his ear as he took in David’s broad smile. “She’s nearly sixteen and would make a fine wife for a sea captain before too much longer.” David answered his unasked question.

Scratching furiously in nervousness, Killian repeated, “So, she’s 15, hmm?” He swallowed around the sizable lump in his throat as a petite black haired woman whose temples were just dusted with frost joined them at the counter.

She turned her eyes upon David with a slight reprimand in them before turning her gaze upon Killian. Green, just like Emma’s. Must be her mother. Killian extended his hand toward the woman, just as he had moments before with the young woman. Brushing his lips across her knuckles, he introduced himself again. “Captain Killian Jones, milady, at your service.”

“My wife, and Emma’s mother, Mary Margaret Swan,” David introduced them.

“It’s my honor,” Killian murmured, sincerely. “If I’m not mistaken, I have you to thank for the stew I partook of this evening?”

Mary Margaret’s cheeks tinged a light pink. “Oh, it was nothing, Captain,” she deflected, “I’m so pleased you enjoyed it.”

“I truly did,” he affirmed. “I was just telling your husband that after many months at sea, a hot, fresh meal is greatly appreciated.”

Emma approached the counter again. “Your room is ready, Captain Jones. If you’ll follow me please.”

With a slight bow to David and Mary Margaret and wishes from both sides for a pleasant evening, Killian followed Emma to his room.

~*~*~

It was nearly a fortnight later before the snow had melted enough for Killian to leave the inn. During the time he had spent with them, he had become quite good friends with the Swan family. He was careful to keep the rapidity with which he was losing his head over Emma hidden as he became her constant companion in her leisure time. Which admittedly, wasn’t much. David and Mary Margaret didn’t have any objection to his obvious affinity for their daughter, and he had even managed to win over the matriarch of the family, Granny. Being in such close quarters with Emma was an exercise in self control such that he had never had to endure before. But, in the end, he had been successful in keeping his true nature from the happy family. The puzzling questions concerning the journal entry still plagued him, but he thought that perhaps, with his new certainty of who Emma was, he might be able to figure out what the rest of it meant.

Entering his cabin, Killian immediately pulled down his logbook and flipped to the page containing the riddle. He hadn’t thought of it since the evening after the storm, fifteen years before. Right about the time Emma would have been born, he thought. But upon seeing her birthmark and introducing himself to David, it had never been far from his mind. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to recall most of the words, so as soon as the snow was melted sufficiently, he rushed to the Jolly to look at the journal again.

The Dark’s minion’s downfall is foretold

When True Love’s Kiss doth unfold

Between soulmates unbound by time

The blue eyed prince and his golden haired Swan

Their True Love will break the hold

And Dark magic will be no more.

Killian stared at the words before him, wrestling with them in his mind, trying to make sense out of them.

The Dark’s minion’s downfall is foretold

Foretold, that means prophecy. The Dark. The Darkness? The Darkness that makes him, makes me, what I am? The Dark’s minion? If the Darkness is what makes us, then Rumplestiltskin must be its minion. Downfall is foretold. He will fall when True Love’s Kiss occurs between soulmates, the blue eyed prince and his golden haired Swan. Me and Emma. Unbound by time. What does that mean? Killian shook his head. He hadn’t a clue. Their True Love will break the hold and Dark magic will be no more. That sounds like True Love’s Kiss between me and Emma will destroy the Darkness. Then Rumplestiltskin can be destroyed. A sinister smile broke across his face. At last our tales will again intertwine. Revenge will be mine.

He could feel the anger and hatred rising within him, nearly triggering a blood frenzy within him. There was no way he could return to the inn with the bloodlust this close to the surface. He closed his eyes and willed himself back under control. He needed to get word to his crew and get as far away from here as he could. If Emma was his True Love, and the two of them were needed to destroy the Darkness and Rumplestiltskin, he had to get as far away from Emma as possible if he wanted to keep her and her family safe. If Rumplestiltskin were to find out about her, find out about her family, he wouldn’t hesitate to destroy them. He had to keep her safe. Safe from him. And safe from him. He’d come back for brief visits in the future, until she was a little bit older and ready for him to court and marry her. A sudden certainty came over him that if he wanted to court her, if he wanted to be worthy of her, his days of slaughter on the high seas and persuasion and compulsion on his crew were at an end. He couldn’t continue to take their free will from them as his sire had taken his. Satisfied with his plans, he pulled out a sheet of parchment and began penning a missive to Emma and her family.

~*~*~

Six months later

Killian made his way through the streets of London with an arm raised to his face, trying to block the putrid smell that came from the devastating effects of the Black Death that was ravaging the continent and had made its way to England’s shores. He could only hope and pray that Emma and her family had not suffered any loss due to the epidemic. The heat mingled with the stench of death made for a rancid bouquet that was causing his last meal to roll within him, wanting to revolt. He finally reached the inn and made his way inside. Getting out of the blazing heat of the sun overhead and the stink from the rampant disease was such a relief, that he wanted to weep. But before he could collapse, his eyes caught the gaze of his friend behind the counter. A gaze that held unspeakable despair and immense pain. Killian’s greeting and smile died on his lips before he could utter a word.

He knew his Swan’s family had not been spared.

Emma’s birthday had come and gone while he’d been at sea, and he now felt that the time was right to formally court her and make her his bride.

That hope for the future was shattered, however when David’s head slowly shook from side to side. He knew who Killian would be most anxious to see upon his arrival, but it was plain to see that he couldn’t bring himself to utter the words. David came around the counter to embrace his friend. A wail of misery that came from the depths of his being threatened to consume him, but he clenched his jaw against it.

“When?” he gritted out.

“Nine days.” David’s voice broke on a whisper. Drawing away from him, Killian tried to curl himself into a ball as the wail continued to try and break free.

David reached around his shoulders and drew him upright again as he led him toward the back of the inn. Pushing through the door back into the heat, dizziness overtook him as he looked at the three graves just a few feet from the door.

“Granny went first. She died in April,” David choked out. “We thought that we’d been spared, since no one else came down with it right away.” Killian could feel the blood tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. He kept his focus on the ground before him as David continued to speak. “Mary Margaret became ill seventeen days ago, and almost the same hour that I lost her, Emma was stricken. I couldn’t bear to leave my beautiful Mary Margaret to decay, so I dug her grave next to Granny. Granny was the only mother my Mary Margaret ever knew.”

Killian chanced a brief glance at the grieving man beside him. The anguish painted there, left his skin with a grey pallor.

“Did I ever tell you our story?” David pressed on, without waiting for his answer. “I came from a family of shepherds. My mother passed when my youngest sister was born. I was seven. Mary Margaret lived in the nearby village and had always been kind to me when I came into town. But the man she called Father, was the most despicable of men. He was a slave to drink. Never satisfied with the work she did to maintain their household, constantly harassing her, beating her for no reason. She had finally worked up the courage to leave his house when he collapsed with wracking coughs. He was dead within days. She was sixteen. For some reason, she came to me. I could never understand why. She said it was because I made her feel safe. That when he would beat her, she’d picture my face and she’d be able to endure it.” He paused, shaking his head. “But, why me? Wouldn’t anyone else have helped her? I didn’t do anything anybody else wouldn’t have done…” He shook himself from his rambling memories and continued their story. “After knowing each other most of our lives, it didn’t take us long to fall in love. When we couldn’t hide Mary Margaret’s pregnancy anymore, my father kicked us out. We came to London to try to find a better life and Granny took us in. Only three weeks before Emma was born. Granny delivered her. It seemed only fitting that they should all be together in death.”

David fell silent. Killian could no longer hold back his tears. He collapsed to the ground, desperate to hide his face and the blood pouring down his cheeks from his friend, gasping sobs breaking free. David stood beside him, silent tears coursing down his own cheeks, letting Killian’s grief find a safe outlet that wouldn’t be contained or interrupted. When the barking sobs subsided to quiet weeping, David patted his friend on the shoulder.

“I’ll go prepare your room. Stay out here as long as you need.” He turned toward the door and disappeared inside.

Finally alone, Killian raised his blood streaked face to look at the graves before him. His golden haired Swan was gone. The woman he loved, his soulmate, was gone. What am I going to do now?

#CSSNS20 #krystal writes #of darkness vampires and soulmates #ch2 #art by spartanguard

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j-hawthorn · 3 years

Text

Books and Bubble Baths: Chapter 3

(Find this chapter and my other work on AO3 here! )

It was so easy for Crowley to sow little seeds of evil in the world. And the fact they were able to do so while getting breakfast for their angel was an added bonus. They held an impeccably wrapped package in their arms – a package they had forced the shop staff wrap, then pull apart only to wrap again until it was perfect. It had to be, Crowley wouldn’t allow a half-arsed gift for their angel. You don’t get shown that GOOD of a time and NOT at least buy the person some pastries!

They’d woken up a tangled mess. Arms and legs and huge wings splayed and curled together with their angel. They’d never done that – woken up with the heat of another person. They also hadn’t seen their angel sleep in...forever. Crowley had stayed with him, watching the rise and fall of his soft tummy, his arms curled to his chest. His cheek had smushed against Crowley’s shoulder, giving him an off centre pout.

Crowley eventually crawled out of the bed, legs wobbling. Naked and still fizzing from the night before, they’d snuck into the ensuite. They showered, stole some of Angel’s perfume and examined themself in the mirror. They hadn’t looked any different. Part of them had wondered if there would be something new about them, but there wasn’t – aside from the marks along their neck from their angel’s hungry little mouth. Crowley touched one gently, and smirked. That had certainly been something. While they could easily alter their form and make the marks disappear, they didn’t. Keeping them made everything more real, they couldn’t pretend the night before was just a very realistic dirty dream – it was real, and their angel had claimed them as his.

They had dressed in a tight (and short) black dress, black stockings and black knee high snakeskin boots with dangerously thin heels. With a wispy red scarf tied at their throat (just because they wanted to keep the marks didn’t mean they wanted anyone else to look at their horny little secret) and hair pulled back into two messy buns on either side of their head they slunk out of the shop. Stiletto heels clicked menacingly on the stone street as if to say: watch out world, I’m newly sexed up! I’m mad, bad and mildly inconvenient to know!

Package in hand, they trotted back to the shop, bell tinkling sweetly. They placed the package on the table, stepping back to make sure it was perfectly arranged – the shop bell rang.

Head whipping round, Crowley hissed under their breath. There was a MAN. He smiled when they met his eye. Crowley curled their lip.

‘Hello-’

‘Go away,’ Crowley strode over, making shooing motions with their hands. The man was taller than them, and white with a mess of brown hair. He picked up a book, turning over uselessly in his hands, ‘I just want to look at some books...’

‘You can’t, shops closed. Piss off!’

The man smiled, then held out his hand, ‘Okay. You caught me, I actually saw you outside and wanted to meet you -’

‘- Ew, grosssss, ’ Crowley hissed – He was ruining their morning! Inside their head a 40 foot serpent was smashing its metaphorical fists on a table chanting “BITE! BITE! BITE! BITE!” Their teeth itched. When ever they felt a strong – and often negative – emotion Crowley’s internal bearings would stop pointing at “person” and start pointing towards “reticulated python” taking their corporal form with it.

‘- The names David.’

‘I don’t care!’ Crowley’s whole faced scrunched in disgust, ‘Do you often follow strangers into buildings? How are you not dead?’

‘There’s no need for that -’

‘Get out! Now! The shop is closed, and I have no desire what so-fucking-ever of knowing you!’

The human couldn’t see it, but Crowley could feel their fangs growing, their body gaining vertebra, lengthening, bones threatening to crack and warp -

‘Crowley?’ The most beautiful sound in the world was their name uttered by a puffy faced, bleary eyed angel in a tartan pyjama set and fluffy slippers. The man turned and blinked, ‘....oh.’

‘Who are you?’ The angel frowned catching sight of the man.

‘He followed me in!’ Crowley snarled, ‘Before I could lock the door.’

‘Why did you follow my love in here?’ Aziraphale walked slowly over, eyes fixed on the man.

‘We were just talking-’

Crowley backed away with a snarl. The snake inside was thirsting for a fight, and they were not going to give in – especially not when Aziraphale’s books were in the splash zone.

The angel stood with his hands behind his back, head cocked to one side. ‘We are closed, sir, you really do need to leave.’

‘Hey, she came in here too-’

‘Of course THEY did. THEY are my partner, you are a pillock,’ The angel gave a steely grin. ‘Vacate the premises on your own accord, before I have to force you out myself.’

Crowley barked a laugh, leaning forward to grip the edge of a shelf. Their ribs were on fire. As a defence mechanism, turning into a giant serpent was quite handy. A lot of creatures backed off from the sight of a skinny little person exploding in a cloud of viscera into a 650 pound mass of teeth and scales. But it did wreck havoc on the nerves.

‘She never said she was married...’ The man whined, slamming the door behind himself. Aziraphale clicked his fingers and the locks slammed into place.

‘Are you okay – oh... Oh dear!’ Aziraphale gasped.

Teeth. Crowley was all teeth now, arms limp and useless around their middle. ‘Gotta biiiite ssssssomething!’

‘Hang on, my love!’

Aziraphale trotted to his desk. He rummaged through the topmost drawer. With expert aim Aziraphale threw a large dog toy at Crowley, who’s body twisted and burst into heavy coils. They caught the toy in their huge jaw, sinking their fangs in deep. With each furious chomp the thing squeaked, lost in the rolling body of the serpent. Crush it! Crush it!

Somewhere in the background of their mind, Crowley heard their angel putting on the jug. The air was full of his scent – warm, tired, a little sweaty. It was calming. Their heavy body slowly unknotted itself. Aziraphale came back in, carrying two steaming mugs. He sat on the shop sofa with a sigh, ‘Goodness me, what a way to start the day.’

‘Bad man,’ Crowley rumbled, punctuating the sentence with a squeak of the chew toy.

‘Indeed!’

The chew toy dropped to the floor, Crowley’s head rising above their knots, ‘If I find who invented misogyny, I’ll give them such a dressing down!’

‘Hear, hear!’ Aziraphale held his drink aloft.

‘They’ll get such a bollocking like no one has ever been bollocked before!’

‘Hear, hear...?’

‘And I’ll constrict around their horrible, pitiful little body until their bastarding head pops off and flies into the sun!’

‘Oh, good lord...’ Aziraphale made a face, looking over at Crowley.

‘Bastards!’ The snake snarled at the world, head aloft, fangs bared. They sucked in a deep breath, then slithered over to the sofa. They looped their body around the entire thing a couple of times, large head placed softly on the angel’s knee. They sighed, ‘....bastards.’

‘I know, darling,’ Aziraphale stroked his finger down the centre of their face. ‘I am sorry.’

‘I’m not a girl...’ They sighed, ‘And I shouldn’t be upset that some wanker thought I was one! What even is a gender to a thing like me? I wear a body for fun, but it’s not...anything! I’m like a...a...a Muppet! A muppet with a snake instead of a hand up it!’

Aziraphale blew out a slow breath, ‘You’re very...descriptive today, my love.’

‘But that’s what it’s like! It’s all fake,’ Crowley wobbled their head. ‘So why am I upset!’

‘Because you were mistreated,’ The angel ran his thumb over the top of their snout. ‘He shouldn’t have said what he said. Or treated you like he did. You’re allowed to be upset, sweet one. Because you deserve the be treated with respect and to be seen how you wish to present yourself.’

Crowley nuzzled their snout into his hand, letting their forked tongue gently touch his wrist. He chuckled softly, and Crowley felt a little thrill at the sound. Comforting. Angel was always comforting and warm.

‘Got you a treat,’ They purred, pointing the tip of their tail at the package. Aziraphale gasped, grinning, ‘Oh! How thoughtful. You’re so kind, Crowley.’

‘Ew, stop it, haven’t I been through enough this morning,’ Crowley mumbled, eternally grateful that snakes couldn’t blush. ‘Are you going to have a snake day?’ Aziraphale asked, stroking his hand down the back of their head. They liked it when he petted them, not that they’d ever told him. But, they supposed, maybe he already knew. He had such a way of finding what made their little brain turn to goo.

‘Nah,’ They said, then pried themself away from Aziraphale’s warm, tender hands. ‘Look away while I switch.’ They slunk down behind the sofa, puling their large body tightly together.

‘Darling, I’ve seen you change a thousand times before, why must I avert my eyes now?’

Because you’ve seen me in ways no one else ever has, and maybe ever will, and I don’t know how to cope with the knowledge of being genuinely and wholly perceived in my true state – and to have that state of being be loved so fully. I feel like I’ve been pulled a part, and put back together piece by minute piece, all by your hand, and that isn’t something I have felt since the birth of creation.

Is what Crowley thought. What Crowley said was:

‘Cut me some fucking slack, Angel!’

Limbs restored, Crowley wriggled their little dress back down over their thighs, and gave their hair a quick pat down. Wrinkle free and fangs safely put away, they sat down beside Aziraphale, and smiled. He didn’t return it.

'So...' Aziraphale said, staring into the depths of his tea. 'We need to talk about last night, yes?'

'Do we, though?' Crowley sat on their hands to hide the shaking. Nerves made their stomach gurgle. There was no point trying to hide it, that man-shaped force of love and light beside them could see through them in an instant. He was their best friend. He'd seen them at some of their lowest points, he knew them probably better than they knew themself. And that put him at an unfair advantage.

'Yes, Crowley, we do,' He shifted in his seat, and looked at them. Crowley couldn't make eye contact, so they slouched, crossed their legs, hands folded on their stomach and stared up at the cobweb covered ceiling. Build a little wall, enough to peek over but enough to shelter, they thought. Just in case.

'Okay then, Angel,' they said. 'Fire away.'

Aziraphale sighed, 'You were gone when I woke up-'

'- To get you breakfast!'

'Crowley, let me talk. Please?' He sighed again, 'Waking up without you beside me was...a shock. I've never wondered what it would be like to wake up with you there, but I found I had been expecting that.'

'...Sorry.'

'Oh! No, please, you don't need to be,' He reached over and patted their knee. 'Dear boy, what I'm trying to say is when I awoke and you weren’t there I feared the worst. I was worried I had hurt you,’ Aziraphale said. ‘Or frightened you in some way. I’ve hurt you before, and I never want to do so again.’ ‘Ah...But I got over it, so no harm done,’ Crowley lied through their pointy little teeth. Sometimes, in the dead of night they replayed the rejection over and over in their head, or they dreamt it – often accompanied by the smell of smoke and lick of flame.

‘Hmm,’ Aziraphale sipped his tea, giving them a look. ‘Well I haven’t. So tell me, are you okay?’ Behind their glasses Crowley closed their eyes and silently cursed themself. Why now were they filled with nerves? They had so many years of quietly thirsting over the angel, of openly flirting and teasing, and now, NOW was when their palms grew sweaty and they wanted nothing more than the earth to open up and swallow them whole.

'I'm feelin' fine, Angel,' Crowley said with a lazy wave of their hand.

'You're feeling fine?'

'Yeah.'

'Just...fine?'

'Yeah?'

'Right-o, then,' Aziraphale said, crossing his legs. But something in the air told Crowley it was not right-o. Something wasn't right-o at all.

'I mean,' they started, leaning closer with their hands on their knees. 'More than fine, Angel. Really more than fine. I'm good, great even. Tingly.'

'Tingly?'

'All up my spine and my skin,' Crowley gave an awkward half smirk half grimace. 'It's nice. But also, real real weird.'

Aziraphale gave a warm chuckle, setting his tea aside, 'I know what you mean, my love.' Crowley's heart did a horrible little flip at that. They kneaded their chest. I'm never going to get used to that, they thought, this bastard is going to kill me with pet names.

'Why are you rubbing your breast, dear?'

'I'm not! You're making my chest hurt!'

'What? How?'

'By being all good,' Crowley frowned. 'And nice and pretty and soft. Why are you so soft?' Their chest was really starting to hurt now, like their heart was expanding and strangling their lungs.

'Sit down, Crowley, you’re having one of your moments.'

'What?' They were pacing – when did they get up? The room was too hot – why did the angel never open any bloody windows in the place-?

Cold hands. Cold hands at their throat. Instinct said to bite, to jump, to scuttle away into the dark. They stood stock still as Aziraphale delicately untied their scarf. Cool air washed over their skin, followed by a tender touch along the marks still present on their neck and throat. Strong arms wrapped around their middle, and soft curly hair settled under their chin. Crowley's arms hung limp by their side.

'I'm a numpty.'

'Yes you are, but a lovely one,' Aziraphale chuckled softly. He rubbed their back. Crowley pressed their cheek to the top of his head, eyes closed. He smelled like soap. Good soap. Fancy soap with roses in it. It was the most comforting thing they'd ever sniffed. They never wanted to not sniff those roses ever, ever again.

'You need to work on your emotional regulation, though, maybe get a stress ball? We could take a perambulation through the park later -'

'- I want to go home.'

Aziraphale pulled back, frowning deeply, 'Oh.'

Crowley picked up the box of pastries and strode towards the stairs.

'Where are you going?' Aziraphale asked. They could hear the frustration in his voice. Crowley ran, 'Upstairs! I think I live here now!’

'What the blazes are you on about?' Aziraphale thundered behind them but Crowley had already placed the box on the table and was sizing up the room.

'I wanna put my desk under that window-'

'Crowley!'

'What?'

'You can't just decide something like that! This is my home-'

'-I think you might be mine, though.'

Aziraphale heaved a huge sigh, ‘Oh, my heart. You sweet, beautiful fool.’ He rolled his eyes then smiled, ‘Crowley, I want to be with you and around you as much as possible. You don’t have to grip so tightly, I’m not going anywhere. I adore you. But you can’t just decide that you live here. Do you actually want to move in to the shop with me?’

‘No, it’s kind of ugly,’ They admitted. ‘And your interior decorating abilities are seriously lacking, Angel. I mean really, tartan curtains? Yellow wallpaper? It’d need a complete do over-’

‘Well, golly, thank you for that Crowley,’ Aziraphale laughed, untying the ribbon on the package. He flipped the lid and gasped. ‘Oh! So pretty! Is that almond paste?

‘And custard.’

The smile Crowley got could have lit up the whole world. They could do this. If they could get a smile like that every day, then fuck, maybe they’d be worth something. All they wanted was that smile. That warmth and bite.

‘Maybe,’ They said carefully, ‘We could have a trial run. Of living together.’

Aziraphale nodded, licking sugar powder off his fingers in such a manner that Crowley had to avert their eyes to keep their thoughts on track. ‘Would you move in here? I don’t know if I could move into your apartment-’

‘Nah nah,’ Crowley rocked on their heels. ‘Somewhere neutral.’

‘Neutral.’ Aziraphale hummed, looking out the window, ‘Like...a holiday?’

‘Yeah! Angel,’ Crowley smiled toothily, ‘Wanna go on holiday? Anywhere you like, you pick, I’ll drive!’

The angel leaned back in his dining chair, hands folded on the table. He grinned, ‘I’ll go pack.’

---

Thanks for reading! If you like my work, consider buying me a coffee here!

#good omens #goodomens #goodomens fanfic #crowleyxaziraphale #ineffable husbands #ineffable spouses #ao3 writer #also on ao3 #my fic

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chapitre7 · 4 years

Text

When I have you

The Untamed [陈情令] | Mo Dao Zu Shi [魔道祖师] fanfiction

Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Yīng | Wei Wuxian (Wangxian)

CQL-verse, Canon Divergence, Alternate getting together

Tracks up to episode 33

Read on AO3

“Why would a person like another person? I mean that kind of like.”

He makes an abrupt pause in his writing, and though he doesn’t look up, the smudge on the paper is ever-growing. If not for the practice of his calligraphy, all the work put into transcribing those rules would have been for nought. He’ll have to discard those, and start over.

Wei Wuxian, however, unfortunately encouraged by his reticence, continues.

“Come on, Lan Zhan, you’re the smartest person I know. I don’t understand what my senior sister sees in that peacock, but she seems to like him, like really likes him, and not out of the endless kindness in her heart.”

The Jiang disciple breaks the peace in the Library Pavilion with heavy steps, crossing the distance between his desk and Lan Wangji’s in long, ungraceful strides, plopping down beside the Second Jade with a low sound. Head bowed, eyes turned up, he attempts to lock gazes with the other.

“What do you think, Lan Zhan? Have you ever thought about it?”

Lan Wangji is not looking up but he can see Wei Wuxian’s grin just at the limits of his peripheral vision. Out of a stubborn, uncontrollable desire to ignore the other, Lan Wangji continues to write down the Gusu Lan rules from memory, the blotch in the middle seeming to chastise him for his irritation.

“Has Second Young Master Lan ever liked someone?”

“Ridiculous,” he mutters, but not with as much purpose as he meant to convey with the word. Under the cold layers of his façade, Lan Wangji admits to know the sentiment in his heart. He loves his brother, and he loves his uncle, and he certainly loves his sect. Those are all different from the kind that Wei Wuxian is talking about, he also knows. A kind that he hasn’t put his mind into in his short experience in life, having had no reason to consider it. Even as brother tries to gently push him towards the path of friendship with someone, he’s... troubled. If he must fulfill his duties with his sect with focus and precision, how could he be dedicated to someone else?

“Right, it is ridiculous.”

It must be a particular talent of Wei Wuxian’s, to sound petulant even when he’s being agreeable.

“Second Young Master Lan is cold as jade, I bet no cultivator has been strong enough to melt the ice in his veins.”

Lan Wangji closes his eyes, summoning all of his diligent training to calm the storm that seems to loom around this disciple who seems to want nothing but to shake the foundations of the Gusu Lan sect.

“But if I could almost beat you in a fight, Lan Zhan, I wouldn’t give up on that front if I were you!”

He snaps his eyes open and Wei Wuxian recoils at his glare, as if sharp Bichen had just been unsheathed and pointed at his neck. And because he’s not been taught to feel pride, Wangji rationalizes that it’s only appropriate for the misbehaving to be aware of their actions.

“Get back to work,” he says, enunciating every word, and Wei Wuxian pouts like a child, resignedly dragging himself to his feet and slouching back to his own desk. He doesn’t ask anything else that day, and Lan Wangji makes a series of mental notes of all the points that Wei Wuxian needs to work on in order to become a proper cultivator.

The question still lingers in his mind when he lies down to sleep. In the cold, dark blue of the Cloud Recesses after curfew, no hints are blown to him on the breath of the wind, nor are they whispered by the cricking branches of the magnolia trees. It’d be a shameful question to ask uncle; brother wouldn’t mind, but his usual method of guidance would be like trying to tread through a village without light. One can live alone, Wangji. Our hearts are our own to keep or to give. But our feelings are hardly ours to control. He knows, just like he’d be able feel the dirt beneath his feet and feel his way from one side to the other in the dark. But as he relies on his sight to see, how could he know if his surroundings were the very ones he had been looking for?

Lan Wangji only falls asleep hours after curfew, after he wills himself to stop thinking.

***

To find Wei Wuxian searching through the archives of the Library Pavilion, having arrived earlier than Lan Wangji, is something of a surprise that the young Lan could easily brush past, his jade-like complexion not betraying the slight sentiment of optimism that the disciple is finally willing to be studious and respectful.

To hear him muttering, “I can’t believe there’re literally no romance books,” causes those fragile wings of hope to melt under the scorching reality that Wei Wuxian is unrepentant, and realize there’s still much work to be done.

“Lan Zhan!”

He barely suppresses the narrowing of his eyes. Every time he calls his name is like he’s closing in again, trying to whisper theories or whatever occupies his mind at the time, and Wangji does not like to be close, does not like to be touched, does not like the ease with which Wei Wuxian falls into calling him by his name. Excessive feelings are forbidden. He bundles his disapproval, folds it over and over and tucks it away, so he can properly start finding ways to discipline Wei Wuxian.

Who’s looking at him with undisguised disappointment. “I had so many expectations for your library, Lan Zhan, but there’s really nothing helpful! The library at Lotus Pier has collections on bravery, legendary hunts and cultivation partners. Doesn’t your sect have any romance in you?”

Lan Wangji moves soundlessly to stand beside the other, adjusting the book spines back into their proper place. The task is nothing to him, just a repetition of propriety, and against his better judgment, his eyes go unfocused, thinking about the concept of romance.

“Lan An, after finding his cultivation partner and founding the Gusu Lan sect, passed on that all regulations can be foregone once one finds the one they love. Although that much is known, he didn’t leave behind any record or notes about his life with his cultivation partner.”

Which Wei Wuxian would know if he had been attending class like his peers, and paying attention instead of messing around.

Casting his gaze aside from the bookshelf, Lan Wangji notices that Wei Wuxian stares at him with wide eyes and an open mouth. Words seem to have escaped him, for what surely must be the first time in their short acquaintance. The moment stretches for so long (seconds) and it’s so out of place that Lan Wangji almost fidgets, but instead he barely moves, ready to guide them to their proper seats to start their work for the day, if Wei Wuxian isn’t inclined to say anything else. However, he takes only a sidestep when the boy blurts, a bit too loudly,

“You can ignore the rules?!”

He soundly gasps, clutching the front of his robes, looking positively anguished. Lan Wangji is unimpressed.

“Lan Zhan! Then why are we even learning this many rules to begin with!”

Lan Wangji retracts his foot from its designed path to place it right beside the other, turning fully to Wei Wuxian, the perfect form of ordinance.

“One must first know and follow the rules in order to forego them.”

The rules are so much more than the binds Wei Wuxian perceives them to be, and with time, he’ll understand. At that point, however, Lan Wangji is a little wavered, experiencing his own limits. He is, perhaps, a bit disappointed in himself. But Wei Wuxian only blinks, the exaggerated, dramatic mask he’s wearing dropping, only to break into his usual mirthful countenance. He laughs, body curving forward, both hands cradling his belly.

“Lan Zhan, ah, Lan Zhan,” he says between difficult breaths, wiping tears away from his eyes. Lan Wangji simply waits, hands behind his back, slowly blinking. “The Second Jade of Lan can be so funny! You must talk more!”

“Nonsense,” he says, ready to leave Wei Wuxian’s inappropriate curiosity behind, walking to his usual seat in the pavilion. Without anyone to entertain him, Wei Wuxian follows.

“Lan Zhan, listen! What do you think a man who wrote down however many rules only to give them up was thinking?” He hops from one side of Lan Wangji to the other as the cultivator walks, and gingerly sits down beside him as the other carefully sets himself behind his desk. “Do you think it he was taken by how pretty she was? Or how nice? But the peacock is neither of those things! Well, he might be good-looking, but his personality is rotten, so what good is it for! What do you think, Lan Zhan? What would you like? Would your destined young lady cultivator have to be prettier than you? I think those standards are a bit— All right, I’m going, I’m going, I’m sitting down, see?”

Lan Wangji keeps glaring at Wei Wuxian even as he starts scribbling down the rules in uncoordinated calligraphy. He catches every glance the other throws in his direction to make sure he refocuses on his designed task. It’s only after a few good minutes of Wei Wuxian copying the rules at remarkable speed (which would probably require another whole round of copying, considering he’s processing a whole lot of nothing that way) that Wangji allows himself to look down at his own blank manuscript.

With Wuxian quiet, the doors to the pavilion closed, and only a breeze swaying a wind chime by the open window, Wangji tries to remember any love poems that he’s read in the past. He doesn’t get up to look for any books, not wanting to catch Wei Wuxian’s attention, but all of the meanings and messages that he remembers fail to form a proper answer, speaking only of an abstract feeling that supposedly one could do anything for. To create rules to regulate one’s spirit and then give them up. To live for a sect and to live for a single person. Be two people — or was it just one, perfectly divided, perfectly wise? Was love also a form of cultivation, once you uncovered its mysteries?

All Wangji knows of love are uncle’s short words about father when he dared to ask, spoken with fondness before a grunt and an endless reciting of rules.

An open door with warm arms and a laughter that rang like bells, teasing him into speaking, into making sounds. Warm despite her fate, caring and welcoming, until the door closed and never opened again.

Flowers that never survived winter.

“...An. Lan Zhan!”

His eyes had been open the entire time, but it’s only after the call that he sees Wei Wuxian. Standing before him with a slight furrow between his brows, holding a stack of notes but keeping it at his side. Instead of handing them over, he kneels, placing his elbows on Wangji’s desk. The paper before the Second Jade is empty again, and if he wrote anything, he’s unable to recall. The sun is low outside, casting shadows on the usually bright pavilion.

“Are you okay? Are you hungry?” Wei Wuxian tilts his head to the side, and all of his questions beg no real answers as he continues. “Really, Lan Zhan, the food you serve here isn’t enough to sustain a cultivator of your caliber. You should come to Yunmeng! I’ll show you all of the best restaurants, though none of them can really compare to senior sister’s cooking. I can ask her to make you all my favorite dishes! I’m sure you’ll like them.”

Wei Wuxian stands up laughing, but it’s not quite like the way he usually does. He’s moving between his heels and the balls of his feet, delighted huffs of air escaping through his nose. It echoes the melody of the wind chime, his eyes catching a light that Lan Wangji doesn’t know the source of. Wangji can only watch him for a second or two, spellbound, as if the sun that he is, that Jiang Wanyin and Nie Huaisang tend to gravitate around, is lighter, the beginning of autumn. Something lies heavy in his chest — the promise or the company? The clear concern or the unambitious compliment? — and he can’t speak, waiting for the words find their way back to him.

“No need,” Wangji says at last, holding out his hand, and Wei Wuxian hands him his copy of the rules with a clearly displeased expression at his dismissal, which gives Wangji some relief; he’s not acting strangely, or not so strangely as to make an impression on the Yunmeng Jiang disciple.

All through dinner, thoughts keep swirling in his head. Brother doesn’t keep him in his company for long, catching that something is on his mind, but being, as always, kind enough to let him go if he’s not ready to share. And as he folds his robes after changing for bed, he’s suddenly hit with the memory of the cloud patterns on his mother’s robes. Even if he can no longer perfectly envision her features anymore, he thinks that he can understand the virtues that could lead someone to love. Kindness, gentleness; a disposition to accept him and stay with him, even if he’s not much of a talker, not fun to be around; and a way to make him feel like he’s right where he’s supposed to be, even within the four walls of her pretty birdcage.

In the space between the long night and sunrise, Lan Wangji dreams of white gentians and of Wei Wuxian, clad in the white of Gusu Lan as he knew him, laughing with his sword in his hand and the night breeze in his hair. The world is boundless behind him, and he’s calling his name. Opening his eyes to the dark of his safe quarters, Wangji wishes it had been one of those dreams that he forgets at the first light of day, lest he feels tempted to long for their continuation.

His name in Wuxian’s voice lingers in his ears.

***

Brother seems to understand something that’s not enlightened to him yet. Or maybe he’s just testing the waters, surveying the scene, as cultivators ought to do at the beginning of a night hunt. Guiding him, without taking his hand. Smiling at him, anticipating his success.

Traveling with Wei Wuxian is nothing like night hunting. There are no guidelines to follow; even as they ride their swords to Caiyi, he talks about everything he can think about, all the people he sees, an anecdote about Yunmeng here and there. Once they arrive, he’d certainly get lost in the crowd, carelessly going from one merchant to another, if Wangji didn’t go straight to their inn. And when brother arranges for them to stay in the same room — what were his expectations, exactly? Wangji wishes he could see the threads of his brother’s thoughts —, Wangji feels like he’s being tested. Exactly by whom and what for, he’s not sure. His brother isn’t one for tasteless jokes, that much he’s certain. So he must be missing something, any indication that he let on, unconsciously, that he wants things to change.

Does he?

An answer doesn’t come simply because he wishes for it. And he’s no child to throw tantrums at what he doesn’t like or understand. So he just takes it as he does the tasks he’s given. He goes, and he’s focused, as he always is.

Wei Wuxian — Wei Ying, despite his brashness and overconfidence, is smart. He’s capable of asking the right questions, to find the flaws in a story, to grasp at the truth beneath. But exactly because he’s brash and arrogant, he jumps to conclusions that, judging from Jiang Wanyin’s brazen outbursts at his attitude, oftentimes lead into trouble. And he refuses to adapt, to fit into the rules, to follow a more direct path to being a righteous cultivator instead of skirting from one way to another like a drunk.

And yet, Lan Wangji keeps the drawing he made secure on a shelf, pressed between his books. And yet, Wei Ying keeps approaching him in that shamelessly familiar way, just to... What? Rile him up? Get under his skin, like he did with that outrageous book? Or is he so used to all the attention that he gets, that he won’t tire until he’s secured his as well? He tries to piece him together, the contradicting parts of him, the loud and the subtle, the clever and the ignorant, and Wangji doesn’t even know why he thinks of him. Is this what brother intended, in the end? To help him solve a puzzle that he didn’t even realize he was trying to put together? He is unlike any other guest disciple that had come to the Cloud Recesses. Maybe brother intends to have Wangji guide him—

“Lan Zhan.”

Wei Ying talks from his bed. He’s been quiet for so long that Wangji had assumed he had fallen asleep after sulking, after his usual games didn’t follow through with him. And there’s a part of Wangji that feels a pang of guilt that, instead of meditating or preparing to sleep, he had just been sitting there, thinking about him while he’s in the room. It feels dangerous, all of a sudden. That somehow, his thoughts and questions might be seen by the other, that he’ll be able to tell that he’s been on his mind.

“I still can’t think of why senior sister would like the peacock. Maybe it was something he said to her?”

There’s no perceptible change in Wangji’s stance, but he doesn’t shut the topic down.

“Maybe in one of their meetings he said something to her that made her fall in love... Is that possible? I’ve said all kinds of things to the girls in Yunmeng to make them smile and I don’t remember any of them. So why like someone for what they say? Why like something that can be so easily taken back or veiled in lies? You agree, right, Lan Zhan?”

Lan Wangji agrees that words are fleeting, especially considering that Wei Ying says so many of them at any given time, and he’s not surprised that he can forget them the very next moment. But he can’t deny that words can have a life of their own; those once said or those never uttered. They carry a weight to Lan Wangji; he’s known for having few, and in his experience, few are enough. Other times, the questions he’s wanted to ask die in his throat and speak only in restless dreams.

Why did mother kill father’s teacher?

Why didn’t he let her go?

How did she die?

Why won’t father see us anymore?

Why is Wei Ying—

“We must sleep.”

He ignores Wei Ying’s complaints, putting out the candles. He takes off his outer robes, folding them with precision, as his eyes grow used to the dark. He lies down and tries not to be so aware of Wei Ying’s presence in the room, even as he strains to hear the rustling of cloth, his intelligible mumbling followed by a sigh, then silence.

Could a person fall for someone’s words?

He has no idea what it’s like to fall.

But a person can remember so many things in a lifetime, that even something ordinary can feel precious with time. A compliment, perhaps. A hummed melody.

A deep inhale in the stillness of the night.

***

It’s not sound that wakes him. Wei Ying is sitting by a window, looking down at an asleep Caiyi, drinking directly from a jar of alcohol that Wangji doesn’t remember seeing him buy, but he’s not making a sound. He’s just peering at something, or nothing at all, moonlight bathing him in pale blue. The Gusu Lan robes grant him a sort of glow — or maybe it’s Wangji’s half-asleep eyes, interpreting the only source of the room with more brightness than it holds. Wei Ying doesn’t look like he’s slept at all.

“Drinking is forbidden,” is something that comes straight to mind and right out of his mouth. His body is telling him that he hasn’t had enough rest. Wei Ying’s image, his face turning to him, softer at the edges with a trick of light and shadow, keeps him from slipping back into his bed. His unguarded posture and uncharacteristic silence keep the sting out of Wangji’s words. The sound of water is faint in the background, in the pause where they simply look at each other.

“Sorry, Lan Zhan, did I wake you?”

Lan Wangji rises, softly muted steps taking him towards Wei Ying. He casts a glance out of the window, trying to will himself awake and catch any abnormality, but he sees only the busy town of the day, now deserted and painted in darkness.

“You should sleep,” he remarks, letting his hand fall from the window frame. Wei Ying just smiles, bubbling with a low chuckle.

“Don’t worry, Lan Zhan. I’ve been to night hunts on little sleep before, it doesn’t affect my performance.” He lifts his jar to him, eyebrows raised with a question, but Lan Wangji just shakes his head. Wei Ying shrugs, then proceeds to down the rest of the alcohol by himself.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just thinking.” He doesn’t really fit on the windowsill but that doesn’t keep him from perching one foot up while the other just moves back and forth languidly, as if unable to catch up with his rapid, endless thoughts. His smile goes a little crooked then, before he says, “Wishing the peacock were here, to see what he’s made of.”

“Don’t antagonize, Wei Ying.”

“I’m not antagonizing him,” he says, eyes darting up at Lan Wangji, his lips forming an almost imperceptible pout. “I just need to know.”

He doesn’t elaborate, meaning hanging and falling away from view. Wangji frowns, more from trying to decipher Wei Ying’s charade than from any discomfort.

“Ah, I wish I had brought my dizi.”

“You can play?”

Wei Ying nods, foot moving down to join the other, body turning to face Lan Wangji fully.

“Madam Yu, ah... Only senior sister really likes my playing, Jiang Cheng complains it gives him a headache. I’m good! I don’t use it for cultivation or anything, although, after seeing Zewu-jun, I think it wouldn’t be so bad.”

Wangji nods, without hesitation. This Wei Ying, creating music with the spirit that he has witnessed, is something that he finds himself wanting to see.

Wei Ying beams up at him, the moon at his back, still favoring him. Like on that first night of mischief, the night when Wangji met his match.

“Lan Zhan, you should come to Lotus Pier and I’ll play for you. You can play an instrument too, right? We can play together! I may not be on the Second Jade’s level but we can play something nice together, I don’t think anyone would complain about you giving them a headache. What do you say?”

He doesn’t give voice to his agreement. Doesn’t take a step forward, closer to Wei Ying, like he feels compelled to. He looks down at Wei Ying’s fingers, supporting him on the windowsill, and lets his mind wander, for the long span of a second, maybe two, about the songs it can bring to life. Wei Ying, in the foreground of the lively Lotus Pier, painted in his mind only after books and retellings from senior disciples. His smile beckoning, ready and open, like it is now, for him.

“It’s late,” he says, after too long. He turns his back so he doesn’t see Wei Ying’s disappointment, lies down and closes his eyes so he can sleep instead of think about it, of how nice it would be.

What would Lotus Pier sound like? What would it smell like?

He doesn’t even know what the Cloud Recesses smell like anymore.

He closes his fists, fingers clutching at his covers. He falls asleep quick, as his body was trained to do, and once again, he dreams.

***

The cold springs turn the burning on his back into a phantom pain; something there but distant, bearable. The cloudy memories of the night before, in inexplicable contrast, don’t stop echoing in his head, as much as he’d like to forget them. The heavy beating of his heart against his chest as his admission about his mother fell from his lips; the slurred tale about a boy, his parents and a donkey; weak laughter drowned in alcohol. He swayed then, right where he sat, taken by the mist of his inebriation but also by warmth. He thinks he fell, embarrassingly, against the other, or maybe it was the other way around. Then the memory blurs and he remembers only of lying down and hands holding his, placing them against his chest. They’re not close, he had said so, he doesn’t like touching people, but boundaries were pushed back, washed away by waves that carried him along to unknown places.

He thinks that he held onto those hands, but it could be either a memory or a dream. Questions asked, answers given, his face so overwhelmingly warm. He tries to recall some kind of promise; another one among so many that he collected now, like pressed flowers between pages of his favorite poetry book. And then nothing else.

He accepts punishment for his transgressions, accepts it because it’s the right thing to do. But the night yet lingers behind his eyelids, faded and out of focus, watched from behind a waterfall. When Wei Ying approaches him, crossing the waters, he’s ever conscious of him, of things he said and things he might have said but that Wangji can’t remember; or maybe something Lan Wangji might have showed, eyes downcast but not closed, the back of Wei Ying’s hand against his cheek.

“We’re friends, aren’t we? Of all people that I know, I really want to be friends with you, Lan Zhan!”

He struggles without purpose, without meaning, while Wei Ying says all that he wants with ease, convinces him to use his headband so they can both uncover the secrets that lie beneath the land of Gusu Lan. Uncle would have been outraged to know; Lan Yi says nothing, demonstrating a spirit so unlike those of his immediate family that Wei Ying himself looks at her in awe, bowing to her with more respect than Wangji has seen him show for anyone.

Their bound hands are just like the pull that he can’t ignore, persistent, like an ache. It’s stronger when Wei Ying is close, and stronger still when he backs away. Lan Wangji doesn’t know what to think. The tangible problem of the Stygian Metal fails to take over his mind, no matter how much he wants it to.

After they emerge from that place lost in time, that piece from the past heavy inside his robes, Wei Ying falls against him. He feels heavier than the Stygian Metal, the weight not lessening even as he stands, pressing against Wangji’s chest.

Every look Wei Ying sends is tinged with meaning now, with secrets shared between them, both acknowledged and not.

When Wei Ying shows him the lantern he made for him, he thinks he knows a bit why his brother seems to have taken a liking to the boy so fast. In his hands stained with ink, in the delicate rabbit he drew for Wangji (it’s their lantern, their secret), he sees him. His is a spirit that thrives in pushing down barriers and then reveling at his success with showmanship, with resonating laughter. Every action has his mark, every move gives him away. Juggling jars of Emperor’s Smile back and forth with a warrior’s gait, speaking against Wen Chao unafraid of an unequal fight, pulling pranks and playing with those he holds in esteem; thinking hard about things beyond himself, just for the sake of his sister. There’s so much of Wei Ying in everything Wei Ying does, and the person he is...

“I, Wei Wuxian, wish to eliminate evil and protect the weak, always maintaining a good conscience.”

...doesn’t feel like a stranger.

***

“After young master Wei leaves, the Cloud Recesses will return to its previous silence,” brother remarks as the Yunmeng Jiang sect leader walks away with his family, Wangji’s chest aching like it hadn’t in so many years. The passing of time in constant calm and quiet, things Lan Wangji has known all his life — he feels like the ants that Wei Ying had been playing with before are crawling over him, cold and insistent and hard to get rid of.

He clenches his fist, the other holding firmly onto Bichen, and prepares himself for the journey ahead. Away from the Cloud Recesses, he might not feel the loss as he does then. Alone, he can focus on his mission, on his duty to his sect, without being carried away by feelings that grow every time he thinks about them, every time Wei Ying is near and filling his head with questions about love. It is enough for him to invade his dreams with his smile, with his gifts and outstretched hands, calling him to share his burdens, to fight together with ideals guiding their swords. He dreams of him even awake, at times, the cadence with which he says his name already etched like a song in his memory.

He tries.

“Lan Zhan!”

And his resolve to let go crumbles so easily, in a single call. It’s always so easy for him; to appear in a second, with loquats in his hands. It was once alcohol, it was once a drawing, a rabbit and a flower for the Second Jade of Gusu Lan. He closes the steps and stands beside him, clad in dark and red robes, the sun catching on his eyes, and Lan Wangji feels the ache of Wei Ying’s absence grow numb, even as he throws his usual quips at him, even as Lan Wangji keeps pushing him away for his own peace of heart.

As they walk together, move together, and talk about which way to go first, the numbness gives way to a buzz, and the buzz gives way to nothing. It doesn’t feel out of place to have Wei Ying standing near, he doesn’t have the need to be alone, away from Wei Ying and everything, secluded in his own cultivation. Wei Ying shows off his talismans and plays around Tanzhou; he chatters away with Nie Huaisang and talks about frivolous things and Lan Wangji lets him. He’s sprinting ahead, leading, taking him by the hand, and he lets him.

Lan Wangji doesn’t know when he started trusting him, at what point between all of his rule breaking and demonstrations of good thinking and good heart he started to trust his judgment, but he does. On the night of their second night hunt together, he sits around a fire with a dozing Wei Ying and a very much asleep Nie Huaisang, waiting for a clue about the Stygian Metal to show itself, waiting to contain a disaster, and it’s completely different from all the night hunts he’s gone with the Lan sect.

It’s...

“Lan Zhan.”

He keeps his eyes closed, but tilts his head in Wei Ying’s direction.

“Uncle Jiang canceled the marriage between elder sister and the peacock. Can you believe that?”

Lan Wangji opens his eyes and looks at the fire. He remembers young lady Jiang’s face at the time of the fight between Wei Ying and Jin Zixuan. Futures are more fragile than we believe.

“I want to feel like it’s a relief but I saw elder sister crying and there’s really nothing I can do to make her feel better.”

Wei Ying pulls himself up to a sitting position, regarding the fire with eyes that look but don’t see.

“Liking someone like that, isn’t it like haltering your own neck?”

He says it so low that Wangji doesn’t think he’s talking to him anymore, fiddling with the ribbon that fasten his arm guard. Concerned about how he gazes so intently into the fire, Wangji speaks, though he’s not sure about the subject, not any more sure than the first time Wei Ying brought it up.

“Have you found your answer?”

The temple is cold, dust and dirt caught in every corner and crevice, under them, all over their palms and robes, long inhaled by their lungs. It’s uncomfortable, and the fire can’t warm them evenly, can’t keep them safe in its weak light from the shadows that surround them. He takes notice of nothing. As a cultivator who treads in the night, who protects those in need, who goes where the chaos is. And as Wei Ying looks at him, saying nothing, maybe still thinking, yet unwavering, perhaps leaning towards him. Wangji waits for the answer, discovering Wei Ying’s smile against the candles flickering behind him, and his warmth despite the whole distance of the burning campfire between them.

It should have been different. Wei Ying smiles for anyone and he plays with everyone and he goes wherever he wants, unbound by rules. How could he long for him to smile only at him, to appreciate his company, to stay by his side, being so fundamentally alike but with so striking differences?

He thinks there’s an answer in his ellipsis, in how he stops smiling. Wei Ying’s hands are moving, splayed on the ground, scraping against the dust, he’s definitely inching closer, the few feet between them growing fewer, and the man who’s always had something to say is silent like the nights at Gusu.

Wei Ying stops when their knees touch. He has to look up at Wangji as he stands with his back straight, and Wei Ying doesn’t, leaning in instead, his breath tickling Wangji’s cheek. He thinks Wei Ying dusts his hands off on his dark robes but he wouldn’t be able to tell much, he can’t look away from his face, suddenly so close. The fire shines in his eyes, beautifully. Wei Ying is beautiful, like the warriors from the books he likes, drawn with fine brushes and the right lines and curves, as Wangji saw in an illustration in Caiyi. He’s more beautiful still, because he’s real and he knows him and he wants to be known in return.

“Let me see something,” he says, and he moves his hand like he wants to touch Wangji’s face. He halts, not completing the motion, hand in mid-air, and Wangji’s gaze goes from it back to Wei Ying’s eyes who are looking down at his lips. Wangji swallows, the action so clear in their proximity, and Wei Ying looks back up, waiting, but Wangji does nothing else. Wei Ying had asked him for permission and he lets him. Through the tempest inside of him, he lets him, one hand closed around Bichen, gripping it tighter, and the other safe on his lap. He closes his eyes when Wei Ying does, and leans his head down at the same time Wei Ying tilts up.

The kiss doesn’t make a sound. Their position is awkward, not close enough, and without either of them holding onto the other, it’s like they can fall at any second. They hold still, not breathing, until Wei Ying moves his lips, closing around his, pressing closer. He backs away but Wangji falls back into him, the hand not holding Bichen moving to fit perfectly on his jaw, the cold tips of his fingers touching the soft skin behind Wei Ying’s ear. He moves his lips like Wei Ying did, capturing his upper lip then his lower lip, while Wei Ying responds, both slow, unsure of what they’re doing. Wei Ying still hasn’t quite touched him, his fingers traveling, but not holding, along the front of his robes.

Their exhales come deep and hot between them when they part. Nothing much has changed; there’s not a strand of hair out of place that wasn’t already out of place a minute ago, and their clothes aren’t crumpled or dirtier. There’s only their lips, glistening in the firelight, and Wei Ying looking at him with wide eyes.

What did you see?

They’re leaning back against each other, like magnets that can’t help themselves, but just like in Caiyi, time is not on their side. There they were out of sync, out of balance, still lost between questions. In their pocket time at the temple, he sees an answer in Wei Ying’s face — or maybe not an answer but a different question, a tilt of his head, an inhale that he’s just close enough to hear — and the moment is broken by the sound of cracking stone and a rumble that shakes the ground and causes Nie Huaisang to jolt awake with a scream.

Together, they fight. They go from one enemy to the other, the night stretching into day, cultivators committed to their cause. He fights back to back with Wei Ying, their feet and slashes working in perfect coordination, completing attacks with simple commands, with a look. Yet Wei Ying still goes a little further, mind always working too fast, too careless, where Lan Wangji hasn’t yet learned to go. He folds and folds his worry and his frustration and everything that follows Wei Ying away, until the moment comes again, when he’s within his reach. Until then, he’s the Second Jade of Lan, and he’s on duty for his sect and for the good of the entire population.

Was Lan An ever worried about giving too much or too little to his partner?

Which way was he supposed to go?

Lan Wangji just marches on, not a single sign in his body language that he’s lost any of his resolution.

He just moves forward, going where his brother wants him to go.

***

Wei Ying is a little tipsy when he enters Wangji’s room in Qinghe. He smiles a silly smile that turns his eyes into tiny crescent moons before he walks to his bed, tips off his shoes, and plops down.

“Lan Zhan, it’s not fair,” he says, swirling the jar of alcohol he’s still holding. “We’ve been through so much the past couple of days and there’s not a stain on you.”

He’s wrong. There’s dried blood caught at the hem of his robes, and residual dirt that told the tale of their battles and little rest. Lan Wangji feels all of the tribulations of their journey in his bones, and the tension caused by the shadow of the Wen sect feels even stronger against his bloodstream. Wei Ying must feel it too, his smile strained, his eyes lost in the distance but not glossy, not overtaken by the alcohol. In a few strides, he reaches the bed and sits down next to Wei Ying, taking the almost empty jar from Wei Ying’s lax grip. Wei Ying lets him, smile shining again.

“Lan Zhan, we need to report back to Zewu-jun. We can figure out what to do about the Wens together. We’ll part in the morning, just you and me.”

He pats down on Wei Ying’s hair, an affectionate gesture that surprises the both of them. Wei Ying just stares at him at first but quickly leans against the touch, and Lan Wangji is left with the tatters of his restraint as he pets him, thumb gently touching his temple.

“And Jiang Wanyin?”

Wei Ying stops moving his head like a needy cat to blink, frowning as he considers his options. Wangji is glad, then, to know that he’s not the only one struggling with priorities.

“I’ll ask sect leader Nie to have someone escort him back to Lotus Pier... I can’t let you travel alone, Lan Zhan, not while you’re carrying the Stygian Metal. What if something happens before you reach the Cloud Recesses? What if you’re ambushed?” He shakes his head, taking hold of Wangji’s wrist and sitting up. “You’re not going alone.”

He holds Wangji’s gaze with the determination he’s got to witness more than once as they worked together. Wangji says nothing, does nothing, but he feels Wei Ying hand trembling in the grasp he has on him. He looks down, pulling his wrist from Wei Ying’s hold, only to hold his hand in both of his. He understands. Though they’ve been trained to fight since they learned how to walk and have been cultivating for just as long, there are little lessons that prepare you for the bloodbath that Xue Yang left in his wake. And it’s only a prelude of what’s to come, following the Wen sect right to their homes.

Wei Ying head falls against Wangji’s shoulder, the hand that’s not being held closing around the cloud motifs in his robe.

“You don’t have to be alone anymore, Lan Zhan.”

His words are low, muffled from his position, but Lan Wangji hears them clearly. And they bring him back to that day, apparently so distant but it wasn’t, not really. It was just before all of this, all of the worry, all of the road that led them to where they are. The words he had forgotten, hidden away by his drunk stupor and shame, but a promise still uttered, still made before he fell asleep under Wei Ying’s kind touch.

You don’t have to be alone forever.

Wei Ying raises his head, nuzzling against his jaw. He takes his hand from Wangji’s hold, placing it on his shoulder, his lips placing a lingering kiss against the corner of his mouth. They’re so simple, his touches, not demands but asking, giving him time and space to lean away, his eyes small and tired but unwavering from his. Asking, please, asking, what do you see?

There’s no risk of falling this time. They’re not alone in an abandoned temple with a threat right at their necks, they’re not exposed and vulnerable under a shaky roof. He guides Wei Ying down on the mattress, the embroidered, silver curtains of Qinghe keeping them safe, if only briefly, a small sanctuary to spare. He keeps one hand on Wei Ying’s waist, the other lying next to his head, lost between thick strands of black hair. There are wet sounds in the silence this time, their mouths finding ways to meet, to pull, to open and breathe, before Wei Ying’s tongue tentatively nips at his lips and he dives further, tasting the alcohol in his mouth and getting inebriated by it alone, Wei Ying holding his face with both of his hands and keeping him close.

They kiss until Wangji’s jaw hurts, until Wei Ying is so dazed that the alcohol and exhaustion catch up to him, drifting off as Wangji melts the stress away with gentle touches and his warm presence. He lies with him until he’s sure he’s fast asleep, then he disentangles himself from Wei Ying and stands up.

Looking down at his asleep form, Wangji can already feel their separation like a physical ache.

Why would a person like another person? For a touch, a look, something they said or did, or a beauty that no other can compare?

Wangji remembers everything about Wei Ying since they first met, has overanalyzed them, discovering only the undeniable proof of Wei Ying’s being; rash and inconsequential, reckless and wild, but brilliant just the same. Relentless against challenges, even if that challenge is the son of a high sect, too closed up in himself to let other people in. And he called himself his friend, he called himself close, until he found all the parts where they intersect, where they meet, and there he made his home.

He doesn’t know if Wei Ying found his answer, but he found his. And because he’s certain of it, he holds Bichen in his hand, and he stands, pale blue of Gusu catching the lights of the Unclean Realm.

“Wei Ying, I’ll be leaving now.”

He parts, knowing he’ll come back, trusting he’ll have someone to come back to.

***

Everything else hadn’t seem real. People looking at him and not seeing, as if he’s invisible. Somebody else’s life, with his own nightmares bled in. People calling his name like a curse long destroyed, a plague, defeated. Jiang Cheng’s hatred was just as he remembered or worse, words stinging with venom each time they fall from his lips. And the white of mourning, touched by the clouds, summoning him — Hanguang-jun.

His guqin, resounding through Mo Manor, was the first thing that got through to him. More than a memory, cutting deeper than the wounds of Mo Xuanyu’s last wish. Under the experienced hands of the Light Bearer, the ground shook and the threat that had troubled his disciples seemed almost small. Then everything stilled under his gaze and Wei Ying allowed himself a moment to simply watch him, those eyes he had missed so much and that could tell you the world if only you were looking.

He’s alive again. The ritual had really worked. And he has to leave those eyes behind, knowing he had already given him enough trouble for a lifetime.

But why does chaos follow him, wherever he goes, knowing he can’t turn his back on the pain of others, as long as he’s in power to help?

Everything else happened too fast. Seeing Wen Ning again, alive, or as alive as he last saw him. Losing control of him, panic soaring inside his head in flashes, like the signal the juniors had sent for their beloved senior. And there he was, as though Wei Ying had truly sent for him, called him, just like in the past. Lan Zhan, he’d say, over and over again. “Lan Zhan,” was at the tip of his tongue but he bit it back, tried to hide behind Mo Xuanyu’s mask, behind the shrill sounds of his makeshift flute that was nothing like what the Yiling Patriarch used to win the Sunshot Campaign. He played for Wen Ning though he wanted to run. He played until he was gone, then, Zidian.

Zidian.

He wakes to the sound of Lan Zhan’s playing, but it’s Zidian that he feels at his back. It had been just one hit, but it grounds him, oh it grounds him with a shiver and a burn. Even when he had a golden core, it had hurt. And though it had been a single hit, it still stung, as if it had been Yu Ziyuan herself who had scorned him for his return.

The melody of the guqin is broken with a dissonant note. Lan Zhan is by his side in an instant, even though he never rushed, never ran, always the perfect son of the model sect. He feels his weight on the bed as he sits up, wincing at the mark on his back but knowing that he had felt much worse.

I’ve died, once. What could be worse than that?

Lan Zhan is calling.

“Wei Ying.”

He freezes, and even his pain forgets to burn. He quickly raises a hand to his face, and realizes that the mask is gone. Of course it’s gone. He’s down to his under robes, so if there had been no decorum for his clothes, why would his mask be spared? The Lan Wangji he had met on that rooftop, a lifetime ago, might not have touched him. But this one who stands before him, who had left whatever remained of his childhood on the battlefield washed with Wen blood, whose face is sharp now, lean and so fair (have they been feeding you? you look like you’ve spent three months at the Burial Mounds, Lan Zhan, ah, Lan Zhan) — this man who stares at him now, he knows Wei Ying too much, too deep.

He had almost fallen off the edge of that cliff, still holding on to him.

“...ei Ying. Is the pain too severe?”

Wei Ying looks up, the anguished eyes in the back of his mind being replaced by the same pair, now worried, in front of him. He tries to wave it off, feeling too exposed by everything happening at once, even if it’s just his heart that’s too slow to catch up.

“I’m okay, Lan Zhan. I just had forgotten what it’s like to be struck by Zidian. I’ll be fine in a couple of days, it was just one slash, after all.”

He lets his hand fall back onto his lap but Lan Zhan takes hold of his wrist, pulling his robes up to reveal the sole mark of the curse that remained. Lan Zhan raises his eyes, the question evident in them. Wei Ying opens his mouth, ready to dismiss it again, but Lan Zhan takes his other wrist, checks the skin above, then attempts to slid Wei Ying’s robes down his shoulders. Wei Ying’s catches his hands, flushed despite the mood of the situation, and says Lan Zhan’s name in a high-pitched question.

“Anywhere else?”

Wei Ying frowns, breathing through his mouth.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Their hands are clasped together, but it’s different now. Wei Ying can feel a slight tremble in them, and it stings, deep in his heart, knowing those hands are always steady, always wielding Bichen with perfect grace, and playing the guqin as if they had been born for nothing else. But they have touched him, whispered secrets against his skin, and held on, even when he tried to let go. When the path got too narrow and too dark for Hanguang-jun to tread and he tried to push him back, he held on, and Wei Ying reveled in it. Until the day he couldn’t anymore.

Wei Ying lets go of him, but his hands remain close.

“Ah, no, I’m all right. I was well put together!” He smiles because it’s what he does, because it’s what he’s always done, even when elder sister worried. “This isn’t even a wound, you see, the ritual—”

Lan Zhan takes his wrist again and pulls, at the same time he leans closer him, and their chests collide. Wei Ying is a little out of breath, and his back complains at the impact, but Lan Zhan has one arm around his shoulders while his other hand travels across his back, its movements long, slow, and warm against the thin fabric. He feels Lan Zhan’s inhale against his own chest, and the exhale is ragged, loud and heartbreaking next to his ear.

“Lan Zhan?” He tries, not really knowing what answer he wants, but knowing the other will not speak on his own, barely ever is the first to move, but he’s shaking now, his forehead pressed against Wei Ying’s shoulder.

“Sixteen years...”

It had been long. Jin Ling is grown now, there are so many disciples that he doesn’t know, but Jiang Cheng still has the same look in his eyes that he did the day elder sister died. And Lan Zhan...

“Wei Ying.”

“Mn,” he lets out, his arms moving, circling Lan Zhan’s middle, his chin resting on his shoulder.

“Wei Ying,” he says again, in a voice that Wei Ying hadn’t heard before, or perhaps did, right before he closed his eyes and vanished from the tragedy at Nightless City.

“Mn, I’m here.”

The last time he had seen Lan Zhan cry, it had been in that forgotten cave, trapped with the Tortoise of Slaughter. He cried for his father, for his sect, for his home, and Wei Ying cradled his head in his arms, kissed his exposed forehead, and didn’t wipe away his tears until he was done. He had promised him it’d be okay, that together they could make it right, but nothing had been right. Had Wei Ying kept a single promise he made him? As Wei Ying’s robes soak all of his tears, Wei Ying realizes that he had left him alone. For sixteen years, he had left him just as he was when he had first met him, with a brother too busy to keep him company, and a world that needed him, but never saw beyond the white of his clothes.

His own crying comes with sobs, but Lan Zhan doesn’t make a sound, he never does. Wei Ying rubs circles on his back but still feels him strained, so horribly contained, and no amount of whispered words can soothe him. He’s caught between grief and his own rules that try to limit what can’t be limited.

Lan Zhan, shouldn’t you stay away from this person? Should you be holding so tight?

Jiang Cheng had proved what the world thought about him still. He feels that he should tell Lan Zhan to let go, but if asked the same, would he do it? Could he don a mask and pretend not to know him, go about his life, without ever looking back at the cultivation world that meant everything to him?

In this second life that he was so unworthy of but that was gifted to him anyway, could he not right his wrongs, mend his promises, and live without regret?

Lan Zhan has stopped shaking, and the hand that had been clutching to him so tightly feels lax. And yet he embraces him, fingers threading through Wei Ying’s loose hair, so affectionate that Wei Ying feels he might cry again.

Why like someone so much? Lan Zhan, is it possible to like someone this much?

He leans back, arms unwrapping from around Wei Ying, head bowed low like a chastised disciple. There’s a flush on his cheeks, on his ears and around his eyes, clear marks of his emotions, vivid in candlelight. He keeps his hands on his lap, almost as if he doesn’t know what to do with them, as if he’s forgotten where they belong. Wei Ying regards all, still clinging to his robes around his waist, sketching his wet lashes in his mind, and his unadorned hair, and all the other parts of him that he shows no one else.

“Wei Ying, you should rest...”

Wei Ying can’t help but let out a huff of air. Really, that Lan Zhan, when has he ever rested unless Wen Qing forcefully knocked him out? And after sixteen years of darkness, neither here nor there, when all the parts of him are finally one, how could he let his soulmate fall apart in his stead?

Lan Zhan looks up at him, a little startled at the sound he makes, and Wei Ying lifts his hands to tearstained cheeks, wiping away the trails, brushing back stray strands of hair. He brings that face closer — beloved, beloved —, lays kisses on closed eyelids, rests his forehead against the cloud patterns of his forehead ribbon. So many promises made, all of them broken, but what does he have if not a thick face and a beating heart that knows he’s welcome?

He places a kiss right on the metal adornment that he’s touched more times than he should probably have. Lan Zhan’s hands have found their way to his wrists and he holds on tight, his breathing loud in the clear silence of the Cloud Recesses.

The kiss feels nothing like it used to. He knows the shape of his lips, and the details of his mouth, but his weight is different, heavier, carrying sixteen years of memory that Wei Ying will never be able to experience, to understand like Lan Zhan does. They kiss like it’s the first time, and it is, all around them a world at peace, with newborn life, and all of tomorrow ahead of them.

Breaking away, Lan Zhan hovering above him but careful not to place his weight on top of him, Wei Ying sees the past in his eyes. Eyes still red from crying, a tell-tale of his heart, that have been looking at him — after him, since he was copying rules at the Library Pavilion. Wei Ying’s memory is faulty and spotty, that much he knows, but he remembers what Lan Zhan looked like then, the reliable expanse of his back, and how he called his name each time with less annoyance, growing used to him, indulging him as he rambled about both useless and useful things.

He laughs, because he remembers wanting to kiss him not to see if he liked him then, but because he already liked him so much, he needed to see if there really was a cliff waiting on the other side and if Lan Zhan would be there to catch him. He needed to give it a name.

Turned out it felt much like they had already been leaning back to back, waiting for the other to turn.

Lan Zhan tilts his head, the curtain of his hair falling over his shoulder, hiding Wei Ying from the gaze of the moon.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying says, wanting to say it a million times more, pulling the other until he lies on the bed beside him. “Will you play a duet with me?”

Lying on his side, facing him, the moon once again smiling upon them, Wei Ying sees him smile.

“Mn.”

“Will you go to Yunmeng with me?”

“Mn.”

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to stay by your side? I’ll try my best not to be recognized, but—”

“If Wei Ying wants to stay this time, I wouldn’t have him anywhere else.”

Wei Ying frowns.

“This time?”

“Wei Ying didn’t want to come the first time I asked.”

He looks down and Wei Ying can’t help but let out a pained noise, scooting closer until his nose is nuzzling Lan Zhan’s collar.

“That was different, Lan Zhan, I wasn’t...”

He sighs, closing his eyes when Lan Zhan’s hand starts petting his hair.

“I won’t leave you alone. I promise.”

With a hand at Lan Zhan’s back, he searches for the ends of his forehead ribbon and twirls it around his finger. His breathing falls into rhythm with Lan Zhan’s and he falls into a peaceful sleep, Lan Zhan only moving to place a cover over the two of them, protecting against the chill of the night. Curled around his best friend, confidante, soulmate, Wei Ying has no need for dreams.

When he wakes in the morning, alone, the sun cascading through the open window, he finds that the Cloud Recesses look just as beautiful as it did in his youth. Fire couldn’t destroy its heart. He sees himself and Lan Zhan in every corner, his elder sister smiling and laughing as he plays with Jiang Cheng, the smiling eyes of Lan Xichen following him, and even the memory of Lan Qiren throwing a scroll at his impertinence doesn’t fail to make him happy.

Wei Ying sees love in the halls and pavilions, in the trees and the rabbits. And when he catches the sight of Lan Zhan at the cold springs, he sees it in every moment of their past, all the way back, in a conversation about Lan An, and in a drawing of the Second Jade with a flower in his hair.

He runs towards Lan Zhan, ready to give purpose to his second life. There are still mysteries to be uncovered and a debt to be paid to Mo Xuanyu. There are night hunts to be had, and without the Stygian Tiger Seal, he can figure out his own way to fight, without harming the body he now cherishes. He needs to find Wen Ning and take care of him, and maybe, when he finds a way, he can see Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling again, even if it’s from afar, against the warm waters of Lotus Pier. He doesn’t know whether he can live in the Cloud Recesses, if they would accept him, or if he dares to hope they can live like Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan, bound only to their common ideals, their combined strengths and inseparable hearts.

Wei Ying isn’t good at planning far ahead; he dreamed of being a hero and he gave it all up to do what he considered right. He doesn’t regret it, not even for all that he lost, for all the pain he caused. All he can think about is the immediate tomorrow and a tangible, new dream.

If he can, if Lan Zhan will have him, he’ll do everything to finally live his life with a clear conscience and a heart full.

Lan Zhan turns his head once he approaches, and seeing him there, trusting and waiting, Wei Ying swears he can promise him a hundred things and still not run out of things he wants to do or say or keep. So many years have passed and he still wants to pour all of his heart at the feet of the second young master of Gusu Lan.

***

“Lan Zhan, what’s the name of the song? Don’t give me that look! Please? There can be no secrets between us! You know I never stopped thinking about it! All I wanted to do was play a duet with you in Yunmeng, ever since you got stuck with me at the Library Pavilion. ...Lan Zhan? Really, you didn’t—? Haha, Lan Zhan, you’re really too much to my heart. I only started thinking about what it’s like to like someone when I met you.

It was always you, Lan Zhan.

It had to be you.”

***

Why would a person like another?

Wei Ying can no longer remember a time he hasn’t.

#The Untamed #Mo Dao Zu Shi #fanfiction #Wangxian #Lan Wangji #Wei Wuxian #Alternate Universe: Canon Divergence

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birminghamblinders · 5 years

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baptism by fire; tommy shelby

Business is not an industry which lends itself to possessing an empathetic nature. Business is by design the striving to procure profits, and businesses which succeed do not do so through weaknesses and by making excuses for the shortcomings of themselves or of the various inferiors which make up their labor staff. Businessmen, then, as the main extension of this cognitive, innovative, cut-throat machine, are also not by nature kind-hearted or gentle. Choosing to enter into business means that one must be capable of making very calculated decisions with their own money and with the money of others. They also must see the parts of their company-and to many, employees often registered only as a moving part in a greater machine-as disposable when they are broken. Thus, although business does not generally allow for strong expressions of emotion, Tommy Shelby believed there were “no hard feelings” when he had to release a person from his employment. He held no personal vendetta against the ex-employee, and did even earnestly hope they would realize the error of their focused labor and once again find fruitful employment elsewhere. But conversely, he would note to himself the error of his ways in allowing an employee of less-than-acceptable caliber to be hired, and would remember what traits made that person useless in the future.

Tommy had to let people go and hire new people on a fairly regular basis. He generally believed in hiring younger people to do menial labor, on the idea that they would have more energy and thus be able to execute these tasks over a larger spread of hours. The past month, however, Tommy had fired two young men or about twenty, who had been hired for menial labor but had proven to be prone to slacking off on the job. He bore no ill will to them, and in parting mentioned a shipping company which operated out of dock forty-three which was hiring, in the genuine if not deeply-felt hope they would reform and become contributing members of society.

Besides, Tommy had larger things to worry about than the performance of workers who neared the bottom of the Shelby Company food chain. In merely three weeks, if all went well, he was going to recite his wedding vows to the love of his life in the full and unyielding gaze of their pastor and before the gentle eyes of God. Tommy and his soon-to-be wife endeavored to make their wedding as small an affair as was possible, only extending invitations to those who they actually, truly wanted to he there. Eliminating the menial made the whole thing blessedly easy to plan, and he found himself mainly concerned with planning out the right words to say to his life partner when she arrived at the altar.

—

Thankfully, the wedding went as smoothly as any Tommy had ever attended, and the flurry of the day seemed to end as quickly as it began. When he settled into bed next to his newly acquired wife that night, slipping a gentle arm around her waist, he even entertained the fantasy that the wedding had taken away so little of his concentration from work that he might be able to take a few days and have a honeymoon of sorts with her.

This was not the case, as both the legal and illegal enterprises of the Shelby Company were growing at a seemingly exponential rate. He was no sooner able to take a few days off without consequences as he was to grow wings. His wife, the young, pretty, tough creature she was, shrugged this slight off, and told her husband he had things he needed to do for the good of his family, and that said family also included her now, and so he had better get to work. Guilted by his inability to properly celebrate his wedding with his wife, but also emboldened by her strong words of encouragement, Tommy dove right back into the chaos of the Company, cutting deals on firearms and horse races in equal stride.

Unbeknownst to either man or wife, the two young men who had just a short while ago been terminated from Shelby company employment had not shrugged it off as a loss of low-level job of which there were plenty in Small Heath, but had instead chosen to interpret it as a personal slight and a middle finger directly from Tommy Shelby. As uneducated as their interpretation of a routine firing might have been, they were not so ignorant as to think they could exact revenge on their perceived enemy in a face to face interaction with him. They instead chose to focus on his weaknesses, and despite the whole thing being a low-level affair, there was no one in Birmingham who didn’t know Tommy Shelby had recently gotten married.

—

The two young men whom Tommy had fired were not in possession of any particularly great intellect, or capability to plan a complex kidnapping and ransom plot, but part of the reason they were hired initially was that they possessed plenty of brute strength. It would seem fairly reasonable that considering her relatively high profile relation to the Shelby family that there would be some type of protection for Tommy’s wife, but she had insisted on being allowed to live independently. As often occurs, there was no real hindsight considered with this decision until it had already generated negative consequences. Tommy’s wife did not work for the Company, and after their marriage continued her job as a secretary for the largest newspaper in the city. It was on a fairly cold morning, while she was walking to begin her shift, that the two ex-lackeys of the Company grabbed her and dragged her out of the sight of the few other passers-by that were on the street that early in the day.

On the days which Tommy was not able to finish his workload in time to be home for dinner (which were fairly plenty), he would just sleep in his office, wake up early, and continue. These were all circumstances which the two ex-lackeys were aware of; though the Company employed plenty people, most of them got their orders from Tommy or one of this brothers and were in and out of the office daily, and knew the movements of the main heads of the Company. They didn’t know exactly on that day that Tommy would work late and stay in the office, but they were willing to take their luck.

Due to the circumstances of their both being employed in highly demanding jobs, and sometimes not being able to wake up together or eat dinner together, Tommy and his wife always spent at least an hour on the phone each day. This usually happened around noon, which left the two wanna-be criminals four hours before Tommy Shelby discovered his wife was missing.

They had, it so happened, taken his suggestion, and sought employment at the loading station at dock forty-three. This particular dock mainly handled night time shipments coming in from the United States or Canada, and so the two decided that with a little duct tape over the face, and ropes holding her arms back, it would be as good a place as any to keep Mrs. Shelby.

—

As it happened, the two men, who were not exactly in possession of god-like intelligence, got the timing right. They had her for four hours before her husband realized something was wrong with her. He called her office at noon, and was received by the voice of her supervisor, who told him his wife had not come into work that day.

At the same moment as Tommy leaned back to yell for his brothers, Polly came into the room and absentmindedly remarked that the postman had left something for him as she dropped a letter onto his desk. Dread built up in his chest as he stared at the sloppily folded paper, and he grabbed hold of the letter and nearly tore it open in his haste. The would-be kidnappers were not elegant nor were they educated, and so their ransom note was not exactly a masterpiece of the English written word.

Tommy Shelby, it read,

We have your wife. Come to dock forty three as soon as you get this. Bring ten thousand pounds with you and you will get her back alive. If you call the police we will know. Don’t bring a gun.

The letter was not signed, and as Tommy’s two eldest brothers crowded their way into the room, the middle Shelby son swore loudly and launched an ink pot against the room, where it shattered against the window and left dark black tracks down the glass.

“Some fuckers took my wife,” he informed them in a violently calm voice. “Get your coats and your guns. We’re going now.”

—

Upon arrival at the specified dock, the faded painting sign reading “43” swinging violently in the sudden gust of wind that had arisen off the waters, Tommy gestured for John and Arthur to stand back.

“I’ll call you when I need you,” he spoke quickly, and indicated for them to stand just out of sight of the door of the loading area, still close enough by to be of immediate assistance if needed.

Tommy grabbed the handle of the door and launched it open, bursting into the large, open room with his gun pointed straight ahead. At the same time as he gained his bearings, he heard a pistol cocking, and found he was looking at a gun pressed to the side of his wife’s head.

Tommy had been in the war, and had seen more men die than he ever cared to speak about. He was used to carnage, and hadn’t flinched at the sight of blood in years. At the sight of his wife with a gun pressed to her head, however, his own blood ran cold.

He felt his breath coming in shorter and shorter intervals, and he had to control himself to keep from hyperventilating, as his wife, a gag stuffed in her mouth, started crying at the sight of him, and leaning towards him as if to beg him to get her out of here,only to be grabbed roughly by the neck and shoved back into her chair by another man, who stepped out of the corner only for that brief moment before vanishing from Tommy’s sight again.

Tommy stopped short, only about four feet from the door he had burst from, and was so dazed by the sight before him he had to force himself to focus as the man holding the gun began to speak.

“We told you specifically not to bring a gun. Didn’t you read the fucking letter? Put that shit down. Where’s my money?”

Tommy still found himself unable to fully compute the situation before him, and so fell back on his usual bravado, scoffing at the man’s question even while wildly searching for a plan.

“I didn’t bring your ten thousand pounds. What were you going to spend it on, whores and cocaine? You’re a piece of shit. You’re going to give me my wife back and you’re going to apologize for the trouble you’ve caused the Shelby Company.”

Another man stepped out of the shadows, loudly swearing at Tommy, and he couldn’t believe the sense of these two useless criminals as they both started walking towards him, leaving his wife unguarded and making it far too easy for him to raise his gun once again and expel a hail of bullets on them, aiming for the head and then adding ten more in just for good measure and as repayment for the insolence of daring to touch his wife.

As he turned to face her, still bound to her chair, tears rolling down her cheeks, he felt his heart stop again as he sprinted to her, pulling the gag out of her mouth and untying the ropes from her wrists all while speaking to her frantically, begging for forgiveness.

“I’m so damn sorry, my love, I should never have let you walk around alone, I should have had a man with you all the time, I should have known someone was going to try something with you, I’m so fucking sorry-“ and broke himself off with a sob, curling into her shoulder.

He felt her take a deep breath and wrap her arms around him, stroking his back as he cried like a child into her arms, terrified by the ease at which two bumbling idiots were able to endanger the person closest to his heart.

She began to console him quietly, his sobs still echoing around the empty room, and Tommy could almost feel her grow harder, more tough, more like a Shelby.

#peaky blinders imagines #peaky blinders #tommy shelby x reader #tommy shelby

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thenamesreader · 4 years

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Good In Me AU Character Profile

Aika Kaneshiro- SHSL Musical Artist

Gender: Female

Height: 5′ 5″

Weight: 48 kg (107 lbs)

Birthday: April 16

Chest: 77 cm

Blood Type: A

Likes: Mukuro, Ibuki, music (obviously), cotton candy (sweet things in general actually), and flowers

Dislikes: Bullies, missing homeroom, people disrespecting her profession

Affiliations: Hope’s Peak Academy’s 78th Class, Class 78-A

Appearance: Aika is a light-brown skinned girl with sunflower gold hair and teal eyes. Her school uniform is slightly altered where she has the skirt switched out for pants. She wears the same typical outfit with a brown vest over a white dress shirt with a red ribbon tied around her neck and black flats.

Her casual wear consists of a brown duster, red scarf, white t-shirt, black two-inch boots, and black jeans. There are usually a pair of round brown sunglasses on the top of her head.

Personality: Aika is a kind and cheerful girl despite always making herself sleep-deprived since she likes to stay up to create songs. She’s also somewhat of a hopeless romantic because of her feelings for Mukuro, becoming a complete disaster if she can make her smile or laugh. Like how Mukuro is way out of touch with her emotions, Aika is too in-touch with her emotions. She tends to react before she thinks which has gotten her hurt a few times. They sort of balance each other out, though, with the musician helping Mukuro come out of her shell while Mukuro helps her handle her emotions.

Despite her flaws, she can be silly, charismatic, and filled to the brim with love for everyone.

Talents & Abilities:

SHSL Music Artist: Aika has always had a passion for music for as long as she could remember. She started performing and playing music as soon as she could walk. Her first instrument was the piano, which she loves to play in her free time along with the guitar. She and Sayaka Maizono tend to compete since they tend to be top on the charts.

Sharp Hearing: Because of her profession, Aika has a more advanced hearing. She can tell voices apart, easily.

Advanced Dexterity: Aika is good with her hands since she plays so many instruments.

History

Early Life

Aika was raised by her father and aunt since her mother left when she was really young. She grew up surrounded by music, her aunt always singing her lullabies or playing different types of instruments for her. She would always wake up to music playing throughout the house. Most of the tv programs she watched were either musicals or music documentaries.

At the age of 4, her aunt started teaching her how to play the piano. She enjoyed it very much and played anytime she could. When she woke up, when she got bored, when she was sad, when she was happy, when she was angry. The piano was her life. After she mastered piano, she taught herself to play guitar and began writing her own songs.

At the age of 13, she found a band called “Black Cherry” and instantly fell in love, listening to their music on repeat. She even started to imitate their music, practicing and practicing until welts covered her hands.

She attended Sixth Black Root Middle School and Black Root High School with Sayaka Maizono. They attended the same classes and were pretty friendly with each other.

She was soon scouted by Hope’s Peak Academy.

Current

Unlike Maizono who did some... unethical things to achieve her dreams, Aika didn’t and worked hard on her own with the support of her father and aunt. She made sure that she got what she wanted the right way.

After the 78th Class Welcoming Ceremony, Aika ran into Ibuki Mioda when she found the music room. After recognizing that Ibuki had been a member of “Black Cherry” and learning that Ibuki had listened to some of her music, they hit it off. Ibuki soon became somewhat of a mentor to her.

A few weeks after meeting her class and her homeroom teacher, Aika bumps into a girl who roomed across to her who introduces herself as Mukuro Ikusaba and Mukuro’s sister, Junko. She found herself, instantly, attracted to Mukuro and very put-off by Junko’s actions, but, was otherwise able to ignore it.

She soon found herself spending more time with Mukuro because of this, much to Junko’s annoyance.

Relationships

Her Father and Aunt

Aika has a very good relationship with her family. She talks about them, fondly, and always says that they would love Mukuro. In her room, she has a picture that sits on her desk of the day before she left for Hope’s Peak with her aunt and father in it as they celebrated her success.

Mukuro Ikusaba

Aika rooms across the hall from Mukuro. After running into her after accidentally sleeping through her alarm, she found herself, quickly, falling head-over-heels for her. This causes the musician to be somewhat protective of her when something happens. Mukuro is the reason she tries to sleep more since they made a deal with each other in order for Mukuro to start eating more.

The two tend to hang out with each other after class in the courtyard and just talk about anything that comes to mind. She expressed her attraction a few times to Mukuro, in more of a joking way, and has asked her to marry her on multiple occasions but never in front of anyone else after the soldier confessed she was unsure how anyone else would perceive it. Aika actually believes it has to do with how Junko would perceive it.

Ibuki Mioda

Aika and Ibuki are pretty much the best of friends. Though, her bond with her fellow musician probably wouldn’t come as close as she does with her class. Aika and Ibuki can be found in Ibuki’s classroom during lunch or the music room when either of them are free and just play music or come up with songs.

Aika is always pretty relaxed around Ibuki, sometimes listening to her upperclassman ramble about things she’s thinking about.

Sayaka Maizono

Aika and Sayaka are constantly competing with each other to see who can top the charts since their two of the top young artists in the country. They're pretty friendly with each other besides that. They tend to mostly tease each other when they see each other in the hallway.

Mikan Tsumiki

Aika tends to visit her a lot because of her bad habits because she’s either sick or she wore her hands out practicing. Because of her sweet nature, Aika tends to give Mikan gifts and help her out against bullies like Hiyoko.

Mikan often doesn’t know how to pay her back so she gives her anpan as thanks.

Makoto Naegi

Makoto and Aika are pretty friendly with each other as well. She has run into him a few times and she believes he is a real sweetheart. Because of his nature, she gave him the nickname of “Kibo”.

Teruteru Hanamura

Aika finds his behavior gross and disgusting and only goes to him for his cooking. She has to give him credit for something if she were to be honest with herself.

Nagito Komeada

Aika finds him... strange. From the few times they’ve interacted, he has commented on how he sees a special future for her. Aika always interprets it as something to do with her music career.

Junko Enoshima

Aika and Junko have an antagonistic relationship. Junko always gets annoyed since Aika has all of Mukuro’s attention. Aika has also witnessed first hand the abuse that gets hurled at Mukuro by her sister. She’s sometimes snapped at Junko because of it. Some of their fights have gotten bad enough that Junko’s stabbed her in the shoulder and threatened her life. Otherwise, she ignores anything that Junko says about her unless it comes to her profession. Most of the comments that come out of Junko’s mouth anyway is something about how Junko feels she’s really important somehow. She also finds Junko’s obsession with despair disturbing. She feels as if she is planning something, but can’t put her finger on what exactly.

Chisa Yukizome

Aika and Chisa have a pretty strong relationship. Aika might not be her student, but Chisa has a soft spot for her. Since Aika tends to visit her classroom a lot, she tends to be warm and friendly towards her. She tends to take a more motherly approach with Aika and considers her an honorary student of Class 77-B.

Kyoko Kirigiri

Aika is acquainted with the detective. She finds her kind of scary, though, because she feels as if she could read her mind.

Quotes

“I’m Aika Kaneshiro, the Super High School Level Music Artist. I’m in Class 78-A. Um, things to know. Not much. I like music and have bad sleeping habits if that’s what you want to know. Or would you like to know more? My favorite color is blue and my favorite flower is a marigold. I also love, love, love cotton candy.”

“Alright! Hold on to your heads- and hold onto your hearts, ladies-because Aika Kaneshiro is here!”

“I’m sorry, Principal Kirigiri! I won’t be late for class again!”

“What’s with this Junko girl on all these magazines? She seems like a brat.”

“Yeah! Go, Mioda!”

“All women are queens! Anyone who disagrees is a... um. Is a... A loaf of stale bread!”

“I’ve seen a lot of pretty women in my life, but, Mukuro takes the cake.”

“There are only two things I will defend in my life: The love of my life and my music.”

“Hey, Kibo!”

“No pain, no gain!”

“I’m not afraid of some kogyaru! I’ll drop her in a heartbeat!”

“I’ll find whoever burnt Muki’s cookie and make ‘em pay!”

“Hanamura! Stop being a perv!”

“We’re all searching for something that gives us purpose. For me, it was music. Music still gives me purpose, but... I found something else that drives me, too.”

“It’s never too soon in the story for a love confession, Tsumiki! Never!”

Trivia

Her first name, Aika, means “love song” and her last name, Kaneshiro, means “golden castle”

Aika makes a lot of references to IRL bands, such as MCR.

While playing the piano once, she hits the G-note and starts crying. When asked why she was crying by a fellow classmate passing by, she replies by saying “It just brings back sad memories.”

Another time, when talking with Maizono, she gets very offended on how she had described her music and replies “I write sins, not tragedies”, an obvious reference to the song by Panic! At The Disco.

She also uses a line from Twenty-One Pilots’ “Stressed Out” in one of her songs.

Aika has many nicknames for Mukuro. She uses “Wolfie” and “Muki” the most, but, she’s called her “Tiger Lily” and “Sarge” on occasion.

Aika is not a fan of British boy bands. She complains that their songs aren’t that different and they all look the same, the only thing being different about them is their names.

She was sent death threats from rabid fans after publicly stating that in an interview.

Aika’s scarf was given to her by her aunt.

Aika did have a brief crush on Sayaka in middle school. She moved on, quickly, though.

Even though she and Junko have a terrible relationship, she wishes she and Junko could be friends in the future.

Aika likes her younger fans better than her older. They’re just so sweet.

Aika’s favorite animal is a cat. She tends to visit Gundham a lot to see the cats he’s found.

#danganronpa au #good in me au #danganronpa oc #danganronpa 3 #danganronpa: the end of hope’s peak academy #danganronpa trigger happy havoc #sdr2 #super danganronp 2 #dr:thh

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negasonicimagines · 5 years

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My One and Lonely

whew! this was intense! I’m really sorry if this doesn’t correctly fulfill these requests, folks! i tried!

1: “okay what about poly yukisonic x reader where the yukio, ellie, and the reader have started a new relationship, but the reader is unsure of it?? and Ellie and yukio just reassure thems?? basically I just want poly yukisonic x reader angst with a happy ending. : ')” 2: “Could you do a negasonic imagine where reader is her girlfriend and has telekinesis? And Wade takes any opportunity to tease the couple so reader constantly uses her powers to slam the door in Wades face?” [yeah i defo didn’t really fill this one but the reader has telekinesis and DOES slam the door in Wade’s face and I have so many requests bro... but I’d be willing to redo this if you’re not satisfied] TRIGGER WARNING for mentions and discussion of past abuse. the reader also almost has a panic attack. let me know if i missed anything

“You know, you could just talk to them about it,” Wade tells you, and your fork and book fall to the ground.

“Uh, no? I literally can’t, dude. Now my fork’s dirty.”

“Uh, yeah. You literally can, dude. And that’ll teach you to be lazy, using your powers for easy stuff like turning pages and eating. I bet the fork’s not that bad.”

“Like you wouldn’t do the same thing,” you scoff, and he shrugs, nodding.

“Come on. It’s totally normal for you to be feeling the way you are. They were friends and dating before you came into the picture. Insecurity’s normal. Especially considering-”

“Call me insecure one more time and I’ll use the dirty fork to show you just how insecure your eye’s placement in your skull is,” you threaten, feeling your face heat up. You didn’t like that your weakness was so obvious. Or that he reminded you of her.

“Christ, maybe I really am a bad influence...Nah, we’re just birds of a feather,” Wade says with a cheeky grin you don’t know how you can see through the mask. Maybe his tone of voice makes the subtle expression more perceivable. “Sorry,” he quickly adds. “But, seriously. They’re the last people who are gonna judge you.”

“Who’s the last people that are gonna judge Y/N?” You hear from behind you. Ellie. Shit. She made you far more nervous than Yukio did. Yukio was the gentle, sensitive moon, and Ellie… Ellie was the sun. Nuturing, yes, but scorching, too.

“Well-”

“No one. Not important. Right, Wade?” you plaster on a smile, fiddling with the fork in your hand before letting it float in the air. “Want the rest of my ramen? I’m not very hungry.”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

“Catch,” you say, flinging the fork at him telepathically. He gasps sharply, but his reflexes are quick enough to grab it.

You get up, and notice Ellie looks a bit… gloomier than usual.

“Everything okay?” you ask, and she nods, her lips twitching into a small smile for you before quickly concealing the expression.

“Yeah, I’m alright. ‘Kio and I missed you at lunch, that’s all.”

“Well, I was, uh… Hanging out with Wade. Like you saw,” you explain.

“You didn’t seem very happy. He didn’t say anything to bother you, did he?”

“Oh, uh, no. I was just a bit stressed. Exams coming up and all that.”

“Exams are a couple months away,” Ellie reminds you. “But you were stressed, weren’t you? Look, if you’re having regrets, whatever, fine. I wouldn’t be happy about it and neither would Yukio, but you have a right to your feelings. Just don’t fucking lie to me, okay?”

“I- I promise it’s not about that. Really, I’m… Happy to be with you guys.”

“Then what is it? Seriously?”

You stiffen, you can tell she’s getting angry. Your heart feels like a stone in your chest, cracked and heavy.

“It’s nothing,” you say, not meeting her eyes.

“Alright. Keep your secrets, then,” Ellie sighs, walking away. You head to your room, locking the door behind you. Most students with telepathic abilities get their own rooms in an effort to avoid accidental harm of their fellow students. This was the case for you, and you used to like it.

But then, you met Ellie and Yukio. The two of them were already dating when you were officially introduced, and you became fast friends with them. It quickly evolved into more, and the three of you became what many refer to as a “throuple.”

The facet of the insecurity Wade so rudely talked of earlier was, of course, the fact that they were roommates, and you were alone every night. They got to cuddle and kiss and you got to watch ASMR.

It was depressingly lonely. Sure, every once in awhile you could get away with sleeping over on weekends. But, most of the time, the teachers monitored the rooms, making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be, in case of emergency.

But, wait, there’s more!

As mentioned previously, Ellie is the sun. Yukio is the moon. What are you in that?

And it didn’t help that you were still struggling to cope with the aftermath of her, a little over a year later.

Before you began your schooling at Xavier’s, you were friends with a small group of fellow mutants that were slowly drawn together by fate. One of these mutants was a girl. You can’t even bear to think her name.

Back then, you were only telepathically gifted. You hadn’t even dreamed you would be capable of telekinesis one day.

But she, she had super-strength, and she liked to use it on you. Even when you didn’t want her to.

You were defenseless.

You shake, pulling your knees to your chest.

“Hey, why’s the door locked? I thought we were all gonna work together on our art projects.” Yukio’s bright voice is muffled by the door.

“Uh, um, yeah, yeah, I’ll be there in a, um, sec,” you say, your breathing growing heavier and more fast-paced. “Actually, uh, you- you and Ellie sh...sh-should just go and, uh, go work on your projects t-together. I’ll- Yeah, I’ll, uh, figure mine out eventually.” Shit, I’m doing a terrible job at covering this up.

“You okay in there, bunny?” It was a cute nickname that Yukio liked to call both you and Ellie.

“Mmhmm, yeah. Just a bit, uh, very tired. Gonna take a nap soon.”

“Okay…” she says, and you know she doubts you. Failure.

“On second thought, uh, I’ll just go to bed early tonight. Let’s get to work,” you decide, unlocking and opening the door.

Upon opening the door, you notice Wade behind them.

“Didn’t realize you took Art, Wade.”

“You also didn’t realize that we planned for you to come to our room. You were supposed to show up twenty minutes ago, actually. So, we went to talk to Wade. Since you tell him everything these days,” Ellie says, pure bitterness in the mention of Wade. It wasn’t that she hated him. She hated that you told him and not her. Not even Yukio, who she’d admit was far more approachable than her.

“Sorry, kid,” he says. “They had a right to know.”

“You- You didn’t tell them about- About…” You feel your eyes widen, alarm racing through you slowly and quickly at the same time.

“No, not that. Not her. Just the other stuff.”

“Oh.”

“Her?” Ellie asks. “Cheating on us, seriously?”

“No,” you say, and it comes out as a whimper due to her angry tone. “I- I- This was a bad idea, Wade. You guys should just go, all three of you, I don’t feel well, I’m tired, I-”

“I’m gonna leave you kids to sort this out,” Wade tells you three. “Good luck.” He slowly backs away.

“Can you close the door?” Yukio asks, and you jolt, door slamming in Wade’s face.

“Yeah,” you say afterwards. This was becoming less stressful thinking and more panic attack by the moment.

“You’ve been avoiding us lately,” Yukio points out. “Wade already told us why, but… I want to hear it from you, ‘kay?”

“It’s nothing, I-” You take a careful, ragged breath, sitting on your bed. Yukio sits on the stool at your desk, and Ellie leans her back against the door. “I just don’t fit. I’ve never fit in anywhere, and I never will. All I’ve done trying is bother others. Especially Ellie and you.”

“You don’t fit?” Ellie asks. “What the fuck do you mean?”

“I- You’re the sun...Yukio’s the moon… And I’m just… I’m Pluto.” The last bit comes out as a shaky whisper. A large, hot tear rolls down your cheek swiftly.

“What?! No! No, bunny, you’re- You’re…” Yukio kneels in front of you, swiping your tear away with her thumb and keeping your sad face in her hand. “I can’t think of anything, but you’re not Pluto, baby.”

“The eclipse. You’re the eclipse, Y/N. Everything aligning perfectly so that we can be together,” Ellie says thoughtfully. “Is that all? You feel like you don’t have a place here, with us? You do. You’re what makes this whole thing work, okay? Now please, please tell me you didn’t cheat on us for validation.”

“The her comment, right…” you say, the temporary relief you felt by Ellie’s original statement subsiding. “No. I didn’t cheat, I swear. I’d never do that to you guys, to anyone. I… The last relationship I had before you guys was, um… Not the greatest. It was around a year ago, a little more. Before Xavier’s. Before I honed my abilities. There was a girl, a mutant like me. Like us. But she, uh… She had super-strength. And I wasn’t very physically strong, I was pretty weak, actually. So… You can probably see where I’m going with this, or I hope you do, because I don’t like talking about it, not at-” You finally dissolve into tears. “Not at all…”

Ellie rushes towards you to embrace you, and you flinch reflexively.

“I’m sorry. I was really thoughtless. Just now and for most of our interactions today,” Ellie admits. “I’m just… Things between me and ‘Kio weren’t the greatest, but we were trying because we knew we were meant to be together. And then you came along, and everything made sense. Everything finally fit together, perfectly. And- And I don’t wanna lose that. Ever.”

“Same here,” Yukio agrees. “You’re so great, Y/N. Wade said that you feel really lonely all by yourself in here. Maybe we should try to get you transferred to our room. Sometimes they let people room in groups of three, and they probably could use the extra room.”

“Yeah, but… It’d be kind of annoying to have me tagging along all the time,” you remind her.

Ellie’s eye twitches. “Tagging...Along?”

“That’s the phrase, isn’t it?” you ask.

She takes a deep, calming breath, and you watch her fingers move as she counts to ten on them silently. They’re both sitting with you on the bed, now.

“Ah-” Ellie clenches her teeth, hissing for a moment, as if she’s in pain. “Y/N, you’re just as much a part of this relationship as Yukio and I. What part of that is so hard for you to understand?”

“I- I don’t know. It’s just hard to believe. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“What shoes? There are no shoes here,” Yukio tells you. “I really only wear them because it’s frowned upon not to, and because if I didn’t then I’d pick up all sorts of nasty germs.”

Ellie nods in agreement. “Same.”

You sigh, knowing there’s no way to convince them of how worthless you are to the relationship. Maybe because to them, you aren’t?

“Hey, did you see that? I saw that. I think it’s clicking, ‘Kio.”

“I did see it,” Yukio agrees, and you smile a little at their antics, shaking your head. “Let me go to the office and get the room transfer forms. I’d love to stay, but I think you two cuties need to talk a bit… In private.”

Yukio exits.

“I’m...Sorry. For talking to Wade and not you guys. I shouldn’t have-”

“You’re allowed to confide in your friend. I shouldn’t have taken it as personally as I did. I just know there was a time, before we all got together romantically, where you would’ve talked to me or Yukio about something if it stressed you out that much. But I guess not… We didn’t know about her.”

“It’s just hard to even think about. I feel so ashamed all the time, I’m really sorry that I didn’t-”

“Seriously. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, and I feel seriously shitty that I was such an asshole about it. You have a right to privacy, as long as you’re not putting anyone or anything in danger. But, the anyone and anything includes you. Okay?”

“Okay,” you respond, and Ellie kisses your forehead, her dark brown eyes looking to yours before she places the softest kiss on your lips, carefully holding your face as if you were priceless and she didn’t want to risk breaking you. You lean into her, forehead on her shoulder.

“Let’s lay down. I owe you some cuddling. I hear I’m an excellent big spoon,” she tells you.

“From a biased source. Let’s try the sweetheart’s cradle,” you offer.

“What the fuck is the sweetheart’s cradle?”

“Honestly, I did far too much research into the perfect cuddle position, for the time it might actually happen.”

“We don’t really cuddle, do we? Yukio hasn’t really given you any cuddles either, has she? Wow, you’re really missing out- ...Oh. I’m so sorry,” Ellie apologizes, looking more heartbroken than determined with this one. She hadn’t realized the extent to which you were being neglected by them. “I’m sorry, doll. Really sorry.”

“Doll? That’s new,” you comment.

“I figured you deserved a petname of your own,” Ellie informs you. “Now, explain this ‘sweetheart’s cradle’ to me.”

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ltadoriyuujl · 5 years

Text

My BNHA OC

Based on @cho-rates form

(Art by my lovely friend Ari, as I can’t draw to save my life)

Name: Aria Rehn

Hero name: Nami

Age: 16

Birthday: May 20th

Gender: Female

Orientation: Bisexual

Height: 5’11”

Weight: 130 lbs

Hair: Dark brown Afro that’s either tied up or in braids.

Appearance: Has dark skin with deep brown eyes. Her eyesight is horrible so she wears tinted contacts that make her eyes purple. Her casual clothes are a T-shirt and clean sweatpants.

Body: Well-proportioned build with broad shoulders, like a swimmer’s. Long legs and sharp features.

Quirk: Water manipulation. (Think waterbending)

As long as there’s H2O in an object, she can control it to some extent. (She can’t control blood though). She can even pull moisture out of the air if it’s humid enough.

Her quirk is affected by:

The amount of water in the object she’s controlling

How far away the object is

The environment she’s in

For example, her perfect conditions are a cool, rainy night by a lake or other body of water.

Weaknesses:

Dehydrates quicker than most, especially if she uses her quirk a lot.

Her quirk is weaker the less hydrated she is. At max hydration, she could easily control a small lake, but if she’s close to her limit a puddle seems like a daunting task.

Costume: See picture. (She always has at least one canteen or flask full of water on her in the event that her surroundings are devoid of water.)

Personality: She tends to be very optimistic, to the point where she could be perceived as naïve. Her intelligence is nothing to scoff at but 90% of the time only one brain cell is in use. She has a strong moral compass and isn’t easily swayed. She likes to think she’s rational but in reality, is very impulsive and emotional. She’s extremely loyal and absolutely won’t hesitate to stand up for others and what she believes in. This said she can also be very confrontational. If she’s truly desperate she goes from lawful neutral to chaotic good real fast.

Do they work well with others: She’s pretty independent but won’t object to working in a group. Her willingness really depends on who she’s working with.

Family: Mikita Rehn (Mother), Saito Rehn (Older Brother)

Family extras: She comes from a family of elementals. Her mom has a fire quirk, her brother has an earth quirk, and her father had an air quirk.

Her father adopted her mother’s last name when they were married.

Her brother works in construction.

Friends: Her friend group consists of the Dekusquad mostly, but she also gets along well with Kirishima and Denki is her partner in memes.

Enemies: She considers the League of Villains her sworn enemies but otherwise none to speak of.

Romantic interests: Shoto Todoroki. At first, it was more of a social experiment to see if she could worm her way through his aloof exterior, but then they became genuine friends and she found that she’d caught a full-body case of feelings.

What do they think about heroes?: She’s idolized heroes her entire life and being a pro has been her dream since she was little. She believes that they’re genuinely doing the best form of public service possible. Her naivety shines through a bit here because she often refuses to acknowledge when a hero has done something wrong.

What do they think about villains?: Her views are a little less black and white here. For the most part, she detests them but her judgment differs from villain to villain. She despises the LOV though.

Is their first reaction to danger: flight or fight?: Her above-mentioned impulsiveness makes it difficult for her not to jump into a fight.

If they had to be stuck on an island with one BNHA character, who would it be and why?: Probably Todoroki. He’d most likely be really calm in that situation and they could quickly brainstorm a solution together. And if all else fails they could attempt to freeze the water and make a bridge back to the mainland.

Favorite holiday and why: She adores Christmas, especially if there’s snow. She likes having all her family in one place and her mom makes the best apple pie.

Do they have a certain way of dressing/style?: She is absolutely clueless when it comes to fashion and wouldn’t know a trend if it smacked her upside the head. Throws on whatever’s comfortable.

Pet peeves: She cannot stand lip-smacking while you eat. Leaving gum under desks and littering irk her too.

Favorite food: Mac and Cheese. Her dad always made it for her, so it holds a fond place in her heart.

Favorite drink: Any fruit smoothie is good in her book.

Favorite season/weather: She loves fall. She may be a cool toned person, but she really likes the warm colors that come with the season. She loves overcast days because it’s usually not too hot which means less dehydration for her.

What’s their sleep schedule like?: Lmaooo, what’s a sleep schedule? Sometimes she goes to bed at 8:30 pm sharp, sometimes she’s still up at 2 am. Depends on a lot of things.

Introvert, Extrovert or Ambivert?: She’s an ambivert that won’t object to a fun outing but will curl up with a book and be dead to the world for hours after.

Quickest way to upset them?: Genuinely insult anyone close to her and she’ll be on you in 0.5 seconds.

What type of student are they?: Straight A. Got an 89 once and cried. Willing to share their notes and tutor but does not tolerate cheating.

Superlative that fits them best: Teacher’s Pet fits really well

A song you associate with them: My Blood by Twenty One Pilots

What’s their diet like?: Actually eats relatively healthy!

Last thing they ate: Vegetable stir fry

Hobbies: She considers herself an amateur author and her (many) notebooks are filled with story ideas and poems (half of them are about Todoroki but don’t tell him that). She also really likes to swim!

Guilty Pleasures: Chocolate cake and curry. The curry is more of a loss than a win because of the insane levels of chugging she has to do afterward, but she loves it all the same.

When and what was the last thing that made them cry: Her favorite character got killed off in a book she was really invested in.

General extras:

She’s an American transfer student.

Her favorite color is red.

Her brother calls her “Blizzaria” because once she got mad at him and iced the floor of his room.

Curses like a sailor for even the smallest annoyances

Has won 3 separate spelling bees.

Always has at least 3 hair ties on her in case the one she’s using gives out or someone needs one.

Has 4 piercings, 2 on each ear, but only ever wears one set of earrings at a time.

Do you plan on filling out a roleplay form: No

Creator name: Daisy

Blog name: @chiefqueenenthusiast

Did I have fun?: This was really fun to fill out!

#bnha oc #bnha #my ocs

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numinex919 · 6 years

Text

What Doesn’t Kill Me - Chapter 2

A03: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15171611/chapters/35279288

Rey strides out of the boardroom, gritting her teeth, head down. She stares at the notepad and digital tablet in her hand so that no one will notice how bloody furious her boss makes her.

She’s starting to consider that being horrid might be his default setting.

His obvious lust for power combined with his sycophantic fawning over the company chairman, Mister Snoke, is revolting. And she hasn’t even met the latter yet.

But it’s the twist of distaste in his expression whenever he issues her with what is tantamount to a set of orders that really puts her on a short fuse.

As though the very sight of her disgusts him. And he makes zero attempts at being remotely civil.

“Such a bas—Oh!”

Her exclamation is muffled by the fact her face is pressed into someone’s chest.

She rebounds, but before collapsing in a graceless heap on the floor, is caught by a pair of strong hands.

Blinking rapidly she focuses her gaze on a fine wool suit jacket, following the dark, elegant lines up and up and up.

Straight into an intense stare that is startlingly familiar.

“What are you doing here?” It’s a stupid question to ask a complete stranger, but in the five days since that night at the bar he’s been on her mind so much it feels natural.

His head jerks back a little, eyes narrowing, a bemused expression on his lean face. When he responds his voice is like clotted cream over rich, dark chocolate. “I work here.”

Oh. Fuck.

“Right.” She drops her gaze to the safety of his chest and perceives quite a number of things simultaneously . . .

One of her hands is pressed to the broad expanse, the other clutching her digital tablet and notepad like a shield.

He is still gripping her upper arms, which means their lower bodies are very much in contact.

She’s just recovering from the tingling shock of this realization when his scent hits her. Spicy-musk with a hint of citrus.

For a dizzying moment she wonders how he manages to smell so edible.

Oh. Fuck.

His grip tightens and she can feel his heartbeat under her fingertips. It’s pounding as though he’s been running, while his breath is coming in short pants.

Startled, she flicks a quick glance at his face. His soft, full lips are slightly parted.

As though ready for her mouth, her tongue.

And his eyes . . . the pupils are blown, making his honey-brown stare appear almost black. Before he drops his gaze to her lips.

He sways towards her.

One part of her brain is screaming at her . . . move away. This is inappropriate, you don’t even know his name!

The other part is absolutely on board with more contact, mainlining the sensations his touch is producing on the rest of her body like a crack addict. Lightning streaks are running along her veins from where his palms warm her bare arms. Butterflies are holding a rave in her stomach and the results of that party are starting to make themselves known further south . . .

Is—is she actually getting turned on standing in the middle of her workplace? Simply from the most innocuous touch?

The heat from his body is a palpable thing against the rest of her. And the briefest flash of hot, bare skin under her hand shoots through her mind. She wants to kiss each beauty mark on his face. There are lots dotting his pale skin. She wonders if there are more scattered over his body.

The distant noise of a door closing is like a gunshot in the charged silence.

And she realizes they’ve been standing there staring at each other for more than a handful of moments.

If anyone walked down the narrow corridor right now . . .

She drops her gaze and jerks back. He lets her go and she’s scrambling to find something to fill the suddenly awkward silence.

“So, you work here. Ah, which area?”

“I’m head of the security division.”

“We have a security division?” She’s briefly startled, but a split second later acknowledges she isn’t particularly surprised by the existence of such a thing. Hosnian Solutions is big on ensuring confidentiality, even secrecy. And she’s not shocked at his place at the head of said division. He has a palpably dangerous aura—hadn’t she thought so in the bar?

Big dick energy. This guy has it in spades.

“Yes, we do.”

Wut?

It’s a struggle to recall her last statement . . .

Oh.

She thrusts out her hand awkwardly, trying to inject some kind of professionalism into the encounter. “Well, um, I’m Rey, Mister Hux’s new secretary.”

His gaze flicks from her hand to her eyes and back before he engulfs it in his own.

“Yes, I know.”

* * *

Kylo watches the shock flit through her gaze, relishing it for a dark moment before he says, “Head of security, remember?”

Understanding dawns on her expressive face, with, is that the faint hint of disappointment?

In that brief moment of contact in the bar, has he made so much of an impression on her that she thinks he might have sought her out?

Uncertainty bites at what he thought was a long-healed wound.

He’s still holding her hand.

Her firm grip would feel incredible wrapped around his cock.

He releases the contact and steps back, away from the intoxicating scent of her, frangipani and jasmine, the touch of her skin, silky smooth.

He’s so hard he’s not certain his suit jacket is doing any sort of job of concealing his body’s response.

Suddenly he’s aware that he’s standing in a public hallway staring at this girl with a hardon which would be visible from the moon.

Anyone could walk past, including Hux, and suddenly he’s certain he wants Rey to keep this job.

Hux is enough of an asshole that if he senses Kylo is even remotely interested in Rey he’d fire her just for the satisfaction of getting under his skin.

Simply because Snoke considered him and not Armitage Hux as his apprentice. Hux was, as Snoke once put it, ‘a rabid cur.’ A useful one nonetheless, whose weakness was to be exploited with scant regard to the fallout for those around him.

“You had better get back to work.”

His words take a moment to sink in, her eyes widening at the implication she’s been lingering irresponsibly.

The flash of anger that sets the gold in the hazel depths of her gaze alight makes his erection twitch.

He needs to get away from her before he does something really stupid—like find out what she tastes like.

“Nice to meet you, Rey.” He moves past her, she doesn’t say anything. When he glances back her head is down, revealing the tender nape of her neck. After a moment she strides away in the opposite direction.

He realizes he didn’t tell her his name.

Using his access card he enters the surveillance room which had been his ultimate destination.

It’s empty, cctv monitors humming quietly. He locks the door and stumbles over to the bank of monitors.

Sure enough there’s Rey, settling behind her desk.

Just for a moment her skirt hikes a little high, revealing her slim thighs before she demurely adjusts it.

That’s enough.

He wrenches at the button and fly of his tailored slacks. A moment later his hot, rigid cock is in his hand, the head already weeping for the touch of Rey’s hand.

A gasp punches out of his chest.

He barely manages a couple of rough, uncoordinated strokes before his spine is tightening, his balls fucking aching.

His desperate gaze lands on the wastebasket beside the desk and as he stares at the monitor he imagines her fingers sliding over his dick, stroking the head, her gold-flecked gaze darkening, pink lips parted, taking complete control over him.

Totally unafraid of him as she works his big body.

The monitor flicks to a different camera. This one captures her front on and for a moment, as though she senses his regard, her gaze darts up, seeming to catch his through the screen.

With a breathless, snarled grunt he slips over the edge, spending into the wastebasket.

He comes so hard he thinks he might lose consciousness.

In the cooling aftermath, as he’s trying to figure what to do about the scent of sex in the room, the wastebasket . . .

His fucking obsession.

He experiences a flash of burning anger.

This girl has been the cause of five nights of him waking up on the verge of coming, grinding a weeping, rock-hard erection against his black cotton sheets.

Jerking off has become not just a daily habit, it’s a necessity if he wants to get any sort of decent sleep. To be able to focus on his work.

He’s so close to his objective, he cannot lose sight of it for a mere slip of a girl. Not much longer and he’ll be able to achieve his goal and his uncle, Luke-fucking-Skywalker will no longer be an issue.

#reylo fanfic #reylo fam #reylo trash #save ben solo #kylo redemption #kylo x rey #kylo ren

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hxlsteads · 6 years

Photo

Disclaimer: This imagine is Jay x reader however I did take ideas from the show and this can easily be read as a Linstead imagine!

It'd make four months now. Four whole months since you broke up with your boyfriend of a year, four months since you'd last heard the words 'I love you' roll effortlessly off his tongue and four months from the moment you had to board that flight and leave your career behind because of your prohibited actions. Sure you missed your job but that didn't equate to anything near how much you missed your former partner. Not a single day passes where his blue eyes didn't cross your mind; the way that even by a simple glance at them they'd brighten your day in an instant. Everything with him by your side seemed so perfect- maybe that's just the sole reason why after all it had to come to an end.

Spanning across over a year, yours and Jay's relationship wasn't always easy. Every day with your careers there was a good chance one of you would end up hurt; physically or emotionally but I guess in the end that's what made you that strong. The fact that no matter how big or small, you both could read each other like a book so you knew when something was up simply showed just that. But I guess that's where it all went wrong. When everything just continued to spiral downhill you just didn't want to drag him down with you yet to do that you had to ignore him. Phone call after text lit up across your phone screen but your finger still tapped away at the lonely button turning it once again black. You knew he was worried and you knew he had realised something was up but you just couldn't bear to hear that slight crack in his throat that always appears after he hears something he didn't want to, without failure. You had to do what you had to do in that very moment; even if it was certain to leave your heart fractured for a long period of time. Some would just say Alex was someone to just get over Jay, a way of releasing that built up stress that would've been gone within a split second of being in Jay's arms. And he was just that but in some ways also more...

It was around two weeks into your new start when everything changed. You hadn't left your new apartment- one that in actual fact felt nothing like 'home', you'd lie in bed most nights letting your tears soak into the pillows and you'd lost pretty much all of your appetite. Nothing was the same anymore. Daily, all you could think about was that particular moment playing on and on like a broken record, the exact moment when you walked out of the 21st district and breathed in the cold Chicago breeze for one final time tearing down everything you'd built over the past couple of years. Looking back at it you could've handled things differently; prevented all of this... but you let your temper get in the way of your career guidelines and now you sit in an entirely different state and an entirely different state of mind. Even with the constant thoughts of him circling your mind and the constant bickers and laughs in your head that originally annoyed you but now are all you had left of the district you wanted to make an effort. Everyone kept badgering you over and over again when you first joined your new unit to include yourself more. Go out for drinks with the crew and stop moping around. They didn't know the reason why and you had absolutely no intent on telling them however you couldn't exactly keep it up for too long. Soon after, enough became enough and a so-called 'annual' work party occurred inviting not only first responders but the 'friend of friends' type of people from all across town. Sure enough one drink soon led to another and consequently resulted in you tangled in the sheets with a man who wasn't Jay...

Waking up the following morning you instantly rolled over to see the face of someone beside you that wasn't that man you once perceived as 'husband material'. You couldn't deny that slight feeling of emptiness knowing this just didn't feel right, didn't piece together. But maybe you just had to make it. You couldn't bring back the past so why shouldn't you just try to move on.

So you did...

As hard as it was, a mere three months later you still found yourself turning underneath the sheets to be greeted with the warmth of his body. It was almost as if as time passed he continually filled that fraction of your heart that was torn from you the second you walked away. He made you happier on days where I'd usually struggle to even process getting through- well he did. That was up until around two weeks ago when words became slurred and that happiest was broken before you could even finalise your sentence following the few words that had turned your world upside down only a couple of days before.

It seemed nothing could go your way in any circumstance. Something always had to send a collision course to send it off track before happiness could even be seen as a final destination. Now before you could even blink your eye everything was crumbling right before you, settling to nothing. Just nothing...

Once again you felt yourself become more sleep-deprived as the calendar rolled on and the sickness became unbearable to the point where work wasn't even a viable option. You always hated to miss a day's work. It wasn't hard to notice that but it just shows how little everyone here really cared about you. The lone fact that nobody after your two-week hiatus even thought to call or stop by symbolises that... These people weren't built on the stable force of family values. Now you were needed. You were simply lounging on the couch when you received a call that sent shockwaves pulsing throughout the entirety of your body. A unit in Chicago needs desperate help with a case and we're on our way to provide that. Chicago alone scared the life out of you. You wondered if it's even the same as when you left it; but as more seconds passed and the brash tone continued to whisper down the phone your heart sank as he elaborated on the unit we'd be working alongside. Intelligence...

Kim: WHAT (click link to see full text messages)

In all possible senses of the word, the journey here was indescribable. The flight was okay in a way, it all just went in an opposite direction the very moment you stepped one foot back onto Chicago soil. It seemed everything was just moving in slow-motion; endless amounts of halts at intersections, far too many cars on the road at once and that ongoing sickness that still lingered in the pit of your stomach. Now rubbing your sleeve across the steam covered windows you felt yourself heave a sigh of relief seeing that one building that way all too familiar knowing you'd finally be able to leave this sweat masked taxi. Even if it, in turn, scared you half to death.

Texting Kim letting her know you were finally here, you soon found yourself perched on the bench around the side of the building seeing the onslaught of cars that rolled up and more members of your crew roll into the district. You'd never been so thankful for a seat in your life... You could just take the weight off your shoulders for a couple of minutes, not in plain view of everyone entering and exiting the unit which is what you needed. After all, you didn't exactly want to be in the faces of all these people you once considered family... who once considered you to be family. Minutes that felt more like hours soon passed and a slight creak of wooden panels signalled someone was perched next to you, forcing you to lift your head from out of your hands. "God I actually can't believe you're here! Look at you y/n with that pregnancy glow!" Kim's voice rang out, leaving you now unable to bask in your own silence as answers would very soon have to be revealed. "How are you!?"

"Ugh I wish I felt like that. I just feel like crap right now. I guess just travelling on top of the usual sickness is just piling up. Pretty sure I could also easily get the flu from sitting out here. I forgot how cold Chicago gets around this time but to be completely honest I'm not ready to go in yet." You muttered, not fully knowing what to say to her. I mean she was one of your closest friends and she was still acting like that but you just couldn't fully accept that she doesn't have that small bit of resentment towards your unannounced departure.

"No don't worry y/n. Hank's the only one upstairs. He's got the rest of the unit out questioning witnessing whilst he talks through the case with your crew. Trudy's also filing things out back so you could easily get past her. Now come on. I'm not letting you freeze out here."

"Fine Kim. But I swear to god if you're messing with me here." You stated, rising to your feet to follow closely behind Kim into the warmth of the district which was once home.

Buzzing yourselves through the gate and continuing to wander up the steps as quickly as this extra weight could carry you, you couldn't quite subside the lump that had formed instantly in the back of your throat. Especially so when you let your eyes wander the room as you reached the top step. It was the same- your desk completely bare all besides the member of my unit that was ever-so-slightly perched against it, watching intently as my former barked his orders for this case. Your eyes stayed rested on him and it all brought you back. The countless days you stood in that position right before him, your sergeant...

It wasn't long before you saw his eyes twitch scanning the faces crowding the room one by one until they finished on you, a long breath escaping his lips he didn't let his focus shift any further. "Y/n..."

"Wait you two know each other already?" You heard Scott, your current partner question, clearly sensing the awkward tension that stiffened the entire atmosphere.

"This was my last unit." You answered quickly, allowing for a slight smile to lace upon your features as a flurry of memories flooded your brain. "Hank, can we talk please?"

You had to admit to the fact you were worried. He may not be your sergeant anymore but he was still a man you looked up to for years as a father figure and god you weren't sure how he'd react to your news. That all became increasingly worse and your stomach twisted in knots seeing that faint nod towards the door of his office... "Hank erm- I guess there's a lot to say." You mumbled under your shortness of breath, slumping heavily into the couch across from his desk.

"You can start with why you didn't return any of my calls. Y/n I put in good word for you and watched you say goodbye but you promised you'd stay in touch. What happened." Hank spoke, his voice growing more and more gruff by the second, something that put you on edge. It was now or never for you... You just had to tell him.

Shifting in the seat, you subconsciously wrapped your arms around the centre of your stomach, the fabric of your oversized coat shielding away the biggest secret that'd soon be revealed. "Hank I wanted to but I just couldn't... You told me to leave everything behind but I found out after a while that it followed me; Chicago. Whenever I thought about it, it broke me and only one person knows and I just don't know what to do- I can't even overpower it with work anymore and-"

"Woah kid. Slow down because you're not making any sense."

He was right in turn. You just had to do it, rip the band-aid right off then and there. As he once told you before you left. No regrets...

"Hank I can't work on the field... I'm pregnant."

That was it. Done. Already you could see the mental processes his mind was running through, clearly in a state of confusion trying to put dates together. "4 months Hank." You answered his mental question.

For the first time in this past 5 minutes, you once again brought your eyes to meet his, seeing his jaw clench out of the corners of them. "Halstead know?" He murmured calmly, the complete contrast to the shaking mess you currently were.

A stream of tears soon threatened to spill down your cheeks as you pressed a palm to your forehead. They weren't easy to control and soon after the waterworks were switched on full force as you shook your head. It wasn't down to debate, there was a good chance he'd react just like Alex did. After all, you did leave with no warning... no goodbye.

As your sobs began to draw to a close, a familiar sensation soon took over you forcing you to immediately excuse yourself from Voight's office and make a mad dash for the bathroom. Except it wasn't close enough. Running into the locker room you lunged for the nearest trash can, emptying the contents of your stomach into it, your eyes watering even more than previously. The heat of the room soon became too much as you felt yourself slip the heavily fabricated coat off your shoulder, resting it on the bench before returning to your last position. Hunched over the black bucket, your coughs echoing around the walls.

"Y/n..." You heard your name whispered just as it was a mere twenty minutes ago. This time the voice was less brash, instead was a soft tone, and underlying pain making it hard for you to breath. You knew this voice- better than anything else. The very voice that soothed and comforted you to sleep every time you returned home and all you felt like doing was crying.

"Jay." You breathed tiredly, lifting your head away from the can and towards the entrance to the room. Rubbing the back of your hand across your lips you couldn't release your gaze from him. He still looked exactly how you left him. Maybe his beard was slightly scruffier but those baby blues that always had a way of captivating you were still ever-present.

"I- I wasn't expecting to see you here." He spoke with evident falters affecting his clarity as he lowered his eye-line to scan the rest of your body.

"My unit." You choked out before without any delay you lowered your head to catch sight of the now distinguishable bump that protruded against your work sweater. It was now out there; he knew. And it was evident, his eyes single-handedly fixated on your torso, he was taken over by pure shock.

"Erm; congratulations I guess. Alex must be a happy guy..."

It broke you completely, shattered you to the core seeing the dullness that took over his eyes. He tried to conceal it but two years of partnership and a year of a relationship meant it was easy to see right through him. "Happy without me... We're not together. We never really were."

"I saw you two on Instagram. He seemed alright. I mean obviously I had to contact him and make sure but what, he just left you? He's gonna be there for you and his child isn't he?" He questioned, a sudden rush of anger surprising you.

"You checked on him? I mean he was alright but we were never serious. I guess that's what made it easy for him to leave."

"Of course I did. I still cared about you y/n. I always will. If I would've known he'd turn out to be a douche and leave you without providing for his child then I would've done something. I just can't believe you're being so calm about this. His voice rose to a high volume signalling his recent build-up of frustration.

"It's not his that's why." You blurted before you were even aware of the words that rolled off your tongue and subsequently instantly regretted them. You quickly closed your eyes before reopening them hoping it'd all be one big and bad dream but still he stood there, eyebrows furrowed in a state of pure confusion. As if it was instinct, you rested your arm across the top of your stomach seeing him try to seek an answer from the information you already provided. "Jay... this baby's yours. I didn't know at first but now I do. Honestly, I'm fine if it's too much and if you want to just forget this and just walk away but this is the truth and I now realised you deserve to know it. I should probably just go." This whole situation was just beyond stressful- to the point where now you stood beyond your breaking point. Snatching your coat off the bench you scurried towards the door, feeling goosebumps rise off your skin as your shoulder brushed past his, however, a tight grasp on your upper arm drew you to stop dead in your tracks.

Before you could even think about arguing, you were stunned and left speechless as you were spun around, his eyes cloudy and diluted when they looked down on you. "So you're just going to leave again... Before I can even say anything?" He stumbled over his words, each of them causing another warm tear to cascade down your face. "We can make this work. I'm not running away."

An onslaught of different emotions came running back to you all at once and they instantly formed that lump once again in your throat. "I- I shouldn't have left. We- we had that argument a week before and I didn't know what we were anymore. When I was told I had to leave I just thought it'd be easier not to see you. I knew I wouldn't be able to leave if I spoke to you. I'm sorry Jay." You grew increasingly more vulnerable as you broke down even more.

"Hey, shh, shh." Jay wrapped his arms around you, tugging your weakened body close to his chest. "Look I have to admit I was pissed you left without telling me. I thought I meant more to you than that. But honestly, I wish I'd have done more to bring you back and ever since I'd been just hoping something would bring me back to you. I guess it's this." He spoke, his pupils dilating slightly as the famous Halstead grin appeared on his face.

Reaching up, you swiped your thumbs across the base of his eyes, wiping away the newly-formed tears. "Hey, not a day went by that I didn't think about you and when the doctors told me I was four months along I didn't really know what to think. Yes, I thought about just not telling you all together, I mean for all I know you could've been happy with someone else but I'm glad this came about. Almost like it's fate." You softly whispered, gazing back down to your growing belly. “Coming back here I truthfully just wanted to ignore you. Everything became so messed up so fast and I really didn’t know how you’d react if I did tell you. I know, I know you wouldn’t have been harsh or whatever but Jay, we never even approached the idea of kids. I didn’t even know if you wanted them...”

“I did. I do.” Jay huffed. “I always wanted to mention it but I never knew how. I already knew commitment was a difficulty for you so I never wanted to push it. I always liked the idea of having kids, especially with you but I didn’t know whether you thought the same.”

A grin was soon embedded onto your facial features as you listened to his delicate words that made your heart swell to at least twice it’s size. “I didn’t. I never wanted kids until I met you. I mean if it was completely down to me it would’ve been later on since we’ve only been together for what a year? I was scared at first I’d have to do it alone but now standing here, none of that matters because I know how great a dad you’ll make. I mean if seeing you with Owen if any indication.” You explained, placing your palm lightly on his chest- the fabric from the grey cotton v-neck top that you knew was his favourite under your fingers.

Soon enough the small gap that was left between your two bodies was diminished as Jay engulfed your petite frame into a tight hug. “You’ll make a great mom as well. Don’t ever doubt that.” He whispered in your hair before simultaneously letting his lips peck the side of your head, resulting in a slight shiver to be sent down your spine. After all, it felt exactly the same as it did a few months ago. “You aren’t doing this alone. We’ll make this work, no matter what.”

You remained motionless as a couple of minutes began to pass, just allowing your minds to rekindle what you thought you’d once lost. Just until a harsh tone bellowed out, loud enough to bounce across several rooms in the unit, “Halstead, we got updated info. Get your ass out here.”

“That’s our cue.” You giggled, dragging your body away from the heat of his and proceeded to saunter out of the locker-room, practically into what was set to be an interrogation in its own right. Especially since Halstead still moved directly behind you, his hand cupped against the small of your back as you reach the crowd of your unit, gathered around intelligence who were all seated at their desks. Jay soon joined that trend, leaning back in his chair with his feet lifted onto his table as you slotted yourself into the gap of people to stand next to him as expected gaining a loud roar as my old unit noticed it was in fact you.

“How nice of you two to join us. Guys, this is y/n’s new unit. Halstead, I’ll leave it to you to introduce yourself to everyone later since you did everything but that when you returned here.” Voight snarled, clearly annoyed at Jay’s lack of discipline disobeying something he was most probably ordered. “For now we’ve managed to piece together four possible suspects, we only have a location on one as of now so y/n, your units rolling out there. Y/n you’re staying here though and working with Ruzek to cut down another location. Rest of you are searching databases, phone records, everything we can get on these guys. Let’s go, I don’t want any talking, just get this done and get whoever this bastard is off the street.”

God, you wanted to speak, talk about anything. I mean there was still so much to discuss but if you’d learnt anything over the years, it was to never cross Hank Voight. Not that you’d end up at the bottom of the river but Jay certainly would. You adopted a different way though. All you needed was three words, three final words before you’d be completely satisfied with this moment and able to go back to doing what you do best. Pulling his top drawer open, you grasped the notepad he’d always kept there that held so many memories. Most of which ended in the unit bin after Voight found screwed up notes across the span of both of your tables. He never held a grudge though even through that. You were just two kids in love. Scribbling onto the page, you took one final look at the words ‘I missed you’ to let a grin upturn your lips knowing how much you truly meant it. Only one thing was missing for you now though, your heart suddenly grew so whole in the space of a single hour yet still one thing remained only a secret to you.

You reached your hand into the back pocket of your jeans, watching closely as Jay’s eyebrows rose when he tried to make out your intentions. Soon enough, in your hand lay a small photograph, to be exact, the very ultrasound that changed your life forever... now you know, for the better. You lay it directly on top of your writing prior to slamming the pad shut and placing it down in front of him, walking away to take seat in your former chair ready to gauge his reaction from across the room. It wasn’t long before his face lit up as his orbs scanned the sonogram and they rose shortly after to glimmer your direction. To say it melted your heart would even cut it- it did so much more than that once he shifted his arms, carrying the picture to sit in the corner of the photo-frame you got him for his birthday before you left. You never did find out what he put in it but it didn’t even matter- now it held your whole world and it didn’t matter what else it carried. A world you wish you’d stayed with forever in the first place, but a world you were now beyond lucky to live in...

A/N - Okay Jay as a dad... it’d be perfect. Honestly I got so carried away with this but it’s only because I absolutely loved this imagine! I hope you guys did aswell. As always I’d love if you’d let me know what you thought so I can continue to improve in my future writings! Requests are also still open for One Tree Hill, Chicago PD, and Chicago Fire so you can still send in any prompt or normal request you may have! Thank you!xo

#cpd #cpd imagine #chicago pd #chicago pd imagine #one chicago #jay halstead #jay halstead x reader #jay halstead imagine #jay halstead oneshot #chicago imagine #possible #linstead

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deadliketheothers · 7 years

Text

Annals of the Cata

In these pages are the accounts of the few people I managed to come across in the wastes that were not trying to kill me, at least not outright. My journey throughout the midwest seemed to be an endless task, however it only took thirty years for me to complete my travels and come to a place I could finally call my own. It is here I began to reread through my notes and journal entries I had written in years past. I noticed as I poured back over my pages that there were many inconsistencies in the dates, locations, and names of things, as a historian of sorts, I feel it my duty to correct these, but as a writer and someone who experienced the Cata first hand, I ultimately have decided to leave the errors in as originally written because at the time, these were not errors but simply what I knew or what I perceived, and thus they were reality at one point and time to me. Perhaps as the time comes, if there is any real interest in these dusty pages of mine, an annotation can be arranged and pressed, but as the wastes have very few who can read, and even less who can print or write, I find that an annotated copy of this work to be a far too lofty goal and ultimately a dream.

One further note as I begin this project, my time wandering and writing in the midwest, I saw many a great things, however writing implements, and writing mediums were often far and in between as such much of my work was composed upon what scrap I could locate at the time and not in a finely bound book as they would have had before the Cata. I have done my best to enter into these pages to the best of my knowledge the order I had written each entry, however as I lost some pages, others were damaged, and yet still, others simply fell out and scattered in the wind before I could gather all of the pages, the time line presented here may be out of order as it is known to other historians and current writers of the wastes, but by no means should such a trivial matter cast any shadow of doubt upon the truths told in this book.

As It Began

Atop the pillar was the orb, its polished sheen could be seen for miles. Late in the night as bright as the moon the orb shone over the entire town. This night was unlike any other except for one small fact, this night, Selena sat on the fence outside her families home and she stared at the night sky watching the stars. In a flash of light a star shot across the sky. Amazed Selena watched as this star slowed down and came to rest directly above the orb. The pillar lit up in a cascade of glowing blue and flickering red light that seemed to streak down from the tip to the earth in strange lightening like patterns. The ground began to shake and the fence upon which Selena sat began to tremble.

Her pink hair glowing in the soft light of the candle dimly flickering on the writing desk, she studied her tome intently. Every few moments she would turn a page and her dainty hand would rise up and push back the strands of hair that continued to fall forward as she continued reading. So intently she studied her tome she barely recognized the sound of footsteps approaching her. "Madam Anna, we have found the ledgers you have requested" Anna waved her hand and motioned for the scribe to place the books behind her on an already towering stack of dusty tomes.

Tasked by the high restorative council with protecting the last of the known books in the wastes, Amy had spent more time than she would admit pouring over the tattered pages of the dust covered and partially burnt copies of books that the scrounging parties had brought back from their journeys. The tome safe, as the council called their small compound, was surrounded by thick concrete walls and had access to its own ground water table, luckily for the inhabitsnts, it was deep enough to not be completely fouled by the background radiation of the wastes. The council was composed of four major groups, the preservers, the travelers, the high council, and the laborers, each group was charged with a task that benefited the group in the best way possible. The restorers were those who demonstrated a gentle touch and high reading comprehension. It was their task to rewrite each book that was returned to the compound by the travelers.

The night air was chill and the scent of a long forgotten camp fire floated through the trees of the forest. The full moon shone bright and light the forest floor even through the thick canopy. Tonight was the night of rest for the pack. Every full moon the pack would return from their hunts and their prowls and lay on the stone that overhung the deeper parts of the forest. There in the middle of the pack, lit by a beam of glowing moonlight that punctured through the tree tops sat a woman. Long black hair fell gracefully down upon her shoulders and a set of geometric wings, black as the space between stars protruded from her back. Upon the woman's lap lay the alpha male's head, his head to the side, eyes closed and ears at rest. There, the pack was perfect, the pack was happy.

The lightening flashed across the sky, and there riding over head on a stallion made from the clouds themselves she rode. Her dread locks waving behind her head in the forceful storm winds. In her left hand she held the reigns of fierce blue eyed mount, and in her right hand she held the scepter of Queens.

It was the strangest thing the scientist noted. "I was standing in the field observing the tree line and how the birds would perch upon the limbs as they flew at high speeds, when all of a sudden the birds all took off of the trees and flew over my head, I thought it to be one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. That is until I returned my gaze back to the tree lines." Almost as if he was back in the scene the scientist looked down into the black coffee stained mug and continued. "There she was, this tiny girl, hair pink like flowers, eyes wide and beautiful, even from where I was I could see their glistening color in the light of the morning sun. She was barefoot and her skin porcelain as she stepped, no almost... floated across the meadow. But that wasn't the weird part, that came next... Its as if she was a flower and they longed for her nectar... all of them, I don't mean a lot, I mean all of them, she had to have had every single moth, butterfly and other little flying insect in the whole damned forest flying near her. It was something I could never forget. She was wearing clothes made of butterflies. When one would lift off another would land perfectly covering the spot left open." The scientist sighed. "It was the strangest thing. It was like she was their goddess and they catered to her every whim. She wasn't mean, nor heavy handed, in fact even from where I stood her gentleness could be felt, she would let the moths land on her finger as she kissed their heads and then lift her hand to the sky and they would all fly away, and with them, as they obscured her in their flight, she was gone."

The highway felt longer than he remembered, but then again he had never walked down it before, it was always driven. The asphalt beneath his feet was warm to the touch after baking all day in the summer sun, but since the sun had fallen beneath the horizon, it was a comfortable warmth that kept the soles of his feet warm as he walked. His back felt the ache of the all day walk with his pack upon it that he was all to familiar with, but the pack carried things he needed to survive. The hatchet on his hip dug into his thigh with ever step but without it he would have no way to get his fire for the night prepared, but from the clouds in the distance, fire would be the least of his issues he worried. Price still remembered what life was like before the defiled ruled the cities of the US, he chuckled to himself as he remembered how many nights he took for granted having a roof keeping rain off his head. He still had a little light left of the evening, and he had to keep going, the rad storms were going to reach him soon.

What could he do? The rain pounded on the tin roof of the shed he found. He had barely managed to get a fire to light before he was forced to take shelter from the rad storm that blew in from the west. No one expected the west to be the first hit, all the projections and analysts claimed the bombs would hit the east US first. Take out the command centers and leaders they said. Chris scoffed at the thought, "If only they knew." The fire sputtered as a particularly strong gust of wind snuck under the rickety door of the shed. Chris gathered his pack and laid down his rolled up sleeping bag. Before he laid down to sleep for the night, he took one last look at the fire and wondered if his friends were still alive. It had been months since they parted ways outside of Old Cloud village. Then he slept.

It was perhaps by her own sheer willpower she made it down the old 94. Losing her family to a herd of Infected Stags, she had two choices, Give up or keep pushing forward. No one knows if she chose to move forward on her own, some say too many days and late nights of video games had affected her mind and when the mushrooms finally came to cleanse the land, that was all it took. Those who became briefly close to her would often tell of her prowess as a gunslinger, and a lucky few were able to recount tales of her skills with a knife. Sam spent much of her early days of the Cata wandering the old 94, and while many saw her, few were able to talk with her, she seemed determined in her mission, keep the old highway clean and cleansed of all four legged beasts.

"T'was such a strange sight, no, a strange sound", Brett remembered thinking. His trusty walking stick that in times of need doubled as a rod for fighting was gripped tightly in his left hand. His knuckles white as he continued following the alluring yet eerie sound that caught his attention about a mile and half back. The town he had wandered into seemed desolate and empty, the prairie sands had covered most of the houses that were still standing, although few buildings could be classified as still standing. On edge, Brett continued to walk forward following the haunting melody that seemed to be growing louder with every step. The sand beneath his feet gave slightly with every step, but yet he was still compelled to move forward. There, at the center of town, a seemingly untouched church, steeple in place, paint clean and white, and door wide open, stood. Before the church lay thousands of broken pieces of glass. As Brett bent down to inspect a piece, he realized they were all mirrors. Etched into each piece were the cryptic words, Shadows begin to sing. pulling his attention away from the shards of glass and back to the open doors of the church, Brett peered forward only to find that the church was devoid of life. Walking further forward he stood in front of the door to the pristine, yet empty church. As he crossed the threshold of the sanctuary, the moment his foot touched the wooden floorboards, the singing stopped.

The glitter of the gold could be seen across the arid plains whenever the sun was high in the afternoon sky. Many wanderers even the defiled were drawn in by the strange lights. The prospect of a curiosity or of some long lost treasure seemed too much to resist for the folks caught in the glint of the giant golden throne. From miles away the sound of hundreds of footsteps could be heard pounding away on the pavement of the wastes, and the groans of those serving the queen served as a reminder to all who would gaze upon the green haired beauty, that their servitude was mandatory. With her own personal army composed of every creature who was caught by her gaze, Siren continued being carried upon her golden throne by her servants across the desolate lands in search of more slaves.

Prior to the fall of the sky and the terrible visions of those fire filled clouds, Josh had enjoyed life in Minnesota. The land was lush with a diverse number of animals and plant life. The sport of hunting had always brought him joy, even in his youth, but he never thought one day he would need to use those skills learned as a means to survive. The initial bomb blasts had little effect on the amount of animals in the region, it was the fallout and the years of background radiation that killed them. It was slow at first, but over the past decade, they had all but disappeared. With the drying up and unexplained disappearance of most of the lakes and the irradiated waters flowing through the rest, the flora and fauna of the previously lush state had been devastated. Hunting was no longer a sport, but a game of survival. Josh knew the deer before him was not just a meal, but a ticket to better trade goods as well as a means to survive the harsh nuclear winter season.

What a day, first the mubear that was running amok in Cillieatown, then having to run from a raider party, and now as she travelled through the glades, she came across a body on the ground. Giving a wide berth to the lump of human flesh on the ground, Clara heard the groan of a man followed by a shallow broken cry for help. Pausing in her soft steps, Clara turned to see the body she thought dead, shifting along the dusty ground. Taking a short step back she reached for her trusty .38 she kept in case of emergency. Almost as if the man heard the sound of the hammer cocking back he stopped his weak crawl. "Please, I....I was attacked by raiders... they took my... my daughter... please... get her back..."

For most, the Cata was unkind. The world tranformed into a desolate wasteland where rival groups faught bloody battles over the few remaining areas of farmland or un radiated water. Once great sprawling cities mow reduced to ashes or graveyards of twisted metal beams surrounded by dilapidated and blackened buildings barely recognizable. Even small rural towns didn't manage to survive the destructive powers of the hellfire that the bombs cast upon humanity. But among all this destruction, there was a woman who despite her previously kind demeenor, seemed to fit right into this terrible world. No one who knew Olivia in the old world would have expected her to now rule over the CagedCreeturs, one of the wastelands most brutal gangs. All across their territories you could see where the members had been. Bodies of their victims would be ripped apart and hung from the twisted metal power poles that still remained. Any one unlucky enough go survive being beaten or shot would be found trapped into a cage that was welded shut after they were forced in. Their bodies covered in the burns from the welding and their remains withered, dehydrated, and starved to death.

The wastes were home to oddities of all kinds, in the far east US territories, tales of men more machine than man could be heard, but on the west coast where the bombs hit the hardest, the tales and oddities that could be heard of were of a far stranger nature. Somewhere in the old world California, now the separate states of god's coast, the tale of the gecko woman were commonly known. Its said that somewhere, where the trees still grow, but the land died, a woman, short, with stunningly beautiful eyes lived. It is said that the radiation gives her an eternal youth and since the bombs fell, she hasn't aged a day, and while this would be the strangest part of any other story, hers is one of much more. There where the Redwoods cry their black irradiated sap that pollutes whatever it touches, lives Maddie, the gecko rancher. Her house, more of a hut than anything is fiercely protected by a band of massive eight foot tall geckos. They run as fast as dogs on two legs and have an acidic bite that melts through Kevlar and metal armors. Attacking everything that wanders too close to Maddie's home, they can be seen chewing on the corpses of the latest traveler unlucky enough to get caught in their gaze.

The ticking of the strange mechanisms were the only sound resonating from within the old mine in the west Virginian hills. Smoke poured from the cave entrance and from old rusted stacks that once supplied the mine with fresh air. It had been years since any soul had been seen this deep in the mountains, but for Frank, this meant this area was perfect. From a distance, no one would even know someone lived here, the decade of running the oil boilers and machines of the mine created a low hanging smog that obscured the entrance to his workshop from view by anyone farther than a half mile out. Inside the cave was an elaborate set of tunnels cared into the granite and limestone that had spent the past few million years undisturbed, however at the center of all this was the emporia as Frank liked to call it. This was his toy shop. The wastes provided plenty of mutated or deformed creatures which Frank would trap, experiment on, and study. When he was done, each of those creatures found themselves bottled in some sort of fluid and stored on the endless shelves of the chamber. At the far end however was the most interesting and terrifying of his collection, more machine than animal, Frank spent the vast amount of his time here bringing the dead back to life with the use of mechanisms and electrical pulses. These strange things were his pets, and each of them were lethal loyal to him.

Before the bombs fell, the land surrounding the old 169 was fertile and held farms for as far as the eyes could see. The land was known for its lush tree lines, cornfields, and green meadows, what happened after however, was stark in contract. The miles upon miles of the concrete and asphalt of the 169 now were overgrown by weeds and sun weathered trunks of trees that fell over the decades of winds and radstorms. The cracked and pitted path still saw much foot traffic just as the 169 did in the past. It remained to be the only road that could be used effectively as a trade route to the northern state and through the great radiated seas of The Vermilion Shores. The Town of Princes lay upon this road. A once thriving community that was nestled upon a wide river, now a series of shacks and crumpled buildings, and no one save for the traders heading north dared go near the polluted waters of the River Rummer. This time of year, when the snows would have fallen in the past, but now nothing but ash falls from the great grey clouds over head, was ripe for gathering meat. The Radogs that roamed the western lands around the Town of Princes migrated east to follow the River Rummer to some unknown destination. During this annual migration, the pickings for meat was simple and easy. Ivana spent much of her days out in the old ash forests gathering the days harvest of Mudberries and if lucky, any Radog that was daft enough to fall into the clutches of one of the hunter's traps.

#OC #Wasteland #Fallout Damage #Radiation #Creative writing

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starsofmirkwood · 7 years

Note

I would love to read your story about not being able to disappoint the sun, it sounds interesting :) Hope you have a wonderful day!

Thank you sweetie!!

I wrote this in my Junior year of high school, when I was taking a creative writing class. Our prompt was to write a story with an epiphany in it, so I decided to write mine about the idea of cosmic indifference, and how it could be perceived as comforting, from the perspective of an utterly miserable teenage boy. I don’t remember what I titled it, so… I’m open to suggestions! :)

…

It was drizzling. The sky was a frozen grey, and the wind came and went in halfhearted swirls. It was a lifeless day, a day to stay inside and avoid people. The kind that numbed you, made you feel just as dull as the thick clouds, as cold as the rain. Sam shut his eyes as he took a long breath.

He had never been a morning person. Not on mornings like these. Being awake was better than sleep, at this point. Third night in a row of restlessness. He didn’t feel tired. The air stinging his ears woke him up. He wished he had a hat, and maybe some coffee. He hated coffee. He tugged his jacket tighter around himself and tried dodging the rain as he shuffled to class.

Sam slung his backpack under his table and brushed the rain from his shoulders, shaking as he felt a drop of water run from his soaked hair down his forehead and into his eye. Blinking furiously, he pushed his hair out of his face. He was freezing.

Art class. He liked it a bit. He could draw well enough to capture the beauty in things. His classmates told him he was amazing. Ms. Earley said he had a gift. For him, it wasn’t good or bad. It was relaxing, watching his hand create things. It was a way of getting his feelings out without anyone knowing. A hiding place.

Today he painted. Ignoring the instructions to compose scenery, he sketched a face. Nobody he knew. Dark hair and a sharp nose. A man’s face. Intelligent eyes. The whole thing was done in watery shades of blues and greens. Sam was satisfied. He signed his name in ink, and turned it in. He got a frown from Ms. Earley for dismissing the assignment. He left the room 6 minutes early. He wouldn’t get in trouble. Never did. If anyone asked, Ms. Earley would tell them he was in the bathroom.

The hallway was quiet. Six minutes of peace. He did end up in the bathroom, grabbing a wad of paper towels to wipe some of the water from his hair. It was mostly dry now, but the clinging dampness felt stifling. Sam caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked pale. Was he sick? He needed sleep. Dark circles framed his eyes. His hair was wild, frizzy with moisture and curled into awkward waves in places. He looked a mess.

He smoothed his hair down with a yawn. He didn’t want to be here. Or anywhere. Restlessness crept back up. Always. God, he didn’t want to be here.

Splashing some water on his face, Sam took a long breath that came out dangerously close to a sob. He stared at his reflection. He didn’t recognize the stranger there. The clothes were his, but the boy wearing them… he looked defeated. Sam turned away. He was tired.

Next class was biology. It fascinated Sam, oddly. All the pretty miracles of nature and the cycles of everything. Ordered, yet chaotic. Not as nice as anatomy would be, but intriguing. Life and how it works. Death. It was all the same. Fascinating.

Watched a video in class. Something about the Sonoran Desert. Sam didn’t take notes. He doodled a saguaro cactus, thinking about humanity, and how it doesn’t matter how tall and strong you are, or how much you surround yourself in protection and spines, when a storm hits, man and cactus alike are capable of falling.

Literature class. Tolerable on good days. Today was not a good day. No days were. Sam endured it anyway, on the basis that it really was something worth learning. Many things were. Most things weren’t.

Sam picked up his copy of Lord of the Flies, opened it to a random page. He had loved the book. It was fast paced, gripping, more beast than boy. Spoke volumes about the human race without saying a word.

The corners of the paperback were getting bent, and one page was folded at an odd angle. He had dropped the book once, and it had landed in such a way that had damaged it. It was funny, in a demented sort of way.

Sam drummed his fingers on his keyboard. An essay about the theme of the book. Due next Tuesday. Sam didn’t know where to start. The theme. Which one? There were many possibilities. Good and evil, civilization and savagery, rules and discord, knowledge and fear and power and wisdom, Ralph and Jack and Simon and Roger and Piggy and it was overwhelming. Sam typed what he knew. Man is inherently evil. Every man. Primitive and unholy. He didn’t need the book to tell him. Jack Merridew. Anarchy and chaos. Order and laws keep people from savagery. That’s what the book said. Sam rather liked Jack. Something about his untamable aberrance appealed to him, reminded him, terrifyingly, thrillingly, of himself.

The printer whirred and beeped as his essay came through. It smelled like ink and stale paper. He proofread his work, for a third time, this time on a physical copy, and decided that his words were sufficiently eloquent and precise, he stapled the papers together with a twang, and tucked the essay into the folder on Mr. Tennyson’s desk.

Ignoring the keyboard clicks and off-topic ramblings of his classmates, Sam spent the rest of the time reading a new book from the library. It was fiction, although Sam preferred fact, but it was entertaining enough to pass the time. About the future and space and war and all those useless distractions. A means of worthwhile escapism, rarely found.

Math was next. Well, Sam loved math. It was the one class he looked forward to, even though his excitement had been rather depleted lately. His teacher loved him. Called on him to solve problems, write out the answer on the board. It wasn’t a chore. Numbers and patterns spiraling to infinity filled his head, and were a thing of beauty to him. Fibonacci’s sequence, algorithms like Turing’s, number theories, abstractions and differentials made sense to him and connected in his head so perfectly, like universal strings inside his mind. A bit too complex for simple geometry, but he smugly enjoyed being smarter than his classmates. It made the loneliness easier to bear.

Today, Mr. Murphy’s lesson was on the area of cones and pyramids and frustums, and Sam already knew all this. He tried to pay attention anyway, because he sort of liked the old man, even if he was a bit too kind and gave the class far too much leniency. Sam personally rooted for him to grow a backbone and actually stand up for himself, but he never mentioned it, figuring a man who couldn’t even trim his ear hair probably wasn’t going to be teaching much longer anyway.

Mr. Murphy didn’t call on him that day, so Sam rotated between doing his homework and taking notes. He only bothered with either because he got a grade for it, and what little motivation he had left pushed him through it. It was just mathematics. Nothing unbearable, he told himself.

Study hall was the worst time of day. Hideously dull, eternally a waste of Sam’s time. He’d played at deductions for a while. Boring after the first three days. Nothing stimulating, nothing more than bland, unexceptional people. Some were less tedious than others.

There was Eliza, the awkward girl with acne on her forehead and thoroughly good intentions. She smiled at Sam occasionally, and probably would have sat with him from time to time if he didn’t make it abundantly clear that he didn’t care for company. She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t particularly smart either, but what she lacked in communicative aptitude she more than made up for in altruism and quiet observation.

Laurel was Eliza’s opposite in nearly every way, Sam had decided. Confident, charming, and brilliant, Sam admired her. She was shallow, but intimate. She wouldn’t say much that wasn’t entirely superficial, but the way she carried herself, the smiles she’d give out so freely, and the way she’d speak so softly you’d have to lean close to hear her, made it feel like she was a close friend, or a lover. But she was clever, and radiated femininity, and although Sam had never talked to her, he could sense her intelligence in the knowing depth her eyes held when her gaze met his.

A boy, Jeremy, had been in Sam’s history class last year. They’d been partners for a project. They weren’t friends, but the taller boy had been kind to Sam, although Sam had done most of the work for the project. They’d both received good grades, and hadn’t spoken since.

There were the typical workaholic kids, furiously scribbling words onto wrinkled lined paper, textbooks open and creased from use. Other kids cared much less, a category Sam was tempted to fall into, but he made good grades regardless. Music blared from one back corner of the room, where a group of assholes refused to put in headphones and valued their short-lived, unsatisfying pleasure over the needs of other people who wanted nothing more than to finish the assignment they hadn’t had time to do last night.

Sam occupied himself with looking out a window. It was raining harder now, and the dimness outside gave way to a ghostly, barely-there reflection on the pane of glass, and Sam stared into the poor imitation of his eyes. He blinked tiredly and tried not to think. He distracted himself from his thoughts with other thoughts. It was bitter and funny, how that played out. It never worked.

Sam dodged and wove his way through the whirling chaos of students in a too-small hallway, shifting and ducking when those prone to being inconsiderate made sudden stops or decided to walk slowly, and in groups.

He still had one class left, but the unsated, miserable part of himself, the foremost part, couldn’t take it. Thinking about any more pressure in his day made his eyes water in anxiety, and his fingers shook a bit. He ducked into the bathroom for a second time in the day, and was surprised that he wasn’t alone.

He coughed as he stumbled into the hazy air, blinking smoke from his eyes and clutching a sleeved fist over his mouth and nose. Another boy was standing by the sink, flicking ash onto the counter carelessly. He had thick hair that fell across his eyes, high eyebrows, and long, bony arms. He turned his noble head lazily to watch Sam, and he must have sensed that Sam was on the verge of breaking down, because he smiled at him. It wasn’t a kind smile, and didn’t reach his eyes. It was akin to sympathy. Pitying. But he reached into his pocket and fished out his box of cigarettes and held it out to Sam anyway.

Sam looked from his eyes to the box and back. He’d never smoked, and never intended to, but when the boy shook the box, threatening to put it away, Sam grabbed one and stuck it between his teeth. Without a word, the boy lit it for him, and Sam took a long breath, and barely managed to swallow his coughing fit. He exhaled in a thick grey puff that made his eyes sting and his throat hurt. He loved it.

A few minutes passed in blissful silence as the two smoked. A time came when Sam turned his head and found the other boy was gone. He didn’t know how long it had been. A smoke alarm went off in a piercing wail, and Sam realized why the boy had left. He took his still burning cigarette and held it against the wood of the counter until it burned a small black spot, growing bigger and bigger until it caught fire, and the fire spread. Sam slipped out of the bathroom door soundlessly and unnoticed, smooth as the cloud of smoke that trailed with him.

…

The night was quiet. Once everyone had gotten over the hype and the hysteria of the school’s fire had died out, it was like the silence after a thunderstorm subsides. The school hadn’t been badly damaged. They had put the fire out before it could spread farther than the bathroom, and no one had been injured. Sam wanted to be glad about that, but he found himself unable to fully care.

Time ticked on in slow hours, and Sam spent it sitting out on his rooftop. It was cool outside. Not so cold as to be painful, but enough that Sam’s breath fogged in front of his mouth, and the slight wind had stolen the color and feeling from his cheeks and fingers. It had stopped raining, and only a few thin wisps of clouds hung in the sky, trailing across the softly glowing moon.

He’d climbed out his bedroom window, wrapping himself in a thick blanket to fight the clinging dampness. From there, facing away from the small road that ran by his house, he had an unmarred view of the sky that stretched above the the trees with leaves clinging to the topmost branches, above the houses that dotted the gentle slope of the land, above everything.

The stars seemed so small, and so far away, like tiny specks of light against a shadow-painted sky. They had always been beautiful to Sam, lovely in their cold, wavering light, but always shining.

Sam thought about how the stars were perhaps the only thing that remained constant. Even though they were constantly changing and drifting and burning away into oblivion, to a human perspective, they were immortal. They were untouchable, throughout time, and while the planet would spin on and on in chaos and entropy, the stars would never die.

The stars were a vast reminder to Sam that while there are limits on life, the universe does not care about people or pain or the trivialities of existence. It didn’t care care about English essays or loneliness or boys who smoked in school bathrooms. In the grand play of everything, Sam didn’t matter. He was small among that which was infinite, and when he was gone, the universe would not miss him.

Sam felt a stillness come over him, and he was calm. He closed his eyes for what seemed to be forever, and when he opened them, he smiled. He was at ease for the first time in a long while, and the tumult in his mind had subsided, at least for a moment, and it was freeing, and Sam felt as though he would be alright.

#writing #short story #original fiction #text #asks #answered #yarn-dino-eating-potatoes #:)

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