#also not pictured: the bags under my eyes because i decided to proof-read this at an ungodly hour | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

byunbaekby · 3 years

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title — the things i know pairing — soccerplayer!jisung x female reader genres — angst, fluff, high school au, strangers to lovers au, first love au, long distance relationship, hurt and comfort, coming of age overall warnings — underage drinking, cancer, character death, language, mentions of hickeys, fainting, mentions and descriptions of hospitals, soccer inaccuracies, lots of angst (you’ve been warned!) word count — 14.8k summary — jisung has never been keen on growing up, or even understanding what adulting means. at seventeen, all he knows is: he loves soccer (and he’s damn gifted at it), and girls are very pretty but also plenty scary. then he met you, his first love who turned his life upside down and made his stomach roll like the soccer balls he loved to kick around the field. but when your cancer comes back after years in remission, jisung thinks, he doesn’t really want to grow up anymore. playlist — falling, harry styles ; your guardian angel, red jumpsuit apparatus ; my first and last, nct dream ; bye my first, nct dream ; orchid, jeremy zucker

additional — for the heartbreak hotel collab hosted by @nct-writers. my concept in the five stages of grief was “acceptance and hope.” thank you to my babes @suh-insane and @astroboy-lele for proof-reading!

The thing about knowledge is that you never know when or what you’re going to learn. There’s no way for you to predict what will be of your mind when you fall into bed that night, surrendering to the moon. In the morning, there’s no telling what knowledge your brain will choose to store away for remembrance over the course of the night, and what your brain will decide is unnecessary. What you decide not to remember is a memory you can’t even miss.

When you wake up every morning, you don’t know if you’ll go to bed having met someone who will change your life forever.

At seventeen, there are two things that Park Jisung knows. One, he loves playing soccer (and he’s damn good at it, the way his long legs carry him across the field in what seems to onlookers like seconds). Two, girls are very pretty but plenty scary as well.

The day starts out normally, like any other away game that the team plays.

He wakes up at six o’clock on the dot, and eats a large breakfast to hold him over for the game, then packs a few granola bars into his soccer bag and lets his sister know he’s leaving before he jogs the way to the park where the bus is waiting for his team. The ride is normally an hour long, so he either tucks his earbuds into his ears and tries to get in a short nap or he converses with his teammates.

Today though, the bus ride is three hours long. Crossing his hoodie-clad arms across his chest to act against the cold air of the bus, he focuses his gaze outside and watches as the town goes by.

“Yo, Jisung, check this out!”

At the sound of his name he turns his head, blinking when he sees a number of his teammates in the surrounding area nudging him closer. A few of them are leaning in towards a particular teammate, who displays a proud expression. “What’s up,” asks Jisung as he too leans forward toward his team member, curiosity slightly piqued.

Jaemin, the teammate in question, tugs the collar of his jersey down to reveal his skin. On the milky white curve of Jaemin’s collarbone, he sports a dark purple bruise, surrounded by a perimeter of yellow where the skin seems to be healing. There’s no question as to where that mark came from, and it definitely wasn’t from soccer.

“Ew, man, that looks sick!” comes from Donghyuck, along with a few comments from others, either approving or disturbed.

“Where’d that come from?”

Renjun slaps Mark on the chest, eyebrows furrowed at him. “Obviously, it was from Anne! Didn’t you see the way they were all over each other at last week’s game?” Jaemin grins, eyes going lovesick at the thought of his girlfriend.

Jisung’s expression contorts into one of disgust. “That’s disgusting, man,” he comments, nose still scrunched in distaste as he leans back into his original spot on the bus seat. Another thing he’ll never understand is why people are so desperate to grow up, as if giving hickeys and sneaking vodka into their Hydro flasks makes them somehow more adult.

He slips his earbuds into his ears, playing some light muzak to lull him to sleep with his head leaned rather uncomfortably against the cold window.

Jisung doesn’t think that he’s exceptionally smart; he’s gotten passing to above average grades his entire life. He’s not musically talented, nor is he particularly a smooth talker.

But hearing people call him gifted is a feeling he relishes every time.

With his long legs and strangely large and spacious lungs, soccer called the boy’s name from the time he could run. He dominated the peewee league, then the club teams until this point, at the ripe age of seventeen waiting to be scouted for college teams.

He wasn’t usually one to brag but today, he had shot the winning goal.

Everyone has their thing, the one thing that they excel at. For Picasso it was painting, for Yiruma it was piano, for Renjun it’s spending four hours every night researching alien conspiracy theories. For Jisung, it’s soccer. But he’s never been exceptionally good at speaking to people.

“What’s your name?” He hears a voice, cheery and upbeat, behind him as he’s grabbing his bag on the side of the field. The game is over, and the crowd begins to dissipate while the team members are gathering their things to return to the bus. Turning over his shoulder he sees you, wearing a bright smile. Cautiously he responds, “Jisung Park.”

“Oh, so you’re Korean then. I’m gonna write that down, okay? How long have you been playing soccer?” You ask next, and now Jisung’s eyebrows furrow in confusion.

“Write what down?” He asks, trying to keep his tone as polite as possible. Even so, how is he supposed to react to a random person at a game suddenly appearing to ask him questions? As he wipes his forehead with his towel he adds, “Who even are you?”

Quickly you say, “I write in the high school newspaper, and wanted to get a close-up of today’s star.” It’s then that Jisung realizes the camera slung around your neck and the notepad in your hands.

“Why are you writing about me? I don’t even go here.”

“Because,” you say, a slight sigh creeping into your voice now. “Our team sucked today. You straight up stole the show, and no one wants to read about a team that lost. I’d rather give them a peek at the star.”

“14!” His coach yells his number once, causing Jisung to look over his shoulder to the source of the voice, where his teammates are already beginning to pile onto the bus. The boy in question slings his bag over his shoulder and tucks his soccer ball under his right arm before finally getting a good look at you. “Shouldn’t you be writing something to raise your team’s spirit or something? Giving them support, maybe?”

You shrug. “I don’t like underdogs. Don’t like writing about them. I’d rather read about the heroes. So how long have you been playing soccer again?”

“Jisung!” Now it’s Chenle calling after him, and he really needs to go. Eyes flickering to the street where his teammates are gesturing for him to hurry, he looks back to you. Your eyebrow is raised expectantly, right hip popped out as you wait. Before he starts to run off, he manages a small, “I’ve been playing eleven years. Um… bye.”

Then he turns away and his long legs carry him to the bus a few meters away. Even so, behind him he can hear your loud, proud voice yelling after him with the name of your high school: “Check the online newspaper! You’ll see my article!”

What a weirdo, he can’t help but think as the team cheers for their star player getting on the bus back home.

A week later, it’s another Saturday night following a victorious win against another team in the local area when Jisung gets a call from Chenle. “What’s up,” he asks immediately, leaning back in his desk chair to throw his soccer ball up in the air and catch it with one hand.

“Wanna party tonight? Celebrate our win a bit?”

“Where?” asks Jisung. He’d never been big on parties. For one, his long legs that were great for running weren’t exactly skilled in dancing or anything of the like. Secondly, he’d definitely be expected to talk to girls and he’s not really in the mood to make a fool of himself.

“Taeyong’s house. Me, Mark, Hyuck, and Jaemin are going. Renjun’s busy, and Jeno wants to spend time with his cat. What do you say? Wanna join?”

Jisung sighs. He was honestly just exhausted. “Think I’ll pass. My sister’s been getting on me about my bio grade.”

Chenle groans on the other line. “Lame.”

“Next time, promise,” says Jisung.

“Fine. Have fun studying, looooser!” This is the last thing Chenle says before hanging up, leaving his best friend alone to shake his head with a small laugh. Then he remembers something, some words that a stranger had yelled out to him a week before.

Sitting up at his desk, Jisung opens his laptop and types in the name of your high school, along with your town. A few clicks around the website finds him at the online news section, plus a scroll or two past some questionable articles, there it is: a picture of him mid-kick, the winning one if he remembers well enough. His nose is scrunched in concentration and strands of dark hair cling to his forehead.

Soccer Superstar from the opposing team steals the show and the win!

A small scoff leaves Jisung’s lips, trying to humble himself as he reads over the first few paragraphs.

Our school’s boys soccer team faced a devastating loss on Saturday in the face of the opposing team’s ace player (pictured above). The game ended promptly when the superstar player confidently kicked in the final shot, though the result had been clear from the first half of the game.

A short interview with the hotshot player revealed that he has been playing soccer for eleven years! A senior from Neo Culture Prep, it is clear as day that the school is very lucky to have such a prodigy on the team.

Who is this superstar player, you ask?

His name is Jisung Park.

Geez, Jisung thinks. He knew he was good but not that good. The article did a good job of spicing him up, making him look like he was a lot better than he really was. There’s too much fluff; sure, he’s skilled and he knows it, but—he touches his cheeks. They’re warm—the article makes him sound like a soccer god, and it’s beyond embarrassing. Who even are you?

A scroll to the bottom of the page tells him all he needs to know.

Article written by: (Name) (Last Name).

He doesn’t return to your town for almost two months. There’s a tournament today, the hours lurching between games giving him more than enough time to psych himself out about how he’ll play.

It’s noon, the sun shining overhead causing a sheet of sweat to amass on Jisung’s forehead. His team has just won their second match of the day, and in waiting for their next game, his eyes are scanning the bleachers set up for observers on the side of the field. It’s not hard to find you, same camera hanging around your neck.

With his long legs, he jogs over to you towel in hand. You’re not at all focused on him, eyes pressed into the camera’s viewfinder as you attempt to capture a good shot of the current game.

“I don’t like the stuff you said about me in your article.”

His deep voice suddenly intrudes your thoughts, and you jump in your place. As you turn to him and drop your camera from your face, he catches sight of the way your eyes widen at his appearance. A flood of recognition replaces the shock before you tilt your head. “Why? It was all good stuff.”

Patting at his forehead with his towel, Jisung responds, “Yeah, exactly. I’m not that good. I could’ve played better that day.” This brings a small snort from you. “Really! They were narrowing the angle on me, I should have flanked or lofted.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It’s—”

You cut him off before he can explain. “You’re good. Why are you so shy to accept that?”

“Why do you keep trying to paint me as the main character of the team? Everyone works hard together.” He questions, eyebrows furrowed.

“Because you are,” you respond matter-of-factly, focused enough to press your eye into the viewfinder again. A few seconds pass, and Jisung recognizes the click of the camera as you capture something on the field. “You’re clearly the best player on the team by a long shot. You’re the main character, the hero.”

At your response, Jisung shakes his head in disbelief and scrunches his nose. There’s really no getting through to you. “I’m more than the hero you think I am.”

You turn to him, facial features contorted into a mischievous expression. “I’m sure you are.” Jisung realizes then that you’re holding something out to him. Taking it, he observes it. A… business card? With your name and number on it. “(Name). Aspiring journalist.”

“You have a business card? Aren’t you like, seventeen?”

You shrug, smile tugging on your lips. “Never hurts to be prepared. Call me.” It’s the last thing you say before you flitter away on quick feet, leaving to interview the team which has just won their match. He watches you leave, wondering if you know what kind of effect you have on people.

“I don’t know, man. She seems kinda crazy,” says Hyuck from the seat next to him, leaning his head back. However, a sudden bump in the road causes the bus to jump, startling the boy a bit. Jisung had just shared his thoughts about asking you out with his friend, who immediately made a face and shook his head.

“Crazy?” Sure, you’re a bit forward and maybe slightly reckless, but he doesn’t think you’re… crazy. It’s been a few weeks since he last saw you and from the conversations you’ve shared over text and phone… he thinks he likes you. Like, really likes you. It’s goddamn terrifying.

“Yeah, we all saw her article,” Chenle speaks up from the seat behind him. “She’s obsessed with you.”

Jisung rolls her eyes. “It was one article. That doesn’t mean she’s obsessed.”

“I think you should do it. It’d be funny to get on camera in case you fail,” snorts Renjun.

Jaemin pipes in from in front of them. “But if you do ask her out, she lives three hours away. That’s a lot of distance.” He’s the only one in a relationship, so maybe he has the only opinion that Jisung trusts.

“Other people have done more distance.”

Now, it’s Jeno’s turn to pipe in. “But you’re not other people, you’re Jisung Park. You’ve never had a girlfriend.” Should he feel insulted? Chenle also adds, “Jeno’s right. You’re a senior! It’s your year, and you wanna spend it tied down to some girl who lives three hours away?”

But you’re not just some girl. Mark’s the only one who hasn’t spoken, and most of the time, he’s the most level headed. Jisung turns to him with a sincere expression and asks, “What do you think?”

Though he had been trying to stay quiet throughout the conversation, he stretches a bit in his seat before finally saying, “I think you should go for it.”

“I think you should too!” Jaemin says. “But I think you should be prepared for what it means.”

“Whatever you decide to do, we’ll hype you up.”

“I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?” Jisung asks. “If she rejects me, at least she’s three hours away, right?” There’s murmurs of agreement around the seven of them. He tries to sound relaxed, but the thought of asking a girl out for the first time causes his heart to thump loudly in his chest. Oh god… should he do it?

“So?” asks Hyuck after a few seconds of silence, and it’s then that Jisung realizes everyone’s looking at him. “Are you gonna do it?”

He gulps. “... No idea.”

A collective groan emerges from the group of boys. Hyuck, ever the genius, straightens his back with a glint in his eye. “How about this? If we win, you ask her out. You’ll be riding on a winning spree and it’ll give you confidence. If we lose then… there’s more girls back home.”

That… doesn’t sound like a bad idea. But oh god, he doesn’t know which option he wants.

For the first time, Jisung feels like his legs are knotting into each other, tumbling over his feet.

Soccer had always come easily to him, like breathing. But for some unknown reason, he’s totally off his game today. He knows the play, his strengths, and even the weaknesses of his opponents, but he trips over his feet.

No, that’s a lie. He definitely does know the source of his nervousness, and it lives in the form of a girl with a camera and a notepad sitting in the bottom corner bleacher. His breath is frantic as he zips back and forth across the field. The sounds of the game are ringing loud in his ear, and he can hardly even focus on the black and white ball being kicked around, let alone what the coach is screaming at them. They’re so close, one more goal should do it.

He knows what’s going to happen. Jisung Park had always been known for his ending kicks.

But what if he messes it up? What if he fumbles the kick or whiffs it?

Then again, does he even want to win? That’s a dumb quesiton—of course he does—but the question is: is he ready for what comes with the win? He really shouldn’t look, shouldn’t peek for just one look at you, but he does. You’re scribbling in your notepad, and he swears in that millisecond that you look so pretty.

Yeah, he wants it. He really wants it.

He’s ready, and—oh god, Sungchan is passing the ball to him. Suddenly Jisung is on high alert, winding up toward the goal. He captures Sungchan’s ball with ease, no longer tripping over himself as he makes his way to the end goal.

One kick, just nail this one kick.

He winds up, turning his body to the correct angle; he kicks it and…

Please go in, please go in, he’s begging.

The ball flies in straight past the goalkeeper, who jumps toward it but there’s no use. It all happens so quickly, and suddenly his team erupts into celebration when the referee blows his whistle. Still standing there, Jisung catches his breath and stares into the goal.

He won.

That means… He glances at you. You’re wearing a huge smile on your face, and without noticing it himself, Jisung has his own proud smile on his. His momentary peace is interrupted by his friends running toward him, nearly knocking him over in their celebration.

“Yeeahhh, Jisung Park, you’re the man!”

A few minutes later, Jisung tries to calm his nerves after thanking the opposing team for a good game. When he returns to the sidelines where his stuff is, he can barely get some water down his throat before Chenle is pushing a soccer ball into his hand. “Good luck, dude,” he says, and Jisung can feel the others’ eyes on him. Oh no, it’s time.

He steals a glance at you, and—Oh. You’re looking at him too. A bashful smile spreads over your lips and you turn away, focusing back to your conversation with your friend. His heart is beating so loud, but Jisung doesn’t think it’s because of the soccer game. Turning back to his friends, he groans, “I need a pep talk.”

“Okay, uh,” Mark attempts. “You got this, you know you’re the man. Um… if she rejects you, then it’s okay, there’s other fish in the sea!” A groan erupts through the group. “That’s not a pep talk, Mark!”

“Listen,” says Chenle suddenly, grabbing Jisung’s shoulders to stare at him. “She’s not gonna reject you. You’re Jisung freaking Park! The star of the team and my best friend! Go get ‘em, and don’t take no for an answer!” With this, he gives Jisung a small push in the girl’s direction.

“Actually, uh—I think no means no,” pipes in Jisung but everyone cuts him off with a collective, “JUST GO!”

Pink spreads across his cheeks as he slowly walks in your direction. At a good distance away, he places the coveted soccer ball down on the ground and winds himself up for a kick. Okay, he just shot the winning goal of the game. If he can do that, he can do this. Running forward the slightest, Jisung gives himself a silent pep talk as his foot taps the ball. It goes moving from its spot, flying through the air… and that’s when Jisung realizes his mistake. Instead of gently tapping against your ankle like he had planned, the ball flies straight in the air, knocking the side of your head rather harshly.

“Not that hard, genius!” Chenle chastises from behind him, and Jisung has to hold back the desire to actually groan in that moment. He immediately runs toward you, hands out in surprise. “Oh my god, oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he repeats, reaching out for you. You’re rubbing the spot on the side of your head where the ball had hit, and he wants to disappear right there.

He never should have done this.

Why was he born again?

“I’m so sorry,” he says again for the nth time, feeling shame and humiliation speed up his spine at the way you wince when you touch the side of your head. “Oh my god, go get me an ice pack,” he demands over his shoulder at his friends.

“No, no I’m okay,” you reassure everyone. Now all the eyes are on the two of you.

A few moments of silence pass as you eye the soccer ball which has rolled some distance away, crouching down to pick it up. Ball in hand, you scan the outside of it… and destroying all of Jisung’s hopes and expectations, you burst into laughter.

You laugh so hard, the boisterous sounds leaving your lips so vehemently that you have to cover your mouth with your hand. Jisung furrows his eyebrows. “I just kicked you in the head and you’re laughing?” Oh god, he must have done more damage than he thought. You don’t answer, the only sounds leaving you are giggles and guffaws. It’s only making him feel worse; geez, he wishes he wasn’t so tall so he could positively disappear right now.

You finally look up at him and meet his gaze, your own eyes crinkled in delight. Flipping the ball over in your hands, you present to him the ball. Written on one of the large white spots reads a firm, “Go out with me?” in black marker.

“This is why you kicked me in the head?” You ask, still chuckling the slightest. Bashfully, Jisung nods. You laugh again. Every time you do that, he feels like getting smaller and smaller. “Of course I’ll go out with you.”

Wait, really?

He says these words aloud, eyes wide at your ease. He hadn’t expected you to actually say yes! “Sure,” you respond with a smile. “Though I could’ve gone without the head injury.”

This brings a laugh from the both of you. He really had been worrying so much about nothing. His frame instantly relaxes, taking the ball back from you. “You sure you don’t need the ice pack?”

“No, I could definitely use an ice pack.”

The first date happens two weeks after that game, and it’s his first real date so he has no idea how to act. Everything goes fine—he takes you to the local arcade in your town, and though he’d deny it to the ends of the earth, you beat him in foosball.

“Ha!” You had screamed. “Superstar soccer player Jisung Park, and you can’t beat me in table soccer?” His cheeks had burned pink at the sound of your voice reverberating around the public arcade, but honestly the mirth in your eyes was worth it.

His cheeks are red but the air is cold on the walk home to your house. He had promised to have you home by nine, and it’s—he checks the time on his phone—8:45.

A look at you, holding the giant stuffed teddy bear that you had won (he hadn’t won it for you, because lord knows he’s horrible at skee-ball), and Jisung can see the air leaving your lips. “Hey, you cold?”

“Nah,” you shake your head, though you scoot closer to him on the sidewalk. His tongue laves over his bottom lip quickly, and he almost wants to hold your hand. But that wouldn’t do much to keep you warm.

He purses his lips, then immediately his hands are working at taking off his hoodie. That’s a cute thing, isn’t it? Boyfriends giving hoodies to their girlfriends? “Here, take this.”

When you take one look at the hoodie in his hands and roll your eyes, Jisung knows he’s in for it. “Seriously? You can’t fool me with some cheesy rom-com moves,” you laugh.

Ouch.

That hurt his pride. He was just trying to be nice, maybe a tad bit romantic, but you clearly weren’t having it. He should have known you would be so tsundere, and maybe he does.

He knows you act strong, like there is no way on the face of the earth that you would ever swoon for his lame attempts at flirting. But when you reach upward on your tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek before you step into your house, he knows you like it just as much as he does.

For the longest time, it’s been just him and his sister Naeun.

His parents passed away shortly after his birth, so they stayed under the custody of their aunt. When his sister became an adult, she became his legal guardian. Since then, it’s been the two of them against the world.

Though kids had sometimes made fun of him for not having a mom or a dad, Jisung never paid those kids much attention. Sure, he didn’t have a dad to teach him how to drive or a mom to attend his parent-teacher conferences, but he had his sister and she was all he’d never need. Naeun gave up everything for him: she didn’t go to college, she traded nights out with her friends to help him with her math homework, she worked two jobs so he could play soccer. She had worked so hard, perhaps sheltered Jisung so much that he had always lived a comfortable life.

It never occurs to him just how much she had struggled until the morning she asks him to get a job.

She sits across the dining table at breakfast, and over his cereal, Jisung notes how shaken and guilty she looks. There must be something on her mind, but that’s how his sister’s always been; she doesn’t like to worry him, and speaks up when she’s ready. When she finally tells him, he blinks, confused.

“I can’t pay the bills alone. Not with soccer getting more expensive, and the landlord raising the rent—that bastard,” she mumbles under her breath, surprising Jisung. She hardly cursed. “It’s… It’ll just be for a short time. I promise.” She has tears in her eyes. Jisung furrows his eyebrows; she must feel guiltier about this than he thought. Immediately he nods in understanding. “It’s fine, Noona. Don’t worry about it. I’ll, uh, go out looking this weekend.”

He takes another spoonful of cereal into his mouth, thinking that the conversation will end there. But it doesn’t, his sister’s quiet voice reaching his ears. “Promise me you’ll go to college, Sung. Promise me you’ll make it. Make it all worth it.”

And it’s in that moment, in the way that his sister’s voice is on the edge of breaking, that it occurs to him just how much his sister has sacrificed for him. How quickly she had to grow up, having become his parent at eighteen, just a few months away from how old he was now. And he was nowhere near as responsible as her.

He swears in that moment that he’ll uphold his promise. He’ll get a scholarship, he’ll help his sister out. He’ll pay back everything she’s given up for him.

Finally, today you’re in town.

It’s the first time you’ve come to visit him in his town, and he’s so excited to show you everything: his school, his favorite ice cream place on the corner of the street from his apartment building, and even the park he grew up kicking soccer balls at. Even after all these years, him and his friends still came here to practice their soccer technique.

Today, the two of you are sitting underneath a tree at said park, his head in your lap. You’re running your hands through his dark hair, and wow, he’d never admit that it feels so good.

There’s a small laugh heard from you as you comb through his locks. “You should dye your hair.”

“Suddenly?” He asks. “I don’t even know what color I’d dye it.”

“You should do like, a blue or something. Oh, purple! Purple would be nice!” Your excitement causes him to roll his eyes promptly, sitting up. “I’ll dye my hair purple if you dye your hair purple,” he retorts to you.

“Maybe I will,” you say, standing onto your feet now that he’s gotten off of you. Wiping the grass from your legs briefly, you nod toward his soccer ball a few feet away. “C’mon, let’s play.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You wanna play soccer.”

“Yeah, is that so surprising?”

“Um, yeah, a little bit considering the fact that you said it’s boring and that you complain having to get up to go to the fridge at two in the morning,” quips Jisung with a laugh. You only roll your eyes in response. “I never said soccer was boring, I just said it’s only interesting when you play. And you’re gonna teach me right now, so stand up,” you say, extending a hand to him.

He takes your hand, rising to his feet before picking up the ball. “Fine,” he relents, a smirk making its way onto his face. “Try to keep up.”

For fifteen minutes, the two of you race up and down the park’s open grass field, chasing the ball in every direction. He evades you, long legs carrying him and the ball while you chase after him.

“Wait,” you say mid-sprint, slowing to a stop. Your chest is heaving, and slowly Jisung stops his running also. “You good?” He asks from a few feet away.

“Yeah,” you say breathlessly, reaching a hand up to wipe at your forehead. “Just… gimme a sec.” A minute passes of you catching your breath, but Jisung doesn’t pay it much attention—a person who didn’t play soccer and have trained lungs like him would struggle.

“Okay, okay,” you finally say, shaking your head a bit. “Let’s go again.”

“Are you sure?” He asks, worry seeping into his tone.

“Yeah, yes! Just—just go.”

So he does, beginning to kick the ball down field as he chases after it, stopping past center field to pass the ball to you. You’re racing after him, and though the ball is coming your way, you trip over it, falling straight onto the floor.

Your head hangs low, and he immediately rushes over to you.

“Hey, hey! You okay?” He asks, kneeling down but your eyes are closed. He swipes a hand over your forehead, and it’s that moment when he realizes your eyes are closed. Did you pass out? Had he pushed you too far? “(Name)?”

No response. Oh god, what is he supposed to do?

Is he supposed to check if you’re breathing? Where can he check for a pulse again? In his moment of inadequacy, he pulls out his phone and calls his sister.

She’ll know what to do, but it pains him that he doesn’t.

His sister arrives quickly, and immediately takes you to the hospital. According to her, you do have a pulse and you probably just had heat exhaustion. He sure hopes so…

For a few hours he sits in the waiting room as he awaits the arrival of your parents. They rushed over from your town, four hours away, and this definitely was not the impression he wanted to have on them. Head in his hands, he can’t help but worry about you.

You do wake up, eventually but he can’t see you until your parents arrive.

They take you back home. You’re walking and talking again, but as you shoot him a weak smile from over your shoulder, walking down the hall and out of the hospital, Jisung can’t help but feel that something has gone terribly wrong.

He swears he’s never been so tired.

Working at McDonald’s isn’t horrible, per se, it’s just different. But it definitely takes more out of him than soccer ever did. The second he walks into his room Jisung drops his backpack on the bean bag next to the door and almost collapses on his bed. Throwing his work cap on the floor, he runs a hand through his hair and pulls out his phone.

The best thing about coming home from work, is coming home to you.

He immediately fishes for his phone from his pocket and opens it to speed dial. Pressing on your contact, Jisung presses the phone to his ear and waits for his girlfriend’s voice on the other end. The line picks up.

“Hey,” he says, a smile spreading over his lips without him even knowing.

“Hi…”

Something’s wrong. Your voice is missing its signature excitement, the snarkiness he had grown accustomed to. He sits up in bed, eyebrows furrowed. “Is everything okay?”

Yes, you’re supposed to say. Everything’s fine. Everything’s just peachy.

But you don’t. “I got a call from the hospital.”

After you had fainted the other day playing soccer with him, the hospital had run a few tests to make sure you were okay. He knew this, you both did. They were supposed to say that you had been dehydrated, that you hadn’t eaten in a few hours. “I haven’t been completely honest with you, Jisung…”

“What, what is it?”

There’s a momentary silence on the other side, then a shaky breath. “When I was ten… I got really sick. I was always having nosebleeds, always tired—some days I didn’t even want to get out of bed. They took me to the doctor and they told me that… I had leukemia.”

Jisung releases a heavy breath, staring into his sheets. No… don’t say it.

“I fought it for two years, and I beat it. God, it was… it was really hard, and I got through it. It’s been five years now but—but the hospital called and…” Please, no. “My cancer came back.”

Jisung’s never felt this way before; like all the air in his lungs have been pulled from his chest, lost to the universe. Not even when he sprinted across the soccer field, not even when he had gotten punched in the chest. All those times, his chest burned with fire, be it anger or passion. But now… his chest feels empty and hollow and numb. He manages to spit out a few words.

It’s not supposed to be like this. You’re supposed to be okay, you’re supposed to go to prom together. Graduate. He’s supposed to get a soccer scholarship, you’re supposed to study journalism at the same school, and the long distance would cease to exist. You were supposed to be happy. “But it’s gonna be okay, right? You’ve fought it before, you can do it again.” Perhaps it was a bit selfish of him to ask for consolation when you were the one with the illness. But you were a journalist, never a liar. Your voice is weak, like you’ve already given up.

“I don’t know.”

“What’s up with you?” Chenle’s voice is almost worried, but Jisung wouldn’t be able to tell because his eyes are focused on the ground. He’s been kicking a soccer ball around with Chenle and Mark for a while now, but there’s clearly something very off about the teenager today.

“Yeah, is something wrong?” Mark asks.

Jisung blows some air into his cheeks. Should he tell them? It’s your private information but technically, you’re his girlfriend right? The news has been troubling him for a few days now, and he’s had no one to talk to. Surely, he can’t talk to his sister about it.

He should just spit it out. “(Name) has cancer.”

It’s like the world stops, his friends taking in his words. “W-What? What did you just say?” Chenle speaks first, then Mark quickly follows. “Did you say (Name) has cancer?”

Keeping his gaze on the ground, Jisung nods and gives the ball a small kick in Mark’s direction. “Yeah. She had leukemia when she was younger, and… the other day she went to the hospital and they said that it came back. Her cancer came back.” When he looks up, both his friends are looking at him with genuine concern etched across their faces.

“Seriously? Cancer? And you’re still dating her?” Mark asks, causing Jisung to raise an eyebrow in confusion. Did he just insinuate what he thinks he did?

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Chenle speaks up next, trying to defuse the sudden tension. “Jisung, you guys have only been dating like, a couple months. It was just like yesterday that you kicked her in the head asking her out!”

“And?” Jisung asks pointedly. Suddenly he’s in front of Chenle, and though he technically towers over the latter in height, Chenle’s chest is straight as he makes his point.

“Is it really worth it to stay on a sinking ship?”

Jisung’s voice reaches a new level of low, erupting from a place deep inside of him that he’s hidden away. It’s a place of rage, of anger sizzling and bubbling in his stomach. Suddenly they’re both chest to chest, unwilling to back down. “Now, I know you’re not talking about my girlfriend.”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Mark interrupts, hands coming between them to tear the two boys apart. “Calm down. Both of you.”

“He started it,” accuses Jisung quickly, dark eyebrows furrowed in frustration. “My girlfriend is not a sinking ship. Neither is my relationship, and I don’t need you to comment on it.” He looks to Mark for guidance. Mark had always been the most logical one, the one he would look to for help, and though he thinks that Mark will agree with him, he almost looks guilty.

“But it’s true, Jisung. We’re worried about you. She’s just a girl. Is she really worth hurting yourself over?” He had trusted Mark to be on his side, but now Jisung just releases a scoff. He had been hoping for his friends’ support, but it seems like he’ll be going through this alone, then.

You’ve been avoiding him.

Of course, there’s not much that can be done to avoid him when you live hours away from each other. But you haven’t been responding to his texts, and when you do, they’re mostly short and taut. You’ve been cutting your phone calls short, often saying that you’re tired. Maybe you really are, but it hurts hearing the line cut off, not knowing how you’re really feeling.

Jisung can’t help but feel like he’s failing. He should be doing better.

It’s like your relationship is an hourglass, running out of time with every day that he spends going to school, work, or soccer practice. Like you’re getting further and further away with each short text message.

His entire life has been spent running. Speeding forward center field like a lightning bolt, long legs carrying him far ahead everyone else. But for the first time, Jisung feels like he’s falling behind.

It only takes a three hour bus ride (four, with the added stops) but in Jisung’s mind, it’s all worth it. It won’t be the first time he’s gone over to your house, but it is indeed the first he’s ever showed up unannounced, which is a strange appearance given that he lives three hours away. But with everything happening, he’s willing to give up the day and six hours worth of travel for you.

Sitting on the bus, he pulls out his phone. It’s early, like nine in the morning, but he knows you have a doctor’s appointment in a few hours so you’re definitely awake. He presses the facetime button, but you quickly reject his call. His eyebrows furrow, but lighten with an incoming text from you.

[ message from : (Name) ♡ ] : jisung, i’m using the bathroom rn. call you back in a bit.

He nearly rolls his eyes, but it’s a sweet one. You’re always so candid.

[ message to : (Name) ♡ ] : you act like you’ve never facetimed me on the toilet before.

[ message from : (Name) ♡ ] : wow, call me out more why don’t you

[ message to : (Name) ♡ ] : pick up my call, brat ♡

[ message from : (Name) ♡ ] : no, You pick up My call :p

Seconds later, his phone is lit up with an incoming facetime screen. A laugh almost leaves him at your tenacity before accepting the call.

The call opens up to the visual of his girlfriend, you in your PJs fixing the phone up against the mirror in the bathroom. He sees himself reflected in the mini screen, hoodie on and earbuds in wearing a boyish grin. “Hey pretty girl. Make sure you wash your hands.”

You roll your eyes at his remarks. “Hey ugly boy. I’m already doing that. What are you doing?”

“Just making sure, because I don’t think you brushed your teeth after you fell asleep on call the other night,” he teases, clicking his tongue as you’re the only person he can tease so easily. “I’m on the bus to practice.” A lie, but a white one at that. “What are you up to?”

You wack your still dry toothbrush in front of the camera, nose scrunching up in the slightest. It’s a habit of his that you’ve picked up. “I’m also doing that right now.” You wet the brush, putting some toothpaste on it. “I thought you didn’t have practice this Friday? Or was that next Friday?”

Your actions bring a low laugh to his lips, and his eyes momentarily focus on the passing landscape outside the bus window as he’s now three hours out of his normal perimeter. “Uh, Coach wanted to add in a practice today. Don’t you have a doctor’s appointment today?”

You nod at his answer, toothbrush in mouth. “I do, I think it’s like, in a hour or something.”

“Oh, okay,” he replies simply as the bus comes to a stop, your house only a short walk away. He stands, gathering his bag. “Gotta go, but I’ll talk to you in a bit, pumpkin honeysuckle,” he snorts, making his way to the front of the bus.

Your brows furrow as you give him a disapproving look through the screen, shaking your head slightly before moving to rinse your mouth. “Talk to you soon, don’t get hurt at practice or I’ll fight you.”

He scoffs as he steps out of the bus, into your neighborhood. “Like you could take me. Later.” You probably could, given your determination, but he gives you a nose scrunch before ending the call. He’s only taken a few steps when his phone rings with a text message.

[ message from : (Name) ♡ ] : you and i both know i could take you :)

A snort leaves him. Classic (Name).

When he arrives a few minutes later, he hesitates at the door, only praying that the person who opens up is you, not your parents or god forbid, your brother. It only takes a few hard knocks before he hears your voice on the other side, determined to see just who the hell had the nerve to interrupt your laziness this early in the morning. “Who the fu—”

He tsk’s in distaste. He shouldn’t have been surprised that the first words to leave his girlfriend’s mouth are cuss words. “You potty mouth. I thought you’d be happy to see me,” he says, opening his arms.

Jisung’s not quite sure what he expected. For you to jump in his arms? What a delusional boy. You blink for a few seconds, then suddenly you’re throwing yourself at him, fist first to land a deserved punch to his arm. “I thought you had practice? What are you doing here and why do you look so much cuter than when I last saw you?”

“Well, I lied,” he snickers, patting your head. “I’m here to annoy you, obviously. But you look too. For a—” A person dying of cancer, but he can’t say it. He won’t. “—person who barely got up twenty minutes ago.”

Your hand immediately begins rubbing the spot that your fist landed, worried that it might actually bruise in a bit. Jisung asks, “So are you gonna invite me in, or?”

“What are you, a vampire or something? I’m pretty sure you weren’t given permission when you entered my heart so just come in and cuddle me before my appointment.”

Your response catches him off guard so he blinks before entering in silently, sticking his hands back into the loose fitting pocket of his hoodie. Even after six months, he’s still not used to you saying those kinds of things. Hell, he still gets sweaty holding your hand.

“Hey Mom! Dad!” You’re grabbing onto his arm, tugging him into the kitchen. “Jisung’s here!”

After a small breakfast and conversation with your parents, he’s given the permission to go with you to your doctor’s appointment. The two of you take the bus, hands interlaced as you sit, and Jisung smiles awkwardly when an elderly woman compliments the two of you, calling you a cute couple.

He’s never really been in a hospital before.

For an arduous soccer player, he’s lucky enough to never have suffered a pain great enough to warrant a visit to the hospital, nor had he ever been sickly enough to send him there. It’s for that reason that he feels slightly out of place, tucked in his hoodie whilst trying his best not to gaze at the others in the waiting room. Instead, he tries to keep his gaze focused upon his girlfriend as you remain bright despite their surroundings. Your hands intertwined, he feels a comfortable warmth seeping into his veins, gold in color and feeling. Gold like the ring on your finger, and like your heart.

He’s so lucky to have you.

“I don’t really have anything planned,” he says softly, giving your hand a slight squeeze. It’s true that your itinerary is next to nonexistent for this impromptu date, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. If anything, a hospital is a strange starting destination for a date but your relationship is a bit strange. Quietly, he says to you, voice low in the hopes that no one overhears, “Don’t hospitals scare you?”

He knows that you spent a good portion of your time here; surely you must have grown accustomed to it, but Jisung was not. Hospitals were cold… white and bleak and much too quiet.

“Nah, not really,” you answer with a shake of your head. “Except for all the souls wandering around.”

Jisung blinks. “Souls?” He gulps.

“Yup. The souls of the passing.” You click your tongue, along with a wink in his direction now that you’ve successfully managed to creep him out. Do you ever stop making jokes?

The door to the waiting room opens and a medical assistant calls your name. “Hey, I’ll be right back,” you tell him, standing and releasing his arm. He gives a hesitant nod, watching as you leave through the door and disappear down the hall.

When you emerge, some forty-five minutes later, the mirth is gone from your eyes.

He knows right away: you didn’t get good news. His heart is pumping in his chest, like he’s waiting for you to collapse right there. Years could pass, and Jisung swears he’d never be able to erase that memory of you. “Are you—” Okay, he wants to ask. But you just give him a small smile and shake your head. It’s not the time. He cuts himself short, reaching a hand out to you with a small, albeit forced, smile. “Let’s go on our date.”

It’s a long afternoon, spent in the arcade where you had had your first date—this time, for memory’s sake, he gets another ring from the claw machine—then McDonald’s and ice cream. He treats you to lunch, courtesy of his employee discount, and the entire day is filled with laughter and mutual teasing. Everything feels like it’s okay again.

Jisung enjoys these moments the most.

The moments where he doesn’t feel like he has to be anybody: not the star soccer player, not the kind understanding younger brother, or a kid trying to look grown up at an adult party. With him he’s just you, awkwardness and quirks altogether. You’ve never hid yourself from him, and now he doesn’t have to hide himself either.

Now that the day is touching evening, the two of you sit at a park, relaxing mindlessly on the swings next to each other. Now that the romantic buzz is gone, the two of you have fallen into a comfortable silence.

“Thanks for coming this far, Ji. This was… nice.”

A small smile spreads over his lips. “It was nothing. I wanted to do it for a long time.”

“No, really,” you say, turning to him with a thankful smile. Your eyes are serious now, and Jisung feels the sunlight seep into his skin. “I really missed you.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. This moment feels heavy, like he’ll remember it for years to come. “... I missed you too. A lot.” You both turn back to face the sunset, watching the sun fade behind a hill. It’s setting, streaks of gentle reds and soft-spoken oranges staining the empyrean firmament. It’s then that Jisung feels his heart begin to sink, like the sun, into the pit of his stomach.

“Are you scared?”

A moment passes without you saying anything, then you speak up beside him. “Not really. I mean, it’s just the hospital. The only thing that’ll suck is not being able to leave. I never thought I’d say it but, I’m really gonna miss going to school.”

Did you think you were never going to return? “Are your chances good?”

The implications from earlier at the hospital return. What are the chances that things aren’t looking up? “They say so,” you breath out.

That’s not good enough. Anything could happen. Jisung needs clarification, confirmation. He doesn’t want to lose you. “What if you—”

“I might.”

A beat of silence.

Jisung feels like crying. It gathers in the back of his throat. “What would I do without you?”

There it is: the implication that you’ll be gone. That one day, Jisung will have to wake up and face a world without you in it, a world with less happiness and less passion. A world where there isn’t someone who will call him ugly when really they think he’s the cutest to walk to the earth, or where there isn’t someone to make fun of him the way you do. A world with less love.

Your voice is dry as you speak.

“You’d move on.”

“I don’t know if I’d ever love anyone like you,” he finds himself saying.

“L-Love?” You suddenly say, voice the smallest he’s ever heard. You’ve always had the loudest voice, most prominent in his brain, but his words seem to have caught you off guard. “Do you? Love me?”

He doesn’t know what love feels like. He’s just a teenager, what is he supposed to know about love? About loss? Is it all-consuming, like in the movies? Is it meant to hurt? “... I think I do. I think I love you.”

There’s a sniffle next to him, and he turns immediately, alarmed that he may have made you cry. There are tears in your eyes, but they don’t fall. Being a writer, you talk too much. Your words are eloquent and true, though sometimes Jisung has a hard time getting you to stop talking. But this time, you choose to abandon words altogether, instead leaving your swing to stand in front of him. Compelled by nature, he stands too. Instead of speaking, you reach upward on your tiptoes once more. Except this time, you kiss him.

Your lips meet, and everything is golden.

And against the backdrop of the setting sun, it feels like the closing scene of Jisung’s very own romance movie. But this isn’t the end, he knows.

When he walks you home, he offers his sweater again.

This time not out of obligation or the desire to appear more romantic than he is, but because you’re cold. Really cold. You’re shivering, arms wrapped around yourself not giving enough warmth.

“Here,” Jisung says, already beginning to take off his hoodie, but you stop him with a hand and a pointed look, though your chattering teeth cause you to stutter. “S-Still trying to woo me with cheap rom-com tricks?”

You’re stubborn. You’re so stubborn and he hates it.

“Just take it,” he says, pushing it into your arms.

“No,” you argue. “You have a three hour ride home, it’s late and you’ll be cold.”

It’s obvious your illness has made you even more sensitive to the cold, and for that reason, Jisung’s fine facing the biting cold as long as you’re okay. “You’re freezing, please just take it.”

“Jisung, I said no.” Your voice is stern now, and he gets the feeling that he’s upset you. He gives up, gnawing on his bottom lip in deep thought. He just wants to make you feel better, doing what he thinks will help but with you, it never does. You’re so independent, too much so and much too stubborn to admit you need his help… “Fine,” he says before putting his hoodie back on. If you won’t take his warmth, then he’ll give it to you.

He lifts his arm, placing it fully around your shoulders and pulling you to him so your bodies meet. “At least let me hold you,” he mumbles. Your frame freezes in his for a moment, until you wrap your arms around the circumference of his chest.

Burying your face into his side, you relent into him. “Okay, fine.”

And later, he finds that you’re right. When he sits alone on the dimly lit train, he realizes that the warmth he had been feeling earlier, bathing in the sun’s rays with your lips, is long gone. All he feels now, is cold.

“You skipped practice the other day.” Jisung looks up from where he had been sitting on the bleachers, tying his shoes after practice. It had been a tough practice; he had missed quite a few passes and whiffed more than just a couple shots. He can only blame himself. He’s been distracted; alongside his worries about you, he also has a job to attend to and even more, the results for his dream school’s soccer scholarship is supposed to come out soon. His gaze falls on all six of his closest friends, looking down at him.

“Yeah, something came up,” he says easily.

“More like, someone,” retorts Donghyuck easily. “We know you ditched to go see your girlfriend.”

“And what about it?”

“I don’t know what’s happened to you, man. You never want to play ball with us anymore, you don’t want to hang out with us. Whenever you invite you to a party, you raincheck. It’s like I don’t even know you anymore,” Chenle spits out, arms crossed over his chest.

“Chenle,” says Renjun carefully.

“No,” interrupts the boy in question. Chenle looks straight at Jisung, who stands now to meet the others’ heights. “He needs to hear this. Ever since that girl came around, it’s like you’ve lost your way. You used to be all about soccer and friendship. Now you always have her on your mind, and—did you see the way you played earlier?—she’s messing you up. Your head’s not on straight.”

“Chenle, stop.” Donghyuck speaks up now, voice low as he tries to stop the younger from going off. “You’re not the same Jisung I met in peewee camp, and I don’t know if I like who I’m seeing,” Chenle finishes.

That’s enough for him. His voice comes out before he can stop it.

“You know why I never party with you anymore?” Jisung suddenly says, voice booming and clearly at his limit. “Because I’ve always hated partying. Because I have a job now, and because I don’t want my sister to stay up worrying about me while I’m getting piss drunk. I hate drinking, I hate trying to look cool while actually looking fucking stupid, because I don’t know how I can even think about partying when my girlfriend is fucking dying.”

A hearty scoff leaves his lips, as though he can’t even fathom the words he’s faced today. “You don’t even know me anymore? That’s where you’re wrong, because you never knew me. Not all of me. You only see me as the star player who’s gonna get you your win. She knows me, she knows all of me, and she doesn’t try to change me. Well, sorry that I’m not the same kid you met years ago who let everyone walk all over him. I thought you guys were my friends, but clearly you only want me around for as long as I can play.”

Those are the last fiery words to leave Jisung’s mouth before he turns on his heels, storming off the field and away from everyone else. He just needs to get out of here, away from everything before he ruins it. Mark and Hyuck follow after him, while Jeno and the rest hold Chenle back.

“Don’t listen to him,” Mark says, ever level headed. “We know what you’re going through.”

Though he appreciates their concern, Jisung spits, “No, you don’t.”

Both of them stop walking, no longer chasing after him as Jisung pulls out his phone.

A new email.

He immediately opens it, eyes glazing over the text.

Dear Jisung Park,

Thank you for applying to our university’s soccer scholarship. We reviewed every application with our utmost dedication and attention. Unfortunately, we regret to inform you that we cannot accept your application at this time. Our soccer program is one of the most competitive at this school, however we encourage you to reapp…

What a load of shit.

The past few weeks have been horrid.

Soccer is as tense as ever, though Jisung would be lying if he said that his fight with Chenle didn’t fuel him to work even harder during practice. His job sucks, especially after someone spilled a bucket of old oil on him (it was cold, thank goodness but still gross nonetheless). So far he’s gotten another rejection. Who knew that getting into college would be this hard?

He wishes that he could say his relationship with you is the saving grace, but it’s really not. You’re in the hospital now, and the two of you have been talking less and less. Even now with his feud between his friends, he feels even more alone. Today when he calls, you sound even more tired than usual.

“Hey, chocolate honeycomb bunny,” Jisung says, giving his absolute worst at giving a cringe-worthy nickname. It seems you’re too tired to even give a repulsed response.

“Hey.” You’re quiet for a moment, only your breathing heard across the line. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” sighs Jisung, running a hand through his dark locks. “Just exhausted. My coworker is getting on my last nerve.”

“The same one you talked about last week?”

“Who spilled the dirty oil on me? Yeah,” he responds with a roll of his eyes. “We’ve both been working the same amount of time, I just want to know why he’s so slow to pick it up.”

It’s characteristic of you to agree, seeing as complaining is one of your favorite past times. But you don’t, voice only coming out softly across the call, “Maybe just give him some time.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” he sighs. “How about you? Are you feeling better?”

“About the same,” you respond truthfully. God, you sound so tired. He almost feels bad for making you talk to him when you clearly sound exhausted. “Any more results?” You ask, regarding his college acceptances.

“No,” he shakes his head. He doesn’t understand. He’s a good student, he’s done community service. Just what more do they want from him? “You said I was special, but I don’t think the colleges see that.”

He can almost see your small smile in his mind. “You are special. Just ‘cause they don’t see it doesn’t you aren’t.”

“Eh, I don’t know,” Jisung says, playing with a loose thread on his bedsheet.

What you say next catches him off guard. “Maybe we can both be college-less, together.”

“What?” He asks, brows tightening in confusion. “Didn’t you get into the journalism program at that one university?” He’s caught you. You’re silent on the line for a few long seconds, but the quiet is deafening for him.

“I did, but Jisung, I…” You hesitate. “I’m not going.”

“What do you mean you’re not going?” He asks.

“I… I don’t know if I want to.” In a small voice, you continue, “I don’t know that I’ll make it that long.” What are you saying? What are you implying? Heart racing, Jisung tries to decipher these words in his mind. To him, it just sounds like the end.

“You’re giving up already, I hear it in your voice.”

“I’m not,” you say, a broken promise. “I just… want to be prepared for the worst.”

“The worst isn’t coming. You’re going to get through this. You’re going to beat it. I know you are.” It becomes blatantly clear in this moment that the person Jisung is trying to convince, is himself.

His pleas fall upon deaf ears, because you argue back in what seems like the strongest voice you’ve made in months. As though you’ve amassed all your remaining energy for this conversation. “I’m not a hero, Jisung. I’m not cut out for this. The doctors said it’s not looking good.”

“Then prove them wrong. You’re gonna beat it.”

“I don’t want to be the underdog either, Ji. You know I hate them.” What you say next has his blood boiling. “I don’t deserve it anyways, no one would want me to come back.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jisung raises his voice now, volume growing with each word.

“No one likes me,” you spit out across the line, and he doesn’t need to see you to imagine how incensed you are at the moment. “I’m rude, I’m loud, I cross boundaries and I say things that hurt without caring about who it touches. And before you yell at me that no one thinks of me like that, these are things I’ve heard from other people.” Your voice breaks, as does Jisung’s heart. “If this were a movie, no one would root for me to survive.”

“I do,” Jisung says, voice strong. “I’m rooting for you. Every. Single. Day. And who cares about how other people see you? You’re rude? You’re crass? I like you because of those things, because you’re different from me. Am I not enough?”

“You’re different,” you relent, voice tired. “You’re the only one who matters. But I—“ You choke up. “I’m just tired of fighting. I don’t want to go to sleep every night not knowing if I’ll wake up the next morning. I want to be strong, and I want to face every day knowing that it could be my last… I don’t want to leave anything behind—”

“You’re not leaving,” he cuts in.

“—and I can’t go through every day letting you think that everything is okay, because they’re not. But I’m ready to let go, Ji. Because I’m happy with what I had, with what we had, and I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

Tears are falling down his cheeks now, suiciding off the surface of his face and staining his bed sheets. He doesn’t know if the tears are the result of sadness, anger, or the pain of loving someone the universe would never let him have, yet it hurts all the same. “But I love you! I told you that I loved you.”

“I love you too,” you cry, and the sound is heartbreaking. “But I just wish that were enough.”

A pregnant silence consumes both of you. All that can be heard is the sound of your mutual crying, along with your breathing that Jisung had learned to fall asleep to. When you speak again, your voice is steady. You had always been the stronger one. “I don’t think you should call anymore.” A few sniffles. He can’t even speak. “Goodbye, Jisung.”

Then the line dies.

It’s Christmastime. He knows it’s cold, probably even colder in the hospital where you are.

Now, Jisung knows you don’t want anything from him. You don’t want him around. In the past weeks he must have become someone even he wouldn’t want around. And though he gets the feeling that you’ll never need him again, he figures you could use a sweater. It’s nothing much, and really he thinks it could be better.

A hoodie, not fit to your size but slightly larger because he knew you well enough to know you’d like it like that. On one sleeve, near the wrist, a patch of a soccer ball. He had learned how to sew it on himself. On the other, his initials. JS.

He sends it in the mail, in a box to the hospital with your name and room number on it. There’s no letter, nothing. Just his bare soul in the form of an oversized cotton hoodie. He’d send it himself, appearing at the door to your hospital bed, but something tells him he’s run out of things to say.

His phone rings at three in the morning.

He knows what it means.

February 2nd, at 2:39AM. The world lost you.

It would never be the same again, and neither would he.

Grief is an interesting thing, someone once told him.

He doesn’t quite remember who it was, whether it was his sister comforting him after the death of their goldfish, the guidance counselor at his school giving him a required appointment after the passing of a student, or yourself. But as the hours go by, it feels more and more like a weight in his chest that has been sitting on a hollowed place in his heart.

Grief is indescribable, and Jisung doesn’t know if this is because his limited seventeen year old vocabulary hasn’t collected enough fitting words to even begin to verbalize his emotions, or if because it really is indescribable.

The first few days had been hell.

He had almost become someone that he didn’t know, barely stepping out of bed and perhaps worrying his sister out of her mind. It was his way of ignoring the world, dissociating himself from the irrefutable truth that you weren’t really gone. You were still laying in bed, three hours away as usual, struggling but still fighting. If he could lay in bed, sleeping the days away and ignoring his text message condolences from his friends, he could pretend for some time that things were the way they were, eight months ago.

Eight months before it.

Eight months before he lost you. Before your relationship, a burgeoning dandelion in the nook of spring. But dandelions represent rebirth, the reappearance of hope like a beacon after an arduous winter, and you would never have another spring.

He could not pretend, because every morning the sun rose again, and he would have to reach his head out from the burrow of blankets he had buried himself in. He would need to face it for himself that he woke up, and you didn’t. His friends texted. His sister knocked on his door and begged him to eat, even going as far as to cook his favorite foods as a means to lure him from the darkness of his corner. He ate. But it was never the same.

Messy bedheads, earbuds tucked in with muzak playing gently like the thrum of his heart which beat enough for the both of you, tear-stained pillow cases, knees to the chest, light failing to shine in through the blinds which remained closed, counting the seconds between each breath, dreaming insubordinate dreams.

The first few days went like that. Empty.

Then he was angry.

Angry because the world had given him a love worth changing for, then ripped it from his inexperienced hands. He had never had anything in his life! Not a mother, not a father. Could he not have this one lily, this flower which sought to remind him of the fragility of life? And even more so, he was angry for you. You were a fire—you were a bottle of passion bursting at the seams, a well of untapped potential, a boldness which no one else could emulate—and the universe crushed you beneath its foot.

And suddenly, the emptiness of your hollow space reflected upon him.

He should have been better, should have done more. A soccer ball proposition? A sweater? It was laughable; that was the least he could give? If only he had called, if only he hadn’t listened to you like the meek child he was, things could be better.

And above all, he was sad.

What would he do without you?

Moving on seemed useless. A light at the end of a dark tunnel which stretched for ages. An epiphany that you would never reach.

He just hoped that it was not cold. That you left the world in a ball of light, surrounded in the warmth of family and love, not the rigidness of the unforgiving world. Perhaps it was selfish of him, but he hoped that the soccer ball sleeve had been clutched to your chest, and that his hoodie could have provided just a little bit of that warmth.

The walking pattern outside his bedroom door is different from his sister’s. So is the knock on the door; his older sister’s is much more quiet, reserved, as though she was afraid to wake him. This one is harsh, and it reverberates through the room before the door opens.

The air in the room is still for a moment.

“Jisung.”

It’s Chenle. And Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Donghyuck, as well as Jaemin. They all take their seats either on the end of his bed, the floor, or his beanbag, but Jisung doesn’t move from his place underneath the blankets.

“What do you want?” He manages to groan out in a small voice.

Someone places a hand on his leg, a comforting gesture. He thinks it’s Jaemin from the gentle touch. “We’re here for you.”

Donghyuck comments, “You haven’t been to practice this week.” Of course that would be what they would mention first. Jisung scoffs. “I’m kind of going through something.”

“And we’re here.” Mark’s voice.

“We wanted to apologize.” Chenle speaks now, and despite being best friends since they were five, he’s the last person Jisung expected to say sorry. In their decade-long friendship, Chenle was the confident one, the one who charged forward without consequence while Jisung trailed behind, cleaning up his mess. “We’ve been… assholes, simply put.” Had he been in higher spirits, Jisung would have snorted. “We thought we understood what you were going through, and we thought it was dumb. To let yourself get hurt over some random girl… but we were wrong. We didn’t understand your point of view.”

“Not even a little bit,” says Donghyuck, head hanging low.

“Yeah, we’re supposed to be your friends. Your team! We’re supposed to lift you up when you’re down and… well, we haven’t been doing that. And we’re sorry. I’m sorry.” Chenle says. Slowly, Jisung lifts his head from below the blanket to face his friends. They all wear a variety of expressions, all somber. “And we know now… she’s not just some random girl.”

Yeah, they’ve all been assholes, some more than others, and Jisung can’t exactly say that they were any help in his struggle. But perhaps this was something he needed to go through alone. At the time, he needed you. But now… he just really needs his best friends.

Tears sting at his eyes for the nth time.

“Come here, you crybaby,” says Jaemin, opening his arms.

It’s Monday, meaning he has to go back to school today. He’s not ready, how could he be? It hasn’t even been a week since you… left, but he knows he has to go back. His sister, God bless her, had let him take the first few days off but now that the weekend has ended and school has rolled back around, he has no choice.

“You look like shit.”

Donghyuck has always lacked a filter. It would hurt if Jisung didn’t know that Donghyuck meant that in the best way possible. You look like shit, he says. So I’m glad you found it in you to come to school, is what he doesn’t say.

Jisung closes his locker with a sigh. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” snickers his friend, and Jisung turns his head to find Mark and Jaemin approaching. “Morning,” greets Jaemin as he taps the top of Jisung’s head, despite being shorter.

“Hi,” responds Jisung quietly, clutching his chemistry textbook to his chest. The three of them look at him with quiet and somber eyes, but don’t say anything. Mark places a comforting hand on his shoulder, giving it a small rub.

“You got this.”

The truth is, he can’t do this. The world feels quiet and empty, lacking a particular passion that you used to always embody. It could be worse. Thank goodness your relationship was rather private; he doesn’t know how he’d be able to function at school had there been curious eyes on him, if you had gone to the same school as him.

The day goes rather slowly, and Jisung busies himself with catching up on his work that he had missed. He could almost pretend like things are normal. It’s not until fifth period calculus that something strange happens.

An office TA pokes her head in and scrambles over to the teacher, who was in the midst of a very enthralling lecture on integrals that Jisung was definitely not paying great attention to. The TA whispers something into the teacher’s ear, then hands her a piece of paper. Mrs. Huang nods, then suddenly Jisung finds her eyes on him. “Jisung, Mr. Moon wants you in his office.”

Him? Why him of all people?

Mr. Moon is the guidance counselor at their school, and Jisung has a moment of internal panic—had he somehow found out about you? Should he prepare himself for a lecture about grief and moving on?

With a gulp, he nods.

Mr. Moon is a fairly nice man, with a friendly smile and a reputation for being a pushover teacher. Jisung had met with him a few months ago to discuss his desire to pursue a soccer scholarship but he highly doubts that’s the case now.

When Jisung enters Mr. Moon’s office, the first thing he sees isn’t Mr. Moon but a tall man with a stoic expression standing behind his desk. In contrast to the stranger, Mr. Moon wears his trademark smile. “Jisung, good to see you. Still getting a kick out of that old ball?”

Of course, Mr. Moon doesn’t know that Jisung skipped practice all last week to mope in his bed, but Jisung nods politely. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” responds the teacher with a smile. “Take a seat.”

He gestures to the chair in front of his desk, and cautiously does Jisung take a seat. The tall, bruff man is still standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, having not yet said a single word. Somehow the atmosphere is tense, and Jisung’s quite sure he knows what this is about.

“Now, Jisung, I’ve called you in today because—”

“Is this about (Name)?” Perhaps it’s a bit rude of him, but Jisung doesn’t want to be prodded at, at least not by people who think they know him. The last thing he wants is pity.

Mr. Moon’s eyebrow raises just the slightest, and he leans forward on his desk. “Why, yes, it is. How did you know?”

A scoff leaves Jisung’s lips, but it’s much weaker than he would like. “My question is, how did you know? Who told you?” Who was it that shared information on his personal life? Was it his sister? His friends?

“Nobody had to tell me, Jisung. (Name) sent the letter to me herself.”

Wait… what?

Jisung blinks, hands falling slack on his lap. “W-What? What letter?”

Perhaps his staring is a bit too obvious, for Mr. Moon gestures to the stranger in question with a hand. “Jisung, this is Johnny Seo.” Finally, the intimidating stranger has a name. “Johnny is the head coach of the soccer team at Greenwood University—” Wait, Greenwood University? That’s Jisung’s dream school—well, it was his dream school, until they rejected his application for a soccer scholarship. What would they want to do with him? “—and he wants to offer you a full-ride scholarship.”

What?

Jisung’s mouth falls open. What? What the hell? Hadn’t they just rejected him three months ago? His eyes must be bugging out of his face, so he blinks repeatedly, trying to find the words to say.

“W-Wait, what? A… A full ride?” He stammers, unable to find his tongue.

The man named Johnny only nods. “Full ride. Covered tuition, dorming, and soccer costs. All you have to do is keep your grades up and keep scoring those fancy goals of yours I’ve heard about.”

“But—But, you rejected me… why now?”

For the first time, Johnny gives a small smile. “Because of the letter.” There it is, that letter again that Jisung has no idea about. He looks to Mr. Moon for guidance. All the counselor does is open his desk drawer and pull out an envelope, which he slides across his desk. “(Name) (Last Name) wrote a recommendation letter to the university, and honestly, it was stunning. It was enough to make the admissions board… bend a little, to say the least.”

Reaching forward, Jisung grabs the envelope and examines it in his hands. It’s opened, but yes, on the front is your handwriting. He’s cried so much this past week that he doesn’t know how many times tears have touched his eyes, but they sting once more. This time, he doesn’t let them fall.

“She… wrote a letter. For me?”

“That she did,” responds Mr. Moon.

“She’s right,” says Johnny suddenly. “In our work at the university, we’re always looking for the best of the best. We should look deeper, sometimes.” The words sink in the room, and Jisung finds himself staring down at the envelope in his hands. What things had you had to say about him?

Honestly, all he can think about is his failure. How he failed to be there for you, how he cowarded in your presence when you told him to leave you alone. He bites down on his lip.

“So? Will you accept our offer?”

Jisung looks up again, meeting Johnny’s expectant eyes. “I…” His mouth suddenly runs dry. “I don’t know, I… I need to think about it.”

“You’re not graduating for another four months. Take your time.” Slowly, still in glassy-eyed disbelief, Jisung nods. His fingers find the edge of the envelope, tracing its pointed edge. You wrote that for him. From across the desk, Mr. Moon speaks up. “You should read that letter, Jisung, and realize what’s coming for you: good things.”

To Whom It May Concern,

Hello. My name is (Name) (Last Name), and I am a high school student writing this letter to appeal a rejection by your university. Not of my own application, but of an extraordinary person with the name Jisung Park. In my humble opinion, I believe that your institution has made a grave mistake in not offering a scholarship to Jisung. So, I write this letter to appeal such a rejection, and to do something that he hated, though it was what I always did best: write about Jisung.

Now, Jisung is a humble person who never speaks up about his struggles, but the truth is that of all students, I believe he is the most in need of this scholarship. His parents passed when he was young, and he grew up in the care of his older sister who raised him. Their small but strong family made sacrifices, gave up luxuries, and endeavored to survive.

In the midst of this crisis, Jisung found his one savior: soccer.

He is, without a doubt, the best soccer player I have ever seen in my entire life. He can sprint across the field in half a normal player’s time, and I’ve never seen him miss a goal or a pass. But his soccer prowess isn’t what makes him great. Moreover, Jisung is the person you want on a team. He believes in teamwork, but is always striving to be better. He doesn’t want to stand out, but does so anyways. He is never arrogant, nor boastful. If there is one person who deserves this, it’s him.

But, I am sure that you are thinking: why should this letter mean anything to you? I’m not a highly valued individual in the community, nor have I done anything significant for my name to mean anything. I’m only a seventeen year old student, a struggling journalist.

The answer to that question is, I know Jisung Park. You only see his grades, the shallow things on his application. You will never get to see the Jisung Park that I knew and loved.

In my time alive, Jisung Park made an impact on my life that will never be forgotten. Even when life seemed the darkest, not a beam of light in the field's view, Jisung picked me up and made me see the sunset. I know now, the sunset is beautiful, warm, and comforting—everything that Jisung is. He never left my side, and never for a single moment did I ever feel alone in his presence. The world often overplays the saying “a heart of gold,” but the truth is that Jisung has one.

I used to think that love would be red, like the burning of one’s lungs racing down a soccer field, or black and white, made to be simple. But the truth is, love is golden. Golden like the sunset painting streaks against the floor, golden like Jisung. It’s a warmth that covers you from head to toe, relenting into a future that you don’t know.

He is my golden boy, and he can be yours too.

I may not have a future, but if there’s one thing that I know, it’s that Jisung deserves one.

I’m a journalist. I don’t write love letters, but perhaps this is the closest I can ever get. And should Jisung ever read this letter, I hope he knows that with this, I dedicated my last spark of sunlight to him.

Sincerely,

(Name) (Last Name)

Your funeral occurs on February 13th, a week and four days after your passing.

Jisung stands in front of the bathroom mirror, nose scrunched in concentration as he makes a feeble attempt on his necktie. This is surely not as easy as throwing on a soccer jersey. “Ugh,” he groans, fingers getting confused again.

“Need help?”

His sister’s dainty voice calls him from the bathroom door. Dressed in all black, she’s ready too. Turning his head, Jisung sighs. “Please.” She makes his way toward him, fingers coming to work on his tie already with steady hands.

“You’re too tall now,” she says softly, with a chuckle. It’s true; he used to look up to her, physically and figuratively, but now he’s an entire head above her. “You’ve grown up a lot.”

It was his eighteenth birthday just a few days ago but to be quite honest, he hadn’t had the heart to celebrate it. If anything, he had always thought that his eighteenth birthday would be like an epiphany for him. As though he would wake up the morning of, feeling like an adult with all the answers to the world.

The truth is, he’s eighteen now and he still feels like he has no idea what he’s doing.

“I don’t feel any different,” he admits. “I thought eighteen would mean something.”

“You’ll get there, trust me. And anyways, I always told you not to grow up too fast.”

For a moment there’s a silence as his sister swoops the tie in and out, weaving it to form the perfect knot. Feeling something scratch at the back of his throat, Jisung speaks. “... I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for, silly? I was the one who never taught you how to knot a necktie,” she chuckles.

“Not for that,” he says. “For last week. I… probably scared you.”

Suddenly, his sister is wearing that demure smile of hers again. The one that is small and polite, but always seems to carry more weight in it than he can see. “No. It’s okay, I knew you’d be better.”

Naeun finally finishes the knot, tightening it the slightest around Jisung’s neck. “There you go.” He offers her a small thanks as he turns to look in the mirror, and she begins to leave. A sigh leaves him; there’s no avoiding it now, he’s ready to go.

“You know, Jisung,” she suddenly speaks up from the doorway. “I’m glad that you met her. Even if it ended up like this… you’re different. In a good way, and I think she had a lot to do with it. Even if you don’t feel different… you are.”

In the months of your relationship, Jisung had come to learn your insecurities. You were loud and proud, but with that confidence came an unwavering insecurity that you were unliked by those you spilled your tongue to. At the funeral, Jisung sees that that’s not at all true.

People give speeches for you, place flowers on your grave. The school newspaper had even written an article to commemorate your presence on their team, and the president of the club reads it aloud. A number of hospital staff make their appearance.

Even Jisung’s friends show up, despite the clear memory of them calling you crazy early on. Maybe they were right, maybe you were crazy. But he probably was too.

It doesn’t rain a single drop, though it had been pouring for three days before. Instead, the sun peeks through the overcast clouds, gifting sunshine.

Jisung smiles.

He probably looks like an idiot, carrying the soccer ball around the entire funeral but he knows what it means to him, and what it means to you. When he places it on your grave, the grass still fresh, his eyes catch the carefully written words on a singular white spot.

I love you.

He knows that he means it.

At eighteen, there a lot of things that Jisung still doesn’t know. But even so, there are a handful of truths that he can hold onto forever. One, he’s still an incredible soccer player and girls are still very scary. But like soccer, maybe that just takes time and practice.

Two, growing up isn’t about a number. It’s not about partying or drinking, nor is it about rushing into relationships that have little meaning. For years Jisung had wanted to grow up, to face the world with no fears and be able to cruise through. But he knows now that growing up is about being strong in the face of sadness, pain, grief. About waking up every morning even if you feel like you have no reason to.

Love is the same.

Love isn’t about making out on the bleachers after practice or trying to copy the coy clichés seen in romance movies. It’s about the sacrifices, like four hour bus rides. It’s about communication and connection, like a recommendation letter traced in gold. Because of you, he’s moving forward. He can go to college, and the day will never come when he stops being grateful toward you and everything you’ve done. That’s love, and he will spend the rest of his life loving you. Maybe the love will change but it will always be love.

It hurts that you’re gone, it really does. Jisung doesn’t think it’ll ever stop hurting.

But the last thing he knows is that things will be okay.

Life moves on, and he will too.

#neowritingsnet #dreamwritersnet #nct-writers #neohbh #neothestars #park jisung angst #jisung angst #jisung fluff #park jisung fluff #park jisung fanfic #jisung fanfic #nct dream fluff #nct dream angst #nct angst #nct fluff #nct fanfic #nct dream fanfic

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danniburgh · 3 years

Text

Boca del Diablo (Javier Peña x f!reader)

Pairing: Javier Peña x f!reader

Summary: I was wrong but I was doing it right; and we would steal each other’s grief, we were thin but we were thick as thieves; you gotta hold me down, ‘cause I might slip away, slip into the past.

Word count: +5.7k

Warnings: ANGST, you guys this is AWFULLY SAD, so, beware. mentions of alcohol and drinking.

A/N: oh god, okay; this is technically a ficsong, based and inspired by Mouth of the Devil by Mother Mother. also, the first time i heard that song i knew it was SO made for Javier Peña, i couldn’t just not write something based on it... I JUST COULDNT. im not sorry. also also i wanna thank my forbidden kitties @ezrasbirdie and @starlightmornings for proofreading and telling me it makes sense, love you so much guys. Jesus Christ Superstar i really should stop hurting javi huh.

Masterlist // Read on ao3 // ko-fi

comments and reblogs are eternally appreciated 💓

gif: @javierpcna

The first thing Javier did when he arrived to Laredo was tour his house around; he walked around the living room, looking at all the pictures his dad had hung onto the walks, he took his time to admire all the faces and the expressions and the situations; he took the time to reminisce about moments of his life he hadn’t given himself the time before to reminisce. He walked the narrow hallways of the house he grew up in.

It was like meeting the house again, even if after leaving he had visited, even if he knew exactly what was in what corner, even if he still remembered that stash of cigarettes he had hidden under a wooden panel in the floor when he was seventeen; he was familiarizing himself again with it; like the prodigal son coming back to a place he had forgotten because he need to forget it.

He discovered that day, after not living in that place for over thirteen years, that it was timeless.

It was as if the house itself was a spot in time that hadn’t moved; as if the place it was built on was rooted down so far into the ground that not even distance or time changed it.

The second thing Javier did when he arrived to Laredo was sleep.

He told Chucho he wouldn’t eat the dinner he had made and that he preferred to eat it for lunch the next day and just shut himself into his old room and slept for twelve hours.

When Javier woke up, he didn’t feel rested, but his mind had stopped reeling from all those excruciatingly exhaustive thoughts he had been carrying with him since he packed up the close to ten years he spent in Colombia into three suitcases and spent three hours inside a plane and two hours driving down from the airport.

In the twelve hours he slept, he didn’t dream at all, and for he was grateful to be so tired that his brain just had shut down for half a day; he didn’t need the constant reminders of what his life decisions had turned into. He didn’t need to dream about the pain he saw, tamed, and caused.

Javier didn’t want to go out of the house at all; because he knew there would be people that asked him about his doings like he was some kind of hero; they would ask him details about the things he did in what they called South America, details he wasn’t ready to even remember, as he wasn’t even ready to correct them; that it wasn’t South America, that it was just Colombia. As if he didn’t want to ruin their perceptions of him; when in reality he didn’t even want to be perceived.

The first time Javier went out of the house he drove to a convenience store that was there since before he was born; another proof that everything in that town he so wanted to get out of and leave behind him as a kid was timeless and immovable.

That time he forgo the cigarettes, as he was decided to try to quit smoking once again; and as he was walking out of the store with a plastic bag full of crap he shouldn’t eat and stuff he didn’t really need, across the street he saw you.

Javier just stood there, like a newly put statue, he watched you hop into a truck he was sure wasn’t yours or your dad’s and as the truck drove away with you in your pretty short sundress inside, he knew, once again, that he was completely and utterly screwed.

He had frozen in place because in that time, in the two minutes it took you to leave, the only thing that invaded his mind was what he did to you.

The second time Javier went out of the house, he had decided to visit some of his old friends that still lived in Laredo; the ones that, unlike him, had stayed there for reasons he, at the short age of twenty, didn’t really understand, but years later, at what he considered the middle of his life, comprehended at last.

None of them asked about Colombia; and, while he was grateful, he was sure it was because one of them told the others not to.

It was as if the subject of him working there had become a taboo; something that they spoke about and debated amongst themselves when he wasn’t there, and he preferred it that way.

Javier was enjoying the time he spent remembering stuff that hadn’t gotten people killed; he liked the feeling of nostalgia that sharing old stories and old experiences with friends made him heel; until someone mentioned you.

He learned then that what had gone down between you and him had also become a taboo; something only his and your generations and the parents of your mutual friends knew about but never said a thing, something that, as in most small towns happened, was a topic that someone brought up when they saw you walk by, or Lorraine, or his dad.

He had even escaped being the prompter of his own fall out being discussed by people on the narrow streets of downtown Laredo.

Javier also learned then that you were a month away from getting married.

The first emotion Javier felt when he heard the words “she's getting married on the fifteenth” was rage; not at you or at your husband to be, but at himself. Because he knew that if he had played his cards right, he would be the one you were sharing your life with.

The second emotion Javier felt was a profound, almost abysmal regret. Because if he had stayed put for thirty-six months he would've been the one you would’ve married. Because if he had stopped his unhealthy, obsessive desire to leave everything he knew and looked at you with all the love he felt for you, he wouldn’t have done what he did. But it was way too late to realize it.

The third emotion Javier felt was sadness. Because even when he had made sense of what he did and convinced himself he was doing the right thing, even when he was doing it wrong, the outcome had been the opposite of what he wanted.

He ruined his life trying to get a better one.

Javier had one too many beers that night and excused himself from the reunion; as he drove away he pulled over because there was an overwhelming question dragging itself from his brain to his chest and settled there like a rusty nail perforating his skin: when was the last time he had thought about you?

There was a difference that he noticed there; as he sat inside his truck in the middle of the country road with the crickets replying to the others and a few car noises at the distance; one thing was wondering about what was of you, asking himself in the little idle times he had in his job if you were doing fine, if you were mad at him, if you were happy, and another, polarizing, totally opposite thing was thinking about you and the years you spent together.

He avoided it.

Thinking about you consoling him with your body when words weren't enough, you understanding him to the deep ends of his persona, you, knowing him exactly as he was, as young as he was, complete as he wasn’t. You meeting him in vulnerability, in nudity, in cynicism, even meeting him in drinking and getting drunk with him every other weekend just to laugh about nothing and fuck like bunnies.

You and the perfect aura and the immaculate energy you exude at all times and that when he was inside you, he felt you share with him.

He avoided it because he knew that he didn’t deserve to get any of it back; but Jesus how much he wanted it.

So Javier decided, inside his semi-alcoholized head, that he had to do what he didn’t do when he had the chance.

He turned the truck back on and gave an U turn that he knew would get him fined if someone had seen him and drove back to where he came from.

He drove by muscle memory. Even after sixteen years he still knew the way and could drive with his eyes closed if he felt brave enough.

But he wasn’t feeling brave or encouraged or self assured; everything he was feeling as he drove was a heavy, disorienting need to fix what he broke.

Or try to.

He got into the driveway and started honking like a crazy man inside the afternoon traffic of the city; someone had to come out at some point.

And you did.

Javier couldn’t identify the emotions he felt when he saw you opening the door of your house or what he felt when he noticed your expression as you recognized the truck and him inside it. He couldn’t name the exact feeling of his chest tugging when you stood there, on your porch, dead on your feet, a hand covering your mouth when he got out of the truck.

He saw you see him; your face paled as he walked up to you, your eyes widened open, he felt like an apparition and guessed he was; nothing but an unwanted sight of a past he was sure you wanted to forget.

He noticed the simple and complex emotions your eyes poured out as he tried to say hi to you with a hand wave.

And even then, half drunk, standing on your porch after who knows how many years, he knew it was something that was supposed to happen.

“What… what are you doing here?” was the first question you asked him, Javier didn’t even have a response to it.

“If I say the truth you wouldn’t want to listen to me.” he said. He saw you shaking your head slightly and looked at you with clinical eyes.

It was as if the time hadn’t passed through you; you were still as beautiful as he remembered you. As terrifyingly gorgeous as the first time he saw you when he crashed your nineteenth party with his friends from college; as inexplicably stunning as a twenty-two year old guy could make sense of.

“What do you want?” was the second question you asked him, and Javier wanted so many things he didn’t know which one to say first.

He looked at you with that expression you had on your face the first and the last time you said goodbye to each other.

“Can we talk?” he replied, you looked at him and bit your lower lip and Javier had to close his eyes because he wanted to do that himself.

“Sure.” you muttered, Javier nodded a few times as he opened his eyes and you had crossed your arms tight on your chest.

“Can we go somewhere else?” he asked, shoving his hands inside the pockets of his jeans.

You stood quiet again as he guessed you were pondering your reply, and he felt like he was asking you to go out with him two weeks after your birthday party.

“Where?” was the third question you asked him “I’m kinda busy.”

“Just for a drive, please.” Javier heard himself begging, but didn’t really care for it.

“I–I don’t th–”

“Please,” he cut you off, “I just… fuck, I just need to talk to you.” he sighed out.

Javier couldn’t stand the look you were giving him, he couldn’t bear the feeling that your eyes on him were giving him because he had a specific memory of you looking at him with a shine in your eyes he didn’t see anymore as you stood in front of him and he was hating it.

“Okay,” you murmured, “let me go get my bag.”

He nodded, and you turned around and walked back inside. You didn’t close the front door and from where he was standing, he could see some parts of the house and some chat inside he couldn’t make out.

He wasn’t half drunk anymore; the weight of the emotions he was feeling were enough to sober him up. But he knew, as he stood there waiting for you, with the most pressing feeling he had felt in decades, hitching his breath and cutting his flow of air, that it was most probably that he wouldn’t get what he wanted. And that was scraping at the well-manicured mask he had built for himself.

You walked out of the house with your bag hanging from your shoulder and gave him a brief glance as you walked to his truck. He let out a heavy sigh and jogged a bit to catch up.

Javier didn’t know where he was driving to. He just didn’t think you would say yes, so he didn’t bother to think of a place to take you; he knew you’d appreciate going somewhere without many people. As you were less than a month away from your wedding and Laredo was a place where if the wrong person saw you walking around with your ex, bad shit could happen.

The truck’s engine roaring was the only thing that made any noise. You were sitting on the opposite side of the seat, all but glued to the window, avoiding to look at him; he understood it; he didn’t even know why you had said yes in the first time.

Javier was still thinking of a place to stop the truck, and as you stirred on the seat, he saw a familiar deviation with an old, tattered, fainted wooden sign on the edge pointing to the right that read Boca del Diablo, leading to a narrow dirt path surrounded by semi-overgrown wild plants.

He turned there and saw you stiffen on your side of the seat out of the corner of his eyes; he wanted to ask you if you remembered the place but instead you glared at him.

“What are we doing here, Javier?” you asked. He wouldn’t admit even to himself that he felt his stomach turn around itself when he heard his name being pronounced by you.

“You remember this place?” he asked anyway as he drove to where the dirt path became a wide opening that led to the edge of a cliff.

“What is it to remember?” you muttered in response, Javier pulled over and turned to you.

“Well, this was our place.” he shrugged slightly and turned off the ignition.

“No, this wasn’t our place,” you murmured, looking back at him, “it was a place where every single couple in Laredo came to make out.”

Javier huffed and nodded a couple of times, he noticed the way you were looking at him and, even in the darkness of the open country and the inside of the truck, he could see the way your brow was furrowing slightly, he wished to know what you were thinking.

“We made it ours.” he whispered back.

“Javier,” you sighed out, he knew you were getting exasperated “fucking in the back of your truck hardly was making a place ours.”

Your words made something inside him sting. He wondered if his actions had made you shift the meaning of your memories; he wouldn’t find it hard to believe.

“Why are you here?” you asked him, Javier was looking for your eyes but he found them outside, on the walnut tree you and him used as shade when you came there before the sunset.

“It made sense,” he replied. You scoffed and turned to face him, Javier saw your eyes water in front of him and took a deep breath “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Right.” Javier saw you take a deep breath and swallow your tears. He wanted to hug you but instead gripped the steering wheel with a hand.

“You’re getting married.” he said, not as a question, but matter-of-factly.

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask why?” you bit your lip with a smirk on your face and Javier felt his chest compress.

“You really wanna know?” your voice was low and soft but it weighed on him like an anvil. He nodded. “I finally found someone brave enough to stay.” you replied with a shrug.

“I stayed.” Javier let out before he could stop himself and you glared at him with a frown.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his lids with the heel of his hand; he knew he was bad with the kind of conversations he wanted to have with you, and he knew you knew as well. But he still wanted to ask you so many things he didn’t even know he was curious about.

He knew exactly the moment he had fucked his and your lives, but he hadn’t stayed to look at the aftermath.

“You stayed,” you retorted “but you didn’t wait.”

“I know.”

“Why?” you asked him, now chasing for his eyes, Javier shook his head a couple of times and you shifted on the seat so you could face him with your body as well “why you didn’t wait?” you asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know.” he replied in a low voice and frowned when your reaction was to laugh.

As you looked around the truck’s cabin with that cynic smile of yours adorning your face, Javier saw a single tear rolling through your cheek that you didn’t bother to wipe off.

“You don’t know?” you let out a sob that sounded like a laugh, “you don't know why you threw away seven years of our lives?” he shook his head, and you opened your mouth in feigned amusement “seven years, Javier, unbelievable.”

“I tried to figure it out but I just couldn’t,” he murmured at you when you threw your head back and sniffed “it made sense at the time.”

“That’s bullshit.” you shrugged.

“It is.”

“I…” Javier started, he tried to find the correct words to phrase what he wanted to say “I know that what I did wasn’t good or an–”

“Wasn’t good?” you cut him off “that’s not really how I would phrase it, Javier.”

“I know, I’m trying, okay?”

“It doesn’t look like it,” you whispered again and rolled your eyes at the tears Javier could see flooding your eyes “you didn’t wait for me, you didn’t even try!”

“I did! I swear I did, but I wa–”

“Everyone knew us, Javier,” you cut him off again and he sighed “everybody in town thought that we would be that couple that stayed together forever,” you snarled as two thick tears made their way from your eyes to your cheeks and he had to refrain himself from leaning and brush them off “I thought that too.”

“Please,” he sighed. You shook your head slowly.

“And now, after what? twenty years? you com–”

“Sixteen.” he interrupted.

“What?”

“After sixteen years, it’s been sixteen years.” he muttered.

“Right, sixteen,” you huffed again and licked your lips. Javier remembered that little gesture as a sign of nervousness when you were barely an adult, “after all that time, you come back to break into my life,” you raised your hands in question, Javier chewed the inside of his cheek “for what? why?”

“Today Matt told me you were getting married,” he said, you rolled your eyes at him and Javier shifted slightly closer to you on the seat “I just knew I needed to see you first,” he saw you see through him and he felt once again like an apparition “I just realized I never stopped thinking about you.”

“Stop it,” you raised a finger to him, Javier stiffened up “don’t do that,” you shook your head at him “because when you should’ve thought about me, and about us, you didn’t,” Javier nodded his chin a few times “you don’t get to do that to me,” you sniffed and he closed his eyes when your voice started shaking “not after everything, not after you promised me you’d wait and then finding someone else.”

“I didn’t find her,” Javier opened his eyes as he said it, you rolled your eyes at him again, “I wasn’t even looking for someone else.”

“You’re lying,” you shook your head again, Javier mirrored the action, “don’t lie to me, that’s the only thing I’m asking, don’t lie.”

“You know I don’t like lying, I’m not.” he whispered, you let out a sob.

“Then what the fuck happened? huh?” you shifted closer “I asked for one thing, I asked you to wait, you knew I left town to do what I wanted, what happened that made you run to Lorraine?”

Javier moved closer to you and threw every sense of courtesy and respect out of the window; he grabbed you by the shoulders and pressed you against him. You didn’t try to fight him and he took it as a good sign, but you didn’t hug him back.

Your head rested on his collarbone and he could smell the softness of your shampoo, and wondered in the back of your head if you used the same strawberry conditioner he liked so much.

“Y’know,” you said, shifting your head so you could breathe “Lorraine and I talked when I came back,” Javier hummed in surprise but felt his body shiver at the thought of you and Lorraine sharing the only thing you two had in common with each other; him, “we tried to make sense of what happened but never actually could… what happened?”

“I wish I knew.” he whispered against your hair and felt you shiver, you buried your face in his chest.

“It’s not fair that you don’t know,” you muttered out, your voice being muffled by his shirt and his skin and him and he gripped you tighter “it’s not fair because I’ve been asking myself that question all this time.”

“I tried to make sense out of it,” he broke the brief silence that formed around you, his words like a knife that was sharp enough to mull but not cut, “I thought I was doing the right thing, even if I was doing it wrong.”

You separated from him suddenly and he immediately missed the warmth of your body on him; it was as if he had never stopped holding you.

“Help me understand this,” you murmured, “I left town to do something you knew I wanted to do for so long,” you recounted in a low, deep voice, Javier nodded, “I left with the promise that you would wait here, that it was my turn of doing something I wanted and that you would be here waiting for me, it was only three years, you told me you’d wait,” he nodded his head again, trying to shove away the need of breaking down as you did “but as soon as I crossed the state line you ran to Lorraine,” you said, Javier opened his mouth but you raised your hand to him before he could pronounce a word; he hated that your version was like that, he hated it, “you started dating her saying nothing to me, and I had to find out, because my dad saw you kissing her inside this same truck,” Javier saw you close your eyes in pain as another pair of charged tears fell from them “and he called me to tell me to never come back, and you’re telling me it was the right thing?” you shook your head and Javier felt his throat close at the sight of your face quirked in pain from an old wound he just reopened “what was I to you tha–”

“Everything,” he cut you off, you sighed “you were everything to me,” he cleared his throat and begged his brain for some reason and sense so he could explain to you and give you what he thought you needed to know “and you didn’t deserve me making you responsible for my own well being.”

He saw you frown as you wiped away the tears you had shed.

“That doesn’t make sense, Javier.”

“Think about it, miel,” he tried to explain, barely noticing he had slipped the old nickname he had given you when the first time he kissed you and whispered that your lips were as sweet as honey, he brushed it off and looked at you and your unsure eyes and your bouncy leg and he was regretting everything he had done in his life up to that point until he saw you tilt your head, asking him silently to continue “we were young and stupid and we were both vulnerable,” he reminisced and you nodded ever so slightly “when we met we had lost a lot and I instantly became dependent on you and you know it,” you nodded again, another tear rolling out, he raised his hand and brushed it off, his hand stayed on your cheek, cupping your face, “the only reason I was living and breathing for was you and I knew you didn’t deserve to be the reason I was alive,” he leaned closer “you didn’t deserve to be anything else than my girlfriend.”

You let out a soft sob and looked at him with dovey, dampened eyes, his own were watering as well.

“I’ve always regretted the way I dealt with things, and I’ve always wondered what would be of us if I talked to you instead.” he whispered and then you leaned to rest your head on his shoulder, wrapping your arms around his middle.

Javier almost cradled you. He wrapped his arms around you too as you tried to drown your sobs and he felt the cold sting of a tear making its way out of his eye.

“You ran away.” you whispered, he nodded.

“I did,” he agreed and barely heard you asking why “everything fell on me out of the blue,” he shrugged with you still resting on his shoulder and his hand started gently rubbing your back “Lorraine almost forced me to propose, your dad was so mad at me he stopped doing business with my dad,” he explained, you hummed in affirmation “so my dad was mad at me too,” he scoffed, “and I couldn’t face you,” he whispered, gripping you tighter to him “I knew that you would throw everything on my face and I wouldn’t recover from that, so I just left everything behind.”

“What a fucking coward.” you whispered, Javier huffed a soft laugh.

“Yeah.” he blinked a few times. You sighed and Javier felt the warm breath that came out of your mouth clashing with his skin, making him think about all the times he had you between his arms inside that same truck in different circumstances. He yearned for those times to come back, he wished for a second chance he knew he wouldn’t get as soon as you pronounced:

“I’m supposed to be making the seating chart.”

Javier’s breath hitched when he heard it, and he scoffed at himself because in the back of his mind, deep inside himself, he held a glimpse of hope that maybe if you talked to each other, things would change. But it was a childish thought and of course… You weren’t ruining your own life again.

“You’re still getting married?” he asked.

Javier felt you undo the grip you had around him and you pushed yourself away from him.

“Don’t do this.” you shook your head. Javier saw you shift further away from him; you opened the door and jumped out of the truck and into the empty space that was the viewpoint of Boca del Diablo, he did the same; opened the door and got out of the truck to the cold air of the night and jogged around the truck to stand next to you as you threw your head back and looked at the dark, star-filled sky.

His logical side was screaming at him to stop, he knew he wasn’t being fair to you; he knew perfectly that you wouldn’t say yes; but he wanted to try so hard, he wanted to do whatever it was in his power to have you again.

He saw you there, standing in the middle of a darkish, barely moonlight illuminated, dry dirt viewpoint at the edge of a cliff he had taken you so many times when you were together, and all the feelings he had made sure to shove and hide deep inside himself came bubbling up. He never stopped loving you, and he had lost you once already, he didn’t want to lose you again even if he didn’t have you anymore.

“Miel,” he started next to you, he heard you let out a soft no “miel, is he good to you?” he asked.

You turned to see him and Javier saw the confusion in your face, he stepped closer and reached for your hand.

“As good as he can be.” you whispered in reply.

“What if…” he gripped your hand, you shook your head slowly “what if I told yo–”

“No.” you said before he could finish, Javier tugged you closer to him.

“Come with me.” he let out, softly, almost imperceptible even to his own ear.

“No.” you whined out after a sob.

“Please.” he heard himself beg again.

“Don’t, Javier please don’t do this.” you cried out again. He looked at you, the moonlight making your eyes shine with all the previously shed and yet to slide out tears.

“Miel,” he said, it was like his own judgement was blinded by the feelings he had been neglecting to process over the last sixteen years of his life; he knew he was talking but he wasn’t thinking about his own words, “I promise there was neve–”

“Javier, don’t.” you whispered, thick tears rolling out of your eyes that he brushed with his free hand.

“There was never anyone that could love me like you did…” he let out, you shook your head and he cupped your face.

“Stop it.” your voice was so thin he could barely hear it.

“...and I tried, miel, god knows I tried to find someone like you…” you opened your eyes to him and looked at him deeply.

“Please, stop.” you whispered again.

“...I was with so many women…” he whispered and leaned into you, you sighed and Javier could feel the warmth of your breath against his mouth “...so many of them and I couldn’t feel anything…” he felt another tear escaping from his eye and you reached to him, you didn’t brush it but your touch made his skin burn “...not one of them made me feel what you did, miel…” he pressed his forehead against yours “not a single one.”

“Why are you telling me this?” you whispered out, Javier tried to calm his racing heart as he fought himself from kissing you.

“Because no one was enough, miel, no one was you.” his voice was soft and he sighed slightly, you closed your eyes as a sob died inside your chest. Javier brushed his thumb on the skin of your cheek and you, out of the sudden, closed the distance with him.

Javier hummed in surprise but his lips acted by themselves. You tasted the same as the first and last time he had kissed you; sweet as honey.

You ate his lips gently, still whimpering and still crying, you brushed your tongue with this lower lip and he opened his mouth to let you in; he was willing to give you everything you wanted. He wanted to give you everything you asked for.

With the same sharpness you started the kiss you finished it.

Javier wanted to chase your mouth and keep kissing you until his lips went numb but you stepped back from him and shook your head as you licked your lower lip; he sighed once again with the wet flesh of his lip still tingling.

“You know that I can’t, right?” you asked, holding back his hand, he stood there, watching you look at him, “you know I won't risk my entire life just because the man I’ve been loving for twenty years came back, right?”

Javier dropped his gaze to the door and attempted to say that he knew; that he understood, that he wished you to be happy and that he only wanted to try because he loved you. He wanted to say that he was happy to know you still loved him after all those years and that he knew you had the right to decide what to do with your life. But he could only nod.

“I grew out of my pain, Javi,” you whispered, gripping his hand, he lifted his head to look at you, you were giving him a smile he thought he would never see again; small, soft, yours, “it doesn't hurt me anymore; you did what you did for yourself and I understood,” he nodded again, “now I’m doing what i need to do for myself.”

“Does he make you happy?” he asked in a mumble, you scoffed at him.

“Mostly.” you replied, Javier tugged you against him again and held you inside his arms.

“Good.” he whispered, burying his head inside the crook of your neck, he felt your hands roaming gently up and down his back and he wished you could touch him like that for the rest of his life.

“I’m gonna get married, Javier,” you said, he shook his head, “yeah, and I’m gonna move to San Antonio, too.”

“No.” he let out, his voice small, he felt you shake.

“Yes,” you sniffed, he held you tighter “and I’m gonna try to be happy,” you said before a sob came out of you, Javier felt your heartbeat against his nose and wished to feel it for the rest of his life, “even when I know I’m gonna forever feel sad that you’re not the one I wake up next to every morning.” you whispered.

“We can still do that.” he mumbled against your skin, he felt you shaking your head and he held you closer to him.

“I’m not gonna do that to him,” you replied, Javier sighed “because I love him too, he doesn’t deserve that.”

Javier lifted himself from where he was hidden in your body and looked at you; he slid his hands from your waist to your arms and your face and cupped it with both hands.

“What about you and me?” he let out; he heard himself and hated how broken his voice was. He felt the way your breath hitched as he finished asking and he saw you close your eyes.

“We don’t deserve each other anymore, Javi.”

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wkemeup · 4 years

Text

Honey and Chamomile

summary: Four cups of tea, four distinct moments in time, and each pulls you in closer beyond the walls surrounding Bucky’s heart pairing: bucky x reader word count: 5.8k warnings: lots of fluff, but also nightmares, and lots of tea because im a fanatic a/n: this was written for @coffee-with-bucky‘s 2k writing challenge and it’s a thousand years late, but I hope you enjoy it! My prompt was 🌟 tea 🌟

It starts late in the evening as the thunder rolls in, low breaks amongst the clouds in the distance, a flicker of lightening touching the night sky and illuminating the shadows cast by the city. Painted raindrops slide against on the windowsill, racing one another to the edge of the pane. It’s soothing as you close your eyes and lose yourself in the soft tap-tap-tap to the walls of the tower and the hums of thunder miles beyond the city. It’s better than the silence, anyway.

The whistle of a kettle sings by the stove and it pulls you gently from your stance at the window. Mug in hand, you grab a bag of peppermint tea from the small box to the right of the kettle; paintings of sunsets and starry nights along the wooden frame. You close the lid and tug the string of the bag so it lays over the lip of the mug. Hot water finds its home at the center and the air around you fills of candy canes and memories of nights wrapped in blankets by the fireplace.

You hear footsteps behind you as you set the kettle back on the stovetop, careful of the bright red rings of the burner, and slowly wrap your hands around the mug. There’s a shuffle at the edge of the kitchen as the warmth of the mug touches your palms, soothes right up into your arms, the liquid too hot to drink but the steam of it is comforting against your cheeks. Crisp and cool amongst burning heat.

“Didn’t think you were home,” you say quietly, back turned to the figure who takes in a sharp breath in response.

The team was out on a mission, one Cap insisted you stay clear of after your near fatal gunshot wound in Bratislava last month. You fought it tooth and nail, but what Cap says goes, and well, you didn’t.

“Steve says I need more time,” Bucky replies, voice barely a whisper and you can practically picture the way he digs his hands into the pockets of his plaid pajama pants, scrunching at the fabric from the inside as a way to ground himself.

“Steve’s a little overprotective, don’t you think?” you chuckle lightly, turning from the window where the raindrops cast down along the glass in full, sweeping lines to find Bucky standing just beyond the plane of the kitchen. Just close enough to make his presence known, far enough to escape. Always one foot in, one foot at the exit. Self-preservation is a hell of a drug to kick.

“He’s right, though. Hard to trust a teammate who doesn’t trust his own mind,” Bucky mumbles slowly, scratching at the nape of his neck.

The shine of silver catches your eye under the dim overhead lighting and he notices it almost instantly, the way your gaze draws to solid metal, how you study the lines and bolts in his joints, and he drops his arm. He holds it then behind his back, tries to play it off casually, but you see how he hides it from view, like he’s been caught with something he shouldn’t have. A weapon.

You sigh, setting the mug down on the counter, the whisper of peppermint on your lips. He sells himself short, gets locked up in the mindset of what Hydra conditioned him to be, struggles to come back to himself and trust that he can control his own mind again. You know how often he wonders when he’ll lose it again, when he’ll break to someone else’s will and be forced to commit terrible acts again. It’s never a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when.’

He wonders when he’ll hurt Steve, or Sam, or Nat, or you. He wonders when the final straw will break and the floor will be ripped out from under him, when he’ll take a life he can’t give back. He wonders when enough will be enough and you’ll decide he’s not worth the trouble.

“I trust you,” you say, and you do mean it, but Bucky only shrugs, eyes downcast.

He shuffles he feet again. It’s uncomfortable for him to hear, you realize. It's foreign in his body and he barely recognizes the kindness in it when he feels it, the certainty of it, because it has been so long since he knew anything but cruelty and manipulation.

So, you pull a second mug from the cabinet; the one behind the Captain America logo painted on the side and Tony’s Disney themed mug that reads ‘Greatest Place on Earth 2003’ down the handle. You grab onto the edge of the mug tucked far into the back; light blue in color, soft undertones along the bottom. It’s painted like the waves of the ocean. It reminds you of him.

Bucky doesn’t say anything as you grab a second teabag from your wooden box and drop it in the mug, or as you fill the cup with the steaming water. You set it at the edge of the counter, eyeing him carefully as he remains still in his stance. One foot in, one foot at the exit.

“There’s sugar and milk if you want some,” you offer but Bucky shakes his head.

“No, no, this is just fine,” he says, voice a little uneven, almost as if he’s surprised by the gesture.

He steps forward, out of the shadows of the hallway and lets the soft lights of the lamp at the couch’s end touch his skin. They illuminate over messy hair, a few strands out of place, creases in his cheeks from pillow cases, the way he sways side to side in his stance. Nervous energy for a man with precision behind a barrel unlike anyone you’d ever seen.

He takes the mug, testing the heat of the surface, before he pulls it between his hands. You busy yourself with your own tea, taking a sip as you watch him bring it the mug to his lips. He pauses, smelling the hot water and you’re almost certain you see his cheek twitch. Ever so slightly, gone in an instant, but a remnant of a smile remains.

“I’ll be at the gym by nine tomorrow morning if you want to join me,” you say as you head towards the hallway. “I’ve seen your left hook and I could use some help on my stance.”

Bucky swallows back scalding hot tea like it’s nothing, his shoulders pushing up by his ears, startled by your request and it makes you laugh a bit. He chokes out a short nod, flustered perhaps judging by the pink in his cheeks.

You smile back at him, pausing at the doorframe to look at him one last time as he leans against the kitchen sink.

The smell of peppermint lingers in your wake.

***

You sit on the couch in the living room with your feet kicked up on the ottoman, book resting in your lap and a warm cup of tea nestled in your right hand. Its leans onto your chest as the steam of a sweet, woody scent of green tea filters through the air.

Fresh off of a month-long surveillance mission in Chechnya, your body is sore from long nights in cramped cars and your mind a little disengaged from hours staring out at a single window through the short end of binoculars.

Natasha sits quietly at the kitchen table behind you, flipping through the files spread out amongst the surface in organized chaos. The soft hum of a playlist on the overhead speakers drown out the grunts of Steve and Sam sparring down the hall in the training room.

You smile as you hear the shuffle of footsteps at the edge of the room, feet dragging purposefully along the tile. You don’t have to look up to know who is it, but you do wonder when Bucky decided to start dragging his feet to alert you to his presence.

He used to be impossibly quiet in his steps, like he was hunting prey even with his defenses down as much as he would allow them. He's snuck up on you a few times before without meaning to, his voice in greeting startling you enough to drop a mug of scalding tea from your hands and onto your exposed thighs and the tile below. If you think hard enough about it, you’d realize it was that moment, as he scrambled to dry your skin of the hot water, frantic apologies under his breath, as he knelt into the broken shards of your mug, that his steps became louder when he approached.

He hasn’t been able to sneak up on you since.

“Hey,” he says quietly from the edge of the room.

You smile to yourself, eyes still on the lines of the novel though you haven’t looked up at him yet. “Hey.”

“Smells good.”

You nod, taking in a heavy whiff of the steeping tea. “Wanna try?”

Bucky sits down on the couch beside you, a full cushion as a barrier between, but you don’t mind. He’s slow to warm up, cautious with even the people he trusts most, and you have no interest in pushing him beyond his boundaries. He sits rigid on the couch, stiff, though you can tell he’s trying to relax. He's fighting with his muscles and arguing with his mind.

“Here,” you offer, extending the mug to him.

He stares at you, blue eyes flickering from the tea and back to your face suspiciously.

“I haven’t poisoned it, Bucky,” you tease, pulling it back to your lips and taking a sip in proof. You sigh as it passed down your chest, warming you from the inside. It doesn’t slip your notice that Bucky’s eyes linger on your lips long after you’ve extended the mug back to him.

“If it’s a germ thing, I can make you a fresh cup,” you offer, laughing a bit under your breath.

“No, uh, thank you,” Bucky musters out and slowly takes the mug from your hands.

You nod and quickly return to your book, though you keep an eye on him in the reflection of the television screen. He studies the mug for a moment, looking over the slightly uneven edges of the ceramic, the speckles of golden flakes mixed amongst the brush strokes.

“Did you make this?”

“Steeped it myself,” you chuckle. “Strenuous work.”

Bucky laughs at that, though it’s muffled a bit, restricted, but it’s still there, still light and airy and incredibly beautiful.

“The mug,” he clarifies as he holds it up. “Did you make the mug?”

“Hey, even an Avenger need a hobby, right?” you shrug, albeit a little embarrassed. The walls of the mug are uneven, the painting done under dim lighting after hours as the little ceramics shop would have been swarmed with fans if not for the kindness of the owner who let you stay late into the evening. “I know it’s not very good--”

“I like it.”

Bucky smiles softly as he nods at you, examining the mug further. He traces over the handle that’s slightly too small for his grip, the edges that sway up and down like waves, the dot of red paint at the bottom that accidentally made its way onto the surface.

He takes a sip and you watch as his whole body seems to sigh in response. Muscles easing, tension leaving him. It’s a respite.

When he hands the mug back to you, you expect him to leave. He doesn’t. Instead, he stays quietly with you, sitting contently as he picks up a newspaper from the end table and you resume your place in your book. Perfectly quiet. Comfortable.

***

“Will you just take the medicine... please?”

“I’m an Avenger, Bucky, I can fight off the common cold.”

“You can barely breathe on your own. I might call for an ambulance. It's starting to look dire. Life or death kind of situation.”

“Oh, shut up,” you laugh, swatting his hands away as you quickly move to cover your mouth as another coughing fit takes over. It burns deep into your lungs, aches hard in your chest, makes it quite hard to catch your breath again, but you feel a soft touch on your back; gentle, soothing circles of a flat hand pressed to your spine, and you manage to find air again.

You wipe your lips as he pulls back. “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing,” he says with a soft smile, waving you off.

“I could get you sick. You should’ve had me quarantined like everyone else.”

“Aren’t you dramatic today?” he chuckles, shaking his head. “I can't get sick with this serum running in my veins, you know that. Besides, no one’s quarantining you. They’re just--”

“--avoiding me like the plague?”

Bucky grimaces. “Yeah, maybe.”

You smile tiredly at him, heat a little fuzzy, vision a little tunneled, but you enjoy the way he smiles back at you. He has such a nice smile, pretty, to the point where it’s almost unfair. It curves up into his cheeks, creating lines around and under his eyes, bright and cheery and you almost forget he’s also a ghost story of an assassin with the sharpshooting range more precise than a drone.

Before you can realize what you’re doing, under the haze of a clouded mind, your hand reaches out and touches his cheek. He freezes under your touch, surprised more than anything else, and he watches with wide eyes as you dreamily trace the lines in his face, the curve of his jaw and the tip of his nose. Your head feels a little fuzzy and your eye lids flutter heavily, just as Bucky begins to smile again.

“Take the meds, doll,” Bucky asks again sweetly. He slowly pries your hand from his face and sets two red pills in your left hand, a glass of water in your right. He guides your hand with the medication up towards your mouth. “Please? I miss my training partner. Can’t spare with someone who’s half dead in the living room from a stuffy nose and I refuse to go back to Wilson.”

“Okay, okay,” you grumble playfully, quickly swallowing the medication and chasing it with the water.

The couch dips slightly as Bucky gets up, jogging over to the kitchen. The whistle of the kettle is muffled in your ears, like it’s distant and behind several walls and closed doors. You stretch your jaw, trying to pop away the barrier, but it’s of no use.

You watch silently as Bucky scrambles around the kitchen, a little flustered for his frame, and you can’t help the smile that pushes at your cheeks.

“Top right,” you tell him, pointing to the cabinet over his shoulder.

He sighs, shakes his head, and sure enough, the mugs are in the cabinet on his right. He pulls down two from the shelf. For you, the one with the tiny cartoon dinosaur on the front dressed in an Iron Man suit, and for himself, he grabs the one you made months prior, with the uneven edges and the red paint stain on the side.

Then, he starts in search of the wooden box and you give him a minute of pulling open every drawer he can find until you tell him, “behind the bread bin on the counter.”

"Oh, of course. Makes perfect sense,” Bucky teases and flips through the packets inside.

He purses his lips, narrowing his eyes, clearly in search of something specific. His whole face lights up as he grabs what he’s in search of and quickly rips open the packets and sets them inside the mugs. He pours the hot water and carefully blows on the surface of the mugs, the steam pushing out in front of him as he sighs.

“Careful, it’s hot,” he says as he makes his way back to you, setting the mug on the arm rest of the couch to give you enough leverage to grab the handle. You smile up at him appreciatively as he takes his seat next to you.

Bringing the mug to your lips, you take in a deep breath – or, as much as you able to give the swarm of congestion in your head.

Spiced and warm. Peppery sharp. Lemon and ginger.

“Bucky Barnes, did you use google for me?”

He chuckles nervously as his hand rakes through his hair, pushing it from his eyes only for it to fall back to place again. “It, uh, it said ginger tea is supposed to be good for you when you’re sick, so I thought, uh, it thought it would help.”

You struggle to contain your grin, hiding it behind the mug as you take a sip. You can already feel your sinuses beginning to clear.

“That’s very sweet of you. Thanks, Buck.”

He nods a little sheepishly, fluster burning warm in his cheeks, but he meets your eyes; the perfect wave of blues and greys, a gentle ocean amongst a sweeping current.

***

When you wake with a harsh gasp in your throat, a sharp yank of reality away from your dreams, the piercing sound of screams echoing down the hall, it’s not the first time.

You know the routine well by now, know that Steve will meet you in the hallway by Bucky's door where the screams only seem to get louder with every passing second and he’ll ask you gently to go back to your room, remind you that he’s got this and Bucky will be alright. He always is, Steve tells you, but it doesn’t lessen the heartbreak of hearing the cracks in Bucky’s voice, the sudden whimpers, the shattering silence that follows as he wakes.

The two of you will skirt around things in the morning as you always do. Bucky will stumble out of his room with dark circles under his eyes, a drag in his feet, shoulders slumped as he slides into a chair by the kitchen. He’ll sit silently as you pour him an herbal tea from your box, never something with caffeine because he’s got enough energy in his veins as they come out in tremors in his hand and bouncing in his knee. Sometimes you give him raspberry, sometimes apple caramel, sometimes peach, and he’ll nod without looking at you, pull the mug close to his face and hold the steam to his lips until it goes cold.

Those mornings frighten you because it takes him back to Bucky you knew in the beginning, before he’d learned to smile and laugh again, before he became a permanent fixture in your life, one you were unwilling to live without.

So as your feet carry you down the hall, skirting around the corner and chasing after the screams, you realize Steve won’t be there waiting. He’s out on a mission with Sam in Ukraine for the next few days. There’s no one else on this floor. It’s just you.

You, Bucky, and the monsters in his dreams.

You freeze at the edge of his door, hand gripped tight to the handle, but you can’t move.

You’re made of marble and stone because even though you and Bucky had come miles since he first came to the tower, you’ve never seen him like this; scared, begging to invisible forces, voice breaking, crying. You haven’t seen him at his lowest and you don’t know if he’ll resent you opening this door, if he’ll be angry with you for breaking that wall of trust, for intruding on something so vulnerable he doesn’t share with anyone but Steve.

But when a scream leaves his lips again, one so broken and distorted it jars itself straight through to your heart like the serrated edge of a blade, you shove your way inside, pushing consequences to the morning.

Bucky lays amongst a mess of sheets, damp with sweat as his hands curl into the fabric, teeth gritted, chest heavy with labored breaths. His eyes are closed shut, painfully so, and you try to ignore the drip of sweat down his exposed chest, how it falls along the lines of his muscles, because he’s thrashing in his sleep like something is holding him down, chocking him, and there’s tears in your eyes as you rush forward.

“Bucky,” you call far too gently. “Bucky, wake up.”

You don’t know what to do. Steve is the one who usually wakes him and you don’t have the kind of strength he does. You don’t know what laying a hand to Bucky’s shoulder will do, if the touch will ground him or shock him to a dream like state, pull him from his nightmares or throw him back to the clutches of the soldier.

But you have to try.

You can’t listen to him beg through bated breaths, “stop, stop please-- don’t! Please, someone help--”

“I’ve got you,” you say a little louder. “You’re okay, Buck. You’re not alone. You’re safe, alright? But you’ve gotta wake up now. Please, Bucky. Wake up.”

You set a hand on his forearm and he jolts up in an instant. You stumble back a few paces in shock, heart beating like thunder in your chest as you hit the sharp edge of his dress to your spine. Hands clutched tight to your chest, afraid you might have to fight him to bring him back, but Bucky remains still. He’s panting, chest heaving as hair falls down into his eyes.

You decide to test the waters.

“Bucky?”

He flinches violently, a sharp intake of breath, though he doesn’t turn to look at you. His hands dig deeper into the sheets in search of a respite he will not find and it nearly breaks your heart in two.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, voice rough and used. He can’t bear to look at you. “I thought it was under control. I—I told Steve it was okay for him to go. You shouldn’t-- You shouldn’t have to--”

“Do you want some tea?”

The words tumble out faster than you can process them. It feels like the wrong thing to say, especially with that look on his face, the guilt and shame seeping through beautifully soft and kind features, but you know his heart is racing a hundred miles a minute. Judging by the tension in his back, he’s stiff as a board, too.

You step forward as he slowly turns to look at you. There's confusion mixed in with the undeserving shame, but it’s a start at least, you think. A couple cautious more steps closer to the bed and you’re standing right next to him, hovering above him as he bends his legs and wipes his brow of sweat with the edge of the sheet.

“It usually helps me calm down at night,” you offer slowly, as gently as you can manage. “I, uh, I get nightmares, too, sometimes. Not quite as loud as yours but...”

Bucky nods in understanding. He’s heard you pacing in your room in the dead of night when sleep evades him as it often does. He’s seen when you trudge out from your room in the early hours of the morning with the kind of look in your eye that reminds him too much of himself.

“It’ll only take a second,” you say, nodding to yourself as you try to calculate the time it would take to boil the water and ready the mugs. “I’ll be right back.”

You move to take a step back but there’s a tug on your wrist. You pause, glancing down to find Bucky’s hand circling at your arm, holding you steady, though his stare remains glued to the sheets.

“Don’t go.”

It comes out in a whimper, a low break in his voice, and your heart plummets down to your stomach.

“I’ll come right back. I promise,” you ease him, stepping closer again, though you notice he doesn’t release your hand. It’s not painful, but it’s firm. He’s holding on for dear life.

“Please,” he whispers and this time, as he looks up with you, you’re met with tears in the blue of his eyes. It cracks your resolve in an instant.

“Okay. Will you come with me?”

Bucky swallows thickly, holding your gaze for a moment before he eventually nods. The sheets are thrown from his legs and you realize he sleeps only in his boxers. The realization seems to hit him just as quick.

“S-sorry,” he mumbles, “just, um, just let me--”

You step back as he releases your hand and slowly stands at the edge of the bed. He grabs his pajama pants from the floor and quickly step into them with a heated blush on his cheeks. It makes you painfully aware of the mess of an old, ratted t-shirt and shorts you sleep in, though you push it aside quickly because Bucky’s eyes have fallen to the ground and you don’t want him to retreat within himself. Not again.

“Come on.”

You extend your hand for him, waiting patiently as he stares at it for a moment. It’s an intimate gesture, more contact than you’ve had with him, but you know despite his aversion to touch, he craves it unlike anything else. He’s vulnerable right now and you hope he’ll take the anchor as you throw it to him.

When his hand does mold to yours, it fits perfectly, exactly where he’s supposed to be and you can’t help but wonder if he’ll ever let you do this again. You squeeze his hand softly as he finds an even pace at your side and you lead him to the kitchen.

He lets go of your hand to give you enough space to prepare the water, but he’s never far from reach. When you glance back at him, you find a strange mixture of fear and something you can't quite place in his eyes. It isn’t until you catch him surveying the room, the adjoining hallways, the flinches at the slightest settling of the tower, that you realize he’s on guard. It’s like he’s protecting you.

“Take a seat, Buck,” you ask of him gently, nodding to the chair at the kitchen table. “Try and relax for me. Deep breaths, okay?”

He follows your gaze, hesitantly glancing over the area, always on alert, before he turns back to you. There’s a resistance in his movement as he takes his first steps away from you, but he holds your gaze, holds the softness of your smile as long as he can, while he slumps down into the chair. It’s too far away from you, but he manages.

The kettle boils quickly and you slip two bags of tea into the mugs. Hot water in next, you drizzle an ounce of thick amber on top, swirling it around with the heal of a spoon. The smell of earthy apples and sweet nectar.

Honey and chamomile.

When you make your way over to the table to join him, Bucky is slouched down in his seat, dark circles heavy under his eyes, though he forces out a strained smile as you slide in next to him. You drag a chair up as close to his as you can, your shoulders bumping somewhat as you set the mug in front of him.

“Drink,” you tell him. “It will help you fall back asleep.”

“I can’t go back to sleep after that. I never do after... you know,” he mumbles, shaking his head, though he does take in a heavy inhale of the sweet aroma of steam.

“You’re telling me my teas won’t cure all of life’s problems?” you scoff playfully. “Blasphemy.”

It steals a smile from his lips, curving up ever so slightly into his cheeks though you can see his body fighting against it. You set a hand on his forearm, one that comes in comfort by stark contrast of the way he used to flinch out of your touch. With a slight squeeze, you draw his attention back to you, the blue of his eyes overcast into deep navy, lids falling heavy with sleep despite the race of his heart.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” you say slowly. “You don’t have to say a thing. Just let me help you, alright? Drink the tea, Bucky. I’m not going anywhere until you do.”

He nods, a slight ghost of a laugh in his exhale. “Okay.”

You smile triumphantly as you pull your own mug to your hands, warmth spreading into your palms and you take a sip. It stings on your tongue a bit, too hot, but it feels nice as it travels down into your chest, warms you from the inside out.

The two of you sit in silence for a while, the only sounds between you coming from the muffled purr of the furnace and the contented sighs as the tea touches your lips. Bucky’s shoulders start to relax as he his mug nears empty, his body swaying in his seat and you can practically see the exhaustion nestled in his bones.

You swig back the last sip in your own mug and set it on the table, a task you’ll deal with in the morning as you slowly push Bucky’s mug out of his reach.

“Come on, Buck. Let’s get you back to bed.”

He comes easily as you offer your hand, guiding him away from the sanctuary of the kitchen and back to the room that holds his monsters. The grip on your hand tightens with every step and you rub your free hand down his forearm soothingly, trying to pull the tension away. You can feel the anxiety rushing through his veins, the panic reemerging back to the surface as you cross the threshold into his room.

You know he won’t ask. He won’t dare because he can so often get wrapped up in his own mind, the chamber of burden and isolation, of guilt and shame, and he often forgets how much of yourself you’re willing to give to him.

So, you don’t say a word as you lead him slowly to the bed, releasing his hand as he slides back under the covers. His body is rigid as ice and you can feel his eyes on you, trying to memorize your face for when the darkness takes over and he prepares for you to leave.

It surprises him when your hand slips over his forehead, brushes up into his hair, and you lean down to kiss his temple. The gasp that it pulls from him is muffled, impossibly sweet, and you linger there a moment longer before you pull away.

Bucky stays silent though you can see the question burning behind the blue of his eyes.

Stay. Stay. Stay.

There isn’t an ounce of hesitancy as you slowly make your way around to the other side of the bed and pull back the covers. The mattress is firmer on this side in its lack of use as your knee dips onto the surface. Bucky is watching you cautiously, stunned, but his muscles start to relax as you settle in next to him.

“This okay?” you ask, just to be sure.

He nods quickly. “Y-yes.”

“Try to get some sleep, alright? I’ll be right here.”

He doesn't say anything, but there’s relief slipping through the tension in his body, pushing out the stones with the gentle flow of a calming stream. You smile at him as you turn onto your side, one hand gently resting on his shoulder, grounding him to the earth, to you.

You close your eyes and hope that he will feel safe enough to follow.

***

“Y/n?”

“Yeah?” Your voice is muffled by the pillow and you turn to find stars still littering the night sky. You don’t know how much time has passed, how long he’s been lying there in the prolonged silence, churning thoughts racing through his mind, so you turn onto your stomach, prop yourself up on your elbows to get a better look at him.

“You wanna go to the tea shop in Brooklyn with me tomorrow?”

You narrow your eyes, confused why he’s asking you near – you check the clock by his bedside – three in the morning. His stare is trained up at the ceiling for a moment before he turns to look at you, ocean blue littered with nerves, a new kind of vulnerability you haven’t seen in him before.

“Of course, Buck. Whatever you--”

“As a date, I mean.”

It catches you off guard, wakes you quickly. Tongue tied and throat dry.

Bucky swallows nervously and you can tell that he’s been working himself up to asking you in the hour or so that he’s been lying here awake as you curled up next to him. There are dozens of excuses brewing in the back of his mind, ways to play this off as a joke or anything but what he wants it to be in a way to preserve the friendship between you, but before he can start the waterfall of backtracking, a smile curves up along your lips.

“That sounds really nice.”

He smiles back at you. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Okay, good.” He nods to himself, settling back into the mattress with the widest grin you’d seen on him in ages. It wrinkles up into his eyes, brightens across his face bright and cheery, sits in startling contrast to the way you’d found him just hours before. You like seeing him this happy. You like being the cause of it even more.

“Will you go to sleep now?” you tease him, nudging at his shoulder enough to pull a laugh from his chest.

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“Good. Don’t want you half asleep on our date.” It twists pleasantly in your stomach as you say it, butterflies and goosebumps and you bite back the smile pushing high up into your cheeks.

“Can’t have that,” he replies, chuckling to himself and it doesn’t slip your notice how his smile seems to widen as you say the word, too. Date.

You slide back down onto the mattress, trying to find your comfortable position again when Bucky extends his arm. There’s a short pause as he waits, staring up at the ceiling, and you realize what he’s offering. Without a second thought, like you’re coming home, you scoot your body closer to him, rest your head on his shoulder as his arm curls around your back, holding you securely against him.

The soft thumping of his heart beats gently under your ear, your hand resting against his ribs, tracing lines that leave shivers in their wake. He traces patterns onto your back, his eyes slowly fluttering shut until the movement stops and he falls into the warm embrace of sleep.

You sigh, content in his even breaths, the slow pace of his heart, the muffles snores. Hugging him close, holding him in your arms where he’s always belonged. You fall asleep wrapped in the scent of honey and chamomile.

Thank you so much for reading! ❤️ If you enjoyed this fic, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi account ✨

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x you #lyn2k

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kuroosweakness · 3 years

Text

birthday cake | suna rintarou

in which u insist that suna makes a cake with you for his birthday. grocery shopping trip, him loving that bum of yours, fluff

a/n: not proof read :’) i really hope you like this hehe <3

word count: around 1.2k

“but it’s your birthday today,” you plead, taking his hands in yours and looking at him with soft eyes. “you’ve ought to do something special.”

suna looks up from his slumped posture with a small smile. you’ve already made it special enough. waking up to you everyday is enough to have his spirits soaring. suna never did much on his birthday, it’s only a regular 24 hour day just like every other day. but you made it special, like his birthday is more than just a day.

“rin?” you snap him out of his thoughts.

“hm.” he blinks and lifts his hands out of your hold, cupping your hands instead. “now what were you talking about?”

your eyes glow. “cake! we can make a cake and light candles and i’ll sing and you’ll make a wish and we’ll both eat cake :)”

suna tilts his head in interest. not interest in the cake, but interest in how adorable you look when you’re excited. “what type of cake?”

“hmm,” you tap your finger in thought. “that’s up to you. it’s your birthday after all.”

“let’s just go with a simple cake, yeah? i’ve never made one before.” suna says as he runs his finger up and down your palm.

“i saw this video about a simple chocolate and strawberry cake,” you excitedly say, pulling your hand away to dig into your pocket for your phone. “look look, we have most of the ingredients at home already :)”

suna’s eyes goes to your phone, wanting to look as interested as possible for you. after a few seconds into the video, he points out, “but we don’t have strawberries or that....” he swirls a finger in the air. “...that chocolate powder thing”

your shoulders slump, but before you can say anything, suna adds, “but we can always go to the store and get them.”

~~~

“always gotta look at all the strawberries in the container,” suna mutters, lifting the clear container over his head to see the strawberries under. “that’s what my mom always said.”

“...rin?”

“yes?”

“our shopping cart won’t move”

suna looks down and sees you struggling to push the cart. you’re pushing with all your might but the cart isn’t moving even the slightest. a wheel must be stuck...

“it...won’t move,” you sigh, giving it one last push. “it was working perfectly fine when we got it :/”

suna sets the box of strawberries down and awkwardly stares at the cart. “...maybe we can get a new one? we’ll have to put this one back first...”

you look up at him in question. “how’re we gonna put it back if it won’t move?”

... suna blankly stares at the cart before giving you a lazy smile with a shrug. “i don’t know”

~~~

“at least we got the strawberries and cocoa powder,” you laugh, hugging the groceries to your chest as you rush up the stairs to your shared apartment. your boyfriend follows behind, going up two stairs at a time. you want to point out that his hair is all over the place but decides against it.

suna has one tote bag in one hand and one hand free, giving him the perfect opportunity to palm your butt as you go up the stairs ahead of him, which is exactly why you’re rushing up the stairs instead of walking.

once you’ve reached your apartment floor, you wait for him to arrive and unlock the door since both of your hands are occupied.

“rin, hurry and unlock the door,” you hastily say, panicking as the cocoa powder, sugar, and box of strawberries nearly slips out of your embrace.

when suna finally reaches the last step, a soft chuckle slips out of his mouth. “i’ve got cha,” he hums, taking the box of strawberries with one hand. “a box of strawberries to hard to carry?” he teases.

“that’s only because i was running up the stairs,” you quickly defend. suna smirks and slides the tote bag handle on his forearm while reaching into his pocket for the keys. with a jingle and a twist, the front door unlocks. he waits for you to step in and follows after, sliding his shoes off as he places the food on the counter.

~~~

“first, we mix the eggs and sugar ...” you trail off, suddenly unsure of what to do even though it’s the first step.

“i’ve got the eggs,” suna calls, lifting his arm up to show a handful of eggs. “how many do we need?”

“two”

“mm”

~~~

“are you sure you didn’t add too much sugar?” suna asks, peeking over your shoulder as you mix the cake batter.

“i put exactly what the recipe said,” you reply back, trying to not squirm under suna’s gaze. “i wonder how much mixing is enough mixing....”

suna gives you a small shrug and goes to organize the bowls and pans on the counter.

~~~

“no need to make cake if i’ve got enough here,” he lowly chuckles, poking your right butt cheek with one finger.

you fight off the smile urging to creep onto your face and frowns at him. “hands off”

~~~

you sheepishly smile at him. suna’s eyes crinkles up in wonder.

“icing cakes isn’t an easy job, is it?”

you laugh as you try to smooth the top of the cake. “nope, definitely not. i wanted to make it like the picture but it’s a lot harder than it looks”

“looks pretty good to me”

“stop lying, it just looks like blobs”

he laughs. “you’re right, it does. maybe we can use strawberries to cover it up?”

~~~

“make a wish, make a wish!” you excited say, clapping your hands together as you urge your boyfriend to blow his candles out. suna looks at you with a goofy smile. you have an unbelievably cute smile on your face; he wonders if he should wish to see it more often.

the cake is placed in front of him on the coffee table. you can see suna sitting criss-crossed with his hands in his lap...and also him looking at you weird.

“rin? the candles are gonna go out if you don’t blow them out! :)”

suna playfully rolls his eyes and softly blows at the candles.

“wait- you didn’t even make a wish!” you protest. “you’re-”

“but i did, i thought of one in my head before blowing it out...”

you sink back on the floor in relief. the cake looks more delicious than it did a few minutes ago.

“wanna tell me your wish?” you tease, eyebrows playfully raised.

“no, not really.” he smiles and plucks a strawberry off the cake, waving for you to scooch closer so he can feed it to you. you take a huge bite and chews on the fruit, giving him a big thumbs-up to make sure he knows how good the strawberry is.

suna stares at you intently before pressing a soft kiss on your forehead. he pulls back, smiles at how cute you look when you chew, and goes in for another kiss.

he wishes with all his might that his next birthday will be just as great as this one.

minus the shopping cart not working. explaining to the employee was way more embarrassing than he expected.

#suna x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu x gender neutral reader #suna rintaro #suna rintaro scenarios #suna rintaro x reader

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suchalonelysunflower · 3 years

Text

I’ll Be With You (c.h)

Pairing: Calum Hood x Reader

Summary: Songfic inspired by “Drive” by Ashton Irwin. One ride can change your life and Calum hopes he could mend his mistakes with you.

Warnings: ANGST. Language. Mentions of a character’s death (not explicit) Some grammatical errors (English is not my first language, I’m sorry)

Word count: 6K

Author’s note: This is an unofficial second part to You Said Forever, but you don’t need to read it in order to understand. Please remember that Reblogs, Comments, Feedback and Likes are very important! You don’t know how much it helps me 💕 Hope you like it and Happy Reading ✨🦋🌻

My materialist // wanna be part of my taglist?

Thank you Andy for the picture

“ I know that you’re hurting

I know you still care

I know his voicemails sound like a lullaby”

You’ve been staring at the wall for what it felt like hours, which was probably true. Your thoughts were made of nothing as your eyes clashed with your wallpaper. You wanted them to be made of nothing.

You wished you could allow yourself not to think. Just to shut down for the day and stop thinking. Thinking made you cry and your head hurts when you cry. He always hated to see you cry.

The house felt empty even though you were sitting right there in the living room. Yet, it almost seemed like you weren’t there like you were just a ghost who you once were before you lost two people in under six months.

How could anyone expect you to be the same? Yes, the losses have been different. But that doesn’t mean their absence didn’t hurt.

You wish it could stop hurting. But at the same time, you wish it could tear you apart. To feel pain is to feel something and you were so scared to stop feeling. It happened once before with the first loss and now, now you just want everything to be over with.

But you were still staring at the wall, nothing’s changed. They were gone and you were here. They left and now you are alone.

Maybe it was always meant to be this way. Maybe it was a sign for you to never love someone else and to not let anyone else love you. What’s the point if they are going to leave anyway?

The ticking of the clock became your only friend amid silence. You took comfort in its tick-tack, the melody of your desolation. You’ve heard it once before and since then you couldn’t stop hearing it, not since that night where you counted the seconds for him to respond. Now you counted the seconds again, still hoping everything would just stop.

A 10-second answer.

“I’m not ready for a relationship”

A 10-second call.

“We lost him”

Who would’ve known that 10 seconds could last forever?

You wondered if you should call; if he would answer. If he knew...But then you remembered you blocked his number to never call again. It’s not like he would’ve answered anyway, not as he would care.

Your relationship with Calum ended before it even began. You were never official but you carried yourselves as such. It was magical until it wasn’t; until he stopped answering and started developing feelings for another.

It wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t control what he felt. But he was the one who decided to end things without telling you, all because he was scared. You were too, not that he cared.

And now, you know you shouldn’t miss him. You moved on and started all over again, promising yourself that he won’t ever see you cry again. Your music career blew up and now you had an album coming up in a few months. The awards and recognitions you won from your first single, the one that was inspired by him, were hanging on your wall like trophies, proof that you could be happy without him and you were.

Until that 10 second call in the middle of the night.

And now you felt like a child. Seeking comfort in the arms of someone who is not coming back. Knowing that the only one who you wanted to be with at the moment was living his best life without you. Not knowing, not caring.

He threw you away like a doll he didn’t want to play with anymore. Or at least that’s how it felt like. He taught you what it meant to love and then backtracked once he realized he felt the same but was not ready to act on his feelings, letting you figure that out by ghosting you like it was nothing.

You felt stupid for wanting him back, he hurt you the most, and yet, you needed him to feel safe. He was your best friend before becoming something else.

It was almost like you weren’t in control of what you were feeling. It was too much and at the same time not enough. You wanted him, you needed him. You want him to love you again like he used to and make everything okay again. But you also wanted him gone and for him to stay that way. You didn’t want his pity or his love words again. You didn’t want to see him and make every little broken piece of your heart stain again just at the sight of him, at the sound of his voice calling your name again.

What's worse? What’s the cure and what’s the sickness? Would you rather forgive and forget? Or just forget that it ever happened?

Did it ever happen?

Loud bangs coming from the door pushed your thoughts away from your mind. You were spiraling again and you didn’t even notice.

The bangs came stronger, yet no one was calling your name. You wondered who could it be; who could be crazy enough to bang on your door in the middle of the night, hours after one of the worst days of your life?

You thought about ignoring it, pretending that you’re asleep when in reality you haven’t slept for days. But the stranger didn’t know that and they could easily go away once they believe you’re in bed, tucked away in dreams.

But whoever it was didn’t stop. You counted the seconds, 5 bangs in one second, one; two; three; four; five, and 5 bangs again. This person wouldn’t have let you sleep even if you wanted to.

After two more series of bangs, you got up from your spot on the sofa, leaving an indentation on the cushion due to the hours you spent looking at nothing. You smothered your black clothes and walked to the door.

The other person was in the middle of another series of bangs when you opened the door, leaving his fist mid-air as he noticed you standing in front of him.

What was he doing here?

If you were surprised you didn’t show it. Maybe you weren’t that surprised to see him standing there with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. His hair was a mess and his eyes had some dark bags underneath it; you assumed you looked the same: tired and hopeless.

His eyes were still the same, shining with a gleam you haven’t seen in a while, hopeful for something greater than life. Yours, however, were hallowed and gloomy, no emotions whatsoever as you gazed into the eyes of the man who you wanted to call yours one day.

He looked so different from the Calum who was standing at the same spot all those months ago when he told you he needed time. And you were so different from the Y/N who stood in pain of just seeing him. Now the roles were reversed, cause at this moment you thought you'd never seen him so quiet, so inside himself. Maybe he was in pain too.

“C’mon. Let’s go” He said, nudging his head to make you follow him into the dark street.

He didn’t say hello. He didn’t need to, not with you at least. You don’t even remember saying goodbye after that night.

Calum stood there, waiting for you to answer. His brown eyes were pleading, but you knew he wouldn’t force you to do anything, he knows he didn’t deserve it and he wouldn’t blame you if you closed the door on his face. But you didn’t.

Instead, like a fool, you followed him.

He got into his car, the same color white with tinted windows and the indentation of that one time you accidentally hit a motorcycle that stopped abruptly before you on the street, and you climbed into the passenger seat, buckling up your seatbelt and pulling your legs to your chest.

Calum started the engine and didn’t turn on the radio, he just began driving into the night. You weren’t talking, but you didn’t need to; the silence needed to be heard.

It’s not the first time you did this. Before he went on tour you would call, or he would call just to spend some time together as you drove by the coast. Words were optional as you let time slip through your fingers, enjoying every second of it in the presence of each other.

“Just drive” You would say, and that was enough.

You saw the lights of the city pass by. The red lights covering you in its lights, creating an atmosphere of security within their red halo. You closed your eyes for a moment at the clicking sound of the turn signal and let you be swayed away by the left and right turns Calum would do to get to the PCA.

He had his eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel, one of his fingers lightly patting the plastic as he didn’t know what to do with it, this time he can’t just put his hand on your thigh like he used to.

You could tell he had some things to say, he always did, but he was keeping them in and you were thankful for that. You weren’t sure if you were ready to talk yet, or if you were ready to talk at all, right now you were enjoying the silence and the roaring sounds of the pavement and you would’ve liked it to keep it that way.

The destination was unknown, it always was. You would recognize the stores and the streets as you passed them by, but there was never a limit to where you could go. Many times you ended up driving as far as San Diego or San Francisco, sometimes you ended up somewhere in the desert where no one could hear you. But it didn’t matter where you’d end up as long as you came back, but how could you come back from this?

Calum must’ve been driving for a few minutes or hours, you wouldn’t know. The night sky stayed the same and you refused to look at him just yet. You knew why he was here, it was as obvious as the stars at night, and you found the strangest comfort in that even though you were still pretty mad about everything he did.

Calum, however, looked back and forwards between you and the road. He hasn’t seen you in such a long time and these are horrible circumstances to see each other again after he fucked up. Cause he will admit it: He fucked up, big time. But how could he fix it now when you won’t even look at him?

Who were you now? Were you the same Y/N he knew and loved? His Y/N never looked that small, that broken and bruised and tucked away in a world of hurt. He knew he had something to do with that, but right now that was the least of his problems. It was clear to him that right now all you needed was not to be alone and he was glad he could help.

A few minutes later, Calum spotted a gas station and parked the car for a few minutes.

“Gonna fill up the tank and get some coffee from the store,” He said as he unbuckled his seatbelt “Do you want anything?”

You were still looking at the window, the white dirty neon lights illuminated your profile as you shook your head. Not ready to give a verbal answer.

Calum sighed “Okay, you can go stretch your legs if you want. I’m not going to take long”

He jumped out of the car and you waited until he entered the store to jump out as well, letting the neon lights and buzzing bugs invade your feelings as you stood upright.

You cracked your neck and the bones of your back, letting out a sigh of relief once you feel yourself go back to normal. You walked around the car and back again, trying to clear your mind with some fresh air. You realized by the stars illuminating the sky that you must be on your way to a desert, not really caring which or where, but happy that you were far away from where you were supposed to be.

Calum came back a minute later holding a bag and two cups of coffee.

“Here,” He said, handing you the brown paper bag and the coffee cup. You looked at him questionably “I-I know that when you’re upset you don’t eat much and- I just wanted to make sure-”

The words ‘that you’re okay’ were stuck in his throat as he watched your eyes fill with tears that you weren’t ready to shed. He just nodded instead.

“The coffee is terrible, but the cookie might be good. I’m sorry, it’s all they had-“

“Thank you,” You said with the faintest voice. Calum felt his heart stop for a second, he hadn't heard your voice in so long and he wished he could hear it again as the night went on.

“You’re welcome,” He said with a tiny smile before turning around and walking up to the driver’s seat, chuckling to himself as he heard you cough the horrible tasting coffee after one sip.

A couple of hours pass and you are still on the road. You remained quiet as time went by, you knew Calum didn't mind but you also knew that he hoped for you to talk, not only about today but about everything as well. And what a beautiful irony that was. He was the quiet one ever since you met; shy and gentle towards the new artist who started working at the studio, it sparked up your curiosity towards him. Your friends said that you were trying too hard, but there was something about Calum that just begged you to know him. Little would you know that it would’ve become the best and worst decision of your life.

You were so in your mind that you missed the moment he started humming a melody you couldn’t recognize, but you didn’t care about that as you got lost in the sound of his low voice trapped willingly on his throat. You missed his singing the most. Every time he started singing you would just sit and listen intently, entranced by his voice like a pirate who fell in love with a mermaid. He always said you had the best voice out of the two of you and you would always disagree, he never understood how his voice comforted you to the point of almost being hypnotized by it and you never understood how much you needed to hear him until now.

You still felt that tingly sensation that begged of you to run away; make Calum take you back home and never see him again for your own good. But another part of you pleaded for you to stay, to treasure this moment and never let it go again, hoping that things will turn out just fine and you could start all over. You didn’t know which part of you talked with logic or with the heart, you didn’t know who to listen to. So you just listened to him hum.

“I never heard that song before,” You said once he’s done, or at least you thought he was.

Calum snapped his head towards you at the sound of your voice. This time you sounded clear, a bit hoarse, and still much quieter than what he was used to, but it was enough for him to smile a little.

“I don’t think you would’ve. It’s some kind of TikTok song” He said, eyes on you the entire time while you kept your head straight for the empty road. You chuckled and he felt like he could touch the sky with his hands, he always loved making you laugh and now he got to do that again.

“You’re on TikTok?” You asked, teasingly.

“Shh,” Calum shushed with a smile, pleased with the banter “Don’t tell the fans about my secret account”

You pressed your lips on a thin line “It’s not like you tell anyone much, anyway”

Calum’s smile flattered. “Y/N-” He whispered but you cut him down quickly.

“Eyes on the road, Hood” And you stayed quiet again.

Calum reluctantly took his eyes off you after shooting you a sorrowful look. He could swear he heard Ashton’s voice saying he fucked up over and over in his head.

You always hated secrets and his life was full of them. When he asked you to keep whatever you got on the down-low you agreed, not because you liked it, but because you respected his privacy. You thought you only had to keep it hidden from the media and the fans, however, you didn’t expect to have to hide it from everyone including his bandmates, who were also your friends. He promised you you would come clean after you make it official, yet that day never came.

He chose to run away from his feelings. He said he loved you, yet he kept you from the truth, hiding his secrets from you until the pictures where he kissed a girl on tour saw the light, simultaneously bringing his dirty laundry to face the consequences. He told you the truth once he came back; he was not ready for a real relationship but that he truly loved you and he meant every word. But, how can you trust the words of a liar?

Calum knew this, and ever since that day he’s been regretting letting you go. He needed time to figure his shit out, he needed to know if it was real or just a game, not only for him but for you as well. The night he broke your heart he realized it had already been broken when he stopped replying to your calls and messages. He foolishly thought that you would be okay, that you needed time as well, but once you were really gone did he understand.

He decided to come clean to the guys one night, he couldn’t keep it in his heart anymore, not after seeing your face drained of color and filled with tears. He could still hear the disappointment in everyone’s voices, especially Ashton’s who considered you like one of them “You didn’t just lose a love, you lost a friend” He said, and those words have been haunting him ever since.

Now you hate him, or at least he thinks you do. You haven’t said much to him and you won’t even look at him. He told himself time and again that he didn't mind, you were going through a lot at the moment and he just wants to be with you and that your company is more than enough. And he meant that, with all his heart and soul. Yet, his mind keeps railing him to do something, to help you lift your spirits somehow and hear you laugh again cause he knows that’s the only thing that could make him feel better. You make him better but you were so far away, even at an arm's length distance; you never felt so far.

A yawn passed his mouth, he tried to keep it hidden so you wouldn’t notice, but you did.

“Stop the car,” You said once this happened two more times.

“What?” Calum asked, alarm clear in his eyes and voice at your request.

You were on a road in the middle of the desert, there was not a soul who wandered over there and no sign of life either. It was just the two of you in the car.

“Pull over and stop the car,” You said, finally looking at him, but your eyes were everything but tender as the seriousness in your voice became palpable “You need a break, you are too tired to keep driving like this. So you are going to pull over at the side of the road and take a walk and wake the hell up”

Calum needn’t be told twice, not with that look in your eyes at least. His heart grew warm at the thought of you caring enough for him to let him take a break, but his hoped shattered at the words you spoke next:

“And then you take me home” It was a whisper, almost inaudible, but Calum heard it loud and clear.

He pulled over after a few meters and you were the first one to get out of the car. Calum watched as you stretched your legs and arms in the middle of the windless desert air. The moonlight shined over you and mistook you as one of her angels, at least that’s what Calum thought of seeing you standing there.

With a sigh, he unblocked his seatbelt and did the same things you did: he stretched and walked around the car a couple of times, trying to get enough energy to get back on the road again. Suddenly, his pacing came to a stop when he heard the faintest sniffle coming from where you were standing.

Your head was thrown back, eyes fixed on the sky as your arms wrapped around yourself. The clear night sky was in full view, letting even the rarest constellations come to life. You felt so small standing in front of the massive universe, hoping that maybe he could see you from where he is, no matter how small you were to him now.

Calum came to stand next to you, he didn’t say anything but you felt him staring right at you. This time you didn’t hide the silent tears that started rolling down your cheek.

“He loved the stars, you know?” You said, tears coating your voice as you stared into the night “He always talked about the Greek origin of the constellations and what they mean. I never really paid much attention to it and… now I wish I had”

Your father was a nerd, your mum always told you so, but he was the kind of nerd that loved studying and teaching and discovering that it never felt like a burden to him. He was always excited to show you some discovery he or other people made, to teach you the history of things and how everything is connected.

You were so scared to tell him that your dream didn’t belong in a university, that you wanted to see the world and make music that matters to people and you, and that it might be a long shot but that you believed you could do it. He was your number one supporter from the start, saying that you were his brightest star and that he couldn’t wait to see how you would leave your mark on this world.

The last time he called you was to tell you that he heard your song on the radio while he was shopping for groceries, he was so proud that he even told the cashier “That’s my baby singing” and you could hear the laugh in his voice when he told you he had to prove that you were actually his child and he was not just a creep in the supermarket.

That was the last time you said I love you and he said it back.

“He was a great man, Y/N,” Calum said, not looking at the stars that sparkled in the sky; no, he was looking at the star he met on Earth and that was standing next to him. He wondered if you will ever know how much you shine.

“The best I’ve ever known”

“I’m really sorry, Y/N,” He said, not knowing what to do, how to comfort you and it pained him seeing you like that.

“It’s okay,” You mumbled, wiping your tears with the back of your hands “You weren’t the one that gave him a heart attack”

A few days ago you got the call that would change your life forever. You don’t remember much of it, only your mum crying on the other line and sobbing through her words.

“We lost him, baby. He’s gone”

It was the second time that time had stopped for you.

“That’s not the only thing I’m sorry for,” Calum said with a sigh. His hands were hidden in the pockets of his hoodie, this time he averted his gaze towards the sky, searching for forgiveness he knew he mightn’t have asked for.

You pressed your lips in a thin line and gazed down, shaking your head. This wasn’t happening “No.” You said, still shaking your head and drawing a few steps back.

“Y/N-” He pleaded, following you.

“No, Calum!” You yelled, “I said no, you can’t do this to me right now!”

“Okay, fine!” He said, running towards you with begging eyes, softly grabbing your hand in his “We don’t have to do this right now, but we have to do it eventually, Y/N. We can’t keep running from it or avoid it forever. I know it angers you as much as it angers me and we can both agree that I’m the one to blame. So, please…”

You pulled your hand away from him, breaking his heart with that harsh movement. You were looking at him, eyes filled with tears he didn’t deserve and an unshared rage that came with it. You felt how your chest moved up and down with every breath you forced yourself to make to stop your heart from thundering from inside you.

Calum’s eyes met yours and you could see the regret in them. Those brown orbs stared at you with such hope that you had to look away in order not to cave. Not today, not for him.

“Why?” You spat, walking over to him and pushing him as you talked. He did not move an inch, which made you even angrier. “Why now all of a sudden? Why not a few months back on the day you broke my heart? Why not a couple of weeks ago when I ran into Luke and asked about you, knowing that he would tell on me? Why not a few days ago when I reached out to Ashton to break the news that my father had died? Why not then? Why not earlier today at the funeral? Why now and not when I needed you, Calum?” You pushed and punched him in the chest with every word, crying at the same time you let your anger take over.

Calum let you take it out on him, not feeling anything as you punched him, he knew you didn’t want to hurt him, you could never. He grabbed you by the shoulders as you cried, sobs shaking through your body as you asked the why of many things.

Why did he have to die?

Why did you leave me?

Why did you come back?

Why did you make me love you?

“I know, I KNOW,” Calum said, getting a little fed up with himself for not being able to give you the answers that you needed “I know I wasn’t there when I was supposed to. I know I’ve been a total jerk for what I did and that I had no right in doing what I’m doing but, for the love of god Y/N, I wanted to be there today!”

“Then why weren’t you?!”

“Cause I was on a fucking plane!” He yelled, matching your tone.

Your eyes opened like saucers at his words “What?” You breathed.

Calum sighed and let go of you, running his hand through his face and hair. He didn’t mean to yell, but he was tired of everything, tired of keeping it inside when you were right there, looking at him like the monster he felt inside. He didn’t know if he could make it better if the image you had in your head of him could ever change, and he was scared, so scared that you’d hate him more than before. But he had to try, he had to. He wouldn’t forgive himself if he took the coward’s way again.

“I was back in Australia. I left a few months after the last time I saw you, knowing that I made the biggest mistake of my life. Nothing made sense anymore and I knew you didn’t want to see me after every bullshit answer I gave you. I just couldn’t stay here knowing that I hurt you, so I bought a ticket and went home to get my shit together as I promised, thinking that maybe I could leave you behind and forget about those feelings that made me realize how scared I was of them, but that never happened and I doubt it ever will. Then Ashton called me after you called him, telling me everything but I didn’t listen to the whole thing. I just heard that you were in pain and next thing I know I booked the first plane back to LA, back to you, but it got delayed so many times that I couldn’t be there on time, so the first thing I did was jump out of that plane and drive straight to you”

You clenched your jaw as you listened to him, trying to drown the knot in your throat. Your mind and heart screaming at you to listen and run, not knowing which one was right. Calum, however, continued as he watched your hesitant eyes.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there, I tried my best to be because I knew you didn’t want to be alone, even when you say you do and I failed you, again” Calum’s eyes were honest, raw pain ran through them with every word he said “All I do is fail you, Y/N and I’m so tired of it. I failed to be honest with you, I failed to love you the way you deserve to be loved, I failed to be with you when you needed me most and I failed to keep my promise. I don’t want to fail you anymore, I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

These past few months without you, adding to the ones I spent on tour, were an absolute nightmare. So many times I wanted to call, to tell you that I loved you, that there was never somebody else but you, and that you are the only thing that’s felt real to me in so long. But I couldn't cope with the fear of you rejecting me, saying that you don’t want to see me again and with fair reasons.

I know I don’t deserve you, or any kind of forgiveness you could give, but I swear to you, Y/N, I want to be there for you. I will be there for you, always”

You cried, you wanted to believe him, you really did “This is so fucked” You said as you broke into sobs.

Calum walked over you and wrapped you in his arms, hiding your face in his chest as you let your tears fall “I know”

“How can I trust you, Calum?” You asked him “I feel like you are pulling me and pushing me to the ends of my rope and every time it’s getting shorter and shorter and-”

“Then we can tie more knots between us,” He said with a shaky voice “We can make it longer, and then I can meet you halfway. Or I’ll walk towards you at the end and we’ll jump together, hoping we’ll fall together as well. Y/N, I’m so tired of running from myself and I know you are as well”

“How do I know you are not lying to me?”

Calum took a deep breath, you couldn’t. Even he couldn’t know that, but he did know one thing:

“Every word that I said to you is true. I do love you, so much it hurt to the point of me being scared of it. It took me nothing to figure out that I could never love someone as much as I love you, but you’re right in not to trust me” He said and you let out a little gasp “I hurt you, and I can promise myself I won’t do it again but I can only promise you I will try. The future is unclear, my love, nobody knows when their last day on earth will be. It took me so long to understand that and it made me think that, if today was my last day, I would rather spend it with you. Always you. And I know that the world doesn’t spin around me or you or even us; but all I could do, all I want to do is spend my time with you, be with you and let it be just us for a while. For forever”

“Life is so much more than that”

“But we could hope”

And with the faintest whisper of your heart, you felt like that was enough for now. For you, it was enough.

You tighten your grip on Calum, holding each other closer as you let your tears dry on his hoodie. His hands softly caressing the back of your hand as he rejoiced in the feeling of having you close again. Just as long as you were there, Calum knew he had nothing to fear, not even himself. It was the peace you brought to each other, the one that never left, the comfort of your embrace, and the familiarity of your bodies; everything fit perfectly right where it was supposed to be. You were right where you’re supposed to be.

You stayed wrapped around each other for a while until your limbs felt numb and you knew it was time to get back. This time the road back home was silent, but not the deafening kind. Calum had his hand placed on your knee as he drove you back. Neither of you needed to say anything, it was already understood. Soon enough, you fell asleep at the sound of his humming.

To go back to where you left it was not going to be easy, you both knew that, but that’s the thing with trust and relationships: you build them as you go and it will take the time it needs. You both need to heal after the break, but as long as he’ll be in it for the long run, you will be as well.

You woke up when you felt a pair of arms wrapped around you as the smell of his cologne flooded your senses. You reached your house without noticing and now Calum was carrying you inside your home and into your bedroom as you cuddled closer to him, grabbing his hoodie with your fist.

“What time is it?” You asked in a sleepy voice.

“6 A.M,” He said and chuckled as you lifted your head to inspect your surroundings, not really believing it until you saw the faintest daylight covering your room, making you sigh.

Calum put you down in your bed and tucked you in, giving you a soft kiss on your forehead as he mumbled a goodbye. But before he could pull away, you tighten your grip on his hoodie, making him stop in his tracks and bringing him back down to you.

“What are you doing?” He asked with a chuckle, softly caressing the side of your face and silently promising to himself that he would do it right this time, not letting anything bad happen to you ever again.

“Hoping,” You said, pulling him again. This time he didn’t hesitate to pull the covers up and slide down next to you, wrapping you in his arms as you accommodated yourself in his chest. “You’ll be here when I wake up?” You asked softly.

And before you closed your eyes to sleep, you heard “I’ll never leave again”

“I'm here for you

When the world is falling down

I'll be with you

When your world is falling down”

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*if you’re url is cross please contact me so we can fix it

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polarbearaone · 4 years

Text

✯𝖬𝗂𝗋𝗋𝗈𝗋𝗌✯

✞ synopsis: Yachi has always felt unconfident about her body. You being the best girlfriend, decided to show her how amazing her body was...

✞ pairing: Yachi x big tiddy! gf

✞genre: smut, no proof read!

✞ warnings: nsfw! Yachi + character as 18+ , mentions of wlw sex

Yachi wasn’t a confident girl. When she began dating you, her confidence was solely based off what you gave her. You showered her in compliments every.single.day , yet yachi felt worthless. Her insecurities ran wild that night. The night her mother was away from town and she managed to bravely ask you to have a movie night. Now, Yachi adores you for you. She isn’t the one to based her liking of people on their appearance but to her, you were a goddess. You made her feel as if she was the only girl in the world. Your body on the other hand, your body drove her crazy. Her chest had always been small and her eyes could never seem to be off yours. Her dream has always been to lay her head on your chest, it just seems so soft. Seeing your chest makes her insecure of hers. They’re very small compared to yours and even when you two have had a heated make-out session and you decided to touch her chest , consensually of course, she wiggled out of your embrace. Her breasts are small to where she doesn’t wear a bra sometimes and this was one of their time. The way you softly cupped her breast and grazzed your fingers over her nipples made all her insecurities rush in. Despite having those insecurites, she loved the feeling. The burning feeling of you touching her in her most vulrable areas excited her. She wondered what your chest best like, to grab and fondle your breasts. Her thoughts her halted when the doorbell rang. Opening the door, was you with a bright smile and a bag full of snacks. “ Ready ,baby?” you asked. She let you in with an excited squeal, despite seeing you in school, she missed you. After taking off your shoes, she jump towards you, engulfing you in a hug. Yachi was particularly clingy when it was the two of you in private. “ Princess, yes I want to hug you too but we need to get the snacks ready, get me some bowls and then you can sit on my lap” you ordered her as she eagerly left to the kitchen. From the small opening on the kitchen door, Yachi stared at your body. You were plump in all the right places, god she wanted to touch you. “ Take a picture, it’ll last longer” you said taking the snacks out the bag, Yachi was never discreet when it came to staring at you.

Roughly ten minutes later, the lights were out and yachi was snuggly placed on top of your lap. The way your hand was barely under the hem of her shirt burned her skin, she needed more. Yachi didn’t care about the movie that was playing, you filler her head. What she didn’t realize is that the movie that you choose had a sex scene in it. “ Wanna lay down princess?” you aksed innocently. Yachi loved off your chest as you layed down, getting on top of you. She was nervous when she realized this position meant for her head to be on your chest. Her sudden pause caught your attention. “ Whats wrong?” you ask. “ Nothing” she said, not knowing where to place her chest. “ babe if you dont rest your head on my boobs-” before you can finish the sentence, Yachi’s head plopped to your chest. Yachi was on cloud nine. Your chest felt like a pillow for her face, she left pure bliss. Again, her thoughts where distracted, but not by the doorbell, by the sudden loud moans on the televison. Her eyes shot to the TV and behold was the sex scene. The two female protaginist where having sex on the big screen and Yachi felt her whole face go red. “ What’s wrong baby? You’re acting like you’ve never seen a naked girl.” Your comment made her realize she was too insecure to ever look at her body. “ Baby you have seen yourself whats the matter?” you ask worryingly. All Yachi replied was a shy shook of her head. “ Baby, you’ve never looked at your body in that way?” you ask, softly touching her arm. “ I’ve never been pretty like that, I have nothing to my body.” she softly spoke. Gently grabbing her body, placing her on your lap, you cupped her face. “ My princess, there is no need for you to be insecure, you’re so fucking gorgeous Hitoka, do you want me to show you?” you aksed, knowing the answer. She only felt two moods, embarrassed and turned on. After a minute of silence, she softly nodded.

Already knowing the way to her room, you softly picked her up. Connecting your lips as you carried her to her room, you softly kneaded her behind. She moaned into the kiss, showing she indeed liked what she was feeling. Carefully letting her down in front her full-body mirror, you stood behind her. Wrapping your arms around her, you softly whispered into her ear, “ For every piece of clothing I take off your body, I’m going to mark it and you’’ll see how beautiful you are ok?” It had seem as all the words left Yachi’s body, she could only reply with a soft whimper. Pulling out her desk chair, you ordered her to sit down. Getting behind her, you softly moved aside her hair, “ Starting off with this gorgeous neck”. Yachi let out a moan as your lips were attached to her neck. The room was filled with Yachi’s moans as you marked her neck. You sucked and bit at the sensitive skin, “ (y/n) please” Yachi moaned into the air, “ patience baby, I’m barely getting started”. After being satisfied with her neck, you hands grazed their towards the hem of her shirt. “ This needs to come off” you told her as you softly pushed up her shirt. After her shirt was off, you softly kissed her stomach, “ You’re not going to leave hickeys on my stomach right?” she asked while she panted. “ Of course I am” you said, connecting your lips to her soft stomach. Your lips nimbling on her stomach made her giggle. “ Fuck baby. keep giggling like that, it drives me crazy” you practicaly growled. Two hickeys later, you looked at her in the eye. “ Will you let me take off your bra princess?” you asked softly, knowing she was nervous. She nodded, feeling herself get wet in her panties. You softly unclasped the back, carefully removing her bra. Her nipples had gotten perky from the previous actions. Your hands came up slowly to cup her breasts. The skin to skin contact made a moan leave Yachi’s mouth. Her whole back arched as she felt your mouth wrap around her sensitive nipple. Lapping your toungue over her nipples made Yachi moan uncontrollably. While you tended to one breast with your mouth, your hand made sure to not leave the other lonely. Vice versa when you mouth landed on the next mound. Yachi’s eyes looked into the mirror. She saw her girlfriend, marking the chest she was so insecure about. After pltering her chest, you moved out the way. Wrapping your arms on her breats through behind her, massing her mounds, you whispered into her ear. “Do you see how beautiful you are, you see all my marks, you’re mine, say it”. If you massaging her breasts was not enough to make her scream, then your whisper was.

Slowly returning to front. Your hands landed on her hips. “ First the skirt, then the panties ok baby?” you told her. You began to see worry in her eyes, “ Would it make you feel better if I take off my top too?” you asked, trying to ease her nerves. She nodded frantically as you removed your tops. Both your chests were exposed to one another now, surprisingly, Yachi’s mouth dove straight to your breasts, as if a baby, Yachi sucked on your nipples. Moaning, you slowly pry her off, “ Today isn’t about me baby, its about you” you remind her. Taking off her skirt, you are left with her glorious covered sex. The sight of you staring at her clothed sex had Yachi squirming. “ Please (y/n) please” is all that left her mouth, over and over. Spreading her legs . your lips connected to the skin on ther outer thigh, “ I told you I was going to mark everything”. The marks you left on her thighs were the most pleasing to make, her juices her practically covering her thighs, giving you a delicious treat. Slowly looking up you ask, “ I’m going to take off your panties ok?” you ask her again. “ please” is all she could whimper back to you. Slowly pulling down her panties, her juices stringed off too. Pulling her more towards the end of the chair, to kissed the skin surrounding her sex. Holding her hips down had to become necesarry, she was squirming too much. “ Please (y/n) please please” Yachi whimpered. “I’m the first one to eat you out right baby?” you said, striding your tongue right through her folds. The moan Yachi let out for sure woke up the neighbors. Sucking her clit and entering you tongue into her drove Yachi crazy. Lapping your tongue in and out of her sent her into a frenzy. “ Look at the mirror baby” you managed to tell her before pushing your tongue into her again. Opening her eyes, she saw herself in her most vulnerable state. Her girlfriend in between her legs as the rest of her body different in purple shades. You knew Yachi wouldn’t last long, not with how she was clenching her walls against your tongue. Yachi let out a loud moan as she climaxed on your tongue. Cleaing what you could with your tongue, you tasted all of her. “ Trust me baby we have to do this more often, you taste delicious”. Yachi’s body was close to giving up, you slowly carried her to her bed. Heading to her restroom, you softly wet a towel and got a glass of water. “ Up up baby come on you need water.” you said, slowly raising her head. As she layed back down, you cleaned her body to help her muscles relaxed. Yachi was snoring softly as you put on some comfy clothes and cleaned the room. Putting on one of your hoodies that Yachi often wore to bed, you carefully wrapped your arms next around her, not trying to wake her up. “ Goodnight baby, I love you so much” you managed to say before your eyes slowly fell as well.

a.n : I didn’t proof read because I WAS SO FERAL WRITING THIS LIKE FUCKEKSKEKKS AHHH IMSONSKSKSKS PLZ @royaigarbage I HOPE YOU FOAM AT THE MOUTH PLZ also this is my first nsfw work so plz be nice

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu fluff #haikyuu x reader #hq #hq x reader #yachi #yachi smut #yachi hitoka #yachi x y/n #yachi x reader #yachi hitoka x reader #Haikyuu smut #haikyuu angst #smut #plz yachi lemme KISS you #Can you tell I love girls hehehe

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writing-gifts · 3 years

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both sides of the viewfinder chp. 4

adult film star!bruno x afab!reader (they are also gn)

18+ content!!

chapter 1 || chapter 2 || chapter 3 || chapter 4

——–

A/N: i was not quicker with the next update lol, but im tired of reading over it so gonna just throw it out there now since im mostly happy with it!

anyways, resort time babeyyy 😎

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You try not to show it but you're filled with excitement. You've never been to a resort and Bruno had offered to pay for your expenses. Of course you were only willing to let him pay half (which was the lowest you could get him to go).

The two of you had been playing a game of sorts ever since your little session in the dressing room. Even though the both of you wanted to finish what you started, you had wordlessly decided to see how long the other would last before giving in. You couldn't really call it romantic but you did know there was lust involved--a lot.

The game had honestly made you quite bold and taught you some patience. Of course you still had some close calls though, and filming Bruno at work had made it that much harder for you. It wasn't fair and you made sure to let the man know this, but he just coyly smiled and told you he was ready to go whenever you were.

You drop your luggage in front of the bed you and Bruno would be sharing for the next week. At first, you assumed you would both be in separate rooms since you weren't an actual item, but Bruno wasn't having any of it which you were glad for. You wanted to get as much alone time as you could with him during this vacation.

You get closer to the sliding glass doors that lead to the balcony. The location was perfect and you had a nice view of the beach from here. You had never seen such blue water or white sand. And you could already feel yourself sprawled out on a towel next to a shirtless Bruno.

"Like the view?" Bruno asks, pulling you from your thoughts.

You nod. "This is great! Thank you again for inviting me."

"Of course. I didn't want to go a whole week without seeing you."

You try to force down the smile that appears on your face in response but it's obvious and you know Bruno already saw it.

He smiles, reaches out and places a gentle hand on your cheek. However, you close your eyes to avoid his very intense and persuading gaze.

"Gonna have to try harder than that," you say under breath as you turn back to the balcony.

"...I didn't expect you to last this long. You've definitely proved me wrong."

"And I'm going to win too." You stick out your tongue.

Bruno smirks but says nothing more before going to unpack his luggage. You eventually pull yourself away from the view to do the same.

-----

You lay on your back, sunglasses on your face as you let the sun warm you. You were still pretty full from brunch and any moment now you expected to fall asleep. 'Til then, you watch Irene, Eli and Jocelyn goofing off in the water and sand.

The group decided to start the day together off at the beach. Which was perfect because today was going to be about relaxation, at least for you anyways. You all had time to get rowdy later if you wanted to anyways.

"____?"

You turn your head to look at Bruno who currently lays on his front. His sun hat sits on the back of his head to keep that part of him shaded.

"If you don't mind, can you put sunscreen on me? It's been awhile since I last did."

"Sure," you say. You should probably put some on too when you're done.

You walk on your knees to grab the bottle out of Bruno's bag and then crawl your way over to him.

You couldn't help but take a moment to admire his tanned back. The muscles along it were a lovely sight and of course being the horny bastard that you are, your eyes drift down towards his ass. He had a cute butt that you had seen many times but still weren't tired of.

You suddenly remember a scene where Bruno was getting railed and need to take a moment to calm down.

Maybe one day…

"Hello?" Bruno pulls you from your inappropriate imaginings.

"Right, right--sunscreen."

You scooch up next to him and move to place your knees on either side of his hips so you can sit on his upper thighs.

Bruno looks over his shoulder at you with a raised brow, causing his hat to fall off, but you smile innocently.

"Relax," you say.

He squints but lays his head back on his arms.

Once you squeeze and rub the cool, sweet smelling cream on your hands you bring them to his shoulders. You spread the cream following the lines of his muscles on his upper back before sliding lower.

You spend a little more time on his lower back then you should, and the dimples that rest above his ass get special attention.

The man's hips shift oh so slightly and you look up and see that his eye is closed and his brow furrowed.

You scoot up and lean forward. "I could do your front too," you whisper in his ear.

"We are in public."

You jolt at the gruff voice a small distance away. Sitting up, you see Abbacchio scowling at the two of you from the giant parasol he's sitting under.

You sigh but move off Bruno before the goth kills you with his glare.

"You're right. Sorry," Bruno says.

You weren't sorry but nod anyways. It's not like you two were doing anything that obvious. Just some teasing. And there was barely anyone outside your friend group out here!

"Just keep it out of my sight." Abbacchio taps the airpods in his ear before returning his attention to the ocean.

After you all get your fill of the beach, which goes well into the evening, it's time to get ready for dinner.

Since it was the first official day of your vacation you all want something more casual but still on the expensive side. So you all eventually decide on Korean BBQ.

"I'm just glad you two didn't try to fuck each other on the beach," Irene says. "Even if it would have been fun to watch…"

Okay so maybe you weren't as discrete as you thought. Abbacchio throws an unimpressed look directly at you and Bruno, but you choose to ignore it.

"I was just putting sunscreen on him I swear…"

Eli smirks at you. "This picture says otherwise."

Your brows raise when they show you and Bruno the image on their phone.

Your cheeks go hot and you look down at your plate. "Why did you even take a picture of that?"

"Memories!"

Jocelyn barks out a laugh. "You have a weird taste in memories cause that's the last thing I'd want to remember!"

You roll your eyes but you know it was in good fun. Bruno seems mildly amused anyways.

Not willing to entertain the topic any further, you pick up a piece of grilled pork from your plate. As you bring it to your mouth, you feel Bruno's leg brush against yours.

You peak over at him but he seems to be completely invested in a conversation with Abbacchio.

You assume it's an accident until you feel him do it again along with resting his hand on your upper leg. His fingers gently squeeze your inner thigh before rubbing the area with his thumb.

You continue eating your food as if it has no affect on you. It takes a lot of will power though as he continues his caresses throughout the whole dinner.

Afterwards, the group splits off. Jocelyn and Irene head to a club, Eli to the casino (Jocelyn made sure to put a limit on the money they could blow) and Abbacchio to the bar. You and Bruno decide to head to your room, obviously not in the mood to go anywhere else tonight.

When you reach your room, you both get ready for bed acting as if you don't want to fuck each other.

You crawl next to Bruno on the bed once you're done with the bathroom.

"I'm not tired yet…" you say

"Me neither."

"I guess we could watch a movie or show. There has to be something we both like on Netflix."

You pick up the remote for the TV and make your way to Netflix and start scrolling through the options on the front page.

"What type of stuff do you like to watch anyways?" you ask.

"Romance works."

"You probably watch the explicit type of romance," you joke.

Bruno's eyes widen slightly and you surmise that you guessed right. Either that or he was weirded out by your statement and that seemed very unlikely.

You smile amused. "Well I guess we could watch something like that then!"

Once you both finally settle on something, you get comfortable and lean against Bruno.

The movie wasn't really that great and every sex scene that happened made you cringe but it was at least kind of entertaining. Still, you were starting to get bored and were still horny from all the nonsense you and Bruno had been up to the last several days.

So in a moment of weakness you place your hand on Bruno's thigh. He looks at you expectantly but you do nothing more.

You want to look at him properly to see his expression but you need 100% focus or you would break. So you keep your eyes on the TV as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. If you were lucky this would somehow bring your game to a close and the two of you could do something more exciting.

Bruno says your name under his breath, but you simply hum. Enduring that dinner was proof of your will and you believe you could keep this up all night if needed. (But that was the last thing you were hoping for.)

Suddenly, you feel a warm hand on top of yours.

Bruno guides your hand further up his thigh. "Please…"

"Huh?" You fake the confusion in your voice.

"Let's end this game."

"Oh...so that means I win?"

"Yes you win, just please touch me."

You smirk and move to kneel a small distance in front of him. "That was so easy!" You were thoroughly going to enjoy this.

When he sees you're not getting closer it prompts him to scooch forward on the bed, but before he can touch you, you push him down on his back and crawl on top. There's a slightly stunned look on his face but it quickly changes to one of anticipation.

You line your chest with Bruno's and lean down for a kiss which he returns enthusiastically.

"I never thought I'd enjoy losing this much...." he murmurs against your lips.

You smirk and continue your kisses down his cheek. Your hands find their way under his shirt and slowly explore the span of his abdomen and chest. He softly sighs when you begin sucking at the skin between his neck and shoulder and your hands squeeze him in response.

When you hear Bruno's breathing become slightly heavier you sit up and remove his shirt. You'd seen his body many times in all sorts of positions but you still take a second to appreciate his toned torso.

You press kisses to his chest and let your hands run down his sides enjoying how he just barely reacts under your fingertips. You stop at his hips, and your thumbs trace back and forth along his hip bones. Your tongue brushes against Bruno's nipple, and you feel him tense under your hands.

You move back to sit on his pelvis and immediately feel his cock through his pants. Bruno gently rocks his hips against your ass, and you entertain the motion by pressing down yourself.

His hands grab your hips, but before he can get too carried away you pull your ass off him. He ends up humping the air and lets out a sigh of frustration. His tune changes quickly though when he sees you move down between his legs.

"I'm not really feeling like I lost anything…"

You gently rub at his hard bulge through his pajama pants. "Well guess I'm just that generous. But at the same time I feel like I'm going too easy on you now."

"Please don't make me wait any longer ____."

You look up and the man's cheeks are flushed and he seems a little dazed, but he doesn't take his eyes off you. Seeing the usually controlled actor look at you this way has your stomach flipping.

"I didn't expect you to be so impatient," you say.

"I suppose you just have this effect on me..."

Smiling to yourself, you pull his pants down and are surprised by a pair of fancy panties.

You raise a brow at him. "...You already knew how tonight was going to end, huh?"

You carefully pull the satin fabric down before licking a slow stripe up his cock. The smug look on Bruno's face is immediately wiped away.

You wrap your hand around his twitching member and press your lips against the tip. He lets out a low hum, and your tongue licks against the slit before your mouth wraps around his sensitive head.

Whenever Bruno tries to move his hips you force them down and continue with your teasing touches along his cock. But eventually you decide to stop messing with him and fully take him into your mouth.

His eyes flutter shut. "Hmm, that feels amazing amore."

Even though he was finally in your mouth you move achingly slow and you can tell he wants you to go faster. And he makes it quite clear.

You let up a bit but mostly keep at driving him crazy. Your hand starts to knead at his balls and you immediately feel him twitching in your mouth.

"____. You're--"

You pull off.

Once Bruno realizes what just happened he deadpans at you. You laugh at his expression and he sits up with a sigh.

"Okay you had your fun, time to lay back."

You raise a brow at him.

Bruno begins stripping himself completely of his clothes. "You're the winner, right? Let me treat you."

Perhaps he had a point, and you didn't really have a problem with letting him takeover. This time.

Before you can think of taking your own clothes off, Bruno's doing it for you. His thumbs hook in the band of your pants and pull them down for you.

"...No underwear?" he asks.

You shrug and remove your shirt in an attempt to prevent yourself from laughing. "Guess you weren't the only one planning on ending this tonight."

Once you're done, you lay down and Bruno settles next to you. He places his hand on your lower stomach and brings his face close to yours. You immediately get caught in his blue eyes. It's not fair that he gets to be so handsome.

His finger easily pushes past your wet entrance while his thumb rubs gentle circles against your clit. Another finger is soon added and he begins to thrust his fingers slowly into you. When he crooks them against your walls you have a hard time holding back the noises you want to make.

"A-Are you gonna get me back for teasing you?" you ask. It would be deserved, but you hope he didn't. You hadn't realized how worked up you were until Bruno started touching you.

"Another time. I don't want to wait any longer."

He removes his fingers and gets himself situated on top of you. Once his hips are comfortably between your legs, you drag a finger along his cock before grabbing and lining it with your entrance. Finally after all the games you could both get some relief.

The moment Bruno feels himself against your entrance he presses in letting you take him slowly, inch by inch. When he's fully in, you sigh and slightly wiggle your hips. One of your legs hook around his waist and you place your arms around his neck. He keeps his eyes on yours as he pulls back before pressing in again and starting a nice and comfortable rhythm.

Your hand plays at the soft hairs at the nape of his neck before properly tangling into his locks. You pull and his lips part, a perfect moan falling from them. His hips thrust against you particularly hard forcing a groan out of you.

You smirk a bit. "Never get tired of that…"

Your fingers massage his scalp before you guide his face close to yours. Your lips join and he quickly presses his tongue into your mouth.

Just as you're really enjoying the kiss, he ends it. But before you can pout he pulls you close against him. His thrusts begin to speed up and his moans are muffled by the side of your face.

You always loved Bruno's moans when you were filming him but something about his current ones were different--so desperate and wanting. They had you clenching on his cock.

His hand snakes down between you two and your eyes fall shut as he rubs your clit. Your breath hitches when you feel him nip your ear.

Bruno hums. "You feel amazing...I feel like I could do this for hours."

You mumble something unintelligible under your breath in reply, not even sure what it you said until you start moaning out Bruno's name. Your back arches and your legs tighten around his waist to keep his hips in place as you come.

Bruno nuzzles against your neck and once your legs relax he continues thrusting.

"You came on my cock so well...ah, just a little more--"

His hips begin to stutter and he calls out your name. You press your lips to his temple and move your hips to help him along. His body tenses before he pulls out and comes onto your stomach.

Bruno's hips rock against you as he comes down and soon his body relaxes against yours. He doesn't seem to mind the mess he's making. His nose brushes against your cheek before you feel a kiss.

After some silence you yawn."...We should do this more often."

He stops peppering kisses on your neck and places an arm over your torso. "Agreed. In fact, we can start again in 5 minutes after I clean us off."

You gawk a bit at him. "Don't you get tired?"

"I do, that's why I said 5 minutes."

You scoff but end up grinning instead. "Well...it's not like we're going anywhere for awhile."

#bruno buccellati x reader #bruno x reader #bruno bucciarati x reader #they should smashed on the beach for the aesthetic or whatever lol #that can be another chapter if i ever get energy to write smut again #jjba x reader #reader insert #n$fw #not sfw

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underappreciated-bee · 3 years

Text

Incompatible Intentions

Chapter One

A/N: This is a Sokka x female!reader and Zuko x female!reader. This is one of my first stories so please enjoy. Also, Y/N is 10 years old in this chapter, making Zuko and Azula 11 and 9 respectively. The year is 94AG.

Can be read on both A03 and Wattpad (same username)

SUMMARY:

Y/N was a young girl born in the Fire Nation: taught that it was the greatest nation in the world. She grew up with these ideologies engraved in her mind. As her father was a close trusted advisor of the Fire Lord Ozai, she would often spend time with the young crowned prince, Zuko.

After her father dares to disagree with the Fire Lord in a meeting, opposing to the invasion of the water tribes, he and his family were banished from the Fire Nation, never allowed to return again. They seek refuge in the Southern Water Tribe, however not for long, as the Fire Nation soon would raid…

WARNING: N/A if you find any please tell me

Also sorry for any spelling mistakes or typing errors. I have proofread this, but sometimes it just skips over my head.

Status: IN PROGRESS

Masterlist

Series Masterlist

Y/N- your name

Y/F/N- your father’s name

Y/L/N- your last name

If you’re on Chrome, you can use this extension to personalise your names.

WC: 1.9K

Zuko's eyes slowly began to follow the gentle movements of the young turtle duck in front of him. Its feet lightly paddled in the shallow water of the pond as it tried desperately to create enough momentum to reach its mother that sat a distance away. Zuko smiled fondly at the creature, breaking off another small piece of the bread in his hand, throwing it gracefully in the direction of its mother- enticing it.

This had been going on for a while: Zuko feeding the turtle ducks and Y/N staring mindlessly at the cerulean sky, neither of them speaking; only sitting in comfortable silence.

Y/N and Zuko had known each other for just under a year, first having met one another at a birthday party for Zuko's grandfather.

Y/N's father, Admiral Y/F/N Y/L/N, helped aid the Fire Lord in his war efforts against the other nations; so for the Fire Lord's 93rd birthday, he and his family were invited by the Fire Lord himself to come to celebrate.

That was the first time that Y/N and Zuko had met.

Neither of them talked the entire night, only ever sharing momentary glances with the other before briskly turning away. It had been during the weeks following when they would first speak.

Y/N's father had brought her to the palace with him, having promised that the meeting wouldn't take up much of his time and that the two of them would be able to go and eat Mochi straight after. Begrudgingly, she followed her father and waited for him in the palace garden.

Warily, her feet dangled off of the bench you sat on- too short to reach the ground- but that was to be expected from an 8-year-old. Happily, she watched as the turtle ducks raced around the pond, your eyes tracing their movements; they seemed relaxed- content, even.

Zuko felt relaxed as he walked into the palace garden. His hand clutching the bag of seeds his mother had handed him, ready to feed the ducks that day. Smiling, he walked into the garden, eyeing his surroundings in hope that Azula wouldn't be there.

Abruptly, his feet stopped beneath him: catching the sight of a young girl- around his age- sitting alone on the corner bench. He had no idea who she was, or even if she had been allowed in there, but that didn't stop him from approaching her.

"Hi," Zuko first spoke up, waving his hand awkwardly in the air at the girl.

She looked up startled, her face morphing into one of shock as she realised who had just spoken to her. Immediately, she stood up and bowed at the prince

"P-Prince Zuko," she stammered. "I am so sorry if I've disturbed you. I didn't realise you'd be here. I can go and wait for my father somewhere else." The words flowed off her tongue swiftly, her nervousness apparent.

Y/N had never seen the young Prince up close in person before. Sure, she had seen pictures of him around the Capital, and she had noticed him a couple of weeks ago at the Fire Lord's Birthday, but despite her father's position, she had hardly ever met anyone other than the Fire Lord himself.

"My friends call me Zuko." he smiled softly.

"Oh. Well, uhm, Zuko- My name is Y/N," she smiled shyly at him, timidly putting her hair behind her ear. Zuko had picked up on her discomfort, and so he started to walk towards the pond to spare her of any more of the awkward conversation.

Carefully, he sat down under the tree in the centre of the garden and started to feed the ducks. Y/N only watched on fondly as the turtle ducks swam towards the seeds he had thrown in their direction.

"Do you want to come and sit next to me?" Zuko asked the girl, turning around to look at her, "Promise I'm not as intimidating as I look."

The young girl smiled timidly, she wasn't even really supposed to be in the garden, let alone be talking to a member of the Royal Family. Glancing between him and the bread in his hand, she spoke up, more confident than before, " Only if you let me feed the Turtle Ducks."

Y/N watched the sky peacefully. As time passed, she had learned to feel relaxed in Zuko'd presence; no longer was she as tense and unnerved as she once was. She looked over at him quietly, still feeding the Ducks, she thought. Her head shook slightly before finally breaking the silence.

"Are we not going to talk today?" She asked concerned. He simply shrugged, unsure of what to say.

He seemed unusual today, not his typical self, and that to no fault of his own. Zuko now being a young 10-year-old Prince had found himself with fewer responsibilities than he'd like. Despite his countless pleas to his father to allow him to be more involved in the war effort, he would always be turned away as 'he wasn't old enough to understand'.

"Sorry I just..." he paused briefly, deciding whether or not to say something, "...I have a lot on my mind, " he admitted, giving her a distressed look.

She glanced at him, concerned, "D'you wanna talk about it?"

Before they could discuss any further, they were unpleasantly interrupted.

"Hey Zuzu," Azula gleamed as she walked into the garden.

Zuko sighed heavily at the sight of his sister. He had tried avoiding her the entire day in hopes she would catch interest in other things.

"Hi Azula," Y/N looked at the girl brightly, whilst Zuko only mumbled irritatedly under his breath.

Azula sat down beside Y/N, looking at her quizically, "I didn't expect you to be here today," her tone more similar to that of a question.

"My father had a last-minute meeting he had to attend. And since we were on our way to the market he brought me along with him." she smiled kindly at Azula.

In the past year, Y/N had found herself inside the Fire Nation palace more often than she'd first liked. Her father would regularly be called in to advise the Fire Lord on some new plan for invading the Earth Kingdom or the Water Tribes. Y/N didn't mind it though, because every time he would have to go to the palace, she'd join him.

It was somewhat of a ritual between the two. Whenever her father had been called to the palace, Y/N would happily join him. At first, she did so because she wished to see the Turtle Ducks. After a while, she realised that she liked talking to Zuko.

Sometimes, however, Zuko wouldn't be in the garden; only his sister Azula. At first, she was a whole lot less welcoming than her brother. And even though Azula wouldn't admit it, eventually, she too began to like Y/N. She liked the fact that there was another girl, around her age, in the palace.

It made her feel less alone.

Azula had sat down beside Y/N and started to pluck at the grass, viciously ripping it up with her fingers before dropping it back on the ground: then repeating.

As she continued playing with the grass, a bundle of daisies caught her eye. Azula scooted closer to them. Then she started to rip the daises out of the ground, as she had done with the grass.

By this point, Zuko finally began to notice his surroundings and looked over at Y/N, who remained unmoving on the grass, sprawled out like a starfish. He smiled kindly at the sight before turning his attention to his sister.

"Azula you shouldn't be doing that! Leave the flowers alone."

Zuko's sudden increase in dynamics caused Y/N to look at the two, unsure of what was going on. Her face was laced in perplexion as she tried to decipher their interaction. It was only when she noticed the daisies in Azula's hands that Y/N moved closer to her to inspect. Slowly, she picked up a daisy off of the ground, and then another, and another; joining Azula in her conquest

Zuko gawked at them both in complete shock, unsure of how to proceed.

"Look Zuko, it's okay," Y/N smiled, lifting a beautifully crafted daisy chain. "We can make friendship bracelets out of them." She smiled kindly at Zuko, who had a shocked look on his face. He glanced at his sister, seeking comfort in the fact she looked just as baffled as him.

"A what?" Azula spoke up.

"A friendship bracelet" Y/N repeated. "It's self-explanatory really. It's a bracelet that friends wear to symbolise their friendship." As she began to dig her nails in the stem of a daisy, to thread the next one through, " and we can make them out of daisies."

From that day on, it became almost like a tradition for the three to sit down together in the garden, creating daisy chains in honour of their friendship. Because despite how long it'd been since they'd seen one another, or even if Zuko and Azula weren't on speaking terms. It would be something they all enjoyed doing, together.

A couple of weeks had passed since that day when Y/N walked into the palace with the brightest smile on her face. In her hands, two perfectly packaged presents. She bid farewell to her father before giddily running off into the garden to meet with her friends.

Azula, sat on the bench, was reading a book and Zuko sat underneath the tree, as he watched the Turtle Ducks paddle in the water. Y/N skipped into the garden, standing in the middle of the room, the cleared her throat.

Both the siblings looked up at their friend and quickly ran up to her, forgetting what they were doing.

"Y/N!" they both exclaimed in unison, rushing to be the first to embrace her. After the three of them had hugged and the excitement had died down, Y/N looked at the two, "I got you both something."

The two siblings remained confused as they began to wonder what could their friend have possibly gotten them.

Y/N brought out two presents from behind her back, giving them to the two. They both looked at Y/N, then at each other, unsure of what to expect from the girl.

As the two opened their gifts, Y/N spoke, "I wanted to get the two of you something for being my best friends. So I decided to make it meaningful."

Azula was the first to open her gift, seeing a red string bracelet with a silver small sun charm on it. She looked down in the box, in awe of the jewellery.

"I decided that the best thing to get you would be the most important part of a daisies life cycle, " Y/N said as she showed the two a bracelet similar to theirs on her hand.

Unlike Azula who had a sun charm and Zuko who wore a water droplet: Y/N had a daisy. Showing them her charm she began to explain her gifts.

"I have a daisy. Azula is my sun," she said nodding to her friend

"And Zuko is my water."

The two children looked at the girl in front of them, both grinning from ear to ear. They placed the red string on their wrist and looked back up to their friend.

" I wanted you to have these so that you would be reminded of our friendship. That no matter where we go and no matter how far apart we are. You will always be my best friends."

No matter what.

#avatar the last airbender #zuko #sokka #katara #aang #ozai #zuko x reader #zuko x y/n #zuko x you #sokka x reder #sokka x y/n #sokka x you #multiple ending #this is really bad #im sorry #i hope you like it #slowburn #ish

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vanillann · 3 years

Text

picture me this (s.r)

i. ii. iii.

word count: 1.4k

steve rogers x gender neutral!reader

a/n: how do we feel about the new header idea? also i didn’t come up with this idea i’ve seen a few people up here use it!! (i’m just a copycat sorry loves)

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I ran my hands over my eye, going back to hunch over the computer that sat across from me with stupid taxes and bill on full display. The coffee shop I sat in was fairly quiet and the cup I had ordered had been long gone.

I couldn’t quite focus, or maybe I just didn’t want to deal with the bill that I was trying to even out. Budget was a complex thing for something as simple as a piece of paper we gave value.

I rolled my eyes, decided to do so, people watched for a minute before I went back to the silly bills I definitely should be paying as we speak.

The city below was running with people, but the outside deck of the coffee shop seemed calm compared to it. Only a few people sat at the outside table, one was a small family of three, another and man obviously waiting for someone, and last a person with their hood drawn looking down at some paper with a pencil in his hand. He was the closest to where I sat, yet I couldn’t see his face nor whatever he was doing.

The person who was writing on the paper, slipping in careful to keep his chin down and his eye hidden from the world as he stumbled to the back. Must’ve had to use the bathroom. I looked back to where he sat and smiled when I noticed the wind was starting to pick up the paper.

An excuse, just want I needed. I stopped up and walked out the glass door behind the older man. I wasn’t worried about my laptop, nobody seemed in the mdoe to steal and I was a regular so someone would fight for it.

I watched the wind rib the paper from under the little rock that was placed on top, most likely to hold it in place and I reached for it right before it was one with the wind to find another stranger to use as an excuse. I went to place the paper in a safe spot, hoping to don’t read whatever he was writing but there was no word, just a drawing.

It was of the coffee shop but it was slightly blurred, the center focus was a person with a bored expression and one hand holding up their head while the other delicately played with the keyboard of a laptop.

It was me, it was the same me that had been complaining about bills while the stranger drew me, I couldn’t figure if it was in a flattering way or a creepy way.

I heard the sound of the bell again and whipping around, the paper clutched in my grasp. It was the person, head still down and walking to where they sat til their eyes landing on my shoes. Slowly their eyes traced up my body until they found my own, suddenly my throat was dry.

Captain America was sitting in a coffee shop drawing me.

I had seen him on TV a million times, maybe even more, and he looked so much different in person. His eyes were bluer than the TV ever told, almost as if you would skinny drip in them, and his jaw could cut through anything.

His eyes were wide as he recognized the paper and then me, he was slowly putting the piece together.

“I’m so sorry-”

“It’s fine Captain,” I felt like bowing, do people bow when you meet a superhero?

“It was about to fly off and I came to grab it, didn’t know I was grabbing my self portrait,” I held up the paper, as if he didn’t already know, and pointed to the rock that had been pushed from the table from the wind.

“Oh, thank you.”

I awkwardly modded, holding out the paper from him to take. He took it quickly, slipping around me to his seat and I knew it was time to go back, but I really didn’t want to do my budget.

“You’re really good, at drawing I mean.”

He seemed shocked when I kept talking, his chin still low to hide himself from the world but he looked up from the end of his eyelashes, his look delicate as the softest pillow as he looked at me.

“I-uhm- thank you, been drawing a long time,” he nodded to the drawing and I suddenly realized he didn’t want to talk. It seemed I was going to have to go back to my budget.

“Uhm, have a nice day,” I didn’t wait for a response, slipping back into the much warmer coffee shop and let out a shaky breath. I definitely had a distraction, one I slightly regret because now when I’m close to death and the Avengers are saving everyone Mr. America is going to leave me to die.

Okay, calm down (Y/N), you’re being overdramatic. I just need to sit down and do my bills, beside this would make a wonderful party story.

I met Captain America once, he was drawing me in a coffee shop.

Maybe I could even convince people he was in love with me while drunk and talking nonsense. I moved back to the table and smiled when the laptop sat in the same spot as before, the only difference was the dark screen.

I skipped over to the laptop and did my best to not look out the window, acting like I had forgotten the whole incident already but I don’t think I’d ever forget the time a superhero wanted to draw me.

As I typed around on the laptop but my brain couldn’t focus on anything except the pencil lines and how I was the centerfold of the piece of art. How the coffee shop was smudged, like nothing else mattered but me, as I typed away with something I never cared about. It was myself frozen in time, with my eyebrows in a scolding look at my own life typed across the screen.

He had captured me in a way I never thought possible.

Yeah, I was never forgetting this moment.

I eventually finished the bill and taxes, after almost falling asleep and promising myself not to look up when the bell rang. Once I finally looked up from the laptop I realized how late and I was sure my roommate was worried sick for me.

I hurriedly packed my bag, trying to make sure I had everything when I noticed one of the workers who knew me by name approached.

“Pretty boy left ya something,” she held out a folder, a smirk on her lips and I knew she had looked even if she wasn’t supposed to. I set it on the table, opening the folder and my jaw dropped.

It was more drawings of me, all in the same spot and I didn’t even realize I always sat at this table until now. Some I was laughing on the phone, some I was drinking out of a funny mug, some I was reading, one I looked like I was almost sleeping on the table.

One the inside of the folder where word in a gentle handwriting, even prettier than his art.

Hope this doesn’t come off creepy, just thought you deserved to be held in time. Sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I’ll stop!

Steve Rogers

I probably should have been weirded out, a tall strange man was just sitting around drawing me, but he clearly gave them to me to prove he meant no harm and his words didn’t seem harmful. He just seemed like a nice guy who wanted someone to draw, I just happened to be there. I picked up the drawing from today, flipping in over and pulling a pen out of my bag.

I wrote a short message on the back, leaving my name and number at the bottom and going to the counter once I had everything, including the folder.

“If a pretty boy comes back, give this to him,” I nodded to the paper and the girl simply smiled, nodding and placing it in a safe spot in the cash register.

I ran out the coffee shop, a goofy smile stretched across my face as I clutched my new folder closer to my chest.

I definitely had a party story now, with proof.

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tokoyamisstuff · 4 years

Text

Oneshot: Substance - Bucky x Reader

Summary: After stumbling upon certain things on your boyfriends phone, your self-esteem drops below zero.

Warnings: Self-hatred, Angst, Fatshaming, kinda Self-Harm (like withdrawal, not eating enough and overly excessive sport), one or two Swear Words.

Words: ~2900

A/N: Didn’t want to keep you guys waiting any longer, so this has been written in an hour without proof-reading. please have mercy with my soul

“Heya, sweetie-pie. Mind giving me the usual?”

There he was, 12 o’clock as usual. Bucky was leaning over the counter and staring at you with his piercing blue eyes.

He gave you a wink as he shoved the money over the counter, looking around the small but full diner. It was always that crowded at this time of the day.

“Come on, you doofus. You know it’s on me” you chuckled as you pressed the coins back in his hand, relishing at his warmth for a brief second before stepping back.

It has become a ritual to prepare his favourite on almost every single day, even though he claimed to love everything on your menu. His therapist once told him that a certain routine would help him adapt to society again, and he stuck to it pretty closely.

And visiting your restaurant was an important part of his day.

“Do you think we can spend the evening?” Your boyfriend was sipping on his coffee, eyes lighting up when you finally got him his piece of plum pie with whipped cream.

When you watched him eating it in almost one bite, you kind of admired him for being able to eat basically anything without gaining weight. But well, on the other hand, training and fighting were his daily bread, so it was no wonder those calories would be burned like it was nothing.

“Gosh, delicious as always” Bucky mumbled and you couldn’t surpress a quiet laugh at your dork while you were serving another customer. “And I mean you in that dress, not the food. Love your style.”

You usually avoided to fuel his stupid way of flirting, no matter how flattered you felt anyway. So you simply changed the topic. “Dunno. Might get late. Today seems to be very profitable.”

It was just wonderful how understanding Bucky was. Well, he knew he was a piece of work as well. Why should he be mad if you were sucessfull anyway?

So he just shrugged with a wide grin as he handed you over the empty plate, saying “Well, then I’ll tidy up the flat until you’re done. Guess who’s gonna get a back rub when they’re back home?”

“Sounds like a Netflix and Cuddle evening?”

“Everything you want, doll.” He gave you a quick kiss on the cheek, knowing you weren’t all that comfortable with PDA - at least at work. “I won’t bother you any longer.”

“You’re never bothering me.” Smirking, you admired the way his muscles bulged through his sleeveless top. “Distracting is a far better word.”

He won’t comment on your statement, rather winking at you and mumbling something like “You just wait until later...” as he already rushed out of the entrance.

Six hours later you were finally able to end your twelve hour shift and close the restaurant almost on time - well...plus the few customers who came about five minutes before closure, and having to clean up the mess you’d always leave behind when cooking as quick as possible.

“I’m home, darlin’!” you cheered as you threw your bag into a corner and got rid of your shoes.

Seems like he was in the shower, at least he yelled something like ‘having something for you when he’s done’.

Well, if the surprise was something cute or nasty - you’d have no problem with either one.

“Hey, babe!” his voice called you out of the bathroom. “Can you look up when we made the reservation for cinema? I made a screenshot from the booking confirmation.”

He’d always ask for that kind of stuff in the weirdest situations. Probably because he knew he’d forget it otherwise.

“Alright.” His smartphone was placed on the nightstand, as usually. It was a miracle that he learned to use it that quickly, but on the other hand he’d always been very invested with new technology.

The two of you had no secrets. And even if: Taking each others cellphones wouldn’t really tell you something you didn’t already know about each other, so it had never been a no-go to use the others phone.

You sat down on the edge of the bed after throwing your sweat-soaked and stained clothes into the basket, wishing Bucky would hurry up so you could clean up and enjoy some hot water.

Scrolling through his picture folder, you hummed a happy little song, already wondring what you’d do on your day off tomorrow.

James is still pretty awkward in todays society, but hell he knew how to treat a woman. And dates were his speciality.

“I can’t fi-” Your words turned into a loud gasp as you saw the preview image of a seemingly naked woman. Shocked, even though you felt bad for prying instead of trusting your partner, you klicked on it to see the whole picture.

It was exactly what you thought it was. That sort of picture drunk elderly men would send each other in Whatsapp Groups.

A beautiful woman, only wearing a thong and presenting it in a - let’s call it ‘seductive’ pose.

And the worst of all was the headline, floating above the models face:

“The Perfect Woman”

This was not the only pic of some sort - you found a dozen of it, videos as well.

Disgusting was the only thing that came to your mind.

Not the woman, though. You were not one to slut-shame anyway.

But a feeling of disgust came up when you layed down the phone and went to the mirror, watching yourself closely. And for the first time, you were not satisfied with what you were seeing.

Sure, you’ve always been kind of chubby. But up until now you’ve never doubtet your beauty.

Curves were always something beautiful to you, even though you had to admit that some days, you were asking yourself why you had to be the only one of your friends who had that hard cellulite and stretch marks.

Maybe if you’d already have kids or were older, you’d be fine with it, but...

On the other hand, your friends would admire the fact that you had bigger breasts and a ‘peach ass’, as they’d call it.

Your mother used to call it ‘atomar boobs’ and ‘birth-enthusiastic hips’, always making you laugh about how self-ironic she was. But on the inside you knew how much she was struggling as well.

There were so many forms of beauty, and you loved every single one of it - including your own. But now..

“Ugly” you told yourself again and again, while trying to find a suitable pose that didn’t make you look like a small, wobbly piece of fat.

Did the opinion of a man really matter more to you than your own? Now you also felt kind of pathetic.

Actually, you were just hurt. Of him not being honest, and obviously searching for something...you didn’t want to say ‘better’, but rather ‘different’ than you.

As former Winter Soldier, he might not be that popular, but his looks sure did the trick anyway. So why not searching for a thin woman if he loves them so much?

Or does he already know them? What if those were not mere pictures, but woman he actually contacted?

The thought alone made you tear up.

You’ve tried. Your whole life you did and he knew that.

It’s a problem you’ve been struggling for your whole youth, after all.

No matter how much sport or diets you tried out, your body just wouldn’t change. Even after you’ve got diagnosed with hypothyreosis, the medication would only do so much as prevent further weight gain.

Things got a lot easier when you were grown up, and the bullies would decrease.

You learned to love yourself, and realized that many people were into exactly your kind of body-type. After finding your own style and way of living, things became so much easier and you could finally be yourself.

“Heya, there” a familiar voice snickered behind your back, “What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”

The only reaction Bucky would gain was a pained groan, yet you didn’t dare to make a scene just yet. You wanted him to take the hints and be honest with you, that was what you had decided.

“Didn’t find the picture. Go look yourself.”

With that said, you’d walk straight past him and towards the bathroom. It took you quite a while to cry to your hearts extend, sobs being deafened by the pattering sounds of the shower.

You wrapped a towel around yourself, but when you saw your reflection again as you put on some lotion, you decided to wear the bathrobe.

No matter how you moved, you felt like some fat would always wiggle or roll up somehow - and Bucky felt your discomfort as soon as you greeted him with a twisted face.

“C’mon here, babydoll. We can talk.” He patted the spot right next to him on the bed, and goddamn it was just too unfair how he was posing there on the mattress, looking like a fucking adonis compared to you.

The very second you stiffly layed down next to him, you felt his hand slip under your bathrobe and squeeze your thigh, making you gasp.

“Maybe I can cheer you up otherwise before we talk...” he breathed into your ear, adding a bittersweet “I missed you.”

“Bucky, please. I’m tired.” Perfect. You managed to get that sentence out without your voice cracking once. Now you just needd to turn around and wrap yourself in your comforter before he’d see the tears in your eyes.

You didn’t want him - or anyone else - to touch you ever again.

“O-okay...” James stuttered, already reaching out his hand to touch your shoulder. But in the end, he retreated it, realizing you needed some time for yourself. “Imma be at the sofa if you need me.”

“Or tell me what the fuck is wrong all of a sudden...” He kept himself from saying that.

The following days were the hardest ones yet to come - for both of you.

It all started with you declining all offers from friends to go swimming or visiting some food-places, slowly but steadily withdrawing you from the happy, active life you’ve built up out of anger and shame.

You had grown quite distant as time passed, at first finding any kind of excuse for intimacy, and afterwards not even bearing any kind of physical contact. Not to speak of simple and carefree talking...

The air had become strained around the two of you, but Bucky was too afraid to ask you what was wrong.

Instead of letting off some steam through work as always, you took a few weeks off. It wasn’t like you needed the money anyway, looking at how successfull your work was.

Your restaurant, even though being more of a small diner, had been on the top of New Yorks most popular ones for years. And you were damn proud of it.

Bucky would always say you’re the only one who cooks just like home, and meanwhile you knew all of his favourite dishes.

An unconscious smile ghosted your lips when you thought back to the day where Bucky would go all Winter Soldier on a dude that made fun of you for being “a wandering cliché: a fat woman running a kitchen”. Ouch.

You didn’t go on vacation those days - there was different work to do.

Actually, you liked sports. For fun, that is. Like going to swim with your friends, or going for a walk. Sometimes visiting the gym, even. To you, it was more part of a healthy lifestyle instead of a competition for appreciation.

But now, things were different. You tried to built up your confidence again through secretly visiting the Avengers training rooms - yet to no avail.

Steve kindly offered you help with any certain training, but you declined. This was something you wanted to achieve yourself.

As if that would change anything about your feeling of betrayal...

“Fuck!” you exclaimed after almost falling off the treadmill, having to use the emergency turn-off. Even though many people assumed it, you weren’t really unfit. But those past days, you’ve just overloaded yourself through excessive training and eating almost nothing.

You kneeled down, desperately trying to catch your breath. Looking down, you saw your bruised knuckles from punching the bag earlier and thinking of that damn beautiful woman on Buckys cellphone.

If only you would have the courage to talk this through with him...but you were afraid of the outcome. Of the truth.

Knowing you were all alone on the floor, you finally gave in to your emotions, huddling to a fetal curl and starting to sob over your deadlocked situation.

“Y/N?”

Dear god no - it was Bucky. What was he doing here? It was not his usual training time!

On the other hand: What else did he have to do in his free-time, now that the other Avengers are on a mission and his girlfriend is avoiding him at all costs?

Actually, he wanted to let off some steam as well. But seeing you like this swung his mood in an instant, and he aided you immediately.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?!” There was genuine compassion in his voice, sorrow even. As if it was his fault.

He was kneeling right next to you, and for the first time in two weeks, you wouldn’t flinch at his touch. “Let me help you...”

“You don’t need to play anymore, James” you whimpered, slapping his hand away. “Just get this over with.”

Now you’ve got him mad. “What the fuck did I do wrong to deserve this, Y/N?!” he screamed and his metal fist would meet the floor, cracking it broken.

“I know damn well I’m far from the perfect boyfriend...” Bucky began to sniffle, still clenching and unclenching his fists. “But I thought you’d love me as I am.”

“You’re one to talk.” Fuck it, now that you seemingly screwed up anyway you could talk freely. “I’ve seen the photos, Bucky. Of the perfect woman. Many of them. Seems like you prefer something not remotely close to me.”

For a while, there was only silence.

Bucky dug his face deep into his palms, as if he wanted to disappear in them - or simply to facepalm in a pretty weird way.

“Doll, is that what all this is about?”

His reaction made you feel kinda strange. “Y-yeah.” Did you overreact?

“You know I don’t possibly know her. Don’t care about her or her body either.” He sat there, cross-legged and with a face as dark as your heart had been those past weeks.

“Then why do you keep a ton of photos of naked models on your phone?!” You jumped onto him, effectively knocking him over and pinning him on the floor. Out of a whim, you wanted to run away, but he trapped you in his hold.

“Gosh, why can’t you talk to me for once?” It almost sounded like he found it funny. “You’re usually one to be upfront about everything.”

A sole tear escaped every eye, but Bucky would catch them with his thumb.

“Sam sent them to me. We have that Whatsapp-Group, and he’s simply that single, horny dude that finds that kind of stuff funny. You know I never delete anything. I have over 5000+ photos on that shit phone.”

You were stunned, looking at him in disbelief. “I’m sorry, doll. I should’ve know you’d stumble across them eventually. But you were always so confident and strong, the thought of it bothering you never crossed my mind.”

“Y-you-” Gosh, what a fucking idiot you were. “You’re not at fault, Buck! I’m so sorry! I feel so stupid right now.”

“And I thought you wanted to leave me...” he murmured, mainly to himself.

“Wha- how could I ever?! You’re the love of my life! Why else do you think your opinion matters this much to me? Look where we are right now!”

“And you know that the beauty-standarts of the 40s are exactly what you look like, right?”

The situation changed so drastically, it left both of you in boisterous laughter.

When you finally catched your breath, holding your thummy at how much you laughed, Bucky would not give you a break - rather cupping your cheeks and pulling your lips onto his.

“Look” he breathed out calmly, his cheek barely brushing yours. “I feel stupid for even saying this, but: My girl doesn’t have to be a model. Beauty is a concept, dear. Everyone pictures something else when they think of it. And I think of you.”

You had already snuggled up onto his chest as he swiftly picked you up, your ear able to sense his heartbeat. Absentmindedly running your hand over his prosthetic one, you realized that you were not the only one who was self-conscious about their appearance.

But just like you never doubted the true beauty of your lover, neither did he.

“Y/N...You’re strong and smart and kind. No one had ever touched my heart the way you did. That’s all that counts.”

_______

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astralsweetness · 4 years

Text

I can’t be honest (but neither can you) || Changkyun/Reader (m)

➣ I cannot believe this is my first contribution to Monsta X, this is really how I’m entering the writing side of this fandom OTL Also hello idk how to write short summaries?? I proof-read this at 4:30 AM so please tell me if I missed something lol. Fair warning I switch P.O.V.’s often in this and with absolutely no regard to any writing rules

➣ Changkyun/Reader | Angst[?] with a surprisingly happy ending that I didn’t mean to write | Showcases some bad coping mechanisms from both he and the reader | Mentioned Wonho/Reader, but it’s purely platonic in a sexual way | Smut warnings include: mentions of choking, pegging, fingering, mentions of a ruined sexual scene, sort of self-imposed edging if you squint, hair-pulling, facesitting

➣ It’s been almost a year since he called off the relationship and your name still tastes like a mixture between sugar and ash on his tongue when he says it, your picture is still saved in his camera roll, and he’s taken the plunge these last few months to reach out to you to be friends again. His hyungs tell him it’s a bad idea, and he tells them he knows, because he does, really, he swears he does. It’s just that his heart soars when he gets to talk to you and he can’t remember why he was ever scared of letting you in past that last wall he’d put up, and he’s going to your place and he hates himself because instead of “I love you” he says “please fuck me” and even now he can’t be honest to you about his feelings.

“I want you to fuck me.” He’s standing at your door, speaking in English with that deep voice of his, and you just blink blankly at him - he hadn’t called or texted to say he was coming over, and to be completely honest you hadn’t seen him in over a week. The silence is uncomfortable, but his eyes are intense, and he refuses to shift shyly under your blank stare.

“..well, come in I guess.” You invite him in with raised eyebrows - he goes easily, knowing your apartment like his own home. It’s been almost a year since you two broke up, but he hasn’t forgotten anything. That same stupid plant he hated was still on your table. He had no idea how it was still alive.

“So.. we aren’t together anymore, we haven’t hung out in a while, but you decided I’m the person you want to fuck you. Suddenly.” Your tone of voice conveys your lack of belief - this sort of feels like some very strange joke, but you have no idea who’d ever come up with one like this.

“You fuck Wonho-hyung all the time, and you aren’t dating him, so why can’t you fuck me?” His words are said in a rush, the first sign of nervousness, and you cross your arms and cock a hip. It’s your default power-pose, lets you feel like you’re in control when you have no idea what’s going on.

‘Is that really all it is?’ you want to ask, but you stay silent. He doesn’t seem aware that when you’re with Hoseok it’s more for the other man’s emotional well-being than it was just to get laid. Sometimes people needed to be broken apart and pieced back together lovingly just to feel okay. For Hoseok, you were a friend he trusted enough to let break him and then take care of the pieces that remained shattered on the floor.

“If you tell me why then maybe.”

“I’m not doing shit for a maybe.” He fires back instantly, gaze narrowing. His shoulders have tensed and he’s widened his stance, an unconscious reaction to the way your own body language had changed. Whether he actually felt it or not, at a subconscious level he believed he was being threatened.

You step forward and snag him by the forearm - the fight goes out of him instantly, replaced by pure innocent confusion as you lead him to your bed. He notices dully that you’ve redecorated your bedroom - though it makes sense considering he was the one who had helped you liven it up before.

“Sit - and try to relax. All the muscles in your shoulders are tensing up.” Your words have the opposite affect you wanted them to have - he tenses more, seemingly thrown off by your care, your notice of his minute actions.

You watch the way his gaze drifts over your room – it catches and lingers on a group picture of you and the rest of his group, tucked safely into the frame of your vanity mirror.

It’s a nice picture, though you really don’t remember taking it. You’re fairly certain everyone was drunk though, since you’ve got your arm thrown around Minhyuk’s shoulders in it, pressing your cheek against his.

It’s cute, even if looking at it is bittersweet. You can see the question on his face, the ‘why did you keep this?’.

“It’s not like I stopped being friends with them just because we broke up.” You feel defensive over your choice, face heating – you weren’t even near him in the picture, on completely opposite sides in it. He just murmurs a soft “oh” that sounds dejected, and you desperately don’t want to think about it.

“Anyway –“ You’re desperate to move on at this point, and he seems to feel the same because his attention snaps back to you. “You’re not really in a position here to argue and make demands, but fine -“ It was just sex, right? For you, anyway. “I can’t literally right now, I have a class in 30 minutes, but if you tell me why then we can negotiate.” You feel like some sort of fucking dealer.

He seems vaguely surprised you’ve agreed so easily, but he works his jaw and tries to figure out how to explain his reasoning to you - whatever it may be. You let him think and go in search of your computer bag. Online classes were a pain, especially those that required attendance in the form of a webcam. The bag has been thrown into a corner of your room, and you sigh and bend down to begin your annoying search.

“Well, we’re not together anymore, so..” You crane your neck to look at him, even as you continue to rummage through your backpack for your computer cord. Damn thing was in there somewhere, you knew. “I don’t have to worry about what you think of me anymore?”

He finishes his statement with an accidental upwards inflection that turns it into a question, and your hands pause before you turn back around and continue searching, mulling over your word choice carefully. ‘You never had to worry’ sits on your tongue, something that is desperate to be said, but you swallow it back down. He wouldn’t believe you and it’d cool the current mood.

“I see.” You finally settle on, standing and popping your vertebrae back into place as your prize - the fucking charging cord - dangles from your hands. Your two words could convey many meanings, and you can see from your peripheral that his brow has furrowed. It’s not the answer he was expecting, though you think he probably didn’t know what he’d been expecting in the first place. “Then - what is it you want?”

“For you to fuck me.” He answers again, and then swallows as he notices your blank stare has returned.

“I know that, you said that. I meant what specifically are you looking to get out of this?”

“I want it to hurt.” His words make your breath catch in your throat, emotions swinging between vaguely turned on and worried. Sure, he’d had some masochistic tendencies in bed before, but - “I mean - I don’t – not physically -“ He’s switched to Korean in the wake of your silence, a comfort language, and you wonder if he even realizes he’s done it.

“Okay.” You respond simply in Korean back and he stops his rambling, just blinks at you. You see the tension finally start to drain out of his shoulders and switch back to English purely for your own sake, because it was easier, definitely not because you wanted to be able to hear his voice speaking your native language. “So long as you promise to use safewords, I won’t ask. I’m not your therapist and I’m not -“

“My girlfriend.” He finishes your sentence quietly, back to English as well, and your mouth goes dry.

“And I’m not here to judge you.” You remedy - you weren’t going to mention anything about your past relationship, and he looks away quickly at that realization. “You mentioned Hoseok -“ His hand twitches at his side when you call his hyung by his real name, but you mercifully don’t call him on this. Maybe this was a bad idea, but you’ve gone this long purely on the denial that he regrets breaking up with you, and it’s too late to stop that now. “- so I’m going to treat this situation exactly like that.”

“Okay?” Changkyun has no idea what that means, his fingers curling into your bedspread. You check the time - 20 minutes until class.

“I’m your friend, and I want to help you. This doesn’t change anything between us, this doesn’t add some extra dynamic, some extra layer.” Your voice has gone business mode and he’s stiffened his back at it, an ingrained response from being in the music industry for so long. “I’m not doing this just because I want sex - if you are, that’s fine, but I’m just doing this to help you out. Is that clear?” He nods once, eyes wide. You think he’s cute. You’ve always thought he was cute, and it reminds you of how cute turned into smitten and smitten turned into perfection and perfection turned into love and love - well, he ended love. “Changkyun - do you promise this is just about sex or release of some kind and nothing else?”

Your tone had softened, and he’d been let out of whatever thrall your no-nonsense voice had put him into. The question hangs in the air heavily, dripping of a nectar so sweet it’s sickening.

“Yes. I promise.” His voice is hoarse, cracking and quiet - and you think he’s lying.

But you’ve held on to your denial for so long. He had said before that the spark was just gone - and what were you supposed to say to that? It wasn’t his fault; people fell out of love all the time. You could barely believe he’d ever been interested in you from the beginning and you refused to believe you were worth falling in love with for a second time. The fact that you had managed to remain friends is more than you could have ever hoped for.

“Okay.” You repeat his assurance, more for your own benefit than his. The room is quiet, and thunder rolls in the distance. Fuck - a storm meant spotty WiFi for your class.

You check the time again - 15 minutes.

“We can use the stoplight system -“ His gaze has blanked so you take the time to roughly translate it into Korean, explaining until his brow smooths out, and then you’re back to English. “Aside from that, though, I need to know what you’re interested in, what you want to happen or don’t want to happen. You can hang out here if you want during my class, or leave, I don’t care - but take the time to think over what it is you want in this session.” Your words are too clinical, you know this, but you can’t keep yourself from doing it that way. You know most of the things he’s into and not into, but if you don’t take this route then it all feels too intimate. Besides, he’d always kept a very careful hold of how much control he’d let go around you before, never wanting to slip too far into subspace, always wanting to seem in command, even when subbing for you. You wonder if that’s changed. You certainly don’t remember him ever blatantly asking outright to have something done to him before.

Memories flash across your mind eye, his back covered in your scratch marks, the way he moaned brokenly when you pulled on his hair, the way he came when you pressed your fingers to his throat. But he never asked for any of it - you had to ask if it was okay to do to him, and he always brushed off any of your attempts of aftercare.

You swallow again, feeling vaguely sick. Things had been broken in your relationship long before he called it off, but neither one of you wanted to admit it. Your heart hurts for multiple reasons, but when you glance at him out of the corner of your eye you know the biggest one: ‘I hope I didn’t hurt him by not talking about it’.

But he didn’t talk about it either. Did he care about whether it hurt you?

“Is that okay?” He’s been talking to you, and you startle out of your thoughts - a half-formed little smirk dances at the corners of his lips, one eyebrow quirked in amusement. He knows you well enough to know when you’ve been drifting. “I said, I’ll stay here if that’s alright with you.”

“Yeah, it’s fine - sorry, was just.. thinking.” It doesn’t really surprise you that he’s decided to stay - he’s confident to a fault, it’s true, but there’s a slash of shyness that strikes through his character, and you know that if he left he might not be able to come back. The thunder rumbles in agreement.

You half-watch him as you set up your computer on the coffee table – he’s looking around your apartment with thinly veiled curiosity, though you don’t really blame him. It didn’t really look anything like when you two had been together, and yet.. you felt it still had his subtle touch all over it. You wondered if he noticed that.

The class is boring, as it usually is – you’re watching the screen but your mind is far away, listening to your admittedly enthusiastic professor talk about the hyoid bone and articulations while your focus is on Changkyun. He lingers around you with a nervous type of energy, clearly not feeling allowed to roam around your apartment (it’d be kind of weird if he had, you admit) but also not feeling comfortable enough to sit on the couch next to you, even if he would have been off camera.

It’s almost like it was before, and you half expect him to sit down next to you anyway and throw his arm around your shoulder, always just off-screen, sitting next to you during your classes while he amused himself with his phone, just so he could be near you.

You’re just about to be able to feel the phantom warmth from the memory of his arm around you before he coughs and you startle, eyes snapping to him – he looks back wide-eyed, not understanding your surprise but murmuring a quiet apology anyway.

God you were so fucked.

.｡..｡.

“So?” The instant your class had ended you’d snapped the computer lid shut – you hadn’t retained a single thing said, what a complete waste. It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d skipped and focused on Changkyun in the end after all. “Did you decide on what you wanted?”

You’re so flippant with your question that he feels like he’s being asked about what it is he wants to eat instead of how he wants to have sex – the entire hour of your class he’d been nervous, and those nerves had by now tightened into a very tight ball at the base of his spine that periodically sent white-hot flames licking along his muscles.

“I –“ His mouth is so fucking dry and he hates how small he suddenly feels – he’d never felt like this around you before, but usually it had always been you asking if you could do something to him, hadn’t it? “I said it earlier. I want you to fuck me.”

He watches your reaction with pin-point precision – the small widening of your eyes, the way your gaze darts to the side like it always did when you were thinking something over – it wasn’t like you hadn’t ever fucked him before, but he’d never asked you to do so, and you clearly hadn’t expected him to come out with something like that so easily.

Why the hell could he say something like that and not something as simple as ‘I love you’, or even ‘I miss you’?

“Okay.” You’ve wrested your thoughts back under control – it wasn’t fair of him to say something like that, looking so utterly and effortlessly attractive. “As long as there’s no kissing I’ll fuck you any way you like, Changkyun.” You were over him and he was over you and this was just sex.

If you said it enough you’d start to believe it, right?

Changkyun just nods at your terms, looking a bit despondent – you can’t help the strong surge within you that says to fix it, fix whatever upset him, but you have a feeling you knew already. He’d always been a bit fixated on kissing you, but you knew if you let him this time then it’d all be over.

“I don’t remember you ever falling this far into the ‘submissive’ side of things, Changkyun.” You’re desperate to regain the upper-hand, and he flushes a bright red at your comment, grumbling out a weak “shut up” that has you smiling.

“Have you been experimenting?” You’re still teasing him but he bristles at the insinuation that he would have been with anyone after you – you had no reason to think he hadn’t been but the mere thought of being with anyone other than you makes him ache deep in his chest, in his soul.

“No.” He tries to keep his voice calm, but it wavers still and he digs his fingernails into the soft leather of his belt, pausing. “I haven’t been with anyone since –“

He can’t say it, but you understand regardless – he doesn’t like how surprised you look, ducks his head and lets his hair obscure his view of you as he refocuses on undressing. It’s not that you’d been wrong to be surprised with his decision for today, either – before you, he’d never really definitively considered himself particularly dominant or submissive, happy with having the choice to be either at the drop of a hat. That changed with you though – you had been so uncompromising with your power, beautiful and self-assured, and he knew without a doubt that if you so much as even hinted at it he would be on his knees for you every single time.

Not that he had ever told you that, of course. He’d never told you anything he really wanted to. Even now, with you looking at him softly, trying to see if you’d crossed a line with your little teasing jabs, the words ‘I’m happy being this for you’ get stuck in his throat and all he can do is tug his shirt over his head wordlessly, fingernails clicking nervously at his belt as he undoes it. You pretend not to notice the way your heartrate accelerates as he reveals his body bit by bit to you, slender waist but powerful figure, beautiful skin, beautiful body.

“Well, then – lie down.” You gesture to your bed and he swallows down the stupid fucking butterflies he gets at the gesture – he’d been on your bed before, he’d been in this position before, there was absolutely nothing to be nervous about.

And still, despite his nerves, a pleasurable chill runs down his spine when he hears the cap of the lube being clicked open, and he forces himself to exhale as he shifts and tries to get comfortable on a comforter he no longer recognized, in a room that had no trace of him in it anymore.

You look at him with a level gaze, always so calm, and he ignores the erratic beating of his heart and nods his assent for you to begin, immediately shifting his gaze to your ceiling.

Why the fuck was he so goddamn nervous?

(He tries to forget the way he instantly whimpers when he feels your finger, slick with lube, probing at his rim, tries to forget the way he gets hard in under a minute from your heavy gaze and one finger alone, and god he aches for more, aches for anything you’re willing to give him.)

“You’re taking this awfully well.” The teasing comes out unbidden, spilling past your lips before you can even think about the words – but it’s true, for someone who had claimed to not have been with anyone since you he was taking your fingers incredibly well.

“My own hands – fuck – exist..” His snarky response turns into a shaky moan halfway through when you decide to carefully – but quickly – add a third finger. There’s something erotic (and interesting) to you about that, thinking over the fact that Changkyun had been finger-fucking himself ever since you two broke up.

“You look good like this.” It’s an attempt to make up for the previous teasing but all it does is cause him to groan and throw a forearm over his eyes, legs spreading wider when you hit that spot deep inside.

“Fuck, jesus – fuck..” It’s a broken sob instead of an actual sentence (though he manages to stick with English), a familiar feeling already building deep in his gut. He’s not sure if it’s because it’s been so long since he’d been fingered by someone else or if it’s because it’s you doing it, complimenting him while doing so, or if it’s a combination of everything, but his back arches against his will and he knows he is seconds away from coming undone already.

“Stop – stop, oh my god –“ At his desperate plea you stop moving completely and he wants to sob as the pleasurable feeling slowly ebbs away, an almost painful drag as it settles back into a dull burn. He’s gasping, tiny whimpering sounds as he sucks breath back into his lungs, chest heaving – his eyes are wide, fingers curling into your comforter. He looks frantic, frightened almost, and even if it wasn’t your responsibility you knew you’d be desperate to fix it.

“Changkyun, ar –“

“I’m fine.” He bites it out angrily, doing his absolute best to look like he had been anything but moments away from an orgasm five minutes into.. whatever this was. He’s shutting you out again, before anything even begins, and it fills you with such an irrational anger that you have to suck in a breath of your own to keep from lashing out, taking gentle care to extract your fingers even as your blood boils.

“Stop fucking lying to me.” You can’t keep the ice from your words, even if you manage to control the volume and pitch – his dark eyes snap from the ceiling to you in surprise. There’s a panicked feeling bubbling up in his chest, because he really doesn’t know if he can handle you calling him on his true feelings for you right now, doesn’t want to have to admit he still loves you while he’s naked and so vulnerable.

“I’m not –“

“Stop it.” His mouth shuts with an audible click of his teeth, so sudden is your cut-in. Your brow has smoothed out, no longer angry, instead immensely sad, and he’s not sure this is any better. “You said you wanted to do this because you didn’t have to worry about my opinion. So why are you still doing it?”

He can’t breathe, and the lube is drying sticky on your fingers, and for a moment neither of you are aware of the position you’re in, the way the thunder has become your constant background music – he’s looking at you unblinkingly and you’re staring back, and it’s too intimate, too much, but neither of you look away.

“Please stop.” He speaks and it’s barely a whisper, the sound of someone’s heart breaking louder than his voice. You don’t know what to say but open your mouth anyway.

Lightning flickers outside your bedroom window and then your apartment is shaking from the resounding thunder, the power flickering and then plunging the two of you into darkness. Suddenly you can breathe again, and you’re quickly trying to slide out from in between his legs because he said ‘stop’ and he was fully coherent even if he hadn’t said ‘red’, because he said ‘stop’ and you have only ever wanted him comfortable.

“Wait –“ He is frantic, grabs your forearm with frigid fingers as he leans half off your bed to catch you from retreating too far. It’s hard to see him but you get flashes from the light outside your window, electricity reflecting off his dark eyes in starbursts.

“You said to stop.” Your voice is broken and you feel so powerless, sick inside because while you rarely manage to ruin a scene it still tears you up inside each time, and Changkyun wouldn’t let you try to fix it with aftercare and you don’t know what to do anymore.

“I meant –“ Stop talking, stop laying me bare and open, just fuck me and make me forget everything, stop being you so I can stop loving you. “I just want to be ruined.” He says instead, and his voice is so low but so weak that you barely recognize it.

“I can’t do that if you don’t let me.” Your clean fingers curl around his and gently pry them from your arm – but then you keep holding them, and you want to let go but you can’t remember how to tell your body to do so. “Will you let me, Changkyun?”

The air is still and silent aside from the rain slashing angrily at your windows – there is no thunder, your own heartbeat loud enough (or maybe it was his, you didn’t know anymore).

“I want to.” He answers instead, voice quiet but a bit stronger than before, and your eyes have adjusted so you can see the features of his face vaguely now, follow the line of his brow to his cheek to his lips, and you’re leaning in and you hate yourself because you had promised this was the one thing you wouldn’t do.

“Let me wreck you then, baby.” And oh that nickname was a mistake but you’d said it anyway, a ghost of a whisper against his lips, a proposition and a plea all in one. He moves forward the last centimeter and connects your lips as an answer, a sound that is almost one of pure relief being ripped from his throat.

It’s like he’s been waiting years for this moment, doesn’t even fight as you grip his jaw lightly and angle him into a better position so you can scope out the inside of his mouth with your tongue, relearning things you had known long ago but had thought were forgotten.

There’s a flighty feeling in his chest, one of nervousness and expectation – he doesn’t want to give you control so easily, he doesn’t want to be opened and laid bare in front of you, he doesn’t want you to see something you dislike in him – but more than anything he wants you to touch him and keep kissing him and god he fucking misses you, has missed this. He’d asked you to ruin him, you’d asked to wreck him, but he knew he was already both ruined and wrecked just from being near you again, from having your lips on his own.

You try to slide your hands back down his body but he stops you, continues to kiss you as his fingers curl around your own, and the act is so intimate it almost feels wrong.

“Just – hurry up, I’m ready enough.” He manages to say scattered between four different kisses, never apart from your lips for more than a few seconds. You hate yourself for not even trying to stop him, leaning into them each time.

“You can stretch yourself some more while I get ready.” You have to pull away from him completely to say this, and he follows you like you’ve got some magnetic pull on him before you’re off of the bed and the connection is broken.

Even with your eyes adjusted it’s hard to properly get the harness on, fingers fumbling with the straps but managing in the end. You can hear him breathing harsh, anticipating – you can tell from the sounds alone that he hadn’t taken your advice, but you’re not surprised. Always your little pain slut, even if he had never wanted to admit it.

When you approach him again his eyes are wide, brow furrowing as he notices you’re still fully clothed – he keeps his mouth shut tight though, gaze darting in the dark. The storm still rages on outside but neither of you even notice it anymore.

Your fingers on the inside of his thigh startle him – he jumps, trying to close his legs, but you force them back open again. Something about that simple action makes a moan trickle into his throat, but he swallows it back down stubbornly.

He can’t conceal the next sound he makes when you press the blunt tip of the strap-on to his opening, though, a rasping whine as you push in slowly, so fucking slowly. Even with all the lube he knew you’d slathered over the toy it still takes a bit of work to get it into him, and every slight stretch makes him grit his teeth in a masochistic type of pleasure, feeling so full by the end that it makes him so painfully hard his head spins. It hadn’t taken long to get him worked back up, but he’s not really thinking about that right now.

All he knows is that he wants to be close to you, wants to feel good, wants to make you happy – he wants so much that he doesn’t think he can even begin to put any of it into words. It always ends up at ‘I love you’ and he already knew that was a phrase that lodged in his throat like knives.

“Please.” This he can say – you don’t know what he’s begging for but he’s begging all the same, the word ‘please’ becoming a chant that slowly shifts back into his native tongue when teeth mark his throat, fingertips pressing insistently into his hips as you fuck him hard and rough. He hopes, distantly, that it bruises. He wants to be able to remember this for as long as possible.

If he was present enough in the moment he might have been embarrassed by the sounds he was making – his naturally deep voice has transformed completely into high breathy whines, all trace of his ‘savage rapper’ persona gone when you bite his lip hard enough it throbs before you’re flipping him, pushing his shoulders down into the bed with one hand.

The feeling of your palm, small but blindingly warm on his back, makes him weak enough that his thoughts stutter, head a chaotic mess of fractured thoughts and sensations. His eyes are open but unfocused – it’s dark in the room anyway, but he’s unaware of it, cognizant only of your presence and his, that warm fuzzy feeling in his chest competing with the white-hot fire you were stoking lower in his pelvis.

You want to cry at how beautiful and perfect he is for you, the way he arches his back instinctively, presents himself as your own personal plaything – but he wasn’t yours, you had to remember that, remind yourself over and over that this was just sex. (If you repeated it enough it started to stop sounding like real words, and that was equally as dangerous as forgetting them in the first place.)

The head of the strap-on teases his entrance and he groans, clenching his fists into your pillow – you’d taken it out when you’d flipped him and he was fighting against every fucking urge and want and need his body was screaming at him to just take the plunge and force himself backwards. (But another part of his brain is telling him to wait, to make you happy, to draw this out as long as fucking possible because he has no idea if he’ll ever get to experience it again.)

“Can you tell me what you want?” Your voice is soft as silk, quiet, and a fluttery feeling rises up in his stomach at the sound, at how you’ve modified an order to be a request. He doesn’t know how he feels at the realization that you were taking it ‘easier’ on him verbally, that you had at some point come to understand he was having trouble letting go completely.

“I –“ He tries, he really fucking does, but like always the words get stuck in his throat. He just can’t seem to bring himself to admit what he really wants out loud and it is destroying him. One of your hands smooths down his side, lingering at his hip, and he feels like you’ve left behind a line of pure fire on his skin, almost burning away the shame and hatred he feels at himself for his fucking inability to be vulnerable, his cowardice.

“Just fuck me.” He says instead, defeat coating his words – and he can feel you hesitating, because it was obvious he’d meant to say something else and hadn’t.

He opens his mouth to say something, though he has no idea what, at the same instant you decide to slide the strap-on back into him. Whatever he’d been planning to do is gone from his mind instantly, his world reduced to just the dull burn, the frustratingly slow drag against his innermost walls, the way you manage to somehow brush up against the spot that has him trembling and dropping to his forearms. He curses in a strange mixture of Korean and English and you laugh softly at the sound, even as you slide out and thrust back into him hard enough that he jolts forward.

He feels, in a sense, like he is being broken in all the best ways – all he can focus on is you, all he can feel is the way you’re fucking him, grabbing at his hips. His breath is caught in his throat and he just knows he is going to ache later, bone-deep and satisfying.

But it’s not enough, never enough – you’re not asking to do more to him like you had in the past and he can’t manage to tell you what he desires most (though, at this point, he’s not totally sure he could say anything coherent anyway). He reaches back with one hand, groping – your fingers wrap around his and he drags them up to his hair, a wordless plea. He hopes you understand what he’s asking for.

A broken moan is ripped from his throat when you fist your hand in dark strands and pull backward, forcing him into an arch – his mind has blanked into varying shades of white, electricity on his skin and molten lava running through his veins, your heat against his back overwhelming.

You know it’s a bad idea before you do it, but you lean down and press you lips to his shoulder anyway, teeth scraping over feverish skin – the hoarse whine he gives at the feeling makes wetness pool between your legs, uncomfortable and wrong because this was just sex, this was just supposed to be for him.

The urge to mark him up is so strong it’s almost distracting – your hips falter in the bruising pace you’d set as your mind drifts, Changkyun groaning at the sudden shift in speed.

“Let me –“ He’s gasping, feels like he’s been running a fucking marathon or drowning (and oh, he has, drowning in you, in his expansive and terrifying feelings for you) but he knows your hips have to be sore by now and to be completely honest he is just downright greedy, wanting to feel you deep inside, wanting to –

He just wants so much. He reaches back to press at you gently and you let him move you instantly, trying to figure out what had bothered him – as soon as you realize he just wants a change in position you’re grabbing at his hips again, tugging him over your legs. His cock drags against the fabric of your shorts and he nearly sucks in a breath, trying to focus on lining himself up instead of the way it throbbed (or the way you were looking at him, hair splayed out on the pillow and yet so in command still).

He thinks he should feel more in control like this, on top of you, hands braced on your shoulders – but he doesn’t, not at all, and he knows instantly that he isn’t when you snap your hips up to meet his and he falls onto you, moan vibrating against the skin of your neck. He can feel your fingers in his hair, nails scraping against his scalp, can feel the infuriatingly teasing way his cock is rubbing up against your fucking shirt you never took off. It’s gone untouched for so long that it’s absolutely aching by now and he thinks he might actually be able to orgasm like this – but he doesn’t want to, not yet, even with how border-line painful its become. He doesn’t want this to end, doesn’t want to have to go back to a world without you in it.

His hips stutter on top of yours when you tug on his hair again, grinding hard against the strap-on, and you lift his face high enough you can press your lips to his, all hot breath and panted moans. He tastes of honey and heartbreak and you want nothing more than to make him cum and fall apart, trembling, on top of you.

“Am I ruining you properly, baby?” Your voice is dark red and sinful, and he trembles at the sound and tries to seek out your lips again, a whine lodged in his throat when you tighten your grip on his hair and keep him in place, rolling your hips languidly up to meet his frantic movements. “Tell me.”

“Fuck..” He responds instead, deep and rough in his chest – it cracks into a high moan when you punish him with a harsh upwards thrust, fingers curling into your shoulders. Your soft laugh, amused or delighted he’s not sure, makes a feeling like electric butterflies break out across his skin. If you had let go of his hair he’d have buried his face into your neck again to hide his expression – but you haven’t, and he knows you can see everything, every part of him, every expression he makes.

He thinks he must look stupid, embarrassing – but all you see is pure beauty. His brow has furrowed and sweat drips down to his collarbones, bruised lips parted slightly, glistening from where you’d kissed him earlier. Hazy eyes try to look anywhere but your face failingly, allowing you to see the foggy galaxy residing in their darkness. You’re not sure if what you’re seeing is his pupil or iris, but you find it gorgeous all the same, intoxicating.

“I’m going to make you cum, Kyunnie.” He shakes at your dangerous words, your knife-sharp gaze. You’re aware he never responded to your last question. “You’ll fall apart up there, ruined, just like you asked to be.”

Your words wrap around him, coiling tightly like chains – he feels caught, trapped, and he wants nothing more than for you to make good on your word, even if it sends a sharp trill of fear through his stomach.

The grip on his hair lets go suddenly and he sags forward, as if your pull on him had been all that was keeping him upright. He’s left a mess of pre-cum on your shirt, flushes a dark red when you drag your fingers through it thoughtfully.

“Messy boy..” You muse, heat spreading through you when you see the way his cock jerks at those two simple words, so red and aching, so fucking beautiful and desperate.

Fuck, you wanted so badly for him to be yours.

One of his hands flies to your wrist when you finally wrap your fingers around him – more of his weight is on you now but you can’t find it in yourself to mind, not with the way he’s breathing hot and wet against your neck, the way he doesn’t stop you when you move your hand, just clings to your arm desperately like he’s not totally sure he wants to be touched yet.

A choked sound leaves his mouth, lips bitten bloody, and you turn your head so you can breathe against his ear, let him press his face further into your neck. “Such a little whore..” You murmur, and he sobs open-mouthed against your skin and thrusts weakly into your fingers and then back onto the strap-on, unsure of which feeling he wanted more of. “So beautiful. So perfect.”

A part of him feels like he’s dying, unsure if he was really okay with being so vulnerable with you – but another part of him, the larger part, feels like he is fucking soaring, like this is all he had ever wanted and more. There are flames licking at his body, coiling tighter and tighter in his stomach, and he’s not sure how much longer he can last like this.

“You can fall, Changkyun.” Your voice is in his ear, like the sound of silk sliding over skin, fingernails tracing lightly along the back of his neck. He hates the way he reacts so viscerally to it, climax surging forward at the sound, at the way your fingers slide wetly over the head of his cock pinned in between the two of you. “It’ll be okay, you can fall to pieces. I’ll catch you.”

He orgasms with a wail that makes him flush a dark red, and he would have been mortified at the sound if every nerve ending in his body wasn’t currently sparking, his muscles spasming as he tries to keep thrusting into your fist even as the lightning bolt sensations turn from overwhelming to painful. He doesn’t even realize tears have slipped from his eyes until he feels your lips kissing them away, and he is hit with such a wave of emotion that he can’t breathe all over again (and it is just pure emotion, he couldn’t identify a single one of them if he tried).

After you slowly pulled out and settle him on the blankets he watches, distractedly, as you slide the straps down over your hips, leaving it on the floor to be dealt with later. Impulsively he reaches out to catch the edge of your shorts when you try to head to the bathroom, tongue sliding over chapped lips when you turn that powerful, beautiful gaze of yours on him. One of your eyebrows has raised, appraising him as he slowly tugs you back to the bed until you’re resting on your knees next to his waist. Sweat is drying sticky on his skin and he’s trying not to feel like he’d done something wrong, reacted in some undesirable way that you’d remember and relate to him for the rest of your life - but above all that, he wants to taste you. It’s the only consistent thought running through his mind, more prevalent than the lingering unease at having bared so much of himself to you.

“Please.” Again, it’s all he can say, eyes so dark and wide, pleading – his fingertips rest lightly on your hip, over the waistband of your shorts, lips parted ever so slightly. It’s so obvious what he’s asking for, and you want to say no. You’re pretty sure you need to say no. “Babe –“

You surge forward to cut him off mid-sentence with a brutal kiss and he gasps – you didn’t want to hear that, and you can tell from the way he’s frozen that he hadn’t meant to say it, even as his body returns the kiss on pure muscle memory alone. This entire experience had been a mess, a mistake, and yet –

“Okay.” It’s more a breath against his mouth than a word, but the way he smiles at your soft agreeance makes your heart hurt. You were in so deep, had fallen so far – how foolish of you to think you had been over him. How fucking stupid you’d been.

He wastes no time, pulling your shorts and underwear down like he’d done it hundreds of times before – because he had, you note dully – fingers wrapping around your thighs. When you sink down onto his face a tension drains out of his body that neither of you had even noticed was still lingering.

All he can smell is you, all he can taste is you – you surround him and this is all he’s ever fucking wanted, to be possessed by you, to be as close to you as possible. He’s not even totally sure what he’s doing aside from the fact that he’s putting his absolute all into it – he’s just trying to taste every inch of you he can, tongue delving as deep as possible before switching to suck on your clit. There’s no rhyme or reason to his method and it has you letting out a quiet sigh that borders on a gasp. He tries to memorize the sound instantly – any sound he could get out of you was a treasure in itself, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever get to hear them again after this.

There is no particular build-up to your orgasm – it’s at first lingering briefly bone-deep and then suddenly it is upon you in streaks of lightning, hips grinding against his face but mouth stubbornly shut. You can’t let this be any more intimate than it already was. (And yet you instinctively reach down and lace your fingers with his, and his thumb smooths across the back of your hand as he continues to mouth at your cunt, drink up your fluids. You are so utterly and completely stupid, your heart in your throat.)

There is a moment you want to carve out afterwards, a small bubble in time where the two of you could just bask in the afterglow and pretend like nothing had changed from a year ago – but you can’t let yourself do that, pushing yourself up off the bed even as every fiber of you begs to remain beside him for a moment longer. His fingers remain holding yours a moment too long before dropping to your bedspread, defeated.

Your heart suddenly felt like it was three sizes too big for your body, filled to the brim with love for a man you knew you’d have no second chance with, and you clench your teeth tightly to keep it from oozing out between your teeth like bittersweet sugar.

He’s still panting when you return with a damp cloth, reaches for it as if he really expects you to make him clean himself off. You scoff and catch his hand with your own, setting it back down on the bed as you begin to clean off his face first. Whether you wanted to avoid intimacy or not there were things you simply refused to throw to the wayside just because you wanted to remain distant, and one of those was taking care of him after sex. (He’s more receptive this time than he used to be, not fighting you and claiming he was fine, letting you dote on him with a sort of hesitant and soft acceptance. It makes your heart hurt all the more, the pure ache and want almost unbearable.)

“You’re always so messy..” It’s meant to be a light comment but the two of you accidentally lock gazes when you say it, your hand stalling in its motions. He looks like he wants to say something, lips parting – your breath catches in your throat, waiting, but he ultimately just shuts his mouth, gaze darting away from you. Your breath leaves you in a small burst. “Just relax, Kyun, I’ve got you.”

It’s the typical words you say to a sub after an intense session (with an accidental affectionate nickname that you bite the inside of your cheek for), but you mean them, and you don’t want to, but you do, irrevocably. You know that if he needed it, if he asked for it, you would let him stay here for as long as he wanted. You knew that tonight you wouldn’t be asking him to leave. And for that you are so, so incredibly fucked. (You wonder if he is too, judging from the way his eyes widen at the nickname and his breath stutters – but you crush that thought instantly, don’t dare to get your hopes up.)

He’s surprised that you take the time to clean him up, bring him water and a change in clothes – they aren’t his but they’re clearly a man’s, and he wonders if they belong to Hoseok considering the size. Something deep in his chest hurts at that thought. He’s even more surprised when you pull on an oversized shirt instead of telling him to leave – he faintly realizes that he recognizes it, a soft violet that hung down to your lower thighs and always felt soft against his chest when he’d hold you – crawling into bed next to him after changing into it, though he’s automatically moving to accommodate you, perfectly content to throw the thick comforter to the floor to be dealt with in the morning.

“Is.. this okay?” Your voice is quiet, so tentative and soft and hesitant, and all he wants to do is tell you yes, this was more than okay, this was everything he had ever wanted.

“Yeah – I mean, it’s your bed, so..” He hates himself for the way he responds, swallowing hard but taking the initiative to slide his arm over your side, nose in your hair. He can feel the way you tense, but you don’t say anything against it or try to pull away. “And.. this? It’s okay too?”

“…it’s okay.” It’s a small response but he inhales deeply in relief, drinking in your scent half by accident. It’s the same smell he had missed for so long, the one he’d dream of and wake up thinking there was a chance it still lingered on his pillow, heart dropping through his ribcage when he realized it wasn’t.

Despite the nerves fluttering in your stomach you fall asleep fast, mentally drained and physically exhausted - his fingers trace the line of your shoulder, head pillowed on his own arm as he watches you sleep. There is a purely warm and happy feeling trying to spread through his body, but it doesn’t make it very far before the remembrance that you still weren’t his and he still wasn’t yours freezes it in its tracks. He feels like his heart is melting, dripping through his ribs and oozing into his stomach and making him sick.

He’s shaking your shoulder before he even knows what he’s doing, and you��re half-awake and groggy but so fucking beautiful and every single one of his nerves feels like a live wire underneath his skin, buzzing and loud and painful, and he is so scared, but he is also tired. Tired of hurting, tired of missing you, tired of the way Kihyun will be talking about you but stop awkwardly when he notices Changkyun listening, tired of the way he smiles so big his cheeks hurt when the two of you talk on the phone, tired of how he swallows down the words “love you” every time you hang up – and he’s fucking tired of being scared most of all.

“Changkyun, you better be fucking dying..” You’re angry, always angry when woken suddenly, and he just wants to kiss you.

‘I love you, I’m stupid, I was scared, I always loved you, I never fucking stopped, did you know I would dream of you? Did you know that you were the only thing on my mind? On plane rides, in the vans, backstage, all I could think about was you and my hyungs all told me I was just hurting myself and I knew that but I still hoped that somehow you and I would end up happy together.’

Like always he can’t say any of it. It sits on his tongue and he just utters a quiet ‘fuck’ instead, throat tight. Why couldn’t he fucking do this?

“..Kyun?” He’s sitting up now, and you are too, side by side – your expression is open, sleepy but worried, and he has a sudden urge to take your face in his hands and kiss your eyelids.

The scariest part of telling the truth, of laying yourself bare for someone, of letting them in, was that they could take one look and never come back. And maybe he’s not afraid of loving you – maybe he’s never been afraid of loving you, with your eyes that hold the only stars he ever wants to look at. Maybe he’s been afraid of not being loved back.

He swallows hard, reaches for every bit of confidence and courage performing has ever given him, forces himself to be brave the way the industry has taught him to be. Moonlight filters in through the window and he thinks your eyes might actually house the milky way in them somehow.

“I love you, still – always. I never stopped.”

He can’t breathe because you’re just looking at him, stunned and disbelieving, tears collecting on your lash-line but not falling, never falling, and he feels like the fucking worst for telling you now, this way, this bluntly – but he knows if he didn’t say anything he would have never said anything, and he’s not sure he could have survived that, so the words had fallen from his lips hard and heavy and desperate to be said. (And a part of him is still surprised he even managed to say them at all, rushed and frantic as they were.)

“I –“ Your brow is furrowed and your voice is thick, but when he reaches to brush your tears away you let him and his lungs start to tentatively fill themselves with oxygen again.

When you smile it is watery and weak but it is there, and he feels like sunlight has reappeared in the lining of his skin, bright and blinding and warm.

#sub!changkyun #sub!monsta x #changkyun x reader #monsta x reactions #monsta x imagines #monsta x scenarios #i don't usually do happy endings but this one just happened #i'm going straight to hell for this

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