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229zmi · 3 months

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DO YOU THINK WE’RE LOVERS IN EVERY UNIVERSE?

Kuroo Tetsurō/Reader | 2.5k words, lots of description and run-on sentences and like 3 lines of dialogue, brief mention of kuroo’s parents separating

It’s simple. At only seven years old, Kuroo decides that love is always going to be a hair out of his reach.

Perhaps it’s foolish of him to make such a finite conclusion at a young age and to already determine so early on in his life that yes, love is a finish line he is never going to make it to — that love may be something he can only observe in his surroundings but never truly hold as his own. But this has been his observation for years, so he can’t help himself from thinking of it in this forever-unattainable sort of way, that is: if love is something like a narrow world — one where he can see where it starts and ends, what it encompasses, and what it lacks all at once — then Kuroo Tetsurō is stuck idling along the edge, perpetually on the outside looking in.

And you know, most people don’t remember the first few years of their life. Yet somehow, he remembers the first time he looked in and caught a glimpse of the parents who lifted their kids up, twirled them around, held their hands, kissed the crown of their heads, asked them about their day. He saw the sunlight pool onto their smiling faces, heard their laughter bleed into the afternoon, and felt the breeze of their light-hearted chatter brush over his head, so close that he swore he could almost touch it himself.

Then, he blinked and time inched forward, slowly unveiling a version of love that was much quieter than the one he witnessed in the vicinity of an elementary school, so subtle yet ardent — so incredibly mundane yet human all the same.

On the train he took to his grandparents’ place, he admired the shy looks exchanged among two young lovers sitting across from him. He yearned for the experience shared between an elderly couple a few empty seats away, shoulders connected and timeworn fingers intertwined as if the two were one; listened in carefully on a phone call from the woman beside him, who seemed to be speaking to her mother with the amount of delicate I miss yous and promises of visiting home soon; and found a warm feeling bubbling his chest at the sight of a person waving at their friend through the window until their fingers turned red and numb from the wind and the train began to depart from the station.

(By then, the friend had already turned back around, yet Kuroo still watched the other person grow smaller in the distance, wiping away at their cheeks and sort of curling into themselves as if the loneliness was suddenly too cold to bear.)

Even in the love-laced tunes that spilled out through the overhead speakers at the grocery store, love was there. Certainly, it was there and alive and flooding his mind with convoluted melodies and sentimental lyrics. It lived, too, in the old-timey romance show his grandfather loved to watch on full volume at seven-thirty every evening and in the memory box his grandmother said she had kept under her bed for decades.

It was a matter as indisputable as the moon orbiting the earth: love was… everywhere. Suspended in the frosty air after a long day at school, dancing through the crowd on the train to Ibaraki Station, and lingering above him as he wandered through the cereal aisle. Even if it wasn’t quite his — wasn’t really for him — love was all around him, ever-prevalent in the nooks of his life and taking the form of bits and pieces that seemed to make up a larger mosaic.

So, when such intricacies were rare in his childhood for him to keep, Tetsurō, who loved love for what it was the moment he could echo the word in his mind, made sure to hold on to each memory as tight as his hands would allow, lodging every fragment in between the crevices of his palms as if it was the ink of an invisible tattoo embedded permanently into his skin.

The two lovers on the train lived in the uppermost line across his right palm. The elderly couple resided in the one below it, among other connections he witnessed along the way. Romantic ballads he overheard at stores and on the radio took up most of his left hand; and in the finer lines, between rough callouses and bruises too tender to touch, there were his grandfather’s show and his grandmother’s old shoebox of memories.

It was so simple before. Kuroo used to like it that way.

But then summertime hits, and suddenly he’s eight-turning-nine with sunkissed cheeks and scuffed knees, when terse conversations throughout the day and wrathful voices at night aren’t supposed to be thing in his life anymore, apparently, because home isn’t with his mother and father and sister in a small apartment in the prefecture of Nagano anymore.

Instead, home is in Nerima City now, and it stands right before his eyes in the form of an old, visibly timeworn door. With the sky as barren as a pond completely frozen over and his mind muddled with a wide range of emotions, there’s an ache in his chest as the door opens, revealing two elderly faces who, as unfamiliar as they appear to Tetsurō, welcome him and his dad with wide open arms.

(Later, he learns that they are his grandparents, his father’s parents. Even later, he discovers that neither of them like watching television very much and that the space beneath their bed is less a place to keep tangible items of nostalgia than it is a haven for cobwebs and dust.)

Still, he doesn’t let go of the past. There’s a craving in his heart that is as fiery as the sun against his back on a hot summer’s day, and back at his old home and in the old routine of things, he had found a way to live with it through filling the empty spaces in his palms. Now, it’s telling him to keep going — to keep on collecting the mosaic tiles that other people had left behind on the ground and add new to the old, fuel to the flame.

So, he does.

Kuroo blinks again. It’s still summer, just nearing the end of it, except he’s fifteen-going-on-sixteen this time around, no longer navigating the daunting hallways of Nekoma Grade School but instead partway through his first year of high school.

(Where did time go?)

Perhaps it is because he’s bigger than he was at five and seven and almost-nine, evident in the way his hands have already grown too large for last year’s pair of winter gloves, but he sees more of the world than he has ever before — sees more, holds more, loves more with a newfound ease that most likely would’ve put younger him into shock.

With that being said, some of the new people he meets — they don’t stay forever, despite his tendency to hold on and never let go.

Actually, none of them do because forever is, well… way beyond his lifetime. However, the point is, people come and go. There are those whom he was never meant to see again after the first time, colliding once and then heading in opposite directions like two perpendicular lines. Others pull out of his orbit after a couple of months, a few years, or however long it takes for them to drift apart because their interests had grown less aligned with time or because something else had happened and there was no saving the relationship from it.

(He thinks of it like this: a scene of ambivalence, in which he is not a bystander on the train to Ibaraki. Rather, he is the one standing out at Nagano Station, waving at familiar faces through the window until his wrists hurt and the smoke begins to billow out above him, twisting and turning like the rotten feeling in his gut. He’s the one watching them leave, but no one will be there to see him if he cries.)

Nonetheless, there are still the people who stay a while longer, weaving themselves back into his life time and time again. It’s never going to be forever — he knows that, and maybe it would hurt less if he didn’t — but they’re with them in the present and that’s what matters.

And, maybe, if he squints closely enough, he’ll see that an unshakeable mosaic of his own has started to form, of the memories he’s created over the past several years instead of strangers’ fleeting moments he picked up from the threshold.

Somewhere along the line, the strangers from the train had moved to smaller crevices in favour of the family who lived next-door to the Kuroos’ house. Further in time, all the lyrics he used to keep locked away in the many lines of his left palm for so many years had begun to fade away as inside jokes, pick-up lines, sincere compliments, and the like occupied the spaces.

Then, in the creases along his fingers: the way a volleyball feels against his hand right before a victory, how the air smells the morning right after a rainstorm, the resolution of a book he managed to read in one sitting, the late night conversations that took place on the phone between him and Kenma whenever he couldn’t sleep, and finally the playful banter he exchanged with his lab partner during class, who didn’t seem to mind whenever he said something corny about the two of you having chemistry together, even if — from the deepest depths of his heart, where lay the secrets he was too afraid to admit — he wasn’t really meaning it as a joke.

It’s still summer, by the way, although it’s been seven years since he moved— just nearing the end of it with shorter days on the horizon and auburn leaves turning brittle beneath his feet. And all of a sudden, he finds that his world seems to have grown a little wider and love feels heavier in his hands these days.

So yes, perhaps it was foolish of him to make such a finite conclusion at seven years old, to think of love as something so unattainable and out of reach. Because twenty years later, at twenty-seven, Kuroo Tetsurō has it right in the centre of his palms, no longer the outsider looking in on a scene he thought he wasn’t meant to be a part of.

It must be sometime after midnight when his name falls upon his ears in the form of a tentative whisper, sweet like the peppermint melting on his tongue as his fingers hover over the keyboard, frozen at the sound of your voice. Coming from his lab partner turned friend, then lover— it’s a stark contrast to the way you used to say his name back in high school, during the painfully long two years of pining before the day he finally insisted, with sweaty palms and his heart pounding in his chest, that you use his given name instead. Tetsurō, instead of Kuroo, or Rooster Head and Annoying Bastard and Shithead, which you used interchangeably with his surname until a teacher overheard and assigned you cleaning duty in the restrooms for a week.

(Of course, that didn’t stop you from calling him those epithets still, even today. If he provokes you just enough and presses all the right buttons, he’s sure to hear the same string of offensive names from you again, although there’ll certainly be less venom behind it now compared to when you were teenagers, thinking the other was the most irritating person in the whole wide world.

…Where did time go? he wonders again.)

You should’ve fallen asleep long ago. Not only had he thought the sound of his typing would’ve at least lulled you to sleep, there isn’t anything particularly riveting about watching someone type up a report on their laptop. Nevertheless, you insisted on staying up anyway, fighting through the drowsiness that threatened to wrap around your neck and yank you into dreamland.

His eyes sweep over the planes of your face, down the slant of your nose, and along the curvature of your Cupid’s bow before flitting back up to meet your gaze at last as he shuts his laptop, stands up, and pads over to the side of the bed in one quick stride, where you currently lay with one side of your face smushed against the pillow, blinking up at him tiredly.

Tenderly, as if you’re a fragile illusion that could shatter beneath the slightest touch, a hand — his hand — settles against the side of your face, pulling the fat of your cheek between his forefinger and thumb in a playful manner. The action rouses you awake somewhat, and you suddenly remember the reason why you called his name.

“Tetsu,” you say again, barely louder than the clock that ticks on the wall. “Do you think we’re lovers in every universe?”

Despite your lethargy, a sly grin strews across your face like you’re trying to play it off as some inane joke, a frivolous thing rotting away in your brain until you can find the answer. And Tetsurō can only chuckle, shaking his head at your question, yet he indulges anyway, letting the matter soak in his mind for a moment longer as he pretends to think.

Truth is, the answer is simple. He doesn’t have to spend much time mulling over it because even if love didn’t come easy to him in the first decade of his life, loving you comes easy to him enough; he’d do it over and over again in every universe and in every lifetime if it were possible to make up for the lost time he’d spent in this one before he crossed paths with you.

So, Tetsurō answers the only way he knows how— teasingly. Leaning down to land a kiss upon your forehead, he murmurs against your skin, “God, I hope not.”

(You know he’s lying. He’s never been too good at it, with his telltale signs appearing in the form of reddened ears and him avoiding eye contact as much as possible. However, you know it especially this time from the softness in his voice. It’s a tone that you know he’s only ever reserved for you.)

He feels your eyebrows furrow together, and your response comes quick: “Shithead. I hate you.”

(He knows you’re lying, too, when you turn your head to press your lips against the palm of his hand, against the creases that now hold thousands of snapshots of you and many more to come.

The way that you laugh and the way that you smile. How you twist the shiny ring around your left ring finger whenever you’re deep in thought. The times you keep insisting you don’t snore in your sleep despite the multiple years’ worth of evidence on his phone that speaks otherwise.

And most importantly, he thinks, the way that you love him.)

notes: in my kuroo phase tbh…. something abt him Man 😍…. idk if any of this makes sense but the first part of this has been marinating. in my drafts since july so i wanted 2 finish this as quickly as possible 〠 Kisses n hugs 2 whoever reads this

#kuroo x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x gender neutral reader #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu x you #kuroo fluff #kuroo x you #kuroo tetsuro x reader #229ZMI

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wongyuuu · 5 months

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memories of us | lsm

pairing: seokmin x f!reader - soulmate!au summary: every night seokmin dreams of his past lifes, when he met and fell for his soulmate countless times. genre: fluff, angst word count: 11.9k warnings: reader has really low self esteem a/n: this is not, in any way, connected to elevator. both stories are centered around soulmates, however the rules are different. in elevator people carry marks that vanish from their bodies once they meet their soulmate, here is the bond is created by eye contact. i hope you enjoy it :)

Today, when I woke up, the first thing I thought about was you, but that’s not something new. You’re always the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last one before I go to sleep. My mind is consumed by thoughts of you the entire day. There’s not a single minute when you don’t make your presence noticed, even if you’re not really here by my side. The funny thing is that I haven’t met you yet and somehow you are the only one in my mind.

I started to dream of you when I was sixteen. At the time I had no idea of what was going on, I didn’t know what Memorous were, and I couldn’t even phantom why I was dreaming of an older version of myself. I was young and the naive teenager version of me thought that it was something everyone goes through. Ah, maybe these are memories from my past lives. I was right about that part, but I didn’t know the length of what was going on with me.

It was only a month later when I told anyone about it. Because those dreams were something no one ever mentioned around me before, so I was afraid to speak about them. What if, because of those dreams, people started to label me as a freak? I had already a very negative reputation, so to say, I didn’t want to make it worse. When I finally mustered the courage to talk to someone about it, I figured that I should tell my mom about it. She was a mother, my mom, and like all moms she would probably know what to do.

She didn’t.

For a while, she just sat there and stared at me, not like I was a freak but as if I had become a stranger. I was no longer Lee Seokmin, her eldest son who on most days seemed like the youngest. I saw her eyes change that day, from a mother who loved her son to a woman who didn’t know who the boy in front of her was.

It was also the first time that someone told me that I was cursed.

None of us could be sure whether I was cursed or not, but she said it with so much belief that I knew that it had to be true.

I don’t think I have ever felt so alone. Before my mother said those words to me, those words that would be forever stuck in my brain, you are cursed, Seokmin, and there’s nothing any of us can do to change that, I used to be normal - or as normal as a sixteen-year-old hyperactive boy could be. But the second those words were uttered, released into the world, something inside me changed.

I think that the best way to describe it would be a click, I felt a click inside my heart. There’s no other word I could use to describe it.

After everything that happened in the span of minutes, I changed. I started to be more restricted, no one else in the world knew about the dreams or about me being a Memorous. My circle of friends got smaller and smaller. What if, by accident, I told one of them something about the dreams, about you? That couldn’t happen.

In reality, I didn’t have many friends. You know, the kind you tell secrets to and are really close to. Those were the kinds of people that I wanted to avoid at all costs. I wasn’t a loner, though. I had people I could hang out with, people that I would go to a bar or a club with, but I liked to be alone.

It’s weird, isn’t it? I had friends but I wasn’t actually friends with any of them. I wasn’t a loner but the thing I enjoyed the most was being alone.

When I turned eighteen and high school was finally over, I moved away from home. For two years I saved every cent that I could, my main goal was to just leave. I studied my eyes off in school so I could get into a university that was as far away as possible from home. I needed to get a scholarship so I wouldn’t need to ask for help from my parents.

Doing those two things made me feel somewhat proud of myself. It was like I was telling them see just because you think I’m cursed doesn’t mean that I can’t do what I want.

Let me explain to you how the dreams work: every night I dream of you, no exception but every night is a different life.

This is how Memorous must live. I remember every single thing about our past lives, all the details that people usually forget about their lives. I remember them, more or less. I know what you were wearing on April 18th, 1811; I know what was the first word you said to me in Madrid, it was a curse by the way; the first time we bonded.

Sometimes it feels so real that I think if I look by my side, I’ll see you there. That couldn’t be true, I haven’t seen you in this lifetime - I would never be able to let you go if I had.

There’s a trick about being a Memorous though. Once I fall asleep and dream of a different life everything I dreamed the night before vanishes and I can’t remember anything. At first, I thought that it happened like that because sometimes we forget about the dreams we have. It was as if it simply vanished from my mind, and I could only remember it when I dreamt of the same life again. It’s like a selective memory kind of thing.

You know, the feeling of a dream being so real that you could either wake up in panic or just really happy and satisfied?

For me, every dream was like that. If I held your hand in my dream, when I woke up I would still get the feel of your skin against mine; if we fought for whatever reason I would still feel the sadness and the anger lingering in my body.

When I understood what was happening, I started to write down the dreams, every little detail that I could remember. Slowly I started to find a pattern in the dreams, slowly I learned to tell the lives apart and so I started notebooks. It’s a little weird, I know, but I had to keep track of our lives. Maybe, at some level, you might think that I’m crazy or that I’m a stalker. But could it be considered stalking when it’s my own life?

I can’t wait to meet you. Although I haven’t actually met you or even seen you this time around, I feel like I have known you all my life. Is this the feeling we’ll get when we finally meet, this feeling of fullness?

I wonder if you feel that too.

Out of all our lives together I have a favorite one. I mean, it is expected, isn’t it? After such a long time of living countless lives, every day being a different person - although I’m ultimately the same - we are bound to have a favorite one.

If I do say so myself that life is very much Shakespearean. Okay, so imagine this: two families who were very powerful but were opposites and hated each other with a burning passion. And there you have it. Sounds very much like Romeo and Juliet, doesn’t it? Maybe if it happened a couple hundred years earlier, in England, then maybe I could say that we actually inspired him, but we happened far too late.

You know, I still remember the first time I saw you that time around. I think that maybe that bond was the strongest one we’ve had, probably because we were supposed to hate each other. The idea of an unexpected bond between two opposite families is kind of thrilling, isn’t it?

We met at a party. Because our families couldn’t even stand to be in the same space together, mostly our dads - why is it always the dads though? -, they send you and me to represent the families. As you can probably imagine, we had no idea of what the other person looked like.

So, there I was walking inside this immense ballroom, and you were the first person I saw. Looking at you I just knew that you were out of place, that kind of environment wasn’t one you felt comfortable in. At that point, you weren’t looking at me but when you finally did, it was like the entire world stopped. I felt my heart thump inside my chest, but I could feel you too. I saw as you went wide-eyed. You took a step closer to me but then, realizing what you did, you took a couple of steps back. For the entire night, we didn’t approach each other but my eyes never left yours, as yours never left mine.

We followed each other through the night. I got angry, really angry, when someone wanted to talk to me because all I wanted to do was look at you. Whenever my feelings changed, I would feel yours changing too. You felt mostly curiosity. How could this man, someone you had never seen before, catch your attention in such a way that you couldn’t look at anything or anyone else?

Back then it wasn’t like today, you know. The bond happened more quietly, or maybe we only thought it did. Though the bond is something that has been around since the beginning of time, we only found out about it much later in life. I suppose that back then we still didn’t know much about it. Maybe the change everyone felt around a couple that was bonding was there but because we didn’t know what it was supposed to be we just overlooked it.

Back to the story.

You were the first one to make a move to leave but I couldn’t let you go, no way. I followed you out and much to my own surprise you were waiting for me, because somehow you knew that I had to go after you. We didn’t say much, just promised to meet each other a couple of days later.

From that moment on, things took off, or as much as you could possibly expect from a couple in the early nineteen century. We would always meet each other. Everything was exciting because no one could know about what we were doing. Besides the whole ‘my family hates yours’ problem that we had, there was also the problem that both of us were promised to other people. You were supposed to marry a young Duque and I had to marry the daughter of a rich family. If we were against it before, imagine what it was like after we found out about how we felt for each other.

Our happiness didn’t last very long. We were careless and, although we were trying to hide it, we weren’t as stealthy about it as we liked to imagine.

It’s needless to say that when our families found out they were far from happy. They didn’t try to kill us or anything that dramatic, but they started to rush things. Your marriage that was supposed to happen only a year later was set to two weeks later; mine was happening in a few days. Of course, neither of us accepted that.

On the night before my wedding, I felt something trying to pull me. It was like my legs were moving on their own and I saw myself walking out of the house and into the city. I found you there, all alone in the middle of the street, staring at the church I was supposed to get married in. I realized then that the sadness I felt was only partially mine, a lot of it was coming from you. I didn’t really understand how it was possible for me to feel everything that you were feeling but I knew that there wasn’t another explanation for it.

You couldn’t control your emotions and tears were running down your cheeks, you tried hard to push them aside, but it was of no use. The more you tried to make the tears stop the more they fell. I couldn’t control myself by then. You were afraid when my arm went around you but once you knew that it was me you turned in my arms. The tears that ran down your face were no longer out of pain and hurt, they were because we were finally reunited.

We ran away. We didn’t take anything with us. There was no time to go home and get clothes, or say goodbye. We were sure that if we were together then everything would be alright. Because we had each other nothing in the world nothing could hurt us.

That's… that’s as far as the dreams go. I’d like to think that we had a happy ending.

Two years into college I finally understood what my mom meant when she said that I am cursed.

You see, the dreams I have at night are just fragments, tiny little pieces of an entire puzzle. I could only see a day or a week, at most. But the thing is that I only saw us young, meeting, starting the bond, falling in love. Not once did my dreams show us a little older, getting married, having kids, or even if things didn’t work between us. I never dreamed of those things.

At first, my guess was that the dreams were trying to show me a way to get to you, find you in a world that’s filled with billions of people. That wasn’t the case.

One night I dreamed of you dying. I woke up in despair. Instead of the sweet dreams, filled with warm touches and whispered words, I faced images of you surrounded by blood, a lifeless body in my arms.

For a while I wanted to make myself believe that it was just a nightmare, that it would eventually go away but I knew it wasn’t that simple, nothing ever is.

I kept seeing the same thing for days and every day it got worse and worse. It got to the point where I stopped sleeping at all. Every time I closed my eyes I could see your body on the ground, eyes wide open. I knew that it wasn’t true, but I felt like you were looking at me, like you blamed me for your death.

I searched it up. If the same thing happened to other Memorous I wanted to know how to make it stop, if I could even do something like that. From task number one I had problems.

For one, Memorous doesn’t like to be clear about it, we are heavily judged by it because no one understands what it is like to be one. Most people just think that we are making a fuss over nothing, that knowing what your soulmate looks like, what that person likes and dislikes makes it much easier to find the person you are supposed to bond with. What they don’t know is that, like everyone else in the world, people’s taste, personalities and all else changes. In one of your lives, you were a dancer, the stage was your home, and being watched by people was something you thrived off of but in the next one you were a shy girl who couldn’t bear the thought of people looking at her (this actually happened, just so you know).

Second, there aren’t many Memorous in the world. We are considered an anomaly, there are very few of us. I believe that we will only be able to understand why we are born this way when a scientist is born as a Memorous.

But not everything is a lost hope! God bless the people who aren’t scared to share their stories because they want to help other people. I found this post, on a very weird and hard to find website, saying that there is a way to break this ‘curse’. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s not up to us to end the cycle. Well, technically it is but it’s not a choice that we can make. It’s confusing, I know.

Apparently, the only way for us to stay together for a long time is if both of us are born Memorous, meaning that you and I must know our past lives. The one who wrote the post was a young boy, claiming that it was his grandparents’ story and that both of them were still alive and fine.

It’s not much but at least it’s something. I can’t help but wonder if this time around you already know who I am.

I saw you today, or at the very least I thought that I did. I looked at my right and you were right there! Your eyes went anywhere but me, it was like you were purposely trying to avoid me. I went after you, called after you (even though I don’t know what you’re called in this life). It seemed that you were running away from me, though I’m sure that wasn’t the case. How could you run from someone you don’t know?

On days like this, I think I’m starting to lose my mind. The dreams are starting to feel more real than ever, and I don’t know what to do. Is it because we are getting closer to each other? Maybe we are in the same city? I hope so.

I’ve hoping for something, just a tiny signal, for the longest time. Was today it? I think about seeing you, how the dreams are now just a repeat of all the first meetings before, how every day when I wake up I have a feeling inside my heart telling me that we are getting closer to each other.

Are we? Does this mean that we are getting closer?

Maybe this is the universe’s way of letting us know. Because our lives, all of them, have been so messed up that this is fate’s way of apologizing for all the crap that it put us through.

I’m going to find you soon. Hopefully, wherever you are you’re also looking for me and that will probably make our lives that much easier.

You closed the journal and put it aside. You managed to hold yourself back while reading, you didn’t want the tears in the back of your eyes to fall on the pages, the precious pages that told your story through Seokmin’s eyes.

It had been hard to come to terms with the idea, the fact, that he was your soulmate but over the years you became more and more used to it. Your lives were too different, your backgrounds complete opposites, and yet - somehow - you were it for each other.

The first time you saw him on TV, you clearly remembered how you felt. It was as if someone had just punched you in the chest. On the other side of the tiny screen was the boy - now the man - you had been dreaming about for years of your life. You never thought that you would find him, especially so soon but then again if you thought about all your dreams, both of you seemed young - maybe even younger than your 25 years.

You stayed away from the TV for about a month after that, but you knew that it wouldn’t last much longer than that. The entire time Seokmin was in the back of your mind, always making sure that you wouldn’t forget him. That was simply something that would never happen, you forgetting about him - even if that was one of the many things that you wanted to do. Eventually, you found yourself turning the TV on again, watching every single program, every video, and buying any magazine that featured him.

Thinking back at it, you felt sort of stupid for doing those things and not just trying to look for him. You were right, your soulmate was Seokmin but your own insecurities were holding you back. Out of everything you had, there was one problem you considered to be major: you had nothing to offer him.

You were the kid no one wanted, the kid that had been tossed into an orphanage at the age of eight, and no one had gone back to take claim. Like a monkey on a tree, you moved from house to house without a chance of staying, even the prospect of making friends didn’t exist.

Growing up you always dreamed of meeting your soulmate, imagined the way you would finally meet the other person. In your mind you were always the hotshot, someone who could make anything happen with a simple word. As you got older you wanted to just live a decent life but all you had was a shitty rented apartment in a sketchy area of the city, a shower that didn’t run with hot water, and were living paycheck by paycheck.

That wasn’t the life you wanted, it was a life that you were almost embarrassed over. How could you ever share a life with someone when you could hardly sustain yourself? That wasn’t possible.

But then it happened. You got dragged by your friend to go to the TV station and watched as Seokmin recorded a program. Jun said that he wouldn’t notice you, that you would sit far in the back, and you could put your bangs down and cover your eyes so there wouldn’t be a single chance of the bond happening.

It was a lie, you knew that. Jun lied straight to your face, and you let yourself fall for it. You couldn’t say no to him, much less to his kids. Hana was so excited about it. Watching Seokmin on TV was her favorite thing in the world, more than dancing or watching cartoons. He’s pretty and funny, my soulmate has to be just like him, she said. It was funny and endearing to watch. Sometimes you just wanted to meet Seokmin because of her, because she was so in love with him. The day you decided to take a step forward was also the day you took eleven steps back.

“Are excited?” Jun bumped his shoulder into yours and smiled.

He could be the kind of person your silly heart would fall for if there weren’t any soulmates. Jun was essentially a good person, with a heart made of gold and filled with so much love that his kids would never go a day in life thinking that he didn’t love them.

“No" yet another lie.

You were excited, a little too excited. Or maybe your excitement was actually just fear. Fear that the bond might happen, fear that Seokmin would be disappointed in who you were, fear that maybe your dreams would come true.

“You said that Seokmin is pretty” Hana called out.

A moment of weakness that you regretted.

“Handsome, honey. Boys are handsome”

She repeated the word a few times as if trying to memorize but everyone knew that she would just keep calling boys pretty.

“Why are you carrying her around like she’s three?”

Hana sighed and hugged Jun’s neck, her head on his shoulder.

“I’m daddy’s little girl”

Jun looked like he was about to cry and Hanbin just groaned, his sister’s act wasn’t something that he was too fond of. You could only smile at them. They were almost too cute for you to handle.

You were one of the first people to get in so there were still a lot of empty spots to choose from. The second you and Jun started to move towards the back Hanbin and Hana protested. Of course, they didn’t want to sit in the back. Besides being kids, and too short to be able to see anything, both liked Seokmin so being too far away was not something that they wanted. In the end, you caved. You couldn’t say no to two kids who were doing the puppy eyes at the same time.

As minutes went by and the studio got filled with people you started to get nervous. You ran your sweaty hands on your jeans trying to get them dry, but it was useless. Every person who walked inside made your heart skip a beat because you thought that it could be him. It never was. The scared part of your brain told you that it was a good thing, that maybe he wouldn’t show up at all, but the other part, the one that wanted to see him in person just once, told you to just wait a little longer because he was going to show.

You waited, for over an hour and there was no sign of him. You knew that in this kind of event it could take them a while to get everything sorted but you were told that it shouldn’t take long once you all went inside.

“Stop,” Jun said, his hand on your arm “Don’t overthink it"

He was smiling at you kindly. It was the kind of smile that was supposed to calm you down and reassure you and yet all it did was make you even more nervous.

“What if we bond?”

“Then you’ll deal with it later”

What if I don’t know how to deal with it?

When people started to scream you looked up and saw the host walking in. He talked for a couple of minutes, made a few jokes trying to be funny and then he introduced Lee Seokmin, a TV personality. The crowd went crazy, there was a girl behind you screaming so loud that you thought you’d go deft.

Seokmin walked in, his characteristic smile in place, as he waved at the audience.

Seeing him in person made the world slow down, even your own heart. Instead of going crazy, your heart nearly stopped, as the sight of Seokmin put you at ease. Your hands were no longer shaking, you didn’t feel like trying to hide yourself anymore. In fact, seeing him made your soul scream at you it’s him, what are you waiting for? Your soul was begging you to go to him. After all, it knew him, because despite being apart for years it recognized him immediately.

And then Seokmin looked at you.

His eyes were on yours as he stood frozen there. You could feel him everywhere. He was shocked, surprised, caught off guard, hopeful, and just so happy. His happiness was contagious because inside you felt happy too. You wanted to stand up and hug him, stay as close as possible to him. The fear you felt for years was momentarily forgotten in the back of your mind.

Your legs moved before you could even realize what you were doing. You stood up and walked to him, stopping only a couple of steps away from him. You felt his heartbeat like it was just under your skin. Being so close to him made your body tingle in the best way possible. Your entire being was begging you to just take another step, just one closer to him, just so you could touch him and feel him all around you.

When Seokmin moved forward, his hand raised ready to touch you - just like you wanted to do - you took a step back. Suddenly the realization of what could happen came crashing down around you. Your dreams, and images of Seokmin lying lifeless on the floor that had been engraved in your mind were unexpectedly in your eyes. You could see it coming, your downfall, and the things you dreaded the most, happening.

“I…”

Seokmin wanted to say something, anything, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to. What words could he possibly profess that would make the fear running through your body go away?

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this"

Turning around and walking away from him might have been the hardest thing you ever did.

You tried your best to keep living normally but it was close to impossible. Every second that went by you were reminded of Seokmin, of the broken look on his face when you walked away, of the way he felt like he had somehow done something wrong. And he felt unloved when it was supposed to be just the other way around. Even before the bond, before you had the chance to look at him in the eyes, you already had feelings for him. Perhaps it was because you knew that you were supposed to love him, you knew that once you met him your feelings would be unstoppable, or it was just because he was charming.

And just how charming he was.

You didn’t know one single person who disliked him, someone who would flat-out say that there was nothing good to like about him. Everyone loved Seokmin, his easy smile and friendly eyes pulled everyone in.

“Until when are you going to keep avoiding him?”

Jun had become the personification of what was happening inside of you. You wanted to meet Seokmin, desperately. You wanted to find out where he was and just go to him, introduce yourself, and just talk to him. Everything seemed so simple inside your mind, and in Jun’s as well, but it was so far from it.

“You’re just avoiding it, you know that”

“So, what if I am? I’m sorry if I don’t want to see my soulmate die!”

You weren’t angry at your friend or even Seokmin, as he would feel sometimes. You were just angry at everyone else, at the world, at destiny, at anyone in the world who decided that it was a good idea to make you see your soulmate die every night.

“I know that, but wouldn’t it be better if you could spend some time with him? Let’s say that you’ll have six months together, that’s it. No more and no less. Don’t you want to be with him for as long as you possibly can instead of keep hiding in here?” Jun moved his hand showing the lounge of his dance school “Think of all your past lives, about how happy you were because you were with Seokmin. In this life too, shouldn’t you be able to feel that kind of happiness?”

Jun was the only person who knew that you were Memorous and he was also the only person who would say that there was nothing wrong with it. You aren’t cursed. If you ask me, you are one of the lucky ones. I would anything to have more memories with Seol. He was also the kind of friend who wasn’t scared to say that you were messing up your own life, that you were doing something wrong. Most days he would act like the dad you never had. You were grateful for him, for having someone so eager to make sure that you were happy.

“Here’s a wild scenario” Jun smiled at Hana, who was running to him, as he stood up “Seokmin doesn’t die"

His words left you speechless as you watched him move away from you.

When you got home that day Seokmin’s journals were waiting at your doorstep.

Reading Seokmin’s words was much like reading your own. Since you started to have dreams, you thought that you were the only one who felt like that, like the only one who didn’t have anyone else to run to. Yes, both of your lives were very different, the place both of you came from was also different. But looking at it or wasn’t all that different.

His words and the way he described his feelings for you were the things that made you take a deep breath and go meet him.

I know that you are scared, I can feel it but please reconsider it. I’ve been waiting for a moment like this for a very long time and I would like to believe that you have too. I’ll be in the city for a few more days so let’s meet. If you don’t come to me, I will go to you. We can’t run away from this.

Seokmin.

Somehow you found yourself getting out of your tiny apartment and going towards Seokmin. You knew just how much he could feel your nervousness and yet he tried to stay calm so you could feel at ease too. The entire time, since you left the TV station, you could feel him in your mind and it was like he was talking to you, trying to convince you to meet or just to be comfortable with the idea of him.

At times you could swear that he was talking to you, his voice clear in your mind. It’s okay, you don’t have to worry. It was like Seokmin himself could read your thoughts. Of course, there were moments when he would feel that spark of fear, and anxiety but most of the time he was in complete control of his emotions. He was doing that for you, there was no mistake, so you felt childish for being all over the place and guilty for bombarding him with emotions that you couldn’t fully grasp.

That was one of the many reasons why you decided to go to him. His words had been the main reason, but you also wanted to put your heart in peace. From the second you walked away from him your heart had been heavy. It was the kind of emotion that was impossible to verbalize, the only word that could possibly come to mind was lost. Your heart was lost. You walked around feeling like there was a huge part of you missing, your eyes looked for something, someone, that was never there.

It was like that until you got his journals. Although you didn’t feel whole you could feel that a little piece of you was back. Perhaps it truly wasn’t a part of you, instead what could be the missing was a piece of you never found before.

The missing piece had always been Seokmin.

You stopped in front of his door, your hand closed into a fist just an inch away.

The truth was that everything you felt, every tiny thing, could be summed into just one word: fear. You were scared.

For years you saw Seokmin die in your dreams, he died in a new way every night. You saw, more times than you could count, the life left his eyes as he took his last breath. Sometimes you would just hear about it from someone, just words thrown into a conversation – words that always managed to break your heart. It never mattered how you found out, it always happened suddenly and unexpectedly.

Whenever you and he were settling into a life together, when you allowed yourself to love each other freely, it happened. You always thought that your love for him, as his for you, worked like a time bomb. And the moment the bond was made was when your time started to run out.

The only thing you thought about was how if you never made the bond then Seokmin would be able to live a long and happy life. It was okay if once, just once, you didn’t find your soulmate. As long as Seokmin got to live, you were fine with whatever life threw at you. Many people went through life without ever finding their soulmates but that didn’t mean that they weren’t happy. It just meant that they had to find other ways to be happy.

“Just, please, knock on the door”

You turned around, startled by the sudden presence behind you, a voice that you had memorized a long time before meeting the person to whom it belonged. Seokmin was there, looking at you like he had just walked out of some kind of sappy movie with his hair a mess and a hoodie that was at least three sizes bigger than him.

“How long have you been there?”

He smiled at you then making you feel like your insides were melting. Seeing him was like making the bond all over again. Your hands were sweating, your heartbeat out of control, slow, fast, and slow. The air around you was heavy and the tension between the two of you was almost palpable, like a thin sheet separating you and him.

“Long enough to know that you’ve been hesitating, for at least, five minutes”

How was it possible for him to be so calm when you felt like your heart was about to combust? Having him so close to you made your entire body shake. You almost wanted to take a step back before you fell to your knees. It was like your legs were barely there to support you.

“I want to say so many things but I’m afraid that if I do, you’ll run away again”

You shook your head at him. This time around you weren’t leaving or running. You had made it this far, there was no way you were backing down. Somehow, seeing Seokmin in front of you made you feel stronger like you could fight the entire universe just because he was right there by your side. He wasn’t doing anything, but he looked at you like you were everything that he had been waiting for and then some more.

“I came so that we could talk” you tried to smile in reassurance, for him or yourself you weren’t sure “Do you want to do this here or somewhere else…?”

“I think that it would be best if we had some privacy”

You took a step aside to let Seokmin open the door to his hotel room.

You had always been scared of people, not of what they could do to you in the spot but of what they could cause in the long run. From a young age, you learned that you were alone and that the people around you never really wanted you there. For the foster homes you went through most of your life, you were just a way to get easy money; for your first boyfriend you were just a pity bet; for your high school friends you were just the girl they let hang out with them in exchange for assignments; for your parents, you were just someone, something, that they could easily toss aside when they finally got bored.

All of those things left deep scars on you. Though you did your best to cover them, they were always there right under the surface. You always smiled at people and made sure to tell them that you were perfectly fine even though you weren’t, even though all you wanted was to curl into yourself and let yourself feel all that pain.

Jun had been the first person to get through to you, the only one who had stayed long enough for you to think that maybe he was around you because he actually liked you and not because he wanted something from you in return.

It was true that Seokmin was your soulmate, that once the bond is made someone can never really walk away from it. You knew all of those things, like a book that you were constantly reading. Knowing something is completely different than doing it. The insecurities, always in the back of your mind, screamed at you louder than any belief or hope. Your brain always told you that someone like Seokmin, someone who had everything – and anyone – he could possibly want, would never stay for someone like you, bond or no bond.

“Do you want something to drink? I can get you anything you want”

Seokmin opened the door for you and pointed at the couch in front of it. As you had expected his room wasn’t just room, it was like a goddamn apartment – hell it was bigger than half of the houses you went through as a teenager.

“I… it’s fine. I’m fine”

Seokmin knew that you weren’t fine but chose to stay quiet about it, he knew that it wasn’t a good idea to tell you just how much of you he could understand. It wasn’t only because he could feel every tiny thing coming from you but also because you were like an open book, filled with words begging to be read.

“I got your journals,” you said “I also read them”

Your words made Seokmin sigh in relief. He thought that if you saw his journals, and read his feelings, you would be able to understand how desperate he felt, how much his feelings had been all over the place – despite him trying to remain calm. His feelings mirrored yours very much, almost in every way.

“Because you shared yours with me, I think it’s only fair if I do the same with you”

He looked up at you, surprise all over his face as you handed him the small box you had been carrying.

“I’ve dreamed about you, for the past ten years, too. Every night I saw you and fell for you, every version of you”

The surprise Seokmin felt, the happiness, and the relief that ran through his body the moment he saw you at his door was almost completely gone when he heard what you were saying. He wanted to think that maybe he heard it wrong but the look in your eyes assured him that he hadn’t heard it wrong. Your words had been loud and clear, ricocheting inside his brain.

“For how long you have known about me?”

Your heart was breaking, shattering into tiny pieces when you saw and felt the change in Seokmin. He held the box with your journals like it weighed a thousand pounds, his face was contorted with something that you couldn’t decipher but his feelings were clear, like the sky on a starry night. Seokmin felt betrayed, hurt, and unwanted, all things that weren’t true.

“Since you started, around the same time, since I was sixteen as well” you whispered.

Seokmin felt his heart drop all the way down to his toes feeling sick to his stomach. He had always wanted to find you, from the day he understood what his dreams meant he looked for you – everywhere and anywhere in the world. You were the reason why he even started to work in TV, he thought that if he got a job that required him to talk to a lot of people then it would be easier to find you. But the idea, now the fact, that you had always known about him but even then, decided not to look for him, not to take a step away from him, was like a slap to his face.

“Do you know that I tried to look for you everywhere? I nearly went crazy. Every day since my dreams, the memories of us, started I searched for you. While you…” he scoffed like the world had played yet another sick joke on him “You knew who I was but you never…”

He couldn’t bring himself to say it; thinking about it – feeling it – was already bad enough. Seokmin didn’t want to voice it, if he did then everything would become that much more real, too real, more heartbreaking than anything else in his life up until that moment.

The dreams crushed his heart every morning when he woke up. Seokmin felt his heart die a little inside his chest for the life he never got to live with you, for the words he never got to hear from you, for seeing the bright light leave your eyes time and time again. But ultimately those dreams were just that: dreams, memories of a different period in time, of a different life that although felt real, it no longer was.

“I was afraid, Seokmin…”

“I know that you were! I felt it, with fiber in my body, I knew that you were scared, terrified that for some reason I wouldn’t love you. I knew all of that like it was my own fear”

The despair he had in his voice was felt in your body, every tiny cell. You hated that he was feeling like that, that your first ever encounter with him – a proper one – was only worth a fight. That was not how you wanted things to go. You thought that if you ever met him things would run smoothly but the reality of it was far from your expectations.

“Like you, I am a Memorous” you had to say it, you needed Seokmin to hear your words just once “The first time I saw you, like you are right now, was on TV but it was so fast that I couldn’t be sure. I was on the bus, passing by a TV store. The next day I stayed in front of the same store the entire day, waiting for that brief second of your face for hours. When I finally saw you I cried, right there in the middle of the sidewalk because I just felt so happy to see you, to finally find the boy that I had seen so many times before, the boy I loved so blindly, even though I have never met before.

“But the dreams… they are alive inside my mind. I don’t forget them like you do. My brain stores them like they are memories of this life, all those feelings were as real as if I lived them this time around. I thought about all the times I saw you die, and I couldn’t live through that again. I couldn’t let that happen to you, not after I saw you. I only knew you from the screen of my tv but my feelings were already so strong. I wanted the bond to happen, you can’t doubt that for a second, but I was scared. I would very much rather live knowing that you were somewhere out there, living a happy and long life than having you live a short one with me”

Your words were more than enough to make Seokmin stop. Until that moment, his mind was flying all over the place but the second you opened your mouth he couldn’t bring himself to be angry anymore. Those feelings, the fear of seeing your other half – the one you were supposed to be with – die, was one he knew very well. He often wondered what would happen when he finally met you.

The first time he saw you, he had been over the moon, he felt you and everything else. He felt the pull and your desire to get closer to him. To say that Seokmin was surprised when you ran away was an understatement. He didn’t truly understand everything that was happening inside of him, the unthinkable mix of you and him made him feel dizzy because he couldn’t set you apart.

He could finally understand the things you did but it didn’t mean that he liked them.

“I think it’s going to be a very long night”

Seokmin read your journals in front of you, and it didn’t feel embarrassing. Those journals, your words, had been written for him and for him only. While you wrote down your dreams you thought of him, of how he would read them one day and how much you wanted him to.

You spent the entire night in his hotel room. You talked for hours and hours and suddenly the subject wasn’t as heavy anymore, both of your fears momentarily forgotten, and you were simply enjoying each other’s company.

Seokmin was everything that he seemed to be, but he was also that much different. His bubbly personality was still there, fully out in the open for everyone to see, but there was also a shy side to him - one that not many people knew about but it was cute to watch. More often than he would like to admit, Seokmin would trip over his words, insecure about what he could and couldn’t say to you. The ice is still very thin, it’s making me nervous he said at some point in the night.

You had scooted closer to him or maybe he got closer to you, how it happened didn’t really matter. You found yourself sitting on the couch with your knees pulled to your chest as Seokmin quietly played with your fingers.

Just having him around you felt like a dream but the moment his skin touched yours? It was like fireworks exploded under your skin, like every single nerve in your body was suddenly awake. You could feel him everywhere, like he was not just the man in front of you, but he was also part of the air, like he could be all around you whilst staying in the exact same spot. He gave you calmness, a sense of peace and security. Things that up until that moment no one had been able to give you, not even yourself.

“I really want to kiss you” you whispered. Seokmin’s fingers stilled in yours and something sparkled in his eyes as he looked at you. The moment was suspended in the air as if it wasn’t neither here or there, as if time itself had stopped and all the attention was now on the two of you and the way you were feeling in that very second.

You couldn’t bring yourself to look away from him, you didn’t want to. It was the first time, in your entire life, that you craved someone’s touch and presence. With Seokmin you wanted that and so much more, everything that he had to give, you wanted.

Feeling like that for someone after only knowing them for a couple of hours was impossible, the kind of thing that you would never expect to happen, the kind of thing that you would laugh at because something like that couldn’t exist. But with you and Seokmin, nothing was as it seemed.

It was true that you had only known him for a little while but just in this life. When you looked at him you saw traces of the many different people that he had been in the past and because of that, it was like you fully knew him. That wasn’t the case, and you knew that, but even so, the feeling of reconnection still existed.

Seokmin inched forward, his eyes focused on your lips, as he interlocked your fingers and pulled you towards him. There was one second of hesitation, one tiny second that felt like an eternity before his lips finally pressed on yours and then it was pure magic.

Seokmin had to leave a few days later and you hated the idea of having to see him walk away. It wasn’t final, you knew that, but it hurt all the same. He had stayed in the city for you far longer than he was supposed to, his phone always blowing up with text messages from people concerned about his whereabouts when in reality he had been locked up with you inside your apartment.

On the contrary to what you previously thought, Seokmin didn’t care about your tiny apartment, about the fact that you had been to more foster homes than what you were willing to admit, or about the fact that you didn’t have a degree. I like you for you, not for the baggage that comes with you.

You sat at the airport for hours after his flight departed, the emptiness growing inside of you as the seconds ticked away.

Seokmin felt the same way. He wanted to stay or for you to just go with him, but he didn’t dare to ask. He knew that even though you didn’t think much of your life, you liked it. You loved to be a receptionist at Jun’s school, loved being surrounded by the kids, loved the city you lived in, and you were a little proud of yourself for being your own person and living your own life - even though you would never admit it. He got into the plane with a heavy heart, but he had to figure things out. He had to find a way for the two of you to be together. It was uncertain of what the future held for you. You could be together for just a year before one of you died or your entire life was still ahead of you. The not knowing drove him crazy.

Three weeks apart was all he could take before he found himself boarding a plane to the other side of the country and breaking a few contracts while he did so. You called every day, facetimed whenever there was a chance and texts were always a constant but just that wasn’t enough.

Due to the distance, the constant pull to you only grew stronger and the grasp he had of your feelings, how Seokmin could tell exactly what was going on with you, was slowly disappearing. It wasn’t that you were learning to control what he could and couldn’t see. Once the bond is made the newfound soulmates need to stay close to each other, it’s physically and mentally tiring to be away. He noticed that you sounded more exhausted on the phone, as your eyes nearly closed when you talked on Facetime.

All those things pulled him to you, yes, but Seokmin also wanted to see you desperately.

He didn’t tell you that he was coming to see you, he wanted to make it a surprise. The entire flight he felt just how happy you were, probably because you were at the dance school with the kids, but he also noticed your worry, because he hadn’t answered his phone in a few hours, as you tried to push it as far back in your mind as possible.

The long see-through glass walls of the school allowed Seokmin to see you inside. He heard your laugh before he saw you, the sound had been imprinted in his mind like the type of song that just gets stuck. And then he saw your profile looking at the little boy in front of you lovingly. When you smiled, he thought that his heart would explode inside his chest.

Seeing you, even from far away, was like going home after a long time. The feeling of calmness, the feeling of finally being able to breathe properly. Just looking at you made him lighter in a way that he couldn’t exactly put into words.

The kids were the first ones to see Seokmin. The little boy you talked to gasped, and his eyes went wide. All the other kids had the same reaction, some of them pointed at him while others just went back to what they were doing before.

You stood frozen in place and watched Seokmin walk from where he was to the door. You had to make sure that he was really there, that it wasn’t something that you were imagining. If it wasn’t for the cute selfies he sent you stored in your phone, you would be sure that meeting Seokmin and everything else that happened after had been nothing but a dream. It wouldn’t be the first time you wished for a life that could never have.

You got up and took a step away from the kids before walking as fast as you could - nearly running - towards him. He met you halfway, his arms reached for you before you collapsed into him.

You sighed in contentment and relief when you felt his skin against yours, when his warmth enveloped you. Everything else was forgotten and it no longer mattered.

“You’re really here,” you said against his neck.

His chuckle ran through your entire body and he tightened his arms around you, pulling you as close as possible to him.

“Half a country away is too much" he murmured.

You stayed in place for minutes, long enough for one of the kids to get bored and call out your name a couple of times. One of them ran inside and got Jun, because the little boy thought that Seokmin might be holding you for too long.

“This reunion is great and all but it’s weird for the kids”

At the sound of your friend’s voice, you let go of Seokmin but you didn’t go too far. Three weeks had been long enough, you would take whatever few moments with him that you could get before he had to leave again. So you stayed by Seokmin’s side, your fingers interlocked with his.

“Seokmin, this is Jun”

“I was the one who gave him your address, how else do you think he would send you his journals?”

Seokmin looked at you, with surprise in his face. He hadn’t expected you to tell someone about it, about his journals, or about anything at all. From the moment he saw you, and even from the journals you wrote, he knew that you were the kind of person who didn’t tell those around her much about her life so it was a surprise that you had talked about it with someone.

“It’s good to see that things worked out for you,” Jun said, he looked at the watch on his wrist before looking back at you again “Go on, take the rest of the day off”

You shook at head, pointing at the kids behind him - who were already making a fuss all over the place.

“I still have a few more hours to go and you need help with the kids”

Jun just rolled his eyes when he took a few steps closer to you and Seokmin, pretty much pushing out of the door.

“I’ll let you know that there was a time when I managed this place just fine without you”

For the rest of the day, you walked around town with Seokmin. He held your hand the entire time, letting it go just to put his arm around your shoulder, either way, he always had his hands on you. You didn’t mind it, in fact, you liked it a lot. The idea of always being close to him made your heart flutter in impossible ways, made you imagine what life would be like when you finally got to be with him for more than a few hours at a time, it made you wish for a future when you would be able to see him every day and talk to him and just be around him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Seokmin said when you reached your neighborhood.

“That could be dangerous”

During the time you and Seokmin talked on the phone, he told a lot about his childhood and there was one thing that was clear to you: he was an unpredictable kid. His ideas were always crazy and so unnatural for a child. When you were in foster care you thought that the other kids were crazy, but they were just reckless, Seokmin was wild.

“I should have never told you those stories,” he said with a sigh, a tiny smile on his face “I’ve got this job offer, here in the city. It’s not like what I do now but I think that it could be fun and I’ll try to make it work as much as possible. If I do take it, we’ll be closer to each other”

You were shaking your head before he was done speaking. Seokmin changing jobs, and doing something else that was not what he wanted initially was a huge no.

“You’re not moving here”

He sighed again and took your hand in his.

“I know you’re worried about my job, but I only started to do it because I thought that it was the easiest way to find you. I can do something else, anything else, if it means that I can have you”

You turned to look at him, your hand squeezing his. His words assured you, more than anything in the world. Hearing those words was the only thing you needed.

“Remember how I told you that Jun’s soulmate mom is a social worker? She told me that there is this University, not the most prestigious one but a university nonetheless, that is more likely to give out scholarships. A couple of months ago I took the test to get in and I got the results a week ago”

Seokmin nodded at you, not really understanding what you meant. Truth be told, he was a little hurt. The second he mentioned it you were already denying it, like the mere idea of having him close to was repulsive. He knew that couldn’t be the case, knew that those things never reached your heart but even so, the feeling of getting rejected was there.

“I got in. I have to move there in the next few weeks or so, to settle in and find my way around town”

“Where… where is that?”

You laughed and kissed him quickly. He looked way too cute with the confused look on his face.

“I didn’t ask for your address just to have it, Seokmin. I want to be close to you so I was looking for a place near yours but also close enough to the university”

Before you even done speaking Seokmin already had his arms around while he placed quick kisses all over your face, making you laugh.

Moving away was harder than expected. There weren’t many things that tied you to that place, but the few things that did make it heartbreaking.

Just as you predicted, telling Jun was easy. Your friend, like always, had been supportive saying that he had your back in all the choices you’ve made and the choices that you would come to make.

His kids were a completely different story. When you told Hana about it, she started to cry, tears running down her little face and sobs escaping her lips. You knew that it was going to be hard to talk to her, but you didn’t think that it was going to be like that. Hanbin was easier but you knew that he was also feeling it.

“Will you call us every day?”

“I’ll call you every Sunday morning,” you said pinching her cheeks “We all know how much your dad loves Sunday mornings”

Jun groaned but he still had a smile on his face.

“Why do you hate me?”

It broke your heart to leave all three of them, but it was something that you had to do, not only because you wanted to be close to Seokmin but because of yourself. The change was something that you needed to do in order to move your life forward.

Moving day wasn’t as terrible as you expected. Seokmin had helped you move all your stuff, boxing everything to perfection. You didn’t have much you wanted to take with you but even so, everything you owned had been labeled and wrapped.

Somehow Seokmin had managed to convince you to just move in with him. You tried to deny him at first. It didn’t make any sense; you had just started something with him and suddenly you were putting your toothbrushes together. That was way too fast. “We don’t know how much time we have together so why waste it by being apart?” You tried reasoning with him “What if I can’t stand your habits and you hate mine?” To what he just said, “I’ll love all of your nasty habits and I’ll be the perfect prince, so you’ll have nothing to complain about”.

It all ended with a heated make-out session on your couch.

Seokmin was feeling edgy. He was supposed to be home hours ago, he knew that you were worried but restraining yourself from calling him. He loved his job, he really did, and it was amazing that he got to keep it and be with you at the same time, but he hated days like those. He hated the late-night shootings when he had to be away - especially when he could feel how worried you were - and he didn’t even like to think about when he had to do something out of town.

The drive back home felt endless. He broke God knows how many speed limits, and crossed a few red lights. He didn’t know why he was feeling like that, he knew that there wasn’t anything wrong going on at home. You would have called him in case something happened, he would have felt something change.

But at times he couldn’t help but feel anxious.

It had been four years. Four years since you found each other, since you started your life together, probably the four happiest years of his. But whenever he wasn’t expecting it, whenever Seokmin started to feel comfortable again with his life and you around him, his dreams would come back to haunt him. Instead of seeing you, in the past, he saw you as you were in this life. He saw the woman he loved, more than any of his dreams could have let him know, die in front of him, in his arms. It was always like that, you had a smile on your face, a tear ran down your cheek and you said that loved him.

On nights like that, he would search for you. His arms moved directly to you and pulled you to him as quiet sobs escaped his lips. You always cried with him on nights like that. You didn’t have those sorts of dreams, but his despair and fear ran through your body as if they were your own.

That night was just like that. The whole day he had a sickening feeling in his stomach. Like the world was telling him that something was bound to happen. The one thing that had somehow calmed him was how at ease you were during most of the way.

Seokmin walked inside a house in darkness, the light in the hallway the only thing that could possibly tell him that there was someone home. You always did that for him when he had one of his late nights.

You were sleeping in the bedroom, so Seokmin tried his best not to make a sound. But he knew that all his efforts were useless when he walked out of the bathroom to find the bedside lamp on and you looking at him.

“I didn’t mean to wake you”

You sat up and smiled at him, shaking your head. It was a good thing that he had woken you up. Your sleep wasn’t peaceful, no nightmares or dreams but although you were asleep you still had that weird feeling of being awake while sleeping.

“It’s fine, I actually have to talk to you about something”

Seokmin wouldn’t like what you had to say to him, in fact, you were pretty sure that he would probably hate it.

“I talked to your sister today” the words left your lips in a quiet whisper.

Seokmin stood still, his eyes focused on you, but his mind was somewhere entirely. He finally understood why you had felt so anxious and nervous during lunchtime and why he was feeling on edge the entire day.

“We’re not doing this” he shook his head.

“Seokmin it’s been 12 years, you’re going to have to talk to them at some point”

You reached for his hand at the same that Seokmin scoffed at you.

“You haven’t talked to your parents in 22 years and I don’t push toward them”

Seokmin regretted his words the second he said them. He watched as you tried your best to control your emotions and not let him feel just how hurt you truly felt about his words. You pulled back the hand you reached to Seokmin and tucked it under the blankets.

“I did try to look for them, Seokmin. I found them. It went the same way as it did when I was eight years old. They didn’t want me”

You never told anyone about that, it wasn’t the kind of thing that you liked to talk about. To be honest you didn’t even like to think about it.

A week before you moved in with Seokmin you searched for your parents. With Jun’s help, you managed to find them, quite easily. They still lived in the city, in the same house you lived in for the first eight years of your life. All it really took to get a hold of them was to find the documents they filled when they left you in the foster house. Your meeting with them didn’t last long, less than five minutes and they didn’t even invite you in. All the conversation was done at their doorstep. “We can’t do anything for you, we’re not parent material,” they said to which you answered, “I’m no longer a kid who needs care and protection”.

For them to suddenly find their inner parent wasn’t something that you wanted or expected but you thought that they could, at least, be part of your life but even that they refused. They only showed some kind of interest when you mentioned Seokmin and just by looking at them, you could tell that their interest was more on what Seokmin brought with him than for you.

After that you never mentioned them again, never allowed Jun to talk about it again, not even thinking about them was allowed.

“Just because people bond doesn’t mean they become good people, Seokmin. It just means that there’s someone out there who won’t judge your choices”

“Babe…”

Seokmin crawled on the bed towards you, his arms going around you and tangled his legs with yours.

You stayed quiet for a while, unmoving. That was your favorite place in the world, his arms. Even if you had just some kind of argument with him, even if you were hurt by what the other person said, you never turned your back on each other.

“I’m afraid if I let them in again the same thing will happen. I can’t go through that again”

You turned in his arms, facing him.

“They were probably just afraid Seokmin, the things people say about Memorous aren’t nice. Maybe they were just afraid to lose their son. Your sister did sound really sorry on the phone” you ran your hand on his cheek “You’re thirty years old, the feelings you had at eighteen are not the same and you certainly are not the same person. Maybe we could try talking to them, and if it doesn't work, it doesn’t”

“Thank you for reminding me that I’m old”

You giggled against his chest, which made Seokmin kiss the top of your head.

“You’ll only be old when our kids kids go to college”

Something in Seokmin’s eyes changed, all the anger and laughter from just a second before suddenly disappeared. He rolled on the bed, so he was on top of you.

“Are we talking babies now?”

You wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed your way up from his collarbone to his lips.

“You’ve been lacking in that department lately, husband”

He pulled your hands away from his neck and presses it against the mattress.

“I’ll be sure to make it up to you, wife”

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erathene · 7 days

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Sowing Seeds

Summary: Wound up by your mother’s incessant nagging, you reminisce over the ranger of the north you fell in love with. Aragorn helps in more ways than one.

Word count: 2k

Pairing: Aragorn x Female!Reader

Warnings: This fic is rated mature. LOTS of Spice, sexual themes (flirting, touching, kissing, teasing). Mentions of pregnancy and conceiving a child. Mentions of sexual intercourse, but it is not explicitly described.

AO3 Link: Sowing Seeds

Author's note: Thank you to @emmanuellececchi for being a wonderful Beta reader and taking time to provide feedback even when sick! You're the best 😘 Thank you also to @dancerinthestorm and @inkedmoth who cheered me on when I was documenting my creative process, you guys are awesome 🙂 This fic is also dedicated to anyone who has had the unsolicited question of “when are you having kids // when are you trying for baby #2”. Fertility and conceiving is a journey which looks different from person to person, and there are many versions of happiness that come with it. Enjoy ❤️

..........................

"My love?"

At the distant sound of your husband's voice, you glance up, the letter from your mother still clutched in your hand. You rise quickly, tucking the parchment back into its envelope and stuffing it hastily into a drawer of the writing desk.

"In here," you call back to him. Even after all these months of living in the royal quarters, at times they still feel enormous to you.

He rounds the door to the study and your eyes take in the full sight of him. He's sporting a crisp linen shirt and lightweight moss-green tunic, both of which are generously covered in dirt. His sleeves have been rolled up to the elbows, the dirt even more pronounced around his exposed forearms, down to his hands and fingertips. His breeches and boots fare no better, and there are particularly large patches of mud clinging to his kneecaps where he must have been kneeling in the fresh earth. There's also a slight sheen on his forehead which speaks of his toil.

He looks far more ranger than king today, more than you've seen in a long time. He looks... delightful.

"Been in the gardens again?" you muse, taking in his form with one eyebrow raised and a twitch at your mouth.

"Aye," he says, brushing one elbow where a patch of drying mud seems to bother him. "Our head gardener believes we will have the most spectacular blooms in the palace gardens ere the start of summer," he gushes passionately.

"I don't doubt it," you smirk, still looking him up and down, "with all the work you're putting in."

He flashes a quick smile in your direction. There he is. Your ranger. The dirt-ridden Dúnedain who was always traipsing from one corner of Middle Earth to another, ragged and rough-looking from the wilds and the woodlands, the scent of which lingered on every part of his being. You suddenly wished you were close enough to smell him, just as a flash of a distant memory crosses your mind; one of the two of you buried in each other's arms, his calloused hands running gently through your hair, your lips pressing against his, fully consuming him yet wanting more. The temporary burst of imagery in your mind is intense.

You blame your mother for this, her and her persistent letters which usually centre around the royal heirs that need to come forth sooner rather than later. She was quick to approve your match with long-lost-heir-to-the-throne-of-Gondor Aragorn, but much less approving of Strider and his ranger ways. Indeed, if he had stepped over her threshold in his current state, she would likely throw him out and tell him to go bathe in a horse trough before showing his face at her doorstep again.

He somehow seems to partly read your mind. "I'll go change into something more--"

"Don't," you interrupt him quickly. The last thing you want him to do is change.

You slowly cross the room to where he is standing with a slightly bewildered look on his face, the light chiffon of your dress trailing behind you across the carpets. It's a loose-fitting gown, one of the more casual garments from your wardrobe, the colours well-suited to the warming spring weather. With no royal engagements today, you had deliberately chosen it over the tighter, more formal frocks that now seemed to be overflowing from every armoire in your chambers.

What happened to the simple leggings and cotton blouses you used to wear? What was ever wrong with them?

"What troubles you?" Aragorn's voice is calm and quiet as you approach, despite the crease in his brow. Ever the doting husband, he instinctively knows that something has irked you.

"Nothing of great significance... My mother and her nagging," you shrug shyly with a roll of your eyes.

"And what has she to say, pray tell?" He traces the backs of his knuckles along your upper arm, up to your shoulder and the strap of your dress, so gentle it barely touches your skin.

You look up into his deep, grey eyes. "Please, I do not want to think about my mother right now." Your voice is hovering somewhere between a whisper and a moan. He doesn't stop caressing your arm. "She's on about… that subject again."

His eyebrows lift in surprise. "Has she rescinded her opinion of me? To be posing the question to you so openly and so often?"

You snicker at the thought. "I don't think she will ever move past the fact that her only daughter went chasing after a ranger of the north. She missed out on the opportunity to play matchmaker." Yes, your mother would have loved to have been the one to set you up with some petty lord with the promise of new trade links for your homeland and a sizable dowry for your family's coffers.

Aragorn hummed to himself, his head tilting sideways as he considered this fact. "Is the King of Gondor not enough for her?" he says, stretching his arms wide in jest.

"Enough of that talk, Telcontar," you scoff, using his chosen house name against him. "You married a strong woman; unfortunately for you, she comes with an equally strong mother-in-law."

"Well," he breathes softly, wrapping his soiled hands around your own, "loathe as I am to do something to appease your mother, the idea of you, round and brimming with our child, does sound very appealing to me." He lifts your hands to his chest where your finely-crafted silver wedding band gleams in the bright sunlight. "A little Telcontari of our own," he murmurs, placing a kiss on your ring finger.

You cannot help your coy smile. "Only the one?"

His fingertips reach for a stray strand of your hair that dangles beside your cheek, and he carefully tucks it behind your ear. "However many you want, my love." His giant hand moves from your hair to your jawline, his thumb inching towards your mouth.

His words are deliberate and astute; many times you have mentioned your childhood spent amongst your large family, and there is little doubt he is not aware of your desire for a generous brood. Yet you cannot stop the flirtatious back talk that slips from your open mouth. "You may come to regret that," you say, before biting your lip and locking his gaze.

A smile quickens across his features. "I think I ought to be the judge of what I regret saying to my wife."

It almost sounds like a challenge.

Strong, muscular arms pull you in closer as he speaks, embracing you, his palms settling into the small of your back. He holds you regally, his touch firm yet gentle, as though you're the answer to every prayer he's ever spoken in tortured whispers to the divine. You are his queen, and he intends to treat you as such; he lays a tender, drawn-out kiss on your forehead where the Gondorian diadem would normally be resting on your brow. He is practically worshipping you.

Yes, it's good. But receiving the royal treatment is not on your agenda today. What you are looking for, what you need, is the ranger in him. You need Strider.

Your next move catches him somewhat off guard. You press your palms to his chest and push him backwards, driving him into the wall with a gentle thud. His eyes betray his curiosity, but he shouldn't be surprised; after all, it was he who trained you in hand-to-hand combat when you joined the northern rangers. You begin your assault, placing kisses along his collarbone and up his neck to where, eventually, you come to the skin beneath his ear where you know he is most sensitive. He confirms you have found his weakness with a low, gravelly moan that rumbles his throat. It gives you the confidence needed to push on, to be bolder. Your hands trail from his chest to the nape of his neck, up into his hair, your fingertips massaging his scalp before pulling his lengths taught. You smirk into his skin when he lets out a second moan.

You should have known better than to think your touch would disable him and this time, it's you who is caught off guard. He sweeps your legs out from under you and wraps them around his waist, spinning you around, lifting you up against the same wall he had his back to moments ago. The breath is driven out of your lungs as he pins you there. He gives you a look, his eyes holding a hunger like he's absolutely starved of you, and you know you're about to learn exactly what regret means.

His lips take to your mouth and he's a man on a mission; to satiate every whim, every desire, every need that you awoke within him and he will not allow himself to rest until he has achieved it. His kiss is wild, passionate, and his broad hands explore your body freely, taking in every contour and curve you have to offer him. You finally figure out how to draw breath again and you inhale his scent, the blissful smell of gardens and disturbed earth washing over you.

It's not hard for you to picture him the way you fell in love with him; a worn travelling cloak hanging from his well-built shoulders which also bear his pack, bow and bedroll, prepared and ready for whatever the world throws his way.

He breaks away momentarily, muttering something incomprehensible about how sweet you taste, before his lips meet your own once more. He consumes you as though you're the first proper meal he's had after weeks on the road. Your breath catches in your throat as he nips at your bottom lip in his frenzy, yet your reaction only encourages his mouth; further kisses are placed along your jawline, one after another like trailing footprints, inching their way to your neck, where his teeth sink into yet more of your flesh and begin to gently suck. He knows just as well as you do that it will leave a bruise. A claim to mark his territory.

His hands return to roaming about your thighs, tugging at the fabric of your dress, searching for his prize. You know exactly what he wants. However, your full-length gown is awkwardly caught around your knees, the chiffon unwilling to stretch, blocking his access. His fingers switch to tugging at the fastening at the back of the dress, impatient and restless.

Frustrating as it is to tell your husband to stop, your conscience knows you must. Breaking away from his touch, you hiss a command. "Not here, Aragorn.” You have been working hard to build a trusting relationship with your household staff in recent months, and goodness knows what would happen if one of them were to catch their king and queen in the act of procreation right here on the study floor. The poor elderly head housekeeper would likely faint with shock.

He tries to protest, the disappointment evident in his longing eyes, but you press your index finger to his lips. "And not with those filthy hands either. Wash them first, then meet me in the bed chamber." You pause, taking a moment to lean in to whisper in his ear, "and there, you can remove whatever you want." Your seductive tone makes the prospect sound even more inviting to him than it already is.

Aragorn sighs, allowing a curse to slip through his lips. He releases your thighs and they slowly drag against his soiled breeches until your feet return to the floor. You pull away and turn towards your chambers, but not before taking a moment to look back at your husband; he's gaping at you like a fool, completely caught in your trance, so you intentionally allow the strap of your dress to fall from your shoulder. You know it's all he can do to keep his feet planted where he stands and not curse you again for being such a tease. As a final provocation, you run your tongue across your bottom lip before sauntering away, your hips deliberately swinging from side to side as he watches you leave. The palace gardens are not the only place Aragorn will be sowing his seeds today, it would seem.

#aragorn x y/n #aragorn x reader #aragorn x you #aragorn #lord of the rings #lotr fanfic #fanfiction #tw: pregnancy #tw: conceiving

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mppmaraudergirl · 5 months

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here is an unnamed, unfinished WIP that is too fun to die alone in my WIPs folder, hope you enjoy

prompt (but make it wizard):

"Evans," came the gruff voice of Alastor Moody, Head of the Auror department.

Lily looked up from the stack of parchment she'd been pouring over slightly maniacally for the last three hours. She was starting to see double. "Yes? Sir."

"We have an urgent assignment for you."

"Me? Why?"

Moody's magical eye was piercing in its intensity. "Because I'm bloody telling you—"

"Crouch has me working 'round—"

"You let me worry about Crouch. This new assignment is taking precedence. You are the only one who has the requisite intel to pull this off."

She should be flattered. But she had been an Auror long enough to know this was not a compliment. "Why's that? Sir."

"Because of the target. James Potter."

Thus Lily found herself heading undercover for one of the most bizarre operations she’d ever undertaken as an Auror. The gist was this: a critically important memory had gone missing from the Department of Mystery’s Prophecy Department—that was all she was allowed to know, giving the clearance level required of which she woefully fell short—and in the process of recovering the palm-sized orb, the chain of custody was broken and the prophecy was sent off via owl post.

To James Potter.

Somehow.

That was where she came in. A long-time acquaintance, sometimes-friend, one-time-when-they-were-drunk-snog-partner, she was tasked with recovering the orb from James without revealing that he possessed it. Simple enough task on the surface level, if one were to ignore the simple fact that, of all things, the orb was disguised as a bloody Snitch.

“You sent James Potter important Ministry information in the form of a Snitch?” she’d asked, unable to keep the contempt out of her voice. “And you expect he hasn’t already broken it? Or let it loose?”

Idiots. Idiots, the lot of them.

(Moody was not particularly appreciative of her tone. But again, long-time acquaintance, sometimes-friend, one-time-when-they-were-drunk… She was their best option.)

That was how she found herself casually bumping into her old co-Head on the high street in Diagon Alley, ignoring the little twist in her gut that she attributed to the nerves of her assignment, and chatting with him as though she was hanging on to every precious word that came out of his mouth until she finally mustered up the courage to ask him out.

“Dinner?” he had replied. “Tonight?”

“Yes. Why wait?” she had said, summoning the best version of her seventeen-year-old flirty self—she wasn’t sure that part of her still existed to any real extent, but she also knew James used to have a thing for her, so she had to play the cards she was dealt, as her dad used to say.

She tried to not be so pleased when he agreed.

***

That life was unpredictable was often one of James Potter’s favorite parts about it. He leaned into the chaos at every possible moment from the moment he learned what leaning was. As he aged, he took on a new life philosophy and decided to live his life expecting the most outrageous things to happen; he played the odds, chose the underdog every chance he got, and like the lucky arse Sirius said he was, often it paid off.

But even this felt like too much of a stretch.

Because while James had a lot of luck in life, and a lot of privilege, too, what he unequivocally did not have, was good fortune with Lily Evans.

And yet now, he was supposed to believe that he just happened to run into Lily Evans on the cobbled streets of Diagon Alley and she was so thrilled to see him that she asked him out?

Lucky James might be, but stupid he was not.

He knew right away that something strange was happening when he received a parcel earlier in the day that contained a pristine Golden Snitch. He had eyed it warily for twenty minutes before Sirius interrupted him.

“I don’t get it,” James had said.

“Well, I know it’s been a while since you played Quidditch, mate, but that is a Snitch.”

James had shot him a look, slightly disgruntled but mostly annoyed, before he reached forward toward it. “But why did it come through the post? There’s no address on it. No letter. There is definitely something going on with this. And I intend—”

Sirius had cut him off with a sigh.

“I intend to find out!”

“Good luck, Sherlock.”

“Sher-what?”

“Nevermind.”

It was this intent to investigate that led James to Diagon Alley in the first place, though what he was expecting to learn from the small selection of books in Quality Quidditch Supplies was beyond him. And so when he returned to his flat empty handed that was not altogether surprising.

Sirius looked up from the sofa where he was sitting while filling in the crossword, paper and ink pot balanced on either knee, and gave James an if you must look before nodding.

James wouldn't realize what planted this idea in his head, but the moment he gazed down at the Snitch something clicked.

"Evans is an Auror, isn't she?"

***

The Shack was an… interesting venue choice for their date, Lily thought as she pushed open the splintered door. Tucked away on the windiest street in Diagon Alley, The Shack was named and modeled after The Shrieking Shack by a couple of wizards who bought heavily into its lore. As far as Lily knew, the haunted building on the outskirts of Hogsmeade village was so heavily warded that no one had ventured inside of it in decades, which made Lily skeptical about the owners’ ability to truly model their restaurant after it.

It became quickly apparent that they simply leaned into the dilapidated ambiance of The Shrieking Shacks’ exterior when designing the interior. The tables and chairs looked beat up, mismatched and wobbly, some missing legs or propped up by magic. The photographs lining the walls were hung in broken picture frames and never level; they were also surrounded by peeling wallpaper or chipped paint. Candlelit chandeliers flickered overhead, casting rolling shadows across the room as Lily scanned it.

James was already there and flagged her over with a delighted wave of his arm.

“Hi!” she said, voice exaggeratedly cheerful. She leaned down to press her lips to his cheek, earning herself a surprised widening of his eyes before his trademark grin slipped back into place.

“Hey, Evans. All right?”

“I’m gre-at!”

Unfortunately her upbeat reply was momentarily derailed when she sat down on a battered wooden chair across from him; it wobbled dangerously and she just stopped herself from toppling over.

“Steady there,” James said, not bothering to conceal his grin.

She knew her replying smile came out more like a grimace. To make matters worse, when she leaned forward to rest an elbow on the table, a chunk fell off and onto the floor. James repaired it with a flick of his wand and an unabated grin.

“Careful, Evans. You keep breaking things and I have it on good authority that they’ll chuck us out of here.”

The idea didn’t sound altogether terrible, if Lily were honest with herself. If they did get kicked out, perhaps she could convince James to take her back to his home. It would get her to her end goal faster. Something told her that she wouldn’t be getting off that easily though. Nothing ever was easy with James Potter.

“Is that true?” she asked, pretending to be concerned.

The messy-haired wizard opened his mouth, closed it, and then finally said, “Nah, I’m taking the mick. I take it this means you’ve never been here before? Everything is in a state of near-disrepair.”

“I’ve never been here. It’s… interesting, though. In a nice way.”

James only smiled in reply as their waitress appeared.

***

If James had any doubt that something was going on with Lily Evans, it would have all been erased within two minutes of sitting down at the restaurant. The choice to meet her at The Shack came quickly during his afternoon brainstorming session with Sirius.

“Evans asked you out?” he had asked, the crossword now forgotten. “Unless you’ve suddenly changed into a cephalopod and didn’t tell me, something’s amiss.”

Despite Sirius’ jokes, or perhaps prompted by them, the pair concocted a plan to test just how interested Lily truly was in dating James.

Admittedly, it had been hard to not get his hopes up. Regardless of his previous concerns, part of him was still hopeful that Lily had a more-than-platonic reason for the invitation. Now, seeing her falsely smile through her casual review of the menu, he would settle for platonic instead of… whatever the real motivation was.

#jily #jily fic #unfinished wip #jple

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gffa · 1 year

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As I continue my rewatch my frustration with the timeline of The Mandalorian is not eased by having two seasons under our belts or more information on the Children of the Watch because there’s a very central question that haunts me: Why does everyone act like Mandalorians not removing their helmets is the default and never mention any other way? To establish a timeline, centering the first season of The Mandalorian as year zero: - 28-31 years ago, the Clone Wars take place, which is likely when Din’s parents were killed and he was adopted by Death Watch - 11 years ago, the events Rebels takes place, in which Sabine gives the dark saber to Bo-Katan, who unites the Houses to rebel against the Empire - 9 years ago, the events of A New Hope take place - ?? years ago the Great Purge, the Night of a Thousand Tears happens, where the Empire wipes out the Mandalorians (this is likely somewhere around 10 years ago, but could be anywhere in this timeline) - 5 years ago, the Empire fell in the events of Return of the Jedi In the first episode, Mythrol asks if it’s true you guys never take off your helmets. In episode 2, Kuill says he’s never met a Mandalorian, he’s only heard stories about them (and their battle skill is implied). In episode 3, Paz Vizsla says that the beskar was from the Great Purge, the reason they live like sand rats now. In episode 4, Cara asks what happens if Din takes off his helmet, despite that he never told her that about himself, but she has no mention of any other type of Mandalorian. The thing is: The Mandalorians we know from The Clone Wars and Rebels were running around the galaxy eleven ago at minimum (likely less even!). And the Empire has been gone for five of those years. Which means, even if the Empire would have suppressed knowledge of the Mandalorians (and there’s no suggestion that they did, nor an obvious reason to), it wasn’t just within living memory, it was only a five or six year period where they would have had time to do so. So, within those eleven years, did the galaxy forget that any other kind of Mandalorian exists? The Children of the Watch were wiped out in the same Great Purge, so it’s not like they sprung up in place of other types of Mandalorians, and they’ve lived in hiding ever since. But are apparently common enough that people know they don’t take their helmets off, ever? I can believe that, despite that Din is fairly aware of the state of the galaxy (he knows the New Republic is a joke when Greef suggests reporting the Imperial remnants to them), he’s extremely unaware in other ways. I can believe that even when the Mandalorians were running around the galaxy eleven years ago and he would have been in his 20s at earliest, more likely in his 30s, that the Watch was all he knew, he’s not a chatty guy, and somehow he avoided running into any other Mandalorians during the years of the Empire before Bo-Katan united the Houses. What I’m forever ??? about is how do people around Din seem to accept his religious rules as the default on Mandalorians? Are we just supposed to think that everyone else knows most Mandalorians weren’t like that but don’t say anything because they know Din does follow those rules? Are we supposed to think that they were killed off and eleven years is long enough that nobody remembers anything but the Children of the Watch version of Mandalorians, despite that all of them would have been plenty old enough to remember? My frustration is that people seem extremely aware that Mandalorians exist and understand that they don’t take their helmets off, they’ve “heard the stories” or they know tidbits about them. I get that the Empire suppressed and changed knowledge of the Jedi, they had ~20 years of propaganda and Palpatine made a hardcore point of it because he didn’t want anyone else to have access to the Force. And if all knowledge about Mandalorians had been wiped, okay, sure, maybe there was a reason. But people are aware Mandalorians exist! They’ve heard the stories! They know details about Din’s version of Mandalorians! How do they know that, but nobody seems to be aware that Din’s not the default? Or are they just extremely aware of the difference between the Houses of Mandalore and the Children of the Watch and so they know Din’s different, but they’re not interested in asking about other Mandalorians, only Children of the Watch? I just don’t really see how the galaxy goes from what we knew during the Clone Wars and Rebels to the state of the galaxy re: Mandalorians in The Mandalorian. If nobody mentioned it and Din was unaware, sure, but multiple people around him seem like Din’s version is default and, like, JON, DAVE, I WATCHED REBELS, I KNOW THE STATE OF THE GALAXY, COME ON.

#din djarin #mandalorians #the mandalorian #meta

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leidensygdom · 14 days

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ENNU FINAL SESSION RECAP!!

OKAY WE'VE FINISHED PLAYING NOW- For the record, the next session is gonna be the epilogues, but this is the final one before that! A lot has happened, so- Bullet points as usual

For the record, Ataraxia (the meat computer- and BBEG) had killed Yxala last session after her main body was destroyed- And took over Yxala's corpse, forcing it to move through an artifical organ

For this session I played Relent! He was in scene as the NPC (We usually bring one NPC along with the party), and I got control of him

please look at this drawing of him i'm working on : ) I used a quickly colored version of him as a token

The fight was very intense! We were low on resources and possessed Yxala (just like regular Yxala) hit like a truck. Ataraxia lost her cool completely and was a bundle of rage

Ataraxia was aware that Yxala's body was rejecting her- She's a celestial-aligned artificial intelligence, and Yxala is a fiend with air elemental influence. She instead wanted to go for Blasma (who is almost an empty vessel after she broke her soul for power) or Centi (a celestial, whose family had been used by Ataraxia for power)

During the fight, Ataraxia was trying to use Yxala's soul for power (like in a Soul Cage spell), and could've potentially exhausted it. Urion, while unconscious, tried to protect Yxala's soul from her- Very sweet

Everyone in the party tried to kill Yxala either by grabbing the artificial heart or stabbing it

Things got rough-

With Centi downed and Relent with (literally) one hit point, Blasma broke her soul again for a last boost of power. The DM told her that she could do so- But she'd lose 15 points of maximum health per spell slot level. She used a level 6 one, and lost 90 permanently, leaving her with 22. WILD.

Relent managed to somehow escape Yxalataraxia's last attacks as he almost fell, with some lucky misses.

He had been using a homebrew item during the fight- Twin swords containing the half-dormant, ghostly souls of his twin older siblings, who we saved previously. They let him use Call Lightning but as a melee attack, delivering it through a stab.

He got the final hit- I think it's very climatic, given how much he had lost to Ataraxia. He stabbed Yxala in the artificial heart as Ataraxia tried to choke him. With Ataraxia dead, Yxala regained consciousness briefly- She seemed thankful and understood why, and hugged him. He was a mess.

After that- We had to try to run! But the Deep Lab was crumbling, as the meat that formed Ataraxia (which got woven into the entire laboratory's structure) was quickly decaying and dying. We didn't have the needed items to resurrect Yxala either. The Onirist/Urion managed to force Ataraxia's remnants to take us out of there as a last miracle, because in the end, Ataraxia is programmed to try to save lives, and it was against her principles to let us die. Whatever faith and divinity Urion had left was used in that.

We woke up outside. The city is in a state of chaos. All the people of the Deep Lab (thousands of them were down there, including us) had been teleported outside. More than half of the city had been mentally controlled by Ataraxia- And she just lost control the moment she died, which- Well, suddenly becoming aware of yourself after having been controlled is probably shocking.

We were teleported outside of the cabin some of our allies had been taking refuge in.

Out there, we found out that Blasma has had some massive memory loss because her soul is barely... there. Her horrible deadbeat dad said he knows who can fix her. Everyone in the party wants to kill that guy.

Centi struggled to hug her mother, as she gave her the same vibe than Ataraxia. Which was to be expected, given how Ataraxia chopped up her mothers for fuel.

Urion/The Onirist was mostly dead at that point, after having been on forced life support from Ataraxia. She had drained them of energy and blood too, so we had to get Uri's sister to help with that. Recovery will probably take months, or years

Relent told Uri's sister so many mean words these two hate each other soooooo much

Relent knew they didn't have the needed materials to resurrect Yxala- Not a properly valued diamond, and she was missing an organ. Instead, after verifying that Yxala's soul was still there- Protected by Uri, actually-, he used his last spell slot (which he had saved up for this) to resurrect her.

Fucked up necromancy time. He substituted both, the diamond and her heart, with his crystallized eye, the one he had yoinked out of his face years ago and used as an energy power- Later given to Centi. He also made use of Urion's bismuth (as an earth genasi they produce it).

His reasoning is that given how Yxala made her partners her paladin oath, having materials belonging to her two anchors was probably the way to go. She... Uh, has an amalgamation of quartz and bismuth where her heart should be, but she lives. Surely fucked up necromancy with makeshift materials won't have consequences.

Relent actually had to take away any remnant of Ataraxia's fucked up artificial organ and the whole scene was a bit medical and so. He's got a background in medicine. He had to put tissues and bones back in place. He was drenched with her blood by the end of it.

The session ended shortly after. Yxala is alive but hasn't been conscious. Same for Urion. The epilogues will happen two years later, next Sunday- We'll have to see how that goes.

Anyhow, I'm an emotional mess now. Man I love TTRPGs

#ennu #long post #i cry sob etc #i wanna draw so many scenes from this #Relent stabbing Yxala to death and the consequent hug #the weird resurrection #i feel like Relent has changed tonally as a character from this

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crazyunsexycool · 1 year

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I just got an idea for a story and have to share!! So reader and Bucky are high school sweethearts and married just before he's in the war and taken by hydra. She never finds out what happened to him and never remarries because he was the great love of her life... but just after he's taken she finds out she's pregnant.

Flash forward to the present and when Bucky is saved by the avengers he tries to find reader but finds out she died and also that he has a son. He goes to meet his son who tells Bucky all about reader from when he was growing up.

Somehow Bucky finds a way to bring reader back through teleporting her or something because he simply can't live without her.

80 years later.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Warning: talks of death, angst, pregnancy, fluff.

A/N: the day I stop writing. About time travel send help because I love it. The TVA can kiss my ass. I also forgot I had written this and it was saved in my drafts for the longest time. I also thought it’d be funny if Bucky was a grandfather that looked younger than his grandkids.

Bucky stood in front of the red door and took a deep breath. He finally gets the courage to knock on the door, his hand trembling as he raked it through his long hair. When the door opens it feels like he’s been punched in the gut.

“Dad?” Surprise colors the voice of this familiar stranger.

“Hey kid.”

Bucky stood in front of an older looking version of himself. White hair and wrinkles around electric blue eyes. But the nose and the lips were all you.

James Grant Barnes, was the son you’d had right after Bucky had been shipped off to the Great War. The son Bucky would never know about because he’d fall off of a moving train and into the hands of hydra. For sixty five years you’d mourn the loss of your high school sweetheart, love of your life and husband. He’d asked for your hand in marriage as soon as you both graduated high school but only married right before he went off to boot camp. It was the happiest days of both your lives, a life you’d never get to share.

Both men stared at each other for a minute before a voice came up behind them.

“Who’s at the door pa?”

“Please come in.” Bucky gets ushered into the living room. “Make yourself at home.”

“Pa who was at the-“ a woman walks into the living room. Hair down to her shoulders, bright eyes and the spitting image of you.

“Rebecca, I'd like you to meet your grandfather.”

“You look just like her.” Bucky’s voice breaks as he speaks.

Rebecca smiles as she sits next to him and it makes Bucky’s heart ache even more. She takes his right hand in hers and squeezes it gently.

“I’m sorry you lost your time with grandma. I feel like I’ve known you all of my life, she talked about you all the time and she loved you so much.”

Bucky cried at that for two reasons. The first being because hydra stole his life away from him and second because he could barely remember you. He just always knew there was something or someone missing. He could only piece parts of your relationship by what Steve told him. The only thing Bucky had of yours was a picture and you looked a bit older then.

“Would you like to see pictures?” James asks his father. Bucky only nods.

Bucky and James spent hours together watching home movies and looking through albums you’d put together. James filled in the blanks for some pictures and family moments. The more he saw the more memories from your time together came back to Bucky.

“Grandma, what was grandpa like?” A very young Rebecca asked you.

You were both sitting in a garden having a picnic. James was currently recording the interaction. While Rebecca sat beside you, you held the newest addition to the family in your arms.

“Well he was a nerd.” You giggle along with Rebecca. “The cutest nerd at our school. He loved reading and dancing and anything to do with technology.”

“Did he ever take you dancing?”

“He sure did. We went dancing every Friday night and we would always drag Stevie with us. Even the night before he went off to war we went dancing.”

“Why didn’t he come back so he could dance with you again?” Rebecca asked innocently. She was still too young to understand what had happened.

The video cuts off there and James pauses the video before it goes any further.

“I wish I could have.” Bucky says after a while.

“She knew, Ma was never mad at you or anything. She just missed you. Even when she thought I wouldn’t notice I always knew when she’d be crying over you. Especially around your birthday or your anniversary. So once I was old enough to have a job I’d always take her out to celebrate.”

“She did a good job raising you. Did she ever-“

“She never remarried or dated anyone at all. Always said you were the love of her life and that there was no use in seeing anyone else because she would just compare them to you and it wouldn’t be fair to them.” James says sadly.

“She should have. She deserved to be happy.”

“Ma was happy with the family she had. She said it herself she wouldn’t change a thing.”

Bucky nods and stands up.

“It’s getting late, I should go. Thank you for not shutting the door on me and for showing me all of this.”

“I could never shut you out. This is your family too. I never thought I’d ever meet you,” James struggled to find the words to express how he felt. “I’m happy we got a chance to meet. You’re welcome back anytime.”

“Me too, I’ll come back soon.”

James stood and they hugged. The hold they had on each other was strong and neither of them wanted to let go. When they finally did they both had tears running down their cheeks but for different reasons. Bucky cried because he missed out on raising his son and James cried because he got a chance to meet his father.

Bucky left the house with a new sense of belonging. Although he never understood why you wouldn’t have written to him to tell me he would be a father. He knew he’d never get an answer so he tried to let it go. It was a complete shock when Steve told him about it.

From that day Bucky met with James frequently. They would mostly talk about the family and what growing up was like for James. His job and his kids. Bucky wanted to stay away from the topic of what happened to him with hydra or the missions he was going on with the Avengers. James didn’t seem to mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Today was a special occasion. It was Rebecca’s birthday and the family was going to have a party. Of course the first thing she did was invite her grandfather and anyone he wanted to bring. At first he politely declined, stating that he would probably ruin the party. But she insisted, with multiple calls. She was stubborn just like you.

Bucky showed up with Steve and Sam at his side. This would be the first time Bucky would meet the rest of the family and he was nervous.

“Grandpa, you made it!” Rebecca said in a joking tone. Bucky smiles and accepts the hug she’d offered.

“Wow, Buck was not joking when he said you looked like Y/N.”

Steve stood there stunned. While he had spoken with James on the phone he hadn’t met him or anyone else from the family in person. You had been one of the few people to see Steve for who he was and what he wanted to become. The two of you had been friends for as long as Bucky and Steve had been. He grieved your death when he woke up from the ice. Now he stood in a room full of people that had loved you, he took comfort in knowing you hadn’t been alone all those years.

“Hi, grandma talked about you just as she did gramps.” Rebecca smiles at Steve and opens her arm for a hug.

“James, this is Sam.”

“Pleasure to meet you.”

“No, the pleasure is all mine, James. Now tell me all about your mom. I bet she had the patience of a saint to put up with these two.”

“She did.” Both men chuckle as they move to the living room.

Not only did Bucky have a son and grandchildren, he also had great grandchildren as well as nieces and nephews. They had all gathered for Rebecca’s birthday in the hopes of meeting him. It was a surreal experience to have so much family. Bucky had thought that there would be no one left. That there wouldn’t be a place for him in this world but you’d managed to make sure he wasn’t alone. Even if you never got to know what you’d done.

After introductions were made the celebration really got started. There was music and conversations going on everywhere. Steve and Sam had been accepted quickly.

“Hey Steve,” Georgie, James’ son, called out. “You should try this.” He held out a plate for Steve to grab a cookie.

“Mmm,” Steve moaned out after he took the first bite. “These taste just like the ones Y/N used to make.”

“They are. When dad said you were coming Becs and I pulled out grandma’s recipe books. She had a little note next to this recipe saying they were your favorite. She was your friend too, thought you’d like having something she used to make.”

“Thanks,” Steve cleared his throat. “This is incredibly kind of you.”

“Don’t mention it. We made a few for you to take home. So don’t forget them before you leave.”

“Trust me I’m not leaving these behind.” Steve said with a chuckle as his phone began to ring. “Excuse me, I have to take this.”

Steve moved to a more private area as he answered Nat’s call and sighed as he hung up. He went through the house until he found Sam and Bucky out in the backyard.

“There’s an emergency, we have to go.” He announced grimly. “Buck, why don’t you stay? We’ll call you for backup if we need to.”

Bucky looked at Steve then at his son and some of the other people he had been talking with moments ago. If something bad was happening he had to go. He had to make sure to keep them safe however he could. So Bucky shook his head. “I’m going with you. I’ll be back before you know it, kid.” He told James with a wry smile.

James accompanied them to the front door where he exchanged a hug with Bucky. “Please come back safe.”

The request was a punch to the gut. You’d said those exact same words on the platform just before he got on the train.

“I’ll do what I can.” He knew better than to make a promise he couldn’t keep.

Days later Steve would come back and tell James that Bucky had disappeared in the snap.

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

Bucky stood in front of the same door he had five and a half years ago. He felt the same kind of fear he did last time. The door was opened this time by Rebecca who, upon seeing Bucky standing at the door, launched herself into his arms and cried. She pulled him into the living room and sat down on the couch.

“I’m so glad you’re back.” She said with a sad smile. It only served to make Bucky’s heart stop.

“Rebecca, where's James?”

Tears started to run down her cheeks again.

“He passed away two years ago. I’m so sorry.”

Bucky’s chest tightened. He’d never been there for his son in the moments that mattered and now his son had been taken away from him. He didn’t realize he’d started crying until Rebecca pulled him into her chest. Her arms around him and he sobbed. He grieved for his son, his wife and the life he’d lost.

“I thought Steve would have told you. He was with pa when he passed.”

“No, the minute I was able to come out here I did. We didn’t even get a chance to talk.”

After what felt like hours of them just sitting there and talking, Bucky excuses himself. He needed to get back before Steve went on his final mission.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.” Steve quipped.

“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.” Bucky and Steve hugged. “I’ll miss ya buddy. If you see her tell her I’ll always love her.” Bucky whispered.

Steve nodded and patted Bucky on his shoulder before heading to the platform.

Bucky held his breath as Steve disappeared. It should have taken only seconds based on what Bruce had said but Bucky knew he wasn’t coming back. Sam and Bruce began to argue but Bucky just turned around and started to walk away.

Bucky found it odd that Sam and Bruce went completely quiet and his steps faltered. He turned to find Steve standing on the platform and headed back.

“Tell her yourself.” Steve said with a shit eating grin as he stepped to the side.

Bucky had barely processed that Steve was back or what he had said when his eyes landed on you. You stood there wide eyed as you looked at him and then you moved. Before he could even react your arms were around his shoulders and your face was buried in the crook of his neck. Bucky snapped out of it and wrapped his arms around your waist.

“Hi.” You said once you pulled back, letting out a teary laugh. Your hands cupped his cheeks. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

“I’m pretty sure I do because I’ve missed you just as much.”

For the first time in years Bucky kisses you. It’s slow and timid but perfect nonetheless. He rested his forehead against yours and breathed a sigh of relief at having you in his arms again.

“My love, there’s something I have to tell you.” You inform him.

“If it’s about James I already know.”

“How?”

“I met him. He was a full grown adult but I spent some time with him.” Bucky tells you.

“I hope you’re ready to spend more time with him.” You say as you turn to find Steve holding on to a five year old version of your son.

“Hi daddy.” James waved excitedly and Steve set him on the ground. He takes off running and jumps into Bucky’s arms, giggling at the feeling of Bucky’s scruff tickling his cheek.

“Hi kid.”

You stand back to watch father and son interact for the first time. Your heart feels like it’s going to burst at the sight. Steve stands next to you and wraps an arm around your shoulder to pull you in. You cry in his embrace, this time the tears are from happiness.

“Thank you so much Steve. I never thought I’d see him again.”

“The moment I knew we could travel through time, I knew I’d go back to get you. If anyone deserves to be happy it’s both of you.” He smiles down at you.

“What about you? You deserve happiness too.”

“And I have it.” Steve said just as the platform activated again and someone stood in the middle. The suit came off to reveal a very pretty redhead. “That’s Nat, she’s my girl.”

She walks down the steps and stands beside Steve as you pull away. Steve officially introduces you both before you move toward Bucky and James.

“I have heard so much about you it’s good to finally meet you, I’m Sam.” He said as he stretched his hand out for you to shake.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” You smile at him and then look up at Bucky. “Who is that?”

“That Bruce, he works with us.”

“Why is he green?” You whisper.

“We will explain as much as we can. Why don’t we go home?”

“Where is home?”

“I have a place in Brooklyn. You’ll stay with me while you get settled.” Steve spoke up.

“Is that ok with you?”

“Anywhere you are is ok with me.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

The red door didn’t feel as intimidating this time around. Bucky explained everything that had happened to you. From his time at hydra to being saved by Steve to the family you still had. The door opens and Rebecca’s face immediately lights up when she sees it’s Bucky.

“Hey gramps, how have you-“ the words die on her tongue when she sees you standing just behind Bucky. “Grandma?”

“So I’ve been told.” Your eyes soften as you see the tears in her eyes. When she steps out and cups your face you let her. She stares in disbelief for a moment and then you bring her in for a hug.

“How is this possible? I mean you’re so young again.”

“I’ll explain anything you want to know.”

“Let me have George come over first.”

****

“That’s amazing.” Rebecca said after Bucky explained everything. “You should keep the house.”

“What?”

“You should keep this house. Dad wanted it to stay in the family but we don’t need it. But you do, especially if you want to raise him somewhere safe and away from the Avenger business.”

“George we couldn’t do that, this was your father’s house.” You said although it felt a bit weird.

“But he was your son first. Dad loved taking care of you. If he were here now he’d offer you this home. It would just sit empty until someone finally decided to sell it. Let him take care of you one last time, please.” Rebecca adds.

You and Bucky looked at each other before he spoke up. “Ok, we’ll take it.”

“Wonderful. We’ll clean it out for you and you can keep whatever furniture you’d like. You can change whatever you want in it. And if you need anything all you have to do is let us know.”

You all stood and headed to the main door and exchanged hugs.

“You have no idea how great it is to see both of you together. You deserve to be happy.” Rebecca said.

“Even though you’re technically younger than us, you’re still our grandparents and we’ll be here for you for whatever you need.” George added.

“Thank you. It’s very kind of you to help us like this.”

“It’s the least we could do, you are, or rather were, the best grandmother a kid could have asked for.”

You hug Georgie again and then Rebecca.

“I can still be that if you’d like. We can have Sunday dinners together. How about that?”

“Just like the good old days.” Rebecca said. “We’d love to.”

“Once we’ve settled in then, I’ll call you and let you know so the whole family can come over.” You inform them.

“It’ll be good. Steve has been asking about seeing you guys again.”

“So it’s settled. We’ll see you soon.”

~~~~~~~~~~

A year and a half later.

Most of the nieces and nephews and great grandkids had all left already. James was asleep in his room. The only ones left were Georgie, Rebecca, Sam, Steve and Nat. You all sat at the dinner table still trading stories. Bucky takes your hand and intertwines his fingers with yours. You look over at him and give him a little nod and a smile which he returns.

“There’s something we’d like to tell you.” You say, getting everyone’s attention. “I’m pregnant.”

Everyone stares at you for a moment before they start congratulating you and Bucky. Sam and Steve take money out of their wallet and hand it over to Nat who is smiling smugly at them.

“What’s that about?” You ask her.

“I told them that you were acting differently. I said you were pregnant, they didn’t believe me so we bet on it.”

You laugh as you turn back to the others. Sam and Steve came up to hug you and promise to be the best uncles, but you knew that already with how they treated James. Next were Rebecca and Georgie who also promised to be there for you however they could.

****

You were exhausted by the time you laid down in bed. Bucky walked in a few minutes later after checking to make sure all the doors and windows were locked and the alarm was set on.

The bed dips behind you as Bucky lays down and immediately pulls you into his chest. His hands immediately rest on top of your very small baby bump and he kisses your shoulder.

“Today was good.” He murmurs.

“You say that every night.” He can hear the smile in your voice.

“Any day I get to hold you like this is a good day.”

“I love you Honey.”

“I love you sweetheart. And I love this little bean too.” He says as he smooths a hand over your belly.

“Little bean?”

“Yeah, we don’t know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl yet.”

“I think it’s going to be a boy.” You say confidently.

“Nope. It’s going to be a girl, I just know it.”

“You would be good with a little girl.”

“Can I ask you something, sweetheart?”

“Anything you know that.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me you were pregnant? You sent all those letters but you never mentioned it.”

This time you turn so that you’re fully facing him. You can tell it’s been weighing on him, the not knowing.

“It’s going to sound stupid. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid that if you knew I was pregnant you wouldn’t be thinking clearly out there. I don’t know, maybe you’d be afraid of getting hurt and would make a mistake and then you’d never come home. Now with everything I know I feel guilty that you never knew about him back then.”

“Don’t, I probably would have been distracted. I mean even back then all I wanted was to get back home to you. That was my only reason to fight as hard as I did. I think I would have been more afraid to fight if I knew about James. It could have been worse, I could have actually died. But I’m home now, we’re together and that’s all that matters.”

“It only took about eighty years.” You smile before pulling Bucky down for a kiss.

This new life you had was strange. You didn’t really belong in the current time you were in but you did belong with Bucky. The city was different, the only people you knew were your family and the Avengers. There was no one left from your previous life but you’d trade all of those things at a chance to be with Bucky.

Because Bucky had always been it for you. Whether it was in the 40s or eighty years later.

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#bucky barnes fanfiction #james bucky barnes #bucky barnes request #anon request #Bucky barnes x reader #dad!bucky barnes x reader #dad!bucky barnes #grandpa!bucky barnes

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ganondoodle · 9 months

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I'm curious, in your totk rewrite, would the final fight with Ganondorf be the same, or would you do something entirely different?

somewhat, this is a bit of a different take on ganondorf though, it makes more sense in context of his changed ... or added rather, backstory;

you fight him once before, not a phantom like in canon but him physically, were hes still trying to cope with the horros he had lived through being half awake for such a long time so he isnt much for talking, at the end of it he has like a breakdown that essentially causes cataclysm 2.0 (that might even open up new caves that were previously just cracks in walls too) and which spawns the miasma/memory trees that contain his memories, all of which you need to collect to unlock the ending-

structurally the final fight is similar:

theres a horde of enemies you fight all together and the sages get taken away once you reach ganondorf; when you find him hes all calm and collected but does not allow zelda to talk to him despite her understanding how it had come to all of this and her wishing for a different solution; the fight begins but over time as he loses HP he start to act differently, less calculating and like he is in control and more and more aggresively, and more jumpy like he is afraid of something

phase two he gets too cornered and activates his enigma stone + the sages rejoin you, he is visibly just trying to put an end to you using everything he has to offer, phase two of phase two, he loses it and changes into a beast form (a miasma version of the best forms we know basically, i made a sketch of it once but it was only a rly early concept; i need to put more boar features on that

(unsure whether i want this to be his engima stone active version or the actual beast one) after he changes into beast form he charges at link and zelda and essentially burrows through the earth with them, breaking through the surface in the hyrule plains where the dark beast ganon fight happened in botw, here you fight him in the open, any weathher and time of day can happen here so its a much more diverese vibe each time; he is very fast in this form, if you are familiar with bloodborne im thinking of something akin to the first phase of ludwigs fight but a little more coordinated

this fight ends with zelda telling you to shoot at her so she uses her shielding powers (sth she can also do in the game itself) to reflect your arrow in a certain angle (reference to how ww zelda shoots an arrow you need to deflect in order to defeat gan but in reverse), it hits the ornament keeping the enigma stone in place from the side and it flings off

the battle seemingly ends with beast ganon falling to the ground, zelda tries to run and take it away but gan is still awake and sees in her how sonia sealed him way back, so in a last ditch effort to avoid the fate he had just escaped (despite zelda not wanting to do any of that) lunges for the stone and swallows it

he transforms into a dragon snatching up the both of you and flying high into the sky, zelda can wriggle free but falls and while she could land safely with her paraglider gan is flying off with link so she makes a last moment decision to take in her enigma stone as well, she transforms, rams into gan to free link and a somwhat similar fight as in canon happens, though i would like zelda to be more openly agressive towards dragon-gan

sicne in this version gan doesnt have his stone on the forehead somehow but inside like you would expect you need to fly into his mouth to end the fight, assuming you have found the lab that held the moonbloom (perhaps kogas so tie him nicely into it all) needed for the reverse dragon medicine (bc i wanted to involve links passion for cooking somewhat i thought it would be cool if he takes the chrage on that to make that special dish), you now use it, causing gan to spit out his stone and reversing (still unsure whether he survives this or not, but i thought of the scene from spirited away when chihiro gives haku the lil herb thingy to make him spit out whats killing him when i was coming up with this) zelda catches you again and you use the second charge on her to reverse her as well, boom you got your epic falling scene, the sages also now have made their way up through the tunnel, perhaps they catch gan too

this is a super rough current concept for it, it might all change still so dont take this as the final version, still working on it all after all

#ganondoodles answers #zelda #totk #ganondoodles rewrites totk #again this is quickly and sloppily written #but maybe theres some good on this #though i might all change still if i can think of sth better

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bitethehnd · 1 month

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omg i’ve had the biggest brainrot over ur naomi & taylor!reader & rewatching the eras tour i have 🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️ thoughts

i can imagine reader! having a chat w naomi when they’re ready to make it official and actually tell everyone they’re together (god knows everyone’s figured it out but shh let them have their moment) & reader! asks if they can make it official during the show but doesn’t tell Naomi how,, they’re just like trust me it’ll be good and naomi is like ok !! anything for u !! & during karma reader! sings “karma is my baby on the screen, coming straight home to me!” & they somehow get naomi’s live reaction on the big screen megatron thing of reader fully making it official to everyone mid show and they’re just in AWE

& in the same show when reader! sings “you’re in love” they do a lil speech about how this song was written for someone else completely and after everything that went down, they hated this songs because it brought back so many bad memories (or something) but now they have someone who makes them feel like this song is the reason for existence again and it just cuts to lil naomi sobbing aAAA i truly love that fic so much i still have so many thoughts about it thank u thank u thank u

⊹ ‧₊˚ ౨ৎ you are in love

pairing : naomi mcpherson x popstar!reader

a/n : ANON I LOVE YOUR BRAIN KISS KISS

at this point during your eras tour, the two of you are already together. you think you’re all sneaky but literally everyone knows… naomi looks at you like you gave them the moon so it’s quite obvious, but everyone lets you two have your fun!

the first people you told were obviously katie and jo. they both had fake surprised looks on their faces but said the two of you deserved to be happy. then ensue the countless jokes and comments from jo.

the boys were thrilled too! since phoebe had also opened for you, she had taken a guess that you two had a thing for each other and then her suspicions were confirmed. julien fist pumped naomi and lucy gave you a big hug!! you guys are adorable fr.

next came telling the world about the relationship. you two held off for a few months, wanting privacy, but it seemed twitter was already aware of it. everyone had their theories and some were so outrageous that you just wanted to tell everyone yourself.

you told naomi your feelings on the matter and they immediately agreed, no questions asked. they were ready to show you off and not have to hide. you suggested doing it during your next show, and like anon said, naomi is just like “whatever my princess wants, she gets!!! anything for her!!”

you quickly put your plan into motion. you decided your surprise song for the next show would be “you are in love” from 1989. it perfectly described how you felt about naomi. you came up with some ideas for the speech you would give before hand and it went something like this…

“the next song that i’m going to play is one that i haven’t performed in so long. i wrote it about someone who i thought was going to be my forever, but it just didn’t end up that way and it left me with some sad memories. i have never felt the need to play this song since then, but now everything has changed. even if i originally wrote this about someone else, my partner renewed it into something so pure and now has a reason to exist again. i love you.”

the camera doesn’t pan to naomi just yet, since you wanted to build suspense. for dramatic effect, of course. but jo and katie make sure to get their reaction on video. it’s just naomi basically happy crying and laughing with tears under their eyes. even when you guys are a whole stadium apart, the invisible string between you is there.

when it was finally time for the last era of songs, from midnights, you were planning to do a lyric swap in “karma.” the actual lyric was “karma is my girlfriend,” but obviously naomi was not a girl and the song originally wasn’t written about them, you planned to change it to something that made you happier. when the time came to sing “karma,” you looked right into the vip section where naomi was and sang “karma is my baby on the screen, coming straight home to me!” cut to the camera panning to naomi and they’re just giddy, laughing and crying all at the same time. when you told them you were going to make it official, this is definitely not how they imagined it, but they weren’t complaining.

you just wanted to show the world your love for them and honestly didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. the two of you just existed in your own little bubble, feeling like you were just singing to them.

after the show was over and naomi practically sprinted backstage, their beaming smile lit up the room as they saw you. they pulled you in for a fierce hug and pressed gentle kisses to your forehead.

“that was the sweetest thing in the entire world, baby. i love you so much.”

“so you liked it? it wasn’t too much?”

“never. that was, like, magical. can’t believe you did all that for me.”

“i’d do anything for you, nom.”

#bitethehnd #naomi mcpherson x reader #naomi mcpherson x you #naomi mcpherson au #naomi mcpherson fluff #naomi mcpherson fanfic #muna x reader #muna fanfic #popstar!reader

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princess-ibri · 6 months

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So I remember you said in your Disney-Verse you were going to use the scrapped plot line of Aladdin and Mozenrath learning they were long-lost brothers and that got me wondering how Cassim and Mozenrath's mother met and ended up having relations that ended in the conceiving of Mozenrath.

@rememberingmermaids Yea! Sorry for the wait, I had some other projects I needed to finish first.

So in the og story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, Ali Baba's brother is named Cassim, and he dies when the theives discover him stealing from their cave. And Ali Baba ends up later marrying his son to his servant girl Morgiana after she helps save the family from the thieves when they try and sneak into his home to get revenge for stealing from them.

And since we know that some version of this story does happen in Aladdin's reality as Genie mentions it, I thought it made a ton of sense to have our Cassim be the son of Ali Baba. He's named for his uncle, he grew up poor and despised, so him talking about being called a streetrat and wanting more still totally works. Then his family finally gets a taste of the good life. Wealth and the comfort and security it brings.

But then something goes wrong.

Somehow the wealth fails. Maybe bad investments, bad luck. Whatever faitytale tropes befall once wealthy families to bring them low. Ali Baba can't find the magic cave again, it's moved to a new location (being magic and all). Cassim watches all that security fall away and his family that was so well respected when they were rich goes right back to being shunned once they're poor again.

His wife even leaves him. Though tbf to her, it had been an arranged marriage set up by his father. A reward for Morgiana, so he thought. Now she was a member of the family and not a servant! Never mind if maybe she'd wanted something else from her life. Like actual freedom.

Not that Cassim was a bad husband per se, he just wasn’t what she chose, nor he her. And when she sees an opportunity to forge her own life for once, she takes it.

Neither of them realize she's carrying his child.

So Cassim, desperate to regain a taste of what he'd had, goes on a desperate search to find that magical cave his father had told him stories of so many times.

Along the way he makes many friends and foes, more the later, which causes him to take up several aliases. Its under the guise of a lamp seller named "Hamid" that he meets a young adventuress named Zena, and the two soon fall in love and marry (after he's told her who he really is of course).

And for a while he's content.

But once they have a baby on the way, the old need,want,obsession comes back. He's got to find the treasure cave for the baby, for his family. To prove that he's not delusional and hasn't wasted most of his life on this.

He leaves. Fails. Comes back. They're both gone. He leaves again. And this time he finally succeeds. It doesn't feel like the success he hoped it would. But with nothing else to live for but gaining more gold, he claws his way to the top of this new incarnation of the 40 Thieves, and tries to block out the memories of his old life.

Morgiana meanwhile, has always had a talent for magic, and she uses it and her wits to get by in the world. For herself and her son. It's a hard life, constantly on the move, but it's a free one. And her young son it turns out shares her magical talent. For several years they're happy together.

Until they catch the eye of the sorcerer Destane, ruler of the Land of the Black Sand. He coveted Morgiana's power, and her beauty. When she refused him both, he turned his wrath on her, and unfortunately, his power was greater. Her son he took as his slave, and something of an apprentice, though only to make him more useful. The boy hated his captor, but was cunning, biding his time until he had learned enough in secret to overthrow him and take his place as the lord sorcerer of the Black Sands. His hatred of his erstwhile master and desperation to be his own, led him to greater and greater schemes of power. At one point to trade his true name in order to possess a magical gauntlet that would triple his power, a boon he would need if he were to achieve his goal of conquering the Seven Deserts.

And from ever on, he was known as Mozenrath.

***

Meanwhile on Jasmine's side, young sultan Hamed Bobolonius II (who's name we know from a deleted line in an earlier song draft x) was smitten the instant he saw his intended bride, the beautiful Princess Badroulbadour of Sherabad.

(So smitten, in fact, that he ended up picking a flower for his new bride from an enchanted garden, an act that ended up getting him into some hot water later on.)

The princess was unsure of her new betrothed at first but was so won over by his kindness and enthusiasm. Their story might not have as many twists and turns as Aladdin's parents did, but it had a lot of love. They were very happy together, especially when their daughter was added to their family, and were grateful for each moment they had together up until the Sultana's untimely death, soon after the appointment of the Sultan's new Royal Vizir.

(Badroulbadour, it may be supposed, was a much better judge of character then her overly trustful husband, and therefore was better off "out of the picture" in the schemes of Jafar)

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queenimmadolla · 1 year

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what about one based on fall outta love by salem?

the morning after a house party at ricks, eddie bumps into reader for the first time - hungover in a kitchen and they instantly fall for each other, but reader initially rebuffs him (and every other guy in hawkins) & eventually agrees to a date but despite her feelings for him she tells him to fall out of love with her, they keep hanging but he just falls harder and then finds out from someone else she had her heart literally ripped out and set alight by an ex so has built so many walls hence constantly telling him to save himself, fall out of love because that’s what she’s also telling herself. but obvioooooously, they will end up together 🫶

my god. this one got out of hand. i mean i really ran away with it. thought it’d be like 2k word count wise now here we are at 8k! since the song was in scream, I decided to have it be a Halloween party they meet at! I took a couple of creative liberties because I couldn’t think of a date idea fast enough to write in a satisfying manner (meaning decently, but Eddie would most definitely consider smoking in your car as a date, he’d consider anything with you a date, so long as you’d have him.) and I didn’t want to have too many large time skips, but I still tried to capture the root of the request! Hope you like it because i LOVED writing it!

𝐒𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟, 𝐅𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞

(Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader)

warnings: teenage angst, fluff, alcohol consumption, underage drinking, reader dresses as Ghostface, Eddie as Michael Myers and Heather Holloway meddles in your love life

a/n: we’re gonna pretend Scream came out in the early 80s (I have a whole fancast of an 80s version). let me know if the keep reading tab eats or repeats paragraphs so i can remove it!

“Jesus Christ,” you groaned, forcing your eyes open in a squint as you were pulled from sleep due to the chill of the air. You could make out a mesh covered ceiling—wait no. You still had your mask on.

You lifted your head from the cushion it had been resting on, frowning when you realized you’d wiped out on the couch at Reefer Rick’s. Your head was killing you and you could feel something sitting in your stomach, something that wouldn’t be going anywhere but up.

You’d caught wind of the party when Heather mentioned it to you. Initially, you’d been skeptical of attending─not because of the weed and drugs that would be going around, you were a hardy participant in that—since you were sure that it would disappoint you. It’s not like you expected anything life changing to happen at a drug dealer’s party, but you’d been faced with a lot of recent let downs and disappointment, not a whole lot was going on in your life. That was sort of the problem. You liked being on your own, it was safe; you wouldn’t get hurt and nothing would happen to you again.

But nothing was happening to you.

It was like you were living your life on autopilot, finding barely any joy in things. Maybe part of you hoped you’d somehow find some at the party.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t remember shit, having blacked out after your friends talked you into a couple of shots. After the fifth, it was all you and by the ninth, caution was gone with the wind. It wasn’t even a blur to you, you legitimately couldn’t recall a single thing other than your own laughter along with your friends’ immediately after downing that last shot.

You’d gone dressed as Ghostface, a quick last minute costume that wasn’t too much effort (you wore something a little scandalous underneath the black gown just in case it proved to be a ‘sexy’ party instead of just a bunch of teenagers dressed however they wanted to be) and you liked the mystery it gave you, you could interact with anyone and no one would know it was you.

Your head throbbed as images popped up—memories. The memory blurs finally arrived and they were causing your brain a great deal of pain. You couldn’t recall too much and you didn’t want to because nothing good could have come from getting fucked up so fast and waking up on some pornstach having dealer’s couch (seriously, Rick was like thirty two and he was hanging out with teens? Red fucking flag).

You sighed as you pushed yourself up, hugging the black gown of your costume a little tighter around you. You wished you’d gone with wearing a long sleeve t-shirt and some warm pants instead of the cheap black corset and black tights. Should’ve know better, really, because it was way too fucking cold to dress hot on Halloween.

The wind howled outside of the house, as if to prove your point and you stood up, stepping over the sleeping individuals that littered the ground. You noticed a couple of your friends but you hadn’t driven together so there was no point in waking them. Clearly, you hadn’t been the only one to pass out at the party and you made a note to never do that again. Anyone could have taken advantage of you.

You chanced a glance at your wrist and breathed a sigh of relief. It was still early, really early. Barely even 5am, so you could still make it home before your parents were up and realized you hadn’t met your curfew, you could also be sick in the comfort of your own clean bathroom. You made a beeline for the door.

“Another survivor,” a voice commented, disturbing the quiet of the thoroughly wrecked house.

You followed the voice, spotting Eddie Munson in the corner of the kitchen, leaning up against the counter there.

You weren’t too familiar with him, had a couple of classes with him in the past, saw him around school and knew he dealt to a couple people, but you hadn’t ever had an encounter with him before. Never exchanged a single word.

The feeling in your stomach grew worse, as did the pulsing in your head, “I don’t know about that.”

Your voice was a near whisper, hoarse from whatever the fuck happened last night after you blacked out.

Eddie chuckled and you wondered how he was still functioning—and this early, too—but you hadn’t seen him around. Or maybe you had, you thought as you took in the blue mechanic overalls he was wearing and the Michael Myers mask by his side. Like you, and just about everyone else at the party, he hadn’t been the only one with that costume, so while you could recall seeing a couple of Michaels around while you were sober, you couldn’t be positive one of them had been him.

“Not feeling too good, Ghost?” He didn’t seem to have a problem talking to a total stranger, talking you up like he was familiar with you, which you highly doubted thanks to your mask.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Kinda just want to take my head off.” You rubbed the back of your head through the hood.

“You want some water?” He didn’t wait for your response, just went right into Rick’s fridge and pulled out a bottle of water, reaching over the counter to hand it to you.

Despite how it seemed to jostle your brain, you gave a brief laugh before you remembered people were still passed out and you hastily tried to silence yourself, covering your mouth which ended with you letting out an embarrassing snort. Then you quickly took the offered bottle into your glove-covered hand, but you didn’t drink it, regardless of how badly you wanted to. That would require taking off your mask.

Eddie just grinned, sliding his hands into the pockets of his costume.

“I like your costume.” You commented, your gloved fingers picking at the label on the bottle, heartbeat picking up as Eddie’s grin widened to expose his teeth. There was something about it, something secretive. Like he knew something you didn’t.

“Thank you,” Eddie grabbed the Michael mask from where he’d placed it on the counter next to his own bottle of water. It flopped around in his hold. “Didn’t wanna show my mug.”

“That’s a shame.”

Pretty, is all you could think when he glanced to the side for a moment, looking all shy. His hair was a mess, yours was probably worse under your mask, definitely matted, but other than that, he looked put together.

Suddenly, you were even more grateful for your mask. You hadn’t bothered putting on makeup since your face would be hidden for most of the night (save for pulling it over your mouth to drink). But god, you must have stunk. You couldn’t wait to get home where your shower and toothbrush were waiting for you. You were glad there was a notable distance between the both of you so he couldn’t smell you and the alcohol radiating off your being.

“So. So, so, so. I’m guessing you don’t remember.” Eddie leaned back against the counter behind him, looking very smug.

Your blood went cold—colder, actually—at the implication.

Oh, no.

Oh, no, no, no, no. What had you done?

Play it cool.

“I don’t know, do I?” You winced behind your mask. Cool, not stupid, you idiot!

Eddie chuckled, glancing shyly down at the ground before his gaze flickered back up to you, warmth pooling in those brown eyes.

Huh. You never noticed the color before. Or how big they were, or expressive. Very soft.

“I don’t think so,” He responded, teeth biting at his lower lip as he stared at you from under his lashes.

“Damn. Didn’t expect you to call my bluff. Please tell me it wasn’t anything too embarrassing.”

“No, it wasn’t. Not in my opinion, we just—uh, hung out.” He licked his lips, suddenly looking very skittish. You did a quick mental body check, clenching down there to see if it felt different, sore to indicate you’d fucked someone but you felt nothing unusual, so you couldn’t have slept with him. He must have genuinely meant hanging out.

“Oh. Okay. So, I did something pretty cool then.” It was the right thing to say, Eddie immediately perked up, leaving you amazed with how he somehow managed to go from sullen to glowing so fast.

“What? Not mortified that you spent time with The Freak?” He said it so nonchalantly, if you hadn’t seen how affected he’d appeared when he simply thought it moments ago, you wouldn’t think he cared.

“You’re no freakier than anyone else,” for some reason you offered him a smile even though he couldn’t see it. “But you appear significantly better dressed. In my opinion.”

Eddie looked like he was mulling something over, then he pulled his hands out of his pockets and took a step closer, grin morphling into a smile, a little more intimate, “You have an opinion of me?”

Oh, fuck. He was flirting. Oh, God. Eddie Munson was flirting with you.

He was flirting with you and he didn’t even know who you were. It made that feeling in your stomach more apparent because you knew the moment he found out who you were, he wouldn’t be interested.

Just like—no. You couldn’t go there. You were finally in a good place and you’d be damned if you let any guy ruin it for you. Even Eddie Munson.

“It’s not very thorough. Well, it was nice meeting you, Eddie.” You didn’t wait for his reply as you returned to your original goal, ignoring the flash of disappointment you saw on his face in favor of slipping out the front door.

─

“He’s staring at you again,” Heather smirked, chin perched in her palm as she sat across from you in the cafeteria.

“Who?” You asked, trying to seem bored with the conversation to get her to drop it. Anytime she noticed some guy glance in your direction, she tried to convince you you had a new suitor. God forbid it actually was a dude who was interested in you. Heather always aggressively lobbied for you to do something about it then she’d get mad at you when you did, by telling them to move the hell on because it wasn’t gonna happen.

She leaned across the table, pretty brown eyes wide with excitement as she grinned. “Eddie. Munson.”

You tensed, swallowing the cucumber slice you’d popped into your mouth before she’d sprung the news on you. Despite how badly you wanted to, you kept yourself from turning to look at his table, almost clear across the cafeteria.

“What? Why?”

“Who cares? Eddie Munson is staring at you—has been every day this week and he’s been doing it in the halls, too,” Heather looked proud of herself for her snooping habits, curly side ponytail bobbing as she rattled on, “He’s cute, he can give you free weed—Lana Landon dated him for like a week and wouldn’t shut up about that perk, and I don’t know, he seems like a good guy. Maybe a little on the grumpy side, but I think that’s an act.”

You rolled your eyes and took a drink of water before responding.

“That’s all guys ever do. Act. He doesn’t know me, if anything he probably just thinks I’m pretty or something. He’ll get over it.”

Heather smirked and you knew what was coming, “I think he’s still hung up on Ghostface.”

She raised her eyebrows suggestively and you threw a chip at her, which she dodged with her palm.

“Hey! Friendly fire!”

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you that.” You groaned, shaking your head. After you’d gotten home and cleaned up, you’d called Heather, having remembered (with a great deal of panic) that she’d been there, too, and you might have left her there amongst the strung out people in the house. She seemed surprised at your relief when you heard her voice on the other side. Turns out, she’d left pretty early.

When you’d taken offense to her leaving you at some random party, she’d explained that she had initially tried to take you with her, but you’d been having such a good time talking with Eddie that you begged her to let you stay.

She hadn’t seen you like that over someone in a long time, so she’d actually threatened Eddie with bodily harm if anything happened to you and allowed you to stay.

Maybe that had been why Eddie was still around when you woke up.

“Look, I’m just saying you should talk to him. If he doesn’t know you’re Ghostface—which I’m pretty sure he does because he is doing some intense staring─then he’s just interested in you. Talk to him, give him a shot. Pleeeeaaase?” She batted her eyelashes, lower lip jutting out in a pout.

You pretend to think it over, eyes raised to the ceiling. “Mmm—no.”

“Ugh!”

“Ugh!” You mimicked with a smirk, standing with your tray. “I’m gonna go smoke in my car, wanna come?”

“Yes,” She sighed but made no move to get up, in fact, she looked down right depressed. “But I can’t. I’ve gotta cram for Siegfried’s stupid stats test. There’s no way I’m getting anything higher than a ‘C’.”

You failed to notice her gaze flicker behind you and back. “You have fun! Go! Give you brain cells a vacation.”

Heather shooed you away, eagerness returning but that was Heather for you. She flip flopped through emotions pretty quick. With a shrug, you turned and made your way to a nearby trash can, dumping your tray on your way out. You’d made it halfway down the hall when you felt a presence behind you.

You swiveled around and flinched when you found Eddie just a foot behind you, hands raised to show he meant no harm with a sheepish grin on his face.

“Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Geez! You’re really quiet, I didn’t hear a thing.” You calmed your breathing, running a hand over your hair.

Eddie snickered, gesturing down to his reeboks, “Sneakers.”

A silence fills the space between you both as Eddie watched you fight to keep from smiling, bemused at how you were clearly losing.

“Get it?” He added to prompt your defeat.

You succumbed to the smile, biting your lip to keep it from getting too big and Eddie looked thoroughly proud of his ability to be of some amusement to you.

“That was—that was really bad.” You admitted, still smiling. “It’s a good joke, great joke, just also very bad.”

“Belittle it all you want, it served its purpose.” Eddie shrugged his shoulders, scuffing one of his sneakers against the school tile. “Hey, uhm—where you going?”

You hadn’t expected him to be so direct, or nosey. “Not far.”

Eddie nodded, having expected you to be a little wary and pursed his lips, looking like he was ready for a kiss. Then he made a popping sound.

“Do you happen to smoke weed?”

It was obvious to you that he was asking so he could offer and you remembered what Heather had said. About Eddie being able to give you free weed. Or rather, being used so he’d provide the weed. Truth was, you remembered Lana bragging about it, too, until Andrew Wilkerson from the baseball team started paying attention to her. She never mentioned Eddie or his weed again. And it hadn’t been just Lana, a couple of other girls took advantage of Eddie’s romantic side. You hadn’t cared all that much back then but after realizing he’d taken care of you on Halloween, had kept you company although he didn’t know you were you, thinking about what they did to him made you feel sick.

You didn’t use people, you knew too well how awful it felt. Still, Eddie looked so hopeful. You had a feeling he fully expected you to do the same thing as those other girls, but was too naive or resilient to give up. Reminded you a lot of how you used to be.

“I do,” you confirmed and when Eddie opened his mouth, ready to offer you what he had in that lunchbox of his, you continued, “I have a nug in my car, if you’d like to join me.”

Despite your better judgment, you’d indulge him, if not because so many others seemed to let him down. Nothing could come from it of course. And you wouldn’t use him, either.

Eddie’s face split into a wide smile.

That’s how you wound up in your car, giggling as Eddie nearly hacked up an organ from the harsh bubbler you kept in a scooby doo themed lunchbox, under the passenger seat which Eddie was occupying.

“Jesus,” he croaked out, coughing into his elbow.

“Feels like you burned a hole in the back of your neck, doesn’t it?”

Eddie nodded as he continued to cough, eyes watering. Once he’d managed to get it under control, he let out a sigh of relief.

“How the hell do you hit that all the time?” He asked, passing you the small blue pipe.

You lit it again and took your own hit, coughing once you’d exhaled but not worse than Eddie had.

“I don’t,” you placed the bubbler in your cup holder and leaned against the driver’s door so you could face Eddie who was leaned all the way back, staring at you with happy looking red eyes, “It’s pretty harsh, so all that coughing gives a pretty intense and quick high. I’ll be good off of that for a couple of days. Also I have to give my throat some time to heal.”

Eddie laughed at your joke and you couldn’t help but think it was a pretty sound. “I’m more of a joint kind of guy, but pretty girls don’t offer me free drugs often, let alone smoke with me without getting so high they can’t function. Would’ve been stupid to say no.”

You tried to ignore the fluttering in your belly, you’d thought those butterflies had died out a while ago. And all he did was call you pretty. Pretty pathetic.

You may not not have been high enough to pass out like Eddie implied; however, you were high enough to feel brave.

“Is that what Lana did?”

Eddie looked momentarily shocked at your question, eyes rising to the ceiling of your car before he decided to answer your question.

“Uhm. Yeah. She—yeah. She was nice, sweet. Didn’t seem repulsed with me. Thought she just approached me for a deal, then she started flirting with me, I guess. Then, I thought we were a thing, but it turns out we weren’t. She actually was interested in just the deal.”

“Only, she didn't tell you that.” You finished for him, realizing despite having been wronged by her, Eddie wouldn’t paint her in a bad light, making it seem like it had been a misunderstanding. You’d heard the way Lana boasted. It hadn’t been a misunderstanding. “Did she lead you on, Eddie?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, I just did a lot of thinking. Not enough asking.”

God, you wanted to punch Lana in the face. Eddie was so nice, he refused to admit that Lana—in that moment—had been a bad person. Blamed himself for thinking some girl was interested in him because she was intentionally flirting with him in order to gain something for her own selfish reasons.

“That’s how it works, Eddie. Leading someone on. They flirt, make you feel special, play coy or maybe make you think you’re worrying over nothing when you work up enough courage to question the slight gaslighting and affection-bombing—then they leave. ‘Cause they’ve taken what they wanted and you’ve got nothing left to offer. It’s not okay. She was wrong for that.”

Eddie was quiet, you could tell his mind wasn’t. When he did speak again, his voice was soft.

“But I flirt. A lot.”

You wanted to shake the victim blaming mentality right out of him, he was making another excuse for her! Or worse, he thought he was like her.

“Eddie, listen really carefully to what I’m about to say, okay?” You waited for his nod of understanding.

“There is a large difference between your flirty personality and leading someone on. You,” you lightly punched his shoulder, “flirt because you’re just a flirt. Lana, doesn’t. Lana singled you out, intentionally, with the hopes that making you think you two were more serious than just casually dating would get her free weed. When you intentionally single someone out with your flirting, it’s because you like them and you want more of them. Am I right?”

The weed in your system was why you were able to withstand the intensity of his gaze, almost burned more than the bubbler had.

“Yeah,” Eddie finally admitted, the side of his head leaning into the headrest as he shifted onto his side to face you, “You’re right.”

“You deserve better than that, Eddie. You deserve better than the rest of those girls, too.” He hadn’t mentioned the others and you hadn’t wanted to bring them up either, sensing his shame but you needed him to know. He couldn’t end up like you.

“Do you remember me?” He blurted out and you frowned.

“Yeah, we had English together last year.”

“No,” Eddie shook his head, “I mean from the party. Rick’s party.”

You froze, heart stopping.

Eddie had that hopeful look on his face again as he tugged on a strand of his hair, nervous.

“You were Ghostface,” he prompted, as if it would trigger the memory you already recalled.

He knew it was you this whole time?

“How did you know it was me? Oh, fuck, please tell me I didn’t rant to you about my life while I was plastered. I’m so embarrassing.”

You wanted to disappear until Eddie gave a nervous laugh, shaking his head again.

“No, no. Definitely didn’t do that. But uh, I saw you. With your mask off. While you were drinking. A lot.” He snickered at the memory of you throwing a shot glass back, then proceeding to refill it an almost concerning amount of times.

“Your voice is pretty distinct, too. You also meet your height requirements.”

“Oh.” You didn’t know what else to say, stunned that he’d even be able to recognize your voice. Up until the morning you’d woken up on that shitty couch (and the night before, apparently) you couldn’t remember ever actually speaking to Eddie. Still, somehow he’d heard you. That knowledge warmed the area in you where the butterflies had been fighting to survive all this time.

You weren’t stupid, you knew where Eddie was going with this. What his stare had meant when you reassured him he wasn’t like Lana.

Heather was right. Eddie Munson was hung up on you. You had to put an end to it.

Luckily, you were (in the most cliche of manners) saved by the bell when it rang, signaling the end of the lunch period.

You hurriedly got out of your car and Eddie scrambled out after you, hurriedly moving around to your side while you locked it.

“I gotta go,” was the poor excuse you gave him as you started to rush back to the main entrance of the school.

“Hey! Wait!”

“Eddie, please.” You whipped around to face, eyes pleading for him to understand. “I meant it when I said you deserved better than Lana and the other girls. You do. And you deserve better than me, too. I can’t give you what you want and I’m not gonna lead you on. So, we should just cut our losses now, before one of us gets hurt. Whatever you’re in, fall out of it. It was actually rather nice hanging out with you, and thank you for looking after me at Rick’s party, even though I can’t remember most of it. You’re a good guy and you’ll find a good girl. You will.”

You left him standing in the parking lot as you weaved through the cars, feeling an awful lot like you just cut off a limb that had miraculously been growing back. Tears were prickling in your eyes when you pushed through the doors and disappeared into the crowd of students. You didn’t feel the butterflies anymore.

And you didn’t notice Heather, crouched behind the school bus when you passed by it in your hurry to get as much distance between you and Eddie as you could.

She stood up once you’d gone in, looking remorseful over something she had no control of and watched as Eddie stood there, staring at the entrance like he hoped you’d be coming right back out. When he realized you wouldn’t be, he shoved his hands in his pocket and walked over to his van, sitting on the back bumper.

Heather waited until he couldn’t see before she snuck back into the school. She couldn’t miss the test in her last class, but she knew what she had to do after and she knew where she’d be able to find Eddie when school let out.

─

Eddie was drained. Mentally, emotionally and physically ‘cause he hadn’t eaten anything during lunch. He ditched the remainder of the school day, wallowing in the back of his van, despite the rapidly dying high he was nursing, he hadn’t been hungry. Still wasn’t.

He figured he wouldn’t be regaining his appetite with a stomach already full of defeat.

Just when he finally thought things were looking up for him, life had to remind him that he wasn’t allowed to be completely happy. Had to have some sort of angst in his life, because apparently his mommy, daddy, background, academic, and financial issues weren’t enough.

He wasn’t allowed to have you, either.

A couple of weeks ago, that would have been fine with him. He hadn’t known you too well. You’d had some classes together over the years, though he only realized you were pretty in English class last year. Caught glimpses of you out of the corner of his eye every now and then, it was no big deal. Then, it was like he opened his eyes or something, because you were suddenly everywhere.

Never center stage, always in the background amongst the crowd but always drawing his attention, like a moth to a flame. His locker was across from yours and a couple of lockers down so he was usually able to overhear your conversations with your friends. He figured loud mouthed, know-it-all Heather Holloway was your best friend since she was more often than not on the other end of those conversations.

You were pretty fucking funny, witty, goofy and cool. He wouldn't have minded actually getting the chance to know you, maybe be friends. You even seemed like the type who would appreciate Hellfire, could offer to show you the ropes and extend an invitation.

He wasn’t ignorant enough to think he was infatuated with you or anything, didn’t even know you. He was just intrigued and he happened to play close attention to details.

It would have been a passing fancy, really, had it not been for Reefer Rick’s party. Eddie had gone under the guise that it was to strengthen his business relationship with the supplier, and not at all because a girl he was interested in would be in attendance.

Of course (because he’s Eddie) she’d gone, alright, and had been all over another guy.

He hadn’t been too hurt by that one, they hadn’t held any meaningful conversations and she seemed pretty flighty.

Then he caught sight of you, one of the many Ghostfaces—the shortest of them all—and when he actually saw you take off the mask, the allure returned. You’d shown up in the background of his life again.

Eddie had watched you (from a safe distance) get progressively more drunk and he was honestly pretty impressed with how much it took to get there. If he wasn’t gonna be getting the girl at the party, maybe he could gain a new acquaintance. With that, he’d approached you. Or rather, you plowed into him.

Heather had apologized for you as they both worked to steady you while you rambled out your own apologies a mile a minute.

“Hey—no harm done.” Eddie held his hands out as if to showcase he was fine. Then he realized his own mask was in the way of his vision and yanked it off, though he had suspected you wouldn’t know who he was.

“Eddie!” You chirped, pointing a gloved finger in his direction like he didn’t know who he was. “I’ve seen you before!”

He raised his eyebrows, bewildered at your admission.

“You have?” He had to lean in closer to make sure you heard him.

“Yeah! We go to school together.”

Eddie barked out a laugh, eyes flittering to Heather as she slowly pulled away from the conversation, leaving just you and Eddie amongst the loud music and compacted bodies.

“I think we go to school with most of the people here, sweetheart.”

“Oh, yeah.” He watched as you glanced around before shrugging.

“But I don’t know a whole lot of them. Like that girl,” You pointed at a girl dressed like Molly Ringwald. “Never seen her in my life.”

“That’s—actually, I don’t know her either,” Eddie squinted as he tried to recall her from somewhere but he’d never seen her before either. “Maybe she doesn’t go to Hawkins.”

“Freaking knew it.”

Eddie laughs again, he knew you’d be funny.

“Are you Michael Myers?” You asked and Eddie smirked.

“No, I’m Eddie Munson.”

You didn’t appreciate the joke, pinching his shoulder through his coveralls.

“Ouch! Yes, okay! I’m Michael,” He rubbed the not-really sore spot, still smirking.

“Hot?”

“Michael? I mean, he’s not really my type, I have no idea what he’s working with under the mask but he’s─”

“No!” Now you were the one laughing and Eddie’s heart kind of ached (in a good) way at the sound. He knew what that meant. “The mask, silly. Is the mask hot?”

“Oh, yeah. Kind of feel like the man in the iron mask with it on.” Precisely why Eddie probably wouldn’t be putting it back on. “What about yours?”

“It’s pretty breathable actually,” Lucky, yours had a mouth space made of mesh, allowing for some pretty easy airflow. “And it keeps my face warm.”

Yeah, but that meant Eddie couldn’t see it and he really, really wanted to. Up close.

“Plus, I feel mysterious.” You said it like it was something devious.

“Yeah? You like that?” Eddie was amused with the entire thing because you actually were mysterious, with and without the costume. To him, at least.

“Yeah, I mean I can be anywhere without actually being anywhere because people would have no clue it’s me, makes sense?”

No, but Eddie knew what you were tipsily implying.

“I get it.”

“Oh,” you bent over, reaching down into your black boot as you pulled out a pocket knife and flicked the blade out. “I have a knife.”

“Oh my god.” Eddie grabbed it from you tucking the blade back in before he returned it, nervously looking around to make sure no one had noticed. “As hot as that is, you can’t just bring a knife to a party.”

“No, you can’t bring a knife to a gunfight.” You giggled, swaying in place.

Eddie rolled his eyes with a fond chuckle, “Damn, you’re still wrong. Don’t bring a gun to a knife fight.”

“Tomatoes, potatoes.”

“Those are also two very different things.” Were you always this adorable?

“It’s for my protection. So if anyone tries anything, I’ll have my knife and I can stab them. Defend myself.” You tucked the pocket knife back into your boot, leaving Eddie curious as to why you didn’t seem to have any pockets under that black gown.

“So what? You just showing off for me?”

Your head bobbed, if Eddie could somehow see through your damn mask, he would’ve been enamored with the shy look on your face.

“Yeah, I mean—you look like you ‘preciate knives.”

“Oh, because I’m scary?” He got that a lot, didn’t mind the reputation at first because it kept people from messing with him but it also kept the good people from interacting with him. Not that he cared or anything.

Because he didn’t.

“No, because you seem really cool. Look it, too. All metal-y. Suits you”

Oh fuck. Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. You were nice, too. He was done for.

He didn’t know what to say, a ‘thank you’ didn’t sound genuine enough for his liking.

“I think you’re cool, too.”

You laughed again, threw your head back with it and Eddie wanted so badly to tear that mask and hood off your head. Needed to just get a look at you while you smiled.

“You don’t even know who I am.” You stated once you’d calmed down.

Eddie pursed his lips. He knew exactly who you were, he was also picking up on some major signs that you didn’t want him to know who you were under that mask, having realized you hadn’t bothered introducing yourself though you apparently felt comfortable enough to address him.

“You want to play a game?” He asked instead, not willing to risk souring your mood.

You gasped, practically bouncing on the balls of your feet, “A game? I like games. What game?”

“It’s called, ‘Move a couple of things around so Rick thinks he’s going insane when he cleans up tomorrow’.”

“That sounds like a fun game. Let’s do it.”

You both proceed to make your way around the house, moving a couple of random objects.

You both hit his bedroom first (what kind of dumbass doesn’t lock it?), finding it thankfully unoccupied. It was shitty and small, but you both transferred everything to opposite sides, literally flipping the room. It took some work—Eddie moved the heavier of the objects and the bed was blocking Rick’s bathroom door but you were satisfied so the two of you moved onto the kitchen.

Heather came by to take you home in the middle of your planning for the area, but you insisted on staying with Eddie (he wanted to jump up and down, he was so happy and he’d promised to take care of you, something he’d planned on doing anyway but Heather was pretty fucking scary and had told him she’d hang him up like a scarecrow with his own intestines if anything happened to you).

There wasn’t much you could do with the space or the living room, given the amount of occupants, but you rearranged the inside of the fridge and bottom cabinets while Eddie tackled the drawers and top cabinets, making sure everything was where it wasn’t supposed to be.

After that, you headed outside. Then immediately went back inside when you realized how creepy the area looked.

The game and the alcohol took its toll on you and soon enough Eddie was watching over you as you curled up on the couch. He hadn’t immediately realized you fell asleep due to that goddamn mask, once he had, he’d kept everyone away from the couch. Didn’t even sleep. He only left you once to get some water and that had been when you chose to wake up.

You’d sobered up, so he figured he could try his luck and you’d all but ran out of there when he started flirting with you.

It stung but Eddie wasn’t ready to just give up yet. No, he couldn’t just lick his wounds and go home, he had to watch your every move the entire week after, look for dumb reasons to be in the same place as you (why the fuck did you hang out on the bleachers outside so much? It was fucking freezing) and trail after you like some pathetic dog.

And you didn’t even throw him a bone. He’d seen you leave the cafeteria, sans Heather for once and tripped over himself in his haste to get to you.

Then you had to be completely wonderful, had offered to share your own weed with him and validated his feelings after constantly being used because he was stupid enough to trust girls who so much as smiled in his direction.

He’d been stupid and hopeful enough to try his luck again and driven you away.

The mean girls didn’t want him, the nice girl didn’t want him, maybe he really was just destined to be on his own.

He had moved his wallowing to the bench in the woods behind the school (still had to work, regardless of how depressed he was) when Heather appeared, aggressively clearing her throat to announce her presence.

Eddie dropped his hand from his chin to deadpan in her direction, “You here to kick my ass?”

“No, I’m not here to kick your ass. I’m here to help you, Munson. She’ll kick my ass for telling you this, but I can see it’s different with you. It could be, so, listen up and listen good. Do you know Duncan Carson?”

—

You were getting ready for bed, having scrubbed your face clean of makeup and slipped into your pajamas (consisting of your christmas onesie from last year, a family tradition, since it was pretty chilly and your mom liked to freeze the entire house) when the sound of something hitting your bedroom window made you jump. You assumed some dumbass bird barreled into again until it happened once more. As you got up from your bed, slowly approaching the window, you could see a small object hit the glass. A pebble.

What the hell?You yanked the window open, barely managing to dodge the next pebble thrown at it. It knocked a glass on your dresser over instead.

“Oh, shit! My bad–did I hit you?” You leaned out the window pane to see Eddie standing outside, in your yard. He gave you a timid grin, quickly tossing the pebbles he collected out of his grasp.

“Eddie, what the hell are you doing here? How do you even know where I live–are you stalking me?” You didn’t bother answering his initial question.

He glared up at you, arms crossing at your implication. “No, I’m not stalking you! Can you please come down? I-I can’t climb up there. I tried.” It was only then that you noticed your neighbor's rose bush, which extended just below the low roof of your garage, had been trampled. “What do you want?”

Eddie groaned, “I’ll tell you when you come down here!” “That sounds like something a stalker would say to lure me out of my house.” “Oh my god, look–you’re really cute but I’m gonna need you to stop being a jerk and come talk to me. Please?” Your mouth dropped open and you knew you were doing exactly what he wanted when you yanked on your shoes and stormed out of your room (quietly tiptoeing down the stairs to not alert your parents). “What are you doing here and how did you know where I live?” You demanded the moment the front door closed behind you. Eddie had moved to stand directly on your porch so you had to usher him back a little to create some space between the two of you. “Heather gave me your address,” He rushed out, wanting to focus on why he actually came. “Why can’t we be together?” Heather? Heather?! You were going to kill her. Ring her little neck. “Just because she gave you my address doesn’t mean you show up in the middle of the night─”

“It’s 7:30, cute jammies, by the way.”

“—and demand I come speak to you! I already told you, I can’t give you what you want. You’re better off.”

“What about you?”

“What?”

“I said,” Eddie stepped closer, forcing you to take a step back, “what about you?”

You stuttered to find words, mouth open and closing as you started your sentence but were too dumbfounded by his question.

“Don’t you deserve better?” Eddie prompted, his voice gentle and gaze unwavering. “You do. You deserve better. Better than Duncan The Asshole Carson.”

Your eyes squeezed shut at the mention of your ex-something, trying to force the memories away.

Fucking Heather.

Of course she didn't just give Eddie your address. She’d told him all about Duncan. A football player in your graduating class that had befriended you last spring. Unlike most of his teammates, he wasn’t a complete dick. He was funny, charming, sweet and things turned romantic. He’d hold your hand, kiss you, take you on dates and he’d even attended your powderpuff game toward the end of the school year. Life was bliss.

Until he asked you if you thought Heather would be interested in him. Your best fucking friend.

You’d been horrified and outraged that he’d even ask you that and he quickly got upset with you, arguing that the two of you hadn’t been in a relationship. You were just having fun.

He hadn’t been interested in you, not genuinely. He’d been interested in the attention you gave him. All those months, all those moments. All fake and tainted. He’d used you to feel important, better about himself. And when he finally felt he was big enough, he’d dropped you. Let you fall.

You’d slapped the ego right out of him and ran off to some field outside of Hawkins. The dolt was stupid enough to try and approach Heather the same night. She’d also slapped the crap out of him and drove around town until she found you, crying your heart out in the middle of nowhere. Initially, she’d feared you’d be mad at her but you reassured her she wasn’t to blame. You were, for being stupid enough to fall in love. Heather tried to comfort you and convince you otherwise but you wouldn’t hear it.

You spent the entire summer broken and you thought you’d healed since, having promised to not put yourself in a situation where you could get hurt like that again, but here you were, the cracks in your heart still very much so apparent.

“I’ll be fine on my own.” You swallowed hard, forcing yourself to meet his eyes even though you could see through the tears lining your own. You wouldn’t back down. Couldn’t. Not again.

“Goodnight,” You turned to go back into your house when Eddie darted forward, grasping your wrist to keep you from leaving.

You glanced down at his hand then back up at him, sucking in a breath at the desperate glint in his eyes, brows pinched together in despair.

“The thing is, I can’t.” Eddie bit his lip, and you noticed the shine over his own eyes. “I can’t let you go. I could do it with the others, with Lana. I knew not to chase after them when they left. But I know I’ll regret it if I don’t chase you.

“You deserve someone who makes you feel special, someone who’d run across the school to get to your classes in time to walk you to the next, someone who will hold your hand and your backpack. Someone who wants to kiss you really, really badly. Like all the time. A-And hold you. Someone who wishes they’d talked to you a long time ago, could’ve kept a lot of heartache from happening. Someone who will help you rearrange another person’s house to prank them whenever you want. You said I deserve better than you but you’re wrong. You’re exactly what I deserve and I want to be what you deserve. I want to do it all, and only with you.”

“God, Eddie,” you wiped at the tears escaping your eyes with a sniffle, “Can you just stop? Stop saying nice things!”

“No. Never.” He used his hold on you to pull you closer and you didn’t fight him, didn’t push him away when his hands slipped to rest on your sides.

“What if this doesn’t work out? What if we get hurt?” You asked as Eddie leaned down, pressing his forehead to yours.

“I’m not stalker-ish enough to say I love you just yet, but I’m pretty sure I’m starting to, which means I’m probably gonna be the one that gets hurt. I’m willing to risk it if it means I get to have you, for even a little bit.”

You barely had to angle your head to kiss him. Eddie moved a hand to the side of your neck as his lips moved softly against yours, rings cool against your skin. He pulled away, just to get a glimpse of your reaction. When he saw no hesitancy, no traces of doubt in your eyes he leaned in for another taste, mouth pressing eagerly against yours. Your tongue licked at the seam of his lips and they parted for you, tongues finally meeting.

Eddie pulled you flush up against him as you made out under the hazy glow of your porch light. The butterflies in your stomach had been revived, every single one of them was a flutter and all you could feel was bliss as the cracks in your heart faded away.

Eddie pulled away again, panting out, “I just gotta make sure, does this mean you’re my girlfriend? Do you want me to ask? I can—fuck, no, you deserve to be asked.”

Then he got down on one knee and you covered your eyes, grinning despite the slight embarrassment coursing through you. It was a good kind of embarrassing. The best.

“Will you be my girlfriend? Like exclusively, as in you can only do this mushy shit with me.”

“You’re so romantic,” you laughed out, still sniffling, “yes, I would love to be your girlfriend.”

Eddie cheered, leaping back to his feet. His arms wrapped around your waist as he hoisted you into the air and spun you around. You clung to him, squealing in surprise. Your shared laughter echoed down the street before it was once more silent as you kissed him.

The next day when you pulled into the school parking lot, Eddie was waiting for you, leaning up against his van.

He practically bounded over to you, pulling your lavender backpack out of your grasp, before you could stop him he’d slipped his arm through the strap and slung it onto his back, the other hand outstretched to you.

“Ready?”

You slipped your hand into his and used it to yank him closer to you. He made a sound of surprise but smirked when you pulled him down for a hungry kiss in the crowded parking lot.

It definitely caught some attention, you both smiled against each other’s lips when you heard Heather whoop in the background.

“YEAH, GET IT! GO MUNSON!”

Eddie laughed when you pulled away, giving Heather a thumbs up before he intertwined your fingers and led you into the school, flipping off a stupefied Duncan Carson on the way and you gave Lana a look as you passed her locker, happy she’d fucked up with Eddie so he was yours for the taking. You planned on keeping him.

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