#I Saw Someone Start To Reblog My Chapter 3 Update And Was Like Oh No Oops.

[theonewhonothingknows]

Power Rangers (2017) fic rec list: (UPDATED: Jan, 2024)

Hello there, as someone who loves this movie, I decided to make a list of fics that’ve read, or am about to read, to anyone who is interested:

Note: I’m only putting here fics that I’ve read. So if someone knows a fic they might want to recommend, let me know! XD  There are currently almost two thousand works on the power rangers 2017 tag on AO3, so be sure to look around and dig for stuff you might like.

NOTE: Remember to check out the author if you like their stories! Leave comments and kudos and reblog stuff you like, apreciation is always important

Illustrated Story: @theone-with-thestuff​ ‘s power rangers sequel: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 , part 6, part 7 , part 8

MultiChapter fics (post-canon)

Rangers with Attitude by SmokeyCut : A sequel to the movie that is very in synch with the power rangers universe, both in how the story is told and how light it feels. THat doesn’t stop the drama from happening though. Awesome battle scenes and a very engaging take on Tommy, and the 2017 universe as a whole.

Power Rangers 2: Sythesis by SatanSpeaks (mature) : This fic is a piece, it’s another sequel to the movie, but with a much more bleak look on the universe as a well, however, it doesn’t dive too much into it and it has plenty of hopeful moments to spare. It’s a fic that leaves you on the edge of your seat, start to finish, biting your nails hoping everything will work out.

we gladiate but i guess we're really fighting ourselves by sunnydalehart: “The rangers don't really know what they're doing, but they really are trying their best.” -- Another post-canon fic with good romance, and team-bonding, check it out!!! (Trimberly) (Billy/ Jason/Zack)

Power Rangers 2: Rise of the Green Ranger by IzzyIniguez: Rita loses her coin, but finds a new power.  The rangers learn to be a team and meet the Tommy and Tamsin Oliver, the new (twin) kids in town. Sparks fly and tempers flare between Kim and Tommy, and Trini and Tamsin. I think this might be one of the most original takes on 2017 Tommy Oliver out there.

Short-stories:

 5 Times Jason Scott Was Protective of His Team by notawriters: Jason-centric goodness!!!!      

Zack Taylor Designated Driver Squad by iwasnthere622 : Zack didn't have the best school record. His friends help him fix that. -- This isn’t as much a sequel fic as it is a Zack sequel fic, exploring his life after becoming a ranger, and how he relates to his new friends. The chapters go through his bond with each of the rangers, and it’s an amazing piece of Zack Taylor fanfic, enriching what we already saw in the movie. One of my all time favourites!!

Been There, Done That by TaikoTurtle: The team has a bonding camping trip up on the mountains, but after a series of unfortunate events, Kimberly has to figure out how to make things right, including her feelings.

One More Ride by magimumu: (NEW!) : Uber driver Trini picks up Kim on a rainy evening. (TRIMBERLY)   (This short one is amazing! Like poetry! Can’t recommend enough!)

One-Shots:

***NEW!!!!! - (This is) Good Weird -  by Laslus -----  Poly Rangers fic!!! -  Or: The Huge Colective Denial of FeelingsThe first time Trini notices, they are around the fire. She looked at the whole picture, feeling the warmness she usually felt when hanging with them, how she finally felt like she belonged somewhere. She should focus on that, on the happiness she felt as they sang off tune, how they were a picture together. Oh.

All of the Above  by songofsunset : This short one shot is a perfetc mood setting piece, with rangers hanging out. In a few senteces, it grasps both each ranger’s personallities and the nature of their both. Sweet fluffiness all around.

Just let me love you when your heart is tired by milkyegg_carton: A cure little fluff about the aftermath of the battle with Goldar!!

walk me home by twoorangecookies: A nice little, well, it’s canon complaint but it’s sort of a missing scene, but it’s also sort of an AU where Kim asks Trini to walk her home.

Campfire Dance-Off by Skyland2704: team bonding fluffiness!

we carry each other (we’re just different colors) by hearden: This is a fascinating fic, about the rangers before being rangers! Seriously! There are so many character beats, and a very good grasp on the characters!!

am i the only living soul around by younglegends: A story told backwards,going from the aftermath of the movie to the very beginning. Again, another rich story exploring the characters and their core! An awesome read about the power rangers that really makes a point about their evolution and their bond in face of their sttrugles. I always go back to this fic for inspiration.

Do Better by iwasnthere622: One of the best jason centtric fics out there, exploring his role as leader and the way he shoulders the burden.

Dildo Wars  by cabooseachievables : I think this is one of the most fun pieces of fanwork I’ve ever read, seriously, just pure delight from start to finish as the rangers start a prank war between themselves.

**********NEW!!!!!!!!! Riding Shot Gun by zipzipnada:   --Kimberly finds out her new friends have never tried weed before, and knows for a fact Jason is a shotgun king.

Shipping Fics:

BY THE WAY, THE AUTHOR tworangecookies has plenty of Trimberly works if you’re interested, I can’t recommend enough to check them out, you’ll definetly find something for your tastes, both on AO3 and on tumblr @5ivebyfive. Another tumblr with fics in this universe is @magicmumu2

you’re my sunshine by titaniaeli: Short, fluff, and engaging, basically a tale of Jason falling in love with his team. (RANGER POLYCULE)

 in a hopeless place by twoorangecookies: (AU) This is one of my favorite fics. It’s an Outsiders AU, and I never had contact with The Outsiders, but I do love how consistent the rangers are even in an Alternative universe. This fic is well paced, and leaves tense with each cliffhanger, not to mention the forbidden romance, which is just *cheff’s kiss. (TRIMBERLY)

The Heart part 1 by The Otter Limits: While this fic is a sequel to the movie, I’m putting it here, because its main focus is the relationship between Trini and Kimberly. I really love this fic because it has a very heavy dose of Angst. I’m not sure it’s everyone’s cup of tea, but I do love the melodrama involved. Also, there is some neat world building about the rangers’ powers and the universe they live in. (TRIMBERLY)

The Hunt For Love by magicmumu: Awesome Valentine’s day Fluff, what else can you wish for? Honestly, the dialog between the characters as they go on an scavenge hunt it’s so amazing, you can’t help reading this with a smile on your face. Can’t recomment enough. (TRIMBERLY)

Fire meet gasoline by twoorangecookies: (mature) A cute little soccer AU, with that good old rivals to lovers premise. What more can I say? Go check it out!! (TRIMBERLY)

Clarity by thebrightestbird: I think this was the first time I read about this ship, and interestingly it immediately spread to be fond of it in the tv show universe as well. Great stuff!!!  (ZACK/JASON) 

with my feelings on fire (guess I'm a bad liar) by movingforthesakeofmotion: The one where a date night turns into exposed secrets and discoveries. (TRIMBERLY, CRANSCOTT)

We can have all that we ever wanted by theshipstorulethemallwrites: 5 Times Someone Thought The Rangers Were Dating and 1 Time They Were

EXPLICIT FICS:

Turning sweet love into poison by twoorangecookies: (EXPLICIT) this fic is Intense, and I really advise you to look into the tags before going in. It deals with heavy subjects like body dysmorphia, so be mindful. Now that that’s out of the way, this fic is delicious to read, two traumatize characters navigating a complex situation, it has all those spices for those who love some heavy Angst in their romance. (TRIMBERLY)

Legacy of Power by Hearden (Mature, but the collection has Explicit fics): (INCOMPLETE) .This fic is interesting because it’s sort of a nice multiverse mix between the tv show and the movie, with the simple premisse of having TV Kimberly and Tommy meeting the 2017 rangers. It’s one amazing fic, very well written with an awesome premisse and solid character work. It’s specially awesome to see two versions of Kimberly knowing and interacting with one another.

*****NEW !!!! -- Shut up and Drive -  by Twoorangecookies --  (Sort of a power rangers meet Fast and Furious, but R rated 😈)  Trini is looking forward to start her new career as a rookie cop. She isn't the best at relationships, so she goes out one night just looking for a thrill. Then she stumbles on a scene that is not her scene at all and more thrill than she asked for, and she meets a woman that is the most annoying, obnoxious woman she's ever met. A woman she wouldn't go for in a million years. At least...that's what she thinks.

PS: I have to say, it’s really interesting to go through fandoms, not only to meet how diverse people’s interpretations can be, but how rich and creative they are as well. Just the ammount of Tommy Olivers I’ve seen for the 2017 universe is stagering, not one version is the same, and that, I think, is also very precious.

Anyway, remember to comment, reblog, and all that stuff that shows authors your apreciation. Feel free to add fics you might’ve read and are not here, I’ll sure try to do so as I find new ones. I tried to categorize stuff as best as I could.

#power rangers 2017 #power rangers #fanfiction #fic recs #mmpr reboot #Trimberly #cranscott #kimberly hart #trini kwan #zack taylor #billy cranston #jason scott #tommy oliver

[lcvernat]

Our Tainted Love Chapter Three | Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Reader

Series Masterlist | Chapter Two | Chapter Four

Series Summary: Natalia Romanova had one mission: kill the princess. It was meant to be simple for someone of her skillset, and it would've been simple, but Natalia made one tiny mistake that could cost her everything: she fell for you. Yet she had no choice, you were her mission and she had to complete it.

At the end of the day, a love between an assassin and her target was destined to end in bloodshed.

Word Count: 3.7k

Content Warnings: fluff, mentions of dreykov & violence (think that's all tbh but lemme know if i forgot something)

A/N: starting this off by saying i am so sorry for abandoning this series for 3 months. writers block sucks but i promise you this series will get finished and i will try my hardest to make updates more frequent! i love this series, and i am so excited to write the next chapters & also to hear what you guys think. so please tell me what your thoughts are!! i love love love getting comment reblogs or replies to my fics, they mean the world.

You don't think you've ever met a more talkative man before today. You had danced with him three times, and he had not ceased his obnoxious chatter once. Your ears were going to bleed. His voice was like gravel, but it wasn't hot or attractive, it was disgusting, and you had to resist the urge to tell him to clear his throat multiple times. How he managed to still have things to talk about, you didn't know. You'd tried your hardest to tune him out after the first dance had ended, your body moving on autopilot as you nodded along to whatever he was saying.

Your feet were aching, and your face muscles were strained from the amount of times you were required to smile tonight. All you wanted to do right now was head back to your quarters and go to sleep. You hadn't even gotten another glimpse of the mysterious woman since the first time you saw her; it was as if she had walked through a wall and disappeared.

"-gardens are beautiful, you shall have to come visit them one day, yes?"

Lord Armstrong (you had surprisingly paid enough attention to catch his name) was looking at you expectantly and you blinked, your mouth tilting downwards in confusion for a split second before regaining your composure and plastering another massively fake smile onto your face.

"Hm? Oh yes, yes, that would be lovely."

He immediately brightened, and you had literally no idea what you'd just agreed to. Maybe if he wasn't so dull and boring, you'd pay more attention to him, but the only thing that was currently occupying your thoughts was the mysterious redhead. You hoped you'd be able to see her again, even though you didn't know her name. But you were determined to find her and speak to her, and nothing was going to stop you. Unless you died from boredom because of Lord Armstrong.

"Apologies, my Lord," you cut him off right as he opened his mouth to speak again. He shut his mouth, looking disgruntled that you had interrupted him (you were pretty sure he was a misogynistic asshole, if the way he looked down his nose as if he was superior to you was any indication) but chose wisely not to say anything, "but I do have to admit I'm quite tired. Would it be alright if I retire for the night?" Your voice was as professional as you could make it, even if you really wanted to scream at the insipid man.

You were planning on leaving anyway, whether he said yes or no, but you figured it was nice to ask him first. Many of the guests and nobles had already retired to their quarters for the night, each of them saying goodbye to you as they left. Each of them except for the redhead. It didn't make any sense. Why would she come to this ball, dedicated to finding you a marriage partner, without even bothering to introduce herself?

Ironic how she was the only one to catch your attention out of the hundreds of hopeful guests who had purposely sought you out multiple times to introduce themselves and have lengthy, albeit mundane, conversations with you. Lord Armstrong nodded, despite looking a bit disappointed that he couldn't get to spend any more time with you. You bid goodnight to him and the rest of the lingering guests before exiting the ballroom, one of the guards following in stride behind you the minute you leave.

Maggie was already waiting for you in your room, preparing to help you undress for the night. You were thankful to see a welcome and familiar face after hours of interacting with people you've either never met before or had seen at least once in your life, but all you really needed right now was to sleep for at least 24 hours.

The first part of her plan had worked perfectly. Natasha had captured your attention and had then effectively slipped out of the ballroom without being noticed by any of the guests inside, most busy mingling or trying to get a conversation or dance with you, so it was really quite easy to slip out unnoticed. She claimed a headache and had a servant escort her to her quarters.

They were nice. Extravagant, really. Better than anything she’s ever had. Better than the rickety bed with a mattress so uncomfortable concrete would be softer that she had to deal with in the Red Room. A dark, jealous monster writhed in her chest as she clenched her jaw. Life was unfair. She was well aware of that, and she tried to never let it bother her, but seeing these rooms that half the people in this castle had been used to all of her life whilst she had been treated as less than an animal, jealousy couldn't help but strike.

Being born was a gamble that no one asked to be a part of. Either you were lucky, and were born into the rich, spoiled life such as this; never having to know a day of pain or hardship in your life. Or you were another Natalia Romanova, unlucky in the gamble of life, despite being a child who had asked for none of it.

It wasn’t fair, but she couldn’t do anything about it. This was her life, whether she liked it or not. At least she could savor the six months of living in this room, with a bed that looked like a comfortable cloud she could sink right into, and actual good food that didn't taste like cardboard.

Yet that wasn't the only thing she should focus on; she had a mission to do. Everything seemed to be going according to plan so far, and hopefully she had captured your attention enough that you'd actively seek her out tomorrow. She didn't want to be the one to seek you out, didn't want to seem too eager. Best if she kept eyes off her for as long as possible.

Right now, though, she was ready to collapse into bed, and this time, she wouldn't be handcuffed to it. It's weird, this newfound sense of some freedom, even if she was only here on a mission. She could... live. Away from the chains Dreykov had her trapped in. All he required was updates on how the mission was going via letters, but he didn't need to know if she decided to act human for a while. Savor the months of just being able to simply live before she had to complete the mission.

It was noon now; you'd been up for hours and yet you still hadn't set eyes on the mysterious redhead from last night. You didn't want to risk asking anyone if they knew her name because you didn't know whether she was a noble or a commoner or even perhaps a peasant. Despite the Royal Marriage Laws being repealed 50 or so years ago, many nobles still frowned upon the idea of a member of the royal family marrying a commoner.

Did it make sense economically wise? Yes, because unfortunately, you knew that many of the royal family didn't marry for love. It was expected of them, really. They married for economic purposes, nobles that would be able to give them benefits economically. Rarely, they married for love. The marriage laws had been repealed, yet it was still rare for someone to marry a commoner or peasant.

You couldn't risk it. Even if you were adamant that you were going to fall in love with someone and marry them, not someone you couldn't stand. You were not going to subject yourself to years trapped in a loveless marriage: you would rather abdicate.

Luckily, you could always ask Wanda. She was your closest confidant and wanted nothing but the best for you. If you asked her, she'd probably fight to the death just to allow you to marry someone you actually loved.

"The redhead wearing all black?" She asked for confirmation whenever you had brought up the subject.

You nodded.

Wanda shrugged, hopping over a puddle before continuing, "I saw her for a split second. That's about it. She looked kind of weird. Pretty, but weird. I mean, who wears all black to a ball of potential courtiers? You'd think she would want to stand out."

You and Wanda had managed to escape the swarm of courtiers that wanted to get to know you more temporarily by retreating to the garden. You'd begged Clint to guard the gardens and not let anyone else in because you desperately needed some alone time to talk to your best friend. It had taken him a lot of convincing to leave you alone, since rumor had it that Maggie had threatened all of the guards to make sure you weren't alone with anyone for even a split second. Clint liked you though, and he trusted Wanda nearly as much as he trusted you, so he had agreed in the end.

"Maybe she didn't need to stand out," you muttered, plucking a flower out of one of the bushes.

You can feel Wanda's gaze on you, assessing you. "Don't tell me you've experienced love at first sight," she sighs, exasperatedly, "you don't know her. Now, I don't care whether you end up marrying a noble or commoner or even a dog if you really wanted to but... other people might care."

It's your turn to sigh, "I know. But she was pretty, and... there was just something about her, okay? I want to see her again."

Wanda sighed resignedly, but her gaze softened, "I'll ask around. Someone's had to have seen her."

You brighten, wrapping your arms around the redhead gratefully.

"You are the best, Wands,"

"I know."

Another victim visited her in her dream last night. Despite sleeping in a bed so comfortable it was almost surreal, the nightmares didn't stop plaguing her. For some reason, this particular nightmare had unnerved her more than usual, even though it was the same monotonous plot of all her other nightmares - Natasha reliving her kills again and again. Maybe it was the waking up in an unfamiliar environment, and the fact that she wasn't handcuffed to her bed that had done it. Whatever it was, it had woken her up before the sun had risen and it had kept her up.

Natasha thought it would be best to explore the castle today, so she would know her way around her temporary home for the next six months. She would probably have to steal a map from somewhere too, get a look at all the exits and guard towers, in case she might ever need to make a quick escape, in the rare chance the mission would go wrong. She didn't plan on hunting you down, instead hoping that you would be the one to attempt to hunt her down. The prey hunting the predator. How charming.

Either it was just her luck (and it probably wasn't, considering she has never been lucky a day in her life) or she was just in the right place at the right time, but she spotted you. Her next stop on her exploration list was the gardens, and Natasha had admittedly been quite confused as to why there was a guard refusing to let anyone entrance into them. That was until she had heard your laugh, followed by the sound of your light footsteps on the grass as you came into view, Wanda in tow beside you.

Natasha knew the exact moment you laid your eyes on her. Saw the way your breath hitched, and your chest stopped rising momentarily. Wanda stopped in her tracks too, turning to give Natasha an assessing stare. Natasha straightened automatically, before sending a gentle smile Wanda's way. Wanda may potentially prove to be a complication in her plan, especially since she's so close to you. Having Wanda grow suspicious of her is the last thing she needs, so she needs to get on the other redhead's good side.

She turns her attention to you then, and kneels down into a curtsey, "Your highness. Lady Romanoff, but please just call me Natasha. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." She keeps her voice prim and proper as she rises from the curtsey.

"Natasha," you smiled at her, "please just call me Y/N." You turn to look at Wanda, Natasha sensing a silent conversation going on between the two of you, before you turn back to her, "Would you want to take a walk with me in the gardens?" You finally ask. Natasha notices Wanda gives your hand a reassuring squeeze before slipping away soundlessly, leaving the two of you and the guard alone. The guard coughs then, and you turn to look at him. The expression on his face says he doesn't want to leave you alone with Natasha. Your expression is reassuring, promising that you'll be okay.

If only you knew.

After an intense but silent stare-off between the two, the guard sighed resignedly, waving his hand in what Natasha thinks is meant to be a very begrudging approval.

"I would love to," Natasha finally replies, and the side of her mouth quirks up as she sees your face brightening. You turn on your heel, making your way back where you came, and Natasha follows after you.

"So, Natasha, I've heard that you're a ballerina?" You ask her. You'd been talking for a while, simply getting to know each other. Luck was on your side today, the universe wanting you to meet the redhead as much as you had wanted to meet her, and you were caught off-guard whenever you had exited the gardens just to come face to face with the mysterious redhead from the previous night.

Of course, you couldn't pass up on the perfect opportunity to actually have a conversation with her and show her your favorite part of the court, so you just had to ask her if she wanted to join you for a walk.

Natasha nodded, "I do. Though I doubt you've seen any of my performances. I, well, I perform in the more... poor parts of the kingdom."

You could sense her hesitance as she said that. She probably thought you would judge her for it. Frowning, you stop in your tracks and turn to face her. She stops too, turning to you with a confused expression on her face.

"I don't care about that," you say softly, "I'd love to see you perform one day. If you want to show me."

Natasha's smile is shy, "Thank you. I'd love to perform for you one day."

"Well, you have six months to find some time to perform so," you trail off, your tone lighthearted and full of amusement.

A light chuckle is your only response, and you both descend into a peaceful silence as you walk through the gardens together. Occasionally, you’ll point out some of your favorite flowers in the garden, and it warms your insides how you notice Natasha eagerly latching onto your every word. You don’t think anyone has ever given you so much undivided attention before, except for Wanda.

Carol used to give you her undivided attention, you two used to be inseparable, but something happened one day, and you weren’t sure what. A rift divided your friendship, slowly tearing it apart as you both drifted away from each other. It stung then, and it still left a bitter aftertaste in your mouth now. You hoped the rumors of her courting Maria Rambeau were true though, because you still wanted her to be happy.

“Are you okay?” Natasha glances at you, noticing the abrupt change in your mood, as if someone had flicked a switch inside you.

You shake yourself, pushing away the memories and focusing on the present. “Yep! Completely fine,” you give a tight-lipped smile before an idea popped into your head and you gasped, eager for a change of subject. “Hey! I want to show you something, come on.”

Grabbing Natasha’s hand, you failed to notice how the redhead momentarily tensed at your touch because you were too excited to drag her to one of the best spots in the garden. It was hidden deep into the gardens, and not many people knew of the place, but you did, and it was magical. You weren't sure why you wanted to share it with Natasha, you were just certain that you did want to share this special place with her.

"Here we are!" You said as you rounded a corner, the view greeting you was a beautiful stone fountain, covered in leaves and vines, moss in the crevices of some of the intricate designs carved into the fountain centuries ago. There was no water in the fountain, having dried out years ago, yet it was still beautiful. It was hidden by overgrown hedges that hadn't been trimmed or taken care of in years, and unless you were really searching for it, you wouldn't find it. You loved it. Sometimes you came here to hide from the duties of being a princess. No one ever found you here, not even the guards.

"Do you like it? It's one of my favorite places, I come here to hide sometimes. I don't think anyone else knows about it, not even Wanda. So, you're one of the special ones to know of its existence." You rounded on Natasha, smiling.

"It is beautiful," she agrees, "how long has it been here?"

"I have no idea, probably a long while. Maybe since the castle was built? Probably since the first ever monarchs, like way before my time. I love it, though."

You still hadn't taken your hand out of Natasha's. She hadn't removed her hand from your grip either, though. Unfortunately, she noticed it the same second you did, and abruptly pulled her hand from yours. You tried not to visibly deflate.

Wanda would most definitely laugh at you right now, talk some crap about 'love at first sight', but was it really your fault? Natasha was nice, and very pretty, almost ethereal. She looked like an angel. She actually listened to you ramble too, which was something. She wasn't boring like everyone else, but you knew you had to converse with some of the other guests too. This was a six-month long event, so you couldn't really call it a day on the second day, and you still didn't really know Natasha. You wanted to get closer to her, while also talking to the other guests.

"We should probably head back now," you break the awkward silence that had enveloped the two of you, "the sun's setting, and I don't want to get murdered by my lady-in-waiting."

"Yeah, that's a good idea."

The walk back was unfortunately very awkward. The mood was certainly ruined tonight.

Y/N L/N was the complete opposite of what Natasha had expected. The assassin expected an uptight, spoilt, and selfish princess, but you weren't that at all. You were the type of princess people wrote fairytales about. She wouldn't be surprised if you had a deeply devoted love for animals too.

She couldn't get her emotions involved. She couldn't afford that. Despite you not fitting the image she had made of you in her mind, she'd have to work around it. Even if you had treated her nicer than she's ever been treated in her life. Even if she had felt actual happiness today. Or what she thought was happiness. Something warm had blossomed in her chest as she walked through the gardens with you, trying its hardest to battle the darkness the Red Room had inflicted in her. Her life was a sick game.

Natasha had never been asked to get to know her victims before, rarely would she ever be asked to gain a relationship with them. She got their names, location, and killed them. That was it. This was different. She had to gain a relationship with you, had to gain your trust. She had to actually get to know not just the princess, but Y/N L/N. But she'd went her entire life with thinking of her victims as nothing except for something to be discarded, thrown out like the week's garbage. She could easily do the same for you. She could.

Having retired to her room for the night, she began to write the letter to Dreykov, needing to send it out tomorrow. The undercover guard had caught her while she was exploring a deserted corridor earlier today, and he had damn well been close to getting his throat slit with the way he had grabbed her arm, but luckily for him he had slipped her the note and revealed his identity before she could do so. Ivan was his name, and he'd been undercover here for months, under the guise that he had been a very skilled bodyguard for many different important individuals until he had a terrible accident and had to be on leave until his injuries had healed, and then got hired as a guard for the castle.

Whether he used to be an actual bodyguard or if he was just one of Dreykov's men, Natasha didn't know, but clearly his credentials were good enough and any background checks had been passed if he was allowed on the Royal Guard. He also seemed to be talented at staying undercover if he hadn't been found out yet, which was good. The last thing she needed was an incompetent man sabotaging the mission.

She'd meet Ivan tomorrow night when the rest of the castle had retired to their rooms, and he'd do whatever he had to do to get the letter to Dreykov without it being intercepted. All she had to do was update Dreykov on how the mission was going so far.

Of course, purposefully leaving out the part where you are a lot different than she had expected. And she fears she may grow to like you, because despite her determination to keep her emotions away from her job; she was a human after all, and humans had feelings, even if the feelings were ultimately unwanted.

general tags: @sheneonromanoff @olicity-boo @r4nd0mgir1 @tigerlillyruiz @dj-bynum3718

series tags: @lonewalker17 @francedeboix @notmeellaannyy @mrsromanoff @romugh @marrymemcgrath @gryffindorkromanoff @sayah13 @waltzingin1698 @natashaswifeyyyyy @persephonespomegranetes @princessblackmoon @shortstoppan @h3artsnatty @yyyyourmummmm @wanda-natasha @agalsmaraudersobsession @mmmmokdok @unknownwithyou @jowshuaayee @reginassweetheart @ellal04 @mazikeencooper @xxsekhmet @szlayed

dm me, send me an ask or reply to be added to my general taglist or this series taglist!

#natasha romanoff x reader #black widow x reader #natasha romanoff #black widow #natasha romanoff imagine #black widow imagine #natasha romanoff series #natasha romanoff fluff #natasha romanoff fanfiction #natasha romanoff fanfic #black widow x you #black widow x y/n #natasha romanov

[wolfprincesszola]

The Fate of the Marked Six Chapter 9

still busy asf to the point where these updates may be later on in the day but enjoy <3. as always, reblogs and likes are appreciated! ——————– Summary: Virgil moves into a new town and meets Roman, a ghost that he promises to help in finding the unfinished business needed to pass over. However, Roman's past seemed to be deeply muddled with trouble, an uncurable disease that has started to affect a classmate, and a certain tight-lipped valedictorian. Friendships are made and Virgil finds himself thrown into a situation far more complicated and twisted than he signed up. Hopefully, with the help of his new five friends, he can find a way to bring peace to the town once and for all.

Trigger Warning: None

Content Warning: Swearing

<Masterlist>

<Previous> <Next> ——————–

Chapter 09

Patton was sitting on his couch with Logan.How did the two get there? He didn’t know.

They were watching a movie. What movie? He couldn’t tell you because he was too focused by Logan leaning his head against his chest. He had his arm around him. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest, almost praying that Logan couldn’t hear it. What was happening? Why was he so comfortable with him? Why was he so nervous around him?

The movie said something that was almost incomprehensible if it wasn’t for the iconic line that was said. “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Patton looked down at Logan, who at the same time, looked up at Patton. Then, Logan smiled. Not the smile he often gave to Patton when he was annoyed or tired. Not the smile he faked for professions in front of others. It was a genuine smile that he had never seen his do. It was a smile that caused his eyes to crinkle at the side and a smile that showed his teeth. Logan's laughter rang in Patton's ears and Patton was addicted to the sound. Although it was the first time he heard it, he promised himself he would make it his life goal to hear it every chance he got.

His heart skipped as soon as he saw the smile, but what really got him was the look in Logan's eyes. He had never seen Logan look at someone like that before. Logan looked at Patton with pure love, as if he would never love anyone else the way he did Patton.

Then, Patton sat up in bed. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he groaned, staring at his bed. It was just a dream. That was all it was going to be, and he waved it off. Whatever that was, it was weird, and something that would never come true. He didn’t even like Logan like that.

-+=~=+-

"Hi Remus!" Patton smiled, seeing Remus approach Virgil and him.

"Hey, Patton. Still got that bitch up your asshole?"

Patton let confusion roam his face, "I don't have a dog up my butthole..."

"No, he's talking about Logan." Virgil sighed, rubbing his temples, "Remus, Patton's too innocent to get that type of joke."

"I'll just keep making jokes until they stick." Remus grinned as the three started walking to their first period, which they all had together.

“Uh huh.” Virgil drawled out, “Did you guys do the math homework?”

“Not at all.” Remus snorted, “That’s what first period is for. To do the math homework.”

“I did.” Patton offered, “Just not well. I don’t know what I was thinking when I did it because I calculated 2 + 2 to be 27.”

“Oh jeez, I’m stuck with the dumb people--no offense, Pat. I’m going to go ask Janus.” Virgil moved towards the boy, leaving Remus and Patton to be alone in the hallways together.

Patton hesitated on the topic of Remus, as he had known something was going on behind the scenes. Still, he asked, hoping that for once, Remus wouldn't say anything inappropriate.

“How are you doing?” Patton asked Remus, “You seem…on edge recently.”

"I'm fine! In fact, I thought the other day about how Woody should've said there was a snake up his butthole because that would've been funnier."

Yep. That was on Patton for assuming Remus was going to be serious.

"Really?"

Then, the facade crumbled from Remus' face and Patton saw a side of the boy he had never seen before. This side of Remus seemed more vulnerable, more honest. "Honestly? I haven't been feeling too great. I’ve been hearing some things that I don’t know if they are real or fake. No one has any clear answers, and I feel like if I tell anyone that doesn’t have powers, they’ll just think I’m insane.”

"Oh, Remus. The people you surround yourself with love you. There's nothing you could say to make your friends think you're insane. I mean I already think it's insane that I live in a world where everyone has powers except for a select few. I think you're already insane for half the stuff you say, but I'm not going anywhere."

Remus was surprised by that answer by the sheer mouth agape he had. He pushed his mouth to close before he let himself catch up to Patton, "Record scratch? Patton admits he thinks I'm insane."

"Of course in a good way!" Patton tried to correct himself, "I think it's crazy that you have powers overall!"

“You…know I have powers?” Remus asked.

“Why, of course! I told you that I know when others have powers already." Patton giggled, “You just gotta know what you look for in the auras of magic people, and then you know when someone doesn’t or has powers.”

"Then doesn't that mean that you have magic?"

"Don't be silly. I haven't shown any signs of it."

"Logan told me that only magic users know when other users have magic.”

Patton thought about it before shrugging, "I don't know, kiddo. I know Logan's so smart and everything, but I think I would know if I had magic. I mean look at me. I don’t have anything magic in me.”

Remus raised an eyebrow, but waved it off, deciding he would tell Patton what else has been bothering him. “Apparently, there’s a ghost that’s following me around.”

“Oh? Is it the ghost that’s Virgil’s friend?” Patton raised an eyebrow.

“You know he’s a medium?”

“I mean, it was pretty obvious.”

Remus scoffed, “Moving on, it’s not Virgil’s friend, but…I’m just on edge. I don’t know what to do and how to help myself.”

“Ah, I see.” Patton sighed, staring at Remus, “I think, right now, you’re stressing yourself too much.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. You’re saying that Virgil’s handling it?”

“Yeah.”

“Then trust him.” Patton gave Remus a small smile right as the warning bell rang, “Now come on, let’s go to class before we’re late.”

-+=~=+-

Patton walked into his 3rd period, only to be met with the sweet smell of hot chocolate and marshmallows.

“Welcome, welcome! Take your seats!” His teacher yelled at the front of the class, with a lot of mugs of hot chocolate at the front.

“That smells so good.” Janus groaned, “I really hope he gives us the mugs. I’d love one.”

“Me too.” Patton murmured as he sat down at the table he shared with Janus.

He sat down, staring at the hot chocolate.

All of a sudden, Logan walked through the door, a timid smile on his face. The feelings he felt after the dream he had during the weekend rushed back to him, as he remembered every detail he dreamed of. His heart dropped as he stared at Logan.

Shit.

“Hey, Mr. Lonesins, did you still want me to drop off the boxes over here?”

“Oh yes, Logan, thank you so much.”

Logan nodded, “It’s my pleasure.”

Before he could leave to grab the boxes though, Patton called Logan over, “Sanders!”

Logan looked towards the sound of his voice, walking over, “What do you want, Morris? I can’t physically give you another hour of detention, when you have yet to make up the last 20.”

“What are you doing here? I thought you had a third period.”

“Unlike you, I arrive at my third period early. I TA, and since I had no work, he said I should come over here to help.” Logan rolled his eyes, “Now focus on the class and maybe if you’re good, I’ll give you extra marshmallows.”

“You're my favorite person, Lo.” Patton gasped in excitement, brushing the flush on his face as just redness from the cold when Logan left.

“You’re being weird today.” Janus remarked, but said nothing else. Patton was glad that he didn’t bring anything else up when Patton didn't even know what was going on.

The entire class period, he found himself blushing at the sight of Logan, and had to look away every time he made eye contact with him.

At the end of the lesson, Patton found oddly messy notes, unlike what he usually took. Logan came by at the end of the class period to help pass out the mugs, and after he finished, he asked who wanted extra marshmallows, immediately everyone raised their hands, and Logan went over to Patton first.

“Since you were good.” Logan remarked, giving him three extra ones before passing the other ones out, only giving them two.

“You’re special.” Janus smirked at him.

Oh stars, he really hoped he wasn’t.

-+=~=+-

“So…you’ve been weird. What’s going on?” Virgil asked, on their walk towards the cafeteria. Having Janus and Remus always be there early to get his lunch meant that he could always wait for Patton who was in the classroom right across from him.

“What do you mean?”

“Janus has noticed it too. He told me you were being super smiley today, and not annoying Logan as much as you normally do.”

Patton flushed, “Okay, maybe I just think that he could use a break from me bugging him.”

“But you’re Patton Morris, the infamous class clown.”

“Infamous?”

“Infamous, in Logan’s view. Famous for everyone else.”

“Ah. Makes sense….I don’t know. I think it was that I had a talk with him, and a part of me felt bad that he knew so much about me, but I don’t know anything about him.”

“It’s okay. I don’t think anyone knows a lot about him….but honestly? I think you’re lying to me, and even yourself. Are you sure there’s no other underlying reason?”

“No.” Patton was fast to assert it.

“Wow, feisty today.” Virgil remarked, “Come on, even if you can’t trust anyone, don’t you think it’d be nice to get it off your chest?”

Patton sighed before snapping, an idea coming to fruition, “You know what I can do? Tell your ghost friend, Roman.”

It was a good idea. It would give Patton a chance to let it off his chest, but not to tell someone that knew him personally.

“What?” Virgil raised an eyebrow, “You can’t even see him. You wouldn’t even know if he’s here right now.”

“The problem is the thing that’s haunting my thoughts right now is the thing I can’t tell people who know anyone in this high school. Your friend doesn’t.” Patton spoke, hoping that Virgil might believe him. Patton wouldn't even know how to start talking about his issue even if he could talk to Virgil about it.

Was he falling in love with Logan after just one dream? Was love too strong of a word? What was Logan to Patton?

It made his brain hurt.

Virgil sighed, “Fine, I’ll set up a meeting…as long as you tell me all you got on Roman, because I remembered you promising me that you’d find resources on who he might be.”

“Yeah, so good news and bad news.”

“What?”

“No one shows up with the whole Roman 'died a few months ago’ and ‘has a brother’ Sanders, but interesting enough, there’s no results of him dying a few months ago. There were more than 10 Roman Sanders who had a brother, but I didn’t want to look through all their information. Then, I remembered who else’s last name is Sanders and had a brother, and started working backwards from him.”

“Logan? I thought of him too, but it just doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t talk about his brother, but Logan's brother is 4 years older and Logan talks about him like he didn’t die. Besides, he's adopted or something.” Virgil remarked. "I learned about it through context clues."

Patton seemed to come to a revelation, “He’s adopted!”

It caused everyone else to look at him weirdly, and Virgil pulled his hood over his face in embarrassment from the attention.

“Yeah, so I look at our one and only Logan, and find out that in his family, he has had a brother named Roman Sanders. Roman died almost 4 years ago, and he died when he was 17, a few months before he was supposed to graduate with a high school diploma at this school. He was the valedictorian, but just a few months ago, an exhibit at the art museum was dedicated to him as an exhibit. A statue in the park was built for him months after he died. Then, I go back to the Roman Sanders, instead only checking the Romans who died in the past ten years, and jackpot, I find only 3. Only two of them have brothers, and only one of them died at a young age, as I’m assuming you aren’t really talking about an 80-year-old. That one Roman is the boy that stands at the legacy of this school with the personality of a sun.” Patton grinned triumphantly.

“So what you’re saying is that we’re dealing with having to talk to the most difficult person to open up and talk about his brother, who he forbade us from talking about?”

“Well…when you say it like that-“

“That’s what I thought. We’re going to have a bit more trouble then.” Virgil gave a sharp inhale.

“Sorry, kiddo. That's all I can do.” Patton shrugged.

“No, it’s okay. Thank you for finding all this out anyways.” Virgil sighed.

Patton nodded, as they walked into the cafeteria, “Listen, I’ll try to weasel as much information out of our valedictorian as much as possible.”

“Uh huh, good luck with that.”

-+=~=+-

Patton was sitting at the lunch tables after school when a composition notebook hit the back of his head hard. It made a sound and he let out an audible “OW!” despite not being hurt in the slightest.

He turned towards the person who hit him only for them to walk over to the front of him, slamming the composition notebook down.

“Stop being weird.”

Patton blinked, still rubbing the back of his head as he looked at the person. It was Logan and he didn’t look too amused with him.

“Sorry?”

“Stop being weird.” Logan repeated again, sitting on the other side of the table from him.

Patton looked at the composition book to see at the top it said “Patton Morris” in Logan’s neat handwriting.

“How am I being weird? You're the one that hit me in the head with a notebook, Logan! What is this?”

Logan huffed, flipping open the book to a page that was clearly the most referenced page. At the top, it was labeled “Statistics” and Patton scanned through the rest of the information quickly.

Logan pointed to a couple of the lines, “You, on average, pass by me 12 times a day. You, on average, call out my name upon passing me 9 times a day. You, on average, have 19 interactions with me. You, on average, manage to annoy me 5 of the interactions we have. Even on good days, you bring those numbers to 12, 20, 9, and 3.”

“Okay?” Patton raised an eyebrow.

“Today, you have passed by me 15 times, and have called my name once. Even in the three interactions we’ve had today, you haven’t even spoken a word about what you normally would annoy me about.”

“Do you miss it? I mean I can-”

“No. It’s not the same when you try to annoy me because you think you’re acting weird. It’s never been the same!” Logan huffed, flipping to another page, that clearly tracked all the days he was being off and the reason why.

“Why do you care?” Patton snorted, “I thought you hated me annoying you.”

“I do! That’s what doesn’t make sense.” Logan groaned, standing up and starting to pace around, “Every fiber of my being despises you with a passion. I get so mad when I think of everything you do, and how you always are making me clean up your messes. I think I’m done with everything you do, and yet I can’t shake the feeling that maybe you’re not so bad! You do things like staying to help me clean up my mess, and yell at the hallways to stop talking shit about people they don’t know, and you genuinely respect me, which is something I don’t get from most parents, adults, and students. It frustrates me that you make me feel this way, that I hate you, but I also am the furthest thing from an enemy. Just…tell me what’s going on, so I can just mark it off as another weird day, and then I won’t have to stay awake at night, wondering what I did wrong or what happened with your life, so I can just pretend like things are okay.”

“Lo-” Patton began before Logan interrupted him again, going to sit down to interrogate him.

“Is this because you don’t know anything about me? Is it because I don’t open up about my brother? Is this because of my parents? What is it?”

Patton stared as he watched the boy freak out about the idea of not having Patton talk to him for a day, and a part of Patton got closure of where he stood with Logan. He just let out a laugh.

“What?” Logan stopped his ranting to stare at Patton.

“You’re kinda obsessed with me, aren’t you?”

Logan made a face, scowling, “What are you talking about?”

“Normal people don’t have composition books marking everything I’ve ever done to you.”

“Oh, don’t think you’re so special. I have folders on everyone I’ve interacted with in the school too.” Logan crossed his arms.

“Normal people don’t have that either.” Patton chuckled endearingly. “Normal people also don’t get driven crazy by someone not talking to them, or not annoying them.”

“I’ve always been told I’m not normal.” Logan mumbled, looking away.

“You’re being a little too obsessive right now. I’m fine.” Patton smiled, placing a hand on his shoulder, “I’m just trying a different method of being your friend right now, and it seems like it’s driving you crazy, so maybe I’ll go back.”

“No, no, I kinda like this better.” Logan shook his head, “It’s just that….you really helped me out through my toughest times. I hated how annoying you kept being, but that sense of familiarity really helped me during a time of change where everything around me shifted. I don’t think I’m ready to let go of the only thing keeping me sane yet, and I guess I’m scared that you’re going to stop being my frenemy.”

“I won’t ever stop.” Patton promised him.

“Thank you.” Logan gave a weak smile.

“So…was that your first time being vulnerable and not robotic?"

“It’s so hard.” Logan groaned, slumping in the picnic tables, “My obsessive thinking kept my mind running all day, and it’s tiring.”

“Awe, I was in your mind all day.” Patton teased.

“Shut it, Morris.”

Patton looked at Logan, who seemed almost relieved that Patton was talking to him again. Patton hesitated with his next words, making sure to think about them carefully.

“...you mentioned your brother, but you never like to talk about him. What happened?”

Logan’s face shifted to a melancholic expression, “...he died four years ago, and I have yet to forgive myself for letting him die.”

“Oh come on, you couldn’t have known that he would’ve died.”

“But I did.” Logan sat up, “I have the powers of precognition and months before he died, I kept having the same recurring nightmare of him driving and being hit by a drunk driver. Even an hour beforehand, I had the nightmare, and I told my parents, but they just waved it off. I don’t think my parents looked so angry after they found out my brother died.”

“Oh, Logan...you were what? 13 years old at the time? You couldn’t have possibly been asked to understand at that young age what it felt like to lose someone, who I’m guessing was really important to you.”

“He was so important to me.” Logan murmured, “I remember I spent the following two years after he died just trying to do everything I could towards safe driving, and donating all of his stuff. He said he wanted to make a difference in the world, so…I tried to make his wishes come true.”

“Have you ever tried to contact him through a medium?”

“I researched everything there was to be about ghosts, but I knew that a medium couldn’t do much if he wasn’t a ghost near this area. Most mediums are people who can see the ghosts around them. Besides, when he died, he and I were in a fight. I doubt that even if I wanted to find my brother, he would want the same.” Logan’s eyes portrayed a sense of hurt and regret that he had been clearly holding in for a long time, “I just…wish I had more time with him. I was adopted when I was 6. I wasn’t close with him until I was 8. I barely even got 5 years with him.”

Patton saw tears prick the edges of Logan's eyes for the first time and he was left speechless without words. Still, he forced something out, his voice hoarse, "I'm sorry."

“He’s the reason I’m the valedictorian now. I thought that maybe, I could fill the hole in my parents’ hearts. I thought maybe I’d get to know him more if I became the valedictorian. Except I don’t. Now, all I feel is emptiness. I feel more disconnected with him now than before. I stopped feeling sad or angry or anything really. for my brother and for my life"

“What would you give to see him again? Just at least once.”

“Everything.” Logan whispered and Patton knew what he had to do.

Logan stood up, grabbing the composition notebook, sighing, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Patton. Promise me you won’t be weird?”

“I’ll try my best.” Patton remarked.

Logan was cute, maybe even handsome. He was smart, and funny. he was genuine to Patton, and even when he was vulnerable, Logan still trusted Patton with all the information he normally wouldn’t trust anyone with. Although Logan was obsessive with his actions, maybe Patton could look past it. However, until he found out what he really felt with Logan (whether the dream awoke the hidden crush or the dream instigated the crush), he was fine with learning to be kinder to the boy who had been nothing but kind to him all these years. ——————– Logicality at its finest everyone <3. i feel like this is the closest these characters are going to get to canon because Logan's not really emotional but he's smart enough to know the patterns of everyone while Patton's emotional, but he really knows how to dodge feeling those difficult feelings. Hope you guys enjoy and I promise you that things will continue to go in a direction you probably wouldn't have expected them to go~

If you enjoyed this, please consider reblogging! Reblogging helps me a lot and are very appreciated. Check out my masterlist for more, feel free to request any writings, and stick around if you want to see the rest of what I have in store for this! :)

#aw patton liking logan is so <3 #logicality ftw #logan x patton #ts remus #ts virgil #ts patton #ts logan #cw swearing #high school au #sanders sides #the fate of the marked six #chapter 9 #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #remus sanders #magic au #remus has magic sharing powers #logan has precognition??? crazyyyy fr #patton has powers too allegedly? crazy #medium virgil

[whatsk-poppinhomies]

Not really an important post or like notification, it's more so an appreciation to everyone who reads my stuff, and kind of a little shout out to some pretty special people who make writing fun for me and make it worth it.

As some of you may have read, I haven't been able to really get on a write often because my work schedule is wack which means my sleeping schedule can not be wack and I actually have to sleep :P But I really will try to get some stuff out, I'm doing my best, I'm just so tired :'(

But anywho!!!

Here's some great people who make writing amazing! (Please be sure to comment and/or reblog peoples any artist/writers posts, it means so much more than a like :'))) )

@sunflwryu @readeryu <3 You make the struggle of trying to stay awake and write fics worth it because your tags when you reblog my fics are honestly so special to me, I love reading them, and I read them over and over. It's also so nice just being able to talk to someone every day, even though I complain a good bit about how crappy work is, you listen and you're always there for me, and I'll always be there for you. Thank you for being the coolest yondongsaeng. ALSO, PLEASE CHECK OUT THEIR FICS ON THEIR MAIN BLOG! SO GOOD! SO SO SO GOOD! <3

@jcngh0-hq <3 My favorite fan of Company Policy, I love hearing about your mutual hatred of Niko! I try to make sure that I'm able to get on my phone and tag you in updates as soon as I possibly can just because I hope that you enjoy every next chapter and I really really hope to hear from you when the series is over (On the 29th this month :( ). Thank you so much for reading, it means the world to me <3

@rachagen <3 I remember you first came to my blog when I posted the Jealousy Is series, and you're still here for the Spin The Wheel! If you're waiting for Goodnight Moon, I promise, I'll get to it, it's coming! I'm gonna get there! Thank you for being here though and reading my angst at this point, I hope that it in some way brings you happiness. Thank you so much <3

@laylasbunbunny <3 You absolutely blew up my phone with notifications and I cannot thank you enough for how kind you were and what you said and your reblogs, oh my gosh, I just, I was so so so happy when I saw all the notifications. Especially since you read some of my fics that even I forgot I wrote because they don't get enough recognition, but you recognized them and that is just, so amazing, and I cried a little bit, so thank you so so so so so much! <3

@whatudowhennooneseesyou <3 I remember you first became my moot when I started the Jealousy Is... series, and you sent me some of my favorite requests (some of my only requests that I feel comfortable and confident enough to write for) And you put out an absolute masterpiece for my request for your Mommytober2022 that I hope everyone read and was able to keep up on because even though I wasn't able to keep up on it, I know that since it came from you, it's amazing. I need to find some time to read all of the fics you put out. Thank you for being here and thank you for reading my stuff, and I promise that when I get the time, I will definitely read your entire Mommytober2022 collection. <3

@goodnightlittleme <3 You also first started following me when I started my Jealousy Is... series, and I do believe that you were one of the first to ask to get tagged in it, which made me feel so cool, not a lot of people ask to get tagged in my stuff, so, it was just really nice to know that people looked forward to my fics enough to want to be tagged in them. And then the comments you'd write in the tags or when you'd reblog, it made my heart happy, and it's really nice reading what you have to say about the fics and what you think. Thank you so much <3

@kim-jvnkyu <3 Sometimes your notes get buried in a sea of likes, but I notice all the reblogs that you give for Company Policy, and it's so appreciated. I hope that you're still enjoying it, and thank you so much <3

@mybabywearschanel <3 Yeonjunie lover, the one singular person that wanted to be tagged in Theater Baby, I appreciate you, and everything that you'd send to my inbox whenever there was an update on the fic. I will always remember the one inbox thingy you sent when Hyejin got what was coming for her, and you put a meme with it, and that made me smile all fricking day, just to know that you liked it enough to not only message me, but to put the cutest meme in with it. Thank you a million times over, so much <3

#nana appreciation post #thank you all so much #you all make writing worth it #<3sunflwryu #<3jcngh0-hq #<3rachagen #<3laylasbunny #<3whatudowhennooneseesyou #<3goodnightlittleme #<3kim-jvnkyu #<3mybabywearschanel #and so many more #thank you so so so much

[agent-aurelie]

And on this, the anniversary of the day of Cowboy Dave’s birth, I offer you the last chapter of my 5/1 fic, Stay.  I’m not saying I uploaded the Kanera sex chapter to spite Filoni on his birthday, but I’m also not saying I didn’t. 

There are lots of things I like about this fic and lots of things I’m proud of, and there are lots of things that I kind of wish I’d mapped out better. There are definitely things I’d revisit to correlate a little better with my headcanons, but it’s done and I was getting very tired of staring at it, so it was time to set it free.  I’m super grateful hat this fic helped introduce me to some completely lovely people, so that’s a win.  BIGGEST THANKS TO @the-arctic-violet for all of her hard work beta-ing and dealing with me screaming about these two at ridiculous hours.

Thanks for your comments and your support.  This was my first “big” jump into writing for this fandom and I really did enjoy it. <3 I have some other things to share soon. 

#I Totally Meant To Post This Earlier Today But Then Got Distracted With A Book And A Nap And A Burrito Kind Of In That Order #I Saw Someone Start To Reblog My Chapter 3 Update And Was Like Oh No Oops. #I Am Garbage At Remembering To Share Updates On Tumblr Oops Again #SWR Fanfic #Star Wars Rebels Fanfic #Kanera #Kanera Fanfic #Just Me Your Casual Smut Peddler Reporting For Duty

[justnerdthings]

New Beginnings Ch. 3

Female reader x Liu Kang/Kung Lao (Not sure which yet)

Wow, guys. Thanks so much for all your kind words, favorites, reblogs, and follows! I didn't think this fic would do well. But I'm glad I was wrong!

Someone had asked about being added to a tag list for updates. I'm certainly willing to add one! Let me know if you'd like to be tagged for future updates. I'll try and make sure I get everyone.

Without further ado, here's the much requested chapter 3!

You didn't sleep worth a damn that night. Not only was your anxiety running wild, but it gave you nightmares of being killed in fights your subconscious conjured up by remembering what Raiden told you about Mortal Kombat.

That… And this wasn't your bed.

You managed to fall asleep early into the morning.

A harsh knock banged on your door. You nearly jumped out of your skin as it woke you. Wide-eyed, you sat straight up in your bed and watched the door as if it was about to attack you.

Another harsh knock startled you. Quickly you got to your feet and answered the door. Kung Lao stood in front of you, an impatient look on his face. A large black, brimmed hat was on his head… was it made of metal? "Put on a gi," he ordered.

Your brows bunched.

One of his brows rose quizzically.

"What?" You said. You could feel how dry your throat was. God, you needed a drink.

Lao inhaled sharply. With a nod he gestured vaguely for you to step back. You did, and he stepped past you to the wooden chest at the foot of your bed. With a swift kick the top swung open. You stepped over to look inside and saw a small selection of clothes, very plain, but similar to Lao's and Liu's that you remembered. There was also a long, simple gown that you guessed was for sleeping. That would have been nice to know about last night. Lao reached in and pulled out a gi. He tossed it on your bed. "That is a gi," he told you, turning his attention back to you. "Put this on, then step outside into the hall. I'm training you this morning."

You brushed a hand through your hair and realized it was a mess. Bed head. Your fingers tried combing out the knots as you looked at him. "When's breakfast?" You asked. Really. Food sounded good. You hardly ate last night.

"After your morning training," Lao said.

"Why after?"

"Because it is. Wake up. Train first. Then breakfast. Then train again. Lunch. Train. Dinner," he listed off. "After dinner you can do whatever you like, but you'd be wise to rest up. You're going to be sore."

Your jaw hurt as it clenched. "Everyday?"

"Everyday."

"Even weekends?"

"Everyday," he repeated sternly.

You almost groaned.

"Unless you'd rather give up and go home?" He mocked.

God, would you. Home sounded great.

But you were needed here. Raiden needed your help to fight Shang Tsung. Sure, you were useless right now. And sure, he gave you a choice to not be involved, but Raiden had been able to paint a very real picture of what Earth would be like if Shang won Mortal Kombat just one more time… Earth would be destroyed. Everything gone. You. Your home. Everyone.

"No," you said. "No, Raiden wants my help… Can't exactly tell a god ‘no.’" Was that defeat in your tone?

"Good. Now change," Lao said as he turned and stepped out of your room, closing the door behind him.

It only took you a minute to get changed. The gi felt strange. You weren’t used to such loose clothing, but you did like that it let your body breathe. Stepping out into the hall, you saw Lao leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He looked you up and down, then nodded in approval before turning and walking down the hall. You followed, but kept your distance.

“Can I get something to drink?” You decided to ask after a moment of silence.

“We’ll have water there,” He said, glancing back at you.

“Is Liu going to be there?” You asked.

“Already don’t like me?” Lao asked.

“He’s just not an asshole to me,” you quipped, and immediately regretted it as Lao stopped in his tracks. Goosebumps covered your arms and neck.

“I’ve been called worse,” He simply said and continued walking.

A relieved breath escaped you. You saw that going differently in your head. You expected some shouting. But he just… accepted it.

The rest of the walk was in silence as he led you to an open area, sand covering the ground, pillars to the left and right. An array of training dummies and tools were placed around the sand. This was a fighting arena, you realized. And it had a view...

You slowed your pace. Oh no. Not a view. And this one didn’t have any sort of railing. It just dropped off! Oooh fuck this, you thought and stepped back even though the ledge was about a hundred feet away.

“Come here!” Lao called over as he stood in the center of the arena.

You didn’t move. Moving to him would put you closer to the ledge. No way.

But he grew impatient again. His voice raised and it echoed through the ravine. "COME. HERE!"

Those goosebumps came back. Hesitating, you slowly made your way over to him.

"Good. Sit."

You did. Right in the sand. Lao took his hat off and swung it down. You jumped as he made a deep line in the sand not even an inch from you. The sound of metal grating the sand sent a shiver through you.

"This is Lord Raiden’s arena. Each day you will step closer to that ledge," he said, not having to point to it. "You will learn to meditate and control your fear until you can sit on that edge comfortably."

Oh no.

"Are you ready?” He asked.

“No…”

“Good.” It was like he heard you say ‘yes’ instead. You groaned and he slipped his hat back on his head and secured the strap under his chin. “Sit with your legs crossed. Like Buddah.”

You moved your legs, sitting as you knew ‘criss-cross applesauce,’ but Buddah style did sound more mature.

“Close your eyes, straighten your back, and rest your hands on your knees.”

You did, but felt him close in on you, then his hand on your shoulder. Goosebumps again. A knot in your stomach. Grip firm, he pulled you back slightly, straightening you out more. You opened one eye to glance up at him, seeing a focused look to his eyes as he critiqued your posture silently. His eyes then shifted to your open one.

“Close your eyes,” he repeated. That impatient tone returned.

You did. You felt him step away.

“What do you see?”

“What?” Your eyes were closed. You saw nothing! What kind of question was—

“What do you see?”

“Nothing,” You said in annoyance.

“Do you see the ledge?”

You hesitated. “No.”

“It’s about seventy feet away from you.”

Your jaw stiffened.

“The drop is miles deep.”

Your fingers curled into your knees.

“If you'd fall off, you’d die.”

You took a shaky breath as panic began building in the pit of your stomach. That’s when you remembered you didn’t have your anxiety medication here… wherever here was.

“These are facts. There is nothing you can do about them.”

Now came that helpless feeling.

“Relax.”

You couldn’t. The images of the ravine, the ledge, and you falling to your death were flashing in your mind.

“Relax,” Lao repeated and you could feel him come closer again.

“I can’t,” You admitted.

“You can.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Stop thinking about it.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I can’t.” Your tone became defiant. You could feel a presence circle you slowly.

“Focus on the sand under you. The wind as it blows around you. My voice. You are not falling. You are sitting on the ground. Safe.”

You tried. You really did. But the ledge had its grip on your attention.

“What are you doing?”

“Freaking out…”

“What are you doing?”

You hesitated. “Sitting in the sand.”

“Are you falling?”

“No.”

“Are you going to fall?”

“No.”

“Breathe.”

You took a hard, deep breath.

“Feel the air fill your lungs then leave as you slowly exhale. Feel your chest expand and contract. Focus on what’s real.”

You took another breath, and did your best to breathe out slowly. It still shook.

“Keep going until I tell you to stop.”

You took another breath. You kept taking breaths. You kept trying to focus on the air and your chest, and not the death trap this arena was with an open ledge into the ravine. Would you even feel it when you hit the bottom? Or would you die in mid-fall?

Lao tapped your shoulder. “Focus.” He must have noticed. You weren’t sure how long it’d been. You’d gotten tapped, reminded, and straightened several times. But by now, your breath wasn’t shaking anymore. You could swear your lungs had grown. Your breaths were deeper as you fought to focus. You could even feel the heat of the rising sun kiss your face and arms. Eventually, the ledge faded away from your mind and Kung Lao told you to stop.

“Open your eyes.”

You did. A blue-ish hue tinted the world as your eyes adjusted to the light.

“Relax.”

You let your back slouch again and stretched your fingers out.

“How do you feel?”

“Stiff.” You cracked your knuckles and rolled your shoulders and neck.

“Get up. Stretch.”

You rose to your feet and rubbed your face. Turning around to face him, you stretched your arms behind your head. He was sitting on the steps leading to the sand pit, leaning back against a pillar, very much relaxed as he watched you. You had been out here in the middle of the arena all by yourself. For how long, you weren’t sure. Turning back around, you looked out at the ravine.

“Scared?” Lao asked, not moving from the steps.

Weirdly, not so much. “Not as much…”

“Good. Tomorrow morning you will be a step closer. We’ll do this again.”

“Until I’m out there…” You looked at the very edge and imagined sitting there, knees almost hanging off the ledge, alone… What if a strong wind blew you over? What if he tried to straighten you up but accidentally pushed you? Oh, there was that panic again. You turned away, breath starting to shake again as you hurried towards the safety of the steps.

Lao had watched you. He noticed your breath shake again even from several feet away. You’d almost thrown yourself into another panic. “Breathe,” he coached. “You got a while before you’re there.”

You nodded. He was right. He’d said you were about seventy feet from the edge. If you only took a step closer each day, that meant it was about sixty days away. Give or take. Okay. Two months. Two months sounded do-able. You pulled your shoulders back tight. Your upper spine cracked and popped with tension. You’d feel better once you got away from here.

“Thirsty?”

You looked over to him and he pointed up the stairs. Following his gesture, you found a clay pitcher and cups on a table. You’d forgotten just how thirsty you were, and now your throat felt sore.

After climbing the steps, you poured yourself some water and felt it rush all the way down to your empty stomach.

“You’re horrible at meditation,” Lao said, breaking the silence.

You looked back at him.

He just grinned at you.

You rolled your eyes and turned away. Of course you were horrible at it. It was your first time and you were in the middle of a panic attack. Breakfast. Finally. Lao sat in his usual spot at the table. You sat across from him and looked at the array of food already set out. It was mostly vegetables and proteins… though no actual meat. Right, you thought. Monks. Monks were vegetarians weren’t they? Well… At least there were some eggs. You reached for the simple white rice to start off your plate.

“Take it easy on the rice,” Lao ordered, which made you look up to him with confusion. “Focus on vegetables and protein. You need to get into shape.”

Did he just call you fat? You glared at him, but it did nothing to move the critical look from his face. With an annoyed sigh, you slid some of the rice off your plate and back into the bowl. You looked back to him, as if to ask for some much unwanted approval. He nodded. You then filled your plate with vegetables and poached eggs. You didn’t care much for tofu or beans, so you ignored them.

“I’d kill for some pancakes,” you unknowingly whispered under your breath.

“If you kill Shang Tsung, I’ll get you all the pancakes you want,” Lao said, jarring you.

“Oh... Didn’t mean to say that out loud,” You admitted sheepishly.

“Offer still stands.”

You glanced to him and couldn’t help the grin that pulled your lips. Hearing the door open, your smile faded and you turned to look behind you. Liu Kang had walked in, flushed, face and arms glistening with sweat. He offered you a smile before sitting next to you.

“Good morning,” He said, not wasting time in filling his plate.

“‘Morning,” You greeted and watched him fill his plate with rice and beans. A bit of vegetables.

You looked back to Lao with furrowed brows. How come Liu could eat all the carbs?

Lao noticed your fuss. He pointed his chopsticks at Liu, but looked at you. “He needs the energy.”

Liu, lost, looked up, then to you, then back to Lao.

“I told her to take it easy on the rice,” Lao explained.

“Ah,” Liu nodded. The gentleman that he was, he didn’t comment on your weight, but you felt it. Okay, you weren’t in the best shape. You didn’t have the six or eight packs you figured they had. But you weren’t fat… Right?

You looked down at your stomach, hidden under the baggy gi, and folded an arm over it tightly in a futile effort to hide it.

“Being a nurse, I’d think you’d know about nutrition,” Lao judged, mouth full.

You huffed. You got it. You were fat. Okay. Shut up, Lao. “Being a nurse, I hardly have the time to cook for myself,” You defended.

“Lucky for you, you don’t have to cook here. The monks will. Shouldn’t be an issue anymore. No excuses,” Lao said.

“Yeah… Lucky me,” You said, still annoyed. You began to eat, starting with the vegetables.

Liu, again being the saint he was, had decided to change the subject. “How was morning meditation?”

When you didn’t say anything, Lao answered for you. “Fine.”

That caught you off guard. Fine? He told you you were horrible!

“Really?” Liu’s interest was piqued.

“Her posture needs work, and her mind isn’t yet disciplined enough. But she did fine.”

“That’s great.” Liu looked to you.

You bit your tongue, but couldn’t hold it. “You said I was horrible,” you said to Lao.

Lao grinned and filled his mouth with food.

What was this? A give and take? Or take and give? Tell you you’re horrible, then say you were fine?

“I’m sure he was only kidding,” Liu suggested.

“Was I?” Lao questioned with an inflection, which earned him a stern look from Liu. Lao’s grin only grew.

Liu sighed in accepted defeat. “How did you sleep, Y/N?”

“Awful,” you answered quickly.

“Oh?” Liu frowned.

“Yeah.”

“Anxiety?” Liu asked.

You nodded. “And nightmares. And it wasn’t my bed. Always takes me a while to get used to a new bed.”

“Well, yesterday must have been stressful enough,” Liu reasoned.

“Bit of an understatement,” You mumbled before filling your mouth.

“Did you decide if you were going to stay?”

Lao answered before you could swallow. “She’s staying.”

Liu looked so relieved to hear that, but looked back to you for confirmation. “Is that true?”

You nodded.

A smile came to his face, the smile you liked. So sincere. So real. “Thank you.”

You looked to your food. You didn't feel much like talking anymore as thoughts raced through your mind. Now it was concrete. You were staying. You were crazy, but you were staying. Liu was training you now. This was a different arena. It had a view, but the walls were high enough that you didn’t mind. Still sand on the ground, it looked like a smaller version of the colosseum… but without the thousands of seats surrounding you, and more oblong. A huge statue of Raiden sat off to the side, just outside the arena, in a fighting stance seeming to watch your every move. On the other side, some other statue, ready to fight Raiden. You quickly realised they were two parts of a monument. Some fight that had happened. Who won, you wondered.

“Time to test your might,” Liu said.

“What?” you turned away from the statues to look at him.

“Have you ever had lessons in self defense?”

“Uh. No. Not really. Remember? No experience.”

He nodded and walked over to you. So you were starting at square one. He could handle that. “Try and hit me,” He told you.

“What? No.” You stared at him as if he was crazy.

“The best way to learn is to practice. And the best way for me to gauge just what you can do is for you to try and hit me.”

“I’m not going to hit you, Liu.”

“And what do you intend to do when Mortal Kombat begins?”

Okay. You had to admit. He had you there. You wouldn’t be much use if you couldn’t fight. You sighed in your defeat and looked him over. He took no particular stance. He just stood there, eyes locked on you.

Okay. You could do this. Not like you could hurt him. You doubted you could hit that hard anyway. Without much warning, you swung a fist. Unsurprising, he dodged it easily. You swung again. He dodged. You tried a kick. He blocked. You still weren’t surprised, but after a few more attempts, you were getting annoyed.

“I can’t hit you if you keep moving,” You hissed.

“Do you expect Shang Tsung’s fighters to just stand still and let you hit them?”

Again, he had a point. You kept trying. You kept failing.

“Keep going,” Liu coached gently as he gracefully dodged your futile attacks.

You took turns pushing each other across the sand pit. You would push him to one end, then he would take the offensive, and you would dodge, backing you up to the other end. You knew he wasn’t really trying, he hadn’t even broken a sweat while you were sure you dripping. Eventually you stopped. You walked away and gave him a ‘time-out’ sign as you leaned back against a wall. Heavy breath after heavy breath came out of you. You really were out of shape. Fuck it. You gestured your forfeit vaguely as Liu walked towards you.

“Not bad,” He offered.

A single, exhausted, “Ha!” escaped you. Yeah right. You were awful.

“You’ll get better.”

“Maybe in a hundred years,” you only half joked.

“If you stay determined,” He joked back. It earned him another laugh from you and he smiled in that small victory. “Between myself and Lao, you’ll be in shape within a few months.”

“If you two don’t kill me in the process.” Again, only a half joke.

“I assure you, we will not kill you,” He said, that sincerity in his voice. “However, you may feel as though we have.” That wasn’t a joke.

You groaned. You already felt that. “Can I just go back to meditating? I can handle that.”

“I think you deserve a small rest. We can meditate until your breathing comes down,” He’d accepted and gracefully fell to the sand. His legs went into the Buddah-like position, but instead of his hands on his knees, he held one up as if to pray and the other gripped the prayer beads that hung from his wrist.

You slid down the wall and positioned your legs. Your hands went to your knees, and you leaned on them. Liu didn’t seem to mind that your posture wasn’t correct, and you were thankful for it. You just allowed yourself to relax and closed your eyes.

Alright, you thought. You remembered what Lao had told you only a few hours earlier. Focus on what’s real. The sand. The wind. The air in your lungs. Breathe. And you did. You focused on all of it… Which quickly backfired.

Okay. Focus on one thing. You focused on the air. It was so dry. It was dry earlier too, but you’d forgotten during breakfast. Were you in a desert? The Sahara? Would explain the quietness of the place. And come to think of it, you hadn’t even seen a plane in the sky since you got here. Where did the water you’d been drinking come from? It had to come from somewhere. The ground? Maybe there was a well here. Where? But wait, you had a bathroom in your room. It didn’t have a tub or shower, but the toilet and sink did work. Was there plumbing? There had to be if the sink and toilet worked.

“Your mind is wandering,” Liu said softly, bringing you out of your thoughts.

“Yeah,” You answered, keeping your eyes closed. You straightened up. “Sorry.”

“What were you thinking about?” He asked curiously.

“Nothing. It’s fine. Sorry.”

“Tell me,” he pushed gently.

You breathed a laugh nervously. Well, if he insisted... “Just wondering if there was plumbing in this place.”

Liu didn’t say anything for a good minute, which prompted a knot to build in your stomach. God, you were stupid.

Then you heard a soft laugh. You opened your eyes to see Liu chuckling to himself. That knot melted away along with some tension in your shoulders. You smiled, then shared in the laugh. @miss-nori85

#mortal kombat #mortal kombat 2021 #liu kang #kung lao #raiden #reader insert #fanfic #fic #reader x character #ludi lin #max huang #tadanobu asano #new beginnings

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Path

Breach Masterlist

Warnings: non/dubcon sex (series), general angst

This is dark!Winter Soldier/Bucky and explicit. 18+ only.

Note: Uh, yeah, the long awaited update! And we’re very close to an ending. A necessary explanation that the timeline of the MCU has been changed for the purpose of this series. As of this chapter, the year is 1989. Anyways, let’s welcome back James and Luka!

I won’t demand but do ask for feedback; likes, reblogs, replies, comments, asks, especially on this series, but again, enjoy in your own way! <3 Love you!

You’d never been on a plane before. You’d ridden in the cargo bay of a large boat from Europe, hidden amid the barrels and fishing nets. The rest of the way, had been marked by the back of rickety farming trucks and mule-drawn carts. But never a plane.

Weeks on the road, by foot, by car, until you reached the short dock along the winding river; a peculiar, small plane floating on the water. 

James handed the man a handful of bills and turned back to you as he felt the pistol hidden beneath his jacket. Luka sat on your hip and asked a dozen questions as you were helped into the aircraft, the pilot ahead of you and James behind. How did it fly and float? Where were you going? Were you going to space? 

You hushed him as you sat on a crate against the wall and James sat on the next. You turned Luka so that his back rested against your front and the man beside you tapped his gloves fingers on his knee. 

You listened as the pilot flipped switches and cranked the plane to life. It rumbled around you and you latched onto James’ arm without thinking. He leaned in until his arm met yours. Luka laughed in delight as the propellers began to spin.

“It’s alright,” James said in Portugeuse; he warned you not to speak Russian. “Be calm. I rode in worse.”

“Maybe you have, but I do not like the idea of being so high up,” You hissed and retracted your hand. “Must we go so far away?”

“We’ve spent long enough here.” He whispered close to your ear. “And now is the time to go. So many people are moving around, we will hardly be missed.”

“You still haven’t told me where we go,” You hugged Luka as the plan began to move.

“Best I don’t. Yet.” He said pointedly and raised his finger to his lips to signal silence.

You nodded and rocked Luka. The canvas bag on your back held a change of clothes for both of you and the woolen wolf toy you’d knitted him when he was still in the cradles. James told you to bring as little as possible. Enough to survive. He had a bag on his own back stuffed with salted rations, ammunition, and his own clothing. He was geared more to war as you felt little more than a refugee running for the hills.

The constant roar of the engine set you on edge and tugged at your exhausted mind. As the plane lifted from the water in a flurry, you clung tighter to Luka and he grabbed onto your arm to keep you from squeezing him too hard.

“Mama, mama,” He called over the noise. “You will hurt me.”

“Here,” James reached out and took Luka’s arm. “I’ll take him. You should try to rest.”

“Up here?” You let go, reluctant. The boy was your only comfort as you lifted into the clouds. “I don’t think I can.”

“Try.” He ordered. “We will still have far to go after we land.”

“We always have far to go,” You crossed your arms.

He was silent. Again. In those days you’d traveled, he had been even less talkative than before. His brow wrinkled as he forged on, aimed towards some unknown target. He was even more insistent, even more impatient, but you did not have the strength to hope that he was eager for some end to the road. Only another pit stop.

Despite your nerves, despite the way your skin pricked every time you thought of the dearth of land beneath you, and the altitude made your ears ache, your eyelids closed. At first you did not doze, merely tried to hide from the world before you. But your own fatigue overwhelmed your obstinacy and you fell asleep.

In your dreams, you were there again. As you were every time you slept. The bright cell, the anguished cries of your child, the sinister shadow of the soldier. Not James, the soldier. And the doctors poked and prodded at you as they whispered. You screamed but no sound rose and you woke with a start.

You blinked through the haze as the engines whirred still and you glanced over as James quickly folded up a piece of paper. You saw only the picture of a man, taken long ago, blonde hair and square jaw; stoic. You covered your yawn with your arm as James tucked the paper into his pocket, jostling Luka who slept silently against his chest.

“You okay?” He asked. “You were dreaming again.”

“Was I?” You played dumb.

“You make noises,” He said. “Sometimes you speak.”

“Oh,” You shifted on the crate. “How long did I--”

“Mmm,” He shrugged. “We’re almost there.”

“There?” You asked.

“Almost ready to land,” He explained. “You don’t trust me.”

“Why do you say that? I have trusted you, James. You have kept us safe.” You argued.

“But you watch me.” He said. 

You lowered your head and rubbed your hands together. “You are quiet. You… never tell me anything.”

“I tell you what you need to know. Any more and it would be dangerous.” He pushed back his hair. “Can you trust that I am taking us somewhere we will be safe? Somewhere we might be able to stay?”

“And where would be such a fantastical place?” You challenged.

“Another thing I cannot tell,” He smiled grimly. “But will you trust me one last time?”

“Always trust,” You assured. “Always.” You reached over and touched Luka’s cheek. “Even then, you saved him. You took him from those monsters.” You sniffed. “You never had to take me too.”

He bent his head and looked down at the child in his lap. He rubbed Luka’s back and sighed.

“Do you think I would’ve left you?” His voice was brittle.

“You weren’t James then.” You placed your hand over his as his fingers, the metal ones concealed in his leather glove, began to twitch. “You are now, but you still hide from me.”

He shook his head and turned his face away from you. “The soldier, James…” You could barely hear him. “They are the same person and they both hurt you.”

“You are not--” You tucked your fingers under his palm and held his hand as he tried to pull away. “No, you did not know the soldier as well as I. You are not the same, James.”

He kept his face hidden but squeezed your hand. He took a deep breath and rested his head on Luka’s smaller one. “I try…” He muttered. “I try.”

✰

Back on solid ground, you didn’t stop moving. The only thing that changed, was the world around you. At first, the signs remained in Spanish and after a stop at a checkpoint, they turned to English. You could not read that so well and the few people you met, spoke too quickly for you to keep up.

You could surmise that you were in America. You knew that James was born there, it was of the few details he offered about who he was, or who he had been. You stopped at a bank, he waited for the other customers to clear out, and he exchanged his real for dollars. He kept his head down as he returned to you, hidden with Luka behind a cafe, and kept on.

He bought a rusted old Chrysler from a dealer on a dusty road. It rattled but didn’t putter. He stopped only to fill the tank and buy coffee and processed sandwiches from the stations. You stopped once to eat in a restaurant but James had hurried you through the meal as Luka began to shout loudly in Spanish, Russian, then English.

States lines were little more than painted signs on the road. The landscape changed, it grew wetter, lusher, swamps then forests, then sprawling farmlands. James kept away from the cities and forged along the back roads. And then he stopped and stared down an impasse.

You were tired. Days spent sleeping in the car, almost a whole week, with the brooding man and the bored and energetic child. It had all mounted on your shoulders and in your head. You wanted a bed; a real bed. You wanted to stay still.

“What is it?” You asked.

“We’re almost there,” He said.

“Almost where?” You wondered as you unwrapped a candy bar for Luka. A treat you’d saved for him a few days back.

James let out a long breath and turned the wheel as he hit the gas. He didn’t answer as he drove on. He wasn’t going to tell you. You could tell he was anxious. You could tell he was uncertain. And you were too.

You played a game with Luka to distract yourself. He grew tired of it and so you sang with him, out of key, but it eased your nerves. You went silent as you reached the city. You didn’t need a sign or a map. You knew it from the magazine and the television. It was New York.

You looked over at Bucky in disbelief.

“This is--”

“Where I’m from,” He said. “I was born here. Up in Brooklyn.” His voice was wistful. “A very long time ago.”

“Very long,” You chided. “You are not so much older than me.”

“I don’t look it,” He kept his eyes on the road and slowed with the traffic around him. “I…” He swallowed. “I have to meet someone and then I will tell you. Everything.”

“Meet who?” Your heart was fluttering.

“An old friend,” He stopped as the car before him did and he leaned against the car door as he reached into his pocket. He pulled out that paper, newsprint, folded and refolded time and time again. “Here.”

You unfolded it carefully. The article was printed in English. You frowned. “I cannot read so well this language.” You said.

“You can read enough.” He insisted. “You will have to learn to speak it too.”

You squinted and looked over the paper. The same picture of the blonde man; words you recognized; a name. ‘War hero, Captain America, found in Arctic’. Your eyes roved the page; thawed, alive, preserved, miracle. You shook your head in confusion.

“That is my friend,” James said. “He can help us. He knows people. People who can keep us from Hydra.” He eased onto the gas. “I can’t fight alone. Not anymore.”

“You sure they will?” You asked. 

“I know he will.” He gripped the wheel tightly. “If not me, you and Luka.”

“All of us.” You insisted.

He looked grim as he nodded but said nothing more. You folded up the paper and looked around at the crowded buildings.

“Mama, there’s so many people,” Luka chimed. “And everything’s so tall.”

“Yes, Myshka,” You said. “So tall.”

✰

It was dark. You sat in an alley with Luka in your lap, a disposed orange crate beneath you. James stood against the wall, hidden in shadows as he kept his eyes on the opening. Every time a pedestrian passed, he grew tense. You weren’t sure what his plan was, you were only scared. You needed somewhere to sleep, even the car, but he was too nervous to leave you alone, even locked in the old Chrysler.

Then he marched forward. You watched him as he grabbed the silhouette and dragged it into the alley. The man was taller than him, his figure limned in sunlight as he pushed back against James and forced him against the wall. The two men struggled with each other as they grunted.

James caught a fist than an elbow, barely keeping himself from being thrown off his feet. He was holding his punches, refusing to hit the man.

“Steve, Steve!” He hissed. “Hey, punk, it’s me!” He snarled. “Bucky.”

The other man suddenly stopped. He held James, or this person he knew as Bucky, against the wall as he tried to see him through the dark. He released him and stepped back, stunned.

“How--” The man uttered.

“I can’t explain. Not here.” James said as he lowered his voice.

“It can’t be,” Steve gasped. “Bucky. What the hell are you doing scaring me like that?”

“I didn’t know how else… I spotted you just down the street but-- had to take a chance.” James said nervously. “And I-- We need a place to go. Just for the night.”

“Just for the night?” Steve asked. “Is that all?”

“Well, no, but--”

“Wait, you said ‘we’,” Steve interjected. “Who--”

Bucky waved two fingers and signaled you over to him. You stood from beside the stinking bins and neared as Luka asked what was going on. You hushed him and came to stand by James, just behind his shoulder. The moonlight shone past the tall apartments and you saw the man clearer as he saw you in turn. He smiled.

“Buck,” He said. “You--”

“My son, Luka,” James said pointedly then introduced you.

“How did you--”

“We can’t talk out here.” James urged. “I know it’s a lot to ask but I can’t take them anywhere else.”

“It’s nothing, pal,” Steve patted his shoulder. “Stay as long as you need.” He looked between you and James. “So, let me show you my place. Not much…” He inched towards the mouth of the alley. “But it smells much better than this hole.”

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #winter soldier #dark winter soldier #dark!winter soldier #winter soldier x reader #fic #series #breach #dark fic #dark!fic #captain america #mcu #marvel #au

[weasleymalfoypotter]

i hate you (but not really) pt4

draco malfoy x fem!syltherin! potter reader

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

summary: draco malfoy and harry potters twin sister have hated each other since they met. but in 5th year he comes to find that maybe he doesn’t hate her and the reasons he did end up be the things he loves

word count: 2k

warnings: fluff, a little angst, cussing

A/N: i am honestly really proud of this chapter and i’m really excited for the next two. i think there are only gonna be six parts but i really hope you enjoy this one. please like and comment suggestions or criticism and feel free to reblog!! also i have a lot of stuff coming out soon so stay updated and i’ll be posting a master list once i post more fics

it’s safe to say that i am in love with draco malfoy. these last few months have been ethereal. we took our time in getting to know every detail about each other, although it wasn’t necessarily by choice. it was a lot more difficult than we thought it would be to spend time together like a normal couple would do while hiding the relationship from everyone we knew and even those we didn’t. we decided very early on that it would be best to keep it a secret for now. if his family found out about us it wouldn’t end well for him and if my brother and godfather found out... it would end very early for him. it was actually fun keeping it a secret, always sneaking around the castle, learning everyone’s routines to keep away from prying eyes, and hiding away from other prefects and filch. we abused our prefect positions to help with the whole secret relationship which is exactly what we aren’t supposed to do as prefects but it’s justified in my mind.

we’ve been together in secret for 6 months now and i think we’re both tired of not being able to sit next to each other in the great hall, walk and in hand to classes, kiss when everyone was watching, and simply go to hogsmeade together like a normal freaking couple.

we went to my dorm room after dinner on thursday night and made sure no one saw him come in. i didn’t have any roommates , thank merlin, so we didn’t have to worry about that. we cuddle up next to each other just talking about anything and everything until he moved from underneath me to sit up, criss crossed, in the middle of my bed and spoke

“i think it’s time” he was being serious and goofy at the same time which was just adorable but i was stubborn and wouldn’t tell him that. i raised my eyebrows at his statement and questioned him.

“what are you talking about?” i tilted my head to the side, voice calm and unwavering. i knew what he was talking about but i was terrified. i also knew he would be right.

“i’m talking about us, about telling people, if it gets back to my parents i’ll just tell them it’s a silly rumor. the only thing we have to do is tell your brother” his voice trailed off at the end of his statement. telling harry was the terrifying part

“i want to tell people, i really do, but harry is going to be so unbelievably upset, you have no idea. not only have i been lying to him for the past 6 months, i’m also in love with his arch nemesis who he’s hated for the past 5 years. it’s not going to go well” i was talking animatedly with my hands.

“i know but we have to get it over with sooner or later, and it’ll only be worse if it’s later” he’s right. and i hate it. i sighed and laid back on my bed and pulled me next to him. “i know you don’t want to but it really won’t be that bad”

“what were the last words my brother said to you?” he chuckled but didn’t say anything and i knew it’s because it would prove my point. “exactly. he’s going to hate me” he was tracing circles on my arm and he kissed the top of my head

“he’s not going to hate you, trust me, i used to and we saw how well that ended” we both laughed, he always made me laugh when i needed it.

“i would say it ended rather nicely” i said with a smile tilting my face to look at his. he was smiling and i loved it. i took in his features and tried to suppress this moment to memory, trying to take a mental picture of him because he was just perfect. he looked down at me laying on his chest, looking at him with my e/c eyes and i just melted.

“it ended better than nicely in my opinion” he was smiling and it was beautiful. he leaned his head down to kiss me and the only words to describe this moment and every other i’d spent with him was perfect.

-

here it goes. time to tell harry. or not. let’s not. dammit i cant, i promised draco i would do it. harry would usually keep me updated on their common room password so i could hang out with them or study away from the slytherins so i made my way to the portrait hole. i said the password and walked in. sure enough harry, hermione, and ron were at a couch, hermione doing homework while harry and ron talked. upon hearing someone come in they lifted their heads and smiled when they saw me.

“y/n! hey i’ve barely seen you all day where have you been?” harry asked. he hadn’t seen me all day because i was so nervous about telling him that i avoided him like the plague.

“oh you know, classes and prefect stuff has been keeping me really busy lately” i nodded fondling with my hands awkwardly

“tell me about it, i’ve been studying nonstop and i think i might fall over at any given moment.” hermione was exhausted and you could hear it in the way she spoke while she scribbled with her quill.

“you alright y/n? you look flustered” ron showed concern on his face and he was right, i am very flustered, but he gave me a segue.

“listen i actually need to tell you three something” this caught their attention and hermione put her quill down as they lifted their heads up

“what’s up?” harry asked

“okay so you have to promise me to be calm...at least at first, and don’t get mad right away because i’ll explain everything” they all looked so worried but i knew they weren’t expecting what i was going to say.

“y/n what’s going on?” harry questioned.

“promise me. all three of you. you have to promise”

“okay we promise” hermione stated and the boys nodded in agreement. i let out a breath and decided to get it over with

“so... i um..” i sighed “i’m dating someone” their faces lit up at this, harry looked excited but concerned at the same time

“who is it?! why didn’t you tell us you liked someone? when did this happened?” ron questioned before anyone else could get a word out. he was happy for me, you could hear it in his voice, and it warmed my heart but in a few seconds he wouldn’t be so warm.

“okay this is the part where you can’t get mad” they nodded, and harry just wanted to know who was dating his sister. “umm, i- uh... okay. it’s draco malfoy” i said the last part quickly and i bit my bottom lip ready for the world to fall apart. hermione’s eyebrows furrowed and her mouth dropped. ron’s eyes were wide and he was blinking as he started daggers into me with his mouth agape, and harry didn’t skip a beat.

“what the hell do you mean ‘it’s draco malfoy’!” he stood as he spoke and he was trying so hard not to completely yell but he was so confused and on the verge of pure rage.

“i mean that i’m dating draco malfoy” i stated simply. he blinked and the other two stayed silent to let him react.

“NO YOURE NOT!!”

“yes i am, now if you let me explain-“

“THERES NOTHING TO EXPLAIN Y/N!” i looked at him with pleading eyes and he took a deep breath. “okay okay there has to be some rationality to this so explain what the hell is going on. explain to me why you’re ‘dating’ the most foul, evil, and terrible person we know. explain to me how you could do this. explain to me how this is supposed to be okay” he said angrily and quite loudly. i took a deep breath and looked away before meeting his eyes again

“he isn’t foul and evil and terrible actually” i stated calmly.

“HA!! right and voldemort didn’t kill our parents. how long has this been going on?” he was flinging his hands around as he talked. i looked at my feet “y/n... how long has this been going on?”

“six months.” i said quietly, but he heard me. his face dropped

“i’m sorry, what?” he blinked hard “you mean to tell me that you’ve been dating draco fucking malfoy behind my back for six months?! you’ve been lying to me for six months?”

“i didn’t know how to tell you. i knew you wouldn’t understand and we wanted to keep it a secret for a while” ron and hermione were listening intently to everything still in shock

“OF COURSE I WOULDNT FUCKING UNDERSTAND!!” he ran a hand through his hair and took another deep breath “y/n how, why would you ever be with him? how could you trust him? how could you trust anything he says? how could you excuse his behavior?” he had a point...but i had an answer. and one that he couldn’t dispute.

“i know he was horrible for the longest time but he never wanted to be. everything he did in the past was because of his father and he has hated himself for it his whole life, he’s wanted nothing more than to apologize. it’s not an excuse and he knows that, especially with everything he’s said to you” i looked at hermione “but that’s not him.” i spoke with a pleading tone trying to get them to understand that draco isn’t terrible and loathsome.

“and how can you believe all of that? how can you trust what he’s telling you?” i looked at all three of them before i answered

“because he took off his ring” their faces showed even more shock than when i initially told them that i was dating draco malfoy behind their backs for six months.

“he what?!” hermione asked.

“back in september he told me he liked me, i asked all the questions you did. i asked him how i could trust him, so he took off his ring. i saw draco for he really is and not what we all though him to be” i sighed while harry sat down took all of this in. knowing that draco was being honest and that he was actually kind is a shock for most at first. ron was still speechless

“i still just- i don’t know how to...process this” harry said after pulling his face out of his hands

“i know and i don’t expect you to understand and be totally excepting at first but once you get to know him for who he really is, you’ll understand.” ron finally spoke up next

“he really has left everyone alone all year, no bullying, pranks, nothing. i guess that makes sense now.”

“this is so weird” hermione said “i honestly can’t imagine him any other way than how we’ve known him”

“he’s actually the biggest dork ever. he’s sweet, and funny, and...just wonderful” i said. now that everything settled down i felt better. their responses were different because there was no lying when i was in someone’s mindscape. they had to believe what i said i saw in his head. i sat down next to harry and he spoke

“don’t go expecting us to be buddies anytime soon, but if you really say that all of this is true and he really is a good person underneath his... facade, i’ll trust you” i hugged him and hermione and ron joined in

“i love you guys” i said and a chorus of i love you too’s surrounded me. this went better than i expected and i knew draco would be happy that tomorrow we could walk into the great hall hand in and hand for the first time.

TAGS: @idkmanicantenglish @dracoswhore007 @lordlodge

#harry james potter #harry potter #hp fanfic #hp fandom #hp fanfiction #harry potter fanfiction #draco malfoy series #draco series #draco malfoy x y/n #draco malfoy #draco x reader #draco fanfiction #fan fiction #potterhead #potter fandom #hermione granger #ron weasley #gryffindor #slytherin #hufflepuff #ravenclaw #hogwarts #hogsmeade

[goldenchan-fx2thepeacock]

Don’t Go Running Off Into Danger, Even If I Do pt 3

Hek. I woke up today and found that my FNP phic has 41 notes and my DGROIDEIID phic is gaining attention and reblogs; holy shit. And I woke up at noon. It’s Saturday. I sleep in on such days. Anyways. Last I checked, Val and Danny were gonna go get Dani, but we need some Dip and Mabs action cause I forgot last night. I will probably develop an uploading schedule later. For now, just have random updates. I might even make a side blog for this shit.

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Chapter 3

Dipper stood off in the background as Danny got into an argument with a dracula ghost. By the amount of times he heard Plasmius, this must’ve been Vlad. Danny looked pissed when he finished. He still took Dipper and Mabel to their classes, but when they tried to find him at lunch, he was absent.  “I wonder where he is?” Mabel pondered.  “I’m sure he just had something to do,” Dipper replied. Some guy walked up to their table.  “Hey, you’re the kids Fenton is touring. Listen, he’s Phantom and I have proof!”  “And you are?” Mabel said patiently. “Wes Weston. Listen, you gotta believe me!” “We legit just moved here, we have no clue what you’re talking about. Leave us alone,” Dipper said. Wes looked taken aback.  “Fine! Fenton better worry. I will expose him. I just need more proof,” Wes stalked off. Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look.  “Should we be worried?” He asked Mabel. “He seems to have it under control,” 

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Danny stared off into the daylight as they flew. Val set down.  “Come on. She’s fine. Why are you losing it?” “Just a certain Wisconsin Ghost told me about you keeping her,” “Vlad?” “Wait, you know?” “I’ve known since I met Dani,” “Jeez. I’ve known since I met the guy during my parents college reunion. I’m still pissed at him for that whole invisble wall fiasco,” “That was him?” “Yeah. I mean, I started it, but he kept trying to get in my mom’s pants. I needed to put him down a peg,” “You made his wall invisble!?” “Yeah. But it’s not like being naked on camera is going to tell the public any secrets,” “I’m confused. Why do care so much?” “It’s nothing,” Danny grunted. They were headed to the basement. “It seems to be something,” “I have things I’d prefer not to reveal to the entire school,” “No one saw your dick. You managed to catch it in time,” Val was confused. Danny laughed.  “Hey Val. Why would a guy have a female clone? Oh right. I forgot to tell you. Dani is more or less my clone because Vlad was being extra creepy,” “Weird. So she isn’t your cousin. Wait. OH MY GOD! Danny, I understand completely. If Dash knew, you’d be dead meat,” Val caught on quickly. Danny couldn’t but laugh at the dead meat. “Hey! What’s funny?” “I am dead meat Val!” “I’m an idiot. Anyways, we’re here,” She opened the basement door. Dani was sitting on the couch.  “Danny? Val? What’re you guys doing here. Shit, sorry Danny,” “It’s fine. She knows,”  “Who else knows anyways?” Val said.  “You, Jazz, Tucker, Sam and literally all the ghosts,” “Vlad included?” “Vlad included,” “And Amity Park can’t connect the dots?” “No one knows Danny Phantom has a human life. I’d be seriously pissed if someone told the general public,” “That’s fair. Anyways. We’re here because a certain Dracula cosplayer told Danny you were in danger,” Val said. Danny snorted. “Dracula cosplayer? I have to use that on him,” “Why would anyone think that’s a good look?”  “My ‘dad’,” Dani said. Thus causing both her and Danny to break out in laughter. “Where does the whole cousin thing come in?” Val asked. “My ‘Unkie Vlad’. It’s his way of making me family,” “Unkie?” Val looked lost. “I like being a little bitch to him,” “He deserves it! You should expose him,” “If I expose Plasmius, Masters exposes Phantom,” “Oh jeez,” “And there is a very good reason not to expose Phantom. And they wear way too much white,” Dani said quietly.  “I’d prefer not to get dissected,” Danny said haughtily. “They already want to,” Val made a noise of disgust.  “How could anyone with a set of morals do that?” “Heh. I’m a ghost. Not really real to most of the world. I don’t have feelings. Don’t feel pain,” Danny repeated what the ghost hunters had told him way too many times.  “That sounds awful, but we should get back to school. Cya Dani!” Val waved and put on her helmet.  “Hey, wanna leave the quick way?” “What do you mea- AAAAAAAH!” Val screamed as Danny made them both go intangible and up through the roof. “Never. Do that again,” “Hey, at least you didn’t end up going through the table and random floors and get banned from handling anything fragile,” “I’m confused,” “When these powers first came in, I was stuck dropping everything. From my pants to beakers,” “Oh jeez. So, why aren’t nerd and nerdette with you?” “Tucker had to go see a doctor out of town and Sam’s mom took her to this convention thing. They’ll be back tomorrow,”  “No comment on the nicknames?” “They’ve been called worse,” Danny shrugged. “And I’ve been shoved in way too many lockers to care,” “I have one last question. Why on earth would you try to date me when I was trying to kill you? And why did you destroy the suit when I could’ve been inside?” “That’s two questions. But Fenton and Phantom needed a distinction, and I knew you weren’t inside. Technus was controlling the suit,” “You are a mystery,” “I’d like to keep it that way,” “You won’t tell anyone my secret if I don’t tell anyone both of yours?” “That makes it sound like you’re going to tell one of them,” “That’s not what I meant,” “We need to come up with an excuse as to why The Red Huntress suddenly has a truce with Phantom,” “Later. I need coffee,” “I couldn’t agree more,” The plume of blue air showed up. “OH COME ON!” “What,” “I have to deal with something,” Danny sped off. 

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Dipper and Mabel looked at the chaos in the caf.  “Students! Hide under tables! Ghost Hunters and/or Phantom will be here soon,” Mr Lancer yelled into a megaphone. “Already here!” Someone yelled. A flash of white said Phantom. There was blue ghost throwing boxes around.  “I am the BOX GHOST!” It yelled. “Yeah, we know. Just say it already,” “I will win this fight with boxes of... spoons! BEWARE!” “Don’t you know not to bring a spoon to a knife fight?” “You do not have a knife!” “No, but I do have a thermos!” Phantom pulled out a green and grey thermos and flipped the lid.  “I will not stay in your cylindrical object!”  “Looks like you’re gonna have to,” Phantom pressed a button and a beam of light came out of the thermos and sucked the Box Ghost inside. “Is everyone okay?” Kids pushed out from under the tables.  “Phantom! Will you sign my book?” Dash said. This must be a cruel joke.  “Ghost boy! The Fenton Peeler is back in action,” “Whoops, gotta go!” Phantom dashed off as Jack and Maddie Fenton came rushing in. “Darn it. Missed him again,” They ran off. Danny walked into the caf and ran over to them. “You guys are lucky that your first ghost attack was the Box Ghost. Harmless,” “Doesn’t look very harmless to me! That’s gotta’ve been at least a level 5,” Dipper opened the journal. “Nah. Box is a solid 2. Hardly a step up from an ectopus. Might get concerned if Desiree shows up. She’s a level 5,” “What’re you?” “We more or less tested it. Pretty sure I’m a 7,” “That means they aren’t a big concern to you most days,” “Mmm. King Pariah was a level 10. That was terrifying. Vlad’s an 8. Convinced he’s a 9,”  “Okay,” “Skulker gets to be a 6 on a technicality. Without the suit, he’s a 1. He can be an 8 on a bad day. I think Frostbite is a 9. He won’t bother you guys though. Dan must’ve been a 9, but I’m not going into that. Technus is an 8, but can be a 10 if he gets his hands on the right tech. Clockwork is an 11, which technically doesn’t exsist, but Clockwork breaks the mold. He won’t bother you unless you end up destroying the world in the future,” Danny shivered.  “Who’s Dan?” Mabel looked confused.  “Nobody. Just a horrible way to learn not to cheat on tests,” Danny shivered again. “But that’s not important. I didn’t cheat on the CAT,” “Your life seems more hectic than Gravity Falls sometimes,” Dipper said. “Where is that? I’ve never heard of it,” “Oregan. Never Mind All That,” He knew the rules. “You know, the way you say that is kinda creepy,” “We’d be breaking the law if we told you why,”  “Jesus. Well, it’s not like we’ll get another Pariah unless an idiot thinks it’s a good idea. He’ll never get his hands on the crown of Fire,”  “Time Out,” Dipper and Mabel looked around.  “Umm, CW, why aren’t they out with everyone else?” “They’ve met Cipher. At this point, I cannot pause time for them,”  “Eh, whatever. Mason, Mabel, this is Clockwork. What’d you need?” “I actually came to speak to you about the Crown of Fire. In defeating Pariah, you gained ownership,” “I, uh, did what now?”  “Gained ownership of the Crown. Though in your case, it would be the Crown of Ice,” Clockwork repeated. Danny looked lost.  “I don’t need to be the King of the Ghost Zone,” “Someone must take the place. It’s your duty,” Danny looked like he was about to have a full on panic attack.  “Can it wait?” “Two years is a long wait as is,” “B-but it went thousands of years before!” “Because they failed to remove the crown and it wasn’t a singular person,”  “What’s two years in the Ghost Zone? As far as I’m concerned, that doesn’t seem like a long time. Walker was gonna give me a thousand year prison sentence,”  “You get some time, but I’ll tell you, if you take the crown, the Ghost Zone enters an era of peace unprecedented,”  “Danny, what’s happening,” Mabel asked. Danny snapped and started hyperventilating.  “I can’t. No. Why? I just wanted to keep the world safe! Is that too much to ask?” “Daniel, you do get time to think about it. Just remember, time can pass however fast or slow I want it too,” “Right, of course. Cya CW,”  “Time In,”

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Danny trudged home. Exhaustion and anxiety gripped him. Mason and Mabel had been concerned, but he wasn’t about to explain everything. He’d talk to Sam and Tucker tomorrow. It didn’t help that he’d had gym after lunch. At least there wasn’t any more disappearing walls.  “Danny! How was school?” Mom asked as he walked in the door.  “Great!” Danny said and rushed upstairs. He’d deal with The Box Ghost in a minute. Jazz stood in his doorway. She didn’t know about Dan, but she did know about Pariah. “Danny, is everything okay?” “No, everything is not okay!” “What happened? Is it Dash again? We should report him,” “It’s not just that. You remember the Pariah incident?” “Yeah, you don’t just forget that,” “Well, turns out that by beating him, I ‘gained ownership’ to the crown,” “That doesn’t sound bad exactly,” “It’s horrible!”  “How?” “I just wanna be a kid, ya know? It’s hard enough living a double life, but ruling the Ghost Zone? I’d have no chance to do anything remotely useful in the human world,” “You wouldn’t need to. If you ruled the Ghost Zone, ghosts wouldn’t come here anymore,” “The King can’t enforce rules in the Human World. It’s just scary,” 

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Aight, that’s a chapter, I guess. The ideas tend to come from random places, and my brain is running out of ideas. I need to do another “planning session” which is coming up with scenarios in my head to make sure they make sense.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #jazz fenton #maddie fenton #jack fenton #dipper pines #mabel pines #clockwork #crown of fire #gravity falls #crossover #trans!danny #trans!dipper #dash baxter #valerie gray #danielle (dani) phantom #bill cipher (mentioned)

[taliaquinn]

Why Me!? Chapter 16

A/N: Hey peeps, I hope you guys enjoy today's update. I hope you guys like the fact that I uploaded so soon. Also I have a lot of oneshot ideas however the tricky part is actually WRITING. Who knew am I right? 

“Kaalki quick open a portal to that old alley, It’s better to transform there, Tikki you can finish Game of Thrones later” Marinette ordered a previously napping Kaalki, while pulling out a miffed Tikki from her mini-room in the closet. Tikki was almost done with the first season of Game Of Throne. The only reason it was taking so long was mostly that she had to watch it whenever Marinette wasn’t around due to uh reasons.

“Priorities much?” Marinette teased, quickly making a fake sleeping Marinette on her bed in case someone checked on her.

She quickly leaped through the portal, after appearing in some Paris alley she quickly ducked behind the dumpster and transformed into Ladybug, and made her way to the Attack.

To no one's surprise she was facing off with Lady Wifi again. Except for this time she was busy tracking down her ex-boyfriend Nino who had broken up with her over text. Ouch. Good for him regardless. The darker part of Marinette was pleased. He came to his senses. Finally. 

Unfortunately for her Lady Wifi was pissed, which made taking her down harder. She had to leave to recharge, Chat showed up during the last few moments but still proved himself useless by getting frozen by Lady-wifi somehow. Luckily Ladybug was sadly used to this and left him frozen. 

Quickly ducking to the side she delivered a blow to Alyas' side. Throwing her yo-yo she managed to tangle Lady Wifis legs, causing her to drop her phone. Ladybug quickly scooped it up to destroy. Seriously, what was it with this girl and her obsession with phones? 

Purifying the Akuma, she used the Miraculous Ladybug to instantly repair all the damage. Releasing a heavy sigh she turned to face her ex-best friend. To her disgust she was facing a pouting Alya and a smiling Chat. 

The instant that Alya saw Ladybug she immediately stood up and ran towards her, 

“Oh my gosh Ladybug thank you for saving me, I don't know what Nino was thinking breaking up with me like that, he KNOWS how mad I get” she said huffing out a laugh. 

Oh. my. god. She was trying to make it seem like Nino was at fault! Marinette was furious. She was acting just like Chat!!! Marinette is going to need so much therapy after all of this is done.

“Alya, you need to apologize to Nino,” she finally told her. “and afterward leave him alone, you have to respect his decision and space.” She added. They might not be friends anymore but that didn’t mean that Marinette didn't care about Nino. 

“L-L-Ladybug, you don’t get it, he broke up with me for no good reas-”

“It was a good enough reason that he felt the need to do it through a text” gesturing towards Nino's home she added “and as it turns out he was right to do so”

Alya huffed, “You just don't understand Ladybug”. She moved away from her and took out her phone to begin live streaming. 

She made her way towards Chat noir who was standing on the side watching the whole exchange a bit nervous. “Chat Noir, Are you aware of a certain girl named Marinette who got caught on camera criticizing you, when she had no right to mind you, about your most recent actions?. Do you have anything to say in response to it?” She asked pointing her phone camera in his direction. 

Chat Noir immediately leaped at the chance to defend himself.

“W-well like you said she had no right, what could she know about the struggles of being a superhero, heck I even had to save her a couple of times and that’s how she thanks me?’ He mentioned facing Alyas' camera. “Honestly I think she’s just jealous and mine and m’lady's partnership, but what can you do am I right?” he teased.

“What partnership chat?” Ladybug cut in. No way was she letting rumors spread when she was standing right there. 

“M'lady's just jealous as well,” Chat said with a wink

“Oh for Pete's sake” Ladybug pulled Chat away from Alyas prying eyes (and cellphone) and yo-yo away without a goodbye to the blogger.

A few rooftops away she finally plopped down and released Chat none too gracefully. The look on Chat noirs face wasn’t the charming one he was displaying for Alya and her Camera, he had the nerve to look annoyed.

“What was that?” He spit out

“What was what hmmm?” Oh she was annoyed now too.

“Al-that Cesaire girl has been your biggest supporter since Day One. You just don’t know what's going on with that Cesaire girl”

“I do, her boyfriend broke up with her because he was involved in an extremely toxic relationship” She stated, “I have to make sure she understands that, she’s trying to shift the blame!!!” 

“And what was that about our partnership, you sounded like you agreed with that Dupain-Cheng girl” He complained annoyed “That's cause I do”

“WHAT!?”

“You said it yourself Marinette could never understand the pressure cause she’s not a superhero, I on the other hand AM,” Not to mention they were one and the same but he didn't have to know that, “frankly you’ve been lacking in the superhero department if I can show up for every Akuma battle why can't you?” 

“Because I have a life unlike you” 

“Pfftt I am an independent business owner who still manages to be a stellar student AND I manage to handle Akuma attacks alone more often than not, what about you?”

“What does that matter? Marinette's gotten to you hasn’t she? You know she's been sent away for assaulting a classmate?”

“That's weird from what she told me she quit” she shouted “really chat you should leave the manipulating to Rossi and Cesaire”

“YOU TAKE THAT BACK, I DONT MANIPULATE” He screamed at her. Why was it that everyone was turning against him lately?

“You’re right, you only do that after you try everything else to make yourself seem good” Ladybug finished staring back at Chat noirs infuriated green eyes, His eyebrows were furrowed and he looked the angriest he ever had. 

Staring at him Marinette came to a realization, she took a few step backs “We’ll talk later” She jumped off the roof and started making her way to a specific location.

Batcave                                                                                                      Wayne Manor, USA                                                                                      12:30 pm

“Master Dick I must ask you to please refrain from breaking your ribs in the future” Alfred sighed, Luckily Batman was able to arrive in time to stop Nightwing from getting kidnapped or worse. Red Hood quickly arrived and hauled an unconscious Nightwing to the Cave.

Batman, Red Robin, and Robin were currently spread around Gotham and Bludhaven trying to track down any stragglers. 

“Sorry Alfie, I’m way too cute for the criminals to stay away” Dick mumbled sleepily

 “-humph- Regardless No patrolling for 6 weeks,”

“You hurt me, I hope you know that Alf” He joked. Eh, they were all fast healers, he’ll probably be back on patrol in 4 weeks. 

“Heya Alfred, Now that Dick is alright I am going to head back out” Jason said adjusting his gloves and strapping his knives in place.

“Before you leave Master Jason please pickup the Tupperware filled with food I have left for you in the kitchen, And please escort Master Dick to his room for rest” Alfred knew good and well that his charges love not listening to doctors, er butlers, orders.

“Thanks, Alf, Comere Dickwad” Helping Dick up from the cot “but I don’t want to,” Dick whined. “Tough luck”

Making there way throughout the manor, Dick suddenly stopped “Marinette's room is right there, lemme check on her” 

Jesus sometimes Dick can be more of a mother hen than Bruce “Come on Dickface, It's almost 1 am any sane person will be asleep by now” he said tiredly but a part of him wanted to check up on her too. Curse these big brother instincts. “Fine only a peek”

Once they stumbled to the front of Marinette's room, Jason gently cracked open the door seeing Marinette sleeping he moved aside to allow Dick to take a peak. To Jason's shock Dick unwrapped his arm from His shoulder and pushed open the door, stumbling to Marinette's Bed. Quickly pulling off the sheets he revealed a bundle of pillows under the blanket. 

Marinette wasn’t in her bed.

 “Crap”

I just Love cliffhangers, don’t you guys love them as well? I am asking that you guys please message me any prompts you would like for me to write for my one-shot series. Else I’m just going to keep making sad angsty one-shots. Stay Safe and Healthy guys <3. 

Feel free to reblog,like and comment :)

Taglist:

@maribat-is-lifeblood @kass-is-weird @another-fan-of-anotherplan @damianette-is-life @amayakans @parallelparabox @miukiiu @valeks-princess @toodaloo-kangaroo @vixen-uchiha @thezestywalru @dreamykitty25 @pirats-pizzacanninibles @mochinek0 @shamefullove @mochegato @souleateralicestein @thestressmademedoit @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen @aestheticnpoetic @mysupporthyperfixations @itsmeevie01

#miraculous ladybug #mlb au #maribat #batfam #marinette deserves better #damian wayne #jason todd #dick grayson #tim drake #bruce wayne #class salt

[snowdice]

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 39]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. None edited chapters are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

Alright. Time to get a bit of studying done.

Arc II What We Do to Each Other

Chapter 16:

As it would turn out, Janus and Virgil did not get in trouble for hooking up the old phone to Virgil’s integrator, mostly because it wasn’t really a mistake on their part. The phone cleared all virus checks that the tech people both from the university and the TPI ran on it. The phone should have been clean and should not have caused an issue.

In fact, they were still trying to pin down the code on the general university server. They could tell that something was mucking about on the system but what or how was a mystery. This also meant that there was no telling what information had been compromised and considering how many things Silver Mountain had its hands in, that was… a bit worrying.

 Another worrying thing was there was suddenly more activity of late at the TPI. There were more time distortions popping up every day. Usually they would be few and far in between. There had been 3 total recorded the year before, but over 12 in the last week. Some of them were fake like the one Janus had investigated, but some of them were real. It painted a distressing picture and also was a drain on their resources. Khalid was actually looking to advertise positions to hire new recruits which was something she rarely did as she liked to keep appointments to the TPI in house.

 They’d even loosed the number of field agents needed for each mission and Janus and Remus had been splitting up just to get everything done. Today, he and Remus had thankfully only two missions scheduled for the day.

“Are we going together or separate today?” Janus asked Remus.

“Think they’ll burn me at the stake for being a witch if I go alone to either of them?” Remus asked.

“I don’t know. Probably. I think we’re getting a bit late into the 1700s for that in Cuba, but I have no idea about Mesopotamia.”

“Let’s just go together. I did not like almost drowning yesterday because I was the only stranger in town when the weather was going wonky.”

“Surely it isn’t because you opened your mouth. Ever.” Janus said dryly.

“How was I supposed to know he was the local clergyman’s son?”

 Janus rolled his eyes. “On second thought,” he said, pushing a button on his desk to choose Cuba as he next mission, and standing up. “I don’t want you coming with me.” Yet, he did not protest when Remus also signed up for the Cuba mission and he waited for him by the office door before going to talk to Rhi.

Rhi was a bit frazzled when which meant quite a bit as she was usually incredibly put together. Remus didn’t even seem inclined to tease her today.

“Okay,” she said once they’d closed the door behind them. She flipped through some documents on her desk. “Picani and Clockson. Camaguey Cuba 1755. Do you know Cuba?”

 “Uh,” Janus said. “Yeah?”

“Like you’re reading the things, right? I don’t have to babysit you, right? You got it? The Seven Year War was happening, but it won’t affect you much as it hasn’t really hit Cuba. It’s the middle of the Camaguey Carnival. Everyone will be everywhere and there will be chaos so as long as you don’t really fuck up you should be fine. Um…apparent races.” She looked up at them and studied them each for a moment as thought looking at them for the first time despite having known them for years. “It’ll work. Go to costuming.”

“Shouldn’t we…” Janus said, “sign things?”

 “…Yep,” she said, fiddling with her desktop and then sending documents over to their side to sign.

Janus and Remus both did before sending them back.

“Great. Good.” She stood and grabbed some things from behind her. “You can go.” She sat back down as they took their things and Janus noticed a message pop up on her desk. She looked up at Remus looking exhausted. “What?” she asked.

“Just open it,” Remus said.

Rhi tapped it and a photo opened.

“I got her a new mouse toy!” Remus said happily as Rhi looked at the picture of Diesel Fuel attacking a cloth mouse.

“That is… appreciated Agent Clockson,” Rhi said. “Now get out.”

 They did, leaving to get their costumes on and checked. Costuming was just as busy and frazzled as Rhi had been and they actually had to wait for decon because there’d been a mix up with the agents leaving before them. They landed in Cuba without issue. Janus could already hear the festival in full swing outside the small building they’d were in. Remy was standing there with a very not time appropriate mug of coffee.

“Sue me,” Remy said when Janus raised an eyebrow at it. “Please just… get in and out without causing trouble. Seriously. I don’t want to have to deal with that on top of everything else.”

 “We’ll do our best,” Janus assured.

Remy pulled his sunglasses down to look at him. He looked exhausted. “God please do more than your best.”

Janus nodded tightly. “We’ll be in and out,” he said, already glancing at his timepiece. It had been disguised as a golden bracelet which made it a bit harder to actually use, but wrist watches wouldn’t be invented for more than a century, so they’d have to make do. “The time distortion, if that’s what it is, should be in the middle of town. Let’s go.”

He and Remus exited the building onto the packed city street.

 Janus was immediately bombarded with all types of sights, sounds, and smells. There were many colorful articles of clothing and costumes as people went every which way along the street talking to other members of their community, playing instruments, and dancing. There was the sound of people speaking Spanish, still mostly almost pure Castilian Spanish with perhaps a bit of influence from Taino as the Haitian revolution had yet to push the Creole language over to Cuba. People must have been hard at work cooking different dishes for the carnival as many different spices wafted through the air. It was sticky hot considering it was the middle of June in the tropics and Janus was immediately sweating despite the temperature appropriate clothing he’d been outfitted with.

 He glanced around their immediate area, just scoping out the crowds. His eyes were immediately drawn to one person near them.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said out loud when he saw Pat. Remus looked in the direction Janus was.

Even if Janus didn’t recognize him the moment he laid eyes on him, he probably still would have ended up staring as he was the only person in the area who clearly did not know how to do the dance he was attempting.

Remus snorted and Janus shook his head in secondhand embarrassment. “Well, would you look whose boyfriend’s here,” he said to Janus. Make that firsthand embarrassment. “Has anyone told him the Mambo wasn’t invented until the 1900s and also that’s not how you do it?”

 Chapter 17

Pat stopped dancing the moment he saw Janus approaching him, but he still bobbed cheerfully ( and unrhythmically) to the music. “Hi Janus,” he said pleasantly.

“You just have to rub it in, huh?”

There was a flash of confusion across his face, but then he smiled. “Well, I know where in our relationship you are. How was France?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“You stole the phone,” he laughed.

“You stole the bomb,” Janus countered, “and you wanted me to steal the phone. You booby trapped it.”

“No,” Pat correct, putting a finger up. “We have security on my phone because in high school I once forgot it in the school locker room and long story short, the three of us ended up in a lake. So, then Lo made sure I always had some sort of tracker on it. When I started time traveling, he updated it and when I met you we updated it again in case there was ever an opportunity like that. Lo calls it using our weaknesses to our advantage.”

 “He’s a bastard too,” Janus growled.

Pat just laughed.

“Is someone talking about me?” Remus asked, stepping over to them. Janus rolled his eyes.

“Oh,” Pat said, blinking at Janus’s partner for a moment. “Remus.” He hesitated slightly. “How are you doing?”

“Me?” Remus asked. “Uh, I’m doing good. A little stressed out with work, but fine.”

“Good,” Pat said with just a little too much heartfulness to it.

“What?” Janus asked, eyes narrowed at Pat. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Pat asked. He met Janus’s eyes briefly and it made panic surge up Janus’s spine because the look Pat was sending him wasn’t one that said he was playing dumb. It was a warning.

 Oh, Janus did not like this. That look told Janus Pat had some foreknowledge that he absolutely could not tell Janus about without messing up the timeline spectacularly. This was why this mess the two of them were mixed up in was so bad, but it seemed Janus did not have much of a choice when it came to Pat.

Despite how bad of an idea he knew it was, he still wanted to push, because whatever Pat was hiding could be very, very bad and it had to do with Remus. There were so many reasons Pat could be acting like that around Remus, but the worst ones were definitely the ones on his mind. Death, injury, illness. They were all possible especially in their line of work and especially with how time was being screwed with right now. And Pat knew. He knew exactly what the answer was, and oh did Janus want to push.

Experience knowing what worse things could come out of having foreknowledge made Janus bite his tongue.

 “So, what are you two doing here,” Pat asked, and Janus unhappily let him change the subject.

“Oh, like you don’t know,” Janus replied.

“I don’t know,” Pat said innocently.

“There’s another time distortion,” Janus said, “and while you didn’t know what it was the last time I saw you, I’m pretty sure you do now.”

“Oh, I didn’t know there was a time distortion here. I can help you if you like,” he offered sweetly.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to see if I could find the Flying Dutchman,” Pat told him.

“And so you went to Camaguey?”

“Uh huh.”

“One of the farthest places from the ocean in Cuba?”

 “Is it?”

“I don’t trust you.”

Pat just shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want my help finding the time distortion, I’ll just be on my way then.”

“Wait,” he said when Pat went to turn away. Pat paused. Janus turned to Remus. “Remus, do you think he’s bullshitting me so I let him wander off and do whatever the hell he’s doing, or do you think he’s bullshitting me into letting him come with us.”

“Hmm,” Remus said, looking Pat up and down. Janus could immediately tell he wasn’t going to get any helpful answer. “Well, if we’re going with the how much do I get to see his, admittedly very sexy, ass criteria.” Janus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Letting him leave now means instant gratification and a nice full image when he turns away. However, letting him go with us means many more opportunities to get a glimpse, but they’d probably just be glimpses. So, yeah that’s a tough call.”

“You didn’t even bother to give me an actual hidden suggestion with that bullshit,” Janus groaned. He glanced at Pat only to see him hiding his very red face in his hands. Janus blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You got him, Remus.” Janus was surprised. He’d expected a bit more tenacity for someone with Pat’s personality. Of course, Janus was used to Remus, so that perhaps had some effect. Pat made a muffled distressed sound behind his hands and Janus raised an eyebrow. “You really got him.”

Pat flapped one hand around while still using the other to completely hide his face. “It’s just. His face. Saying that. Is weird.”

 Janus could not say that he didn’t feel a slight spark of joy at seeing Pat flustered. After all, Pat’s weapon of choice had often been flirting with Janus in the past. However, he still smacked Remus on the shoulder when it looked like he was about to continue with something likely far more inappropriate. “We are here for a reason,” he reminded. He turned to consider Pat and squinted at him. “You’re coming with us, I’ve decided. I don’t want to let you out of my sights. Don’t,” he said empathically turning to Remus as the man opened his mouth once more.

 Pat had mostly recovered, though his cheeks were just a bit pink still. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Where do we start?”

Janus glanced at his timepiece. “It’s not showing up on our trackers yet.”

“It messed with your tracker last time,” Pat pointed out.

“I know,” Janus said. “Which means it could be another fake one or whatever is causing it hasn’t started yet. If things start going wrong, but it still doesn’t show on our radar, it’s almost certainly a fake one, but some of the fake ones haven’t blocked our technology.”

“Here, I can check,” Pat said.

“Please don’t pull out an iPhone,” Janus begged.

 Pat stuck out his tongue at him, and then smiled. He reached for the bracelet on his wrist and twisted it back and forth a few times before pressing his palms together. He glanced around them quickly to make sure no one around them was watching and then peeled apart his palms like he was miming reading a book.

“What the fuck is that, and how do I get one?” Remus asked immediately. It was innocuous, whatever it was. If someone from this time caught a glimpse of the display, they’d likely assume it was a trick of the light, but staring right at it, Janus could tell it was a map of the surrounding areas with a softly glowing blue light marking their current location. Janus could see no screen or origin of a hologram. It looked like the image was drawn onto the man’s palms, but as he watched, the image shifted to zoom out.

 “There doesn’t seem to be anything major yet,” Pat said wiggling his fingers a bit. The display changed slightly to some sort of colorful overlay Janus did not understand. Pat hummed. “Did you two come from that building recently?” he asked nodding at it.

“Yes,” Janus replied. “How do you know?”

“There’s sometimes a slight temperature change when people time travel,” Pat explained. “I can read it on here.” He tilted his head. “There also seems to be a big enough temperature change in a church a few blocks away that could indicate time travel. Want to check it out?”

“We might as well,” Janus agreed.

“And if it’s nothing, we can get drunk on the communion wine!”

“He’s going to get immediately struck by lightning,” Janus said.

 Chapter 18

“If we see anyone,” Janus said as they entered the church. “You keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me? Remus, do you understand me?”

Remus immediately turned to Pat. “You know, I didn’t grow up Catholic,” he said to Pat who looked at him in confusion. “So the first time I ever entered a Catholic church, you can’t blame me for being a little confused about the whole cabinet thing with a wall between them. After all, everyone was singing about glory to god and what not. So I…”

Janus slapped him. “This is why you were almost burned at the stake yesterday.”

 “Excuse you,” Remus said, putting his hand over his heart. “I was almost drowned.”

“You were almost drowned?” Pat asked, his voice seeming legitimately distressed.

Remus shrugged a smile on his face that caused a Pavlovian migraine to start up behind Janus’s eyes. “It’s one of the hazards of the jobs, and really it would have all been worth it if I’d actually gotten to drown in that man’s…”

“We’re in a church!” Janus cut him off switching from Spanish to Swahili in the hopes that no random passersby would be able to understand him in this time and place. “Don’t talk about lewd sex things. Don’t talk about sex at all. It’s a Catholic church!”

 Remus continued to speak in Spanish with no regard for anything. “But not talking about lewd sex things takes away 3/4ths of my personality,” he pouted.

“More like 9/10th,” Janus grumbled, “and the other 1/10th is just normal stupid.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t be mean,” Pat scolded, in fucking English for some reason, “but Remus, honey, you probably shouldn’t be saying things like that right now.”

“No, no, he has a point,” Remus said switching to English.

“He’s my partner, I have the right to call him stupid,” Janus insisted.

“And I love you too!” Remus said in Greek because he was really, truly, stupid.

 Pat looked between the two, but then seemed to accept it, dropping the concerned expression for a slightly amused one. “If you say so.”

“Can I… help you?” A voice asked. All three of them whipped around to see a young boy looking at them and seeming very confused. Which was fair considering that to his ears, they’d just been speaking nonsense.

“We’re here to pray!” Remus claimed, then he turned to wink at Pat and said under his breath in Swahili, “to that ass.” Pat went immediately bright red again, which was doubtlessly Remus’s aim. Janus subtlety stepped on his foot while smiling at the boy.

 “Oh,” the boy said. “Okay.” Thankfully, he didn’t seem interested in questioning the random strangers in front of him further. “I’m going to go back to the celebration now.”

Janus smiled at him. “Have fun,” he said. He waited for the boy to leave through the front door before slapping Remus on the back of the head.

“Ow!” he whined sounding far too pained for how hard Janus had actually hit him.

Janus rolled his eyes. “Let’s just start investigating,” he said.

“Sure, sure, you never let me have any fun,” Remus said, pulling up his wrist and spinning the golden bracelets on his arm. “Hmm…” he said.

 “What?” asked Pat.

“Either I put on the wrong jewelry this morning… or my timepiece isn’t working.”

“Well, then I’m guessing we’re in the right place,” Janus said. He turned to Pat. “Your stuff still working?”

Pat brought up whatever device was on his hands. “Yeah,” he said, “and it looks like something is just starting.” Just as he said it, there was a violent crash of thunder.

“Well,” Janus said. “We should probably find the source and soon. Which way?”

Pat glanced around himself and then motioned with his wrist. Suddenly there was a 3D display of the church in front of them.

 Janus could see immediately where the problem had to originate. There was a swirling mass of some sort of energy centered at the top of the bell tower of the church. As he watched, he saw the picture of the church glitch out a bit. He had a bad feeling about that.

“Is there something wrong with your display?” he asked, or more hoped.

Pat shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so…” The room seemed to shift suddenly underneath their feet. It felt a bit like time travel, but also wrong. The picture on the display flickered harder, part of the building fracturing and dissolving before appearing back in place. The room settled after a moment, but Janus’s stomach did not.

 “Whatever is going on,” Janus said, “We need to stop it right now.”

Pat nodded. “The quickest way up would be that way,” Pat said pointing. The display closed as he did.

“Then, let’s go,” Janus said.

The world was eerily calm as they all started off in the direction Pat had pointed out. In fact, it was almost too quiet.

“Where’s the nearest window?” Janus asked when they came out on the second floor.

Pat glanced at his hand. “There should be a couple a few feet that way.” Janus nodded and left them standing there. When he glanced out of the first window he came to, it appeared to be night. Yet, when he walked to the next window, he saw daylight.

26606

“Time is fracturing,” Janus informed them. “We need to be careful.” This time distortion was much more intense than any of the other ones the agency had been tracking down over the last few months. It had also come on much faster. Usually there was some time between when the time distortion began and it started having extreme effects on the environment. He was suddenly very glad that he and Remus had not split up today. He was even glad for Pat’s company, no matter how aggravating he may be sometimes. Not to mention, he was glad for the man’s technology that seemed to circumvent whatever was blocking Janus and Remus’s timepieces.

He backed away from the windows and returned to the others.

“Whatever you do,” Janus said. “Don’t let anyone be in a room alone.”

“I know what time fractures are this time,” Pat promised.

“It was as much for the idiot as it was for you,” Janus said.

“You accidently bring a bubonic plague infested rat to 900BC one time and you never live it down.”

“I’d say I should put a leash on you, but you’d twist it into something disgusting.”

“Probably,” Remus agreed.

“Where next?” Janus asked, ignoring him.

“That way,” Pat said.

They walked together to the door he’d indicated. “Please don’t be bullshit,” Janus prayed. He opened the door and immediately got bowled over by a stream of salt water.

 Chapter 19

Janus landed flat on his back, a wave of water splashing over him and then quickly retreating, but still leaving him absolutely drenched. He sighed, looking at the ceiling. “Don’t,” he warned, “say a word.”

Of course, he was with the two most impossible people in all of space and time, so neither of them headed him.

“I thought you said we were far from the ocean, Jan,” Pat said.

“Yeah, Janny,” Remus immediately jumped on board because he was an asshole. “I thought we were far from the ocean!”

“Maybe I’ll achieve my goal of finding the Flying Dutchman after all!”

 “Ooo ghost pirates! I’ve never gotten to fight ghost pirates before. Any good with a sword Patty?”

“My friend has a sword and he let me use it before… but all I did was cut a hole in our couch, and then Lo was mad at us.”

“I mean… just pretend the pirates are a couch and we’ll be good!”

Janus slowly sat up. There was still water on the floor and every so often a wave would crash into the room as though the door frame signaled the edge of a beach. Pat reached down to offer him a hand up and Janus slapped it away.

 “Rude!” Pat claimed, but his eyes were alight with mischief.

Janus shoved himself to his feet on his own power.

“You deserve it,” he hissed. “For all of this!” he waved his arms around.

“Water you talking about. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You are on thin ice.”

He looked down at his feet with a contemplative expression. “Looks like water to me.”

“Arg!” Janus spat, throwing up his arms.

“I don’t sea why you’re screaming, Janus.”

“Yeah,” Remus contributed. “You seem overally emotional to me.”

“Yes, yes,” Pat replied. “Very em-ocean-al.”

“One may even say he’s pretty salty.”

“I know where you live, Remus,” Janus reminded.

 “Alright, alright Remus, reel it in,” Pat said.

Remus opened his mouth to respond, but Janus cut him off. “Why don’t the two of you dedicate all of that brain power to figuring out how to cross the literal ocean in the next room,” Janus suggested hotly.

And it was a literal ocean. If one ignored where they were and the fact that there was a staircase climbing out of said ocean about 80 or so meters away. There was sand being washed up across the door frame and a seagull flying in the distance. At least it looked like a nice day in the room with the way the sun was glinting off the water. At least it wasn’t storming there. Yet.

Janus’s head throbbed with the thought of what had to be happening with the time distortion to plop a piece of the ocean into one single room in a church. Usually they’d be calling the TPI for backup or at least for information, but that was a loss. Even if they tried to get out of range of whatever was disrupting their timepieces, time was so unstable, they’d very possibly get dumped somewhere dangerous. It was better to just get to the time distortion as quickly as possible and stop it.

 “Hmm,” Remus said. “I wonder how deep it is. Do you think there are man eating sharks in the water? Or giant jelly fish? Remember that one time I got stung by a jelly fish and almost died?”

“Yes,” Janus said, lips pursed, “and it was entirely your fault.”

“I just looked so squishy!” he declared, “I didn’t know it was a murder blob.”

“I think I have a boat,” Pat said.

They both turned to him. “What?” Janus asked. He was looking at his hands and just hummed in response to Janus’s question. The next thing he knew, Pat made some motion with his hand and a yellow raft started to autofill from his palm. “...Why?” Janus asked.

“I… recently started carrying a wilderness survival pack in my time device.”

 “I’m not going to question it. It’s better than swimming.” By the time the raft was completely deployed, they’d all been shoved into the walls by it.

“Huh, on second thought. I probably should have put the raft in the room before blowing it up.”

“You think?” asked Janus.

Pat glared at him over it. “I never really thought about how to open it in a narrow second floor corridor.”

“Just try to shove it through the door without popping it.”

“Why are you looking at me?!” asked Remus.

They managed to somehow squeeze the raft through the door into the other room after a few minutes.

 Pat squinted at the tottering raft he was holding to the door frame. “After you,” he offered.

Janus glared at him.

“You’re already soaked!” Pat defended himself.

Janus sighed and very carefully climbed into the raft. It tottered dangerously, but he didn’t immediately fall out, so that was a plus. The other two of them slowly also climbed onto the raft with him. They then sat in it for a few seconds. “Is there an oar?” Janus asked.

“Oh right!” Pat did something else with the device in his hands and an oar slowly unfolded from his hand.

“Seriously, I want one of those,” Remus said.

 “Let’s just get out of here,” Janus said, snatching the oar. The staircase luckily wasn’t too far away. They probably could have swam it if necessary, but the raft gave them some modicum of protection. Everything seemed to be going in their favor, which of course meant everything was about to go incredibly wrong.

They were about halfway across the water when the entire world around them rumbled.

“…I hope that was a giant jellyfish,” Remus said.

It was unfortunately not a jellyfish or any sea creature at all. The world around them fractured, the ocean seeming to split right down the middle so the water right of the staircase was 6 feet higher than on the left. The sky flashed red and yellow before the water split completely like Moses splitting the Red Sea.

 There was a millisecond as the split widened until it was only a few feet from them, to decide whether when they landed they wanted to be on the side with the water or on the side without it. On one hand, going towards the side without water could mean they fell to their deaths or the water crashed back down on top of them when it settled. On the other hand, if the fissure was closing or shifting to a new area, it was very possible that they’d end up trapped in the middle off the ocean with no connection to the church.

 Well, the best chance to actually get to where they were going was probably the side without water. It seemed everyone had the same idea at once because as he grabbed for both of them, they both grabbed for him and they all went tumbling off the raft into what could have very well been a bottomless pit.

Janus learned after a couple of seconds of free fall, that it was definitely not a bottomless pit. He landed hard, flat on his back and saw stars. The next moment something landed on top of him, squeezing all of the air out of his lungs.

 Something else fell half on top of his legs.

“Ow,” Pat said from near his ear.

“Yeah, well you’re the one on the top,” Janus groaned though his teeth.

“Wow, I never took you for a bottom, Janus,” Remus said from near his feet. Janus kicked up his legs into whatever part of him was on top of Janus and he gave an “oof.”

Pat snorted a bit and Janus glared at his… shoulder? He shifted around a bit so he was less thrown across Janus and more just on top of him. Janus blinked. There was a wooden ceiling above them, so that was a good sign, though there was also a giant dark hole of nothingness directly above them which was not as good.

 Janus moved slightly. He could tell he was going to be bruised later, but he didn’t seem seriously injured. “We should,” he started, but was interrupted as the hole above them pulsated and dumped a bunch of sea water.

Pat shrieked as they were all drenched with the chilly water. Luckily, they seemed to be on higher ground because, while water kept pouring out of the hole, it drained away just as quickly instead of drowning them.

Water still hitting his back relentlessly, Pat peeled his head up to look Janus in the eyes. A giggle bubbled out of his mouth.

“It isn’t funny,” Janus informed him. Pat just giggled more, leaning his head against Janus’s chest and cackling.

 Janus just rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, this is an entirely appropriate reaction. Thank you for your contribution to our very important mission.”

Pat seemed incapable of stopping laughing completely, but he did calm himself enough to peel himself off Janus’s chest and lean forward so their noses almost touched. “It’s hilarious and you know it,” he claimed.

“In what way is this ‘hilarious’?”

“In many waves,” was the joy filled answer.

“You’re horrible.”

Pat hummed. He hadn’t moved to get off of him even though they really should be moving in case something worse than water came through the hole in the ceiling. He hadn’t even moved his face away.

“No, no, you two just tell me when you’re done being gay for each other,” Remus interrupted. Janus was surprised to see he’d stood up at some point and was now hovering over them.

 Janus flipped him off even while Pat laughed once again. Pat finally drew away and rolled off of him so Janus could sit up. Pretty much everything hurt when Janus moved, but he was able to stand up, so he was probably fine enough. “So,” he said looking around. “Where are we now?”

 Chapter 20

Janus looked around himself while Pat booted up his map to try to figure out where they were. They were in a small room that may actually be considered a large landing as there were staircases on either side of it. The water that was still coming out of the ceiling was running down the staircase that led down from the room.

 Something was stopping the water, creating a pool on the steps that was already about to overflow into the room. With the speed the water was flowing, they should have enough time before the room completely filled up with water and drowned them.

Janus wondered if they were in the church or not. It was not out of the question and there was church like décor around them, but who knew? He could feel a strange vibration in the ground and the one window in the room shone with green light.

“Hmm,” said Pat. “That looks not good.” He’d projected his map so they could all see everything.

 The map itself was moving. Rooms were phasing in and out of focus and fracturing down the middle. One room was even spinning lazily around in circles. Janus could see the room they were in. It was connected to the bigger blob of rooms, and there was a black line connecting it to another room from the top which was obviously the hole spewing water at them.

“Well, at least the time distortion is still coming from the bell tower,” Remus said. Janus shot him an unamused glance. Said bell tower was currently upside down and shuddering as well as divided from any other room by at least two inches of empty space.

28842

“How are we supposed to get there?” asked Pat.

“We don’t,” Janus said. “It’s literally impossible.”

“There has to be some way,” Pat argued with a frown.

“If we try to use time travel, we’ll definitely get shredded by the warping time and space around it and walking there isn’t an option. There aren’t even any entrances!”

“Well, there were at one point.”

“Yeah, before,” he gestured wildly to the ceiling that was still pouring water into the room.

“So?” Pat asked.

“’So’?! What do you mean ‘so’?!”  

Pat shrugged. “When one door closes, cut another one.”

Janus froze and looked at him for a long moment. “Where the hell did you hear that?”

Patton raised an eyebrow. “You.”

“I don’t think like that anymore.”

“Well then I guess we’ll die,” Pat said lightly. “Of course, that’ll make an even worse time loop considering I’ve met older versions of you.”

“Fuck,” Janus spat. “Fuck. Fine. Give me a minute to think. Not that I even know if we have a minute because,” he gestured once again to the room.

 “Okay,” Janus said. “The room with the source of the time distortion is separated from us by a swirling pool of dark nothingness and there is no way to get to it. But, the only way we’re going to stop the distortion from ripping apart time and killing us as well as probably a bunch of other people is to get to it. That is an impossible situation. There is no solution. That door is closed to us. What other ways are there to look at it?” He looked at the visual representation of the rooms. One of them suddenly went spinning out and his eyes tracked it. We need to be in the same place as the source,” Janus said. “That is fact, but we don’t have to get to it.”

“Um, what do you mean?” Remus asked. Pat shushed him.

 “If you want thing A and thing B to be in the same place, there’s more than one way to do it. If you can’t move thing A to thing B, you might be able to move thing B to thing A. Pat, you have a working time device. We can’t travel with it because that would kill us, but if we can make it do a stutter warp, it could draw the time distortion to it.”

“You…” Remus said. “Want to create another time distortion in hopes that the original time distortion will be pulled into this room?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sounds good to me!” Remus said.

 He maybe had expected Pat to argue, but he didn’t. Instead, he moved his hand to his wrist. There had been nothing there before, but when he touched down on his wrist with two fingers, there was suddenly a metal bound around it that Janus immediately recognized from the times he’d seen Pat’s timepiece before. How was it made invisible? He shook the thought off as Pat offered it up wordlessly. Janus took it and Pat leaned over his shoulder to look.

Despite the fact that the device looked nothing like his own, the interface was surprisingly convenient. “I assume you have safety setting to prevent a stutter warp,” Janus said. “How do I turn those off?”

 Patton pointed at a gear icon on the screen. “You put it under your normal settings?” he asked.

“I have to put in my password or use my fingerprint!” Pat defended.

“It doesn’t matter right now.” He navigated through the settings. He was interested to see that there were many different saved default security settings, but he didn’t get much of a chance to read what all they did. He just turned them all off.” It popped up with a message to put in the password and Pat pressed his fingertip to it. Another message popped up warning them that turning off these settings could cause damage to the machinery, the person using it, and time itself. Janus pushed “okay.” A message popped up that asked “Continue” and Janus pressed “yes.” One last message popped up that said “Security functions disabled.” Janus pressed “okay.”

 “Anything else I’d need to disable?”

“Nope,” Pat confirmed.

He navigated back to the main screen and then bought up the manual travel input screen. Yet another message warning him not to do this flashed and Janus once again ignored it. He copied the space time coordinates that the device said they were currently at and put it in the ‘travel to’ location. “Well,” he said. “Here it goes. Let it be known that if I die, it’s my own fault for allowing Remus into a church.”

“Really?” Remus said. “That’s what you’re choosing to be your last words?”

Janus just raised an eyebrow.

“Love you too Janus.”

Janus nodded and hovered his finger over the travel button. He quickly mashed his finger to the button 22 times.”

 The device warmed in his hand enough that he almost dropped it. Time literally froze for a few breaths as whatever Deity that may or may not exist processed their stupidity.

Janus was not a scientist or technician, but he had a good idea of how badly they were fucking up right now. The timepiece was attempting to travel over and over again to the exact same place and time. This basically punched a small hole through time, that if left unfixed would grow and disrupt space time all around them. As it was, their current position, all gathered around it and staring at it while one of them had it literally in their hand, was perilous.

 There was a rumble under their feet and the world tilted on it’s axis. The all went tumbling down in a pile of limbs to new floor of the room which had once been a wall.

Of course, this change of gravity caused the water that had been building up in the staircase to dump on top of them.

Janus would have cursed, but he was too busy being under the water. He maneuvered himself away from the other two flailing bodies and managed to shove his feet against the wall turned floor. His head popped above the water in time to see the ceiling, or well, it would be the opposite wall, rip in two and the other walls/floor/ceiling start to fold in.

 “Give me a boost!” Pat called over the noise of water rushing and walls crunching.

“Give you a boost where?” Janus asked.

“Up!” Janus wasn’t sure if ‘up’ really existed right now, but he still nodded. The water was a few inches over his head, so he held his breath and interlaced his hands so Pat could put his foot in it. He was shoved down into the water, but it gave Pat enough leverage to shoot up out of the water. When Janus resurfaced, he saw that the man had grabbed ahold of the crumbling wall and was pulling himself up into what for all appearances seemed to be absolutely nothing.

 It took a moment, but then Janus blinked, and he was suddenly in a new room entirely or perhaps it was the same room. He honestly didn’t know at this point. Remus was next to him. He couldn’t recall if he’d been there before the shift or not, but they were both treading water. Pat crashed into the water next to them. Janus’s wrist buzzed as his timepiece came back online. “Got it!” Pat declared when he resurfaced, holding a device up. It looked almost the same as the device they’d found in France, but this one was definitely different if it was able to cause that much chaos that quickly.

 Janus looked around and pointed at what appeared to be a set of stairs. The three of them swam over and pulled themselves out of the water.

“Where are we?” Pat asked.

“Looks like a basement,” Remus replied. “A flooded basement.”

Janus pulled up his timepiece and pushed some buttons to stabilize Pat’s timepiece. It slowly stopped vibrating and cooled. “Here,” he said, handing it over to him. “I suggest you put the safeties back on now.”

Pat nodded and took it.

“We’re still in Cuba,” Remus informed them, looking at his own timepiece. “Same church too, but in the basement and… two and a half centuries later.”

“Remy is going to be pissed,” Janus said.

Remus shrugged. “He’s always pissed… at least at me.”

“Well,” said Pat, slipping his timepiece back onto his wrist. “Thanks for being willing to pool our resources.”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Stop.”

“Ah, mi sirenito-”

“I hate you.”

“-never.” He disappeared with a pop which was when Janus realized, he’d never handed over device that had caused the first time distortion.

“…You bastard!” he yelled at thin air as though the man could hear him.

“Well,” said Remus, “that mission went swimmingly.” Janus reached over and shoved him back into the water.

 Chapter 21

“We should probably get out of here,” Janus said, very much not helping Remus out of the water. Remus pulled himself back up onto the staircase and shook like a dog. Janus crinkled his nose as water droplets hit him. They didn’t smell salty anymore, he noted. In fact, there was a broken pipe spewing out water on the other side of the room.

Janus and Remus cautiously snuck out of the church, not wanting to be seen and blamed for the flooded basement. They came out on a city street that was much different than the one they’d entered from.

 They walked down the street a bit, Janus’s eyes scanning the buildings. His eyes caught on a sign and he tugged Remus towards it.

They entered the small paladare and the person delivering food to one of the tables blinked at them both. Right. They were in clothing from the 1700s and were soaking wet. He met eyes with the woman, challenging her to say something. She did not.

They found a seat at one of the tables.

“Ah…” the worker said, approaching them. “English?”

“Ron,” Janus said, “por favor.”

Remus turned and started ordering the both of them food in Spanish. Janus didn’t pay attention to what he did.

 After his second shot of rum, Janus sighed and brought up his timepiece to ping the TPI. The reaction was almost instantaneous from their perspective. Remy all but kicked down the restaurant’s door and walked over to them. “How the fuck?”

“Ah, Remy,” Janus said calmly. “Have a seat. We’re waiting on our food.”

He did, but probably only because people were looking at them. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s been a long day,” Janus answered, “and I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, it certainly looks like you’re interested in the food,” Remy said, eyeing the empty shot glasses.

“Let’s just say, I’m glad Cuba started letting paladares legally serve liquor a few years ago.”

 It’s clear that Remy wanted to ask them what had happened, but he also was cautious enough not to make a scene here and Janus wasn’t planning on getting up until he’d at least gotten his food. “Why are you soaked, by the way?”

“Turns out the ocean isn’t as far away as we thought,” Janus said.

“Also, a church basement is flooded,” Remus said.

“Fantastic,” Remy replied.

They sat there mostly in tense silence until their food came, and then Remus and Janus ate. Remy slapped down some pesos once they were done and then proceeded to all but physically drag them out of the restaurant.

 They were led to an alley way and then through an old almost hidden door. Remy immediately rounded on them. “What the hell happened?” Remy asked.

“The time distortion caused level 5 time fractures in its vicinity, we almost drowned three times, and the worst person in the universe fucked me over again.”

“To be fair,” Remus said. “He did save our lives before that.”

“I saved our lives first,” Janus said. “I don’t have to be fair.”

“Oh, yeah, Mr. Curl Up In A Ball And Perish. I’m sure we would have been fine without him.”

“Anyway,” Janus said to Remy. “If you want your lump of flesh, I suggest you take it now, because Khalid is going to murder me, and then fire me, and then rehire me so she can put me on desk duty and make me do paperwork until the end of time.”

#not writing #study break stories

[aspenflower17]

Finding You (Part Two of ??)

Hello again! I'm back with the second installment of my new series, Finding You, which was previously Untitled.  If you want to be tagged when I update this series, just comment below :)

 Part One Link

In this part, we finally get to Satan and what he's been doing during all this. It's not really a happy chapter. You have been warned.

I think it's important to note that I am American. In this part, there is a funeral. Since I don't know much about other cultures or religions way of holding funerals, I just wrote what I know (and that's very little actually. I've only been to two full funerals. I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have). Feel free to change the story up in your head to match your own funerary customs.

As always, likes and reblogs are greatly appreciated and help me endure the torture that is typing up this story from my notebook 😒 I also tried to make sure the editing on here was good. Any DM's for typos or things that didn't make sense are appreciated so I can fix them (please be kind though 🙂 ). I did write some of the funeral disjointed on purpose, trying to recreate how I was feeling when I attended the funerals I did.

Tags (for you lovely people <3 ): @obey-me-trashshshshsh, @naimena

F! MC/ Satan

Word count: 3,195

Warnings/triggers: ANGST!, description of funeral, loosing someone dear to you, some violence at the end though nothing too graphic (he is the avatar of wrath after all)

Satan had felt when Mc died. His pact mark had begun to glow and heat up. A terrible rending feeling in his chest, then… Nothing. He couldn’t move, fear completely paralyzing him. No, it couldn’t be…

Then he heard Mammon scream. Then Asmo. Then Levi. Soon, the whole House of Lamentation was filled with wailing. Satan scrambled for his D.D.D, hurriedly dialing Mc. No, no, no, no, no. He had just talked to her. She’d been fine.

“Hi! This is Mc. I can’t get to the phone-”

“No… No, no, no, NO!” Satan screamed, throwing his phone at the wall. Satan sunk to his knees in a sobbing heap.

The brothers never got an answer to what exactly had happened to Mc. Diavolo had confirmed she had passed, but he couldn’t get any details since she hadn’t been sent to the Devildom. He had managed to find out when and where the funeral would be, if they wanted to go. They would only be able to attend the graveside service though, since the viewing was being held in a church. 

Each brother attended the graveside service. Satan stood stoically as the casket was brought out of the hearse. He was wondering if he would be able to get Asmo to charm everyone in attendance so he’d be able to see her face one last time, when he felt his brothers all shifting around uncomfortably. He realized the religious figure he’d tuned out was quoting scripture at the congregation, promises that Mc was now in the hands of God. He decided to tune him out again. Then the casket was being lowered. He had to be physically restrained from going out and pulling her out as the first fistfuls of dirt were being thrown on the casket. How could they do that to her? A voice murmured a reminder that she was gone, and they were just saying goodbye. Well, he needed to say goodbye too. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

Next thing Satan knew, he was at the corner of the grave, a flower he’d had a death grip on since they had started out from the Devildom in his hand. Her favorite. A shiny wood box met his eyes from 6 feet below. Was she really there? He couldn’t feel her presence from his pact mark. Where was she? When was he going to wake up?

The other demon lords watched their brother loose the fight with his emotions. He sobbed, falling on his haunches. Six hands found a part of Satan to touch, tears in their eyes as well.

“It’s time ta let ‘er go,” Mammon’s stuffy voice came from next to him. Satan looked over to find Mammon had removed his sunglasses. His eyes and face were wet.

“I… I don’t think I can,” Satan stated, tears falling freely.

“I know. I know,” Mammon said, pulling his brother in for a hug. Each of the rest of the brothers joined in the hug, pulling the fourth and second born up with them. After a bit, they all let go, moving forward to give Mc their own token and say their last words. When Belphie had finished, Lucifer put his hand on Satan’s shoulder.

“Mc’s waiting for her flower,” Lucifer said, gesturing towards the grave. Satan nodded, and walked forward. He fiddled with the stem for a second, trying to find the words to say, “Mc… Huh, I don’t actually know what to say… I guess, I… I thought I’d find some way to be with you forever. I never thought… I’ve never felt anything like you before Mc, and I don’t think I ever will again… Please… Please, if it’s possible, come back to me. Please,” he uttered as he dropped the flower onto the casket, and walked back to his brothers. He knew everyone was looking at him, confused and curious through their sorrow. They all stayed until the end of the funeral, when Satan turned to Lucifer, “I think it might be time to go.”

“If you’re sure, that would probably be the smartest course of action,” Lucifer nodded, the humans looking questioningly at the demons. The religious man from earlier was actually making his way towards them.

“I’ll visit her later when there aren’t so many people around,” Satan stated as he started walking. The brothers exchanged looks before following him.

The next couple months were quiet at the House of Lamentation. The brothers did the bare minimum required to keep the household going. They were all absent from RAD and Lucifer even took some time off from the endless amount of paperwork he usually did, to grieve. Mc may have been dating Satan, but the rest of the brothers loved her too, and missed her greatly. The only time the brother’s saw Satan was when he was raiding the fridge, finally giving into his stomach pleading for food. He still managed to look somewhat put together, though his eyes were dead and haunted. He had retreated so far into his mind if one of them managed to get him to acknowledge their presence they counted it as a win. He was a shell of himself, and everyone was worried.

Time marches on though, and life slowly returned to normal. One day, Lucifer had gone to RAD and come home with some random paperwork that needed to be done. Another, Asmo was going out to update his wardrobe because his was terribly behind the trends. Each brother found their own way of coping. Beel eventually asked if they could all have family dinner again. They all actually made an appearance, though Satan left once he was done eating.

Though he wasn’t doing well, Satan had been visiting Mc’s grave at least once a week if not more. Lucifer had granted him access to the portal indefinitely, a gesture of kindness that did not go unnoticed. At first he just cried quietly at her grave, not able to produce a coherent sentence. It slowly evolved into him reading her her favorite books or some snatch of poetry that reminded him of her. Eventually he was able to talk freely as he once had. Sometimes it was a mixture of the three. His brothers never saw him cry though. Since Mc had been the only one that seemed to truly understand his feelings, she was the only one allowed to see him cry. Through this self therapy, Satan started to heal. He started sitting in the common room with his brothers in the evening, or snorting at some joke that had been thrown around the table at dinner.

As the years passed, Satan would still visit Mc’s grave, though the frequency dropped. He slowly learned to deal with his sorrow, just like he had with love when he’d first fallen for Mc. It was much harder, his wrath often informing his depression. She became his support again, even if she wasn’t able to respond to help him through his feelings. He always visited on her birthday, bringing her a bouquet of flowers and some small piece of literature, art or playing her some music.

One year, while reading her some Shakespeare, someone came up behind him, “She appreciates it. I know she does.”

Satan stopped reading instantly, whipping around to see a woman who looked quite a lot like Mc, “Excuse me?”

“Coming to see her every year. You have great taste in art by the way,” the woman said, sitting down besides Satan, looking fondly but sadly at the headstone.

“Um, thank you. May I ask who you are?”

“Only if I can ask you the same thing,” the woman responded, smiling at him wryly. The look was so similar to one Mc would give him, he found himself instantly trusting this woman, “I’m S… Stan,” he answered, giving the nickname Mc come up with, when he had asked if he’d ever be able to meet her family. She’d laughed when she'd thought of it, saying she could never introduce him as Satan.

“Stan? I was wondering. She met you when she took that trip out of the country right?”

“Yeah… Did she tell you about me?”

“Oh, you want me to remember that far back? Hmm… I seem to remember her talking about how smart you are, “She chuckled, her eyes far away, “I remember one time, I went in to talk to her and she was furiously reading some book. When I asked what she was reading she told me she couldn’t talk to me right then, needing to catch up to where you were in the story. It was a silly little moment, but she looked so determined… I do know she was in love with you. Though she only really told me about you shortly before she died, I remember the look in her eyes when she talked about you. Telling me about how drawn she was the moment she laid eyes on you. You know what a romantic she was. As her Mother, you can guess how excited I was to meet you, especially after watching her get her heart broken before... You’re exactly her type, you know. Tall, blonde, smart. She was even thinking of introducing you to us. Then it happened.”

Satan didn’t realize the tears were flowing until she looked over and wiped a tear away. She continued, “I was disappointed when I didn’t see anyone that matched your description during the viewing. I don't know what kept you, but I am glad you made it for the casket lowering. I was surprised to see your brothers though, if that's who they were. You all look so different… Anyways, I’m sure she would've loved the intrigue you brought to her service. A handsome stranger, distraught at the thought of life without her. She always did love big, dramatic displays of affection.”

“You remember me from the funeral?”

“Who could forget? It became a topic of conversation in our family once we could all talk about her without crying. Who was that blonde guy? Why wasn’t he at the viewing? Who were the other men he was with? Did she secretly get married while she was out of the country? So many theories, each one more ludicrous then the last. It seems her best friend and I were the only ones to connect the dots as to your identity.”

“Ah. I’m a little embarrassed now,” Satan admitted sheepishly.

“Don’t be. I was extremely bitter after the funeral for a long time. How could my beautiful daughter be taken away from me? Parents were never meant to outlive their kids. I’ve never understood the reason people take photographs at funerals. Most of the time, there’s so much makeup caked onto the body they’re almost unrecognizable. There’s a photo of you from the funeral I actually saved though. You’re looking at the casket with such a look of longing and loss, just waiting for her to come back to you. That photo actually brought me a lot of peace after she was gone. Your look perfectly encapsulated how I felt at the time. It also helped me to know she was able to know that much love before she left. I never want you to feel embarrassed for showing that kind of love to my daughter.”

" She is and always will be the only one for me.”

Mc’s mother laughed, “Oh, you’re still young and quite handsome. You’ll find someone else. In fact, you don’t look like you’ve aged a day from the first time I saw you. You must’ve made some kind of deal with the devil,” she joked.

“Ah. Very funny. Yes. A deal with the devil. Haha.”

Mc's mother looked at him, slightly concerned, "Well, it seems I've made things awkward. I’ll leave you two alone now.”

“Oh, that’s okay. You don’t have to leave on my behalf,” Satan protested.

“It’s alright. I live close by, and I come and visit fairly often. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime. Good night, Stan”

“Good night, and… thank you.”

Mc’s mother smiled at him and walked away.

“Well, Mc, I guess I have your mother’s approval now,” Satan joked, turning back to his Shakespeare.

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

“Remind me why we’re here again,” Satan said, only slightly interested in the antics Mammon was trying to drag him into.

“Tryin’ to get some sucker… er, customer ta part with their Grimm, obviously,” Mammon explained, leaning back in his chair and turning to face Satan and Belphie.

“What does that have to do with us?” Belphie mumbled, eyes more closed than open.

“Well, everythin’! You two are super smart, so I need ya ta…” As Mammon continued talking, Satan wondered, not for the first time, if Mammon actually ever intended to make money with his schemes, or if he had simply found a way to work through his sin without causing too many problems. He had to understand how likely his plans were to fail… Right?

A bump on his shoulder announced Belphie had fallen asleep. Since Mc had helped him work through some of the trauma he had held onto since Lilith’s death, Belphie had gotten comfortable with his brothers again, growing especially close with Satan, their mutual dislike of Lucifer giving them something to bond over. When Mc had died, Satan had found Belphie to be the most supportive of his brothers. Though they'll lost had lost Lilith, Satan had found Belphie the most sympathetic to what he was going through.

“Oi! Listen when I’m talkin’ ta ya! Ya both younger than me, so you shouldn't really show me more respect.”

Belphie lifted his head, and rolled his eyes, “Mammon, do you really want me to do you a favor? How about this? Maybe, don’t explain how you’re going to con people in front of those you want to con.”

Mammon looked around worriedly, finally noticing the glares he was getting, before rounding on Belphie, “I was just explainin’ the plan ta ya and Satan cuz ya both asked again! If ya didn’ wan’ an explanation, ya shouldn’ have asked!”

Belphie was about to retort, when he got a self satisfying smirk, “Oh, dearest big brother, looks like you’ve got your first customer.”

Mammon went pale, turning around slowly to find a demon about as tall as Lucifer staring Mammon down, obviously angry.

Very interested in how Mammon was going to worm his way out of this one, Satan turned to say something to Belphie when he caught sight of a familiar hat. 

“Belphie, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn’t that Luke?”

“Hmm? You mean the chihuahua?... Oh, I think it is. Why do you suppose he’s here? I never heard we were getting any visitor."

"It's a little terrifying just how much you know. You're like Asmo that way."

"It's not my fault everyone just assumes I'm sleeping while they're talking."

"Belphie, you know enough, I think you store information while you're asleep."

"Huh… I'd never thought of that before… Who’s that other angel with him?”

“I don’t know… She kinda looks familiar though, don’t you think?”

Belphie looked over at him, arching an eyebrow, “Do you know any angels younger than Luke?”

“Well, no, but… She just looks so familiar.”

“I guess… Hey, you’re missing Mammon squirm.”

“You watch and enjoy. I’m going to go talk to them,” Satan said, clearly distracted, as he got up out of his seat.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a large body planted itself in front of Satan. The demon was tall, but so was Satan. He was able to look him right in the eyes.

“What’s it to you?”

“You’re with the guy that was going to scam us right?”

“You were actually going to fall for his scheme? Really? Well, the first step to getting the help you need is admitting you have a problem. Now, move. I’ve got places to be.”

“Not so fast Princess. You’re not getting away that easy,” the demon put out his hand and grabbed Satan’s shirt.

Satan looked down at the offending hand, and then at the demon, his horns already starting to sprout, “I’d suggest you unhand me if you want to keep your kneecaps.”

The demon laughed, a cocky smile on his face, “Ya think just cuz you’re an elite ya can take me? What makes you so special huh? Ya just think ya so great, just because ya pretty. Am I right?”

The rest of Satan’s demon form appeared, his eyes glowing, a menacing aura surrounding him, “No. I know I can take you because I’m the Avatar of Wrath. Maybe, if you weren’t such a dunce you’d have noticed that,” and with that Satan grabbed his hand in a bone crushing grip. The demon started yowling, trying to twist out of his grasp. It only made Satan increase the pressure. He leaned in right next to the demon’s ear, “Next time you pick a fight, understand who you’re dealing with first.”

He swept the demon’s legs out from under him, and put him in a wrist lock submission hold. The demon was now yelling for mercy, desperately trying to break Satan’s hold. Satan looked around to see if he could still see Luke, but realized quickly that wasn’t going to be possible. Both of his brother’s were currently dismantling whatever demon had decided to pick a fight with them. The rest of the area had erupted into chaos, most demon’s running away. No one wanted to be around when one of the Avatar’s were fighting, much less three! A couple idiots were trying to get in on their fight though.

Sighing, Satan leaned down again, “Well, well, well. Looks like you’re losing your kneecaps today.”

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

Satan muttered to himself, picking up bits of trash that had been left by the fleeing demons. Because of his involvement in the fight, he had to clean up the entire park. Trying to explain to Lucifer he'd been trying to walk away apparently didn't help when you'd put five demons in the hospital before he'd shown up to stop you.

“Well, Lucifer, if you could’ve just kept your cool, you’d still be prancing around with Simeon and Michael up in the Celestial Realm, making friendship bracelets, painting each other little rocks and braiding each other’s hair as you giggle about how… Huh?” Satan crouched down, noticing a small foot peeking out from a pile of leaves. Moving around to the other side of the pile, he saw it was the small angel that had been with Luke.

Up close, the feeling he'd met her before was even stronger. She looked so familiar, but he knew he’d never seen her before. The youngest angel he’d ever met was Luke. Maybe she was from the foggy memories of Lucifer’s he still had? That was forever ago though. She should've grown up quite a bit by now...

His musings were interrupted as the small angel moving. She winced as she sat up, holding her head, “Wha… What happened? Luke? Where are you?, then noticing Satan, “Oh, hello there. I’m sorry, but could you help me find my big brother?”

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

Part Three Link

#obey me satan #obey me belphie #obey me! #obey me #obey me! swd #obey me luficer #obey me mammon #obey me asmo #obey me mc #f! mc #obey me fic #obey me leviathan #shall we date obey me #shall-we-date-obey-me #hopefully that's enough tags... #my writing #Finding You #obey me beelzebub #obey me satan/reader #obey me satan x reader

[silver-wield]

Can you do an analysis on Cloud and Tifa’s body language during that scene when they’re in Cloud’s room and he’s slyly referring to his promise to Tifa? There was crazy sexual tension in that scene and it honestly looked like Cloud was subtly being flirty with her 😭

No probs, Nonny! I actually already touched on their body language in a reply to a gif set of this bit, so we'll just expand on that ^=^

Ok, spoiler warning for ppl who haven't played – do I still need to do this? Eh ok, (I tag FF7R spoilers as final fantasy 7 remake spoilers) and it's gonna be a VERY long one so prepare to scroll.

Also, this is one person's interpretation of the scene, so if you disagree that's cool and we'll agree to disagree.

You're also gonna have to excuse the janky quality on some of the screens, I'm grabbing them from Youtube and it's frustrating af trying to get the exact moment I want.

Other analyses if anyone's interested.

Shinra HQ vision scene (Cloti/plot analysis) 

Chapter 3 (Cloti reblog) 

Tifa character analysis 

Aerith Resolution (plot analysis/theory – I should probably update this since I've had other ideas since then) 

Train graveyard (not really an analysis, but I got some sweet screenshots of Cloti) 

Clotiscrew tunnel analysis 

Cloti reunion analysis 

The Promise Analysis 

Andrea's approval (Cloti ask response) 

Leslie analysis (not mine, but a good read) 

Cloti action touching 

Aerti friendship analysis 

Now, strap in and enjoy the ride.

Keep reading

Recap time! Yall know the drill by now if you've read my other ramblings.

Chapter 3, where we get a room (lol), do some jobs and have a chat with Tifa. It's pretty basic stuff until the cut scene after Marle gives Cloud a talking to. She's the overprotective grandmother figure that Tifa needs in her life and she wants to make sure Cloud isn't messing with her. Now, why would she think that? Well, maybe she picked up some hints when Tifa mentioned Cloud to her about wanting a place to stay? Marle's pretty sharp, after all, and if she got the impression Tifa is carrying a torch, she'd definitely make sure Cloud's not about to blow it out. She tells him to pay attention to her, to listen. This is the very first instance of Cloud taking in that kind of info and it changes how he treats others for the rest of the game.

After the chapter 4 mission where Cloud reflects on his promise to Tifa, it's back to the slums for some rest. Then Tifa knocks on his door and enters. She mentions Cloud was gone for a while, and he answers he was walking so that he keeps Jessie's secret – because he's that kind of guy.

Small talking Tifa is cute, but lol, Cloud seems to have purposely forgotten Johnny since he's yet another admirer of Tifa. For a guy who doesn't forget info like morons who could cause them trouble in the long run, it's pretty telling how quickly he is to dismiss Johnny.

Onto something more interesting in this pic, though. Cloud is sitting on the bed. Now, if he wasn't comfortable around Tifa he'd have got up. His eyeline is lower than hers so he has to look up at her. This puts her in a position of dominance over him – also not surprising since his mentality is that of a 16yr old around her and she's the adult in the relationship. Tifa for her part has her body turned to the side in a non-confrontational pose.

Tifa has her hands clasped in front of herself (couple of seconds before this screen) which indicates she's trying to protect herself as she asks the question if Cloud is leaving Midgar. Not surprising since she's afraid of losing people she cares about and even just someone heading off somewhere else would upset her, though she'd try not to show it.

Cloud, for his part, looks away, appearing as though he's thinking it over, but we're already aware he's decided to stay and help Tifa out, so this is a fake out on his part. He's half-teasing, half trying to get a positive response from her (remember the water tower? Yeah, this is that Cloud. The dork. The one who is useless at talking to girls).

I'm sorry, but Cloud is such a cheeky bastard I just can't with him! This is giving me all the throwbacks to his behaviour at the water tower and I love that it mirrors that moment, but with more success on his part this time. He's looking all around trying not to give himself away before it's needed. He's smiling and looks relaxed. He might be sitting but he definitely believes he has the upper hand between them at this point. Remember, I've said before that eye contact is important. Well, in this case, Cloud's deliberate refusal to make eye contact shows he's teasing. This is such a cute moment between them!

Oh ho! But here's where his teasing ends. Cloud is being completely serious and obviously took the promise between them as being special. Ducking his head out of sight completely prevents us from seeing his expression and allows him to act in a casual way about something that's such an important part of who he became. But, he's not quite pulling it off because he's also looking quite defensive in this pose. His hands are clasped in front of him and he's leaning forward, looking at the floor. This is something very meaningful for him to talk about and he's hoping Tifa doesn't brush it off, so if he doesn't look at her he won't have to see her reaction.

Tifa's obviously got her own interpretation of how that promise went. We can guess she did it because she just wanted a guarantee she'd see Cloud again some day from how she acted during the water tower cut scene. Here, she's leaning back on her hands which leaves her body language open, but also conceals something. She's looking down, the same way Cloud did. She's also hiding her true feelings towards Cloud the same way he's hiding from her, but she's being as honest as she can be as the same time. I've seen people call Tifa a liar because of how she doesn't address Cloud's memory problems in OG, but when you really take a close look at her, lying just isn't her. This is a complex moment between them. They've not long met again and they're having this heavy conversation. The feelings between them are still there, but there's all this other stuff that's more important. But, they know they're friends, and that's a good place to start getting to know each other again, and Cloud choosing to stay is that first step, with the quick follow up of him reminding her of their shared history.

Cloud, you smooth bastard I love you for this! This is definitely flirting! He's looking directly at her, then dips his head to the side in an inviting gesture. His eyes soften and he gets this tiny smile on his face. His body language has changed, too. He's sitting up and back slightly with both arms by his sides. There's no more defensiveness about him. He wants to listen to her. Cloud is choosing to ask for Tifa's confidence. He's letting her know she can rely on him. That he's interested.

For her part, Tifa's pleased, but surprised. She's not long got back in touch with Cloud and, while he's been a decent guy, she's had the overall impression he isn't the same as the soft boi she knew, so this is a revelation for her. The Cloud she knew is still within this Cloud – which anyone who knows the real!Cloud SOLDIER!Cloud storyline is exactly the point of this moment. Tifa knows his true self. The true self that comes out only when he's with her.

Cloud, bro, I'm gonna combust from all these flirty gestures! Fully open body language, a smile, teasing tone. Goddamnit, just say you love her already! Yes, please, invite Tifa to check you out. Remember, he's still sitting. He's so relaxed and natural around her. Even if all you saw was two friends and no ship, you'd be insane to think he isn't a different person in this scene. He's not SOLDIER Cloud here.

Tifa, for her part, isn't flirting here. She likes Cloud, that's clear, and her body language is reaching towards him, which suggests she has feelings towards him, but her tone is more playful and her expression is pleased. She's happy to see her friend isn't too different from the one she knows. Most of the flirting in this scene is on Cloud's side, which makes sense when you think of the torch he's been carrying for her. He's trying to get her attention, same way he did when they were kids. Tifa's oblivious but receptive because she likes him back, but she won't show it as much because she thinks he's not interested. Someone knock their heads together please lol

OMG FUCKING HELL CLOUD JUST TELL HER YOU LOVE HER! Leaning back on the bed, totally vulnerable body language, drawing attention to the bod in an attempt to spark her interest – since he's clearly interpreted this line from Tifa as a rejection – this boi is trying so hard! He even looks a little disappointed she's not more impressed with SOLDIER Cloud, but we knew she preferred the dork anyway lol

Now, I know everyone talks about the physical and emotional distance between them here, which is obvious, but what I'm gonna point out is after feeling like SOLDER Cloud has been rejected by Tifa – thanks to her preference for the real deal – Cloud looks away from her. She's brushed him off and he's hiding his upset by not meeting her eyes.

Tifa is still oblivious to this, but Cloud definitely has a look of disappointment on his face.

Now, after that last bit you'd think Cloud would assume he's got no chance, but then Tifa says how glad she is to have him back and that cheers him up. He's still in that mindset of a 16yr old with a crush, whereas Tifa's moved on. She's had 5 years apart from him (she thinks it's 7, I know, but he saw her in Nibelheim and how she'd matured a little). She's not thinking of him in an openly romantic sense, whereas Cloud is definitely still deep in his feelings for her. Hearing she's happy to see him hints to him that he might still have a chance with her if they spend more time together. His soft af goodnight is the last indicator of his strong feelings for her. His body language is open once more, he's staring after her with a longing look and a smile and doesn't look away until the door closes.

Conclusion

JUST GET FUCKING MARRIED ALREADY IT'S BEEN 23 YEARS!

Lol seriously though, Cloud is definitely still deep in the throes of his childhood crush. Tifa could resurrect hers with time because it's clear she does still harbour feelings for him, but she's not the type to be pushy or insistent. She'll let Cloud take the lead and offer subtle hints how she feels, hoping he feels the same. She doesn't pick up on Cloud's subtle flirting compared to those more in your face things he tried earlier. Through all of those interactions with her he's definitely trying to say that he likes her and he'd like her to accept his feelings, but the bigger gestures get the brush off, although she blushes and looks shy, and the smaller ones go over her head.

Unfortunately, these two are oblivious af and it's gonna take everyone's help to get them together.

#final fantasy 7 remake spoilers #final fantasy 7 remake analysis #cloti #cloud strife #tifa lockheart #seriously #just kiss already

[sweetcathedral]

Note: The reblogged continuations looked weird on phone format, so here’s a cleaner one with a link for Part 1. Link for Part 3 will be updated here tomorrow!

⚠️: Reader’s discretion is advised. This chapter contains forms of dubious consent and explores the theme of sex being used as self-harm.

They sat together in comforting silence, thinking of nothing but the serenity of having each other by their sides.

“Hey, Tsukki.”

“Mm?”

“Just message me next time you feel like sleeping around.”

Contemplating silence. Maybe what he said was stupid, or Tsukki had fallen asleep, or he’ll be met with another cold—

“Okay.”

Suna blinked, taken back by surprise. “What?”

“I said okay.”

“Oh.”

“What do you mean ‘oh’?”

“No, I just—I thought you’d be opposed to it.”

“They’re not as … good … as you,” Tsukki mumbled.

Suna grabs his face tilting it up.

“Assho—!”

“Say that again.”

“No!” Tsukki shakes his head out of his hand, so that he could turn around and face him properly. “Just because I’m sleeping with you doesn’t mean I like you, okay? Pleasure. We’re only using each other for pleasure, okay?”

Suna knows.

“I know. But I couldn’t quite catch what you said before, you put water in my ears.”

“I said, they’re not as good as you.”

“Not as good as me in—?” He baited Tsukki to fill in the blank.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

“Say it, or I’ll drown you,” Suna said over Tsukki’s voice.

“They’re—” Tsukki’s ears were turning red again, “they’re not … they’re not as good as you in bed! There I said it!”

Suna burst out laughing. Tsukki kept splashing him to calm him down, but he was having too much fun poking at Tsukki after he had admitted how good Suna was compared to the other guys.

They finished up their bath in silence, Tsukki fell asleep while they were in the tub, so Suna finished cleaning him up first. After dressing Tsukki in clean clothes and putting him to bed in the spare bedroom, he went back to the bathroom to finish his bath with a quick shower.

Finally alone, he let out a loud sigh. “Fuck,” he mutterd under his breath.

Suna knows. He knows what he’s in denial of, he knows that Tsukki likes Kuroo, he knows that Tsukki would never choose him, that he’s just a rebound to pass time as Tsukki gets his shit together. I know, I know, I know I know I know I know I know. I. Know. But this relationship was better than nothing. He didn’t care what he had to sacrifice, as long as it kept Tsukki from spiraling out of control. And if it costs him to break a relationship to make Tsukki happy, he’d do it in a heartbeat, because that’s all he wanted Tsukki to be. To be happy.

“Oi, Suna!”

Tsukki waved his hand over his face. “What are you dozing off for?”

“Nothing, just thinking about what to have for dinner later on.”

“Hinata, Kenma and Atsumu are trying to invite us for korean bbq tonight. You coming?”

“Sure, I’m free.”

A couple of weeks have passed since he dropped by Kenma’s place to hand Atsumu a package Osamu needed to get to him urgently. He had planned to give it to Tsumu as soon as he saw him, but everytime he did, the package wasn’t with him in person. Osamu kept reminding him to the point of pestering paranoia that he ended up at Kenma’s place in the middle of the night, so that he could finally sleep in peace and not have nightmares of Osamu killing him for not delivering the package in a timely manner. Thank God Kenma allowed him to stay over. According to Atsumu, the package wasn’t even a big deal as Osamu made it out to be. Again, Suna got caught in the twins’ antics and bickering over the phone. The package in question wasn’t physically that big (looking at it from the outside), but when he caught Atsumu opening it and holding it in his hand the physical appearance didn’t matter anymore. Suna had delivered an engagement ring to Atsumu on behalf of Osamu, not knowing the story behind it and not caring to know it. Not a big deal my ass.

Once Suna’s paranoia disappeared, he was finally able to resume back to his daily life routines. Except, this day also wasn’t part of his routine.

“Where are you taking us?” he questioned Tsukki to remind him again.

“Shopping for new shoes.”

“Couldn’t you do that alone?”

“Yeah, but then I won’t have an excuse to get out of conversations with fans that I bump into. I’ve been bumping into them almost everyday thanks to Kenma’s Portugal vlog with Hinata, and his fans have been asking me to do another one with Kenma too.”

Tsukki grimaced, while looking at the maps app on his phone, leading the way to the store he wanted to checkout.

It’s true Kenma’s fans go overboard about wanting to know what goes on with everyone that appears in his videos, but as long as they don’t force themselves onto them, then it’s fine.

“Hey, could you guys be Tsukishima Kei and Suna Rintarou? Volleyball players, right?” A cheery woman walked up to them, coupled by two of her friends waiting close by to confirm their curiosity.

“Yeah, you watch our games?” Suna replied with a smile, covering for Tsukki. “Sorry, he’s a bit shy.”

“Oh that’s okay, we didn’t mean to take up your time,” she clarified hurriedly, “we just wanted to know if it was okay to get a picture with you guys?” She timidly asked, perked with anticipation.

“We don’t mind,” Suna kicked Tsukki’s foot, still keeping his facade on. “We have a bit of time to spare for you guys, right Tsukki?”

A harmless response, yet calculative in a polite way to let their fans know that they’re only free for the picture and nothing more.

Tsukki fidgets behind Suna then reluctantly steps out, properly greeting his fans.

One of the girls tried holding the phone in an angle that could get them all together, but Tsukki and Suna were too tall.

“Here, how ‘bout I hold it for us,” Suna offered, winking at the woman, which sent her into a flustered expression. “Okay! Ready, one, two—”

“Three!” They ended the chant in unison.

Once they confirmed their satisfaction with the picture, they bowed their goodbyes to each other.

“What’d you do to make her friend blush like that?”

“Fan service.”

“Not scared that you could’ve turned her into a stalker?”

“Don’t need to be scared. Stalkers start their day stalking, she started the day with her friends not knowing they’d bump into us.”

“That’s some deduction.”

“I’ve dealt with a few stalkers before, so it’s only natural to know so I could avoid it in the future.”

“Scary.”

“Is it around here?” Suna looked around for the shoe store Tsukki had on his phone, swiftly changing a conversation he didn’t want to get into details about.

The thought of it sent a shiver down his spine.

“Ah, over—here.”

“Tsukki?”

“You guys are here too?”

Just as they spotted the store, Suna and Tsukki bumped into Hinata, Kageyama and the woman Suna saw in the gossip articles, Kuroo’s girlfriend.

“Tsukishima, Suna … what the hell?” Kageyama narrowed his eyes in annoyance.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Kageyama wanted to improve his foreign language skills with her, but we also planned to buy shoes afterwards, so we met at Kuroo’s place and now we’re finishing the day off with shoes.” Hinata rambled, explaining their day to Tsukki.

“No, I wasn’t—I didn’t mean it literally.”

“Dumbass,” Kageyama snickered.

“Huh? But you asked.”

“That’s,” Tsukki sighed in defeat, “nevermind.” He shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Oh, by the way, this is Kuroo’s girlfriend.” He introduced you to Suna.

“Hello,” Suna bowed.

You bowed in return.

For someone who’s usually sneering at almost everyone, Tsukki was composed, unable to look anyone in the eye.

“We can come back later on if you want,” Suna spoke to him in a low voice.

“Why? We’re already here.”

Suna and Tsukki followed behind the trio into the store.

What Suna could tell from Tsukki wasn’t anger, jealousy or sadness, he was uncomfortable and awkward—withdrawn—maybe because everyone else seemed to get along with her and Tsukki didn’t know how. The one thing they had in common was their feelings towards Kuroo, from what Suna can presume.

“Are you gonna shop for shoes too?” You asked, trying to strike up a conversation.

“Nah, I only came ‘cause of Tsukki.”

Out of the five of them, you and Suna stood by waiting for the three to pick their shoes as they made snarky remarks at each other.

“Are you finding the stay okay?” Suna picked the conversation up.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” your feet fidget. “I’m finally able to take a well needed vacation after working non-stop for a year.”

“What do you work as?”

A question not asked out of curiosity, only to keep the conversation from dying in awkward silence.

“Artist, specifically a painter.”

“Nice. I never thought of Kuroo as the artsy type, so how’d you guys meet?”

“Through Kenma,” your eyes softened. “We were able to meet thanks to him.”

Kenma? “Oh, you knew Kenma first?”

“Yeah, although I only met Kuroo in person after a few years of being friends with Kenma,” you nervously laughed.

A few years? Suna thought back to what he knew from the articles, but he never thought about the extent of your relationship with Kenma. Your connection with him only surfaced when the rumours between you and Kuroo were making headlines. You also never appeared in any of his videos, nor were you ever mentioned by Kenma himself. So who were you to Kenma?

“Did you meet Kenma as a fan?”

“No, I actually didn’t know he was a pro gamer until afterwards.”

“Oh?”

“We met at E3, and I guess Kenma came as a shareholder instead of what he’s known for.”

“So you game at the side too.”

“No, not as seriously as Kenma. I went as a shareholder as well.”

“Hey! You guys wanna head to the bbq place now?” Hinata interrupted.

Kageyama and Tsukki trailed behind him, looking satisfied with their new purchases.

“Oh, I’m heading back for the day. I still haven’t prepared Kuroo’s dinner and he’s working overtime today,” you politely declined.

“Aw, boo,” Hinata pouted.

“Sorry, maybe another time. I still have a few more months before I leave.”

Hinata continued making excuses for Kuroo to starve, so that you could join them for the bbq, but you seemed to purposefully be avoiding hanging out with them.

“Do you not like us?!”

“That’s not what I’m saying!” You yelled back at Hinata. “I’m saying that I’ll look like a whore if I’m the only girl there!”

“Then I’ll be a whore with you!”

“That’s not how it works!”

“Oi, if she said no it’s no! And that’s Kuroo’s girlfriend you’re trying to ask out!” Kageyama smacked him upside the head.

After Tsukki broke the fight off, they decided to drop you off at the station. Suna felt disappointed at the thought of not getting to know you better, there were still questions he wanted to ask, but at least he got to see how the others were around you. Although, Tsukki had different reasons for being the way he was.

Hinata and Kageyama didn’t even talk about you behind your back, once you were gone. Kageyama was excitedly going over his new phrases and vocabulary with Hinata, and talked about how easy it was to learn from you, like a kindergartener talking about their first day of school. On the other hand, Hinata was still annoyed that you weren’t able to come, but he was already planning where and whom to hangout with next. Their excitement expressed how comfortable and happy they are to be around you, except for Tsukki.

Tsukki neither expressed his like or dislike of you, not that Suna knew anything about you, yet. He barely got to know you, except for the fleeting, but daunting, mention of Kenma. A thought he’ll overthink before he sleeps in the nights to come.

They arrived at the korean bbq place and found Kenma and Atsumu at their reserved table at the back corner of the restaurant, right by the washroom.

“Took you guys long enough,” Atsumu scooted over, making room for the rest.

“Hinata was begging her to join us and wouldn’t let go until we dropped her off at the station,” Kageyama exasperated.

Kenma turned to Hinata, putting his phone in his pocket. “Someone’s attached.”

“But she’s fun to be around and it’s not like she’ll be here for long,” Hinata sulked.

“You can see her another time. It’s not like she’s gone forever.”

“You can see her any time. I don’t have that much money like you to be saying it that easily.”

It’s true. Out of everyone seated at the table, Kenma was the only one rich enough to say he could travel easily, despite them being pro athletes. Must be nice to be that free.

Time flew by fast as they got lost in their conversations and topics, blissfully filling their stomachs with good food and light beer.

Suna couldn’t help but overthink about the way your name sounded coming from Kenma’s mouth, but they had suddenly stopped mentioning you after a quick change of topic, thanks to Atsumu. There was no mention about the ring Osamu had been pestering Suna to give to him, so he had assumed that it could be fake, although the conversation the twins had over the phone sounded serious.

Tsukki was seated across from him, intently listening in to Atsumu and Hinata rambling on about their sponsorships and what to do in their upcoming fans meeting, while scrolling through his phone. Placid as usual, but nothing out of the ordinary … though he can feel Tsukki brushing his foot up his ankle under the table in a discreet manner. He glances up to Tsukki, nonchalantly keeping a poker face, blending in with the right reactions to the conversation. Suna knows he was the one who proposed this type of relationship first, but his intentions weren’t the same as what Tsukki is probably thinking of.

Suna gets up from the table, naturally Atsumu and Kageyama adjust themselves to make room for Suna to get out with ease. “I’ll be back,” he tells them.

He takes a trip to the washroom and heads out the back door of the restaurant for a smoke. And of course, after a while, Tsukki followed him outside.

“You free tonight?” Tsukki asked in a mellow tone, lightly tapping Suna’s feet with his.

“Again?”

“So you’re not free?”

Everything clicked in Suna’s head. It all made sense now, and he was right to keep Tsukki close to him by proposing this type of relationship. Whenever Suna turned him down to fuck, it’s not that Tsukki agreed with his answer, he just found another way to get what he wanted by calling someone else. The options Tsukki keeps in his phone is just his last resort, if things didn’t go the way he wanted them to. The only time Tsukki wants to fuck is when something related to Kuroo comes up; the point where he wants to forget the most. How could Suna not notice after all this time they spent together? Tsukki never talked about how he really felt about anything. This whole time Suna thought that Tsukki was getting better, but he had actually gotten worse. Maybe this relationship wasn’t a good idea in the first place, but Suna didn’t want to risk going back to how it was in the past, especially with how their relationship is now.

[...]

[Part 3]

#minors dni #haikyuu!! #suna rinatro #tsukishima kei #haikyuu!! fic #suna fic #tsukishima fic #suna angst #tsukishima angst #suna x tsukishima #suna rintaro x tsukishima kei #suna rintaro angst #hq tsukishima #hq suna #hq fic #haikyuu suna #haikyuu tsukishima #suna x tsukki #hq tsukki #haikyuu tsukki #haikyuu time skip #suna time skip #tsukishima time skip #suna rintarō

[benscaligraphyset]

Chapter Four

(A/N: I am once again apologizing for the late update. This chapter is a bit long in my defense but it also takes me a while to fine tune things and then I get more ideas and then I want to add more blah blah you guys don’t care but I really hope you enjoy this chapter! Please reblog if you do so I can get more engagement! I love reading your guys’s comments as well <3  I also decided to do something a little different and not use a gif of Ben but instead something that relates to the chapter? Let me know what you guys think!)

Warnings: Drug use

You knew that Luke would be pestering you soon to get up, so, reluctantly, you threw the blanket off your body and left your warm bed to go find your robes for the day. It was a somewhat chilly day so you decided to wear one of your heavier sets of robes, a grey one that Leia had gifted you, and you quickly reached out to the Force and brought your saber to your awaiting hand. You looked in the mirror, planning to give yourself a good once over before going to see Ben, but anxiety pooled in your stomach at the thought of what he would think of your appearance. Would he think the robes were ugly? Would he hate your two messy buns that were very clearly not brushed through? What would he think of the dark circles under your eyes?

You sat in front of the mirror for a good minute before groaning and forcing yourself to turn away. You could fixate all day if you let yourself and you weren’t even sure what you were so worried about. Ben was your best friend and you’ve never worried about how he thought you looked before—not since a long time ago, anyway—so what was the issue now?

You threw open the flap to your hut and were greeted by the bright sun, causing you to instantly squint your eyes as you attempted to see what everyone was doing. Voe and Tai were practicing forms nearby, the former actually giving a rare smile, and Jannik was reading a book in the grass a little bit past them. Everyone else was either in the cafeteria or still mustering the strength to get up and start the day. A whistle in the distance brought your attention to your left and you saw Ben waving at you in the field a few yards away.

You giggled and thought briefly that he looked adorable huddled in his colder weather robes.

“I didn’t think you were ever going to wake up,” Ben said once you made your way over.

You rolled your eyes. “Not all of us woke up to sneak out of someone else’s hut at the crack of dawn.”

“Would you rather I stayed?” He teased and handed you a wrapped biscuit.

You cleared your throat and took the biscuit from him. “Even if I did, you know how Master Luke would’ve reacted.”

“I was kidding,” he said, giving you an odd look. You swallowed nervously and suddenly found the sight of your biscuit very interesting. That familiar anxiety found residence in your chest again.

“Yeah, uh, I know. I was just saying,” you replied lamely and prayed that he would just look away from you. He quickly did, not a fan of social awkwardness himself.

“So, are you ready for me to kick your ass tomorrow?” he asked, thankfully changing the subject.

You snorted. “Big talk for a man who’s lost to me the last two times we sparred.”

“Not this time, honey.”

Your cheeks flamed at the nickname and you could only chuckle nervously as you unwrapped your biscuit.

“You know I hate it when you call me that,” you mumbled and he grinned.

“That’s exactly why I do it, honey.”

He was so infuriating sometimes.

“Whatever. If it makes you feel like a big man to patronize me—“

“You’re so dramatic, Y/N.”

“Oh, coming from you, the most dramatic man alive?”

“Me? Dramatic?” he asked incredulously, bringing a hand to his chest in offense. You couldn’t help but note how much he looked like his father.

“Mhm,” you hummed, taking a bite out of your biscuit with a grin.

Ben chuckled softly. “I don’t know where you get your delusions.”

You both made the trek over to the nearby lake that you had made a habit of going to every morning. It was just a nice and peaceful way to start the day as you watched the waterfowl feed their young and splash around.

The local flora kissed your ankles as you drew closer to the lake. The yard wasn’t tended to this far away from the temple so the grass was allowed to grow free and tall. You actually like it better grown out; it being allowed to grow freely with no influence from anyone else, namely the Jedi. Though, maybe you were just projecting.

There was a lone bench on the side of the lake that you and Ben had silently claimed for your own. It was a bit rotted and discolored, but it supported both your weights and that’s all you really needed. The lake was in a dip in the field and the tall edges blocked out any evidence of the temple even being here and it was relaxing to just forget about all of it, if only for an hour.

You giggled in delight as one of the birds waddled over to you, eager for what you had to offer. The tri-colored bird honked impatiently as you riffled through your pockets.

“Alright, alright,” you laughed and finally retrieved the seeds. “Here you go.”

The bird chirped happily as it pecked at the seeds that you threw to the ground, bringing the attention of the other birds. Suddenly, they were all waddling towards you with hungry eyes

Ben laughed. “They’re gonna swarm you.”

Panicking, you tossed the seeds far to the left and, luckily, they went for the seeds instead of your toes. You sighed in relief and looked back at the original bird, continuing to peck away happily as if nothing had happened.

You both ate your breakfast in silence, enjoying the beautiful lake before you. A fish jumped in the distance, followed by a few more, before the water went calm again. You wondered if they were escaping a predator below the murky depths.

“Do you have any more seeds?” Ben broke the silence.

“Uh, yeah,” you answered, fishing in your pocket for the remaining seeds. Ben took them and went in the direction of the pecking birds, but ignored them for a scrawny bird on the outskirts of the swarm. It kept trying to get some of the seeds but was continuously pecked and squawked at, unable to get any. You figured the feathers out of place all over it’s body was from other birds pecking at it.

Squatting in front of it, he offered his hand full of seeds for the neglected bird and it cautiously approached him. It looked up at Ben’s face and you watch as he gave it a comforting smile, letting the bird know it was okay to trust him.

Your cheeks rose in temperature and you had to look away to stop the butterflies that were beginning to swarm in your belly. He was just so good and it made you want to do things to him that a good Jedi wouldn’t. Besides the obvious images that run through your head whenever Ben stretched up and his shirt slipped up just enough for you to see his sharp hip bones or when his pants were just a little too tight, you also struggled with ideas of you laying together late at night, holding each other in the middle of the night like it was the easiest thing in the world. It was almost overwhelming at times how much you wanted to hug him, how much you wanted to just hold him and be held by him for the rest of your life, and how much, honestly, you wanted to kiss him until he felt no more pain. But, you can’t do that when you’re trying to be a good Jedi, not that you have much of a choice.

You waited until Ben came back over the bench to turn your gaze away from the lake and back at your friend. That’s all he was after all: a friend.

A friend, a friend, a friend....

He smiled at you before throwing an arm around you and sighing. “I wish we could just sit here all day and not go to training.”

You planted a grin on your face and leaned on his shoulder. “Me too.”

You tried to ignore the butterflies that flurried at his words.

“Thank you...for last night, I mean,” you said after a minute, eyes cast down at the bird below you. It was weird to thank your best friend for spending the night with you with you were both over twenty.

“It’s no problem,” Ben replied as casually as he could manage, but you could tell he felt the awkwardness as well.

You were both silent for a minute, each chewing on your respective biscuits, until you couldn’t take it anymore.

“I—I’m sorry,” you blurted. “I made things weird, bringing it up. I shouldn’t have—“

“It’s fine, Y/N,” he interrupted and you clamped your mouth shut. You internally smacked yourself as you somehow managed to make things worse.

“It was a one-time thing,” he continued and took another bite. “No big deal.”

Your heart sunk in your chest and you quickly put the walls up in your mind so he couldn’t see inside. You don’t know why the prospect of it never happening again filled you with such sorrow, but it did, and you realized all you wanted was for it to happen every night. Maybe it was just because this was the first night in a while that you were actually able to sleep soundly through the night.

“Yeah,” you said with a clearly forced laugh. “A one time thing.”

Ben gave you a strange look and looked ready to question you until a saving grace in the form of Jannik appeared.

“Hey! What are you guys doing?” Jannik yelled across the lake and began striding towards your place on the bench.

Ben pulled his arm away from around your shoulder and settled for crossing them across his chest, causing you to frown at the loss of warmth. He was clearly irritated by their new visitor, and while you were grateful your awkward conversation had been interrupted, you too shared these sentiments as you enjoyed these mornings with Ben.

“Just feeding the birds,” you answered, plastering a smile on your face when Jannik arrived.

“Sorry, did I interrupt something?” He asked cheekily, pointing between the two of you. Both of you shifted to put some distance between each other.

“No, Jannik,” you sighed, no longer grateful for your intruder. Now, you just wanted to go back to you and Ben’s relaxing morning, awkward question or no.

“Great!” he interrupted and went to sit between the two of you and you felt Ben’s anger flare before feeling his walls go up and your frown returned with a vengeance.

“I love nature,” Jannik sighed, throwing his arms over the backrest of the bench.

You and Ben sighed in union. The ambiance of this beautiful morning had been shattered and now you were both sitting in strained silence until you found a way out of this.  

You couldn’t help your startled jump when Ben suddenly got to his feet. His face was scrunched up in discomfort and you could see the tips of his ears that were poking out of his scruffy hair were tinged red.

“There’s a book I needed to find,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact. “I, uh, have to go.”

“Ben!” you attempted to call after him but he was already scurrying off towards the library.

You glowered at the remaining man. “Real nice, Jannik,” you snapped, standing and snatching up your biscuit trash.

“Hey, what did I do now?”

“I get one hour, one hour, every morning where Ben and I can relax by the lake and it’s just us and he’s open with me and you just cut it short by—“ You checked your watch. ”—twenty minutes.”

“I’m s—“

“And, you know, he’s the only one here who really understands me here. I mean, you and Hellixia try your best but you’ll never—“

“Okay, hurtful.”

“Sorry if that was harsh, I just—“

“No, I’m sorry,” he started and grabbed your arm. You turned your gaze of discontent into him. “I didn’t realize how important these mornings were for you.”

“Well they are,” you snapped, pulling your arm away, and still feeling the anger hot in your belly.

“I’m sorry, let me make it up to you.”

You scoffed. “Oh, yeah? How?”

“We’re gonna go smoke some Savorium herb tonight,” Jannik practically sung.

Your face instantly perked up. “Really?”

“See.” He elbowed you in the rib lightly. “I told you I could make it up to you.”

You stubbornly crossed your arms across your chest. “I didn’t say I wasn’t still mad at you.”

“It was implied,” he replied with a toothy grin. “I’m assuming you’re bringing Ben?”

He pumped his eyebrows suggestively.

“Yeah, that thing about still being mad at you—“

“I’m just asking a simple question.”

“Obviously, I’m bringing Ben,” you replied with a shove. “But, that doesn’t mean anything, we’re just friends...best friends.”

You hated how small and melancholiac your voice sounded at the last addition.

Jannik’s face suddenly turned serious, his signature goofy grin now gone. “You know I’m just trying to look out for you, right?”

His green eyes were sincere and you had to look away from his intense gaze. No matter how hard Luke and your former master had tried, it was still hard for you to accept that people actually cared and that their help was genuine.

“I—I know,” you muttered, kicking a bit at the grass below you.

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

That statement hit harder than he probably intended it to. The biggest reason, besides the Jedi rules, you were hesitant to admit your feelings to yourself and Ben was the thought of soul-crushing rejection, and even worse, if he feels the same way, and you both end up damaging each other beyond repair and lose each other forever. You don’t think you could survive losing Ben again. It took you long enough to to put yourself back together the first time.

Besides, you weren’t even sure what these feelings were.

“I’ll be fine,” you said, throwing on a reassuring, tight-lipped smile. “But, thank you, Jannik”

Jannik just shook his head with a scoff, looking to the sky almost in disbelief. “Whatever you say, L/N”

He began to walk back towards the direction of the temple. “We’re meeting in the clearing at ten!”

Ten. One hour after lights out.

Today was mostly private training with Luke, so you didn’t get a chance to see Ben until right before dinner.

Of course, you found him in the library looking for more calligraphy books, his eyebrows scrunched together as he tried to locate a certain book.

“A bunch of us are getting together to smoke some Savorium herb at ten if you want to come.”

“No thanks,” he replied immediately.

“Come on, Ben. It’ll be fun!” you sang.

Ben snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure being around our obnoxious classmates while they’re high out of their minds will be fun.”

“But, we’ll also be high out of our minds. Trust me it’s good stuff.”

He raised an eyebrow at you. “How would you know?”

“I’m not a prude, Ben. I’ve tried it a few times over the years.”

Ben huffed and turned back to the bookshelf, continuing to scan the rows.

“Please come,” you pleaded, flashing him your best Loth-cat eyes. He didn’t even have to look to know what you were doing and he threw his head back in a groan.

“Fine, but if my night is ruined I’m blaming you,” he said and pointed a finger at you.

“Fair enough,” you said, raising your hands in surrender with a grin.

He rolled his eyes and turned back to the shelf, finally finding the book he needed and pulling it from the shelf.

He put the book under his arm and gave you a half-hearted glare. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Oh, sorry, I want my best friend to be carefree for a night.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see if this drug can actually make me ‘carefree’. I’ll believe it when I feel it.”

The temperature had been steadily increasing throughout the day, leading to a warm night that reminded you of Naboo summer nights.

At a little past ten, Ben showed up at your hut and quietly knocked outside of it. You instantly peeled back the tarp and noticed he looked a bit taken aback by your appearance.

You had forsaken your typical Jedi robes for a sleeveless shirt and tight black leggings. You suppose it clung to your body a bit more than he’d be used to, but didn’t think it was worthy of the look his was giving you.

“What?” you asked with a awkward giggle. Ben shook his head and brought his head back up to meet his gaze with yours.

“Nothing,” he said, clearing his throat nervously, throwing on a mask of casualness. “I just can’t wait for this night to be over with.”

You rolled your eyes. “If you go into it with that attitude then you are going to have a bad time.”

“Ah, yes, you and the ‘power of positive thinking’.”

“Yes, and it works! You just refuse to try it.”

You didn’t have to look to know that he was rolling his eyes.

“You just sound like my uncle.”

You flinched a little at that. You hated when he compared you to Luke as that’s all people have been doing your whole life, especially here at the Jedi temple.

“Maybe a little. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” you ended up mumbling.

As you walked in mostly silence the rest of the way to the clearing, you couldn’t stop thinking about the look Ben had given you. It wasn’t the look itself that was really bothering you as much as it was the fact that you liked it, you liked it a lot and you couldn’t get it out of your head. The warmth in your cheeks had yet to fade and it felt as if the butterflies in your belly were trying to escape through your abdomen.

At last, you reached the clearing in the woods and found Jannik beginning to roll the leaves into some sort of rolling paper on a log bench. There were a few log bunches circled around the campfire in the center and Voe and Helixia were sitting on the one across from Jannik, the latter rambling excitedly about something while Voe looking on in disinterest.

“Y/N, Ben, you made it!” Jannik exclaimed excitedly, getting the attention of Helixia, much to Voe’s relief. She squealed in excitement and rushed over to the two of you. You both tried to hide your cringe at the sound.

“Hey, Helixia,” you greeted with a smile and her smile brightened even more.

“You wouldn’t think that the Master’s nephew and protégé would make good party guests! But, I guess you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

You thought you heard Voe mumble something that sounded like, “We’ll see.”

Ben must’ve heard it too because he tensed next to you and you looked down to see his fists were clenched at his sides.

“Come on,” you said, pulling his arm to go over to Jannik and away from Voe’s comments. Helixia followed behind happily, oblivious to what had just happened. Perhaps she had already took a few hits, or perhaps that really was just Helixia’s nature, to not notice those things. You wondered for a moment if you’d be better off with that trait.

“Just ignore her,” you said.

“It’s just everything she says seems like it’s meant to infuriate me.”

You scoffed. “It’s Voe, it’s what she does.”

A few more people came, surprisingly, including Tai, and soon everyone was sitting on the log benches discussing miscellaneous things amongst different groups.

“Alright,” Jannik announced, standing on of the benches, “who here has smoked before?”

A majority of classmates raised their hands, save for Ben and Tai, no surprises there. You couldn’t see in the lowlight, but you just knew the tips of Ben’s ears were pink.

You reflexively placed a hand on his thigh to try and relax him. There was nothing wrong with this, in fact it’s what you would do to most friends to help them relax, but when Ben leapt at the touch you started overthinking the gesture. You jerked away as if you’d been burnt, awkwardly crossing your arms across your chest and trying to ignore Ben’s eyes boring into your skull.

Why were things so different with Ben? Why was it that a gesture as simple as touching his thigh sent a tingle up your arm from when you’d made contact? Why were you feeling things Jedi were not meant to feel?

“Okay, okay, so we have some newbies. How about I let you guys take the first hit?”

“Jannik,” you warned.

“What?” he asked in innocence.

“Don’t make him do it in front of everyone.”

“Why? It’s practically a right of passage to have everyone watch.”

“It’s not, it sucks and he doesn’t want to that.”

“Why don’t you ask him what he wants to do?” Someone piped up in the crowd, looking overly interested. Everyone wanted to see the Great Ben Solo explode into a fit of coughs and smoke and you weren’t having it.

“You just want to embarrass him—“

“Maybe you should stop being an over protective girlfriend—“

“Excuse me?”

“Enough,” Ben’s voice boomed and everyone instantly got quiet. “I’ll do it, I don’t care.”

“Ben—“

“I’m not a child,” he snapped at you.

You shrunk away from him. “Alright.”

You knew he’d only snapped at you out of embarrassment, but the hurt still resided in your chest.

You couldn’t wait to be high.

Jannik handed him the rolled leaf and Ben took it hesitantly. If you didn’t already know this was his first time, the way he held it would’ve given it away. He held it delicately as if it might break under this fingers and turned it experimentally in his hand, giving it a good once over.

You watched cautiously as he brought the smoking object to his lips. It did something strange to you, watching the way his lips wrapped around it, and you had to shake your head of the thoughts that began forming.

He breathed in the smoke deeply, before having to pull it out of his mouth as coughs full of smoke started coming out of him. A chorus of laughter rang out around the circle as you patted his back while he wheezed.

Surprisingly, he didn’t seem uncomfortable with everyone laughing at him, and he actually began laughing with them. After the initial shock, you grinned at him and laughed along. You’d forgotten how fast this drug kicked in.

After all taking a few good hits, some only needing one to take effect, you were all very relaxed around the campfire.

“You know,” Ben started, eyes nearly a sliver, “maybe my problem is that I’m not always smoking this.”

He held up the joint for reference and then took another deep drag with a bit of coughing but nothing compared to the first hit.

You giggled. “I agree, but,” you said, taking the joint from him, “I think you’ve had enough.”

Ben attempted to reach for it back but got distracted by something in the air and quickly forgot what he was doing, instead now fascinated by an ember floating by.

You giggled at him and took one last drag before passing it off to the next person.

It’s like the dark cloud that normally loomed over Ben had finally lifted and he could finally just be, at least for the moment.

“It makes everything so much better,” Ben mused and you giggled softly. “Colors are brighter, everything is more beautiful...”

Drifting off, his eyes focused on you now. The look he was giving you would’ve made your knees weak if it weren’t for you already sitting down. It was such an intense gaze and no matter how badly you wanted to look away, you couldn’t.

You were surprised to feel that his walls were completely down for you and you were free to explore his mind. But, you were too scared to, too scared at what you would find and how it would make you feel.

“W-what?” you asked, cursing yourself for sounding so meek.

Reaching up, Ben pushed a strand of hair out of your face and you shivered under his touch. Everything else faded away into static and it was just the two of you, alone in the galaxy.

His eyes briefly flickered down to your lips and you gasped sharply as your chest flushed.

He was looking at you as if you put the stars themselves in the sky and if you could see your face, you knew it would look terrified, terrified that you felt the same way about him.

The moment was shattered by Helixia’s shrill giggling on the other side of the fire and you both ripped your gaze away from each other.

Ben shook his head of his thoughts and suddenly found the fire very fascinating.

“H-hey, give me another hit,” you said shortly after recovering. Bactar handed it to you instantly, most likely seeing the shaken look on your face and knowing you really needed it.

You took a deep drag of the sour tasting herb, wanting nothing more than to not have to think of feelings or Jedi or your  future. You just wanted to be numb.

You started to feel the familiar floating sensation of the drug and you heard Bactar say something from what sounded like far away, but when you opened your eyes, you realized he had moved to sit right next to you.

“How you feeling, Ben?” Bactar leaned around you to ask.

It looked like Ben wanted to answer, but the thought got lost before it could make it to his mouth and he instead closed his eyes with a content chuckle.

“I think we’ve converted him,” you giggled.

“Yes, come to the dark side, Ben,” Bactar taunted, “we have cookies.”

You would’ve criticized him for the phrasing if your mouth didn’t instantly water at the plastic case of assorted cookies that he presented.

“Bactar, I think I love you,” you blurted out and leaned forward to grab two—okay, maybe four—cookies.

He guffawed. “Don’t let Ben hear you say that.”

“Hm?” Ben questioned, mouth already full of cookie.

You moaned boisterously into the first bite of cookie. “This is the best cookie ever made!” You exclaimed, fully confident and with a full mouth.

Laughter broke out around you, including Ben’s, and he nearly choked on the cookie that had grabbed and instantly shoved in his mouth.

You’re sure something did happen between the cookies and the next moment when Ben’s head was in your lap, but you couldn’t quite remember it. All you knew is you were stroking the softest hair in the galaxy and Ben was leaning into it.

“What do you use on your hair, Ben? It’s so kriffing soft,” you exclaimed, pulling on his hair slightly to have a closer look.

Jannik leaned in, interest peaked. “I’ve been wondering the same thing for months now.”

Ben began laughing—practically giggling—from his spot on your lap. “People have been asking for years and I’ve never told them.”

“But, why?”

“Because—“ He broke off to laugh some more and you lightly jolted your leg to shove into him.

“Because what?” you pressed.

“Because...well, it’s kind of embarrassing...I don’t want anyone to have my secret to great hair.”

Your mouth fell open and you stared down at him. “Ben, that’s ridiculous.”

“I know, that’s why it’s so f-funny!” His shoulders shook uncontrollably with his roaring laughter and he nearly fell off of your lap.

“Alright,” you said with a giggle, “As fun as this has been—“ You broke off as you had to prevent him from tumbling to the ground. “—we’re gonna go to bed.”

“Oh, come on,” Bactar insisted. “Stay a little longer.”

You gave him a look that told him there was no chance and pulled Ben up, wrapping his arm around your shoulders.

“Um, you guys might not, but Ben and I have a sparring match tomorrow and we need to actually sleep. Besides, someone needs to take him to his hut before he embarrasses himself any further.”

“But, we love this Ben! And he still hasn’t told us his hair secret!” Jannik called after you.

You ignored the rest of your classmates as they joined in with objections and threw up a wave when you began to walk away from the clearing with bringing your shoulder down a whole foot.

Ben attempted a wave as well, but it was more of a dismissing gesture than anything.

“Yeah, I think you took one hit too many,” you quipped. You were still feeling the effects of the herb, though certainly not to the extent that Ben was, but the effects where now coming in waves and at the moment you were feeling pretty okay. You were in no position to be flying a starfighter, but you had enough confidence to get you both back to each other’s respective huts without a problem.

The two of you finally reached the huts as soon as a wave of the herb’s euphoria hit you hard and suddenly you needed to lean on Ben for support instead of the other way around. Luckily, he was able to support you and you felt the vibrations in his chest as he chuckled next to you.

Smiling, you nuzzled closer to him. His chest was always so warm and smelt like him. It felt like home.

He led you over to your hut and set you down on your bed. You nearly thought he’d taken you to a luxury hotel, because this was the best bed you had ever had the pleasure of laying in.

“This is literally the most comfortable bed in the galaxy,” you sighed, spreading yourself around the sheets in relaxation.

You heard Ben snort and then you felt the bed dip next to you and you were surprised to see him getting under the covers, shirt already off.

“W-what are you doing?” you slurred, heart beginning to pick up speed.

Ben ignored you. “You’re right, this is the most comfortable bed in the world.”

“Ben,” you insisted, even inebriated you knew this was not a good idea.

He shrugged and waved you off. “I don’t feel like walking all the way to my hut, so we might as well.”

You debated with yourself. He was obviously only agreeing to this because of his intoxication and what kind of friend would you be to take advantage of that? Then again, you were also intoxicated and the thought of being in Ben’s warm arms filled you with a warmth you couldn’t deny yourself. You decided to just let the pieces fall where they may and let whatever the Force had in store for you to work itself out.

But, you were keeping on your clothes.

You looked back over at him to see he was already gazing at you with a lazy grin on his face.

“What?” you asked with a giggle.

“If you would’ve told fourteen year old me that eight years from then I would be sharing a bed with Y/N, I would’ve said you were crazy.”

You giggled loudly as your cheeks flared. “Same here.”

If you weren’t under the influence, this conversation would’ve caused your heart to sink all the way to your stomach and you’d probably have to leave to tent before your cheeks became fiery warm. But now, with both of you being guided into a state of euphoria with Savorium herb, you couldn’t be happier with the current topic. After all, you had the freedom to say all the things you couldn’t when you were sober, right?

You really knew you shouldn’t, but you herb infused mind had different ideas and you opened your mouth to speak.

“Hey, Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember when your mom took us to Naboo?” you slurred, prying your eyes open with immense effort.

Why were you bringing this up? You should not be bringing this up. But, your mouth didn’t get the message to stop, so you kept going.

Ben stayed silent for a moment, staring at the ceiling.

“Ben?”

He finally seemed to come back to his senses. “Uh, yeah, I remember.”

“And we snuck off to the lake to avoid that boring dinner.”

“Mhm,” he agreed, closing his eyes with a smile.

“The waves were so pretty that night...we were so happy...I wish every night could be like that...”

You let your eyes close as your mind went back to that day; you could almost taste...

“Me too,” you heard him say from what sounded like terribly far way.

You were too intoxicated to grasp what he was really saying to you and you felt your consciousness slipping by the second. The last thing you felt was Ben’s beautiful presence glowing next to you and you wanted to call out but the thick blanket of sleep was too all consuming.

Your dreams were about Naboo waters and fumbling hands. A secret kiss that you swore to never talk about and a few more kisses just because the temptation was too much after having had a taste.

(A/N: Please reblog and let me know what you guys thought of the chapter!)

@merandlune​  @lover1307​ @bepo-is-sorry​ @snakelaufeyson​ @supervengerslock​ @shockwavee​ @kilo-wrench​ @ohhh-boo-tiful​@serenityofbeingascintilla  @ladyzirkonia​  @fandomshit6000 @i-am-lokii-of-asgard​​​ @siren-queen03​​ @dark-night-sky-99​ @nickangel13​​​ @girlyisthatweirdkid​ @edwardspaghedwardtozier​ @irreverent-dream​​ @amberkay284​ @struggling-writer​​ @steverogersbish 

#ben solo #ben solo x reader #ben solo fanfiction #ben solo imagine #kylo ren #kylo ren fanfic #kylo ren fanfiction #kylo x reader #kylo x you #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren x you #star wars #the last jedi #Luke Skywalker #adam driver #padawan!Ben #padawan #leia organa #ben solo reader insert #kylo ren reader insert #ben solo x you #tlj #ben solo deserved better

[horansqueen]

You & Me : chapter 11

A Niall Horan fanfiction ; rated MA

Sequel to AM CONVERSATIONS

CHAPTER 1 || CHAPTER 2 || CHAPTER 3 || CHAPTER 4 || CHAPTER 5 || CHAPTER 6 || CHAPTER 7 || CHAPTER 8 || CHAPTER 9 || CHAPTER 10

NOTES:

-one chapter is her pov, the next is his. -4.6k -im sorry, i never proofread, i hate it. -there WILL be smut. but not only smut. -this is a romance, comedy, smut story. -for the summary, check my MASTERLIST.

- notes: im excited for the next few chapters to come tbh. if you still read and comment and reblog and like after AM Conversations and this sequel, i want you to know it means a lot to me. i cant even explain. i wrote 11 chapters of this sequel in only a month. thats all because of you guys. thank you, i love you!!! 

if you want to be on the list of blogs i notify when this is updated, just message me :)

requests! : i changed one of the requests only slightly (like the drunk thing) but i think its not that bad. spoilers if you read those requests btw!

Chapter 11 : His chapter

NIALL

Her eyes met mine and her lips parted as I let my arm fall on the side of my body, still holding my phone maybe a bit too tight. Did I enjoy the thought of Olivia and I back together? I couldn't pretend otherwise, of course I did. What I didn't like is some random crappy online journalist announcing it before anything even happened. She wanted to back away, I could read it in her eyes, and I knew I had to do something to keep her from pushing me away.

"You're having that flashback too, don't you?"

She chuckled without amusement and raised her eyebrows, glancing down before looking up in my eyes. I didn't want to ruin the mood by showing her that article but at the same time, i knew I had to, if only to prepare her for what was to come. When one article comes out, it sort of gives the green light to every other garbage web sites to say the same thing.

"You and me, getting out of the movies and seeing an article about us dating while I was with Harry and you were with Maya?" she asked before sighing. "Oh yea, fresh memory. Harry was so kind about it."

"Maya was not." I added, my hands in my pockets, making her lips curl. "She was pissed. We argued for over an hour that night."

Her face changed and her smile fell quickly.

"It's the night Harry broke up with me."

I felt something stir in my stomach and I held my breath. I remembered that, too, because I had rushed to her to comfort her. It was the night I touched her, the first time I heard and saw her get an orgasm, one that I gave her, and that thought made a shiver run across my back before I cleared my throat.

"Sorry for the bad memory."

I knew she wanted to say something, I knew her by heart, but when I noticed she wouldn't talk, It reminded me why Harry actually broke up with her. I only found out later, but Harry had mentioned that it was because he knew she was in love with me. Were we going around in circles?

"No it's okay." she just replied, bringing her arms around herself and shrugging. "It's not like Dylan was gonna break up with me for a stupid article."

We both knew that was not why Harry had broken up with her but I decided to keep quiet. This article would already make our friendship falter and there was no way I wanted to make it worse. My eyes roamed on her and I wondered if I just shouldn't tell her how I felt now. Spill it all, tell her I needed her, ask her to drop everything and choose me, and although it was tempting, I was scared it would just ruin everything. The problem was, she looked so beautiful and vulnerable at that exact moment, that I felt like I could be, too. I could be vulnerable in front of her.

"Of course not." I just replied right before her eyes met mine.

She sent me a small smile and nodded, walking past me as I followed her to the door. We entered and took our shoes off and when the door closed, I heard Louis' voice coming from the kitchen.

"Oi Oiii!" he yelled, making me roll my eyes. "My queen is that you? I bought sushi!"

I expected to see his face but it's actually Eleanor's head that poked from the kitchen. Her smile turned into a surprise expression before coming back even bigger

"Hey! Niall!"

She walked up to us and kissed my cheeks before doing the same to Liv. Her smile was contagious and she made a quick head movement.

"Do you guys want to join us for dinner?"

I glanced at Liv only to notice she was already looking at me with a small smile, making me smile too

"Mmhm, yea, sure, thanks guys."

We prepared the food and the wine and brought everything to the table before sitting down. I ended up sitting next to Olivia, in front of Louis and El and even I could have guessed it would, it didn't feel awkward at all to be with a couple.

"I just realized we never had a dinner like that before." Eleanor pointed, her face illuminating. "I mean, I know you two aren't together and... only a few weeks after you two got together, Louis and I.." she just said without finishing her sentence.

She turned to Louis and tilted her head, sending him a fond smile and I couldn't help but glance at Liv. She just grabbed her glass and took a sip before looking at the food in her plate and I frowned a bit, feeling her suddenly tense next to me.

"So Tommo, how's the album coming?" I just asked, trying to change the subject.

I saw Louis' face illuminate, chewing quickly and swallowing before shaking his head. I noticed my ex girlfriend smiling too and even if I didn't know why, I loved seeing her happy.

"Great! I'm taking my time, no rush, I just want to have fun and write something that reflects who I am." he explained as I nodded. "You know what I mean."

Yes, I fucking knew what he meant. My album felt like a mirror of the feelings I had back when I recorded it... and even now. That thought made me glance at Liv again until Eleanor talked.

"By the way, Louis finally made me listen to the song he wrote for you Liv and he mentioned you asked what I thought." she started, making Olivia look down suddenly. "I hope you know i'm totally okay with that. I know you went through a lot together and i'm all cool with that. It's a beautiful song, too."

I felt my heart jump in my throat as her words starting sinking in. Louis had written a song about her? Now I felt extremely curious to find out what it said but also fairly jealous.

"Thanks, I was a bit scared about that. It's a beautiful song I agree." Olivia chuckled low. "I can't believe he wrote that for me. I cried when he made me listen." she then admitted with a real laugh.

I watched their interaction while holding my breath. Witnessing the fact that my ex girlfriend, about whom I wrote an entire album, was touched by someone else writing one song about her was making something burn inside me. Of course, we had never discussed my album together but I couldn't believe she wouldn't acknowledge it at all, praising Louis for something I did at least 10 times, and more, if you count all the songs that didn't make it to the album that were also written about her.

I swallowed my pride and annoyance but a lump remained stuck and I cleared my throat, trying to get their attention. I was not going to mention that now, though. I didn't want to start drama or make everything awkward, but I took a mental note to ask Olivia about it, for sure. Did she not like the songs I wrote for her? Did it not touch her?

"What's the song about?" I asked, trying to be casual.

"Friendship, mate. Just friendship, and how we went through things together." Louis said, looking straight in my eyes. "Also, it pretty much says she's perfect the way she is and that I wished she'd see it the way I see it."

I nodded as if anyone needed my approval and Louis sent me an understanding smile. He knew exactly how I felt, I could read it in his eyes, and the fact that I was jealous of him was ridiculous but I couldn't help it. I didn't really know what they went through together but I knew it had been intense. They were both heartbroken and spent all their time together. No one else had been there and no one else could really know what had happened but If I had to, I'd guess on intense crying sessions and liters of alcohol.

"It was beautiful, I really didn't expect it." Liv added, making the lump in my throat even harder to swallow. "I'm super grateful."

"You're welcome, my queen."

I turned my head away and grimaced slightly, hating myself for letting this affect me. It really shouldn't. It was juvenile of me to take this against me because it literally had nothing to do with me.

The night went on and we talked about a lot of memories and plans we had for the future. It was amazing to find my friends back and have fun with them the way we used to. It had been a bit awkward with Louis in the past months, probably due to the fact that he and Liv became very close and he had tried to keep us at a fair distance from each other.

I thought about how my life had changed in only a few weeks and I liked it like that. I knew that I was missing on something before Olivia and I bumped into each other again but I don't think I really realized to which extent. I had lost many things when I broke up with her and now that it was all coming back, I never wanted to lose it again. It was an understatement to say that Olivia changed my whole life whenever she was in it and after being away from her for so long, it was even more obvious.

When I finally got out of my own thoughts, I tried to catch up with the discussion, not really sure what I had missed exactly but when I understood, I lost my smile as my heart literally dropped in my chest.

"So when are we going shopping for that dress?"

Olivia grimaced and my lips curled very slightly again. I always thought she made the cutest faces and this one was no exception.

"I need to lose weight before, can't look like that in my wedding dress."

My smile faltered as I was reminded of the fact that she was getting married and I frowned despite myself. Louis quickly jumped in and reached for her hand on the table.

"You're perfect the way you are." he just pointed out, looking straight in her eyes. "Right Neil?"

Everyone turned to me and I tried to stop a groan from coming out of my mouth. I should have said something before Louis did, this I knew, but I was focusing on the fact that the love of my life was getting married to someone who wasn't me and I guess it had made me a bit slow to react. Now that Louis had put everyone's attention on me, Liv would probably think I was pressured to say something nice which clearly wouldn't be true.

My eyes found hers and I licked my lips. I loved how she had changed, actually. She grew up and she was glowing. She was never a fan of her body but I was. I loved her curves, I loved her soft skin and the way she'd get goosebumps when i'd brush my fingertips on it, no matter where. I loved her hair and the way it fell in her eyes when she slept. I loved her thin lips and when a smile played on them. I loved her laughter and how her eyes became smaller and sparkled when she'd raise her nose up. I loved watching her naked, walking towards me, her hips moving slowly, making it obvious I was going to get some.

"You are. You're perfect, Olivia."

Her lips curled a bit and she nodded, pressing her lips together. Suddenly, I wanted to kiss her again. It was always on the back or my mind but looking at her like that and thinking about every feature of her body made me want it so bad that I had to hold my breath to make sure I wouldn't just move closer and crash my mouth against hers.

"Excuse me." I cleared my throat and quickly got up, leaving the table and rushing to the bathroom.

I groaned and closed my eyes, leaning against the counter, just tired to see my stupid mug in the mirror. Was this going anywhere anyway? And if it was not, would I be able to just be around her while she'd be married to an other man? When Louis asked me to tell her she was perfect the way she was, only a few words had came out of my mouth when a hundred wanted to. I couldn't express myself and I hated it. I couldn't tell her how much she meant to me and it was killing me. I gripped the counter harder and bent down, cursing under my breath to myself, until I heard a knock at the door. My heart raced but I just opened the door quickly only to see her standing here. I didn't know how long we stared at each other but the intense desire I had to kiss her was back at full force.

"Are you okay?" she asked in a soft and low tone.

I could hear worries in her voice and I sent her a small smile while nodding.

"Yea, i'm okay." I just said, swallowing hard. "You know, about you wanting to lose weight and shit..."

Her eyebrows raised but quickly, she frowned before I shook my head, trying to untangle the words bumping on the sides of my skull like the logo of a fucking dvd in the corner of a tv.

"You just, you look so good, you don't need to change anything." I stammered, cursing internally. "I love everything about you."

"Everything?" she repeated, licking her lips. "I mean, you haven't seen me naked in a while."

The sight of her getting undressed in my guest room invaded my mind and I swallowed hard, trying to push the thought away. I couldn't tell her that indeed, I had, and that she turned me on even more than she did a year ago. I couldn't also deny it because I had promised myself i'd never lie to her again.

"Everything, Olivia."

She started nibbling her bottom lip and the craving of feeling her mouth on mine intensified. I didn't even know it was possible. She leaned against the door frame and I took a step closer to her, bending down as she looked up.

"You're literally the most gorgeous girl i've ever seen." I whispered, moving even closer, hoping she wouldn't move.

Her eyes got bigger in surprise and I just blinked a few times. I had seen a lot of sexy girls in my life, it was true. Girls with perfect bodies and incredible faces, but none of these girls could make me feel the way she made me feel. None of these girls could turn me on the way she did. One time, she told me that no one else was me and that was exactly how I felt, too. No one was her. I wanted no one else.

I bent down more and she raised her chin up, making my heart jump in my chest. With that gesture, I knew she wanted it too. She wanted me to kiss her and I was almost sure she wouldn't push me away, at least not before I could have a little taste of her, and I was ready to risk it. I tried not to talk, scared to ruin the moment or make her back away. I could feel her lips brushing against mine. I could swallow her breath and it started making me feel a bit dizzy for a reason I ignored, but just as I was about to press my slightly open mouth against hers, she pushed me away and got on her knees right in front of the toilet to throw up.

It took me a second to react but I got on my knees too, remaining close to her and I finally grabbed her hair, holding it away from her face as she threw up again. My free hand reached for her back and I rubbed it gently, feeling disappointed that we didn't kiss and guilty for being disappointed in a moment like this.

"You're okay, i'm here." I whispered as I watched her fingers grip the side of the toilet harder while she threw up for a third time.

After about a minute, Louis appeared through the door and I turned around just in time to see his face change. He seemed in panic mode and licked his lips quickly.

"I'll get a towel."

He was back a few seconds later and turned the water on, soaking the towel and handing it to me. I moved her hair away again and started brushing the cold towel on her cheek as she groaned, her eyes still closed.

"I can do it." Louis said, making me shake my head quickly.

"No, I got this, thanks."

He waited a few seconds but finally left and without thinking, I pushed the door, almost closing it. Olivia groaned again and when I noticed she was trying to get up, I helped her slowly. She leaned one of her hands on the counter for balance as I moved the towel on her face and she opened her eyes, meeting mine.

"I'm so sorry for this." she mumbled, grimacing and making me smile. "Sorry for the bad breath, too."

"Your breath doesn't bother me, you should know that by now." I pointed out in a gentle tone, smiling more.

"This is different, it smells like vomit."

"Your vomit doesn't bother me." I argued again.

"it bothers me though."

I moved closer to her just to flush the toilet and she sighed, swallowing hard and grimacing again. I brought my hand to her back again, my whole palm pressed against it as I rubbed it gently.

"Feeling better?"

She raised her nose up and groaned with a shrug.

"You should get a rest." I pointed out as she shook her head.

"I need to take my make up off first." she explained with a sigh, closing her eyes.

She looked exhausted and I tilted my head until she opened her eyes again.

"I can do it for you." I proposed in a low tone, opening one of the drawers and grabbing the bottle I was used to see her buy. "This, yea?"

She blinked a few times and nodded before pointing me something else. I grabbed it too and poured some of the cleanser on a cotton pad slowly. When I looked up, she was staring at me with a fond smile that I sent back.

"Okay, close your eyes." I asked low again before rubbing gently the pad on both her eyes, watching it get colored quickly. "Don't move."

My lips parted a bit as I used an other pad, running in on her face and going even slower when I reached her lips. I stopped just looking at her for a few seconds and finally cleared my throat again.

"Okay, you can open your eyes." I just said, watching her eyes flutter open. A smile appeared on my lips and I chuckled low. "This is harder than it looks. You've got some black left under your eyes."

She smiled more and tilted her chin up before I brushed the pad under one of her eyes. I watched her eyelid flutter a bit as she tried to keep her eye open and did the same with the other eye. The silence in the room was not heavy. It was actually comforting in a way I couldn't explain. I felt like I was locked alone with her on an island. I felt like nothing could tear us apart. I threw away the pads and when I looked back at her, I noticed her eyes were still on me.

"Thank you." she whispered, making me smile again.

I grabbed the towel and turned it around to run the cold and wet fabric on her face, making sure it was not on the same side I had used after she threw up and when I was done, I sighed with a grin.

"Okay, let's get you in bed now."

She groaned again, her nose raising in a grimace, and it made me chuckle. "Don't be a baby!"

I turned around and bent down slightly, waiting for her to get on my back but after a few seconds, I chuckled again.

"Come on, petal."

"I just... Niall, I did gain a little weight I don't think you can-"

"Shut up and get on my back."

It took a few seconds but she did what I asked and I grabbed her behind her knees as she wrapped her arms around my neck. I opened the door more with one of my feet and brought her to her room without even asking which one it was. I put her as gently as I could on the mattress and she chuckled tiredly as I turned around to look at her.

"Do you want me to help you get undressed the way you did for me?" I asked, a smirk playing on my lips and making her laugh even more.

"No thank you, I'm good." she joked. "I'm sick, not drunk."

I stared at her for a few seconds and she did the same. Now would be a horrible time to kiss her but the will I had to do it was still extremely fierce. I bent down and kissed her forehead quickly instead before taking a step back and sliding both my hands in my pockets.

"I'll see if Louis and El need help okay? You rest."

She nodded and turned around to leave but I stopped when she almost yelled my name and when I turned around, I noticed she was sitting. I waited for about a minute, just looking in her eyes and focusing on the beatings of my heart, but she ended up just licking her lips.

"When are you... when am I gonna see you again?"

The question took me by surprise and I raised my eyebrows, bringing one of my hands behind my head to scratch it lightly.

"Uhm, do you want to go somewhere tomorrow night? A pub or a club or something? We could ask our friends-"

"Yes, let's do that." she replied fast, making me smile and nod.

I let out all the air I had kept in my lungs come out as soon as I closed the door behind me and tried to get back to my senses as I walked to the kitchen. Louis and El were having an other glass of wine and I sent them a smile, leaning against the wall. They noticed me and pulled away slightly, making me smile more. There was always something magnetic between them, perhaps something similar to what Liv and I had, maybe still have.

"She's in bed, I think she'll be okay." I told them as Louis nodded. "I think It's time for me to go back home."

I searched through my pants to grab my keys and closed my eyes with a groan suddenly.

"No fucking way." I grumbled, looking at my key chain and sighing. "Not again."

Louis got closer and I glanced at him before shaking my head.

"I lost my key. Again. I don't know how I fucking do that."

"You can sleep here, the guest room is free, sheets are clean." Louis proposed with a shrug. "Room's yours, mate."

I pressed my lips together as I stared at him. The only other solution I could find was to ask Heidi for her key but just thinking about calling her and explaining where I was seemed like too much trouble. After that, she'd probably ask me to sleep at her place or follow me to mine, which was also not something I was in the mood for.

"Okay, thanks, I appreciate."

It took us all about half an hour to get ready and go to bed but when the whole house was quiet and in the dark, I just lied down in bed with my hands under my head, watching the ceiling and trying to remember all the events of the day. Were we really that close to kiss? Was I that close to feel her lips on mine again and maybe more? I closed my eyes tight at that thought and without thinking, I threw my covers away and got out of the room, quietly walking up to hers. I didn't dare to knock but just walked inside until I was close enough to whisper her name.

"Liv, hey."

She groaned and turned around on her back. I was used to the darkness now and saw her blink a few times, her eyes meeting mine before she frowned.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Late." I replied, licking my lips. "Can I sleep with you?"

She sat up and my eyes fell on her chest, noticing she was wearing a familiar shirt. She rubbed her eyes and whimpered low, letting out a yawn that made my lips curl.

"Why are you still here?"

"Lost my key, Louis said I could spend the night." I explained quickly. "Can I sleep in your bed."

She seemed to hesitate but after a while, she just nodded and moved away to give me space. I slithered under the sheets and she turned my way, staring at me for a few seconds. She seemed totally awake now and I just smiled at her, thanking her.

"I recognize the shirt." I pointed out, not really sure if I should really mention it. "I was looking everywhere for it you know."

"Lies." she replied quickly. "I've had it only for a few days."

"You mean you stole it after I let you borrow it because you forgot to bring one."

"I wouldn't say 'steal'." she argued with a shrug.

"What would you say then?"

Silence. I let out a laugh and she grimaced.

"Shut up and sleep."

I laughed again and she turned around, sliding one of her arms under her pillow as her back now faced me. I stared at it for a few seconds and finally inhaled deeply before moving closer to her, wrapping one of my arms around her and reaching for her hand under the pillow with my other one. She whimpered so low that I was not sure I heard right but slowly, she let her fingertips brush against the arm around her and I smiled more.

"Liv?" I asked in a whisper, making her whimper again. "Do you think you were sick because.. of.. I mean, are you getting married because.."

I couldn't seem to finish my sentence but I was not sure if it was because It was a stupid question or because I was scared of the answer. It took her a few seconds but she finally started laughing.

"I'm not pregnant, Nial!l" she chuckled. "Just, never let Louis choose the sushis ever again. Now sleep."

I smiled and placed my head on the pillow before closing my eyes. Feeling her warm body against mine made me feel suddenly better but when she moved back slightly, I realized her legs were bare, just like mine. Her thighs pressed against mine and once again, I realized how perfectly her body fitted with mine. She started snoring lightly and I grabbed her fingers again, squeezing them lightly but decided to leave my body pressed against hers. I moved my head closer, my lips almost touching her nape, her hair tickling my nose, and swallowed hard. I knew she couldn't hear me but I licked my lips anyway before whispering.

"You're perfect."

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