#THIS TOOK ME FAR TOO LONG TO WRITE IM SORRY | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sohnric · 6 months

Text

plot twist – k. sunwoo

pairing: kim sunwoo x gn! reader

genre: coworkers au, enemies to lovers au. fluff, a poor attempt at comedy. movie theatre! worker sunwoo and reader. bitch boy sunwoo. the reader has anger issues. owner's son! sunwoo being annoying about everything. winter themes, sunwoo is a little kid about stuff but mostly the snow.

wc: 21k

warnings: swearing, a heated make out session. y/n's inner monologue is just my own feelings about this man im sorry. i watched too much of the office when writing this can you tell. also i made sunwoo's sister underage for plot reasons deal with it.

working with kim sunwoo has so far been the worst experience of your whole entire life. just his existence alone is enough to make your day completely miserable– though, one would think that working with movies on the daily would prepare you for the biggest plot twist of your life.

a/n: this took me SO LONG to write woah. i have a humble playlist for this fic if any of yall wanna listen to it while you read <3 a huge thank you goes to my best friend @csenke for being my biggest motivator and hype man when it came to this fic. thank u for being my first ever beta reader hihi i couldn't have done this without you i am forever grateful ily. also im tagging @heemingyu because whe told me to

ho ho ho! this fic is a part of the secret santa event by @deoboyznet ! @kimsohn maya, i was your secret santa this year, i hope you enjoy the fic i prepared for you

TONIGHT'S PREMIERE – UGLY TRUTH (2009)

If anyone ever asked you about your job in the movie theater, you wouldn’t really know what to say.

You see, what may had seemed like your dream job when you were little, acquiring the fairytale vision after going to the cinema for the first time to see the Horton movie when you were just 7, quickly turned into reality one ordinary day during your junior year of university. And it wasn’t even that hard; you just dropped off your CV at the movie theater on the corner of the town's square when you saw the sign that said ‘looking for part-timers’ in a messy, giant handwriting on the glass door– and soon enough, you found yourself in the depths of the vintage-looking cinema, wearing the red uniform the owner gave you, selling movie tickets to teenagers and taking out the trash. It’s hard to enjoy the job when you’re on bathroom cleaning duty, though, and the fact that this is what you once imagined to be the most exciting job in the whole entire world turns twice as boring when you realize just how mundane it really is.

Still, you can’t bring yourself to quit, well, because you need the money.

Do you hate working in the cinema? No. Not really. Sure, it’s kind of boring– especially on the nights when you’re selling tickets at the front and nobody comes in for hours– but it’s not that difficult. It’s not physically or mentally demanding, so you’d say that you’re still on the better end when it comes to work environment. Your boss isn’t a dick and you get paid on time– so really, if anyone asked you if you hated it, your answer would be no.

Until one fateful day, of course.

You’re met with a person that’s going to efficiently change this opinion around in one swift bat of their eyelashes and a drag of their hand through their messy hair.

“So… you’re the new part-timer?” a tall boy asks you one day when you arrive at work. You’re already wearing your uniform when you come through the front door– since you don’t really feel like changing in the toilets that are not staff-exclusive here– and frankly, his voice startles you on your way in.

“Yeah,” you nod, furrowing your brows at the stranger. “And you are…?”

“Sunwoo,” the boy says, matter-of-factly, as if you’re supposed to know who exactly he is now that he’s introduced himself to you. The look on your face may show that you’re still clueless, and see, that’s something that must have played with the boy’s ego. “Kim Sunwoo,” he snickers, “the owner’s son..?”

Blinking a few times, trying to remember if Mr Kim’s ever told you about having a son– he hasn’t– you gasp like a fish on the dry, nodding. “Oh… Hello..?” you mumble, not really knowing what to do with the information.

“Hi,” he says, face stone cold and motionless. Something’s wrong, but you can’t quite put your finger on it….

Well, you’ll have to deal with that later. “My shift starts in 5 minutes, so I gotta find Mr- your dad, and ask him what’s on my to-do list today, but it was nice meeting you,” you try to force out a polite (maybe even warm) smile before you turn on your heel and march towards the staff room, where Mr Kim usually resigns unless he is helping you out with something at the front. See, on not busy days, working at the cinema requires only one person. On Fridays, though, it can get tough. That’s when the owner makes the popcorn while you both sell and scan the tickets at the same time– sometimes you wonder why he doesn’t hire another person to help out with the job.

“Wait– newbie–”

The nickname startles you, again, as you turn around and squint at him. You have a name– and although he has no way of knowing it (other than his father telling him, but seeming that you didn’t even know about his son, Mr Kim isn’t big on sharing information)– but still, you’d love to be called by it. “It’s Y/N, actually.”

“Oh, right…” he hums, “well, Y/N, dad’s not here tonight, so… I’m… kind of in charge,” he says, nodding as he gets the words out, trying to prove his point, “he had other things to take care of, so he sent me down instead,” he explains, watching as your face morphs into one of quick understatement.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” he nods, sucking on his teeth.

Thick silence overtakes the atmosphere. You feel awkward and out of place.

“So…?” you hum, waiting for him to tell you what to do.

Because a guy your age ordering you around at work is already embarrassing enough for a university student just trying to pay for their groceries. You’re not gonna ask for the orders yourself. You still have some dignity.

“So… I could take the ticket booth and you can clean the screening room, since there are no movies on tonight?” he suggests, rocking on his heels. The boy seems a bit shaken with the new sense of responsibility, but you figure that even his undoubtful awkwardness still doesn't put you above his position.

You mentally sigh. Cleaning is your least favorite part of the job.

Still, you’re not gonna talk back to your boss’ son. You’d like to keep your job for a while longer. At least until you find something better.

“Alright,” you nod, turning on your heels once more and preparing to disappear into the depths of the cinema.

His voice stops you again, though, frustration flowing through your veins. “Don’t forget to mop the floors! Oh, and the bathroom could use a clean as well.”

“Alright,” you nod again, your back facing him.

“Also, you need to get the gum off the chairs, I know it’s kind of disgusting, but there’s a-”

“I know how to do my job, thank you,” you turn, smiling ironically over your shoulder.

You don’t know what it is about the man that makes you so, so incredibly irritated. Maybe it’s the fact that every bit of information coming out of his mouth sounds like he’s mansplaining everything to you. Maybe it’s the fact that you feel humiliated to be told what to do by a man that’s your age. Or maybe, it’s just the sheer fact that you hate cleaning– the one thing he just told you to do.

Still, you go and get the vacuum. You go and mop the floors, you go and take the gum off the chairs and scrape it into a bucket you keep in the pantry in the back. You go and clean the bathroom, even though it’s 10 minutes until the end of your shift (you only work 4 hours on Wednesdays) and you spent almost your whole day cleaning the whole screening room by yourself (the screening room that’s giant and Mr Kim helps you with on most days). You go and wipe the mirror in the bathroom, as well as the windows in the hall.

You say that your work in the cinema is not physically demanding, but by the time you’re out, your back hurts and your knees are all bruised up from getting on the ground so often.

What really sets you off, though, is the sight of the owner’s son sitting in the booth, both legs up on the table and chewing on something, his phone in his hands as he watches, what you presume from the language resonating from the speaker, a silly anime. At least someone had fun during their shift, you think as you leave without saying goodbye to him, slamming the door behind you with a loud bang on your way out.

Quite frankly, you didn’t know what set you off so bad this time. Maybe you just had a bad day. Maybe it could've been fixed with your next shared shift with the guy– you never know.

Little did you know that it was only going to get worse from now on, though.

TONIGHT'S PREMIERE – PALM SPRINGS (2020)

If you knew your boss’s son would play the role of your supervisor from time to time, you probably wouldn't have taken the job when it was offered to you.

Why?

The reason is quite simple– while you go to work to make money, Kim Sunwoo goes to work to make your whole life a living hell. Ranging from always giving you the more difficult task of the day to making unfunny jokes about your performance (he once asked if you ran a marathon after you mopped the whole hall, his grinning figure staring at you from inside of the ticket booth), you’re starting to think that Kim Sunwoo is mentally stuck with the brain of an 11-year old boy.

More so with his recent endeavors. You don’t really know what he’s trying to achieve with all of this, but you’re starting to despise going to work even when you know he’s not on the schedule– somehow, you’re afraid his silly pranks and jokes will follow you and surprise you even when he’s not present. Is this his way of asserting dominance? You really don’t know.

It all starts one day before a movie premiere when Sunwoo walks up to you and introduces you to a new concession item to sell in the snack booth. While you don’t really know why one would even think of new combinations to sell at a cinema, since everyone’s just gonna get popcorn or nachos, you don’t really question the idea much further– Sunwoo’s father owns this place, so he must know the best marketing strategies for his business. The reality only downs on you when you’re forced to promote the “Ultimate movie mix” to every customer– which wouldn’t even be that strange, if the mix didn’t include the weird combination of pickles and candy.

Running on two all nighters and half an energy drink, you didn’t realize the snack stand doesn’t even hold pickles. You were notified the day after by your boss, though, and that wasn’t your best experience.

The terror follows when Sunwoo’s father decides to run a Star Wars marathon one weekend. The flood of customers wouldn’t be as hard to manage when you run the snack stand, but it does get more difficult when your coworker running around with a lightsaber knocks over all the buckets of freshly-made popcorn you just put on the counter for the customers to take.

He doesn’t even say sorry. Or help clean the spilled popcorn up from the floor. Or help you make a new batch.

He just laughs.

Sunwoo just loves to laugh at you. Like that one time he made you wear a giant popcorn costume and stand in front of the cinema for the entirety of your 4 hour shift on Wednesday to promote the new movie airing on Friday. Hardly anyone took the fliers you were desperately trying to force into their hands and when you came back, you saw Sunwoo pointing his camera at you from the big glass window.

The next shift, his dad asked you how Sunwoo did when promoting the movie. You didn’t have the heart to tell him he forced you to do the dirty business instead.

Another time, Sunwoo informs you via text in the middle of your shift that you should clean the bathrooms. The fact itself already makes you furious, but you follow the order nonetheless– because, well, what else can you do? You’re used to cleaning the toilets, since it’s a part of your job. It’s just the fact that a guy your age told you to that’s making you rethink all your career decisions.

The trip to the bathrooms quickly turns traumatizing when you step inside of the tiled room and have the door behind you close with a loud bang, followed by the light switching off. Screeching, you jump and try to escape the room with fear making your heart run faster than Usain Bolt, however, you find the door seemingly locked– the sound of Sunwoo’s snarky laugh coming from the other side making you recognise what just happened and how he’s pulling another one of his childish pranks on you again.

When the door finally opens, you throw the toilet brush into his chest and scream out a “I’m going to fucking quit if I see your face one more time!”. You’re over all formalities.

That doesn’t mean you’re not scared every time you enter a room in the cinema when you work with Sunwoo, though. Your reaction was strengthened very abruptly, you see.

Sitting in the ticket booth, door ajar to monitor your surroundings, you plop your head on your hand and glare at Sunwoo, chewing on your gum. If anyone saw you right now, they’d think you were trying to kill him with your stare, but the opposite would actually be the truth tonight– you were quite enjoying the sight of him wiping the sweat off his forehead and scowling at the neverending flow of customers.

The beauty of having ticket booth duty on premiere night is that everyone bought the tickets beforehand already, meaning that it wasn’t usually busy. Scanning the tickets and running the snack booth were the more difficult parts of the shift, and since Mr Kim decided to show up to work today, Sunwoo was graced with the snack booth duty– something that warmed you up from the inside and made you want to kiss your boss’s feet in gratefulness.

There’s just something about seeing Kim Sunwoo in misery that makes your stomach turn and do cartwheels. You’re in love with his pathetic, tired face.

His eyes meet yours when he takes a moment to breathe– the look behind them is pleading, almost embarrassingly hopeless as he internally wishes he was in your place. You think this serves him right for the weeks of torture, and when he becomes you to come over with a motion of his hand, you just shrug at him and bat your eyelashes in faked innocence.

It’s not your fault he’s on duty tonight. What does he want with you?

His lips mouth “Come here,” which makes you battle a satisfied smile. Poor Kim Sunwoo is helpless in his task. The rush just won’t stop and he’s asked of more than he can handle. You kind of feel sadistic when you truly think about your sentiments, but you think you’re only valid for feeding on his misery.

“Help!” he mouths again, and now you truly can’t battle the laughter anymore. His hair is tousled and sticking to his forehead. His uniform is dirty. The tie around his neck is loose. The sight makes you utterly satisfied.

As he mouths “Please,” accompanied by clasped hands and a pleading look that would work on most women, you finally decide to stand up from the uncomfortable chair in the ticket booth and shake your head in disbelief. You can’t even count how many times Sunwoo left you alone in the rush before a premiere, but you can’t really risk his father finding out you didn’t come to rescue his beloved son, since however you might hate this job, you still can’t lose it in your current living conditions.

Sighing and closing the door to the ticket booth after you, your legs take you to the snack stand. Eyes of enthusiastic customers looking almost high on coca cola and the smell of salted popcorn are on you when you finally reach Sunwoo’s side.

“So I’m supposed to help you with your work whenever you ask, but when I’m left cleaning the whole theater completely alone, you can sit around and play on your phone?” you jab, annoyed with the turn of events. You find a spare apron and tie it around your waist, not really wanting to dirty your uniform as you pour caramel into some buckets of popcorn, hearing your companion chuckle next to you.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Okay, so I’ll be back in the ticket booth after serving this customer-”

“My dad’s watching.”

“This is blackmailing,” you snap back, smiling ironically at your coworker.

Sunwoo grins at you when he hands two cokes to the teenage girls behind the counter, shrugging to himself. “Not my problem.”

You learned long ago that fighting with Kim Sunwoo is a battle you can never win. Logically, you know you’re always right, but the boy always thinks he should have the last word in everything, which makes ending an argument with him pretty much impossible. That’s why you stopped trying to prove your truth. In your heart, you know how it is, and no amount of snarky remarks from the feisty boy will change your opinion.

You two work alongside each other in silence for some time. You’d even say it’s efficient– you make the popcorn and he makes the nachos, both of you taking turns behind the coca cola machine, and after a few minutes in his proximity when he’s not being the butt of the Earth, your brain starts to question why you two can’t operate like this on a daily basis.

Oh, how foolish of you.

You’re quickly brought back to reality when you walk over with the grande size bucket of popcorn towards the counter, meeting halfway with Kim Sunwoo’s chest.

It takes everything in you not to scream, but the restraint is deleted as soon as you feel something cold dripping down the front of your uniform, your white button-up suddenly sticking towards your chest in a big, dark-brown pool around your waist area. One sharp look into his eyes is everything it takes you two to come to a mutual understanding of what your next action is gonna be– Sunwoo quickly puts the now empty cup of coca cola onto the counter and puts a hand towards his head in self-disappointment.

“Kim Sunwoo, are you fucking incompetent?!” you scream out, the sensation of your cold shirt sticking to your already sweaty skin making you want to crawl out of yourself and scratch your coworker’s eyes out with the claws of the demon he wakes up in you.

“Look, you don’t have to-”

“I just washed this yesterday, there’s a line of people waiting for their snacks up to the fucking front door, you just ruined the popcorn I made so now I have to redo it, and you just decide to spill this onto me?!” you continue with your rampage, not really caring about the eyes of everyone on you, just letting out all your built-up frustration that creeps inside of you every time you see his face.

“As if I did this on purpose…” he grunts as he turns around in his place and reaches for napkins, not really putting much thought into his actions as he presses the material into the damp place sticking to your skin.

The image startles you– Kim Sunwoo almost in physical contact with you, a paper napkin soaking up some of the coca cola flooding the surface of your skin– and as you watch his slender palms run over your front, your eyes falling to the fluffy hair at the crown of his head, you feel heat rushing to your insides, making you jump away from him.

“Sorry-” he mumbles out as you forcefully pry the napkin out of his hand, gritting your teeth.

“I’m starting to think you’re making me do everything just because you’re useless,” you spit at him.

Rolling his eyes, Sunwoo pokes his cheek with the tip of his tongue. “It was an accident.”

“Don’t care,” you grunt, walking away from the booth, “I’m going to change in the back, you better not burn the place down with the popcorn machine before I’m back,” you comment, sending him a sharp glare over your shoulder.

All that accompanies you to the staff room is Sunwoo’s loud sigh and a sugary-sweet tone he offers to one of the customers as he throws the ruined popcorn into the trash. “I’ll be right with you, miss!”

If anyone asked you if you hated your job now, you think you’d say yes.

Who are you kidding?

You’d definitely say yes.

TONIGHT’S PREMIERE – THE HATING GAME (2021)

You were quite pleased on your way to work today. It’s Wednesday, which usually means it’s not as busy. The weather is cloudy– good enough to not make you gloomy, but not quite sunny enough to make you wish you were outside instead of being stuck in the cinema the whole afternoon– and you packed a home-made sandwich with you to eat on your lunch break. Which is whenever, since you’re on ticket booth duty today– another great news.

The best thing about today, though? Kim Sunwoo isn’t working today.

That alone is good enough to make your whole entire day better. The sun shines brighter, your breathing is lighter, the air is clearer and the birds chirp louder when you know you don’t have to interact with the hellspawn that day. It’s like his absence alone is enough to heal all your wounds and delete all your worries– who cares about the fact that you’re barely getting through your Biology class when you know you won’t have to stare at Sunwoo’s face as you contemplate dropping out of university during your shift?

Maybe you should thank him, in a way.

And with all of this knowledge, a smile plastered on your face as you’re prepared to sit through your 5-hour shift in silence with an occasional swipe through your social media and a well deserved chicken-mayo sandwich towards the end of your shift, it’s quite natural for your smile to freeze and your spirit fall the moment you see the mop of dark brown hair walk through the doors of the cinema.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” you mourn as he walks by, only realizing you said the sentence out loud when the boy looks at you with a scowled face, a scoff escaping his throat.

“Didn’t know we were speaking to each other in third person now,” he says as he stops in his tracks and plops his head into the door to your booth, infesting your calm abode with his presence.

Deep breaths. In and out, Y/N. In and out…

“Hello to you too, Y/N,” he smiles, irony dripping off his tongue, “having a good day so far?”

“It was better without you here, thank you,” you snap back, rolling your eyes at him when his eyes flash with something akin to a victory– it seems you both take joy in making the other one absolutely miserable with your presence.

“Sweet,” he nods on his way out, grinning to himself. “Well, I won’t be long, so don’t let your mood drop too much.”

With that, he’s out of the ticket booth. All that’s left behind him is the smell of his cologne– the tingle of lemon and bergamot filling your nostrils in a way that makes the fine hair at the back of your neck stand up all alert– and silence. It makes you wonder about his whereabouts– you can never know… what if he’s setting up a trap for you somewhere? You wouldn’t be half surprised. You make a mental note to yourself to be twice as cautious when going to the bathroom next time. Just to make sure.

Before you’re able to think of any possible situations that Sunwoo could get himself caught in (while completely ignoring the fact that his father is somewhere in his office in the back– for all you know, he might just need to talk to your boss, like a son does sometimes), the woodworm of your thoughts appears in your view again, two rolled-up tubes under his shoulder as he walks over to the front door.

“Wait! What are those?” you ask, eyes zeroing on the very clear posters in his grip. The shiny white back of the big posters you have to sometimes put up in the front of the cinema are unmistakable to anything else.

“Posters,” Sunwoo replies, calling over his shoulder, already halfway out of the building.

“I know what those are–”

“Then why are you asking?” he huffs, shaking his head in disbelief as he takes a few steps towards the ticket booth, eyes meeting yours. His figure fills the door frame as he towers over you, still sitting on the chair. His eyes have a different kind of twinkle in them– you think, no, you know it’s mischief– making the blood in your veins boil at deadly temperatures.

“Because– well,” you huff, already frustrated, “we’re not allowed to take these,” you say, pointing to the two posters under his shoulder like a kid in the candy store. You try to ignore just how embarrassing you must look right in this moment.

“Oh,” he pouts, taking the posters from below his shoulder, unraveling one of them and resting the other one against the doorframe, “so you’re telling me… I can’t take those two amazingly big, shiny, cool posters of the latest Spiderman movie home for me and my friend Juyeon?”

You’re only half-aware of the fact that he’s teasing you right now, sighing at his innocent face. “No, Sunwoo. You can’t.”

“Hm,” he hums, looking at the poster from top to the bottom, seemingly sad about the news, “that’s terrible. Says who?”

“Your… your father, Sunwoo. He told me when I asked him the other day if I could take–”

“You wanted to take posters home from the cinema?” he gasps, looking at you with big eyes. He looks stupid. So, terribly stupid. Dumb. No thought behind his eyes. You want to smash his head against a concrete wall.

…He’s teasing you. It finally dawns on you.

Now, you want to smash your head against a concrete wall.

Still, you admit defeat with a solemn tone in your voice. “Well, I really wanted the Enola Holmes poster to put up in my bedroom…” you mumble.

“And my dad said no?” he asks, eyebrows quirking up towards his hairline.

“Yes, Sunwoo. Your father said it’s prohibited to take posters home from the cinema, that’s exactly why I’m stopping you right now,” you say, tone filled with annoyance. You know he’s enjoying your face full of misery. But still, if there’s one thing you’re good at, it’s following the rules and orders– if Mr Kim says you can’t take the posters home, you’ll go in the back and tear them into pieces before throwing them into the bin like you’re told to.

If things were going your way, you’d advise Sunwoo to do the same.

A day with Kim Sunwoo in it never goes your way, though. You should’ve been prepared.

“So I can’t take those posters home because my dad said no?” he clarifies, looking like a dummy. Like one of those kids that ask the most obvious questions during exams. Like one of those kids you want to sucker punch in the face.

“Sunwoo–”

“Well, Y/N-ie,” he purrs, the nickname making your hands curl up in fists, “that’s too bad… because I am the owner’s son, so… the rules don’t really apply to me, you see.”

And with that, he sends another sickeningly sweet smile your way before he turns on his heel and marches towards the front door again– not responding to any of your annoyed, infuriated calls of his name. He doesn’t stop at your warnings. He doesn’t care.

And just like that, he disappears just as fast as he appeared. The interaction didn’t last more than 10 minutes, but you consider your whole day ruined.

Fucking Sunwoo and his fucking privileges. And his fucking annoying face.

It’s not even that important. It’s just two posters that would get thrown out to the dumpster in the back at the end of your shift anyway. You don’t even care about those posters in particular– you just with equal rules applied to all workers in the workplace.

It’s not like Spiderman Homecoming is one of your favorite movies… not at all.

You could’ve had that poster. You deserved that poster. You sold tickets for it and served the snack booth when it premiered– not Kim Sunwoo and whatever his friend’s name was.

You kick the wall with your sneaker. It leaves a dirty mark.

You should’ve known the day felt too good to be true.

TONIGHT’S PREMIERE – MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (1993)

There’s a new thing Mr Kim is trying to lure more customers into the cinema. He calls it ‘Rewind Thursdays’, where he picks a movie from the past and airs it in the theater again to bring out nostalgia in the whole town. You think it’s a good idea– you remember when the Harry Potter movies had a rerun back when you were little, ecstatic that you finally got to see them in the cinema because you missed out on the experience when they were coming out for the first time. You went even though you saw them all before, and you had a blast. So in your books, this was the best thing that could happen to the little, old movie theater on the corner of the town’s square.

You were overbeared with joy when Mr Kim went up to you during one of your slow Wednesday shifts in the ticket booth with a paper and a pen, requesting you to write down your favorite movies. He informed you that he’d prefer it if they were older, to, quote, really get the nostalgia going, and you were happy to have some say in the list of movies to play for multiple reasons. One, because it meant he valued your opinion, and two, you don’t usually work on Thursdays, so if your favorite movie is on that day, you can go and relax in the cinema while watching it.

This all happened a few weeks ago. You gave the list back to your boss at the end of your shift, smiling brightly just thinking about it, and he told you he’ll get through it and see what he can incorporate.

The plan gets to you on one uneventful Wednesday. You are stuck in the ticket booth again. Today is one of the Wednesdays where Sunwoo is in charge, because Mr Kim is out of town. You hate those days most of them all, but recently, he’s been giving you your freedom and letting you work in the ticket booth instead of cleaning the already clean cinema, saying he has stuff to do in the back. You suspect he just sits around in his father’s office with his legs on the table, chewing on his obnoxious strawberry mints. The image makes you furious only the tiniest bit, because the fact that he’s out of your sight and isn’t ordering you around is enough to calm your nerves. It could always be worse, you remind yourself. It could always be worse.

“I have the schedule of ‘Rerun Thursdays’ all done,” Sunwoo says as he walks up to the ticket booth close to the end of your shift. His eyes look a little tired when he holds up a thick card to you, the design of the poster making your eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Did he do that?

“It’s ‘Rewind Thursdays’, actually,” you note, pointing towards the very obvious mistake on the top of the poster.

“Oh fuck– you know what, not anymore,” he scowls, taking the poster back from you and pointing glares at the title he mistyped, “I spent 3 hours on this, I’m not remaking it.”

“It looks like a kindergartener did it,” you note, eyes scanning the bubbly font and the orange-yellow combination used throughout the whole design when he offers the paper back to you. It looks like a Winnie the Pooh convention is taking place instead of an event full of nostalgic movies, and you would tell him that, but he beats you to it with a tired remark.

“Well, if my father wanted this to look professional, he should’ve hired someone to do it,” he mutters, obviously hurt by your harsh words, “I used Canva. I don’t know how Photoshop works and my dad can barely operate the computer, so this is what we’re going with, okay?” he says as he explains, big eyes suddenly bearing into yours. “Unless you wanna redo it yourself…?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then this is the final poster,” he says, “I’m gonna hang those outside when we close,” he notes, watching you scan the movie titles. The event will take place in 4 weeks from the middle of November to the middle of December (right in time for Christmas movies to air, since you’re certain Mr Kim has another Christmas-themed business tactic up his sleeve).

“Did any of your movies make it?” Sunwoo asks, surprisingly friendly. You can’t remember a single casual conversation with the male– all you two do it either give each other the silent treatment or scream at each other (more like you scream at him, but he always deserves it…), so you’re kind of surprised at the change. Not pleasantly surprised. Just surprised.

Eyes falling to the second movie on the list, you feel yourself nodding as you smile. It’s like a dream come true– you can finally see your favorite movie in the cinema for the first time. You don’t know who to thank for this miracle, but something in your insides feels very grateful.

“Yeah,” you say, trying to seem unaffected. You’d rather kill yourself than to show any signs of emotion in front of Kim Sunwoo. All he deserves to see is your stone cold face.

“Which one?” he asks, seemingly interested.

“National treasure,” you hum, pointing to the movie on the list, having Sunwoo nod to himself. You expect him to say something to you– perhaps engage in a conversation like a normal person would– but suddenly, he gasps and takes out a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, offering it to you and playing the role of the manager again.

“Oh, by the way,” he starts, watching as you unfold the paper, “I know we don’t usually work on Thursdays, but since my dad decided to do all of this, we kinda have to, since he wouldn’t be able to handle the premieres on his own, so… Here's your schedule for the next 4 weeks,” he says, clasping his hands together in front of him.

It takes everything in you to not correct the male and tell him that those are technically not premieres, but when your eyes land on the little Excel table Sunwoo printed out for you, the feeling is overpowered with one of deep disappointment.

“I work the second week?” you ask, as if the question might magically change the schedule.

“I mean, I think you can read…” Sunwoo hums, shrugging to himself.

A heartbeat passes by of you staring at the schedule, a pit opening in your stomach at the realization. You only work 2 Thursdays out of 4, noticing the fact that you rotate with Sunwoo (with him somehow taking the first week, much to your surprise), but for some reason, one of those days had to be the day when National treasure is on.

And sure, you might think this is good– you can just watch the movie while you work!

Wrong.

Working means either staying in the ticket booth the whole time in case a customer comes, working the snack booth the whole time in case a customer comes, or cleaning the bathrooms. Working means also standing in front of the screening room sometimes, making sure no one is going in without a ticket in the middle of the movie.

There is no time for you to watch National treasure if you’re working.

Sighing, you decide to do something you always prohibited yourself from doing– you ask Kim Sunwoo for a favor. “Listen… my favorite movie is airing the week I work, so I was… wondering if we could exchange shifts? So I could go and watch it?” you ask, looking at your coworker with what you presume are pleading eyes. You hope it works on the boy– he looks like the type to fold under a tender gaze.

“So you want to get out of work only to still come?” Sunwoo clarifies, snickering.

“Pretty much, yeah,” you nod, tapping your fingers on the table.

“Well, the schedule is set,” Sunwoo shrugs, “I can’t do anything about it.”

Eyes sending darts to the very middle of Kim Sunwoo’s forehead, you take a few calming breaths before you speak up again. You don’t want to blow up on him when you’re asking him for a favor– you don’t think this approach would help you much in the situation.

“Why?”

“Because,” he shrugs.

“Because?” you repeat. “That’s the reason?” you say, a weak laugh dragging out of your throat.

“Pretty much, yeah,” he mirrors your previous response, the blood in your veins already growing hot from the confrontation.

“Sunwoo, you– come on,” you say, “just this once, please? I’ll take the first week. We can just switch, what’s the difference?”

Sunwoo tongues the inside of his cheek, eyes pointing towards the paper. “Schedule is schedule, Y/N. You have to follow it,” he says, an innocent look glazing his big fuckass boba eyes. Oh how you despise that look. It’s the look that tells you he finds this all so, so amusing, but won’t laugh in your face in hopes of teasing you some more.

“Oh, amazing,” you say, throwing the schedule to the table, “I knew I could always count on you ruining my day, Kim Sunwoo. And I bet you did the schedule as well! You knew it was my favorite movie, so you made me work that week. Very nice of you, you dumbass. Thank you very much,” you grunt, annoyance flowing through your brain and making you truly merciless– you have no proof of Sunwoo even knowing which movie of yours made it in, or proof of him making the schedule– you don’t care, though. All you want at this moment is to claw his eyes out and pop them in between your fingers to ease the anger on your insides.

You can’t do that, though, so a screaming match will have to do the job.

“Stop being so dramatic,” he scoffs, eyebrows furrowing. “I didn’t even know which one your favorite movie was, so how could I do this on purpose? Plus, I didn’t even make the schedule, my dad did–”

“As if I would believe that,” you roll your eyes, huffing. “You’re all owner’s son privileges this, owner’s son privileges that, but when I ask you for one thing, one! Single! Fucking! Thing! You can’t do it,” you bite, words dripping in spite.

“Look, I really can’t-”

“You can’t do this one thing for me?” you cut him off, the question sounding like an ultimatum.

“No,” he shakes his head, seemingly unaffected by the conversation.

“Because…?” you demand a valid reason.

“Because I just can’t,” he shrugs, casual and cool.

The world stills for a moment. You calculate your next move. Blood rushes in your ears, you see red. Your eyes fall on the clock– it’s 4 minutes after your shift. That’s it.

You take your coat draped over the chair, stand up from the chair and dash towards the front door. You can’t stand being around this man any longer– all he does is bring misery into your otherwise, already boring life.

Speedwalking out of the place, you yell out a harsh “Go fuck yourself!” over your shoulder, leaving Sunwoo to close the cinema by himself. You don’t even change out of your uniform before you go– your head is too clouded with anger to remember to do so. Cursing out your coworker isn’t the best thing you could do in this situation, more so when he’s the owner’s son, but suddenly, you don’t really care about losing your job at the cinema anymore.

Maybe you should quit yourself, actually.

TONIGHT’S PREMIERE – HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS (2003)

In your books, there aren’t many things worse than working three days in a row. You can only think of so many even when you try hard enough: like going to school in your pajamas, getting sick on the day of an important event, ripping your pants on the metro, standing outside of the cinema in a popcorn costume for 4 hours…

Yeah. Not too many.

So naturally, on the third day of your work week, putting one sweetened coffee into your stomach after another, barely keeping your head up from the lack of sleep you’re getting in between classes, work, and writing your essays until 3 in the morning, you beg god for a calm shift. It’s Wednesday, the first week of Mr Kim’s ‘Rewind Thursdays’ event, and it just so happened that you were set to work the first half of the week while Sunwoo got the other half.

The only thing keeping you going is the fact that you and Sunwoo will now basically not see each other’s face for the next four weeks– with the exception of Fridays and Saturdays, the premiere days. You’re getting a lot of shifts this month, but hey… Christmas is coming. At least you’ll have plenty of money to buy gifts for everyone this year. (Or not. You’re very underpaid.)

Entertaining yourself by watching the world outside of your window and mentally betting on the race of raindrops falling down the glass surface– because your phone battery almost ran out during class this morning and you forgot to bring your charger with you– you hope you don’t fall asleep right in this moment. Your boss is somewhere inside and if he oh just happens to check up on you (which he never normally does, but you can never be too sure), you’re certain you’d lose your job after taking a nap in the ticket booth. Some things just can’t be accepted.

Cat fights with his son? Perfectly acceptable. Sleeping on the clock? Not so much…

Eyes drooping when the third raindrop race doesn’t go the way you bet on in your head, you figure you can just rest for a second or two… Eyelids shielding your irises from the orange hues of the lights inside, your brain already turning off and preparing a happy dream for you, you think that taking a nap is not such a bad idea right now…

Wrong.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” the noise of a thunder– actually, no, that was just someone’s voice– wakes you up and makes you jump in your chair, your knee hitting the bottom of the table making you hiss in sharp pain.

“Fuck, man–”

“Didn’t know taking a nap was in the job description,” Sunwoo grins at you through the glass window of the booth. His eyes twinkle in amusement as you drag your hand through your hair, trying to smoothe it down after tousling it in your weird sleeping position.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” you mutter, not even meeting his eye.

“Oh?”

“Yeah… just had… my eyes closed…” you hum, scratching the back of your neck. Clearing your throat, you look back up at him with an disinterested look on your face. “Anyways, what do you want? You’re off today.”

Scanning his figure, fully taking in his appearance– the fabric of his dark gray hoodie a little stained with raindrops (you bet he ran from his car into the building without an umbrella. He seems like the type to be embarrassed about umbrellas.), the fabric of the garment enveloping his head and shading his face a little from the ugly yellow lights. His face is a little flushed– you presume it’s from the running– and his hair is falling into his face. You can barely see his eyes behind the curtain of chocolate locks– he really needs a trim.

“Damn, didn’t know you hated me so much that you can’t stand seeing me on my off days,” he jokes, leaning on the counter as if to stick his face as close as he can into yours. Thank god for the glass shielding you two– you think you’d give him a fist to the nose if you ever felt his breathing on your skin.

“I do,” you agree, impatiently drumming your fingers on the top of the table, “so tell me what you want so you can disappear again,” you say.

“I just went to check up on whether you were sleeping or not so I can tell my dad to fire you–”

“Kim Sunwoo–”

He puts his arms up defensively, eyebrows raising at your threatening tone. “Okay, not really. I don’t actually care that much. Besides, you promised to quit yourself anyway, so,” he explains, shrugging to himself, “believe it or not, I’m here to buy tickets for a movie.”

You shoot him a stare, the look in your eyes dead, stone cold as you ponder on his words. It’s cold outside, it’s raining, and Kim Sunwoo just happens to decide to buy tickets for a movie today. In a cinema that he works at. In a cinema that he works at tomorrow.

“You work tomorrow…?” you mirror your inner monologue, kind of confused at the turn of events.

“You know my schedule? I’m flattered–”

The irritation is slowly creeping into your bones again. Actually, it has been since he arrived, but the more he talks, the more agitating the whole encounter feels. Maybe you should tape his mouth shut the next time you see him– you bet the day would be so much better if you don’t have to listen to him talk.

“Why don’t you just buy the tickets tomorrow when you work? Didn’t have to walk here in the rain,” you explain, sighing to prove just how annoyed you are with his presence.

“Because I kinda need them today,” he says, clarifying to you with the tone you use when you explain mundane things to a child.

You don’t know what he did in his past life to get the ability to annoy you each and every time you meet him, but you’d like some of it to get back at him in your next life. Why you’re even thinking of past lives and the possibility of meeting Kim Sunwoo in your next one, you’re not really certain, but if it helps you to not smash the glass separating you two, you guess you can get behind the thought process.

“Okay,” you nod, painfully calm for the amount of screaming you’ve been doing internally, “what movie?” you ask, turning your body to the computer on your right and breaking eye contact with him. If he’s a customer, you’re going to treat him like one– no small talk and no arguments. You won’t ruin your day even more over a man that doesn’t know what chapstick is. (You don’t stare at his lips, just for the record. It’s just painfully obvious when he talks. Sometimes you want to reach over and pluck away the dead skin with your fingers– you won’t, though. That would be weird.)

Sunwoo straightens his back as he fishes for his wallet in the front pocket of his jeans. “National Treasure,” he smiles, making you break into cold sweat, “two tickets, please.”

Like a scene in a horror movie, your head turns without moving the rest of your body, eyes twitching when you see him standing at the other side of the booth, calm and collected. Suddenly, the scene makes sense– he bought the tickets to see your favorite movie on the day of your shift. Of course. He just has to rub it in your face.

Not only are you working that day. You will also most likely serve popcorn to him as he goes inside with whoever he is buying the second ticket for. And you will try not to trip him on his way inside the screening room.

It was a smart move for him to not go inside the ticket booth with you, even though he has all the right to. You bet he knows you’d claw his eyes out if you had the chance.

“You have to be kidding me.”

“What? I can’t buy tickets for a movie?” he asks, innocence dripping off his tongue.

Breathing deeply– while trying to contain the demon that’s begging to crawl out of your insides and tear him into 25 different pieces– you smile ironically at the male, gulping before you speak. “That would be 12 dollars, please,” you say, your customer service voice turning kind of eerie.

Not even letting the male choose his seats– he lost the privilege when he decided to come and buy the tickets for your favorite movie– you print out two tickets with the worst possible view (the ones in the first row, far right. If Sunwoo loses his neck because he has to look up at the screen for the entirety of the movie, well, who are you to hate that) and offer them to your coworker.

Like a mind game, the male slips them into his pocket without even looking at them, not breaking eye contact with you sitting behind the booth.

“Have a nice day,” he says as he takes two steps back before fully turning and escaping through the front door, figure dashing towards the old Prius parked in front of the building.

Bawling your hands into fists, you try the breathing exercises you found the other week. Calm your body and your mind, the title said. You knew you’d need those when you saved the post into one of your boards on Pinterest.

Still, you can’t help yourself. You simply cannot. You let it out– it’s not healthy to keep negativity inside.

He can’t hear you, but you still mutter a spiteful “I hope you choke,” under your breath as you settle back into the uncomfortable surface of the chair.

TONIGHT’S PREMIERE – YOU’VE GOT MAIL (1998)

Remember the time you said you didn’t really mind having more shifts in November, because it meant a bigger paycheck? Yeah… that was true. For a few days.

Until you got a phone call one day from none other than Kim Sunwoo– whose number you didn’t even want to save into your contacts, but after his insisting that it’s for work purposes, did so under the name ‘dumpster raccoon’– telling you that you have to get to work immediately, that his dad said so, and that it’s an emergency.

Do you believe him? No. Absolutely not.

His tone of voice was too calm to be in an emergency. If his dad wanted you to come to work today, he could’ve called you himself instead of making his son do it. And also, you really don’t know what’s so important to take care of on a Wednesday, since it’s the slow day of the week, but still– you angrily took off the facemask from your face before the timer even went off, shut your laptop with a half-watched episode of The office in your Netflix window, changed out of your comfy clothes and marched towards the cinema.

Because you never know. He might be saying the truth, after all. And if that was the case, you didn’t want to be caught disobeying your boss.

You get to the old movie theater on the corner of the town center at 4 in the afternoon. The sky is already getting dark and you feel the coldness of November seeping into your bones, and so you waste no time in getting inside and chasing the heat of the vintage-looking interior. Your boots make a thudding sound as you walk across the hall, seeing Sunwoo sitting in the ticket booth in his usual habitat: with his phone in his hands and his feet up on the table, chewing on his favorite strawberry mints. Now this sight screams emergency if you’ve ever seen one.

“What was so important for you to call me to work and then chill in the ticket booth all afternoon?” you ask, spite slipping off your tongue with every word you speak.

Sunwoo looks up at you from under his eyelashes, hair still slightly shielding his eyes. He doesn’t even have his uniform on– there’s a gray hoodie enveloping his torso (you swear he lives in this garment. You wonder if he even washes it sometimes) and black jeans hanging off his hips– and the more you stare at him, the more you feel like punching him in the face.

“Oh,” he hums, stretching out his limbs from the hours of sitting on the chair unmoving, “dad said to tell you to clean the screening room. Since it’s Thursday tomorrow, and all.”

The look on his face is innocent. He looks like he just told you the most casual piece of information– and truth be told, he kind of did. The whole thing is just not making any sense right now.

“I should clean the screening room today? You’re on the clock, though, why don’t you do it?” you ask, frustration clearly written all over your face. You were looking forward to having a self-care day today, so you can only imagine how tired of his endeavors you are right in this moment.

“Yeah, but I am on ticket booth duty, so I can’t,” he shrugs, frowning a little to prove his nonexistent point.

“It’s Wednesday. It’s not busy. You know you can do both.”

“Look, it’s not me, it’s my dad–”

“Is it? Is it, Sunwoo?” you huff, arms flying into the air. “Or are you just using me to do the work you don’t feel like doing? Because it really does seem like that right now,” you bite, running your hand through your hair in exasperation.

“Do you want me to call him?” Sunwoo asks, tone of voice suddenly threatening.

A heartbeat passes. You continue to have a staring contest with him. The fury inside of you rages like a storm. Still, you nod to the feeling of authority coming from your actual boss, and so you wordlessly turn on your heel and march towards the screening room, ready to clean the place in the least amount of time so you can go home and back to your selfcare endeavors. (You’re adding printing out Sunwoo’s face and throwing darts at it to the list of activities. You think you really need that right now.)

The screening room is dark when you come inside, and as you reach towards the lightswitch, you almost fear something jumping at you. See, the traumatic response from being locked up in the toilet from your coworker is still very present in your bones. When you stop working here, you’re going to ask for financial compensation for all the damage this boy did on your mental health.

You walk down the aisle of seats and try to inspect the damage. No movies air on Wednesday and there was only one kids movie going on Tuesday, so you can either expect it to be almost clean, or full of snacks that fell off the hands of grabby children during the cartoon. The more you inspect the place, though, the more it seems like… somebody already cleaned it before?

The floor is clean. The laminated surface under the seats has no smudge of dirt on it, like someone already mopped the place. And when you think back, the bins were empty as well.

The screening room was definitely cleaned before.

Which means that Sunwoo brought you here for absolutely nothing.

Suddenly, the lights go out. The whole room falls into darkness, and the anger inside of your veins very quickly mixes with panic as you try to climb up the stairs on the side of the screening room and escape. Your throat gets dry as you yell for your coworker, not really caring if your next outburst is going to get you fired or not.

“Kim Fucking Sunwoo, why the fuck did you call me to clean an already cleaned screening room?!” you yell, not really knowing if he hears you or not. Doesn’t matter– it feels cathartic to do so anyway.

Your feet stumble on the awkwardly-long stairs, your figure almost falling to the ground. Managing to hold yourself up and steady your body before your head hits the sharp corner of one of the stairs and makes you die, you continue on with your small tangent. “You really think this is funny? You’re having fun pranking me all the time? I hate your guts, Kim Sunwoo, and I hope you burn in hell!”

A bright light suddenly illuminates the screening room, coming from somewhere behind you. When you look over your shoulder, the screen is white for a few moments before the opening credits of a Jerry Buckheimer film flash on the big surface, halting you in your movements. The sound is a little too loud in the speakers, but it gets adjusted the moment you almost lose your hearing. The moment you see Nicolas Cage appear, it’s clear as day.

There’s a movie playing. And the movie playing is National treasure.

You think you’re hallucinating. This is surely a fata morgana.

Standing in the middle of the screening room, your mouth hangs agape and your eyes go wide as you watch the first few scenes of the movie. Ben Gates already learns about the hidden treasure passed down through American history when you feel a slight nudge to your shoulder, making you turn your head to see a tall figure staring you down with a bucket of popcorn in their hands.

You are confused. So utterly confused. The movie was on last week. You’d know– you worked the snack booth that day. The screening room is empty and it’s Wednesday– what’s going on?

“Can you sit? Or are you just going to watch the movie standing in the aisle,” Sunwoo grunts, balancing the big bucket of popcorn and two drinks in his large hands, the sight comical and almost making you want to watch him suffer some more.

Caught off guard, though, you let him back you into the aisle of seats, your figure slouching into one of the red cushions like a rag doll. Sunwoo takes place next to you, placing the big bucket of popcorn into your lap, before he settles into a seat as well and focuses his eyes and attention on the movie.

“What… what is this?” you ask, frozen in the seat.

“Hm?” Sunwoo frowns, looking at you. “National treasure,” he hums, “I thought you’d know, since you threw a scene about it that one time.”

“I- I know that, I just…” you trail off, still surprised at the turn of events, “what’s going on right now…?”

“We’re watching National treasure,” he notes, talking to you as if you were slow.

“What…?”

A sigh escapes Sunwoo’s lips at your utter confusion, his hand coming up to the bucket of popcorn in your lap and throwing a handful of the snack into his mouth before speaking. “Look, Y/N. You said you wanted to watch your favorite movie in the cinema, so that’s what you’re doing. Enjoy my owner’s son privileges for once,” he shrugs, watching as your face morphs into an unreadable expression.

That explanation satisfies you for a bit. The shock in your insides, though? Still present.

There’s something about the whole gesture that makes your stomach feel uneasy. Sunwoo did something nice for you– out of the kindness of his own heart– and you really don’t know why he would even think of something like this. You two aren’t on the best terms either, after all. Maybe he finally went crazy.

Or maybe you did and this was all the result of your imagination. Either or.

Yeah, you must be the one that’s gone batshit insane. Surely. You’re certain of the fact when you reach for the popcorn and accidentally touch his hand, the two of you deciding to get some at the same time, and your stomach does a flip and your brain makes a sign for you to quickly retract your hand– but the feeling of his slightly cold hand against your fingertips is now engraved into your memory and won’t leave and let you focus on the movie no matter how hard you try.

“You wouldn’t have to do this if you just let me switch schedules with you that time,” you note, “just saying.”

“I couldn’t,” he shrugs.

“Huh? But you bought two tickets..?”

“Yeah, but those were for my friends. I had to drive my mum down to grandmas that day, so I couldn’t go or take your shift that day,” he hums, not once breaking eye contact with the screen.

“If you would’ve just said so, I wouldn’t have made a scene about it–”

“Yeah… but I enjoy watching you make a scene,” he grins, shifting his attention towards you for a second with that lazy smirk playing with his lips. His hair is falling into his eyes and you have the urge to get it out of his face with a motion of your hand while also scolding him like a mother to finally get a haircut, just so you could see the twinkle in his mischievous orbs.

“You need to get serious help, then,” you grunt, pointing your gaze back towards the screen, unable to look at his face for any longer. He’s being annoying again. You’re annoyed.

“Probably,” he admits.

You two sit in silence for a while, the only sound accompanying you being the movie playing out on the big screen in front of you. You think this is the calmest you two have ever been around each other, and you’re starting to think that if Sunwoo just didn’t talk, you two could even get along.

Something touches the side of your thigh in the darkness of the room. Eyes darting to the source, you notice Sunwoo’s thigh pressing against yours, the cause of his obnoxious man-spreading, and something about the closeness of his body and the smell of his citrusy cologne makes you feel like your chest is heaving in on itself. You can’t stand him around you. You two can’t share this close of a space.

“Are you not leaving?” you ask.

“No,” he hums, “should I be?”

“Well, you’re on the clock…”

The man snickers, shaking his head in disbelief. “Y/N, you and I both know that the possibility of someone coming to buy a ticket on a Wednesday afternoon is close to zero. Me being there makes no difference in today’s sales.”

His hand knocks into yours again as you reach for more popcorn. You gulp, nodding. “Right…”

“And I wanted to see the movie to see if it’s really that good to make a scene about it,” he teases, another playful look sent your way from the corner of his eye.

You grunt, rolling your eyes. Oh how you hate his guts…

And even though you love the movie, you pray for it to end quickly. The more time you spend with Sunwoo forced into your zone of comfort, the more uncomfortable you feel– even the slightest movement of his body affects you and makes your brain turn on overdrive. It’s strange and it’s weird, and you don’t understand how hatred for a person could manifest in such reactions.

It’s better that you didn’t notice you two sitting in the love seat. God knows you wouldn’t handle that well. You’d rather die than to hold on to that knowledge.

TONIGHT’S PREMIERE – CLUELESS (1995)

They say that you only start realizing just how stupid people can be when you work in customer service. As one of the only three employees of the small, vintage cinema on the corner of the town’s square, you can only agree with the sentiment– you have a lot of stories to tell about the wonders of the human brain.

Like that one time you got screamed at because the movie tickets were ‘too expensive’ – because naturally, you should be able to change the price of them when asked. Or that one time you got screamed at because the movie tickets were sold out– because naturally, you should add more seats to the screening room just for the two middle-aged women to sit on during the premiere of the newest Orlando Bloom movie. Or when somebody yelled at you for the toilets being full after the movie– naturally, you are supposed to throw people out in the middle of them peeing. Or build new stalls. Either or.

They say that you only start realizing just how stupid people can be when you work in customer service, but truly, you also realize just how rude they can also be for no reason at all.

Much like today. It’s Friday, which means it’s premiere night. The tickets to all movies this week are sold out already, so no one is on ticket booth duty, and much to your relief, Mr Kim took the snack stand himself. Your responsibility for the day is scanning the tickets and then making sure no one is getting inside during the movie without a ticket.

It’s not a hard job. Not at all– you would even say nothing about working in the cinema is hard, when you don’t have an annoying coworker trying to make your whole life a living hell– but you see, customers love to make your job harder just by being unreasonably rude about things that are clearly out of your control.

“Sir, I really can’t let you in, I’m sorry,” you say, tone of voice polite despite screaming on the inside. In front of you is standing a tall man, maybe a few years older than you, the expression on his face full of anger and vexation. They say a customer is always right. You agree only when the customer looks like they could wait for you after work and beat you up in the bushes. Sadly, that still doesn’t mean you can let the man inside without a valid ticket.

“What do you mean? Little one, I’m telling you I bought the ticket here, so if you don’t let me in–”

“All tickets purchased for the screening should be able to scan through this, sir, and if it doesn’t work, I am not allowed to let you inside of the cinema,” you try to explain, getting kind of desperate. The line behind him was forming and the movie was supposed to play in a few minutes, so if you wanted to scan all the tickets in time, you had to be quick.

He wouldn’t budge, though. His eyebrows are furrowed and the guy behind him seems to be getting angry as well, making the hair on the back of your neck stand up alert, like a cat when it senses danger. You try your hardest to keep your tone firm, hands clasped politely behind your back. “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave, sir, or maybe check in with the owner about the issue? I don’t have the competence to–”

“Listen, I won’t be talking to anyone, because you will let me in, okay?”

“Sir, I can’t-”

Your sentence is cut off by the man again, his fury making you take a step backwards in fear. “And if you don’t, you will see the consequences.”

Gulping, you try to think of a way to get out of this situation. Mr Kim is too far away for you to call, and he is also busy– the line is long and Sunwoo isn’t working today. It’s just the two of you today, so your options are getting slimmer. You can’t let that man in without a working ticket– it seems like the one he’s showing you is either a fake one, or bought in another cinema– but it seems like if you don’t, he’ll have you dead before the next morning.

“So?”

Opening your mouth to answer (although your brain is still empty and you don’t even know what more to say), a low voice coming from behind you startles you in the middle of your crisis. “Is there a problem here?”

Turning your head to the source of the voice, you’ve never been more relieved to see Kim Sunwoo in your close proximity. You watch as he puts a rolled-up poster to the ground behind you before he takes another step closer towards your figure, his expression stone cold and glaring at the man in front of you.

“Your coworker here won’t let me in to watch the movie,” he complains, hand waving around in a threatening way.

Just having Sunwoo around makes you more confident. Clearing your throat, your eyes dart to your coworker, seeing his face morph into irritation. “It won’t scan his ticket, so…”

“If it won’t scan your ticket, it means it’s invalid and we’re not allowed to let you in,” Sunwoo says, tone of voice way less polite than the one you were using before.

“That’s ridiculous-”

“You are ridiculous,” Sunwoo grunts, annoyance clearly written all over his face. “You were asked to leave, so maybe you should.”

Truth be told, you’ve been in a couple of arguments with Sunwoo before. In none of them has he ever looked and sounded like this, though. You and Sunwoo argue with spite– sparks flying waiting to start a fire, curses and harsh words thrown around carelessly in moments of heated hatred. His tone is stern, but never threatening. Never mean. Not in the way he’s being right now.

It makes you stare at him wordlessly. He seems to be taking the lead in the situation, reacting territorially to the man in front of him. You can’t say you don’t feel safer with him around– you would be lying.

“Maybe you could just let me in and get this over with–”

“And maybe you could fuck off,” Sunwoo says back, something in his tone making your stomach feel all light. He looks serious, standing his ground, and the man finally seems to get the memo that he’s not watching the premiere tonight, because he backs off and grits his teeth at the male.

“Your boss will hear about this,” he threatens, making Sunwoo chuckle.

“I’m sure he will.”

Sympathetic looks are thrown your way from the women in the line behind that can finally come up to you so you scan their tickets. You smile at each one and try to seem unaffected by the exchange, but the memory of it still lingers in your brain and doesn’t make you rest easy as you greet the rest of the customers.

You didn’t even realize Sunwoo was still standing next to you, watching you work. He seems to recognise your shaken-up composure, tone of voice sympathetic and quiet as he asks: “You okay?”

“What?” you ask, surprised by the question, “oh. Yeah, I’m fine. He was just… being a bitch, the usual.”

“Yeah,” he snickers, “why didn’t you just scream at him like you do to me? I bet that would scare him away,” he notes, making you roll your eyes at the comment.

“Because he looked like he could beat me up, Sunwoo.”

“And I don’t?” he gasps, suddenly offended.

You scan the boy up and down, pretending to think it over for a few before you shake your head. “No,” you shrug, “I could beat you up.”

“Excuse you?” he gasps, crossing his arms at his chest in a defensive stance, the shock on his face mixing in with amusement.

“Don’t believe me? Wanna try?” you test, the conversation suddenly flowing freely, without you even noticing. You don’t pay it much thought, but you guess getting along with Sunwoo is easier when he’s on your side. Most of the time, he’s not, though– and maybe that’s the problem.

“Okay,” he nods, “meet me in the back when you’re off. No weapons allowed, we’ll do it the street style. This is a battle of fists,” he points a finger at you, the sentence making you sigh dreamily and point your eyes towards the ceiling.

“You can’t even imagine how long I’ve been waiting for this moment.”

Sunwoo smiles at that– that dumb, boyish smile you usually so despise– and shakes his head at your antics. The conversation dies down a bit after the exchange– with you scanning the tickets and trying your hardest to make it through the line before the movie starts, when your coworker, dressed in none other than his signature gray hoodie and black jeans, nudges you with his elbow. “Want me to stay for a bit, or are you good now?”

“I can take care of myself, Sunwoo,” you sigh, “you can go about your day.”

“Well, it didn’t seem like it a few minutes ago–”

“I can take care of myself when I’m not confronted with a tall muscled man that is threatening me, Sunwoo,” you repeat, looking at the rest of the line, “so with him gone now, you can go about your day. What are you even doing here, by the way? I thought you were off today.”

“I am,” he nods, rocking a little in his place, shifting weight from his heels towards his toes, “I was just… here to drop off something for you,” he says, clearing his throat and pointing towards the poster he was holding when he first approached you, the shiny tube now resting against the nearest wall.

You shoot the boy a curious look, eyebrows furrowed in question. You don’t get to ask for clarification about the character of the poster, because he abruptly cuts off your train of thought, speaking fast as if to avoid making any more conversation with you. “I’ll see you in the back after you’re done for that fist fight, then. Bye!”

And before you get a chance to say anything back, Sunwoo swiftly turns on his heel and awkwardly marches towards the front door. You don’t have much time to inspect the thing he dropped off for you, but after you’re done with scanning the tickets and have time to breathe when the movie starts, you allow yourself to peek inside–

only to see a National treasure poster staring back at you, surface glossy and glimmering, as if you just opened a chest full of gold.

As you take the poster to the staff room with you (while also wearing a huge, embarrassing grin on your face for someone staring at the face of Nicolas Cage), making sure it’s safe and sound until you can bring it home with you, you wonder why you haven’t been civil with Kim Sunwoo before.

It’s good to have a taste of his owner’s son privileges sometimes.

TONIGHT’S PREMIERE – ME BEFORE YOU (2016)

The day is Friday, the 1st of December. Mr Kim’s ‘Rewind Thursdays' event is over and while Fridays are always the premiere days, meaning you usually have to work the evenings either in the snack booth or in the ticket booth, your boss told you you can have the night off under one condition– you come in the morning (since you told him your classes are done for the semester, he’s been keen on making you work at random times of the day) and help Sunwoo with Christmas decorations in the cinema.

And, well, who are you to say no to a free evening? Maybe you can finally have that self-care time you’ve been needing before your exam season starts.

“Can you get the ladder from the back?” Sunwoo asks, tone of voice not at all interested. You don’t know what the reasoning behind his mood is, but you figure it’s either the fact that he had to get up before 12, or the fact that he doesn’t really seem like the type to like decorating.

“Why don’t you get it?” you huff, wiping your forehead off the sweat that’s cumulated on it over the time you spent bringing out all the boxes full of decorations out of the staff room. “I brought everything in, maybe you can do some work for once.”

One would think your dynamics with Kim Sunwoo would shift after he’s been nice to you on multiple occasions. And sure, you don’t really fight with him as often and he hasn’t pulled a prank on you in a while, but some days, his whole presence is still just as annoying to you as it’s been for the past couple of months. There’s not really much you can do about it– especially not when he’s bossing you around and not doing any actual work himself.

“I built the christmas tree,” he grunts, opening one of the boxes full of ornaments, squinting at the contains with disgust on his face. “And I put up all the other useless stuff before you got here too,” he says, pointing a glare at you.

Looking around the theater, you notice various types of decorations all over the place. There’s some mistletoe hanging off the ceiling (which has you wondering how he even got it there in the first place) and garlands framing all the doorways– the greenery making the whole place decorated in a very vintage tone. It’s fitting to the theme of the cinema, though, and you can tell that Sunwoo really can’t be arsed to do any better, so you don’t mention it out loud in favor of avoiding another one of your petty cat fights.

Admitting your defeat, you storm back into the staff room and carry out the tall ladder, struggling to fit through the doorways and to cross the corners, praying to all higher forces that you don’t accidentally scratch off pieces of the wall on your way to Sunwoo.

You put down the metal construction with a loud thud, making the boy look up at you from beneath his bangs, the silent curse evident in his eyes. You don’t know what’s up with him, but again, you won’t ask. You try to tell yourself that you don’t really care either, but with every glance towards his direction, the question keeps bugging you and dancing around your brain.

You force yourself not to care.

Watching as he tries to untangle the Christmas lights, struggle evident in the frustration written all over his face, you sigh and walk over to him, taking the bundle of wire out of his hands and threading your skilled fingers through the lengthy cable. You’re an expert in untangling– you don’t own bluetooth headphones, so you do this pretty much every day before listening to some music. Your headphones love to tangle in your pocket no matter how neatly you try to keep them in your pants– it’s a mystery. Almost like the Bermuda triangle.

“I can do it myself,” Sunwoo huffs, eyebrows furrowing when he watches you work your magic.

“You seemed like it too,” you ironically note, letting the spiteful side of you win, enjoying yourself when you’re rewarded by the snarky roll of Sunwoo’s eyes– everything is back to normal. You two aren’t friends, you don’t like to be in each other’s presence, and no number of shiny stolen posters and private sessions in the screening room will ever change that.

“Hold this,” you say, thrusting the end of the cord into his hand, walking a few meters away from him as you detangle the lights, watching as he impatiently stomps the floor with his heel, reminding you of Snowball from The secret life of pets movie.

When you’re done and the Christmas lights are now a straight line of wire, you slowly walk over to the tall tree in the middle of the room, wrapping the lights around the fake forest-green needles. You’re glad that the lights are long enough to cover the whole thing and you don’t have to untangle another ones, and when you’re done, you watch your coworker plug them in, examining the small, colorful light bulbs.

“Okay, now the ornaments,” you say, more to yourself than to anybody in the room, as you waltz over to the boxes and take out the decorations varying in shapes and sizes. You don’t really know what color scheme Mr Kim wants you to go for– and you doubt Sunwoo is aware either, so you just take out the ornaments you find the most pretty and hang them all over the tree, making sure each branch is covered.

Sunwoo stands around for a while, unmoving as he watches you, before he sighs to himself and finally decides to help. You leave him be, thinking that it’s for the best if you two don’t speak today when he’s in such a bad mood, but you break that promise almost immediately when you stare back at the tree after retrieving some more ornaments from the box to your right and notice the almost painful clash of colors.

You should’ve known you can’t trust a man with decorating. The beautiful contrast of the baby pink and brown ornaments you put on the tree is now ruined by the green ones you intentionally left on the bottom of the box. The colors don’t go together at all and you want to claw your eyes out every second you have to stare at it.

“Sunwoo, those colors don’t go together at all,” you say, point and blank– no sugarcoating, no offensive words, just straight facts.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that tree looks terrifying, and it’s all because you ruined it,” you say.

Okay, maybe you are overreacting just the slightest. But isn’t there fun in making your coworker completely out of his mind? Is this your roles being reversed for the first time? Are you finally winning this little game?

Nevertheless, you are enjoying the outburst that follows from Sunwoo. Mainly because he looks like a child throwing a tantrum as he huffs and takes off the green ornaments he put on to the tree and throws the handful back into the cardboard box, not really caring if they break or not. You’ll be replaying this scene in your head forever before you go to sleep, for the absolute frustration and annoyance on his face is one of your biggest trophies. Right now, though, you’re battling the urge to laugh.

“Fine, do it yourself, then,” Sunwoo says as he walks away from the tree, choosing to sit on the floor cross-legged, taking out his phone and scrolling through social media.

Again, you don’t know what’s gotten into him today, but you force yourself not to care. You have a job to finish here so you can go home and enjoy your day, and that’s why exactly you just shrug and finish putting on the pretty ornaments, admiring your work every once in a while when you take a break and stare on the tall tree, kind of breathless from the beauty.

You’re not really big on Christmas, but you must admit that this is fun.

The sound of Sunwoo swiping through Instagram reels is the only thing accompanying your actions, and as you look over your shoulder and see his almost sad face, you bite your lip just to not ask him what’s the matter. You’re not supposed to care. And you don’t.

“Can’t you put some festive music on?” you ask instead, your lips just begging to have a conversation with the male, despite your best judgment.

“No,” Sunwoo barks back, not even taking his eyes off the phone as the sound of the reel changes into another one, a swipe of his thumb across the screen showing him another video.

Nodding to yourself, you carefully try to pick out your next words. Not really sure how to address the male, you choose to approach him with a hint of humor you’re not sure he’ll appreciate. “What’s up with you? You’re bitchier than usual,” you say, scanning the male with cautious eyes.

Sunwoo stops for a while– a millisecond of him halting his scrolling, an action you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t trying to see any shift in his composure– before he speaks up again. “Nothing,” he shrugs.

“Okay,” you say, a tone of voice full of doubt.

When you conclude that you’re not getting more answers out of him, you nod to yourself and dart back towards the Christmas tree, making sure you make more eye contact with the glossy ornaments than with your coworker sitting behind you on the ground. Not much time passes by before he speaks up again, though, tone of voice quiet and hesitant.

“I’m just not in the mood today,” he sighs, “I have a final next week and it’s stressing me out, I haven’t slept well in quite a few days, my dad’s making me work more than usual and on top of that, I absolutely hate winter.”

“You hate winter?” you choose to focus on the least serious topic of the little rant, not really knowing when your boundaries lay in discussing the more serious ones.

“Yeah,” Sunwoo chuckles, “it’s like a shittier fall. It’s cold and dark all the time. It would be different if it snowed, though. I love it when it snows.”

Snickering at his sudden confession, you shake your head. “You’re like a little kid.”

“I remember you calling me a child once,” Sunwoo hums in agreement.

“That was different,” you say, hoping to cheer the male up at least a bit with your usual quarrel.

“I figured by the way you threw the toilet brush to my chest,” Sunwoo laughs, the memory of torturing you fond in his brain. The poster he gave you almost made you forget about the fact that he managed to make your life a living hell for quite some time– maybe you should consider this a wake-up call.

The conversation quiets down for a bit, even the sound of Sunwoo’s Instagram reels discontinued as you two marvel in the now much more comfortable silence. Testing the waters, you clear your throat before speaking up again. “Don’t worry about that exam, by the way. I’m sure you’ll do well.”

“How would you know?”

“You’re clever. You need to be clever to come up with all various ways to make my life more miserable,” you say, smiling when you hear him let out a breath of air through his nose, signaling a silent laugh.

“Any advice on the sleepless nights?” he asks, tone of voice light and humorous.

“Less things in your head,” you hum, putting the last ornament onto one of the branches, satisfied with your work. “Or melatonin.”

“Noted,” he nods, sharing a smile with you.

Walking over to the boxes stored a few feet away from the male, you open up the slim one thrown on the side, holding up the star. Your eyes meet his, a carefree twinkle in your orbs when you try to cheer up the boy’s inner child by doing a child's favorite activity. “Do you want to put the star on?”

He fails you, though. “No.”

“Why not?”

“You decorated it all yourself, so you can do the star,” he shrugs, not really into your idea.

“Oh come on–”

“I don’t feel like standing up,” Sunwoo grunts, the joy on your insides finally dying down when you get a taste of his usual composure– the one that really can’t be arsed with anything.

Sighing to yourself, you waltz over to the tall ladder, and despite your biggest worries, you continue climbing up the metal construction even when it wobbles and makes you fear you’re gonna fall. The whole thing is kind of unsteady and makes your heart thump in your throat, but you choose to get it over with and finally climb to the very top, outstretching your arm and putting the star on top of the tree, the decoration process now done and freeing you off your today’s work responsibilities.

Something akin to satisfaction beams in your insides as you climb down the ladder, and now, you’ll write this off to you being a little too excited with the vision of a face mask and popcorn at home– but your leg slips on one of the steps and despite the ladder being now magically steady, your body comes crashing down to the floor.

A yelp fights out of your throat, hands go flying in a desperate need to steady yourself or hold on to something that would make you not fall hard against the marble floor, when a miracle straight down from heaven comes to rescue in a form of flesh holding you up and shielding you from the fall, a grunt landing in your ears when your body settles into soft fabric of dark gray.

Head snapping to the source of the arms around your waist, surprised at the person’s strength used to balance you two on your feet as you fell (well, your knees buckled, but still, they haven’t yet hit the ground), you notice a pair of chocolate orbs staring down at you through a curtain of dark hair, wide eyes scanning your face and breathing out a puff of air.

“Look where you’re stepping next time, for fuck’s sake,” Sunwoo huffs, watching as your brain tries to process the near-death experience.

Registering his arms firmly placed around your waist (now realizing the soft fabric was the hoodie he’s been living in for the past few months), the citrusy scent of his cologne makes your head spin, eyes scanning his face in quick motions, as if not aware of who was your savior. You wonder how he even got to you on time (not really noticing him walking over to the ladder as soon as he saw it wobbling under you, holding it down to keep you from toppling over), and when your eyes curiously gaze at his chapped, yet plush lips, the warmth in your stomach makes you finally snap out of it.

Untangling yourself out of his limbs, much like you did with the Christmas lights a few minutes ago, you clear your throat and try to get your breathing back to normal. Your knees are a little weak, but you write that off to the shock of falling.

“This wouldn’t have happened if you just agreed to put the star on,” you complain, straightening your clothes as you walk over to the empty boxes nearby, stacking them into one another and avoiding all possible eye contact with the male.

It’s working– at least that’s what you keep telling yourself– up until you hear him chuckle and see a pair of hands taking the tower of boxes out of your hold, a charming grin sent your way as he walks away from you to the staff room. “If you say so.”

Okay, so it’s not working.

You’re fucked.

TONIGHT’S PREMIERE – THE PROPOSAL (2009)

“So… I was thinking,” Sunwoo starts one day, a bundle of rolled-up posters stacked up in his arms like a pyramid, puffs of cold air making clouds appear in front of his face as he speaks, “would you want to go see a movie with me?” he asks, tone of voice casual, as if he was asking you about the weather.

The poster you’re currently putting up into one of the glass holders outside of the cinema almost slips out of your frozen fingers out of shock, your heart skipping a beat. “Huh?” you hum, taking out a container full of pins out of your coat pocket and securing the poster to its designated place. “You want to bring money to your father’s competitor?” you joke.

“What? No,” he quickly replies, furrowing his brows as he shakes his head. “I meant, like, here,” he says, nodding towards the building to prove his point, taking a step aside when you close the glass door of the poster holder and move towards the next one, 3 more movie banners left to put up outside of the cinema.

The wires in your brain work on full force, trying to clear out any confusion caused by his sudden invitation. Sure, you two have gotten closer ever since you talked with him at the Christmas tree a week ago, but still, you didn’t know it was enough to hang out outside of work hours.

Instead of focusing the conversation on this unpredictable development, you turn towards clearing out the logistics instead. “How would we even do that? We either work at the same time or you work when I don’t and the other way around,” you say, taking the next poster from him and putting it up.

All of the movies airing the next two weeks are Christmas movies. Some of them are old, some of them are premieres, but still– you can’t really imagine watching a festive movie with your coworker. Up until last week, you thought of him as the next reincarnation of Grinch.

“I could get my sister to switch with me on a day you don’t work,” he hums, sheepish about his preposition. There’s something bashful in his tone, something shy in his gaze as he watches you put up the movie poster, but you try your hardest to ignore it for the sake of your sanity. You’re already having a hard time dealing with the fact that he appeared in your dreams twice since he caught you in his arms last week. You don’t need to add the switch in dynamic to the mix.

“Isn’t she underage?” you ask, snickering.

“Yeah, and?” he shrugs. “It’s a family business, Y/N. Everyone has to be included, underage or not.”

A laugh erupts out of your throat at the comment, shaking your head at the boy in disbelief.

“What would you even wanna see? Those are all Christmas movies,” you say, moving along and focusing your attention to the glossy material in your fingers.

“I don’t see how that’s a problem,” he says.

“Oh, it is,” you mutter, “I don’t like Christmas movies.”

Sunwoo grunts. “Well, I don’t really care. I saw your favorite movie with you, so you can return the favor and see my favorite movie with me,” he speaks up, making you roll your eyes at his words.

“There’s no way any of those movies is your favorite,” you note, doubtful tone haunting the boy.

“You wouldn’t know,” he laughs, making your heart do cartwheels at the sound, his teasing making you feel warmth despite the cold breeze trying to make your bones freeze into blocks of ice.

“I won’t go unless I believe you,” you say, grinning as you close the glass box and take the last poster out of Sunwoo’s hands, watching as the boy puts his frozen fingers into the comfort of his warm jacket, shielding them from the cold.

“Not fair.”

“Very fair, actually.”

“Oh come on,” he sighs, shaking his head in disagreement, “I thought we could watch a Christmas movie as a celebration to the end of semester,” he says, tone of voice almost pleading.

Securing the last banner into its designated place, you turn towards Sunwoo with an examining look on your face. He seems to be completely serious, eyes big pools of honey as he watches your face morph as you think. Something in your stomach makes it feel like it’s flying, making you clear your throat as you avert your gaze towards the line of Christmas movie posters on the brick wall. “Fine,” you gulp, “so what do you wanna watch?”

“The Polar Express,” he says, pointing towards the A3 scale you put up last, showing one of the movies that were older, but Mr Kim decided to air anyway– as if he was aware.

Fuck, you think. That’s my favorite.

“Absolutely not,” you cough, “I hate that movie.”

“Huh? How?” he sighs, face full of disappointment.

“Just because. It’s too long.”

“It’s not even two hours?”

Eyes quickly darting towards the poster, pupils shaking as you look towards the airing dates at the very bottom, you chew on your bottom lip, trying to find a way out. “You’re working on the 18th.”

“Okay, then we can go on the 19th,” Sunwoo says, determined to make you watch the movie with him. Why? You don’t even want to know at this point.

“I go home for Christmas break on the 19th,” you say, shrugging. “See? It wasn’t meant to be.”

“Y/N, come on–”

“Listen, can’t we just go back to hating each other instead of you annoying me about this stupid movie?” you sigh. In the whirlpool of events, you forgot just how insistent Sunwoo could be– who knows, maybe this was the real reason why you were so irritated with him in the first place.

Slowly walking back towards your workplace, hearing Sunwoo’s sneakers hit the ground behind you as he trails after you like a lost puppy, a sense of momentarily victory flows through your veins when you recognise that you found your way out. There was no way Mr Kim would let his underage daughter work instead of Sunwoo, and you truly were leaving home the evening of 19th. You already had a train ticket– you’re not gonna change your plans because of a man you despised just a few days ago.

“I never really hated you, by the way. Besides, you’re only saying that because you hate the movie,” Sunwoo grunts, chiming in front of you– making you think he’s being petty and doesn’t want to talk to you anymore, surprising you when he opens the door for you and offers you a solemn gaze, waiting for you to walk through the entryway and go back to work. (For you, it’s sitting in the ticket booth in silence. For Sunwoo, it’s pretending to work in the back, since his dad is absent today again)

Reciprocating his gaze, noticing the disappointment behind your coworker’s eyes, you feel something in your stomach drop, the weight of it so heavy you quickly avert your look.

“Maybe,” you shrug.

And maybe, the true reason is something completely else.

The words resonate through your brain– ‘I never really hated you, by the way’. Funny. Then what were all those months of torture all about?

You decide you no longer want answers.

TONIGHT’S PREMIERE – WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989)

You can’t believe you’re doing something nice for Kim Sunwoo.

Shoes hitting the gravel, your scarf pulled up so it covers your nose from the ice cold air, a hat hugging your head in warmth and shielding you from the aggressive weather, you start to contemplate your choices and your next moves. A sigh escapes your throat when your eyes land on the marquee above the entrance of the movie theater, teeth chewing on the inside of your cheek as you shift your weight from one foot to another.

Pulling out your phone to check the time, a shiny 7:24PM stares back at you, pushing you to walk up to the door of your workplace on your day off, 24 minutes after the beginning of The polar express.

You feel silly. You feel oh so stupid when you push the door open and your body is immediately engulfed in warmth, the yellow dim lights of the cinema making your eyes slowly adjust to the brightness contrasting the darkness of the outside world. You feel like you must have gone crazy, especially when your insides start to get all light and bubbly, hints of nerves tingling at the tips of your fingertips and the deepest corners of your stomach. There’s no turning back now, you tell yourself– and when your feet automatically take you to the ticket booth, gaze landing on the boy with his bangs in his eyes and an expression worthy of a kicked puppy on his face, you suddenly feel like your trip to the cinema was all worth it.

Clearing your throat, you notify your coworker of your presence, his big, doe eyes staring at you in surprise. Sunwoo’s mouth goes agape, shock overtaking his features when he takes in your appearance. (You bet he thinks you look laughable– your eyes teary from the cold and your figure stoic, numb limbs hanging by your side.)

“What are you doing here?” he asks, the question not as aggressive as it sounded out of your lips every time he paid a visit to the cinema on his days off for all these months.

“Uh… I forgot some things in the back and I wanted to take them home tomorrow, so I came back for them,” you hum, the practiced excuse slipping out of your lips with ease, “can you come help me?”

Sunwoo looks even more surprised at your question– although there is now a hint of confusion in the mix. What could you possibly have in the back to need his help with? For as far as he knows, you only ever kept your work uniform in your locker. “What? Can’t you get it yourself…?” he asks, noticing as you shake your head in disapproval.

“It’s… it’s on the top of the lockers and I can’t reach it, so-”

“Grab a chair…?”

You didn’t really expect to have Sunwoo question your half-assed excuse. Truly, you thought this was going to go smoothly– but knowing Kim Sunwoo, you should’ve known it was never going to go the way you planned. You’re determined to win, though.

And so it’s the time to bring out the big guns– men never say no when you praise them and make yourself look incompetent.

“Please? I don’t feel like bringing a chair and you’re tall enough. It will only take a second…” you pout, watching as the male in front of you sighs and stands up from his seat, nodding at your humble request.

Sunwoo follows you as you walk down the corridor, your heart thumping with the start of your little plan. Your steps are calculated and your movements carefully programmed, the nervousness in your stomach making you even more giddy with every meter of distance you two cross.

Before you two get a chance to make it to the back, you make a swift turn and open the doors to one of the rooms on the left of the hall, dragging Sunwoo by his hand and tugging him inside. His body stumbles against yours, but the door closes behind him faster than he can react to the impact. Steadying the boy back to his feet, you watch him with anticipation, awaiting his reaction.

The truth is, you haven’t thought the plan out this far. The depiction of it in your brain always ended with you sneaking him into the projecting room and his curious eyes peering into yours. Something about the image of the events always made you feel too overwhelmed– you never dared to imagine the situation further. (That would mean admitting some hidden desires to yourself, so you never even tried. That all makes this situation twice as nerve-wrecking, though.)

“What… are we doing here?” he asks, eyes darting around the darkness of the projection room, the only light illuminating his pretty features being the movie playing behind the glass of the small booth.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to watch The polar express with me?” you ask, voice a few octaves higher than usual.

“I… did…” he mumbles, confusion making him stumble over his own words.

“Well, you are working and I leave tomorrow, so I figured I had to find a way…” you shrug, watching as Sunwoo looks at you a little frozen, big eyes staring you down, gears turning in his head. You can’t really read him– you don’t really know if he’s going to laugh at you or send you home for ruining his shift. You don’t know if he appreciates the gesture, or if he thinks you’re being embarrassing. You don’t know if he registers the slight tremble of your hands and the lightness of your breathing, you don’t know if he realizes how much his reaction could make your day or completely ruin it (just like always), and so, you panic– and when you panic, you ramble. “I know we are technically not supposed to be here– well, me, at least– but I think that being with the owner’s son could make my boss let me off even if he somehow finds out, which I doubt he will, but–”

Sunwoo’s face starts slowly morphing, the slightest of shifts slowly adding up to a change of expression, having the male break out into the biggest, happiest grin you’ve ever seen him sport. His eyes light up and glaze your features in the softest of touches, his head shaking in disbelief. “Oh, you’re adorable.”

“What?” you ask, your heart doing seven somersaults and five cartwheels, eyes a big pool of surprise.

“You did this for me?” he beams, his grin so big and pretty it takes your breath away. Butterfly wings tickle in your stomach at the sight, having you mentally curse yourself– hold it together, Y/N.

“I- I mean, I didn’t really do anything, we just sneaked in–”

“This is the sweetest thing you’ve ever done for me,” Sunwoo hums, the teasing tone making its comeback in his voice, “actually, this might be the first sweet thing you’ve ever done for me–”

“Well, okay,” you roll your eyes, an embarrassed laugh dragging out of your throat as you turn on your heel and walk closer to the little table in the opposite end of the room, needing to avert your gaze from the boy for at least a second. The air is suddenly too heavy and it’s hard for you to breathe, heat rushing to your cheeks.

Eyes focusing on the screen in front of you, your brain tries hard to focus on your favorite Christmas movie. Failing, your head running thoughts full of conflicting emotions and erratic exclamation marks screaming the name of the boy behind you, you ask yourself how and when exactly you’ve gotten yourself into this mess.

Maybe you shouldn’t have gotten this job in the first place.

Ears painfully alert, listening to each sound heard in the small projecting room– the shuffling of Sunwoo’s feet as he nears your figure, the muffled noise of the movie playing in the screening room in front of you, the resonance of your own heartbeat in your ears as Sunwoo’s hands suddenly sneak around your middle, your jacket squeaking from the contact of his limbs as he hugs you.

“What–”

“Don’t fight me, Y/N. Just this once,” he hums, voice deep, but still a bit hesitant. It’s like he’s walking on unsteady land, cautious of his movements in fear of making you run away. He’s in a new territory, in your personal space– the scent of his cologne fills your nostrils again as his head settles itself on your shoulder, the two of you silently watching the movie for a few seconds, not really knowing how to proceed.

There’s something intimate in the way he holds you, in the way the movie is a mere background noise to the marathon of your thoughts, the blue light illuminating your faces as you both try your hardest to keep your cool.

A flashing thought of just how much you from a few months ago would hate the position it’s in right now passes by your brain, making you instantly feel foolish. Oh how much you’d love it if you stood here unaffected right now– there’s no way to battle the warmth flooding your insides right at this moment, though.

“This is nice,” he mumbles, voice barely louder than a whisper. “Thank you,” he says, your insides squeezing at the sincerity. It’s not often you get to see this side of Sunwoo– the sweet, patient one, the side of him that makes you feel safe in his arms and appreciated with the soft tone in his words. And while you realize you don’t hate the playful side of him just as much as you thought you did, you must admit the novelty of the situation makes you feel a bit more joyful than you’d like to admit.

The weight of his head disappears from your shoulder, making you feel momentarily disappointed by the action. You expect him to pull away and take a seat on the chair, to finally focus on the movie playing in front of your eyes, the thought alone making your spirit fall. The fire in your inside lights up like a match thrown into a pool of gasoline just as fast again, though, when you feel soft lips come in contact with your cheek.

They stay only for a second before they disappear, an airy laugh landing in your ear a second later. “Please don’t run away now,” he says, tone of voice uncertain, telling you that now the ball is in your court– your next actions could either make him the happiest man on Earth, or completely break him.

The choice is yours.

Your head turns his way, eyes instantly locking with his brown orbs searching for any signs of discomfort in your face. Slowly, as if still processing the events of before, your eyes trail over his features– the awfully handsome way his face was sculpted, the softness of his eyes and the sharpness of his jaw, the slope of his nose and the plushness of his lips. They’re not as chapped today, making you wonder if he started wearing vaseline, and before you get a chance to stop yourself, you start wondering of the way his lips would feel on yours, imagination running wild.

He heaves out a shaky breath, your eyes darting back into his– as if to ask for approval, see if he’s okay with it. There’s a dazy look in them, gaze pressed to your lips, then to your eyes, then your lips again– a look you take as an invitation as you act against all your best judgment and lean towards him, pressing your mouth against his.

As if testing the waters, you make the kiss short. It was long enough to engrave it into your brain, though– to remember the way his perfectly shaped lips pressed against yours, the way the world stopped just for a moment, the way he tasted of the strawberry mints he always eats at work whenever he has nothing to do.

Sunwoo seems to find liking in the action– lips glazing yours again, pressing another peck to them before he deepens the kiss, the tingling in your fingertips intensifying and the excitement bubbling in your frame making you turn in your position, front facing him and pressing up against his chest. His hands quickly adjust, slipping under your opened jacket and settling on your clothed waist, the slightest contact making your knees weak and settle your bottom against the table behind you, hands grabbing the fabric of his sweatshirt.

He pulls back to catch some air, a boyish grin breaking out on his face, forehead knocking against yours in a sweet, giddy manner. “I’ve wanted to do this for months,” he huffs.

The sentiment makes a thousand question marks appear in your head– why did he make your life a living hell, then? Why did he pull pranks on you and make you hate every second spent with him? Why did he make you so furious each time and argued with you about the smallest things? How could Sunwoo possibly have wanted this for months, when you just only started noticing his attractiveness a few weeks ago?

“Why–”

“I’ll tell you later,” he says, cutting you off as he presses his lips against yours again, your mouth automatically welcoming his presence. Brain erased of all previous questions, his kisses working like a spell, you focus all your senses on the man in front of you.

Having your hands feeling up his abdomen, Sunwoo hesitantly asks for entrance with his tongue, running it along your lower lip until you welcome him in. You like this type of power battle much more than the one you had going on until now, and with each new movement, you feel yourself falling apart under him.

His fingers tug down on the sides of your jacket, pulling it down. You don’t need it anymore– with how heated you’ve gotten, you are actually kind of happy that it is gone. One of his cold hands sneaks under the hem of your jumper, fingertips trailing up and down your side, the other one tugs down the hat from your head, discarding it somewhere on the table behind you before it finds its place on the side of your jaw, angling your head in a way that allows him to deepen the kiss even more, the contact of your lips growing firmer as seconds go by.

Your scarf is swiftly untangled off your neck, Sunwoo’s skilled lips blindly trailing down the side of your mouth towards your jaw, feathery kisses ticking you before he gets more bold and sucks on the side of your throat, a shaky breath shyly escaping your lips.

“Sunwoo…” you say, tone of voice not really present, no real intention behind the call of his name.

The boy hums against your neck, having you gasp again when he lightly bites the softness of your skin, your hands shooting up to tangle in his hair when he licks the spot to soothe it after. Threading your fingers through his locks to ground yourself, you can’t believe you ever hoped for him to get a trim.

His hands firmly hold the underside of your thighs before he hoists you up on the table, continuing his confident attack on your neck when you’re sitting comfortably on the hard surface. It’s not like you didn’t feel excited, the tiniest bit thrilled at the mental image of his possessive marks all over your throat, but you were glad it was freezing outside and you could wear a turtleneck to hide the bruises from your family tomorrow. He nuzzles his nose into the hot skin of your neck, the action making you grin in ecstasy and endearment.

Getting lost in the way he was handling you, his touches firm, yet delicate, acted out in a way that makes you feel safe and comfortable with his passionate ministrations, you almost don’t notice the door swinging open, the figure of your boss like striking like the lightning in the doorway of the screening room.

“Sunwoo!”

The boy jumps, his body quickly ungluing itself off yours, as he listens to his father scolding him. “I don’t care what you two have going on over here, but you’re on clock! There’s a line waiting for the tickets for tomorrow’s movie and someone has to sell them right now.”

The boy clears his throat, voice a little hoarse. “Coming,” he says, trying to keep his composure. His hair’s a little tousled, cheeks rosy and lips puffed– the image that will haunt you in your sweetest nightmares now– and before you get a chance to say anything or let your brain process the events of the last few minutes, your panic works faster, making you act.

Quickly scattering for your things, you run out of the projecting room without saying goodbye to either Sunwoo or your boss, never once looking back.

You think of what you’ve done on your way home, bones freezing now that they weren’t in his presence. You try hard to regret your actions, but you don’t find it in you to do so– it’s kind of hard with the feeling of his lips still playing with yours.

Even though you’d hate to admit it just a few weeks ago, you must do it now.

Kim Sunwoo does make a really good kisser.

TONIGHT’S PREMIERE – PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (2005)

There are many thoughts swimming around your brain as you walk through the coldness of the town the next day, your duffel bag hanging off your shoulder. There’s a conflict between the actions of your body and your thoughts – feet on their journey to the train station, but head stuck in the small projection room of your workplace, your coworker’s kisses occupying your every sober thought.

It’s not surprising, but you haven't heard from Sunwoo since you left the cinema last night. Not a single text or a call– but you figure that this is just your dynamic. Sunwoo’s never been much of a texter when it came to you. He’s never had the reason to text or call you, unless it was work-related, and you think it will stay that way, even though you did make out with him just last night.

Maybe he regretted it. Maybe he just didn’t feel like pondering on the events any longer– maybe it was just a one-time thing for him and he didn’t put much significance to it. You wouldn’t know– it’s not like you’re suddenly an expert on the way he feels and operates.

You, though? How do you feel about the turn of events? Despite not wanting to admit it to yourself, the answer came to you the second you tried to fall asleep last night, every soaring thought in your brain showing you the reflection of his dazed look, desires of wanting him to look at you that way all the time oh so skilfully infesting themselves into every crevice of your neocortex. You want Sunwoo to like you. You want Sunwoo to want you. You want Sunwoo to be so enchanted with your existence that he thinks about you before he goes to sleep at night– just like you have done for the past few weeks.

The answer comes to you again when you feel something wet fall on the top of your cheek, making you turn your eyes towards the sky. Your breathing comes out in puffs of air as you watch the magic happen right in front of you– and as you watch the snowflakes scatter all around the place, you are in another inner argument. While the rational side of your brain is screaming at you to keep walking to the station so you don’t miss your train home, the delirious side is cooperating with your feet for once, your figure crossing to the other side of the street and walking over to the place you could get to even with your eyes closed at this point; all because you suddenly remember the conversation you had with Sunwoo when you were putting on ornaments to the Christmas tree.

It’s the first snow of the season.

Kim Sunwoo loves it when it snows.

Speed-walking towards the vintage movie theater at the corner of the town’s square, you feel something akin to childish excitement bubbling in your insides, a hint of nervousness inviting itself into your insides when you push the door open and aim straight towards the ticket booth, where you know Sunwoo will be sitting, wasting another shift away.

He’s there– eyes pressed towards the window, gaze following the snowflakes kissing the cold ground. You expected more excitement in his character, more childlike joy in his figure– and after taking in his composure: shoulders slouching and fingers picking at the skin of his cuticles, you suddenly feel silly for coming.

Well, here goes nothing, you think.

“Sunwoo,” you call, making the boy snap his head towards you in surprise, big eyes meeting yours the moment he recognises your voice.

You don’t receive a verbal response for a while. The boy just stares at you, a bit hesitant and clueless. His face reminds you of a small puppy trying to take in the new situation in front of it. His lips are formed into a small pout, gears in his brain turning and trying to process the reality of having you standing there, face beaten from the cold.

Clearing your throat, you try to take charge of the situation. “It’s snowing outside,” you say, eyes peering out of the window, all thoughts suddenly escaping your brain, words blanking off your tongue, “and, well… you said you like the snow, so…”

The boy’s mouth hangs agape, a twinkle in his eyes slowly appearing once again when he stares at you, your nervousness doing wonders to your conversation skills. “I- I don’t even know what I wanted to say with that, it’s just- I don’t know… I saw it was snowing and I automatically came here, so-” you stutter, the sentence cutting off as Sunwoo jumps to his feet and grins, wordlessly taking your hand into his and dragging you outside.

The duffel bag falls off your shoulder somewhere in the middle of the hall, discarded to the floor, before Sunwoo sharply halts in his steps and runs back towards the ticket booth, still dragging you with him by the hand. The boy grabs something off the table, the item not visible in your rear point of view, and before you have a chance to register what’s happening, you’re outside of the building again, coldness instantly slapping you in the face.

It’s dark out, but the heaviness of the snow provides enough light in the silent evening for you to see where you’re going under the yellow lampposts on the street. Instantly noticing the lack of Sunwoo’s warm hand in yours when he suddenly lets go, you turn your head to look at the male.

Terror fills your veins when you notice him gathering snow from the ground and pressing it into a tight ball, a screech escaping your throat when you watch him swing it at you, a playful, boyish grin playing with his features. The male chases you around and most of the snowballs don't even hit your running figure (he does have an awful aim), but you still duck anyway and try your hardest to win your snowball fight.

Numb fingers creating snowballs and halting them at his tall frame, but missing most of the time due to his fast reflexes, you laugh and let go of all the worries and questions clouding your judgment. Sunwoo looks enthusiastic, so much more lively than when you found him in the ticket booth just a few minutes ago– but that’s still not enough for you to let him win.

Gathering the icy texture into your hands, you run towards him, taking advantage of his inattention as he’s bent over and taking more snow into his hold, and halt the whiteness into his face just as he straightens his back and wants to prepare for his attack.

More laughter bubbles out of your chest when you watch him drop his snowball to the ground, admitting defeat. The snow is all over his face– slowly running down his cheeks like teardrops, redness tinting his nose and the sides of his face.

The male shudders from the cold, and you instantly start feeling bad. Only now you realize that he ran out without a coat, a gasp escaping your throat. “Oh god,” you mourn, hands flying towards his frozen face to wipe off the snow from his cheeks, fingers carefully tracing over his cold skin. His eyes open as he watches you, something in his gaze so tender you feel yourself melting even in the middle of the snowstorm.

The male shuffles his hands into the front pocket of his gray hoodie, taking out the item you now recognise to be the hat you accidentally forgot in the projecting room yesterday (and already mentally paid goodbye to), his frozen fingers tugging the fabric onto your head.

“Why are you putting this on me? You’re the one that’s freezing over here!” you scold him, shaking your head at the male.

He rewards you with an amused grin, watching your next moves. Acting on auto-pilot, not really putting much thought into your actions, you unzip your jacket and step impossibly near to the male. Holding the jacket open, you hug him around his middle, making sure you are sharing the warmth with him and keeping him as close as possible, shielding him from the cold with both the fabric of your puffer jacket and the heat radiating off your body.

Faces just inches away from each other, you peer at his face. He wears a warm expression, eyes peeking out from behind his dark bangs. Clouds of breath escape his mouth when he speaks, voice quiet, as if to not ruin the atmosphere. “I thought you would regret it,” he says, making you break out into a foolish smile.

“I thought so too,” you nod.

“And you don’t?”

Shrugging, you reply. “Not really.”

“Why?” he asks, suddenly doubtful. “You said you hated me. Which was odd to hear, honestly, since I did all this to get your attention anyway and I thought it was just how our dynamic works, but… I could see how it could be annoying to you…”

Chuckling, you roll your eyes at the sudden revelation. It’s sickeningly sweet how endearing he looks when he doubts himself, explaining himself to you in a nervous blabber. “I don’t hate you. At least not anymore.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” you shake your head, a tender gaze shared between the two of you, “I actually quite like you, I think…” you mumble, a little bashful to admit it out loud.

“You do?” he asks, the twinkle in his eye glimmering twice as much as ever before, tone of voice playful, yet laced with honest joy and surprise at your confession.

“I do,” you nod, voice barely louder than a whisper as you watch him lean closer towards your face, cold nose bumping into yours before he angles his head, breath mixing in with yours in the few seconds before he dares to kiss you again, capturing your lips with his.

The kiss is sweet. The kiss tastes of strawberry mints and the first snow, of unsaid confessions and longing looks sent your way every time you weren’t looking. The kiss makes your stomach fill with a thousand little butterflies, it melts away the ice around you, the two of you like a spark of a fire in the middle of a snowy land.

His actions have your composure faltering, hands untangling from behind him and moving up to cradle his face. He melts under your touch, leaning into you as your fingers trail over his cheekbones. Holding on to him, thumbs padding his soft skin, you’re reminded of the cold only when he breaks off you and shudders again, teeth clattering from the freezing temperature.

“Let’s get you inside,” you say, planting a short peck to his lips, “before you turn into an icicle,” you giggle, watching as he scrunches up his face.

“I won’t,” he shakes his head, “love warms me up,” he grins, making you roll your eyes at his bold statement.

“You’re so cheesy.”

“But you quite like me anyways, no?”

Sighing, moving away from him and tugging him back inside the cinema, you shake your head at the boy. “I’ll think about it on my train home,” you bite back, opening the door to the theater and aiming towards the duffel bag you dropped on your way out.

Sunwoo watches you with a warm gaze, an adorable smile playing with his lips. His figure seems to be visibly taking in the heat again, his face adorning a flush, pink color.

“So I take it as you’re not quitting anymore, then?” he teases as you walk back to the door, both of you ignoring the customers waiting for their tickets in the line in front of the forgotten booth.

“We’ll see,” you shrug.

“I’ll text you the schedule for January?”

“You better text me about something else too, Kim Sunwoo,” you bark back, opening the door towards the cold landscape, “or you’re gonna have a very uncomfortable return back to work in January!”

The boy laughs, the noise like a Christmas carol to your ears. “Noted.”

Slipping outside, you watch as he waves at you goodbye, your feet dragging through the snow towards the train station having more pep to their step now. You don’t even know if you can make it to the train on time, but you surprisingly have no regrets– you can always catch the next one, right?

Mentally wanting to slap yourself for the lovesick grin playing with your lips, you sigh.

The male that once made your life a living hell is now the one you look forward to seeing the most once you come back after Christmas break. It’s kind of strange, really.

One would think that working with movies on the daily would prepare you better for the biggest plot twist of your life.

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powerfultenderness · 11 months

Note

I am so, so thirsty for neighbor!Konig and I humbly beg you for the following request; reader has secretly been hard core cramming online German lessons, and Konig says some stuff (lewd or otherwise) that she ends up understanding. Maybe she teases him by saying something back to catch him off guard and make him flustered? Idk but I just spent an hour reading all of the series and im heart needs more to survive

I'm so happy that you're enjoying the series! I liked this idea so much! But I ended up changing it a little bit, I hope you don't mind!

Nothing really happens, but König does say something a little horny, so I guess this will be [rated Mature 18+]

“What, are you going back to school?”

You jolted from your studies and looked up just in time to see a friend join you at the table in the break room. You laughed as you greeted her. She was almost right, it certainly felt like you were in school again! Your lunch was pushed to the side, nibbled on, while you were hunched over a notebook and your phone.

She leaned over the table a bit and took a glance at your notes. “Why German?” You sighed, you needed a break anyways, and started to pick at your food. “Just trying to impress the hot neighbor.”

“Ooh, is he German? And how hot are we talking?”

“Austrian,” you answered with another laugh. “And very.” Sort of? Well, even if you had never seen him without some sort of hood or mask on his face, he was still a fine specimen of a man.

“Want me to help you?”

“You know German?”

“I studied German for years in school and spent some time abroad in Berlin.”

You narrowed your eyes and hummed as you tried to translate her words. “You said: I something, German, something something, Berlin.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “Oh! I know just what to teach you!”

Bzzt!

You picked up your phone and rolled your eyes before sending a quick text.

König didn’t like it. All night you were half paying attention to him and half paying attention to your phone. “Who keeps texting you?” He finally slipped, unable to hold back the slightly envious (ok maybe a lot) question anymore.

“Sorry,” you winced at how rude you were being. “Just a friend from work. She started to help me with a project and thinks she’s sending helpful tips.”

Just a friend from work! It didn’t sound like someone he had to worry about (though he wasn’t sure if you were also attracted to women, and so didn’t completely write off this friend just yet). “But her advice is not helpful?”

You scoffed and shook your head. “Not really. She’s jumping the gun. She’s thinking way too far ahead.”

"Hm. Well, perhaps I can help you?" Anything to get you to pay more attention to him.

"Oh, König," you were about to tell him that it was unnecessary, after all you wanted to surprise him, but your phone buzzed again. "You know what, that would be great." You tucked your phone between the couch cushions as if that would stop your friend from texting you.

"Yea? What can I do?"

You hummed before smiling at him, an idea coming to you. “Can you say something in German?”

“What? How will that help?”

“Well, it wouldn’t really help so much as distract from-” your phone buzzed, a little quieter now between the couch cushions, just on time. You smiled and gestured to your phone, “from that.”

He chuckled and nodded, “alright. But, what do you want me to say?”

“I dunno, something…nice?”

König glanced away from you to the television, whatever was on was long forgotten by both of you, as he thought about what to say. Something nice? He could write a whole book of nice things to say about you. In whatever language you wanted: German, English, maybe even a bit of Korean that he picked up from Horangi. But what to say? That you were one of, if not the, kindest people he’s ever met? That he noticed how you were frightened of him at your first meeting but you pushed that fear aside because of that kindness? Or that he noticed you liked puns, and would seek out the corniest puns just to hear you laugh? No. Maybe he should tell you that you are the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on? Yea, that was nice, right?

“Hey,” you interrupted his thoughts in a soft voice before you settled a hand on his knee, which he hadn’t even noticed that he was bouncing his knee a mile a minute until you stopped him. “I was just being silly. If you don’t want to-”

“What! No!” He shook his head, “it’s not that.” He paused and looked down at the hand you were still resting gently on his knee, then looked back up at you, eyes shining underneath his hood, and took a deep breath before words began to quickly tumble out of his mouth.

“There is simply too much for me to say, I could not decide! Everything about you is perfect! Even the not perfect things! Ever since you moved here, I have not been able to stop thinking about you! You are on my mind all of the time and I don’t know what I would do without you!” “Whoa! Whoa!” You jerked back at his sudden outburst. “Slow down!”

He shut his mouth so quickly and hard that the snap of his teeth was nearly as loud as the tv.

It was quiet for a moment, the two of you just staring wide eyed at each other, before he started again. “I am sorry! I-” “No! No, I’m sorry. Like I said, I was just being silly and wanted to see if I could understand anything. You know, after hanging out with you so much…”

“Oh…”

Another beat of awkward silence.

“Did you? Understand anything?”

You laughed a little sheepishly. “Uhm. I’m pretty sure I can guess what “perfekt” means, soo,” you looked around, trying to spot something perfect and snapped before looking back at him with a grin. No you hadn’t understood much, but you could lighten the mood with an overly ridiculous answer. “So you must have been talking about…dinner? My stroganoff is great, I mean I wouldn’t say perfect, but-”

He started laughing, dragging you into fits of giggles too, and leaned in a little closer to you, elated that this time you did not pull back.

“So, was all of that actually nice?” You asked once your laughter faded out, though you still smiled up at him.

“Yes. I can only think of nice things to say about you.”

Oh! Nothing could stop the goofy smile that crossed your face, not the butterflies in your stomach, or the way your heart sped up, not even the blush that heated your face. Still you decided to cover up your sudden over acting nerves with a touch of humor. You played up your reaction, one hand over your heart as the other tapped his arm playfully. “Aww, König, you’re so sweet!”

He gently caught your hand, running his thumb softly across your knuckles. “Should I try again?”

“Hm?” “This time I won’t speak so quickly.”

Him holding your hand like that was not going to return your heart rate to normal! Still you smiled at him, a bit shyly, and gave his hand an encouraging squeeze. “Sure.”

“You are very beautiful.” He started, but your soft smile turned into a grin and he paused.

“Aww, you think I’m pretty?” You tried to downplay just how intimate this was starting to feel.

“Beautiful,” he corrected as he took his hand from yours and gently held your chin so that you were looking directly into his eyes. “Stunning, actually.” You were especially cute when you looked so flustered like that. He gently traced the bottom of your lip and leaned in even closer, his voice dropping to barely above a husky whisper. “And I want to see these pretty lips wrapped around my cock.”

You squeaked out a tiny little gasp and pulled back from just enough for his hand to drop.

König froze. “Did. Did you understand. That?”

“No!” You quickly shook your head, eyes darting all over the place before settling back on him, though you could no longer hold eye contact. “What, uhm. What did you say?”

Oh. You were a bad liar. Good to know. He wished he hadn’t said that. He wished he hadn’t said anything! Maybe he should have never come over in the first place! Why was it so hard to say no to you?

“Nothing!” He abruptly stood up. “I have to go.” He rushed to the door and nearly ran out, but at least stopped himself long enough to wish you a good night before fleeing.

“Ah, König!”

But he was already gone. For a guy that big, he was certainly fast.

“Oh, shit.” You muttered to yourself, heart still loudly pounding in your chest as you dug your phone out from the cushions.

You pulled up your texts and scrolled through the many, many, English to German (or vice versa) raunchy translations your friend had been sending you. Sure enough, between her translations and König’s words fresh in your mind…

“AHHH!!! I THINK HE JUST ASKED ME TO BLOW HIM!!!!” You sent off a text to her and finally remembered to breathe.

Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.

“Lol! Are you sure? What did he say? I’m calling you.”

It’s a whole week before you see König again. And you both awkwardly pretend like your last encounter never happened. And you both desperately wish that it hadn't ended.

[Neighbor König Masterlist]

Tagging: (let me know if you want to be removed or added)

@warrior-of-justice @cumikering @ihateuguys

#anonymous #neighbor!könig #könig x reader #könig x fem reader #konig x reader #i'm getting slower!#so sorry!

1K notes · View notes

blitzyn · 6 months

Text

welcome home

leon s. kennedy x ftm!reader

request: Is it possible for you to do a Leon Kennedy x ftm reader where Leon's been away for months and it's just sweet sex? Maybe a hint of cockwarming(Leon falling asleep while still inside), loads of praise and just in general body worship stuff! - Anonymous

synopsis: leon comes back home after being months away for a mission and he's eager to feel you again

a/n -> this was actually my first time writing cunnilingus i was STRUGGLING but all in all this was exciting to do i had fun. anyways alhaitham next i haven't done him in a while. ALSO. IM SORRY I KEEP CHANGING THEMES AND USERS 💔

wc -> 2.4k

cw -> cunnilingus, fingering, praise, p in v sex, cockwarming, ftm reader - use of the word 'pussy' and 'cunt' for reader's genitalia, brief description of top surgery scars, soft leon (heart eyes), not beta read

It was silent when Leon finally made his way back home, the soft moonlight shone brightly, as if treading a path for him.

He was exhausted, wanting nothing more than to feel the warmth of your body in his arms as he held you tightly, to smell the scent of your hair, and to hear the sound of your laughter that sent butterflies to his stomach no matter how many times he's heard it.

His keys jangled loudly in the silent night as he unlocked the front door, swiftly entering the house to make his way upstairs. He knew you were asleep since the lights weren't on, as made evident by your figure covered in blankets. Slowly, he made his way closer before sitting on his side of the bed, creating a dip in the mattress. Gently, tenderly, he reached out and shook your shoulder, chuckling softly at the sight of you taking a moment to stare at him.

Your drowsy eyes lit up in instant recognition as you sat up eagerly to take him in your arms in a tight hug.

"It's good to see you again, [Name]," he said, burying his nose in your hair to breathe in your scent. "I missed you."

"I missed you too, Leon," you said, relief flooding through your veins, grateful to see him home. Reluctantly, you pulled away, watching the way his eyes darted all across your face to take in your features. "You've been gone for so long. I was so worried you'd..."

"I know, sweetheart," he muttered, cupping your cheeks to gently rub them with his thumbs. "And I'm sorry for that."

You nodded, holding onto his wrists. He took a second to gaze into your eyes before he pressed his lips against yours, cherishing the way they melded together with practiced ease. You sighed contentedly, leaning into him to deepen the kiss.

In need of air, you moved back, only for Leon to follow after you, refusing to take his lips off of you just yet.

"Hey—Leon!" You laughed, trying to tilt your head away from his onslaught of kisses. "I still need to breathe."

"Your lungs can wait," he jokingly said, chasing after your lips. You leaned back far enough to lie down, rendering you unable to resist his affection any longer. Not that you wanted to, anyway. Soon enough, he found himself on top of you, peppering kisses all over your face—on your forehead, nose, eyelids, cheeks, and lips before moving downward towards your neck.

At first, they were innocent, but when he tilted his head and sucked on the piece of flesh that pulled a moan from you, you knew then that neither of you would be getting much sleep tonight.

"Leon," you gasped out, reaching up to comb your fingers through his hair. "You just got back... Aren't you tired?"

"Honestly, yeah," he admitted, sliding his hands over your shirt to caress your waist. "But I'll be fine," he muttered against the column of your throat, pressing his lips to it for a chaste kiss before sitting up.

"The question is, are you tired?" He asked, scanning your expression for any lies you might've tried to hide. "I don't wanna push you."

You shook your head reassuringly despite having woken up not too long ago. "I'm good. Don't worry about me."

He let out an amused huff through his nose, the corners of his lips quirking up in a smirk. "No promises." He gently tugged on your shirt in a silent request to take it off, swiftly pulling it up and over your head as soon as you nodded.

"Christ, Leon, your hands are cold!" You let out a surprised yelp, arching your back in a futile attempt to get away. He only laughed, sliding his hands all over your stomach mercilessly to use your body heat to warm them up until you finally relaxed.

He leaned down again, gently biting on a spot over your collarbone as he ran his tongue over it soothingly. He moved again, kissing a trail down your sternum until he took one of your perky nipples in his mouth, rolling it between his teeth. You bit your lip, watching him toy with your chest, running his fingertips along your scars. A heat pooled in your stomach as he slid lower, finding himself slotted between your legs. He watched your face intently, burying his thumbs underneath the waistband of your pants to slowly pull them off upon finding no disapproval from you, his breath hitching at the sight of your cunt.

"Fuck..." He whispered, blowing a teasing puff of air onto your clit, lips quirking up when you shivered. "Missed you and this pretty pussy," he groaned, hiking your thighs up and over his shoulders. Electricity shot down your spine when he looked up at you and gave it a quick kiss before encasing his lips around it, sucking gently.

You sighed, reaching down to comb your fingers through his hair. He hummed in response, curling his arms around your thighs to keep your legs open, squeezing the swell of them with his calloused hands. He moved down to give your pussy a long lick from your hole all the way back up to your clit and down again, savoring the taste of your juices on his tongue. He looked up through his lashes to gauge your reaction, feeling his cock throb in his pants as he softly ground his hips against the mattress.

You let out a moan when he pressed his face firmly against your cunt, eagerly sucking and flicking his tongue up and down your clit. Pressing your heels against his back, you rocked your hips, tightening your hold on his hair as you tugged on the strands.

He let go of one of your thighs, pressing two of his fingers against your hole, swiping upwards to gather some of your wetness before pushing them inside, groaning against your nub when you clenched around them. He curled them, searching for that one spot inside you that'll have you cumming in no time.

A subtle grin lifted his face when he saw you jerk, legs twitching, before diving back down to your clit. He was gentle but relentless at the same time—a blend that had you reeling for more.

"Fuck, Leon," you moaned, squirming. Your belly heaved as you looked down with half-lidded eyes, meeting his.

"That's it, baby," he muttered against your skin, giving it a harsh suck. "Moan my name just like that."

He pulled away slowly, his lips and chin glistening with your juices as he raised his free arm to drape it across your hip and inner thigh. The fingers inside you stopped, pressing against your G-spot while his other hand spread your pussy lips. Leaning over your crotch, he spat on your swollen clit before rubbing it in tight circles with his thumb. You shuddered, tightening around his fingers as his saliva mixed in with your fluids.

"You taste so fucking good," he mumbled, licking his lips. He began moving his hand again as he stared up at you with heat evident in his eyes, watching you toss your head back in ecstasy. "I could stay here for hours."

He curled and crooked his fingers, listening to the sounds of your sopping pussy around him, squeezing and trying to suck him back in whenever he moved away. "You're so wet f'me... This how much you missed me?"

"Uh-huh." You groggily nodded, rocking your hips against him. Your cunt throbbed—you were sure he could feel it—with the need to cum, legs writhing just a little bit more. You bit your lip, whining and gasping as you tensed, inadvertently trying to close your thighs around his head.

"No, don't do that," he said, taking his hand off your pulsing clit to hold one thigh open while his tricep kept your other one down. His arm ran across your lower abdomen, gently bobbing up and down with every labored breath you took. "Keep your legs open... Let me watch you cum 'round my fingers."

You could only nod, utterly drawn to the rasp of his voice and the undeniable authority in his tone. You whined when he latched back onto your sensitive clit, flicking his tongue up and down, eager to make you orgasm.

"That's it, baby," he muttered, giving your nub a firm suck. "You're so close... C'mon, give it to me." He groaned, grinding harder against the mattress as he moved faster, pushed deeper, until finally, you came around him with a loud moan.

"There we go..." He nearly came in his pants as he curled his fingers into the special spot inside you, helping you ride out your orgasm. "You did so good, sweetheart. Missed watching you do that for me." Sighing, he sat back up and pulled his fingers out of you to lick them clean, staring straight into your eyes.

With a grunt, he flopped beside you, turning your body so your back was flush against his chest as he ran his hands along the side of your thigh. His painfully hard cock was pressed against your ass, grinding against you leisurely.

"You wanna go all the way?" He questioned against your ear, his hot breath fanning against the shell of it to bring shivers down your spine. Even when the throbbing between your legs hadn't subsided yet, you couldn't find the need to decline.

"Thanks, baby," he said. You could hear the faint smile in his voice as he shifted around behind you, listening to the sound of rustling fabric and the jangling of his belt buckle. He tossed his pants to the floor haphazardly before swiftly pulling his cock out of his boxers. It throbbed fervently, leaking with precum and leaving your skin slick when he dragged it along the inside of your thighs.

He grit his teeth as he rubbed the shaft of his dick against your pussy, mouthing at the back of your neck before he slowly pushed his way inside you again. The two of you let out satisfied noises, savoring the way he stretched you out so perfectly.

"You're so tight..." his voice was strained as he spoke through gritted teeth, roaming his hands along your body. "You were made to take my cock like this, huh?"

"Mhm," you signed contentedly, eyelids fluttering shut. "Couldn't touch myself without you here."

"Poor boy," Leon teased breathlessly, snaking an arm under you to toy with your nipples, ghosting the tips of his fingers along your top surgery scars every so often. His free hand moved down to rest on your belly, gently pressing down to feel himself thrusting inside you. It was far too late at night to do anything intensive, but both of you were satisfied with just soaking in each other's presence. He held you close to him, whispering those sweet words that you've been aching to hear ever since he had to leave for his mission.

He was already on the verge of cumming just by eating you out, and it was no secret to either of you with the way he twitched and throbbed. He spent countless nights fucking his fist trying to imagine it was you, but his calloused hand could never compare to your soft and warm cunt.

"Fuuuck..." Leon drawled out, fucking you a bit faster. "I'm so close..."

"Already?" You laughed quietly, hissing when he pulled about halfway only to ram himself back inside in response before resuming his relaxed pace. "Okay! Sorry, sorry."

You bit your lip and let out a pleased sound when his free hand shifted itself to pat your clit before massaging it, lifting your own arm back to run your fingers through his hair again. You turned your head, connecting your lips with his passionately. You moaned into his mouth when your sensitivity from earlier began pooling in your abdomen again, earning a beautiful groan from the man behind you when you tightened reflexively.

Breaking away, you lazily pushed against him in sync with his thrusts, eyebrows furrowing in concentration when you could feel the heat burning brighter in your stomach.

"Fuck... That's it, sweetheart," he panted, tugging you closer, fucking you just a bit harder. "Cum for me again. Please, pretty boy, I wanna feel you cum." He rubbed your clit with just the right amount of pressure, brushing up against your G-spot with every thrust. He sucked and licked and kissed the skin of your neck, littering it with hickeys and shallow bites.

"Shit, Leon, 'm gonna... gonna cum again," you gasped, your hips jerking. You could feel him nod in response, but he was in no rush to get you to orgasm. He maintained the pace until he felt you squeeze tight around him and let out a loud moan, your body tensing and convulsing for a moment. The sight and feeling of you cumming sent him right over the edge as he swiftly pulled out with a wet squelch, pressing your thighs around his slick cock to fuck the plush flesh.

With an audible groan, milky white ropes of cum spurt out of the tip of his cock, landing on your skin and the bedsheets in front of you. He pressed himself flush against your body until his cock stopped throbbing and jerking before finally relaxing with a satisfied sigh.

"That was so good, [Name]," Leon praised, nuzzling into the back of your neck. "You did amazing. Like always."

"I know," you responded swiftly, feigning arrogance. But you could hardly keep up the facade, softly laughing at yourself. "But you did amazing, too."

"I know," he parroted playfully, giving you a quick kiss to the nape of your neck when he suddenly shifted to push his softening cock back inside your hole. He caressed you reassuringly when he felt you tense, explaining that he wasn't going to move. Not too much, at least.

"Now go back to sleep," he instructed, exhaustion taking root in his voice as he pulled the covers over your spent bodies. He wrapped his strong arms around you in a comforting embrace, listening to the sound of your soft breathing. "We'll clean up tomorrow."

You rolled your eyes with an exasperated huff through your nose. "Fine." Your eyes fluttered shut, feeling your body relax. "Goodnight. I love you."

"I love you, too."

cross-posted on ao3

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gemstone-roses · 1 year

Note

Hello lovely! If you’re taking requests, would you be able to please write something smutty about Hannibal x reader sort of like enemies to lovers maybe where they don’t get a long and she’s a bit weary of him but one day they end up having really rough sex??? Lots of dirty talk and choking pls xx

Woo okay, let's go!

This took me forever so I hope you like it, likes and reblogs are very much appreciated🥺🥺

a:n- minors be gone 18+ only!. Dirty talk, female reader, choking,smut, rough sex. So. Much. Smut. I got a bit carried away oops, pussy eating, praise kink, filthy language, unprotected sex, mentions of choking on a dick, choking, 18+

Ooh there's a bit of a build up too this time! It's a bit long oops.

This work is intended for adults only, meaning those who are 18 and over. remember you are responsible for your own media consumption.

Hannibal finds it amusing, the way you roll your eyes whenever he opens his mouth. He might well have a good point but it doesent stop you from making your annoyance known. You thought hannibal was just far too cocky and far too sure of himself.

And every time hannibal sees it, a sly smirk appears on his face.

You loathed working with him, and your boss seemed to be oblivious to this since he always made you go with hannibal on a case.

"Im driving" you huff, not even looking at him as you reach for the drivers side handle

"It's my car" hannibal says simply, leaning on the door,causing it to shut.

You gape at him, hannibal stands there leaning against the car door, lazily, a smile dancing across his face.

Hannibal raises his eyebrows at you, waiting.

"You are insufferable do you know that!" You state

Hannibal just smiles wider, sticking his tongue between his teeth watching you become angrier at him.

"Fine" you huff, launching the keys at him. Your pouting, breath heaving slightly, and hannibal can't help the way it sends blood rushing to his cock.

Hannibal starts the car and the radio blares on. You lean over from the passenger seat to try and change it to something more your taste when hannibal places his hand firmly on your thigh.

"Leave it" he says lowly.

Your brain short circuits for a moment

"I am not, listening to this!" You manage to breathe out, hopefully hiding shakiness in your voice.

Hannibal ignores you, hoping it'll be the end of your utterly annoying complaining.

It's not.

"Go that way its quicker" you say

He doesn't.

"You should of gone the other way" you state, as you join a small line of traffic due to some road works.

The drive only takes 15 minutes but by the time you both get out of the car hannibal is rubbing his temples dramatically.

"Oh I'm sorry I didn't realise I was so terrible to be around" you say.

Hannibal furrows his brows.

"I need you to come to my office when we get back" he says firmly

"Jesus christ how about some manners?" You roll your eyes

Hannibal turns around and walks towards you, you can't help your heart speed up at the sight, he's so very... attractive.

You blink away the thoughts right as he reaches you

"Y/N" he whispers, he's out of breath, putting both arms on either side of you he's trapped you against the car.

You open your mouth to speak but no sound comes out.

Hannibal swipes his thumb across your bottom lip, taking note of the way your breathing increases.

He leaves you without saying another word.

The drive back is silent.

He gets out first when you arrive, not even waiting for you to get out the car.

By the time you reach his office, he's already sitting behind his desk.

You enter and shut the door behind you, hannibal looks up at you and his gaze is so intense it makes you want the floor to swallow you up.

"You- you wanted me to come up here" you say, hannibal gets up and clears the space between you in seconds.

And once again he places both arms either side of you, leaning against the door.

You notice he's rolled his sleeves up and it makes your brain short circuit for a moment.

" I did" he agrees, he steps forward, meaning you have to widen your legs slightly

"What are you-

"You have been testing my patience y/n" he whispers, hands rubbing up your waist gently.

"Yeah well your pretty insufferable yourself" you whisper.

Hannibal traces his hand up to your jaw, his big hand gripping your chin, a finger reaching out to caress your cheek

"Should I stop?" He whispers stilling his hand, a warmness in his gaze you haven't seen before.

You shake your head, lips parted slightly.

"Use your words" he whispers lowly.

"I don't want you to stop" you say

"Good girl" he praises and hannibal dosent miss the way your pupils widen at that.

Hannibal bites his lip slightly, oh he is going to enjoy this.

"You liked that didn't you?" He teases, dropping his hand from your chin to rest around your neck.

"Mm hmm" you mutter, slightly breathless.

Hannibal tightens his hand slightly, studying your reaction, he feels your pulse quicken under his hand, you shift slightly trying to ease the growing ache in your cunt.

He squeezes a little harder, causing you to let a moan you'd been holding in escape your lips.

Hannibals cock strains against his pants.

"Open your mouth for me darling" he says, swiping his thumb across your lip before pushing in two of his fingers.

You wrap your lips around his fingers and suck, hannibal closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, commiting to memory the sight in front of him.

"That's it darling" he smiles, his cock twitching every time you made a noise.

He pushes into you, his erection brushing up against your leg.

"Do you feel that y/n?"

You whimper

Hannibal removes his fingers from your mouth, reaching down, he guides your hand to his bulge.

You stroke your hand up and down a couple of times, taking notice of how thick he feels, hannibal let's out a low moan before quickly pushing your hand away and opening his hand to take yours, he guides your arm up above your head before crashing his lips to yours.

You can tell he's skillful by the way he kisses. One hand pinning yours above your head, the other grips your waist, you feel the books on the shelf behind you pressing into your back.

Hannibal pushes his tongue into your mouth, gripping your waist tighter you moan into the kiss.

"You sound delightful when you moan my love" he breaks the kiss, pressing his forehead to yours.

"Please" you whisper, needing more.

"What my love?, what do you want?" He knows exactly what you want, he just wants to hear you beg.

"Touch me" you say, closing your eyes as you sigh

"No no" he tuts, stroking your face

"Look at me"

You open your eyes and stare into his, his eyes blown wide with lust.

"Good girl" he says again and this time you don't bother trying to stifle the groan escaping from your throat.

" I bet you've soaked right through your panties haven't you, and I've hardly, even, touched, you" and with each word his hands inch lower into the waistband of your pants.

He runs a finger through your soaking folds, presses it to your clit.

It makes you squeal.

"Fuck hanni-

He smirkes at you, removing his fingers and instead gripping your wrist and leading you to his couch.

"Lie down" he states simply, and you do, bringing your lip between your teeth as hannibal loosens his tie.

He keeps his eyes on yours as he undresses, he can see its driving you mad as your chest heaves watching him.

"I've dreamt about how you'll taste on my tongue" his accent thick as he kneels between your legs.

Slowly, he removes your trousers, every touch of his fingers on your skin making your pussy throb.

When he's done he admires the view, a prominent wet patch visible in your panties.

You thrust your hips up slightly, indicating for him to hurry up and just touch you.

Hannibal leans down placing his hands on either side of your thighs, he brings his mouth to your clothed pussy, placing a far too soft kiss to your dripping, covered cunt.

You let out a frustrated moan, hannibal chuckles, finally hooking his fingers through your panties.

"May I?" He asks softly.

You nod

"Words, darling" he whispers

"Yes" you almost scream, and hannibal finally touches you where you needed him most.

His tongue teases the outside of your pussy before circling your clit slowly.

"Oh fuck" you moan, thrusting your hips into his mouth, hannibal removes one of his hands from your thigh, teasing your entrance with his finger.

His tongue presses flat against your clit as he pushes a finger inside you, he curls his finger, reaching that spot inside you that makes your toes curl.

"Oh my god hanni" you breathe, hannibal removes his mouth from your folds as he inserts another finger.

"I can feel you tightening around my fingers darling, are you going to Cum?" He asks, but he knows the answer. You close your eyes as you feel your orgasm approach

"Open your eyes and look at me sweetheart" he speaks so softly it makes your cunt clench harder.

"That's it, cum for me y/n, i got you, let go for me" he urges as your pussy clenches round his fingers and you see stars.

Your chest heaves as you try and catch your breath, but before you've had time to fully recover, hannibal places his cock at your dripping hole.

"Fuck me, please" you breathe, and that's all hannibal needs to hear before pushing his thick cock into your pussy.

"You feel incredible around my cock" he moans as he thrusts into you slowly.

Hannibal snakes his hand up your body, around your neck once more.

He applies a tiny bit of pressure as he fucks into you, your eyes roll back in pleasure and hannibal quickens his pace.

"Mm fuck" you moan

"Your squeezing my cock so good y/n" he praises as his hand continues squeezing your throat.

"Im gonna cum again hanni" you warn him, feeling a second orgasm approach.

"Cum with me" he groans, and it's the hottest thing you've ever heard, he's breathless, his skin glowing slightly from the activity.

"Hanni-" you choke out, his cock hitting your g spot with every thrust, he can feel your walls tightening around him.

"Cum for me y/n" he moans as his own orgasm washes over him, and with one last squeeze of his hand around your neck, you feel his cock tighten inside you, causing your brain to short circuit for a moment, you see stars once more as you cum on hannibals cock.

Hannibal pulls out slowly when you've caught your breath and recovered.

"That was-

"Incredible" he finishes for you.

"I should piss you off more often" you tease, he's lay next to you on the couch, his hands trailing softly over your stomach.

"Next time, maybe I'll choke on your cock" you add.

#hannibal lecter fanfiction #hannibal smut #hannibal imagine #hannibal lecter imagine #hannibal x reader #hannibal lecter x reader #hannibal nbc imagine

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tkaulitzlvr · 7 months

Note

Hii! Could you please maybe do one of where the reader and Tom are like on a break from each other, and the reader and him end up being at the same party and he gets all touchy with this girl and the reader gets jealous and she ends up making out with this guy out in the crowd and Tom sees and gets jealous and ends up beating the guy up and the reader and him get into a heated argument in the car on the way to his place and he ends up doing yk as soon as they get there but in a angry way 👀

(sry Im really bad at explaining. And if you cant do it I totally understand, plus your writing is AMAZING, like seriously I appreciate all the time and effort you put into your writing I could never 😭)

BELONG TO YOU - T. KAULITZ

synopsis: you and tom had decided to take a break from your relationship a few weeks back, and you hadn’t seen him until now, at some random party, flirting with another girl. you want payback, but tom notices straight away, acting on his jealousy.

content: angst & smut

a/n: this is such a good idea omgg these types of fics are my fav to read and write. this took me three days omg i made this like unnecessarily long & detailed sorry about that.😭 thank you so much for the request and ur kind words anon!! 💞 also this clip is so hot like hello rail me pls.

my eyes burn into his figure from across the room, fingers clutching the plastic cup in my hand so hard that the material begins to crumple, though i don’t care. i am far too immersed in the interaction taking place in front of my eyes, watching the way he places a hand on her thigh, whispering things into her ear with that same playful smirk i had seen too many times, completely oblivious to the fact that i am here, seething with rage at the sight. god knows how long i had been watching the pair for, time had seemed to stop altogether the second my eyes landed on him, all i know is that i am getting closer and closer to losing my sanity.

it didn’t matter that i was a considerable distance away. i noticed everything - the way his tongue poked out of his mouth and repeatedly brushed against his lip piercing, the lingering touches which, though failing to reach the cleavage spilling out of her tight dress, were pretty close to getting there - too close. not that it matters too much that his hands hadn’t reached the most intimate parts yet: his eyes were already doing the work for him, staring so intently at her overtly prominent chest that he should’ve made physical contact with them and put me out of my misery, tearing away the only remnant of hope i had left - hope that he wouldn’t stoop so low and give himself to the first girl that he saw.

though i know that my expectations are way too high for someone like tom. he hadn’t cheated whilst we were in the relationship, but outside of it, he couldn’t help himself. and, even though we hadn’t actually broken up, ‘giving each other some space’ as he called it, it seems that his morals haven’t at all changed, and i am the last thing on his mind - my chest heaving up and down in utter rage as his hand travels suggestively further and further upwards, fingers dipping underneath her dress slightly. that was it. admittedly tipsy, i strut toward him, stopping just a few feet away from him, now in front of a semi-attractive guy who seems to avert his gaze to me almost instantly. i don’t even have to look in tom’s direction to know that he has spotted me, i can feel his eyes on me, burning intently into my figure.

indirectly aiming to maintain tom’s attention as i soak it all in, i go that extra step further, whispering a small ‘hi’ in the boy’s ear, making sure to flutter my eyelashes, noticing the way a subtle smirk etches upon his soft lips. my hands trail aimlessly up and down his chest, his own slipping to rest comfortably against my lower back, the words ‘you’re cute’ falling from my lips, smooth as silk. it didn’t matter if i meant them or not, i am not looking for a conversation, and i think he knows that too, our intentions pretty much mutual. tom doesn’t have to know that though.

all he has to know is that two can play at whatever game he thinks he has started. though the second he spotted me with whoever had his hands roaming my body, he had stopped playing, no longer finding the small blonde beside him as interesting as he did five minutes ago. i am more than willing to carry it on, messily colliding my lips with the stranger’s, the kiss sloppy and heated - everything that i want it to be. my tongue finds its way inside his mouth, deepening the kiss even more, my hand moving to the back of his neck, fingers raking through his soft brunette curls. his own hands travel further downwards, cupping my ass and using it to bring our bodies closer together, the kiss soon becoming more heated than it was before, fuelled by the alcohol in my system and the jealousy i felt, somehow trading it all in for intense anger, eager for tom to feel the way i had just a few moments ago.

‘you wanna get out of here gorgeous?’

his voice is low as it vibrates through my lips, his words slightly muffled, thanks to both the almost deafening music reverberating through my ears, and the close proximity between us. knowing that i wouldn’t think of doing anything more with this guy, i still nod my head slowly, purely to intensify tom’s jealousy, sensing his presence slightly closer than it was before, somehow easily identifiable through the crowd.

the guy smiles against my lips, kissing me roughly once again, though this one is much shorter than the last - not because either of us want it to be. he is harshly pushed away from me, my eyes opening in a mix of confusion and shock, frantically scanning the room for any clue on what had just happened, the answer becoming crystal clear as i spot tom inches away from him, hands balled into fists against the stranger’s chest.

a small crowd begins to accumulate, my hands pushing through desperately, scrambling my way to the front, the entire thing escalating impossibly fast, tom’s fist colliding with the boy’s cheek with such force he stumbles backward, body slamming against the wall harshly. but that isn’t enough for tom. he continues to land strong punches to his face, the guy finding some strength to fight back, though they are completely pointless, having little effect on tom. after a few harsh blows, the boy is defenceless, lip swollen with blood trickling just below it, a large red mark printed across his cheek.

my fast steps make their way over to tom, who is clearly just as angry as he was before he had beat the shit out of that poor guy, his cold expression failing to waver even when i grab his shoulder, turning him to face me in one swift motion.

“what the fuck? have you lost your fucking mind?” i shout over the loud music, noticing that the people seeking entertainment from the ordeal had returned back to their own company, all immersed in random conversations, or making out with someone they had never met before - not that i was in any position to judge, i had done the exact same thing moments ago.

“have you?” he shoots back, voice a level louder than mine, oozing with rage, carrying thousands of harsh words yet to be spoken.

“take a look at the guy with the fucked up face thanks to you, then think about asking me that question again! what the fuck is wrong with you?” i question, eyebrows knitting together, wondering how he can dare to turn this on me, ignoring the fact that he has just left someone with a bloody nose, seemingly unfazed by it. his eyes scan mine, narrowed slightly, a few wrinkles lining along his forehead as he does so. i hadn’t seen those eyes in so long and, despite the indisputable fury within them, it is impossible to deny how much i had missed them, regardless of the circumstances.

“we aren’t doing this here, not in front of this crowd.” he shakes his head forcefully, grabbing my hand and attempting to lead me away from it all, my body hesitant to do so.

“why? i’m not leaving.” i state confidently. he tilts his head to the side, mouth falling open slightly, his eyes squeezing shut as he appears to be in a fight with his own mind, clearly contemplating something, the decision seemingly difficult to make.

“well i am.” he replies, shaking his head slowly, turning around to walk away.

“what the fuck? are you serious?” i ramble, chasing after him shamelessly, not yet aware of how humiliating it is that he has me wrapped around his finger. my hands clutch at his jacket, wrapping firmly around the material as i pull him backwards, just before his hand reaches to clasp the door handle.

“you don’t seem to care about us anymore.” he shrugs, expression fixed, though despite the hostility it shows upfront, i can sense the sadness behind it. “so why the fuck should i?”

he shakes his head at my silence, looking for something, anything, that hints to a response, no matter how small and totally ridiculous. i stay quiet, in total disbelief of his ability to manipulate this whole situation, somehow attempting to put me at fault, as if he hadn’t had his hands all over that girl. he doesn’t seem to care about his own mistakes, focusing purely on my actions, choosing to act as a saint despite knowing deep down he is far from being one. it is this realisation that prompts him to turn around once again, his back to me as he tugs the door open, walking through it without looking back. yet i refuse to let it end like that, hurriedly following him, not considering the consequences.

“what are you talking about? seriously, instead of being such a pussy and walking away, fucking talk to me!” i demand as he momentarily stops in his tracks, eyes glued on my own, his jaw clenched. i no longer need to raise my voice, the music drowning itself out, but that doesn’t stop me, the volume of my words far louder than they need to be.

he reaches his car, hands moving into the pocket of his baggy jeans as they scramble for his keys, pulling them out without a word, though i still have plenty to say. “i’m talking to you!”

finally, he turns to face me, expression still harsh; not giving away anything that he truly wants to say. for some strange reason, he seems to hold back, restraining his mouth from acting out ahead of his mind, this unexpected, especially considering just minutes ago he hadn’t restricted himself from making particularly rash decisions, the smear of blood on his knuckle concrete proof of this.

“what, are you deaf, hm? my words not registering up there? i’m speaking to you, answer me!” i know exactly what buttons to press, exactly how to make him crack, and, once again, i do so with some success. he briefly hesitates, letting out a heavy sigh, seemingly reaching his breaking point as his mouth opens, ready to pour out the thousands of emotions he has kept in thus far.

“some fucking break this is.” he mutters, shaking his head slowly, his hand clutching the car keys with such strength his knuckles begin to turn white. “i say that we need some space and then catch you with some random guy’s tongue down your fucking throat. really seems like you missed me.”

not waiting for me to respond, he opens the car door, climbing into the driver’s seat hurriedly. i don’t know what compels me to follow him, perhaps it is my desire to find answers, possibly i am eager to continue this argument, or maybe i just missed him: his voice, his presence, everything about him somehow being exactly what i need. whatever it is, i am far too lost within him to care, my body acting ahead of my mind as i enter the passenger side, tom’s eyebrows furrowing in confusion. he doesn’t object though, clearly needing me as much as i do him, a brief look of relief taking over his expression, silently wishing that i would give in since the argument began despite his initial standoffish-ness, thankful that i have.

“don’t act like you’re all fucking innocent! the only reason i did all that was because i saw you with that slut! you clearly don’t love me anymore, not with the way you looked at her!” each word pierces him right in the chest, the daunting realisation of what he has done hitting him faster than ever. but it is the confession that i think his love for me has diminished that strikes him the most, his face softening when i utter those words. despite this, his voice is still harsh, volume meeting my own.

“don’t be ridiculous. you know she meant nothing.” he states, this apparently sufficient reassurance for his actions, the car silent for a moment as he starts it, hands on the steering wheel. i don’t know where he is going, far too frustrated to even care, wanting nothing more than to carry on this argument, in no position to let him off the hook.

“do i?” i scoff, face harshly turning to him. “i don’t see you for two weeks, and when i do, your hands are all up on some girl. the fuck am i supposed to do with that?”

his hands forcefully clutching the wheel, jaw clenched as he looks ahead, i know that he hears every word i say, processing them with ease, yet he stays quiet for a second, an uncomfortable silence in place of the harshness of my utterance, making the words ten times harder to digest. he knows that i am right, that it would be hypocritical for him to be mad at me right now, but that doesn’t stop him from being angry. in fact, his stubbornness only increases despite the realisation that he is just as guilty as i am, if not more.

“what was i supposed to do, hm? i didn’t have you, i just-” he trails off, a heavy sigh leaving his parted lips, head moving backwards to rest against the back of the seat, one hand coming upward to rest on the bridge of his nose. though the hesitation suggests otherwise, he knows exactly what he wants to say, but he can’t bring himself to utter the phrase, perhaps out of shame, or reluctance to admit how he truly feels. whatever it is that holds him back, i am no longer interested in his skepticism, wanting clear answers, not the mixed signals that i am receiving.

“what? you just what? stop being so fucking weird and just talk.” i order, turning in his direction, eyes burning into his features regardless of his hesitance to do so, strangely scared to look in my eyes.

“fuck…” he begins, exhaling shakily, almost preparing himself for the effect that his words are bound to have. “i missed you, okay? i missed you, and i didn’t know what else to fucking do.”

“don’t be stupid. i know that’s bullshit, and so do you. be honest with me, have you fucked someone else? since we went on whatever you want to call this weird distance between us.” i know that i shouldn’t have asked such a stupid question, the answer bound to disappoint me. for some strange reason, i want to hear him say the words, to make me realise that i’m not as important to him as i thought, that in reality, he can find someone prettier within a heartbeat. because the false hope that i continue to hold onto doesn’t seem to fade, even after watching him with his hands all over another girl.

“of course i fucking haven’t.” he scoffs, shaking his head as his face twists in anger, shocked that i would even ask such a question, the thought completely unheard of, apparently. “what, you really think i care that little? your expectations of me really that low?”

“you expect them to be high after i see you acting like that with her? you’re unbelievable.” i state, briefly looking over at him, his eyes fixated on the road, though i notice the quick glances he throws my way, assessing my expression, not giving the impression that he is going to apologise anytime soon.

“you know what? pull over, this was a mistake. we should’ve just stayed away from each other.” i say, turning to look at him, my hand moving to the door handle, desperate to get out of the situation, soon realising that we are never going to come to a solution, instead the back and fourth of our arguing will only continue until it becomes out of hand, unless i put a stop to it now.

he refuses to stop, the pressure his foot applies to the gas only seeming to increase, the speed of the car getting faster, making it pretty clear that he doesn’t plan on letting me leave.

“i’m not letting you go, not when it’s this dark out. you should know that i care about you too much to do that. i want to talk about this.” he replies, his voice assertive yet calm, the desperation behind it more evident than ever. the surroundings soon become familiar, having travelled along this road thousands of times, it would be impossible to not recognise it. countless times i had seen the same houses, same trees, same buildings either side of the road, each small detail reminding me of how much i had become used to this area, able to distinguish it much easier than i realise. the familiar house comes into view, it’s four walls holding more memories than any place i had ever been. thousands of nights of passion, mornings of lazy affection, afternoons spent simply enjoying each other’s company spent here, each one unforgettable - to me, at least.

but the comfort it brings me isn’t enough to make me forget about the situation, instead it makes me resent it even more. “why am i here? you want to ridicule me even more, yell at me for kissing that guy some more, rub it in my face that you had your hands on her-”

“you’re here because i want to you be. please can we talk about this? instead of being so fucking stubborn, just let me talk, for once.” he interrupts, confessing his feelings as they spill freely from his lips, eyes finally brave enough to look into my own.

“why should i?” i scoff, stepping out of the car as he does the same, hurriedly catching up to me, my steps towards the front door heavy and fast. his hands fumble with the keys, swiftly unlocking the door and opening it for me to step inside, all whilst i continue to ramble on, a mix of upset and anger sounding from my lips. “you have your hands all over her, and when i do the same thing, you don’t like it? and then you say you did it because you miss me? you’re the most frustrating person i’ve ever met, you know that? nothing is ever simple with you. you mess with my fucking head, and you don’t even care! why? why do you have to make me so-”

as much as i want to continue the sudden burst of rage, eager to show tom the frustration i feel right now, my words are abruptly cut off by a soft pair of lips, the harshness of them mirroring the venom within my tone, silencing my rushed speech in a way too tempting for me to dream of refusing. without thinking, i quickly kiss back, soon reflecting the hunger that tom displays as his lips move against mine, hands moving to my waist to pull me closer, my own behind his neck, his black braids tangled between my fingers.

“you drive me fucking crazy, you know that?” he breathes out between kisses, my mind too lost within the moment to even respond, his words barely registering. “so stubborn, but fuck, i need you, can’t live without you...”

i moan against his lips in response, deciding that actions speak far louder than words, channeling all the built up frustration into the kiss, parting my lips to allow his tongue to slip inside my mouth, my own entering his. the process of his arms hoisting me upwards, legs wrapping around his torso roughly and walking sloppily into the living room, our lips never parting is all a blur, my back ending up flat against the couch, tom’s body situated in between my legs, hovering over me. it didn’t matter that five minutes ago i could’ve punched his face. truthfully, i could do the same right now. however i decide to exercise my anger in the most pleasurable way possible, figuring that if he is trying to apologise, this is a pretty damn good way of earning my forgiveness - the silent promise of feeling him inside me meaning i’d probably accept whatever half-hearted attempt he put together to make amends, if it meant that we could get to the point faster.

my hair is disheveled, lipstick smudged, traces of the deep red now present on tom’s lips, proving just how desperate the both of us are - whether i am willing to admit it or not. his hand travels upwards, fingers grazing the soft skin covered by my hair, eventually making contact with the zipper of my dress and carefully tugging it downwards, despite his kisses being anything but. it is so wrong, knowing that he has entertained someone else not even an hour ago and he is touching me now, but it feels so right, against all of my morals, every part of me willing to make my body his and his only. my mind silently thanks whatever higher presence up there for gracing me with tom, though the things that we are doing forbid us from ever reaching heaven, not that it matters, because the feeling of his lips against mine is pretty damn close to it.

“fuck- i love you so much baby, so much…” he trails off, pulling away momentarily to allow his hands to take my dress, sliding the material down my body, exposing it all inch by inch until the soft cotton is bunched at my knees. his lips are curved into a small smirk, so subtle it is almost unnoticeable, though once his eyes flick between my face and now bare figure, i know that it is real - his being in some sort of trance as it rests above me, giving away his silent admiration. eyes twinkling as they take in my curves, perfectly defined, adorned with smooth skin, begging to be touched by his calloused hands which now reach outwards from his sides, giving into the temptation.

he is careful, despite the look on his face suggesting that he wants to be everything but. he desperately tries to hold on to the gentleness, hesitant to spoil moment of passionate bliss that resumes as his hands continue to run along my stomach, moving further and further upward. but deep down, he wants to ruin me, to give up the sweet act that he is putting on, and i want it just as bad - each second that he continues to be tender, his actions restricted and mild, slowly tortures me.

“why are you holding back?” i breathe out, eyes locked on his hands as they finally make contact with my breasts, moulding the flesh into his palms. i can sense the way he pauses slightly, refraining from applying any pressure, instead maintaining his steady movements, gaze locked on my breasts as he drinks in the view, mesmerised by the sight as if he hadn’t seen it a hundred times over.

“we don’t have to rush, i want to be gentle-” he speaks, voice slow and soft, though i have passed the point of caring about taking our time, the concept of it long gone. because i could spend an eternity like this, completely connected with him, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

“be gentle tomorrow.” i interrupt him, eyes flickering to his lips, wanting nothing more than to feel them against my own once again, tired of his accidental teasing.

his eyes meet my own, the lust within them taking over, my words barely considered as he acknowledges them immediately, capturing my lips in a kiss. it is rough, lacking that hesitance he showed moments ago, because now he has my permission, he no longer cares about being gentle, able to act out on his desires the way he needs to.

with a simple tug, he takes down his jeans, discarding the denim somewhere on the floor, far too focused on my exposed body in front of him to care where. if his demeanour didn’t give away his desperation, the bulge in his boxers said enough, his length brushing against my leg through the material as his head dips downward once again, reconnecting our lips in another heated kiss. i shift my hips slightly, mouth falling open once his dick brushes against my clit through my panties, the sensation, though only slight, enough to restrain my ability to kiss back.

he quickly senses this, hands moving to my panties, fingers hooking under the material, slowly raking them downwards, letting the lace pool at my feet. his arms lift upwards once my fingers make contact with the hem of his t-shirt, making it easier for me to remove the heavy fabric. i sit upwards, face inches away from his own, lips ghosting over each other’s whilst i pull the t-shirt upwards and over his head, releasing it onto the floor.

within seconds, his boxers are lost somewhere on the floor, joining the piles of clothes scattered around the room. his dick presses against his lower abdomen, the sight only making the aching between my thighs intensify, just about ready to get on my knees and beg, if he doesn’t put me out of my misery in the next few seconds.

and he does - just not in the way that i want him to. instead, his lips move downward at an agonisingly slow pace, eyes never leaving my own, even when he begins to place open-mouthed kisses along my stomach, his teeth grazing over the skin ever so slightly, though the sensation is enough for small whines to leave my lips, hands reaching for his head, fingers running over the rough bumps of his braids.

“shit- you’re so beautiful, so pretty schatz…” he praises between kisses, hands coming upward to pry my legs apart as they instinctively clench together at the pleasure. if it weren’t for his body in between them, they probably would’ve closed completely, not that tom would ever complain about being in such a position - especially not now when he had been without it for so long.

“please…” i whine, back arching slightly off of the couch, his teasing movements no longer enough. i need one thing, and he knows exactly what that is, his desires mirroring my own.

“shhhh. i know baby, i know.” he coos, head finally moving from my stomach as his whole body shifts upward, his forehead now resting against my own, lips placing small kisses all over my face, attempting to distract me from the feeling of his tip aligning with my entrance. he is foolish to think that anything could divert my attention from this sensation - i have been waiting for it for so long that it is the only thing on my mind, mouth falling open once it finally becomes a reality.

his lips curve into a smug smile at my reaction, watching the way my face contorts when he pushes inside of me, his length stretching out my walls as they clench around him. my mind is hazy, tuning out everything else around me, nothing else seeming to matter once i have gotten what i want. sure, thirty minutes ago i resented him, wanting nothing more than to hurl words of irritation at him until my throat turned hoarse, but it seems that i’ll be reaching the same conclusion anyways - the way his cock slowly thrusts in and out of me eliciting moans from me that are bound to leave my vocal chords sore. this doesn’t stop me from vocalising my pleasure though, inaudible whines not far from screams leaving my parted lips once he speeds up his pace a little.

“that’s it baby, let me hear those pretty sounds. show me how much you missed me, mhm?” he grunts, his own mouth hanging open a little as his hips continue to grind against my own, knowing exactly how to move, paying close attention to when my noises would become particularly loud, angling himself to elicit those same sounds from my lips, eyes squeezing shut whenever i do so.

somehow he hadn’t reprimanded me for when i would squirm a little, back arching ever so slightly, legs closing tighter and tighter around him. instead, his eyebrows would furrow when i do so, my movements drawing him deeper inside of me, so deep that i swear i can feel him in my stomach. even if he had scolded me, reminding me to be good, to behave myself as this is what i wanted, he knows that his words won’t stop me from acting out, especially when i know he is too lost in his own pleasure to even consider halting his movements - my climax guaranteed regardless of how much i irritate him so, why not misbehave a little?

“fuck- stay still.” he finally orders once i squeeze my legs around his waist one too many times, my hips lifting instinctively from the couch. his hands firmly place them downwards, fingers digging into the skin ever so slightly, providing just the right amount of pain to make me go close to insane, a moaning mess beneath him. he starts to circle his hips swiftly, his dick moving in and out of me at a different angle, and god, that’s all it takes. that is all i need for my mouth to fall open in a silent scream, quickly acknowledging that his tip no longer brushes weakly against that sensitive spot inside me, it hits the flesh directly.

if i had the ability to speak, i would be encouraging, no, begging him to carry on, to keep his movements going, his cock hitting every spot inside of me that causes me to moan that little bit louder, legs to squeeze around him just a little tighter. but he is perfectly aware of the effect he has on me, knowing the reaction that he elicits out of me is one of unmatched bliss, so he keeps going, much to my relief. through the small part of my vision that isn’t overtaken by the tears that soon begin to cover my eyes, i study tom’s face, his expression causing the already prominent knot in my stomach to tighten even further.

if the pleasure he brings me isn’t enough, the evidence of his own tips me over the edge - his eyebrows knitted together, sweat lining his forehead as he moves in and out of me, mouth open with his tongue occasionally swiping across his bottom lip. he stays relatively quiet, though i know exactly how to elicit small sounds out of him, noticing the way deep groans sound from the back of his throat when i clench around him, almost inaudible words of encouragement that follow his moans prompting me to repeat my actions, noticing the way he twitches inside me as i do so.

“gonna cum, c’mon baby, cum with me.” he prompts, bending downwards to plant quick kisses onto my lips, his thrusts now slow and deep, pushing me over the edge as i manage to nod my head, hands reaching to clutch his biceps. my nails dig into the skin once i feel his hot cum shoot inside of me, an elongated ‘ohhhh’ leaving his lips as he throws his head backward, hips lazily rocking back and forth at an irregular pace, one final thrust being all it takes for the knot in my stomach to quickly unravel.

my eyes squeeze shut, mouth falling open as a high-pitched moan escapes it, back lifting upward off of the couch once his pointer finger reaches to make contact with my clit, rubbing slow circles over it as my release washes over me. he continues to move in and out of me, fucking his seed further into me, his heavy breathing sounding through the silent room. he collapses on top of me, not bothering to pull out just yet, instead using the little energy he has left to softly run his fingers up and down my arm in an attempt to slow my rapid breathing, taking notice of the way my entire body trembles slightly.

“you okay schatz?” he mutters, his low voice vibrating against my bare skin, lips inches away from my breasts as his head rests in between them, placing a lazy kiss there. i mutter a small ‘mhm’, noticing the strain that the small utterance places on my throat, silently cursing myself for being so vocal, though deep down i know that i don’t really regret it, the sex warranting every sound i let spill from my lips.

“you still angry?” he asks, the soft smile that graces upon his lips telling me that he knows the answer to his question before i even open my mouth. he chuckles lowly, squeezing my waist and moving closer, intertwining our legs together, our bodies tangled as we lay on the couch.

“depends if you plan on touching someone like you did that girl again.” i shrug, honestly still a little frustrated at what i had witnessed, the thought making me seethe with jealousy. even after i had tom inside of me just moments ago, the small amount of satisfaction it brings me isn’t enough, wishing that i could somehow go back in time and stop the entire thing from ever happening, realising that my life would be better without knowing he had entertained someone else, even for a few minutes.

“what girl?” he grins, beginning to place sloppy kisses on my neck, hands running up and down my waist. he knows exactly what i am talking about, continuing to sweet talk me, all whilst his lips continue to work against my neck, tongue running soothingly over the skin after his teeth nip against it. “the only girl i want to touch is you, baby.”

“you know what girl.” i breathe out, trying to continue the conversation, my head tilting backwards to give him more access, failing miserably to maintain my composure as his kisses hold me under his trance, getting me just as worked up as i had been ten minutes ago, before he had pleasured me.

“hmm, i don’t care about her.” he mutters against me, his voice vibrating above my chest, sending chills through my body, the feeling soon soothed when he moves on top of me once again, trailing the suggestive kisses lower and lower, hovering just above my breasts. his eyes are half-lidded, filled with tired lust as they peer innocently at me, the intent behind them crystal clear as they darken just before his mouth opens, his voice low. “why would i? just want you beautiful. need you all to myself…”

tired moans leave his lips as they continue to work against me, leaving no part untouched, his kisses becoming slow and sloppy. though he doesn’t show any intention of stopping, muttering small compliments in between kisses. ‘so beautiful.’ he mumbles, taking the skin between my breasts and slowly sucking on it, teeth digging in momentarily, soon pulling away once he is satisfied with the small bruise left in place of his soft lips. ‘love you so much.’ he whispers just before his tongue swipes over an existing mark, head tilting to the side to press open-mouthed kisses just below it. “shit- so fucking perfect.’ he mutters, lips hovering above my breast for a few seconds, breath fanning over it, watching the way my chest falls up and down, anticipating his touch. ‘meine schatz, all yours.’ he murmurs, taking my nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it, his free hand kneading the flesh of my thigh, slowly continuing to work against me, noticing the way my whines become lazy and restricted.

he looks upward briefly, my own eyes on the verge of closing, completely exhausted, entire body aching as it manages to calm down, no longer trembling the way it was moments ago. his hands reach upwards, fingers threading through my hair, removing any knots within it. his own eyes struggle to stay open, yet he forces them to, holding back on falling asleep until he knows that i have, instead resuming his fingers’ slow movements through my hair, paying close attention to my breathing pattern, humming in satisfaction once it becomes slow and shallow, signalling that i have finally let exhaustion take over. even when he falls asleep, he refuses to reduce his hold on me, bodies tangled together as we are finally at peace, belonging to each other once again.

requests are open! keep sending them in!!

#tom kaulitz #kaulitz twins #tokiohotel #tom kaulitz x reader #tom kaulitz smut #tomkaulitz #tom kaulitz angst #kaulitz #tom kaulitz fluff #bill kaulitz

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nmakii · 2 months

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Hi! I'm not the one that requested no one is better than I am.... BUT I loved it so much! I was wondering if you could make a part two say maybe the person we ran away with turns out to be abuse or something like that and we're kinda like 'I fucked up' and realize maybe running wasn't such a good idea.... Anyway you can add your own little twist and you can ignore this if you wish <3

- rose anon 🌹

AND I KNEW YOU’D COME BACK TO ME.

— this relationship wasn’t meant to last long. all is forgiven though. alastor will forgive you.

— tangled reimagined 😮‍💨 didnt even realize it until i finished writing HAHAHAHAHA

a month later, the honeymoon period had died out. to be fair, you hadn’t exactly made a plan…crashing at a motel on the edge of mississippi, not exactly what you had in mind.

living off the scraps of what you took, pawning off your belongings. oh, this was not ideal at all. and, how your lover got when he was angry; he’d bruise your arm from gripping way too tightly whenever you didn’t get enough money. how you started to miss alastor, it’s true what they say— you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

if you were able to run once, perhaps you could just one more time? he is not as smart as alastor, you should be able to get away easily in the night.

yes, you should. after trading away many of your items, all you have left is but a satchel worth of dresses. new orleans is not particularly far with a car either.

and so, a familiar memory of running away at the dead of night. only now, it is you returning to alastor, just like he knew you would.

when you returned home, it was 2 AM. the house was just as it was when you left, albeit quite dusty now without your care.

you dropped your satchel on the dining table, just as you left it. it’s almost as if your home was abandoned when you left.

in the bedroom, your husband, sleeping peacefully— an arm clinging to your side of the bed, as if holding onto what little scent of you there was left.

when you opened the bathroom door, a silk nightgown was hung, simply waiting to be worn.

after you had changed, you sat back on your bed, the familiar smell of home coming back to you. as you laid in bed, you found yourself facing alastor.

your hands moved to bring him closer, the warm touch waking him scarily quick. “my love, you’ve returned.” he smiled, bringing you close.

your muscles tensed at the pet name, frightening reminders of the last month coming back. “hey, calm down, dear. i’m not mad.” he reassured you, awfully calmly at that. “running away; it was a mistake, wasn’t it?”

you nodded as you relaxed under his touch. “he was awful… im sorry, alastor…” you frowned. “oh, darling, i told you, didn’t i? no matter, all is forgiven.” he cooed, brushing your hair gently with his nimble fingers. “i’ll protect you from all that is bad in this world. no evil will meet you as long as i live. all i ask… is that you stay here, with me, forever— take care of our house, cook dinner, and perhaps even care for our little ones in the future?” he rambled on, a wide smile upon his face as he thinks of your future together. “ah, i’m rambling, we can discuss that in the future. in the meantime, could you do that, dear?” he asked, offering it to you as if you had a choice.

you nodded, not even looking at alastor. “good. i love you very much, don’t you know that, my dear? all i want is for you to be safe.” he told you. “…i” you started, thinking carefully of your words. “i love you too, alastor…” you said.

did you truly love him? of course you did. he took you back after you betrayed his trust, he’s a wonderful husband.

the moment the words fell from your sweet lips, a wide smile found its way onto alastor’s face. a kiss pressed upon your forehead.

his little doe finally returned his affections. it’s only a shame of his that he had to hurt your delicate heart first.

why would a single man be in a luxury store? oh, words cannot describe how thankful alastor is for your foolish naivety.

word on the street, that eugene was quite the heartbreaker. not to mention, that criminal record of his.

convincing him to go through with it wasn’t hard either. seeing a new toy that knows nothing of his record, he was more than eager to play with you. all it took was a bit of cash for him to keep up the sweetheart act.

and now that his doe was home, there’s no use for trash like that man in this world. the bruises on your arm, they were not what was intended.

all he asked was a simple grab, but it seems he got carried away, that piece of garbage.

as alastor forcefully swallowed his anger, he held you close, massaging the bruises on your wrist. “rest well, darling. you’ve been through a lot this past month.” he cooed, slowly lulling you to sleep.

oh, how excited he is that his little doe is home. to celebrate, we need a special meal, don’t we? say, there is a rare meat that alastor has been dying to try.

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #alastor #alastor x reader #alastor hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel alastor #hasbin alastor #alastor hazbin x reader #alastor hc #alastor headcanons #alastor the radio demon #human alastor #yandere alastor #yandere

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megalony · 3 months

Text

Take It Easy

This is an Eddie Diaz imagine, requested by anon. I'm sorry it took me so long to get round to writing this for you. I hope it is what you were looking for. Any feedback is always amazing.

Taglist: @lunaticspoem@sj-thefanthefan@hellsdragon@im-an-adult-ish@crazylittlethingg@allauraleigh@onceuponadetectivedemigod@ceres27@avyannadawn@sleepylunarwolf@coverupps@justagirlthatlovedtoread@musicistheway@avada-kedavra-bitch-187@luula@missdreamofendless@bradleybeachbabe@woderfulkawaii@amberpanda99@daggersquadphantom@marvel-and-chicago-fan@angryknightstatesmantrash@minjix@lyjen@kmc1989@itsmytimetoodream@noonenuts@hiireadstuff@ashie-babie@classyunknownlover@jayyeahthatsme@sp1ritssz

Eddie Diaz Masterlist

Summary: (Y/n) doesn't feel well but continues with her shift and reassures her husband that she is fine. Until the pain gets worse and she collapses at work.

Enjoy.

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

Coiling her arms to her chest, (Y/n) leaned her weight on the door and tried to open it as quietly as possible. She peered her head around and shuffled into the bunker room.

The small LED lights on the walls were enough to cast a pale luminescent light around the room and let (Y/n) glance around rather than wander aimlessly in the dark. She could feel the panic dwindling down when she realised the only person in the room was the one person she had been hoping to find.

Other than Eddie sleeping soundly, the room was empty.

She pushed the door to and left it open just a slight crack before she wandered over to the far right side of the room. Moving over to a free cot bed, (Y/n) leaned down to the left and undid her boots and stepped out of them. She was suddenly glad the room was cast in darkness just in case Eddie was awake so he wouldn't see the grimace that pulled on her lips when she leaned down.

Her hand moved to press against her abdomen and it took all (Y/n) had not to groan when she straightened up. Her lower stomach was twisting and knotting itself up like tangled rope. This was exactly the way Eddie had felt a month or so back when he got a stomach infection.

(Y/n) prayed to God she didn't have the same kind of infection, she didn't want to be off work for a week. Stuck taking antibiotics, barely able to eat anything due to the pain like Eddie had been.

Her hand moved to hold her hip so her arm was pinned around her waist. Adding pressure made her stomach feel less tense and took away some of the discomfort she felt.

She had been on shift this afternoon and she wasn't going off until tomorrow evening. If (Y/n) could just get through the next shift, then she could have a day off and try to recover before coming back for a night shift in two days. Next week was her short week where she only had two shifts, she would be able to rest at home with Chris and recover around work so she didn't have to take time off. She didn't want to be stuck at home and she didn't want to leave the station with no staff.

Her eyes softened when she moved over towards the only occupied bed in the room and her gaze landed on her husband.

Eddie was laid on his back with one arm hanging off the side of the bed and the other arm draped across his eyes. He had stripped off his shirt and left it lying on his boots beside the bed, leaving him in his trousers and vest and the blanket was tossed on the floor too. The station was far too humid for anyone to want to sleep with a blanket.

It took some effort for (Y/n) to crouch down beside his bed but feeling her knees press up into her stomach relieved some of the pain.

She folded one arm over the edge of the bed and reached her other hand out to graze her fingertips along Eddie's exposed arm. Her lips curved into a tight smile when she watched his elbow suddenly twitch and he took a sharp breath as his upper body jolted forward slightly.

She stayed put, crouched beside the bed while Eddie lowered his right arm from his eyes and turned to look over at her.

"You okay baby… what time is it?" His voice was groggy and laced with sleep making him sound much deeper than usual. He rubbed the base of his hand against his eyes while his left hand reached out to brush across (Y/n)'s jaw.

How long had he been asleep? Surely it couldn't be morning already? He had gone to take a power nap just after eleven so he could feel a bit more alive if they had a call out during the night. It didn't feel like he had been asleep for very long, but that was usually the way it went with sleep. One second Eddie thought it was midnight and the next, someone was waking him up saying it was three in the morning and they had to get ready.

"Midnight," (Y/n) tilted her head to the side and nuzzled her cheek into Eddie's palm, smiling softly when his thumb brushed across her cheekbone.

"Do you feel any better?" He let his head drop back down on the pillow for a few seconds while his hand moved from his eyes to ruffle his hair and brush it away from his temple.

He knew she had felt sick early in the morning and when they arrived on shift, she had changed from feeling sick to having a dull stomach ache. He was hoping he hadn't passed on his infection to her. Eddie had done his best to be careful around his wife and son when he was ill. The last thing he needed was to make (Y/n) or Chris ill too. And he was sure it couldn't be the same infection because it had been over two weeks since Eddie had recovered.

"A little," (Y/n) wasn't sure whether he believed her or not but he didn't push the subject, he only hummed and acknowledged that he'd heard her.

"Come get some sleep, baby."

A grin formed on her lips when Eddie's hand left her face and moved to hold her elbow instead. He tugged on her arm until she got the hint and moved closer while he shifted around.

Eddie turned to lay on his left side so he was facing her and shuffled back towards the edge to make some room in front of him. There wasn't really enough space to fit two of them on here, but he didn't care. He slept better when (Y/n) was in his arms. Sleeping alone in a small, uncomfortably cot bed like this reminded Eddie of being back in the army and he didn't want to relive that part of his life.

His left arm stretched out and when (Y/n) gingerly climbed onto the bed, he curved his arm up around her chest so his hand could hold her shoulder. His lips curved into a grin when he felt (Y/n) tilt her head down and kiss his forearm that was against her chest and both her hands moved to hold his arm comfortingly.

Eddie's other arm slumped over (Y/n)'s waist and he leaned his head down until he could bury his nose and lips in the top of her hair.

He heard the quiet, uncomfortable sound (Y/n) let out as she shuffled around to try and get comfy. And he felt the way she drew her knees up to her stomach to try and relieve the pain and feel settled enough to sleep.

She kept her lips buried against Eddie's arm and she hummed when he tightened his right arm around her waist and smoothed his hand up and down her abdomen. "Better?" He murmured quietly into her hair and (Y/n) could tell by his voice that he was starting to fall back asleep again.

Her lips kissed his arm and she squeezed her fingers into his forearm near his tattoo while she nuzzled her cheek into his bicep. She felt a lot better to have Eddie wrapped around her like a blanket.

Her knees pulled up a bit higher like she was trying to pin Eddie's arm against her and imbed it into her stomach to relieve the burning, dull ache. But in doing so, (Y/n) unintentionally wriggled back into Eddie and pushed her bum into his groin. She felt his hand press down flat and firmly against her stomach to hold her in place and she froze, breathing softly into his arm as she tried to stay deadly still.

"Don't do that. We're at work,"

(Y/n) shivered when he growled into her hair but she couldn't stop herself from smiling into his arm. While his other arm pinned tighter against her and kept her back flush against his chest so she could feel every ridge of him pressing into her.

"Sorry," She whispered quietly before pressing an open-mouthed kiss against his arm. She was starting to feel a little better already.

***

She felt worse.

(Y/n) could feel tears burning in the corners of her eyes when she shrugged on her overall jacket and grabbed her helmet from the locker. She felt like each step she took caused a fire to burn down the centre of her stomach, and now the pain was moving towards the right side of her abdomen too.

She hadn't managed to eat any breakfast and now it was close to lunchtime and she felt sick even though she had nothing to throw up.

She swiped her sleeve beneath her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to hold herself up and feel a bit more alive and better. All she had to do was get through this afternoon until she could go home.

Once she was home, wrapped up in bed with Eddie, she would feel much better and she would be able to rest.

"Ready?"

Her body jumped and she swallowed down a groan when Eddie curved his arm around her waist and jogged beside her towards the truck. She let him take her helmet from her hands and whack it in the compartment with his before they headed to the steps.

Stars flooded (Y/n)'s vision and she almost let go of the door when she tried to pull herself up. It caused a sudden, blinding strain on her stomach when she reached up and tried to climb up the steps. She realised she wasn't breathing but she couldn't force herself to take another breath.

It was a relief to feel Eddie's hands on her hips and he gave her a tight squeeze and a push up when she froze and he almost bumped into her.

Eddie's eyes followed her as she clambered in and flopped down into a spare seat opposite Evan.

She looked flushed, but Eddie couldn't be sure whether that was because she didn't feel so well or because they were rushing about to head out on a call. He moved to sit down next to her and once they were buckled in with headsets on, he looked down at her.

His left arm reached out and his hand clamped down on her thigh, giving her a reassuring squeeze while silently checking if she was alright.

(Y/n) curled her hands around his arm and managed a tight-lipped smile. It was hard to control the grip she had on his arm. She didn't want to squeeze too tightly and make Eddie realise she didn't feel good. She let herself shuffle to the right and imbed herself between the chair and Eddie, moving his shoulder a little until it was pressing comfortably on her chest. And she could press her lips down on his shoulder since he hadn't put his overcoat on yet.

Keeping her eyes closed seemed to help relieve the nausea that bubbled up in her clenching stomach. But the speed bumps and sharp corners didn't do her any good.

When the truck made a harsh break, (Y/n) kicked her foot out and pressed the heel of her boot into the chair opposite to steady herself but she could feel her breaths jittering past her trembling lips. Her fingers punched into Eddie's arm and she swallowed down a groan.

"Okay?"

She nodded her head but she didn't believe herself. She was starting to sweat through her minimal layers and they hadn't even arrived on the scene yet. She felt sick and the swerving corners were making her feel dizzy.

(Y/n) ignored the small chatter through the headphones and tried to keep herself tucked up into Eddie. She didn't care if the others stared or wondered why she was suddenly clinging to him. All she cared about was trying to get herself through this shift and make the pains go away. She had taken the painkillers Eddie handed her at lunch but they weren't making any difference.

When she dared to open her eyes, she felt her stomach churning again and adrenaline fuelled up towards her chest when she locked her gaze on her husband.

He was staring down at her intently, and he didn't look pleased.

His lips pressed to one side and he had one brow raised while his chin was tilted down in her direction. (Y/n) usually loved it when she caught Eddie staring at her when they were on shift together, but not today. He didn't look at her with those sweet doe eyes that made her heart skip a beat.

Today, he had stern pupils and a clenched jaw and the tension was evident in his features. She could feel his hand digging tighter into her thigh while his other hand was curled around his knee.

Eddie wanted her to go home. He wanted (Y/n) to go home and rest and try to take it easy and come back when she felt better. He saw no point in her pushing herself to continue with her shift when she clearly wasn't well. But he knew how stubborn she was and she wouldn't go home unless she got a lot worse or someone forced her to leave.

"Alright team, let's go."

(Y/n) was glad to throw off the headphones when the truck came to an unsteady stop and the blaring sirens finally turned off. They were the second unit to be called to the scene, they were here for added back up to evacuate a burning building and tend to the injured.

With her belt thrown off to the side, (Y/n) took a very deep, turbulent breath and tried to clear the fog out of her head and undo the knots in her stomach.

She followed in line to get down, keeping her hands around Eddie's arm until he had to climb down and she had to let go.

The temperature change hit her at full speed and her already burning skin flushed the the AC in the truck turned off and the heatwave outside blistered into her skin. And gravity seemed to grab her when she tried to climb down until she stumbled over her feet and barely managed to stop herself from falling down.

When her feet were planted on the floor, her hand automatically reached out in front of her and her fingers curled around Eddie's arm just as he shrugged on his jacket. Her forehead pushed into his arm and she closed her eyes, willing her stomach to stop when it felt like knives were imbedding into her skin and stabbing her a thousand times.

"Baby what's wrong?" He whispered softly as his head turned to look down at her. He could feel her tight grip on his upper arm and he could sense how close she was standing to him like she was trying to merge herself into his back.

"A bit nauseous, but I'm good now."

"You can sit this one out and wait in the truck-"

"No, no baby I'm okay."

Eddie frowned down at her and shivers coursed under (Y/n)'s skin when she felt his hand grip her chin. He pulled her head up and tilted her so she was level with him and able to lock gazes with him.

She could see the stern look in his dark eyes and his jaw clicked from side to side. He was assessing her, going into medic mode to make sure she was actually okay and capable of doing this call out. He had no problem calling rank and telling Bobby that (Y/n) needed to sit this one out. He would put his foot down if he had to, even if he didn't want to.

"You swear you're good to go?" His voice was as dark as (Y/n) had ever heard and it made the knots in her stomach dull down and turn to mush. She wanted to melt into a puddle and she suddenly wished they were at home instead of at work, with Eddie looking at her like that.

"I promise," (Y/n) nodded and batted her eyes up at him but she couldn't bring herself to smile, not yet.

She could feel the adrenaline pounding through her blood from arriving on scene but it wasn't enough to rid her stomach completely. But she was standing upright and she could push herself to get through this call, as long as she could rest afterwards, she should be okay. She hoped.

She forced herself to let go of his arm even though she didn't want to, and secured her helmet and gloves. She could feel her stomach knotting but one of the many knots started to ease when Eddie stayed stood beside her with his arm and shoulder in front of her like a shield. He didn't move an inch away from her as they stood waiting for orders.

His left hand reached out to the side and held onto (Y/n)'s hip so his arm was once again pinned across her chest like how they had sat in the truck.

His thumb brushed up and down her hip over her trousers and his arm pressed back into her chest, trying to apply a little pressure to give her some comfort.

"Okay, Buck and Eddie, I want you round the back with the 211 to evacuate. Chimney you with me through the front to make sure everyone gets out. Hen, go find the medics and assist." Bobby looked across them all before his eyes landed on (Y/n).

It was like a silent conversation passed between them all. (Y/n) tried to look okay, she tried to hold her breath and square her shoulders and hold herself steady to prove she was alright and nothing was out of the ordinary. But with Eddie's arm pinned around her front and his stern, unhappy expression beside her, it contradicted any brave face she tried to put on and Bobby didn't buy her brave face.

"(Y/n)," He could see she wasn't one hundred percent. She figured everyone could and it made her squirm on the spot. "Go with Hen, help check everyone over and assist medics."

She didn't question it.

It would do her no favours to question an order and deep down, she was relieved not to have to rush into the burning building and run around. (Y/n) didn't think she had the strength or ability within her to go faster than a quick paced walk or she would keel over.

She would only slow them down and be a hinderence today if she tried to do the harder tasks with Eddie and Evan. She didn't want to hold them back or cause any problems if she collapsed inside or came over dizzy or had to stop to be sick. She couldn't wear the oxygen mask and safety suit if she thought she was going to be sick. It would be a very bad day if she threw up in the suit.

Helping the wounded was a much easier job for (Y/n), it was automatic to tend to people and help with their injuries whereas Buck and Eddie were far better suited to run into the burning buildings and find ways to get out.

"Be careful," She mumbled quietly into Eddie's shoulder and gave his arm a lasting squeeze before he let go of her and turned to peck her temple. She could feel his lips moving against her skin and she shuddered when he sighed. He could feel how she was starting to flush and burn up, but it wasn't excessive and as long as she stayed with Hen and didn't overdo herself, she would be alright on this call.

"And you take it easy, mi amor. I mean it."

"Yes boss." Her quiet comment earned her a slap on the bum as she turned to walk away.

***

"You look like you could use a drink."

(Y/n) lifted her head from the window and glanced across at Evan when she felt his foot nudge hers while he slouched back in his seat.

She didn't realise they were back at the station until she noticed Evan fling his belt off and move to stand up with his head and shoulders hunched forward. He was too tall to stand up in the truck.

He waved his hand for her to follow and (Y/n) nodded, but she couldn't bring herself to move just yet. Her head was spinning and her stomach was officially pulled into knots that weren't untangling on their own. She didn't know what to do with herself. Standing up only stretched the pain and walking created a burning feeling. All (Y/n) wanted to do was stay curled up in her seat and contort into the smallest, curved shape she could manage to try and take away the pain.

She realised her hands were trembling when she took off her own belt and leaned against the seats to try and heave up onto her feet.

Her head spun in circles and her body tilted to the right when she shuffled to get out the truck. She couldn't stay sitting in here for the rest of her shift and she was officially the last one left to get out.

She let herself slump against the side of the door but her feet weren't coordinating anymore. The heel of her boot skidded off the top step and (Y/n) didn't have the will or the energy to try and catch herself.

She just wanted to go to sleep.

She wanted the pain to stop. It was easier to let go and given in to the thought of collapsing down on the floor. It would take the weight off her body and stop her stomach from stretching and tightening so much if she just went down and curled up on the floor. The pain was bad enough to make her head spin and she had felt constantly dizzy for the last hour of their callout.

"Woah- fuck!"

Eddie barely lifted his head before his breath got caught in his throat and his chest tightened.

The helmet in his hand dropped to the floor and he thrust his arms up just as (Y/n)'s head lolled forward and her body tumbled down from the truck.

Her forehead bashed into his shouolder and jolted the right side of Eddie's body but he tried to tense up and stay standing. He coiled his arms around her waist and slammed his knees into the bottom step of the truck, bending his hips forward to try and take her weight for her. (Y/n)'s body crashed into his chest and her arms flagged against his sides while her legs slammed into the truck floor and bent awkwardly over the steps.

"Fuck, I got you baby." Eddie tilted his head to the left to check no one was behind him before he tried to shuffle backwards a few steps and pull (Y/n) down from the truck.

He grimaced at the way her legs bashed down the steps and scraped against the floor and her arms flopped limply over his elbows.

Once he was a few feet away, Eddie let himself go down on his knees and gently lowered (Y/n) down with him. He then turned her around until her back was slumped down over his thighs and he hoisted her up, shuffling her between his legs that he parted to the sides. His arm bolted around her waist and his hand moved to cup her chin so he could tilt her head back on his shoulder.

"Oh God!"

"Eddie what's going on?"

Hen fumbled to grab one of the medic bags from the truck while Bobby paused, halfway towards the stairs before he caught sight of two of his team on the floor.

"Baby, you with me?" His thumb brushed across (Y/n)'s jaw before he reached up to move her eyelid and check if her pupils were changing and constricting or not.

Eddie didn't like the way (Y/n)'s arms immediately slumped around her waist before she tightened them and started to groan. Her head turned until she could bury her face in his neck and her trembling arms pushed down on her abdomen until she was crying into his neck.

"How bad is the pain, baby? Talk to me," He could feel how flushed her skin was with her head tucked into his neck. She was sweating and he couldn't make out whether she was just trembling from pain or if she was shaking from a fever.

"Eight."

"Eight? Christ (Y/n) why didn't you tell me?" He shook his head as his jaw tightened. She shouldn't be on shift if she was in this much pain. She should have told him how bad it was and that it was getting worse so she could go home or go to the doctor. Staying on shift and pretending she was alright clearly hadn't worked out for anyone.

Eddie's left arm stayed hooked around (Y/n)'s chest while he moved his right hand to tug her shirt from where it was tucked into her trousers. He rolled it up to reveal her stomach so he could carefully press his fingertips and then the palm of his hand down over (Y/n)'s abdomen. He leaned back when (Y/n) cried out and clenched her fingers around his wrist the moment he tried to add pressure to the lower right side of her abdomen.

"I think it's her appendix," He let his eyes trail across to Hen when she bent down on his other side.

She clipped a pulse monitor onto (Y/n)'s finger and slid a blood pressure cuff up her arm before she tried to examine (Y/n)'s stomach. But (Y/n) wasn't having any of it. She squirmed and pushed back into Eddie, crying into his neck until he pressed his lips against her burning temple and tried to hush her.

Hen placed a thermometer in (Y/n)'s ear and pursed her lips when she got the reading. "BP is high and she has a fever. Definitely could be appendicitis."

"You are going to the emergency room. Now. This isn't negotiable."

(Y/n) didn't have the will to argue, all she could do was close her eyes tighter and press her face so deeply into Eddie's neck that she could feel the throbbing veins pressing into her nose and feel each deep breath he took. His arms hooked beneath her knees and around her back and when he lifted her up, it eased some of the pain. (Y/n) tried tightening her knees to her stomach and kept her arms pinned around her middle while she heard Bobby tell Hen to take them in the ambulance.

Her arms stayed pinned to her stomach and she groaned when Eddie tried to carefully ease her down onto the gurney in the ambulance. She was relieved the rest of the team stayed at the station. She didn't want nor need the attention of anyone else climbing in and trying to examine her and help.

It was bad enough she felt like this now instead of in a few hours when her shift ended. That was all she was trying to do; make it to the end of her shift.

"Do you want some morphine for the pain, mi amor?" Eddie slipped the pressure cuff off her arm but left the pulse clip on her finger. He wanted to keep an eye on the numbers and make sure her pulse stayed calm and steady.

"Please… Eddie i-it hurts,"

When she dared to open her eyes, it took a few seconds to form a picture instead of blurred colours of brown, grey and glistening white lights. But (Y/n) managed to focus enough to see her husband stare down at her with a perplexed look.

He wanted to frown. He wanted to scoff and raise an eyebrow or shake his head at her and growl. But Eddie found his expression falling and a sad quirk pulled at his lips when he looked down at his wife.

"I know, which is why you should have told me earlier." His tone was calm and coated in sugar, even though he wanted it to come out stern and repremanding. If (Y/n) had told him how bad the pain was, Eddie would have taken her to the hospital earlier before she developed a fever and severe pains. He would have sent her home this morning if she told him she felt worse instead of saying she felt better.

Reaching out, (Y/n) grabbed his thigh when he sat down on the edge of the gurney with a few items splayed out on the chair opposite him.

He let her squeeze his thigh and he tilted her arm around a little while he tore open the plastic packaging for a new needle pre-filled with a dose of morphine. His thumb pressed down just above the crease of her elbow and he expertly shot the dose into her vein before he leaned forward and kissed her arm when he was done.

"Okay, stay still mi amor, this won't take long." Eddie pinned an IV tube between his knees and grabbed a catheter needle, swabbing the back of (Y/n)'s hand that was gripping his knee.

He carefully pushed the needle into the back of her hand, pinning the leaf green cap in place while he removed the needle and exchanged it for the IV. Once it was taped in place, Eddie undid the clasp to let the fluids run wide open. He didn't want (Y/n) dehydrating as well as burning up and being in immense pain.

"Are… are you mad at me?" It was hard for (Y/n) to try and keep her eyes open when the morphine was starting to do its work. The cramping, twinges coursing through her stomach were still making her shake back and forth on the gurney and rock against Eddie, but her head was starting to feel better. The dizziness was clearing up and her pulse was starting to throb in her head like a drum.

She felt like she was going to pass out.

The feeling of Eddie's lips on her burning forehead felt comforting and cold and it was as if he was melting into her. Especially when his hand moved to cup the side of her neck and she could feel his thumb swiping across the corner of her jaw.

"Of course I'm not mad at you, mi amor." His lips curved up into a gentle smile and he tilted his head down so their foreheads were pressed together and the tip of their noses touched. "I'm worried about you, there's a difference."

When he felt the ambulance come to a stop, Eddie pushed up to his feet and moved to unclip the brakes.

"Right, let's get you to a doctor."

***

"Are you taking me home now?" (Y/n) bit down on her lip to obscure her smile and she tilted her head back to look up at Eddie through her lashes.

Her hands pinched down around the edge of the bed and she swung her legs over the side until her feet were firmly planted on the floor. She stayed still, watching Eddie move forward until he was stood between her parted thighs And his arms dropped from being folded over his chest so he could reach out for her.

He smoothed his hands over her shoulders and trailed them down her sides until he had a firm grip on her hips and he arched his back out to lean over her. His temple pressed against hers and (Y/n) tilted her head up to capture his lips in a kiss. She could taste the coffee on his lips and when she bit down on his lower lip when he parted them, she felt his fingertips scratch into her hips causing her to gasp.

"If you're good, and promise to take it easy."

Eddie's assumptions had been right. An assessment and scan had proven that (Y/n)'s appendix had swollen up and become inflamed. If they had waited much longer it might have burst and caused a lot of complications.

Three hours later, Eddie was sat in the waiting room while (Y/n) had keyhole surgery to remove her appendix. And since she'd had no adverse reactions and seemed to be fine, they were going to discharge her this afternoon.

(Y/n) wanted to go home. She wanted to go to sleep in her own bed and be with Eddie and Chris, not laid up in here somewhere unfamiliar and unsettling. She could recover much better at home than she could here. They had painkillers at home which is all (Y/n) needed to take at the moment and she knew Eddie was going to be hovering around like a warden.

He wouldn't let her overdo anything, he would be on watch to make sure she got some rest.

"I promise. At least we don't have to worry about childcare this week." (Y/n) reached her hand up for Eddie's collar and gave a sharp tug to keep him hovering over her while her foot curled around the back of his ankle to drag him closer.

"This week?"

"What?" Her teeth sank down into her lower lip and her head tilted to the side.

"Uh-uh, don't try playing me, baby." The way he held her chin between his finger and thumb made (Y/n)'s stomach pool with adrenaline and she gasped when he tilted her head back and towered over her. "I spoke to the doctor. At least two to three weeks off work. No heavy lifting, no straining, nothing."

"Eddie…" (Y/n) drawled out his name and pulled her chin from his grasp so she could push forward. Her hands curled around his back and dug into his lower torso while she meshed her face into his abdomen, breathing into his shirt and inhaling his scent.

"Would you rather stay here?"

Her grumble was enough of an answer and Eddie smiled as he leaned down and kissed the top of her head. His arm stayed curved around her upper back while his other hand moved to cradle the back of her neck.

He had spoken to the doctor already. (Y/n) was fine to be discharged today, but she had to rest. She couldn't go back to work for up to a month because she couldn't risk doing any heavy duty and straining the few stitches she had or tearing the internal stitches.

Their job was demanding and hard, it would be too much of a strain to go back to full duties right away. And Eddie wasn't going to risk her health, no matter how much she begged and pleaded with him.

"That's what I thought."

"Please take me home." (Y/n) tilted her head back until her chin was pressed into his abdomen and she could stare up at him.

"We're going home, mi amor. And you're gonna be good and let me look after you. Got it?"

#eddie diaz x reader #eddie diaz imagine #eddie x reader #eddie diaz #imagine #911 imagine #evan buckley #bobby nash

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mariclerc · 2 months

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Hiiii,,

Im in a very angsty mood and was wondering if u could write charles x driver!reader where reader gets in a crash similar to jules’? Maybe have her in the hospital for a bit and charles is scared that he’ll lose her? Thanks ahead of time. Hope u have a nice day!

thanks for this request! I made the effort to write angst, since it is the first time I do it. I hope you like it!!

Fighter | cl16

Summary: where you have a serious accident on the track and Charles's memories of it aren't the most pleasant ones.

Warning: a little bit of angst, a worried and scared Charles, injured reader, some swearing.

a/n: This is the first time I've tried to write angst, so sorry if it's not quite perfect. There's going to be a little point of view from Charles. Let me know if you want a part two of this <3

Part 2

“Are you excited about the race, coeur?” Charles asks you as you enter the paddock. (heart)

You nod. “Yep! I think we can give Red Bull a good fight, and you? Are you excited?” you ask him as you stop to sign some autographs for the fans.

“As long as you don't pass my shiny red car on track, everything's fine.” He says and you roll your eyes with a smile, he giggles.

You two have been a couple for years, specifically since you were both racing in European F4, and although it took you a bit to get up to F1, you finally did it and this was your fifth season. You currently race for Mercedes and there is always that rivalry with the Prancing Horse, a rivalry which you both do not pay much attention to since, if it were up to you, you would support each other on the track as you do off track. You are the most loved and appreciated couple in the paddock, people love the dynamic of the two of you, how you are with each other and so on, and knowing each other from karting and then being a couple and staying together until now is not for everyone.

“Well, I think it's time, see you honey!” you said as you walked up to him to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Be safe, okay?”

“You too chérie!” He said as he also gave you a kiss on the cheek and you both walked to your respective teams. “Love you!”

You enter the Mercedes hospitality and go up to your driver's room and change into your racing suit and then go to the starting grid. Everyone was making the final preparations to start the race and the formation lap, you start in 4th position behind Fernando Alonso and in front of Esteban Ocon, maybe you have to make a good start, but you are confident that you can reach the podium together with Max —who starts first and Charles —who starts second... It's going to be a busy race.

***

So far the race is going well, already in the last part of the race, you are in third place fighting with Max for second place, there is a chance of rain but nothing to worry about...

Or at least that's what you thought...

The track began to get very wet even though it was a "light drizzle" and overtaking became a difficult task, likewise, no driver went into the pits to change tires and there was no warning from the FIA as to whether the drizzle was going to evolve into a storm.

Fighting with Max for second place, you got lost and the car took a turn until the nose was almost inside the net that separates the track from the stands, your head, despite having the helmet, was pushed back... You only remember the big impact against the barrier and your head going numb.

Charles' pov

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, please tell me y/n is okay?” I tell my track engineer as I see Y/n's car under the barrier.

“Apparently not, but they say she's fine.” my engineer answers.

But of course she's not fine, fuck it, she's not fine at all. All the cars line up on the pit line while y/n's strong crash repeats on the screens of the circuit, I get out of the car upset and needing answers.

“Shit, shit shit. Why the hell didn't they report about the rain? They think this is a fucking game?” I say to myself as I take off my helmet and throw it somewhere in the box, Andrea hands me a bottle of water and I take it. “I don't understand, I... The same thing can't be repeated, fuck it.” I murmur as I place my head in my hands. “It's incredible that years go by and the same old fucking shit is always repeated, because of them and their inability.”

Upon hearing over the circuit loudspeakers that the race was not going to resume, Andrea takes me to the Ferrari hospitality and I go up to my driver's room where I change out of my racing suit for my Ferrari t-shirt and a pair of jeans, I don't mind going to the "podium" like that and standing in first place, I just need to know if she's okay.

A couple of years ago I lost important people thanks to the same reason: a racing accident, both were horrible accidents that left a mark on me but none like the one I just witnessed. First it was my sports godfather, Jules, his accident left me scarred for life, thanks to this a new safety device was implemented —which doesn't do much to be honest. He died thanks to an accident that left him in a coma for months... Every day I went with my father to the hospital to see him, to see if he was still with us. Then it was one of my childhood friends thanks to karting, Anthoine, It was in an F2 race on the same circuit where hours later I would take the pole position that would give me my first victory in F1, but what happened to him was instantaneous... The next day they announced that he had passed away, my first victory was dedicated to him.

Just as I'm on my way to the "podium" Fred and Toto pull me from the side. “They take y/n to the hospital.” Fred says looking at me.

“Shit... Fuck, why her? Damn tell me if she's...” I couldn't finish speaking because Toto interrupted me.

“Go with her kid.”

“We'll take care of the rest, but go with her.” Fred says, patting me on the back and I run to Andrea to look for my things in the hospitality so I can go, I feel frustrated with myself and I know it's not my fault, but I wish it hadn't happened to her.

***

The sterile white of the ceiling swims into focus as your blurry vision starts to clear a little but you can't fully open your eyes. A rhythmic beeping cuts through the silence of the room. You try to speak, but your throat feels raw and unused. Strained voices filter in from beside your bed.

“...How long has it been? Do they know anything yet?” says Charles with his voice tight with worry.

A female voice is heard, calm but firm. “Mr. Leclerc, we're doing everything we can. The doctors will be with you shortly to explain the results of the scans.”

”But it's been hours!” says Charles with cracked voice. ”Can't they just tell me if she's going to be fucking alright?”

You hear the soft rustle of clothing and a sigh. The beeping quickens slightly.

“We're doing everything we can, dear. She's a strong girl.” The nurse says leaving the room.

He squeezes your hand again, his voice dropping to a frustrated whisper. His eyes don't leave your face.

“Just like Jules... just like Anthoine... why does this always happen? Why you my dear?” he says to himself. “I wish... I wish it had been me and not you amore.”

The door creaks open and the doctor enters the room. Charles straightens up, a flicker of hope in his eyes.

“Doctor, you have an update?” Charles asks.

“We've run some additional tests. There seems to be a minor head injury causing some swelling. It's putting pressure on...”

Charles doesn't wait for him to finish. “Is it serious? When will she wake up?”

The doctor sighs. “It's difficult to say for sure, Mr. Leclerc. Head injuries are unpredictable. But we're monitoring her closely.”

Charles lets out a defeated sigh. The doctor places a hand on his arm.

“She's a fighter, Mr. Leclerc. Just like you.” The doctor says and then leaves the room and gives way to the nurse.

Charles manages a weak nod, his gaze returning to your still form. He leans closer, his voice barely a whisper.

“Come on y/n, wake up. We have a race to win... together.” he whispers.

A faint flicker of movement beneath your eyelids goes unnoticed by everyone in the room. A single tear rolls down your cheek, tracing a path through the dust collected on your hospital gown. The faint movement under your eyelids becomes more pronounced. Your brow furrows slightly, as if struggling against the weight of unconsciousness. A soft groan escapes your lips.

Charles' head snaps up, his eyes widening in disbelief. He leans in closer, his voice thick with emotion.

”Y/n? Can you hear me love?” Charles says whispering.

Your eyes flutter open, blurry and disoriented. The harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital room assault your vision. You let out a low moan, squeezing your eyes shut again in protest.

“Hey, hey, easy. It's okay, you're safe, you're in the hospital.” he says urgently.

A wave of nausea washes over you. You try to speak, but your throat feels raw and scratchy. ”Charles...?” you say weakly.

Your voice comes out in a hoarse rasp, it's barely a whisper, but to Charles, it's the sweetest sound in the world. A relieved smile breaks across his face.

“There you are! Don't you ever scare me like that again, okay?” His voice slightly breaks.

He reaches out and gently tucks a stray strand of hair behind your ear. His touch is warm and comforting, the nurse speaks.

“How are you feeling y/n?” the nurse asked softly.

You try to lift your head, but a sharp pain shoots through it. You wince and let out a small cry.

“Easy, easy, don't try to move princess.” he says concerned.

“What... What happened Charles?” you said with a little confusion in your voice.

“You had a big crash during the race, don't you remember?” he asked softly.

You shake your head slowly, wincing again. Images flash in your mind — the roar of the engine, the blur of the track, the sickening impact...

“The car... The rain... I... I lost control” you whisper.

Tears well up in your eyes, the memory of the crash is terrifyingly vivid. Charles takes your hand in his, his grip strong and reassuring.

“It's okay love, you're okay now. That's all that matters.” he whispers.

He squeezes your hand gently, a silent promise hanging between you. The ordeal is far from over, but for now, the simple act of holding hands speaks volumes. You've survived the crash, and with Charles by your side, you'll face whatever comes next, together. You manage a weak smile at him, the sound of his voice a grounding presence. However, the celebration is short-lived. A dull ache throbs behind your eyes, intensifying with each passing second. You squeeze your temples shut, trying to push the pain back.

“Hey, what's wrong?” he asks, noticing your discomfort.

You open your eyes, a grimace forming on your face. “My head... it feels like it's splitting open.”

The nurse step forward. “That's normal after a head injury, dear. We gave you some pain medication earlier, but it might be wearing off... Let me check your vitals again, okay?”

The nurse bustles around you, taking your temperature and blood pressure. Charles doesn't take his eyes off you, his concern evident.

“Is it serious? Should they give you more medicine?” Charles asked.

“Let's see how she's doing first... Y/n, can you turn your head for me, please? Slowly, to the left and then the right.”

You try as instructed, but a searing pain shoots through your neck, making you flinch and cry out. Tears well up in your eyes again, a mix of frustration and fear.

”See? She can't even move her neck! There's something wrong!” Charles says quite alarmed and almost furious.

“It's alright, Charles. It's likely just muscle stiffness from the impact. We can give her some medication and a neck brace for support.” The nurse says calmly.

“Will I ever be able to race again?” you say a little worried with a trembling voice.

The question hangs heavy in the air, Charles reaches out and strokes your cheek gently. ”Don't worry about racing right now, you need to focus on getting better. We'll figure out the rest later.”

His voice is firm, but his eyes hold a flicker of worry. He knows how much racing means to you... For both of you it is the most important thing in your lives, but now that is in the background.

”Exactly... Right now, rest is the most important thing. We'll get you the medication you need, and we'll monitor your progress closely.” The nurse says as she looks for medicine and the neck brace.

The nurse injects a new pain medication into your IV. The relief is slow, but it gradually takes the edge off the throbbing in your head. The nurse places the neck brace on you, although it needs to be tight, as this prevents neck mobility. You lean back against the pillows, exhaustion washing over you.

“Get some sleep, love. You'll feel better I promise.” he smiles weakly.

You nod weakly, your eyelids drooping. Despite the pain and uncertainty, a sliver of hope flickers within you. You're surrounded by love and support, and that makes all the difference.

As you drift off to sleep, you hear Charles whisper a promise in your ear.

“Everything will be okay baby, I promise... Just stay here with me, okay?” He says and you give a slight thumbs up, you feel your whole body weak and destroyed.

The road to recovery will be long and arduous, but with Charles by your side, you know you can face it head-on, even with a throbbing head and a stiff neck.

The fear of not racing again persists in you, but obviously it is not something you can control, Besides, you don't know exactly if you will spend months off the track. What you do know with great certainty is that you have Charles' constant support and that is enough for you.

#formula one x reader #f1 x you #charles leclerc angst #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc x reader #charles x reader #charles leclerc #charles x you #mariclerc fics #charles x reader driver

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tlouadditc · 11 months

Text

smoking with roommate!ellie... a thought.

song being thought of while writing: hold on by the internet

WARNINGS: smut [18+, MDNI], fluff if u squint ur eyes, drug use [weed], awkward convo with ellie LMAO, ellie is a horny stoner, fingering, oral [r!receiving], jealousy, love confession. pet names (mostly baby and princess) words: 1.7k, rating: MATURE

note: this is like my first smut [not to mention my first fic] so erm if there are grammar errors or some parts that dont make sense im sorry 😭😭😭 enjoy!

it's been a long week; essay after essay, multiple assignments to turn in, and now you have 3 tests in the next 2 days. you had walked home in the rain, not even bothering to pull out your umbrella. fuck it, you thought, my dorm isn't that far.

you lazily pulled out your keys, unlocking the front door. as soon as you open the door, you're met with a pungent- well, that's harsh; a not-so-pleasant- smell of weed and a random fruity ass candle. you cough and look around to see who the hell is smoking he-

"oh, hey, y/n." ellie was sitting on the couch, manspreading in front of the tv while smoking a blunt. her eyelids were heavy and she had a smug smile. "oh, uh. sorry about the smell.. i took a random candle."

you set your bags down and took your shoes off, waving your hand in front of your face to remove the smell temporarily. "all.. all good." god, she looks good, you thought. she was sitting in a white wifebeater and loose sweatshorts, sitting just right on her hips so you could see her boxers. the way she was looking at you and smiling made your face heat up, thinking thoughts no roommate should think.

she took another drag and patted beside her, signaling for you to join her. you quickly shook your head and said, "gotta change. i got soaked out there."

"i coulda picked you up, babe."

babe? your face was burning hot now as if it wasn't already. you hurriedly walked to your room, blurting out, "i'll be there in a second!"

jesus. ellie had never been this.. flirty before. you've liked her for a while, if you're being kinda honest. you had been in love, if you were completely honest with yourself. she had always been on your mind ever since you moved in with her. walking around, just in boxers and some tank-top that made her arms look deliciously toned- god, she probably doesn't even know what she does to you.

shaking your head, you change out of your completely wet clothes and into some thin shorts and a crop top before walking back out.

"took ya long enough," she said, chuckling. "i was about to just go to sleep."

"sorry, els." you sat beside her on the couch, looking at what was on tv. "american dad? really?"

"i just turned on the tv," she muttered, passing you the blunt. "how was your day?"

you took the blunt into your mouth, taking a looong drag and inhaling, burning your throat slightly. "same old shit," you exhaled. "im just glad this stressful ass week is over."

"stressful, eh? im glad i decided to do this tonight then," she said, turning her attention from the tv onto you.

"me, too."

"sooo," she started, "how are you and whats-his-name?"

"what about him?" you questioned, noticing a slight change in her demeanor when you immediately remembered him. "we're.. not dating. nothing's goin' on."

"what's going on with y'all? i thought you guys were going on dates n' stuff." she sat up, suddenly all in on your relationship status.

"uhm.. it's not him. he's a great person. it's just.." you slightly glanced at her. she was looking like she was anticipating the rest of your sentence.

"the sex is awful," you admit. it was the truth, but not the whole truth; the entire time he was trying to fuck you, you were thinking about ellie. he clearly was only thinking about his own orgasm. whenever he did attempt to do something for you, he either gave up or you had to fake it so he got off of you. he always came before you did. ellie probably wouldn't do any of this, you would think to yourself before making yourself cum after he left.

ellie looks at you, wide eyed, and chuckles. "what?" you ask, defensive.

"i mean.. you wouldn't have thought the dude was a sex god," she mumbled. "he was the nerdiest dude known to man."

"i- i know," you utter, slightly embarrassed. "i don't wanna talk about it anymo-"

"did he make you cum at all?"

your jaw drops, in shock of what she just said. "uh.. no. not at all."

"jesus, you should've told me earlier," she sighs, looking at you with concern- and something else. "i could've helped y'all. or just you."

you don't know if it's just the weed or true feelings coming out of her mouth, but you swear you can feel her staring at your body, feel her moving closer. you slowly put the blunt down in the ashtray and make eye-contact with ellie.

"you know, y/n," she whispers, "i've always wondered why you would go out with these dudes and i'm right here. i see the way you look at me- hell, i've heard you fucking yourself."

your face heats up, quickly embarrassing you. "i- i'm sorry, el-"

you're suddenly cut off by ellie meeting her lips with yours. the kiss is passionate- you can feel the true feelings from ellie, feel the frustration from being ignored. you straddle her crotch, still kissing, slightly rocking back and forth. the friction from your shorts and her crotch has you soaked, whimpering a little into her mouth. she chuckles into the kiss before separating for air. "so needy already," she breathes, gliding her hands from your face, down your sides, and onto the meat of your thighs, rubbing up and down. you slightly nod, looking down, feeling slightly embarrassed of how you look right now.

"hey, look at me." one hand moves from your thigh up to your chin, making you meet eyes with her. ellie's eyes had looked different- darker, in a sense. the way she was looking at you made you wetter than ever before, wondering what she wanted to do with you. "how about we take out some of that stress, yea?"

her hands snaked under your crop top, her warm fingertips meeting your hardened nipples. she smirked. "no bra? you're gonna kill me." taking off your top slowly, her breath hitched. "god." she took one nipple into her mouth, pinching the other one in between her pointer finger and thumb. "els- fuck," you moaned, grinding on her lap. the wet spot in your panties definitely went through your shorts by now. "you're making a mess all over me, pretty girl," she cooed, still pinching your nipple. "tell me what you want."

"i- i want you," you cried, overstimulated by the sensation on your breasts. she let go of your nipple with a loud pop and let go of your nipple, making you whine from the loss of contact. "use your words. cmon, i know you can do it, princess." she sat back, waiting for your response. "p-please.. touch me," you utter, still slightly grinding on her lap.

"good girl," she purrs. she runs her calloused hands from the tops of your breasts down your sides and on the band of your shorts. "let's get these off."

she moves you off of her and slowly peels your shorts off, quietly gasping when she notices the pool of arousal in your lacy panties. "shit, i got you this wet from barely touching you?" she coos, cracking a small smile when she sees how embarrassed you are. "so cute." she runs her pointer finger over your clothed slit, earning a small wail out of you. applying pressure little by little, she watches you as you grow sexually frustrated by the second. "what's wrong, bun? you wanted me to touch you, right?"

"i need m-more, please- oh my god," you cry out, throwing your head back when she rubs small circles on your clit. she applies more and more pressure, making you feel your orgasm build up in the pit of your stomach. "ellie," you loudly moan, arching your back. she's watching you, taking in every feature of your face. she takes note of the way your eyes roll back at every circle she makes. the way your hands pinch your nipples, trying to replicate what she was doing to you. watching you get off makes her even wetter. she mumbles,"fuck it," before basically ripping off your panties off.

"what a pretty pussy," she says, voice barely above a whisper. you can't tell if she's talking to you or to herself, but she studies you; the puffy lips, how it's glistening with slick, how you leak onto the couch- everything. she runs her middle finger along your aching hole, gathering slick on it, then slowly inserts it. you gasp, gummy walls fluttering around the foreign item. she slowly moves in and out, in and out- lewd squelching sounds fill the room. "pleasepleaseplease," you babble, becoming breathless from arousal. "what, baby?" ellie comes up, planting small kisses on your collarbone. with no warning, she adds her ring finger, stretching your entrance and making you weep in her ear.

"els- m'gonna c-cum-" you sob, holding onto her shoulders. she picks up speed, watching you lose your mind. "yeah?" she murmurs, now adding her thumb to rub your bud. "cum on my fingers, princess."

you convulse around her fingers, walls contracting and expanding. your orgasm is blinding- it causes your legs to shake out of control, you loudly moan her name, holding onto her shoulders. she talks you through it; lots of "i know baby, i know"s and "I'm here, angel"'s. once your done, she removes her fingers. "open up," she says, shoving her cum-covered fingers into your mouth. you automatically suck on them, looking into her emerald eyes with innocence. "good girl."

"uhm.. t-thank you, els," you start, moving your hand over her clothed cunt. "let me touch you."

she flashed a small smile before saying, "i'm okay, baby. get some rest." before you could protest, she got up and planted a kiss on your forehead. "let's get you to bed, princess."

PART 2

#ellie williams smut #ellie williams x reader #ellie williams x black reader #tlou2 #tlou smut #the last of us smut #tlou fic #tlou fanfiction #the last of us x reader #pretty pls #i need her so bad

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no-droids · 1 year

Text

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long). As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession. You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets. The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it. The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to. You don’t even really feel like a person right now. The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life. It feels sick. Wrong in your bones. Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop. Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops. Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago. Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground. It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception. What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all. You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now. No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams. No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move. The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again. It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence. Silence. You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement. You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are. You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder. You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something. Reality, maybe. A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands. “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows. Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying? They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat. Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy. It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be. Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately. It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances. Oshua Ryler. Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened. A stormtrooper? His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense. What is he doing here? Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them. They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers. “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.” You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done. You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet. You hate looking at his face. It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust. His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat. He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby. You know what needs to be done. Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over. It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.” You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears. “They hold no power anymore. Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!” The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green. “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…” He stares wide eyed at you and gulps. “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now. “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?” He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?” You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side. “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?” The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around. “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!” You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him. Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about. “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!” He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight. “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty! They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling. You could still kill him. You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit. “Who put the bounty out on you?” You ask sharply. It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!” Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it. You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask. Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something. Din was cut off before he finished. Help? Know what to do? You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by. The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice. The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry. “How many of you are there?”

“At the base? Around three hundred,” he immediately spills. “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours. There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,” You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker. “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground. “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of. In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence. That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector. If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon. And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel. “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…” He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands. “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally? Sure. Realistically? You don’t say anything in response. Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do. The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it. They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip. Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you. Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease. It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression. Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood. Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color. Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?” You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder. Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again. “I need as much information as possible about the base.” You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm. Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard. It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest. While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking. Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now. Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission. Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides. What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors. Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger. Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next. His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears. When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much. He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread. If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces. He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind. Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers. Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base. He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man. If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go. With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get. He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat. Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range. Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind. He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl. Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard. Not far from here, three minutes or less. The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers. It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers. “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask. Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible. Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed. The turrets, then. “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old. Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel. “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport. TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?” You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got. You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here. Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here. The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here. Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not. He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul. If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator. “Mando?” You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway. Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it. That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to. Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction. Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose. Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily. It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?” Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls. “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit. “You cover your face like one. You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.” Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now. “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he? He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan. All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge. You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood. This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby. In a sense, it still feels that way. The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family. The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch. He’d know, you tell yourself. If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow. Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore. The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response. In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet. These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back. Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms. The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes. Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?” Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter. The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh. “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add. “How were you able to find us?”

Silence. The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now. He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red. Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality. The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead. Useless, then. Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor. Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention. “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon. The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite. It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened. But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it. The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what? This Mandalorian?” The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms. “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.” The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head. “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees. “He must want the beskar. I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive. He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!” A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed. There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury. It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues. “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth. He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize. Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible. You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety. Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually. It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive. Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk. They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost. You’re both long gone by now. They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest. Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response. His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it. How the fuck did he know? He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile. Who’s this, Mando? She’s just darling, isn’t she? Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods. “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides. Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man. The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul. His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun. He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?” The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember. He’s panicked before. He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time. This is different. This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection. There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now. The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat. You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it. Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you. Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out. His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision. For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground. There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about. Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed. It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground. Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him. Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up. Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?” You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on. Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them. If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways. The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge. Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!” You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull. You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door. “Now! We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up. Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel. Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears. The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping. You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense. Deadly tense. Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once. One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life. It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it. All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking. You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before. Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear. Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship. But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap. Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared. They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is. You can’t seem to breathe like he is. It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand. Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh. A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now. Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing. You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you. When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain. You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment. You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through. You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now. However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest. Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline. Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you. His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time. It’s… cold. A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin. Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood. You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word. You can’t find a single word to say. The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones. It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet. There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden. Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement. He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip. It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features. His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to. You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there. He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor. You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves. Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly. Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself. “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly. Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t. Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult. You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive. There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment. One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty. There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t. “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it. Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones. You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands. He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from. It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you. The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood. Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face. The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground. It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet. Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back. Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand. It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang. You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground. The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead. So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state. He doesn’t move. His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last. If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else. Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying. You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him. You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor. Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes. Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done. Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown. Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain. The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert. You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy. If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him. It was… isolating. Lonely by yourself. The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp. Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner. Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath. One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet. You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What? At least what? Comfort you? Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions? What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him? You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically. He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you. You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do. If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself. At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment. Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul. Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover. You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on. You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again. You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand. After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone. After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in. The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings. It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent. You don’t feel anything as you do it. You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm. Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster. The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything. They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower. Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy. Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent. When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls. Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today. You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep. You don’t even try, it’s pointless. The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself. You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking. You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago. You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong… They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation. You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point. In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this. You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure. How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices? Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t. You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him. You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance. You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course. Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been. Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you. A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone. Multiple people, this time. He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done. The end result won’t change. You own this now. You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice. He wouldn’t argue with you. He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them. It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount. You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned. You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive. You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him. If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it. Focus on them both, alive and well together. Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness. It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself. Hours, maybe. Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are. You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways. After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair. He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet. “Don’t say anything. Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes. You did save him. You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent. “I tried. Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself. I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul. Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you. It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up. “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat. They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses. “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out. The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body. “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself. The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking. You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.” Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes. “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold. Again, everything turns numb. It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today. It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it. For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks. “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me. I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger. I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe. And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II. Do you know why I did that?” The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart. “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand. You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up. Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away. But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you. Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying. It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die. You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t. “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones. Especially the trained ones. Anything else was meant to be your last resort. Not your choice. Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself. The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him. Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried. You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen. “I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you. He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words. “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?” You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster. Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care. “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.” It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless. Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against. It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean. Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.” The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child. Never. You’ll die before that happens. “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that. Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing. Not even you.”

Din stares at you. His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant. It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become. You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both. He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet. It happened. What’s done is done, you can’t change the past. He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so. This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child. You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them. Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers. It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak. Broken. “You wore mine once before, and it was…” He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away. “It wasn’t real. It didn’t fit. It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out. I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?” You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad. You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but… Not a Mandalorian, he’d said. Of course not. Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.” Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again. “It was you covered in blood. It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger. You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship. And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too. You…” He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice. “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you. “You don’t fly into war zones. You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me. You said you tried to be brave… like me.” His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand. “I’ll never ask you to be brave. I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight. They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time. Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again. It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside. You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?” He murmurs to you. You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?” You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory. “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that. Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain. You’ll never be able to change it, though. This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else. Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come. You need to tell him. You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?” You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor. “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat. “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.” He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time. He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine. You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before. It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms. His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing. “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today. All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty. You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now. If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer. Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him. “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #mando x reader #mando x you #reader insert #fanfic #star wars #rough day #no-droids

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