#from what I have seen she went through his computer files??? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tip-top-cloud-surfer · 5 months

Text

The Danger Zone (Part 14) - Hangman

Pairing: Hangman / Fem!Bradshaw!Reader | OC

Word Count: 4.8k

This work, all my works, and my entire blog are 18+ ONLY.

Warnings: Unplanned Pregnancy; Military Inaccuracies; Daddy and Mommy Issues Galore; Arguing; Crying; Angst; Screwed Up (Seresin) Family Dynamics Discussed; Use of "You," No Use of Y/N, No Set Physical Description

Summary: You and Jake spend some time apart. Maverick offers his help.

Series Master List

Master List

You called out of work the next day, knowing that you were in no shape to go. Closer to lunch time, after you'd wallowed for a time, Maverick drove you over to Jake’s apartment and packed up a few things while Jake was out. You didn’t take everything, just a few days' worth of clothes and necessities, before heading back to Maverick’s house to wallow some more.

Burying your face into your pregnancy pillow, you looked up when the door to your room opened. You sat up when you saw Penny standing there. And when she walked over and sat on the edge of your bed, you couldn’t help but latch onto her.

Penny pulled you close and rubbed your back as you cried, sharing a worried look with Maverick. He leaned against the doorframe, looking like he didn’t know what to do. Penny gave him a look, glancing down at you, before returning the same look to Maverick.

He nodded and walked away to make a call.

While Penny led you outside, Maverick stood on the front steps with his phone to his ear. He knew that it was the middle of the day, but he was still hoping that there was a chance.

“Hey, Mav, what’s up?” Javy answered calmly after a few rings.

“I’m assuming that you’ve heard,” Maverick stated bluntly, causing Javy to sigh.

“Yeah, I’m putting out my own fires over here,” Javy stated, glancing over at Jake’s office.

Jake was furiously writing away at forms and typing paperwork into his computer, barely taking a moment to blink. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night and hadn’t eaten anything, save for three cups of coffee. He was in no shape to do anything. Javy would tackle him to the floor himself before letting him into a plane in this state.

“How’s she doing?” Javy asked Maverick.

“I haven’t seen her like this in a long time. And I don’t ever want to see her like this again.” Maverick glanced back at the house before turning back to the street. “What happened, Coyote?”

“His mom wrote him a letter.”

“And?” Maverick pressed a bit more, not seeing the connection.

“Jake doesn’t really have a traditional relationship with his parents. And for good reason on his part. And he needs to tell her about it, but he’s not exactly the most emotionally intelligent guy.”

Javy gestured for Fanboy to carry in another stack of files into Jake’s office. Jake didn’t look up, working through the paperwork in front of him like a robot on rocket fuel. Fanboy hesitated for a moment but with another sharp look from Coyote, Fanboy turned to Jake.

“Hey, Hangman, we’re kind of falling behind, so I was wondering—”

“—Just put it on the pile, Fanboy,” Jake stated, not even looking up.

Fanboy dropped the stack and walked out, shooting Javy a thumbs up that Javy returned. Glancing worriedly at Jake again, Javy turned away to continue his conversation with Maverick.

“He’s not anywhere near a plane right now, right?”

“No, I’m making sure of that," Javy promised him.

“It might be a good idea to keep Rooster away from him too.”

“Already on it,” Javy replied, watching his wife march Rooster down the hall to go and teach lessons today. Far away from Jake. “I’ve got it handled here but I’m worried about him when he gets off.”

“I should warn you that we went over, and she took her stuff.”

“She’s already decided to move out?” Javy asked, starting to panic.

“No, she just needed some time and some of her things for now. But I'm worried that if he sees her stuff gone, it might set him off.”

“Alright, I’ll drag him home with me and Phoenix.”

“Actually, Coyote, I was wondering if you think that Jake would come with me for a drive tonight?” Maverick suggested, causing Coyote to pause for a moment. “If you think that he needs more time, he needs more time. I trust your judgment.”

“Tomorrow,” Coyote decided after a moment. “Come to my house in the morning. Before he has a chance to get worked up.”

“Alright. Keep me updated, Coyote.”

“You too, Mav.”

Hanging up the call, Maverick walked back inside the house and paused when he saw you and Penny out on the back porch. You seemed to have stopped crying, but you looked so broken that it felt like a direct punch to Maverick’s gut.

You were the little girl that Goose and Carole hoped and begged for. You were the little girl that Goose continually sobbed over when he got a photo of you from the hospital, having missed your birth. You were the little girl that he then proceeded to sob over at the airport in Miramar when he got to hold you for the first time. You were the little girl that Goose swore up and down that he’d protect and love and definitely not let you anywhere near naval aviators.

And when Goose died, Maverick took up that mantle in his place. And he wasn’t going to let you, or Goose, or Carole down.

They were going to fix this. Someway. Somehow.

~~~~~

Bradley, as soon as he saw that something was off with Hangman, knew that something was probably off with you too. And when you didn’t answer his call, he went looking for you after work. He drove by your apartment and after a quick scan of the parking lot, moved on.

And when he saw your car parked in Maverick’s driveway, he pulled in. Getting out of the Bronco, he walked around the back and entered through the side door. Rooster spotted you standing in the kitchen, pouring yourself a drink. You looked up at the sound of footsteps before looking right back down, defeat written all over your features.

“Where’s Mav?” Bradley asked, looking around.

“He went out to grab dinner. Did you need him for something?”

“No, I came to check on you.”

“Why would you do that?” you asked, adding some ice cubes.

“Well, Hangman seemed off today.”

“Did he?” you questioned quietly.

“Yeah.” Bradley waited a moment before asking, “What happened between you guys?”

“Why? So that you can run off and yell at him?” you scoffed haughtily. “Or make some comment to him tomorrow in front of everyone and watch him bite his tongue? Or finally explode?”

“Are you okay?” Bradley asked you worriedly.

“Yeah, Brad. I’m really fucking peachy,” you snapped, causing him to wince. “Look at how okay I am. I’m living out of a bag in Mav’s house after having a massive fight with my boyfriend while I’m nearly six months pregnant with his baby. And one of the things that we were fighting about just so happened to be about how hard my family was on him. Comparing him to my ex. Making him feel like he wasn’t good enough to be with me. Telling him that he was going to be a shit dad.” Placing your hands on your hips, you glared at your brother. “Does any of that sound familiar, Bradley?”

When he didn’t respond, you grabbed the paper towel roll off the holder and threw it at Bradley’s head. And when that bounced off his arm, you reached over and yanked the dish towels off the oven and chucked them at him too. Bradley walked around the cabinets and grabbed the loaf of bread before you could throw it at him too.

“Just put the bread down,” Bradley tried to coax you, worried that you’d grab a knife next.

“Why the fuck did you say that shit to him!?” you yelled, pushing your brother in the chest.

Bradley called your name softly, but you kept pushing him away or trying to hit him. And when he grabbed your wrists gently, you finally broke down. Bradley, not sure what to say, just pulled you in for a hug. You didn’t fight him on that one.

“I love him, Bradley,” you sobbed, your whole body shaking. “Why’d you say that to him?”

“I’m sorry,” Bradley replied a few moments later.

“Are you? You wanted us to break up and now he’s probably shut down completely and is packing up the rest of my stuff in his apartment as we speak.”

“No, he’s not.”

“How do you know? Do the two of you talk now?”

“After your last appointment, he showed the whole squad and about half of the department the ultrasound. I had several people ask me if he had an identical twin brother playing a prank on everyone because he wasn’t acting like his usual asshole self.” Bradley paused for a moment before adding, “A man who’s that excited about his baby isn’t just going to walk away after a little fight.”

You slowly stopped crying, but you didn’t let go of your brother. And he didn’t let go of you. It kind of reminded you of when he came back home to grab some more of his stuff after his fight with Maverick. You were home and tossed everything but the kitchen sink at him for not calling you to tell you that he was alright.

“Everyone has fights. Emma kicked my ass out onto the couch before. We got through it. You’ll get through it too.”

Maverick walked in with a bag of food, not surprised to see Bradley standing there with you. You and Bradley slowly released each other, and you reached to grab a tissue, but paused when they weren’t at their usual spot. You must have thrown them at Bradley.

“I found them,” Maverick called, grabbing the box from behind the kitchen table.

~~~~~

Jake stared at the ceiling of Javy and Nat’s guest room. He hadn’t slept for more than three hours before the nightmares woke him up. You still hadn’t reached out to him, and he took that to mean that you decided to break up with him and the next time that he’d get to see you was in court about child support.

Well, at least he wasn’t crazy to assume that it could all blow up.

Getting out of bed, Jake got dressed. He usually went for a run after he woke up, but he didn’t even care anymore. He just wanted a coffee. But with his current streak, he’d fuck that up too. Not even bothering to shave, Jake headed out to the kitchen. He heard Phoenix and Javy already up and talking.

But when he turned the corner, Jake was surprised to see Maverick standing there.

“Morning, Jake,” Javy greeted him, placing a cup of coffee down.

Jake walked over quietly, reaching for the coffee. He didn’t respond verbally and simply stared down Maverick, waiting for him to explain his presence.

“Morning, Jake,” Maverick repeated in greeting.

“What are you doing here, Mav?” Jake asked, a bit defensive, but mostly exhausted.

“I came to ask if you were free for a chat,” Maverick replied calmly.

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course, you have a choice, Jake.”

“Should I bring my photo ID? Or would you prefer to make it a little difficult for whoever drags my body out of the ditch to identify me?”

“You can bring whatever you want.” Maverick glanced between Jake, Javy, and Phoenix before moving to leave. “I’ll wait out in the car.”

Jake turned to Javy and Phoenix, who stared at him with encouraging looks as Maverick walked out of the house. Jake took a sip of his coffee before setting the cup down.

“Did you call him?” Jake grumbled, causing Javy to sigh.

“He called me because he’s worried about her.”

“What do you mean? Is she hurt? Is the baby hurt?” Jake asked urgently, but Phoenix quickly shut it down.

“No, just emotionally.”

“You talked to her?” Jake asked her.

“I texted her,” Phoenix answered honestly. “She responded, but not much.” After sharing a look with her husband, Phoenix added, “And she asked me about you. So, if you want to repair your relationship with her, go for the drive with Maverick.”

“You have nothing to lose by doing it,” Coyote added, causing Jake to look to where Maverick’s car was parked in the driveway.

~~~~~

Jake didn’t know what to think about Maverick taking him for a drive. He just sat and stared. Maverick started driving up the coast, letting Jake stew in the silence, before pulling off the coastal road. It was a random barren pull off with a stretch of sand beyond the pavement that wasn’t even a body length wide.

Jake guessed that Maverick wanted him to swim with the fishes.

They walked to the edge of the lot together, though they made no move to break the silence. Jake stared down at the dark waves, waiting for Maverick to speak. But Maverick was too busy staring off into the distance.

“What is this place?” Jake asked quietly.

“It’s the closest point to where my accident happened. The one that ended the life of my best friend. And the maternal grandfather of your child.”

“Why’d you bring me here?” Jake questioned quietly, sounding like he was walking on eggshells. “Do you even bring them here?”

“I brought Bradley here once. Not long after their mom died. But I never brought her here. I’m sure that Bradley mentioned it to her, but she never asked me to take her here.” A breath of silence passed between them before Maverick added, “I come out here to reflect. I guess it’s a type of therapy for me.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Jake asked again.

“You’re having a baby with my goddaughter. That means that you’re part of our unconventional family now. And despite what you may think about us, we know that we’re not perfect. We’re far from it.”

Maverick stared out at the waves, lost in his thoughts for a moment.

“My father died in Vietnam. He was a pilot and crashed after a dogfight. The State Department ran his name through the mud and sent my mother into a downward spiral. She died less than a year after my father. And then I went into foster care.”

Maverick turned to look at Jake out of the corner of his eye, though Jake did not return his stare.

“The only point that I’m trying to prove to you is that whatever you’re worried about sharing with her about your past, she’s not going to care. Your parents don’t define you. Their lives don’t define yours. And they’re not going to change how she feels about you.”

Maverick turned to Jake, his serious expression hidden by his sunglasses. Jake didn’t return his gaze directly, but his body did tilt more towards Maverick to show that he was listening.

“But she mentioned that you told her that you were trying to ‘protect’ her from your parents, which, as her godfather, raises some concerns.” Maverick folded his arms behind his back. “I don’t need any specifics. All I need to know is whether my goddaughter and her child are in any kind of physical danger.”

“They're not”

“Then what are you referring to?”

“My parents, the type of bullshit that they would try to pull would be financial. They would try to stop the transfer of any of my assets to her and the baby. At least ones that I inherited. They’re not the mafia, just some old money assholes trying to keep their wealth.”

“And the baby? They wouldn’t try any bullshit with the baby, right?” Maverick asked seriously.

“They wouldn't fight for custody. We’re not married and she’s not a choice that they would have ever made for me. They’d probably try to prove that the baby isn’t mine or do something else to cut off any sort of inheritance or child support from me or my estate. They wouldn’t want anything to do with the baby beyond that.”

“We can work with that,” Maverick stated calmly. “But you need to tell her what you told me and even more. If the two of you are going to raise a baby together and deal with whatever your parents throw at you, you need to be on the same page. And we’ll support you through it. All three of you.”

Jake nodded slowly, staring out at the waves in the distance before he looked down at his shoes.

~~~~~

You sat out on Maverick’s back porch in the shade, reading a book when you heard a car pull into the driveway. You assumed that it was just Maverick.

But when Jake came walking around the corner, you completely forgot about your book. Jake slowly walked over to you, stepping up onto the deck, and slowly sat down in the seat across from you. The two of you stared at each other for a moment in silence until Jake finally bucked up the courage to speak.

“Can we talk?” Jake asked softly.

“Yeah,” you returned quietly, shifting in your seat. “Of course, Jake.”

“How are you feeling today?” he awkwardly asked.

“Can we please cut past the small talk?” you inquired, causing Jake to pause, looking a bit surprised. A bit embarrassed, you rephrased your sentiment. “Sorry. I just really want to talk about our fight. It’s been eating away at me since I left.”

“I get it.”

Jake pulled out the envelope that set off a bomb in your relationship. He stared down at it for a moment before leaning over and holding it out to you. You started to reach out but hesitated.

“Read it,” Jake insisted, leaning further forward.

“Are you sure?” you asked quietly, gently taking the envelope from him.

“I want you to read it.”

You slowly opened the envelope and pulled out the card. It started out as a normal card would. But there were a few lines that jumped out at you that were distinctly odd. And by the end of it, you were more confused than you were when you started. You looked up at Jake and handed the card back to him. He placed it on the table between you and stared down at it, getting ready to begin his speech.

“I haven’t talked to my mom in five years. I wasn’t lying about that. But she has sent me a few cards, usually for my birthday, since then. Similar to this one. I’ve ignored them because I was happier without them in my life.” Jake slowly turned back to you. “And the reason why I stopped talking to my mom is because she is an extension of my father.”

Jake looked away for a moment, thinking over his next words carefully, before turning back to you. You were sitting calmly across from him, hands folded in front of your bump.

“My father is the type of guy to make his own kid call him ‘sir’ around the house. He wasn’t caring. He wasn’t ever there for me, except when I won an award or did well. And I caught him cheating on my mom at least three times myself.”

“Does she know that he’s cheating on her?” you asked softly.

“She’s known since the first affair. He’s not exactly a discreet guy. But she’s stayed with him for three reasons—her image in their community, her religion that preaches that divorce is a sin and a bunch of other bullcrap, and because he’s manipulated her into thinking that she owes him.”

“What does she owe him for?” you asked, growing more confused and concerned.

Jake paused, rubbing his hands together. He turned back to you and straightened up.

“Because she could never give him the biological son that he wanted more than anything else in the world,” Jake stated, causing you to blink rapidly.

“But . . . you . . .”

Jake let you fumble for a moment before finally dropping the bomb that he had held inside of him pretty much every day since he found out the news himself all those years ago.

“I’m adopted,” Jake explained calmly. “And you’re only the second person that I’ve ever told.”

“Jake, I never would have cared if you were adopted or not,” you reassured him. “And if I ever did, I’m sorry.”

“You never did. And I wasn’t scared to tell you that I was adopted. I was worried about explaining the story that comes along with it.”

Jake rubbed the back of his neck slowly, trying to figure out the best way to tell you.

“My parents tried to have a baby naturally for three years to no success. My father threatened to divorce my mother because she couldn’t give him a baby. And the bastard never stopped to consider the fact that he might be the problem.”

You sat back quietly, hearing the anger build in Jake’s tone and giving him the space to let those thoughts out.

“He never got any of his mistresses pregnant. If he did, he would have divorced her in a heartbeat and claimed that kid as his true son. And he could have easily pulled it off with a paternity test on me. No one else knew that I was adopted. He would have claimed that my mom got pregnant with another man’s baby and he probably would have gotten away with it. Maternity tests aren’t exactly common outside of adopted children and my mom was never going to expose the secret to the world.”

“There wasn’t any paperwork to say that you were adopted? Nothing?” you asked curiously.

“No, because my manipulative father and desperate mother did it all under the table. They found a woman who was unexpectedly pregnant. Vulnerable. Desperate. Apparently, she couldn’t tell her family about the baby and the father was gone. My mother took her to a doctor and paid for an ultrasound. Discovered that the woman was pregnant with a boy. And so began the sham.”

He couldn’t bear to look at you, afraid of what he would see in your eyes. But now that he had started, he wasn’t sure that he could stop until it was all out there and in the open.

“They took her in until she had the baby. They hid her away with my mother away from everyone for months to build up the story. And after I was born . . . they coerced her into giving me up. They told her that they would give me a better future than she ever would. They offered her money for her troubles and to write a letter to sell whatever story she told her family. And two weeks after I was born, she left.”

Jake stared at the ground for a long moment and only looked up when he heard you move. Picking his head up, Jake watched you as you slowly walked over to him. You hesitated when you drew close, but Jake didn’t pause when he reached out for you. Finding your seat in his lap, you wrapped your arms around his shoulders.

“The only thing that I can think to say . . . is I’m sorry,” you whispered, causing Jake to pull you closer. “That’s awful, that’s-that’s . . . psychotic. Criminal. Absolutely disgusting. I—” You cut yourself off, focusing on Jake in your arms again. “I’m so sorry, Jake.”

The two of you sat there for a long moment, just processing your conversation. You focused on rubbing Jake’s back and slowly combing your hand through his hair to try and soothe him. You could feel how tense he was and had to wonder how much he had worked himself up to tell you those dark secrets.

Jake didn’t say anything, keeping his face buried in the juncture of your neck. His arm was solid on your back, keeping you supported and close with his hand curled protectively around your bump.

Feeling Jake pick his head up, you turned to meet his gaze, letting him set the tone. He took another breath, leaning back and pulling you further into his lap and you had no qualms about curling up against his chest. You didn’t even realize how much you missed the simplest details about him.

“I don’t plan on ever inviting them back into my life,” Jake began, causing you to nod supportively. His voice cracked a bit as he continued, “And I know that you pictured a life with a guy who didn’t have such a fucked up family and past and—”

“—Jake,” you cut in, tears building in your own eyes. Cupping his cheeks with your hands as a tear slipped down Jake’s cheek, you let a few fall yourself. “I don’t care about any of that. It doesn’t matter what I pictured before I met you. You’re my baby’s father and you’re the man that I love and I don’t care about how your family is. I just care about you.”

“You love me?” Jake asked you softly.

“I love you, Jake Seresin,” you repeated with more confidence in your tone.

“You’re not going to leave me for being a complete asshole to you?” Jake added, his voice breaking again. “Because I hate myself for that. I hated that I said that the second that those words left my mouth.”

“Of course, I’m not leaving you, Jake,” you practically sobbed, tears quickly streaming down your cheeks. “I love you. I don’t want to leave you.”

“I love you too,” Jake returned softly, surprised by the amount of emotion in his voice. “I love you. I love our baby. And I don’t want to do anything else to jeopardize it and risk losing you. Because I can’t lose you. I can’t lose either of you.”

“You’re not,” you promised him, pulling him in for a tight hug again. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“I was stressed and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I just—when Cyclone told me about my promotion, he told me that there was a higher chance that I could get deployed over the next few weeks or months.”

“Jake,” you whimpered softly, drawing your fingers down his cheek. “It wouldn’t be your fault.”

“It would feel that way.”

“But it wouldn’t be,” you told him firmly. “I know that you want to be there, Jake. I’m not going to hold that against you. I knew that was a possibility. And I don’t want you to hold that against yourself, alright?”

“But—”

“—Alright,” you pressed more.

The two of you latched onto each other, letting your tears dry and fade. You felt Jake press a kiss to your neck and leaned into the touch when you suddenly jolted in his lap.

“What? What’s wrong?” Jake asked you quickly, causing you to smile.

“Nothing’s wrong. They’re just moving again. They scared me.” Moving Jake’s hand to rest over the side of your bump that your child was active around, even though he wouldn’t be able to actually feel them, you rested your head on his chest. “They weren’t moving around as much when I was here.”

“Do you need to go to the doctor?” Jake asked, staring worriedly down at your bump.

“I called yesterday. They said just to monitor them and to relax a little bit more. And they were right because now our child’s moving around again.” You leaned back against him as he curled his arm around your bump. “They’re going to be a handful? Aren’t they?”

“More than likely,” Jake agreed, sharing a smile with you before turning back to your bump. “But stop scaring your mom. Do you hear me?” After a moment, Jake turned back to you. “Can they hear me?”

“I think so. At my last appointment, they said that the baby should be responding to sound soon.”

Leaning down more so that he could speak directly to your bump, Jake repeated his earlier message, causing you to laugh. He picked his head back up and turned to you, smiling softly. You leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek. He, in turn, pressed a kiss to your lips that you happily accepted.

“Do you think that you’re ready to come home with me?” Jake asked, causing you to nod quickly. “Then let’s get you packed.”

Jake got you packed in about ten minutes and as you pulled your snacks out of the cupboards, Maverick came walking back inside. He paused by the door, hanging up his keys, before walking over.

“You’re heading home?”

“Yeah. Thanks for taking me in for a little bit,” you replied softly.

“You’re always welcome.”

You pulled Maverick in for a hug and whispered your thanks again. Maverick gave you a squeeze and looked up when Jake came walking around the corner with your bag. Releasing you, Maverick stepped aside and let the two of you out the door.

“Drive safe.”

“We will,” you promised him, smiling over your shoulder at your godfather.

Tags (PRETTY PLEASE have your AGE on your blog or message me about it to be tagged--thank you!):

[If I missed you, don’t feel bad about asking to be tagged again! But please make sure that your age is in your bio/comment/etc. If you see your tag spelled correctly, please double check your privacy settings! Thanks!]

@mrsjobarnes @wishiwasacasualfan @bethabear12 @everythingmarveltopgun @hardballoonlove @mavrellover91 @fangirlvoice @senjoritanana @sophiaslastbraincell @xoxabs88xox @emma8895eb @dempy @harperdoodle @itsmytimetoodream @sarahjoestewy-blog @the-annoying-fan @athenabarnes @midnightmagpiemama @praline357 @sucker4seresin @sunsetsimpsblog @sgt-barnesveins @abaker74 @shanimallina87 @kellyls04 @trickphotography2 @kmc1989 @boiolay @offical-potato @topgun-imagines @caitsymichelle13 @daddymack01 @hangmandruigandmav @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @lilylilyyyyyy @lillunna @bcon24 @sky0401 @ashcosmo @blackwidownat2814 @specialagentjackbauer @imareallygoodlawyersbrick @percysaidnever @silenthappyplace @buckysteveloki-me @havlindzk @hookslove1592 @mamachasesmayhem @aviatorobsessed @marvelogic @ems-alexandra @harrysgothicbitch @shawnsblue @shiara04 @delguersojoy-blog @erindiggory @eloquentdreamer @tomanyfandomstrash

488 notes · View notes

deonsx · 9 months

Text

When You Catch Them Satisfying Themselves

Feat: Dazai, Chuuya, Ranpo, Fyodor, Nikolai, Jouno

Content: Nsfw

Dazai Osamu

Sent alone on a private business trip, when you boarded the plane for the return trip, you picked up the phone and sighed as you read the longing messages your boyfriend sent you

You decide to send him a lewd photo of you and then turn off your phone you could imagine it would piss him off You came home soon after, it was 00.00. You unlocked the door and you entered the house and saw that the light in your bedroom that you hoped was off was on under the door

You opened the door slightly and saw osamu your boyfriend standing back and forth with his hands on his dick

"Is my beautiful boyfriend satisfying himself by looking at my photo? How needy" You spoke with a grin on your face, his eyes quickly turning to your voice, his beloved girlfriend leaned against the door and watched him

“Bella? I didn't know you loved watching me so much, but instead of watching, how about you come and sit on my lap and satisfy me?”

Chuuya Nakahara

It was a long day, your boyfriend was at his office and you were busy doing the files your boss gave you, but your boyfriend hadn't been out of the office for a long time, once he came back with the excuse of "I'm going home"

When he came back, he was locked in his office again, your curiosity took over you, what was it that kept him in his room like that? You took your steps towards his office, you tried to sneak a peek through the misted windows of the door, but when you couldn't see it, you opened the door slightly

Your boyfriend was stroking himself in your underwear, your ears turned red when you saw it, You rubbed your legs together "Chuuya-san?", she put her hat on her rapidly flushing face "Are you watching me s/o!?" He spoke in an angry shy voice

"I should ask what my underwear is looking for in you" There was silence for a while, chuuya took the hat off his face "Since you're so curious.." he averted his eyes with a slight cough, then stared straight at you

"I need you more than ı wanted"

Ranpo Edogawa

Your boyfriend was acting very attached today, he kept coming up to you and saying "aaahh I need you~” You had to ignore him, kunikida's eyes were constantly on you "S/o...why are you ignoring me.." he squinted his eyes

"Baby please wait until home you're being so impatient" you gave him a slight warning, you didn't see ranpo around after you said that

Kunikida came up to you and asked "Have you seen Ranpo around? We need him for a mission" You shook your head when Kunikida asked that "Let me know if you see him," said the blond man, and then you searched around to look for him, when you heard a faint but heavy breathing sound, you turned your eyes to the burgundy door where the sound came from

You put your head against the door and try to understand the sound, the deep breathing sound "Fuck you s/o.."him self-talk turned you on and at the same time made you feel embarrassed

Ranpo hadn't had a chance to take his hands off his dick when you suddenly opened the door, "Oh finally you're here.." his eyes gleamed with joy, but he didn't get up from his chair

you can give me my reward for making me wait long enough today~

Fyodor Dostoyevski

you were at work your boss was at the same time your boyfriend was at his usual office and you threw him a few pictures of you in the shower to turn him on

Then you went about your business, but because you were wondering what had happened to him, you decided to listen to him by his door, but there was no sound from inside. "Fyodor??" You went in and looked around but there was no one inside, so he left his office? Why? Duty?

You wandered around and asked everyone, "Where's the boss?" And you got the same answer from everyone "We didn't see it" where did this man disappear all of a sudden?

Only one place came to mind, Fyodor's computer room in the private basement, a room with only you and the card in his hand, but you weren't even sure where it was because you didn't need it at all You followed the stairs down to the basement and finally saw the room that was barely visible in the dark, with the white lights visible from underneath, you realized that there was Fyodor in the room

You tried to listen to him, you could even hear the sound of his hand, while his breathing sounds were also melodic to your ears, behind the door, the sound of which made your legs tremble after You opened the door, fyodor's purple eyes opened in surprise

"Oh? Dear, I see you're already wet listening to me, why don't you come and please us both?"

Nikolai Gogol

Your eyes followed your self-satisfied boyfriend on the phone looking at photos he took of you before Your body trembled as you continued to watch her from the closet where you were hiding, it all started when you wanted to surprise your boyfriend

But things didn't go well as soon as your boyfriend came into the room, he sat on the chair angrily and called your name "Fuck you, why aren't you at home.. you deprive me of yourself so much"he said. you started watching him through the gap in your closet with very little light

He cursed a lot with your name and that was enough to turn you on he was stroking himself with his hands, you took away the thoughts, but in the end there was a rustling sound from the closet

Your boyfriend quickly stopped himself but didn't turn around, just chuckled

"That's enough play, my love, I have to fuck you now"

Jouno Saigiku

You sat on his lap and took him to heaven with a deep kiss, his hair stained with your slightly messy lipstick, his messy tired face greets you, you rubbed in him lap, causing him to smirk and scowl "You playing with me?" You chuckled and left bites on his neck

The ringing sound of the phone was exactly what you wanted. You picked up the phone while you was on his lap and found out you had a mission, of course it didn't matter, but it wasn't something you wouldn't do to piss him off

You quickly got up from his lap, causing him to be horrified "What are you doing??" He asked in a light but tense tone, "I've got work to do, baby we'll do it next time" and you got ready and left you didn't even care what he said

An hour passed and you came back home "Oh fuck!" You were startled by the voice and you walked into your bedroom and found him satisfied with your boyfriend's hand on his head and his head tilted back

It was a great pleasure for you to see your lover like that. You brought your hand to your lips "Ahh my dear darling, what's the problem? Are you trying to satisfy yourself without me?"

He slowly straightened up, watching his every move, his hand went to his white hair and he laughed nervously

"Oh? What's that heartbeat? Are you enjoying it? Then you're going to enjoy me fucking you"

Enjoy!

712 notes · View notes

love-lilly02 · 3 months

Text

The Challenge pt. 5

Authors Note: this one is gonna make yall mad, i already know it. Also i think i'm gonna have to create a schedule of posting on weekends as apperently all my ideas for this story hit on fridays.

Chapter warnings:

minor character death, mentions of suicide

“You can’t do that!!”

“I can and I will.” Laswell said, closing the file. “She’s on a solo Op and that’s final.”

The boys all rolled their eyes, sighing heavily.

“Let one of us go, Las. We can’t just let her walk into the lions den-“

“Price, that’s enough. She has her assignment, you have yours.”

“But we don’t have an assignment.” Price stressed.

“Exactly.”

Another round of complaints.

You had left the room long ago, departing as soon as you had received your mission. A solo op, just an intel gathering. Get in, get the information, get out.

Get out of one of the most heavily guarded buildings in all of Russia.

What could go wrong?

“Okay, I’ll be the one to say it.” Kyle stepped up, leaning forward in his chair. “I don’t trust that she’ll be able to get out of this place. Even with her level of skill, that’s something no one’s been able to pull off without dying.”

“If you’re worried about her, you can say that you know.” Laswell said simply, raising an eyebrow.

The whole room went quiet.

“Alright, look. I don’t know what’s going on between you four and her, but get it under control. I had enough of it when you lot-“ she points to Ghost and Price-“ wanted those two-“ She points at soap and Gaz- “to join your… whatever this is. I’m not dealing with four children mooning over my best asset.”

“We are not moonin’-“ Ghost protested at the same time Price said “I thought I was your best asset?”

Laswell just rolled her eyes.

“I’ll put you boys on cam duty. How’s that?”

“It’s enough.” All the boys agreed.

You could feel their eyes on you as you adjusted your weapons for the fiftieth time. The suit they had you in was very different from the gear you normally wore, instead of cargo pants and a vest you had on a completely black bodysuit with a matching hood and shoes. Various knives and fewer guns than you would like were hidden among your body, and you kept anxiously touching them to be sure they were actually there.

You looked like the Black Widow from the Avengers. As far as you could tell, the boys thought so too, with the way they kept sizing you up.

You weren’t entirely sure if you liked that fact or not.

You knew exactly why they had chosen you instead of Ghost or Kyle for this mission- you were a lot quieter. They could think quickly and kill faster, but at the end of the day you moved around quieter, left much less noticeable tracks than they did.

This stupid challenge supported that idea.

“Keep touching ‘em and they’re gonna rust, lass.” Soap called over the comms, and you shot him a glare. For the sake of the mission- and your life- you had decided to temporarily cast aside your feelings for their last behavior, allowing them to talk to you again. Some people, like Gaz and Price, understood you would need space after what happened. Ghost and Soap, however, did not get the memo.

“She’s allowed to touch ‘em, Johnny. They’re her knives. ‘Sides, I don’t suppose knives can rust by just touching ‘em anywho.”

“Awh yea they can! I’ve seen it ‘appen me self.”

“Drop it,” Price warned.

Both boys responded with a simple, “Sorry captain,” and the helicopter was silent again.

“Okay. One more time, what are you doing?” Price couldn’t help but be nervous as your drop zone crept closer and closer.

“I get dropped off and enter through a side window, go through some rooms and get to the main center to put the information on the computer with a red chip into a flash drive.

Price nodded and ran his hand along his beard, a nervous habit you noticed he developed.

“Okay, good. The boys and I will tell you where to go and when it’s safe over comms, and-“

“Price. I’ve heard the debrief over fifteen times now. I got it.” You said, doing one more quick pat down to make sure all your knives were in order. “I trust you. Now you need to trust me.”

“Drop zone approaching!” The pilot called, and they all watched as the plane opened to reveal the darkness of the night.

“Wish me luck,” You said, pulling the hood over your head.

“Luck,” they all chorused back weakly.

And you jumped out of the plane.

Anxiety coursed through Ghosts veins as he watched you jump. A while after, thirty seconds as planned, you deployed a parachute, barely visible in the night. It was dangerous to have a black parachute in the dark but it was a risk they needed to take.

There was complete radio silence the entire time you landed. That was another rule, unless you were receiving directions or telling them something important you were to be radio silent at all times. To “make sure no one hears or picks up anything,” as Laswell said.

Ghost thought it was a load of bullshit.

Simon agreed.

Truth be told, he worried for you. Both of him did. This was something he wouldn’t be able to pull off, not even with years of training for it. And they were sending you in with less than a few hours notice?

A suicide mission.

He hadn’t asked, if this was what you wanted to do. He didn’t ask if you were okay with risking your life, possibly dying, for the “greater good.” He honestly wanted you to disagree, he wanted you to protest, say they were stupid for sending you on this mission.

But you had just listened quietly and took the file.

“At the drop zone, headed to the entrance.” Your messages were short and to the point, and he could see the others relax at your words.

“Right, stay on standby,” Ghost said, loading up the cameras.

“Copy.” Then silence.

Once he got the feed loaded he quickly scanned the cameras for you, his eyes flicking back and fourth.

“There,” Kyle said, pointing to one screen. You were kneeling behind a bunch of crates, watching the entrance carefully.

“Okay. Move left, there’s a side entrance, you might have to pick a lock or two.”

“Copy,” and you moved towards the door. They watched as you crawled, seemingly gliding across the concrete floor. Once you reached the door, it took a total of three seconds for you to slip inside.

“Door’s are locked. What’s the next move?”

“Shit, that was locked?” Soap asked, even though his comms were off.

“Suppose so. Two desks down to your right.”

And so it continued. They gave you directions and watched as you absolutely flew though the levels of the building. Till finally, you were where you needed to be.

“Okay, transferring the information.” It shouldn’t take that long, Ghost told himself. He watched as you stayed crouched behind a wall, nervously tapping on your thigh as the transfer commenced.

“Done!” They could all head the relief in your voice, even if you tried to hide it. You put the computer back where it belonged, tucking the flash drive in your pocket.

“Good job, now head out the way you came, it’s-“ Ghost stopped short when he saw two men walk into the room. They were soldiers for the enemy team, the Russian flags in the middle of their vests displaying that. To your credit, you heard the voices and stayed pointedly in place.

The two of them spoke in gruff Russian to each other, monitoring the room carefully. They were going a bit too slow, getting a bit too close for Ghost’s liking. And, based on the way Kyle was gripping his shoulder, for him too.

They kept snooping, till finally one of them jumped out into your hiding spot.

It was absolute chaos after that.

You stabbed the one who found you, using his body as a shield when the other started shooting. You fired your own shots and landed one with rough time to drop the guy you were holding and run out of the room.

By this point, multiple alarms had been tripped, and you abandoned all sense of decorum, flying down steps quickly.

“Get the fuck out of there!” Ghost yelled over comms.

Apparently that didn’t warrant a response.

The cameras he was using to track you were being taken over, and he was quickly loosing visuals.

“Mirage, do you copy?”

“Mirage, what is your position.”

“Damnit Y/N, answer me!”

But he was met with silence.

And for the first time since Las Almas, Ghost felt truly afraid.

For what it was worth, you had heard Ghost yelling over comms. And you had wanted to respond to him, but the current circumstances made that harder than you would have liked.

There were soldiers shooting at you almost constantly, and maybe about two or three snipers on other buildings. And you had about five more stories to get down, not to mention an entire parking lot- which was swarming with soldiers, you checked- and somehow get back on the evac vehicle alive.

One step at a time.

Having cleared two floors already, you burst through a nearby office, breathing out a small sigh of relief when no one occupies it. Over the comms you hear a voice saying something, but it’s Price now instead of Ghost.

“Mirage, there’s a supply drop headed your way, what’s your location?” He doesn’t sound as worried, and you can’t help but wonder where Ghost went.

“I’m hidden in an office, sir. If there was a drop there would be no way for me to reach it without being ambushed.”

You’re met with silence for a moment, before Price comes back into your ear.

“Copy that, just get to the parking lot in one piece. We’ll take it from there.”

You just roll your eyes. As if that wasn’t your plan to begin with.

The stairs seem endless as you run, down flight after flight after flight. You seriously considered taking the elevator but decided against it- they were Russian, not stupid. Once you make it to the room you entered the building through you’re throughly disappointed to find it’s occupied by a few armed guards. Nothing you couldn’t handle, so long as you went out quietly.

Carefully, you made your way behind the first one, pulling one of the longer knives out of your thigh holster. In your other hand, you slip a throwing knife, crouching silently.

It takes a good few minutes before you’re able to make a move, throwing the knife in the eye of the guard at the door before you stab the one in front of you in the neck. The other two load their guns, but you’re faster, flinging two more throwing knives across the room into their heads. You allow yourself the time to collect your knives and slip out of the door, just in time to hear more gaurds enter behind you.

Close calls that just keep getting closer.

You’re able to see the parking lot now. And as you expected, it’s absolutely swamped with enemies. There were small cracks in the defenses, however, just small enough for you to slip through if you were careful.

You stuck to the shadow of the trees, figuring darkness was your best cover. Carefully, you picked your way through the ranks of men receiving instruction, having to duck to hide behind cars multiple times. Finally, you were close enough to make a break for it and just test your luck.

And that dammed supply drop just had to show up.

Immediately, it set off widespread panic, and in the chaos one of the soldiers stumbled over to your hiding spot. Before you understood what was going on you were being hoisted up by multiple soldiers and brought into the center of a light, surrounded by angry Russians who were yelling at you in one of the few languages you couldn’t understand.

Finally, one man walked up to you and said simply, “Where is the band of coonies you work for?” He looked kind of familiar, with almost a dad bod and dark eyes to match.

“Don’t respond, that’s our target.” Price insisted, and as if he could hear him, the target looked up to your ear.

“American.” He spat out the word like a curse, and looked at you with an even nastier scowl. “A shame, you are very pretty.” He said something in Russian, and the men all raised their guns and pointed them at you.

“Wait!” You shouted, and to your surprise, the target stopped. He turned to you slowly, and raised an eyebrow, signaling for you to continue. Carefully, you moved your hand to where the flash drive hid, pulling it out. It glinted red in the bright spotlights, and the target stopped dead in his tracks.

“What is that?” He asked, stalking closer to you.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” You teased further. God you had a bad habit of teasing men. Maybe it’s what got you into these situations.

“Give it to me,” He said, practically running at you.

“Mirage, whatever you’re about to do, don’t. Do it.” Price was yelling, and you could hear the chaos of the helicopter behind you.

“Listen to me, American girl. I will give you one chance to give me that flash drive. And maybe we will let you out alive.” The target stopped a good distance away from you, holding out his hand. You just smiled.

With a flick of your wrist, the flash drive was replaced with a pin. “Over my dead body.”

And a grenade went off- right where you were standing.

Authors Note: this is completely random but i've decided to open my inbox for requests, not just COD but across all fandoms, and i'm doing a bit of blog reorganizing so i'll get to them fairly quickly (tonight that is)

also don't hate me lol the next chapter will be out next week if all goes well

My Masterlist

#cod x reader #poly 141 x reader #task force 141 x reader #poly 141 #simon riley x reader #john price x reader #simon ghost x reader #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick

196 notes · View notes

specialagentlokitty · 7 months

Text

Shaun Murphy x reader - my comfort

Shaun Murphy from the Good Doctor with Werewolf (or were rabbit) Reader being his emotional support animal (or not it's cool) and just fluffy moments where Reader let's him pet her whenever he's upset. - Anon💜

Yawning a little, you stretched your arms above your head as you went back to scrolling through the computer in front of you.

“Don’t you have a job to be doing?”

“Don’t you have a person to be stabbing?”

You grinned a little as you flicked your eyes up to your friend, and she chuckled, setting a cup down in front of you.

“Have you seen Shaun yet?” Claire asked.

You shook your head, leaning back in your chair as you took the cup between your hands, taking a deep breath of that coffee smell before sipping it.

“Stop putting sugar in your coffee.”

“How did you know?! It was just a small bit!”

You set your cup back down, reaching out for hers and she handed it over, letting her swap cups with you.

“Because I’m just good.”

“It’s cheating, she has heightened senses and never told anybody.” Jared said.

“Seriously? All this time and you never thought to share?”

You beamed a little as you stood up, pushing the chair towards the clearly upset Shaun who was pacing back and forth.

“Isn’t it enough I basically live here?”

You rolled your shoulders, walking over to Shaun and you let the familiar burn take over you as you felt your body change.

Paws hitting the ground, you walked over to Shaun and yawned again, sitting down in front of him, pressing your side to his legs.

Instinctively his hands found their way to your head, fingers running through the now brown fur.

“That’s cheating.” Claire huffed.

You flicked your eyes to her.

“I think you should just stay like that, it’s quieter.” Jared smirked.

You snarled at him, snapping your jaws a little, and he laughed, sitting in the desk as he picked up the file you had been working on.

“I’m taking your patient.”

You breathed out a huff, and looked up at Shaun, and he looked at you briefly before looking away again.

“Stay as long as you need, we’ve got you covered.” Claire beamed.

With that her and Jared left, and you were left there with Shaun.

You rested your head on his leg, letting him pet the fur on your head.

“I suppose there are perks to having a werewolf who trusts you.” Melendez said.

You opened your eyes and growled at him, standing on all fours as you stood in front of Shaun who was still petting you.

Melendez raised his hands and backed away, and you heard someone laugh.

You turned around and growled and Andrews who quickly did the same thing.

“What’s the issue? You’ve never been angry with me?”

Shaun tapped your head a few times, and you looked at him.

“I want to go outside.” He said.

You stepped back, allowing him to get up, stills keeping a hand on you as you began to walk him towards the doors.

“Am I a good surgeon?” Shaun asked you.

He glanced at you, and you gave a small nose of confirmation.

“I am a good surgeon.” A repeated.

You let out a small bark, and he repeated his sentence.

You sat down in front of him, and he stopped walking, crouching down in front of you, his hand ruffling your fur.

“Your fur is very soft.”

You lowered your head for him.

“I like it.”

He pat your head a few times.

“Can you stay with me?”

You gave a small nod.

“Okay.”

He began to walk away and you trailed behind him, laying on the desk as he began to do some paperwork.

He carried on running his hand through your fur, the sensation was calming for him.

You knew this.

Sometimes he wanted you to sit with him, other times he wanted you to shift and just stay near him.

He knew when you were nearby he was okay and he was safe. You were his comfort, his protector.

You always had been since he met you a few years ago, and he knew that no matter what changed in his life you would always be there

#the good doctor #the good doctor x reader #the good doctor x you #the good doctor imagine #Shaun Murphy #Shaun Murphy x reader #Shaun Murphy x you #Shaun Murphy imagine

134 notes · View notes

rialikesbts · 1 year

Text

Exploitative

CEO ! Taehyung × reader

Masterlist

You could hear shouting coming from the CEO's office as you tried to work as quietly as possible on your computer.

Within a few minutes, the CEO's secretary came out, huffing and puffing, tears in her eyes as she quickly walked out of the office,never to be seen again.

Yet another poor soul who faced the wrath of your demon boss.

It was nothing new. You had joined the company a few months ago and this was the fifth time the CEO changed his secretary.

He had quite the temper and attitude. Everyone was scared of him, including you.

Kim Taehyung walked out of his office ,causing everyone to go back to their work quietly , forgetting the drama that just occurred.

He raked his eyes over the office in a bad mood .

Until he spotted you.

You looked like a cute little bunny who was trying hard to pretend that she wasn't nervous.

He could see it in your trembling fingers on the keyboard trying to get some work done.

Such a beautiful sight.

He thought it was cute how you were trying to look unaffected when you definitely knew that he was eyeing you.

You made all of his anger disappear and he felt happy just by looking at you. His face curved up in a smile as he went back to his office.

He finally found something which made him look forward to work in the office filled with useless employees.

Over time Taehyung installed more cameras in the area where you worked, where you had lunch and where you conversed with other people so that he could keep track of you. He even started talking to all the other employees, behaving nicely and toning down his temper whenever he was in front of you to make a good impression.

He started having lunch at your table with your co-workers, conversing with them like a friend and not a boss. Over time you got comfortable with him, making small talk whenever you passed by his office or when you met him at the elevator.

It was just another day of Taehyung spying on you through his secret camera gushing at how cute you are when suddenly ,your colleague ,Choi Yeonjun walked towards your cubicle and started conversing with you.

All he could see was red.

How dare you speak to another man except him?

You were going to get punished.

He calmed himself down and tuned into the conversation between the love of his life and the man who was going to get fired today.

"Promise you won't tell anyone." Yeonjun said , holding out his pinky finger.

You nodded, eager to listen to the tea he was about to spill, intertwining your pinky with his. "Promise!"

"I'm gay".

"I knew it!" You say, excitedly and slap his arm.

"And I have the hots for Soobin."

You started giggling, nudging his elbow in a teasing manner and raising your eyebrows with a sly smile and a wink.

Taehyung relaxed hearing that Yeonjun wasn't interested in you, but he still was a man.

You should have known better than to talk or touch a man that's not him.

The same day, Yeonjun came running to your cubicle in anger. He grabbed you by the arms and yelled furiously at you.

"WHY DID YOU TELL HIM?? YOU PROMISED ME YOU WOULDN'T TELL ANYONE! THAT HOMOPHOBIC SON OF A BITCH FIRED ME! I TRUSTED YOU!"

"Yeonjun, what are you talking about? I didn't say a word to anyone about it!"

"Liar! I only told you!"

"But I really--"

"And what are you still doing here, Yeonjun? Pack your things and go." Taehyung interrupted your conversation, hands crossed over his chest, a stern look on his face.

Yeonjun threw you an angry glare before leaving.

Taehyung turned to you.

"Y/N, I have some work for you. "

You followed him into his spacious office where he gave you some files and told you to complete them by the day.

Sigh. Overtime once again.

And you lost a friend.

Could this day get any worse?

You stretched your arms after doing all the work Taehyung had assigned. Everyone had left already. You stood up to grab your bag and wear your coat so you could drop the files at Taehyung's office and leave for home.

Fortunately, Taehyung himself came to your cubicle.

"Thank you Y/N, but I have just a little work left for you to do."

You inwardly groaned.

Giving him a tired smile, you nodded and shrugged off your coat.

"No no, it doesn't take a lot of time, you just have to sign here." He showed you where to sign.

Since you were incredibly tired and it was getting really late, you just signed where he told you to.

Taehyung gave you his signature rectangular smile." Perfect! Now let me drop you home. "

" No sir! It's fine, I can go home by myself."

"Nonsense, I kept you so late in here.How can I let a girl go alone? Come with me."

You had no choice but to comply. Your feet were aching and the buses might have stopped running at this time. Plus, you will get to ride in a brand new Tesla. Who are you to deny such an opportunity ?

" Thank you sir. "

You both went down to the basement and got into his car. Taehyung had turned the AC on and the car seats were incredibly comfortable; they felt like a mattress. Topped with the immense work you did today, you felt really drowsy.

"You can sleep if you want to, I have your address from your employee form. All the data is in my mobile, so I'll wake you up when we get to your place."

You thanked him once again and fell asleep in a matter of seconds.

~~~~~~~~~

You wake up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room.

You look down to see yourself covered in a silk nighty and start freaking out.

Taehyung came in with a tray in his hands.

" Wifey, I bought you-"

"WHY did you bring me here?You said you knew my address. You even changed my clothes! You psychotic son of a--"

You couldn't complete your sentence because of a bang in the room. Taehyung held a gun in his hand and had shot a hole in the ceiling.

"Why would I bring my wife to a separate house? Married couples live together. Look wifey, you even signed the marriage papers yesterday!" He says, handing you the papers from last night with your signature on them.

You thought they were for a business deal.

He tricked you.

And you fell for it.

Taehyung caressed your hand, which was adorned with a beautiful and of course, an expensive diamond ring.

Tears fell out from your sockets as you realised your mistake. Taehyung was quick to wipe them.

"I won't ever let you go" He says, before pulling you into a passionate kiss.

You had brought this upon yourself.

And there was no way out.

399 notes · View notes

storiesofsvu · 1 year

Text

A Dangerous Game Ch 19

Emily Prentiss x reader warnings: language, usual BAU case work/crime. mentions of smut. i am more than well aware that half of this technology doesn't work like this in real life, we're not gonna talk about it. for the sake of the fic, this is how it works LOL. part of me feels like this is a filler chapter but it was needed for how things are going to progress.

When you landed back in Quantico Derek was quick to say he’d be the one to swing through the BAU to pass off paperwork to Emily. You thanked him, but said you had to pick up a couple things from your desk and pop in to say hi to Penelope. Luckily the bull pen was empty, you were able to snag what you needed without being seen, swinging your go bag over your shoulder again you wandered through the halls until you reached Garcia’s office, softly knocking on the open door as you stepped through it.

“Hey you.” She greeted with a warm smile and you gratefully accepted the tight hug as she stood, wrapping you into her arms and pressing a kiss to your cheek. “How was Seattle?”

“Shit.” You mumbled back, slipping out of her embrace and dropping down into a spare chair, “very unfortunately ran into a not so good ex, but at least Morgan was there to counter balance the crap.”

“He is very good at that.” She smiled.

“And don’t worry.” You reached into your bag, “I was not too distracted to forget your present.” You gently set the box down on her desk and she beamed across at you. It had started pretty early on, that whenever you went somewhere new, you’d pick something up for Garcia, it was usually some kind of coffee mug, and this time it was exactly that, from the original Starbucks.

“You are an angel.” She leant forward, kissing your temple and you smiled, squeezing at her hand before you glanced toward her computer screen.

“What’s got you working late?”

“They raided a warehouse Dewald was hiding out at, found a bunch of his electronics, I’ve been working my way through them.”

“Rat bastard.” You grumbled, “deserves to be behind bars.”

“He is.”

“What?” You sat up straight at that.

“Well, I guess he’s not technically behind bars, but he’s in cuffs. They picked him up this morning, he’s been in interrogation all day.”

“Why did no one tell me?!”

“Well, you haven’t really been picking up your phone this week.”

“I— okay. Fair.” You let out a small sigh, twirling your chair slightly to face the desk, “you found anything good yet?”

“I’m honestly not sure, after decoding a bunch I got into his hard drive and I’ve kinda just been poking around. There’s a ton of these audio files, some of them are date stamped and there’s a ton that aren’t.”

“Just audio? I mean we already knew he was big in surveillance.”

“Yeah.” Penelope leant forward, clicking on one, “and look at this, like, it’s just static for hours, sometimes even days at a time.”

“Weird.”

“Right? I’ve just been fast forwarding through basically silence. If I listen carefully or separate off background noises I can kinda hear traffic, or distant noises and I’m pretty sure there’s an animal somewhere but why would Dewald have this?”

“I mean, he’s a psychopathic killer, we may never be able to figure out his motives.”

“Oh! Oh!” She nearly jumped suddenly, “that was a door closing.” Her hand shot out, hitting the play button so the two of you could actually hear the recording rather than skimming through it. Her head tilted as her eyes widened slightly, “and that… sounds like two people who are very eager to get to the bedroom.”

“Dewald never had any sexual motivations or crimes.” Your brow furrowed, but she was correct, you could hear the sound of shoes being kicked off, clothing and belts hitting the floor, the very clear sound of two people kissing, breathy moans and gasps coming through the speakers.

“That is definitely two people getting busy.”

“It’s two women….” Your head tilted as you listened.

“Are you sure?”

“Pen..” You cast her a look and she laughed.

“Right.”

A dark chuckle rang through the speaker and it sent a shiver down your spine before an all too familiar voice followed it,

“Oh princess… I never said you weren’t allowed to come. Poor thing. You must be incredibly pent up.” A small thud, “go ahead, make a mess of daddy’s pants.”

Your eyes widened at the same time Penelope’s did, however it was only your heart that began to race in your chest.

“Oh.. my god.�� She gasped, “that is Emily…”

“Turn it off!” You smacked her hand, “Pen, turn it off, turn it”—

It was too late to save your own humility as your voice was the next to very clearly come through the speaker.

“Oh fuck…. Oh god daddy!”

“That’s it princess. Let everyone know just how good daddy fucks you.”

It was Penelope’s turn to smack your arm with her hand, latching on as she turned to you with a gasp, her eyes wide before the grin took over her cheeks.

“Oh my god! You guys are kinky!” She laughed, “I knew it! I knew there was something going on with you but I did not realize it had progressed this far.”

“Can you turn it off please!”

“Oh, yes. Sorry.” Her hand left your arm, darting out to pause the recording. “Jeeze. No wonder Emily’s so smitten with you.”

You’d dropped your face into your hands in an attempt to hide your complete and utter humiliation, letting out a heavy groan before you glanced back up at the other woman.

“I would definitely not call it that, and it is very much past tense.”

“Oh come on.”

“Can we not talk about this please!” You begged, it had been a long enough week as is and to be completely honest, you were still feeling the hangover.

“Why?” She nearly whined back and you could see the glee etched across her face, and not in the way that she was going to tease you about.

“You really wanna know?”

“Yes please.” She nodded with a wild grin and you let out a heavy sigh, rolling your chair closer to her computer.

“You said some of these were dated?” She nodded, watching you scroll through the pages until you found what you were looking for, “put an earphone in, I don’t need or want to hear this again.”

You watched as Penelope’s face fell, glancing over to you before she reached out and squeezed your hand. A few minutes later she paused the recording and pulled out her earphone, having heard enough,

“When was this?”

“About two weeks ago.” You sighed, “same day I got kicked off the case. Still have no clue why the fuck she would send me flowers right before pulling that.”

“She sent you flowers?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“There wasn’t a note or anything but it was the only thing that made sense.”

“Hold on.” She wheeled her chair over to another computer where she was quick to pull up traffic cams and find the right time and date. “That little weasel.”

“Is that Dewald?” Your brow furrowed, watching as he placed the bouquet down on your doorstep before turning and heading back down the steps, “but… she texted me about them.”

“When?”

“When I got home from the verbal lashing.” You rolled your eyes and Penelope’s eyes narrowed.

“Do you still have the texts?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Phone please.” She extended her hand and you gave her the device after unlocking it, watching as she hooked it up to the computer and swiped through various screens. “Does Em still have that iPad?”

“Yeah, usually on the coffee table.”

“Look, these texts,” her cursor highlighted a handful, “all from Emily. But the one about the flowers… he cloned her phone. Well, iPad in this case but thanks to the cloud and all that fancy stuff, he’s got access to her texts. This guy is almost too good.”

“You’ve lost me.” You rubbed a hand over your face, “and why do you have surveillance outside my house?”

“It’s how we managed to track him down. We knew he was targeting you, easiest place to start was your home.”

“Targeting, no. Pen you’re going down the wrong road here.”

“You know that’s why Emily took you off the case, right?”

“What?” You laughed, “no, it was cause I went rogue without her permission.”

“No sweet cheeks, Dewald was going after you.”

“What are you talking about? Because I was the original agent on the case?” Your brow furrowed as your tired hungover brain tried to unscramble what she was saying. It certainly wasn’t helping that she was piecing things together, beginning to talk a million miles a minute between clicking through random screens on multiple computers.

“No. Well, that is what I originally thought, but look at this.” She had pulled up a video from the field in Florida and you nearly winced at the sight of Emily kissing your temple, “he witnessed that. He was peeved she killed his partner and wanted to get back at her in a similar way. He managed to get out of Florida, get to DC and now we know he had something recording in Emily’s apartment. You were the target because he thought the two of you were together. Ten bucks says that after cloning her phone his plan was to lure you out, making you think you were meeting her for a romantic date night and do… unspeakable things instead… the flowers were the start of the seduction. Until you replied like that and he realized that this route wasn’t the route to go.” She paused to glance up at you and you were looking at her like she had two heads, “did you not know any of this? She really didn’t tell you about the cat?”

“What cat?!” You asked, groaning, “that conversation you just heard was the last time we spoke outside of this office.”

“Man, she really did keep you in the dark on this one.” Her voice was softer when she began to come back to earth, realizing how much she had just info dumped on you at the end of a very long week.

“Penelope, I love you to bits and pieces.” You sighed, standing from your chair, leaning forward to kiss the top of her head, “but my brain is too hungover for this. Enjoy your conspiracy theories and if you listen to any more of that, for the love of god fast forward please.”

“Oh, oh don’t worry. I will be zooming past all of that.” She chuckled softly before her voice softened, “and hey… just think about it, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Across the building, Derek was waiting in Emily’s office while he was filling out some last minute paperwork on the case from Seattle. He heard a small shuffling behind him before her blazer came swinging into view, being tossed onto a spare chair.

“You coulda just left the files.” She greeted.

“Had to finish up a couple of things.” He shrugged, “and I wanted to see how it went with Dewald.”

“He won’t say much but he also didn’t lawyer up. Now it’s Saturday, so he gets to spend the rest of the weekend in the tombs.”

“At least you got him.”

“Yeah.” She sighed, dropping down into the chair behind her desk, “I take it Wilson didn’t come in from the jet.”

“I told her I could handle it.” He replied, Emily tired enough she didn’t pick up on the shift in his tone, the coolness of his voice the second you were brought up.

“How’s she holding up?”

“Better.” He sighed, flipping a file closed, “think a night out helped.”

“Oh?” She raised a brow, feeling her stomach begin to churn, “I didn’t expect that drink to go well….”

“I didn’t ask.” He shrugged as he moved to stand, “but she got in pretty late.” He dropped the file onto her desk, “anyways, I’ll see ya Monday.”

“Yeah.”

Emily’s lips pursed as she watched him leave the office, she knew that she technically had no right to be jealous or upset right now, but it didn’t matter, she still very much was. Instead she tried to push it to the back of her mind, picking up the files Derek had left to go over them before submitting them. She still had a bunch of her own to go through as well, making sure Dewald would be ready to be processed out on Monday. It was a few hours later by the time she heard Penelope’s heels making their way toward her office, pausing right as she crossed the doorway.

“Hi…” she greeted, her boldness suddenly vanishing from her body.

“Hi…?” Emily raised a brow in her direction.

“Uh.. I… uh…”

“What?” She laughed, “spit it out Garcia.” She took in the expression on the other woman’s face, worry taking over her, “oh god… what did you do?”

“You know, this time… I actually didn’t do anything. But I do have a bone to pick with you and honestly, I’m more than a little mad at you right now. Because you did do something.”

“What are you on about?” She laughed once more, placing down her pen to fully tune into the blonde.

“You and Wilson.” She finally spat it out and she definitely caught the way Emily tensed.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” She bluffed, though she could feel her heart rate spike.

“Oh come on Emily! Cut the crap! It’s been the unspoken topic all week. I know I’m not a profiler but I’m not dumb. Not to mention I’ve been going through Dewald’s computer, and now I know you know about the bug in your apartment.”

“Oh god…” Emily dropped her face into her hands, more than a little embarrassed as she realized what Penelope was talking about and just how much she must have heard.

“Also, Wilson knows that I know. But she did swear me to secrecy.”

“As she should have!”

“You need to talk to her!”

“Why?” She looked up at her with an exasperated sigh. It was Saturday, she shouldn’t have even been working in the first place and now everything was coming out of the woodwork.

“For starters you owe her one hell of an apology.”

“What?”

“Two days before you kicked her off the case you found the bug, didn’t you? Sergio broke something, and the apartment gets really quiet from then on in. Until you ended things with her. Which, for the record, I don’t believe one bit. I know you Emily, you wouldn’t be that cruel unless there was a reason. You would have let her down easily, especially knowing that you still have to work together and instead you tore a strip off her, crushed her heart. After all those weeks of sickeningly cute date nights, spending the entire weekend together? And don’t even get me started on how much sex you two were having, my god, good on you guys! After all of that, to rip the rug out from under her, it’s gotta be about the case. You need to talk to her because you care about her, and you hurt her…”

“Are you done?” Emily asked softly, her voice meek, her gaze directed down at the desk in front of her as Penelope let out a huff and she felt the tears misting into her eyes.

“I think so.”

“I broke her heart Pen…” She finally glanced up at the other woman who winced at the look of sheer pain written across her expressions and she finally fully came clean about everything, not that it mattered, Penelope had clearly already heard basically everything.

“So you go and apologize.”

“What? Right now? She just got back from Seattle; I think I can give her a little breathing room.”

“That’s honestly probably a good idea, she’s pretty hungover.”

“She mention anything about Skylar?” Emily raised a cautious brow.

“No. And hey! Even if she did, I wouldn’t tell you because you don’t get the privilege of knowing until you’ve apologized and begged for forgiveness that I really, really hope she gives you because you guys are so stinkin’ cute and honestly I just really need you to kiss and make up and be together.”

“I honestly don’t know if she’ll ever forgive me.”

“Oh c’mon.”

“Pen, you don’t understand, she’s been hurt so badly before, walked out on, abandoned and now I’ve done the exact same thing to her.”

“Yeah but it was to keep her safe. She’s gotta at least understand that.”

“How is she supposed to trust me again?”

“Well you start with an apology and an explanation, and then give it time.” Penelope’s voice was softer this time, “you really care about her don’t you?” When Emily looked up at her, her eyes were blurred with tears and she let out a shaky sigh, finally fucking saying the words out loud.

“She was the first person I let myself fall in love with in a very long time.”

“Well then tell her that!” The last three words were enunciated by Garcia smacking the file folder in her hand against Emily’s arm.

“Hey!”

“Idiots.” The blonde muttered under her breath, turning to leave the room. “Promise me?”

“I will!” Emily groaned, “once we know Dewald’s in actual prison, I’ll explain everything.”

“Good!” Penelope called as she disappeared out of the office.

When you got home that night you realized just how fucking exhausted you were, grabbing the mail from the mail box as you unlocked the front door. The first thing you noticed was that you kicked something small, shooting it across the floor before it clinked against the bottom stair. The second was the beeping coming from the now working and active alarm system.

Dropping the mail onto the entry way table you padded over to the security system and punched in the code you’d chosen when Derek was attempting to set it up and the beeping stopped. Brow furrowed, you moved back to the stairs, picking up what was glinting in the sunlight and realized it was your spare key, pocketing it you flipped through the pile of mail. Nestled in between the folds of a Whole Foods flyer was the blue lanyard the key had been on the last time you’d seen it.

You glanced between it and the alarm box a few times. Emily had been in your house. Emily had made sure that the security system was properly up and running by the time you got home and had slipped the key under the door rather than stashing it on the lanyard somewhere. Two big things that would contribute to your continued safety.

Maybe there was something to Penelope’s findings after all.

__________________

@mickey-gomez @momlifebehard @melindawarnersgf @itisdoctortoyousir @emilyprentiss4life @somethingimaginative17 @temilyrights @alexxavicry @anya-casablanca @daddy-heather-dunbar @aliensaurusrex @rustyzebra @ilovemycrayons @thegrantwater @leftoverenvy @kades95 @dextur @m00nkn1ghts @augustvandyne @supercriminalbean @daffodil-heart @msvenablesbitch @its-soph-xx @going-gray @just-a-torn-up-masterpiece @hopelesslyfallenninlove @peanutbutterprincess @kdaghay @emilyprentisssluvr @lex13cm @awolfcsworld @zizzlekwum @emobabeyy @riveramorylunar @s1ut4nat @midnight-sapphic @scorpsik @thisisraes @prentiss-theorem @unsubologyy @strongsassysexysloane @svushots @overtrred28 @hbkswife @happenstnces @sapphicprentiss @heidss @geekyandgay98 @pagetboobstarcomments

#emily prentiss #emily prentiss x reader #criminal minds #a dangerous game

225 notes · View notes

zinfindoll · 5 months

Text

Swan Song | M. Draconia — 02. campus visit

[ previous chapter | index | next chapter (coming soon!) ]

Rating: T CW: use of [Y/n], she/her pronouns for reader, swearing, mild violence

Author's Note: so much happens in this chapter! i really hope you all enjoy it, and apologies for the delay! ♥♥ finally get to be reunited with malleus next chapter !

Earlier that day....

There weren't many things that surprised Lilia Vanrouge nowadays. Part of it was just his age — 700+ years of living would do that to anybody. The other part was that, in his last year at Night Raven College, he had pretty much seen it all, thanks to an otherworldly traveler who, despite being magicless, had fought off a plethora of overblots and managed to practically unite the school.

Leave it to this little human to be the one to surprise him once more.

Lilia Vanrouge had been enjoying his retirement, living a cozy life away from all the chaos and spending his days picking up new hobbies, improving his cooking, and playing video games. Today was gaming day since a new event was starting in the co-op him and Idia were currently playing, but as he was setting up his computer, he decided to check his phone. There was no reason to, but something in him was compelled to pick it up and open up Magicam...

Only to see that one person he thought would never be seen again was online.

Lilia's eyebrows raised. Nobody had her account information, but the account was kept up for classmates to look back and reminisce.

Before he could even do anything, a text came through from Idia, talking about how he was still caught up in something and might not be able to play today. Naturally, Lilia immediately asked if it was about the former Ramshackle prefect's sudden online presence, only to earn a 'what???????'.

The old fae hadn't planned on spending his day on the phone with Idia trying to figure out what was going on, but that's how it ended up.

"IDK how this is happening... ugh, terrible timing, too..." Idia grumbled over the phone.

"Ahh, that's right. You're still working on those missing persons cases, right?" That... was another worrisome thing.

Idia was silent for a moment. "Yeah... Nobody has been found yet."

Lilia couldn't offer any reassurances, but he did know that their previous classmates going missing was certainly worrisome. Among other things going on in the world... He wondered if it was related to the prefect's return.

Idia clearly thought the same thing. "Ortho's running a scan now. Are we having a sequel or something..?"

"Big Brother! The signal is gone!"

Sure enough, the prefect was no longer online. Lilia could hear Idia's groaning over the line, and after a bit more talking, the two hung up with Lilia mentioning he would tell Idia if it happened again.

With this on top of three former NRC students missing... Lilia couldn't help the foreboding feeling in his chest that he may be having to come out of retirement.

══════════════════

Idia Shroud couldn't stop thinking about the earlier phone call with Lilia and the fact that the former Ramshackle prefect had been online. Even if it was only for moments, it was still bugging him. He didn't need this added stress — and as cool as the prefect was, there was trouble wherever she went. Not that she wanted said trouble, but she unfortunately had that main character energy that naturally attracted it. Cool, but completely overwhelming for Idia at times.

Pouring over the files in front of him, Idia kept on going over the security footages of the latest disappearance. Due to the nature of the disappearances, STYX had been tasked to look into them — and since Idia had gone to school with the victims, they were hoping to get added insight.

So of course, this meant more work for Idia. And he would complain that it dug into his video game time (especially since Project Idol came out with a new installment), but deep down he was worried. Not just for the ones who disappeared, but if things kept up... He had a feeling it wasn't going to stop.

"Big Brother! The prefect is online again!"

This caught Idia's attention.

Immediately switching monitors, Idia had started to try and track the location signal. Moments later, his phone started ringing, and Idia picked it up.

"I know, I'm on it," Idia told Lilia curtly.

The signal was weak — but it was there. Idia could hear conversation in the background on the phone, but he didn't pay much attention to it as he continued to trace the signal.

PING.

"Got it!" Idia cheered a bit too loudly, cringing at himself immediately. Thankfully, Lilia didn't comment on his voice and instead asked Idia to send the location. Idia did moments later — better Lilia than him. He did not want to travel and see what the hell was going on over there.

"Wait— Malleus!"

Idia cringed as he heard Lilia's stern voice call out to him, using his first name rather than his newly-appointed title. After a few moments, Lilia sighed. "That child... I suppose I'll follow him. Maybe it's for the best. I was getting outta practice as it is!" Despite the bravado of cheer, Lilia sounded bone-weary.

"Um.. yeah. GL, HF," Idia told Lilia, who chortled and thanked him before hanging up.

And Idia couldn't help to think once more about how everything happening was probably connected right now.

Keeping an eye on the signal to make sure it didn't disappear once more, Idia went back to work, rapidly typing away at his keyboard.

"Ace?!"

Even through the bad resolution that was no doubt the product of terrible service, you would recognize the two faces anywhere. Six years had passed since you had last seen them, but they still looked more-or-less the same, if not more mature. Just by a bit, though.

"YO it's actually you!" Ace exclaimed, the audio cutting out a bit. You could see Deuce attempting to shove more of himself into the frame.

"Dude, move over!"

You were quick to cut them off before they started bickering. "How... Shit, I mean— what the fuck is going on?!"

It was hard to get your thoughts together. So much was happening, between the mirror and the earthquakes and now this! You struggled to wrap your head around it all, and you knew it was all connected somehow. There was no way it wasn't.

"We don't know either," Deuce responded. "But it's bad over here!" The audio started to glitch out worse. "Riddle is — ing!"

"Wait, what? I can barely hear you!"

"Riddle is missing!" Ace said louder, static still crackling.

"Wait, what?!" You repeated, although this time you did hear them, you just couldn't believe it. Riddle was missing?! How the hell was that possible?

They started to say something else just as the ground began to shake again. It started out gentle before it seemed to get worse. You vaguely heard Yuna call your name as you toppled onto the grass, your phone nearly flying out of your grasp as you waited for the tremors to stop. Almost distantly you could hear people screaming, car alarms going off violently at the earthquake.

You weren't sure how long this one lasted. Between Ace and Deuce yelling for you, Yuna yelling by your ear, the screaming and the car alarms... It was overwhelming. You squeezed your eyes shut, fists clenching at the grass as you waited for it to stop.

Even when it did, you felt as if the world was still trembling around you. You were barely aware as Yuna helped you to your feet. She looked disheveled and frazzled; no doubt you matched her appearance.

"Are you okay?" Yuna asked, her glasses askew. You nodded.

"You?"

She gave you a shaky nod, before her eyes widened, looking behind you.

"Wha...?"

You turned around to see what she was looking at, only to feel the blood leave your face.

The mirror wasn't just leaking blot — it was now bubbling, hitting the grass in acidic splashes that killed the plant life.

"Guys..." You turned to face the phone camera at the mirror, hearing broken up exclamations from your friends at the sight.

"Is that blot?!"

Deuce spoke up over Ace. "I thought your world didn't have magic!"

"It doesn't!" But even despite the irrefutable fact that magic didn't exist in your world, the blot kept pouring fourth, covering the entire surface of the mirror and pooling dangerously on the ground around it. You dragged Yuna back with you as you noticed the pool of blot getting closer and closer to your feet.

What were you even supposed to do in this situation?! It's not like you could just magic it away!

"You have more of those magic friends, right?" Yuna asked, grabbing at your arm without tearing her gaze away from the mirror. You nodded, your mouth dry.

"Uh... yeah."

"Can you Instalive it? Or whatever their version of Instagram is called?"

That was... Actually a good idea.

"Guys, I'm hanging up to live stream this in hopes others will see this," you told them.

"WAIT—"

You hung up before they could say 'goodbye'. Unfortunately, you didn't have a lot of time right now. Fumbling with the Magicam app, you managed to get to the livestream feature, immediately making sure the camera was facing the mirror as you hurriedly began to try and explain the situation. You noticed a couple of usernames, but tried to ignore the comments as Cater immediately started to bombard you.

"What the hell is that."

You looked over your phone at the mirror, only to see in horror what was rising up from it.

A blot creature.

Well, sort of.

It was clearly fashioned out of blot, but it didn't look like the previous blot monsters you had faced off again. It was a lot smaller, with a dripping, goopy head rather than a glass bulb. It almost looked like a Kingdom Hearts villain, but more... Malleable? Liquid?

Either way, it definitely didn't bring forth any positive feelings.

And of course, because life really liked testing you, more of these mini blot monsters started to form.

"Oh fuck me," you muttered under your breath. Before you could even say anything in the live stream to see if somebody had an idea to help, your phone powered off, dead. Probably for the best — you were going to need both hands for whatever shit this was about to be.

Yuna called out your name in a panic as you both backed up. Those who were outside immediately noticed the monsters appearing, phone cameras popping out to video this when all you wanted to do was to yell at them to fucking run!

But... the monsters didn't seem to care much about you or anybody else around. They all started to crawl towards your dorm. Exchanging confused glances at Yuna, you tried to think of what the hell could be important in the dorm unless something was hidden in there.

Like, say, a shoebox under your bed.

You swore again. "Yuna, we have to get back to the room."

"Are you out of your mind?!"

"I think they're after something I brought back from Twisted Wonderland!"

"Then let them have it!"

You gave her an exasperated look before sighing. You didn't have time to argue this right now! Shaking your head and gritting your teeth, you started to run towards the dorm, ignoring the burn in your legs and lungs. Yuna cried out in frustration behind you before following you.

It was nice to know that your current roomie was apparently a ride or die at the very least.

"If we get killed, I'm going to kill you!" she shouted at you as the two of you ran into the building, avoiding the monsters as if they were the plague. You skidded to a stop by the door, grabbing the fire extinguisher mounted crookedly on the wall. It wasn't a great weapon... But it was better than trying to square up with a blot monster with your bare hands and wet noodle arms.

The weird thing about these monsters was that they didn't have the helmet heads. Without hesitation, you swung the fire extinguisher down on one that got too close to you and Yuna, only for it to immediately splatter into harmless ink all over you both and the walls. Some got in your mouth, tasting like dirt and ash. Ew.

Ignoring Yuna's commentary, you continued to run up the stairs, mind racing. The blot didn't sting — not that you were complaining, of course. Not to mention there were so many, and as long as you didn't get in their way, they didn't seem aggressive. And that made you wonder...

Was it actually blot? Or was it the product of somebody's unique magic?

Maybe you were overthinking it. You tended to do that a lot, paranoia being one of your best friends, but there was a hell of a good reason for that. Your time in Twisted Wonderland had unfortunately taught you to be wary and cautious of everybody you met, to suspect everybody had ulterior motives.

Besides — how else could this all be happening? Somebody had to be behind it. But if they were, were they behind the earthquakes and other disasters happening?

Ugh. You wished you had more time to think, but time was of the essence.

"There's so many...!"

Yuna was kicking at them, and a part of you feared of her after you saw her splatter three without breaking a sweat.

Note to self: don't ever get kicked by Yuna.

Thankfully, there were none of these monsters in your dorm room yet. Shutting the door behind yourselves, you immediately went to pull the shoebox out from under your bed, trying to sift through the items.

"Um?! Do we have time to go through everything right now?!"

. . . Yuna had a point. Grabbing your backpack, you started to dump all of the items inside, one of them catching your attention. Without thinking twice, you caught it, gazing at the shimmering green gem stone.

It was a simple necklace, with a silver chain and what was apparently green sapphire. It looked simple, but considering the gift giver, it no doubt cost more than your college tuition.

"Come on!"

Slipping the necklace on, you grabbed the backpack and started to leave the dorm room — only to get swarmed. Yuna shrieked, kicking one away from you and stomping on it as you two traversed the narrow hallways once more to leave the dorm. Now the monsters seemed to be targeting you, which proved your theory right. Something in that shoebox was attracting them. But what the hell was it?

Progress was annoyingly slow but eventually you and Yuna made it out in the fresh air again. There seemed to be no end of the small monsters, and you could feel yourself getting winded. Yuna didn't look much better.

"What now?" she asked. You didn't have an answer, grimacing as one got you with sharp claws through your jeans.

"Hell if I know," you responded breathlessly. Wait until the cops show up? What could they even do?

The ground started to shake again. It hindered the monsters as much as it hindered you, and you and Yuna held onto each other, attempting to stay upright to no avail. It didn't take long for both of you to topple like dominos — the pavement you were standing on was less forgiving than the grass you fell on earlier, but you could barely focus on the numbing pain as you saw the ground cracking a few feet away from where you and Yuna were.

Through the earthquake, you could shakily make out something larger leaving the mirror, squeezing through and ballooning out. Yuna watched it with wide, horrified eyes; you were sure your expression mirrored hers.

It was nothing like the small menaces from before. This thing was the size of your dorm, with large, bat-like, inky wings that dripped blot threateningly. On it's head was the signature black helmet of a blot monster, and its talons tore up the grass as it stepped out of the mirror.

It was horrifying.

And it was the exact same creature from your nightmares.

As the ground stopped shaking, you pulled yourself and Yuna up, your legs feeling both like jelly and lead at the same time.

"Run," you breathed, tapping Yuna's arm without looking at her. "RUN!"

The two of you started to bolt just as the blot monster swooped down, cleaving through the pavement and causing you and Yuna to dive in separate directions. You barely registered the stinging scrape of pavement against your flesh, scrambling to your feet as the monster instantly turned to you.

Welp... At least Yuna will hopefully be safe, because there was absolutely no chance you could dodge this one.

Flinching as the monster dove straight at you, you couldn't help but call out the one person you needed most, wishing for one last time to have been able to see him.

"MALLEUS!"

And if you opened your eyes, you would have noticed the fireflies appearing around you.

#swan song #malleus draconia #malleus x reader #malleus draconia x reader #twisted wonderland #twst #twst fic #zinfic

40 notes · View notes

dropsofletters · 1 year

Text

people you know to people you don’t

summary: she’s a believer that love will be found in unknown fairytales, men who sweet talk and mysterious, unknown situationships. nonetheless, it’d a surprise for her if she was told that lee donghyuck, her best friend’s little cousin could be a possibility.

i mean...he is only her annoying friend, isn’t he? it couldn’t lead anywhere else. ever.

title: people you know to people you don’t. pairing: lee donghyuck x reader (ft. nakamoto yuta x reader) type: childhood friends to idiots to lovers!au ; lovers to exes!au ; slowburn!au ; small town!au ; cousin’s best friend!au ; drummer!haechan ; twitch gamer!yuta ; law student!oc ; just lots and lots of backstory, deal with it. word count: 15k words, i’m sorry. genre: fluff ; slice of life ; angst ; drama ; humor ; suggestive content note: this was the result of a poll i did late february on this blog. keep your eyes open for more polls.

DONGHYUCK’S LAMEST SUMMER: SEVEN YEARS AGO.

She’d write it in a book if she could. Yangyang’s laughter was the perfect epitome of an onomatopoeia. Ha-Ha-Ha in its purest form, with tears rolling down his eyes and his head tossed back as Eunbyul catches him just in time before he falls down the blue plastic chair he dragged in front of the computer.

What they were supposed to be doing was writing a geography project about Japan, the place they picked to talk about, and its cultural richness. Yangyang said they could talk about anime, and she shrugged it off before they came across with the file. Actually, she’d capitalize it. The File. As in, The X Files. As in, Donghyuck’s societal death.

In all honesty, when Yangyang saw a file titled ‘For The Tube’, he could have ignored it. Could have, should have. But from what she knows about her two best friends is that Yangyang can’t stay still for once and Eunbyul follows after his every word. Blame it on the obvious relationship that they try to hide from her and her clammy hands whenever he does so much as smile to her girl best friend, but that’s a story for another time.

Using Eunbyul’s little cousin’s laptop was one thing. Eunbyul’s mother had filed for divorce against her father and they had stayed over at Donghyuck’s house for the past year, with the excuse of going away once things started looking up for Mrs. Lee. They don’t seem to be doing so any time soon, so they got to meet Eunbyul the latest school year. They quickly became close, and met Donghyuck along the way. That didn’t mean they had any right to look around his stuff.

Yangyang didn’t listen to her, and while she expected to see huge tits and piles of porn, this was much worse. Come on, he’s fifteen, it would have been better if he was just searching for boobs online.

It was Donghyuck’s music career in just one file, and she had heard him sing in the shower once. During February, when she had forgotten her purse in Eunbyul’s bathroom and she had flown back inside to pick it up before they went to the mall, only to apologize once she walked in as Donghyuck shrieked after being cut off from his singing. She apologized, but that redemption of Maroon 5’s ‘This Love’ was actually pretty darn good.

He’s a singer, perhaps a dancer though she hasn’t seen it. He’s not a rapper, by any means, considering that he’s standing in front of his phone’s camera, with a hoodie on top of a cap he has pulled back, his black bangs standing through the slit, with clothes too big while he is rapping to Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice, Ice Baby.’

Badly. Oh God, what was Donghyuck thinking exactly?

Then, he started popping and that’s when Yangyang actually lost it.

“Okay, I gotta tell him. I can’t die with this in my chest.” Yangyang stands up, consequently making Eunbyul trip onto her chair as she stares at him with wide eyes.

“Tell him what?” His two friends, or childhood best friend and girlfriend, say in unison while looking at him. For someone as lanky and quite possibly stupidly confident as him, Yangyang liked living his life with the thrill of being a bit of an asshole. A heartfelt asshole, with a good soul right at the center of his chest, but still one.

“That we have a new nickname for him.”

The worst part of being friends with Yangyang (he’s good, mostly, she has cried watching The Notebook with him, so she knows he’s soft at the core) is that they are included in whatever trouble he gets into. So, when he rushes out of Eunbyul’s room, they go after him. The house is not that big, so the white and black kitchen in which Donghyuck is in. He’s holding a bag of cheerios upside town trying to pour the last few bits that are more like dust into a milky plate when Yangyang says it.

“What’s up, Vanilla Ice?”

Donghyuck’s right eyebrows moves the slightest, like a tick of some sort. He looks up at Yangyang, trying to play it off as confusion while he lays most of his body on the counter. His small chest is pushed forward, dark bangs falling on his forehead. “Yangyang, we all know that you’ll eventually end up being a junkie somewhere downtown, but what kind of weed are you on?”

Straight-on, and Eunbyul is about to open her mouth to defend Yangyang (again, the whole dating-not-dating thing is quite obvious at this point), when the man himself makes it worse. “I don’t know, you tell me, is it a totally sober decision to record yourself rapping? Because if so, whew, even I make better decisions than you, Vanilla Ice.”

Never had she seen Donghyuck move so quickly, and that comes from the man that every PE teacher complains about because he never wants to do much other than gossip by the bleachers. Now, he’s face to face with his cousin. “You looked through my stuff!”

“Just say that Yangyang did.” She mumbles, but Eunbyul completely ignores her.

“We just clicked on it accidentally!”

“It could have been something private!”

“Oh, trust me,” Once again, she’s speaking softly, and maybe she should stop doing it because Donghyuck’s now frowning at her. “It would have been better if it was your stack of porn.”

“Get over it.” Eunbyul’s trying to play the tough girl card, probably to defend Yangyang, as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Vanilla Ice.”

Now, she’s not vanilla ice, but she’s cheerios with milk with how Donghyuck pours his whole bowl of breakfast on her head. Eunbyul does so much as scream before Donghyuck stomps away from the kitchen. In all honesty, she would have loved to go after him and tell him that it’s just another stupid nickname from good-old-dumb Yangyang.

But, in all honesty, all those years after which she got to further know Donghyuck, everyone in her friend-group called him Vanilla Ice, so some decisions are taken by life itself.

SUMMERS ARE EVEN WORSE WHEN YOU ARE IN COLLEGE. TWO YEARS AGO.

Alright, so twenty-one sucks. Her two best friends had just broken-up for the first time in what seems like forever and now she’s stuck in a beach party with Yangyang, smelling like greasy hot dogs with corn and wearing a tank top over a bikini top that truthfully looked better online than it did on her chest. Those boobs aren’t for that top, that’s for sure.

At twenty-one, she imagined she’d be a little adult just flickering her way through the pages of life. It’d be like a math problem that she had solved on her first day of school and never found much complexity in it. Only that life is much harder than she imagined, both socially, mentally and economically. Eunbyul and she had eaten hot-spicy ramen as cookies instead of boiling it because they didn’t have any water these days, and that’s enough on economy.

The crisp air bites at her shoulders, leaning the side of her body against Yangyang’s shoulder. One of his hands is up, the other clinging onto a beer bottle, while both of her hands are up. Seven fingers up, bathed in the glow of the bonfire in front of her, only putting the two fingers left on her second hand down when she grabs the third hot-dog of the night and bites into it. She sees her ex staring at her lips briefly, and soon after, he returns his gaze to the other people around them.

Felix was a good start for last October. She almost thought that he could be the one. Four dates and daily texts for four whole months and then, it was over just like how it started. Nothing more than a few kisses and lingering touches happened, if she’s not counting the promises he sputtered. However, the long strands of his blonde hair and his rosy lips still haunt her to this day, because there is some anger that lingers within her.

The loss of time, perhaps, or the fact that he dignified a lot of firsts for her. Her first midnight call which lasted more than five hours. Her first sneaking out experience. Her first make-out in an empty cinema. He felt like forever and would never, ever be the same in her head. Not when he admitted to a few of their mutual friends that he just wanted to test the waters with her and then, it got deeper than what they could both control. Hence, he cut it off.

Oh, and being an experiment is what drives her insane, because she has seven fingers up and he has only two left. He’s clearly more experienced than she is. Must have a laugh remembering the little they did.

Because Yangyang has put a finger down about skinny dipping, and more than half of the circle put another down when talking about weed, but each and every single nasty question is met with silence from her. Even her questions are stupid. Never have I ever hidden alcohol from my parents. Never had I ever had a crush on a neighbor. They all put it down, not her.

What does it for her is when Felix, in all his confident glory of being a guy…because that’s what guys at twenty-one are, just fucking dudes trying to play themselves off as gentlemen, is when with a smug grin he asks, leaning back on the log that is behind him, the flannel of his shirt extending around his slim waist.

“Never have I ever had sex at a party.”

She puts a finger down when his deep-brown eyes lay on her. Just to spite him, as if to tell him that there was someone else after him. He knows that she hasn’t done much with anybody; being him whom she got farther with and it was a hand down his pants before she said she wasn’t ready. He respected it and she respects all the shades of red that take over his face when he looks at her hand.

Because she’s pretending as if she’s not a virgin just to get back to her ex and that’s…magical.

After that round is over, two more questions erase Felix and another girl from the circle, but Yangyang leans to her side, whispering into her ear: “What was that whole stare-off with Felix?”

“He’s trying to get at me.”

“He’s just drunk and playing a game.”

“Well, it looks like a fucking dare. He keeps laughing with his friends that I have two hands up.”

Yangyang doesn’t roll his eyes, because he may be a douchebag to most people, but like she has always said, there is a reason why she is friends with Yangyang. Instead, he inspects her features and just then, she realizes the trembling of her hands, the pattering of her heart, the shame. Yes, shame, because that is what women are brought to when they are young. Feeling ashamed that they trusted a man that didn’t love them as they should have. The inept nature of them is blamed on who loves the hardest.

“Fuck him, but the best way to say fuck him is by showing him just how good you are on your own while also staying true to yourself.” Yangyang speaks the truth, and maybe if her bikini wasn’t so uncomfortable and if she didn’t still have sand up her shorts from the dive she had in the afternoon, she’d listen to him. Tonight, at eleven, is not the night that she’s going to finally hear to Yangyang’s rare wise words.

“The best way to taint a man’s ego is to make him feel like I’ve met someone whose dick is finally interesting enough for me to get farther than with other men.”

“No.”

“Yangyang, think about it. The thought of Eunbyul being with someone else, and hey, I’m not saying feelings are involved or not, that’s none of my business…” She trails her voice, elbowing his side and making a bit of his new beer bottle spill. “Makes you heat up a little bit, doesn’t it?”

“That’s different, we actually had a relationship.” Yangyang takes a gulp of his beer bottle. “You are always stuck in situationships.”

“No man ever wants to be serious with me.”

“Because you stay with them even when they give you a thousand red flags.”

“Name a man with no red flags.”

“Uh…me?”

“Yangyang, you’re a walking red flag.”

“I’m a nice magenta shade, mind you.” She stands up at that moment, because she has only had pineapple juice in exponential amounts and hot dogs, but it’s starting to get to her bladder. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she tells him she’ll be back in ten minutes and soon after, she ventures into the world of Aida’s household.

She doesn’t pay much attention to the bamboo walls or the pretty fountain in the middle. She’s off to the bathroom and finishing her business quickly, only to be stopped when she’s stepping out and wiping her hands on her tank top. Felix stands in front of her, with the same round eyes that last year had told her that she deserved nothing but the best, lips plumper thanks to the alcohol, voice as deep as she remembered it.

“...I didn’t know you had met someone else after me.” Felix utters, though he’s drunk and oozes alcohol, dozing off on his own thoughts. “You told me you had never slept with someone before. How…? Who…? Who changed that?”

There it is. The ego, the intrigue, just what she wanted. To have him thinking of her even a miniscule second, because she sure as hell spent nights crying about what they never were. Only that the simplest answer is, of course:

“None of your business, Felix.”

“I know, God, I know…” Voice growing decibels deeper, he leans back on the wall in front of the bathroom before huffing loudly. “I’m just…have you met someone else? Is it Yangyang? You always told me you and Yangyang were never a thing.”

“And we weren’t! We aren’t!”

“Then…?”

Timing is always wrong when it comes to these kinds of situations. Or a bit right, even. The hallway is empty enough for it not to seem like a coincidence when Donghyuck slips into it, looking down at his phone and drumming with his free hand on his jean-cladded thigh, but when both Felix and herself look at him, it’s like it clicks on her head.

“It’s Donghyuck.”

That’s an answer for Felix, but the confused cousin of her best friend can only answer. “...Yeah, it’s me? Hi. That is my name.”

Bingo.

Donghyuck had grown a bit in his twenties. His hair had gone through a few changes, but now he’s back to pitch black, slicked back, matching the hoodie he has under his jean jacket that reads ‘The Misfits’ in the background. Not that they go along with the khakis he brought to this party, but he makes it work. His cheeks were as round as ever, but paired with a sleek jaw and interestingly relaxed eyes. Being part of a band definitely did him good.

The band started over two years ago; she remembers his debut was during Donghyuck’s prom, which she had attended with him just because he didn’t want to pursue the whole ritual of inviting someone whom he was dating. They never talked, but she got to see him behind the drums. The Dry Flower included Donghyuck as the drummer and some of his friends. Renjun is the singer, though she hasn’t talked much to him. Niamh on the guitar and Jooyeon as the bassist.

They play a few gigs here and there, as far as she hears from Eunbyul, but after she moved out of his place, she only sees Donghyuck at very special events. Like parties, as this one.

“I, uh, you two know each other?” Felix asks and Donghyuck doesn’t look at him like he’s the most interesting person in this world. In fact, he looks a bit bored.

“Yes.” They reply in unison, though Donghyuck keeps walking towards one of the rooms, only to leave her there with Felix.

A few beads of silence pass by like the sweat pooling on her forehead, leaning back and forth on her boots before Felix clears his throat.

“You two are dating, I imagine.”

No. For the love of God, she wouldn’t date Vanilla Ice. Not because he’s not handsome, but there has never been that chemistry between the two. Like two logs staring at each other in the middle of a lake.

“Yes, so if you’ll excuse me…” What is she supposed to say here? I’m going to have sex with Donghyuck now, let me be?

She doesn’t say much more, turning around and trying her hardest not to run inside the room like a madwoman. She opens the door and closes it behind her with a soft thud, but the sigh that she lets out and the following gasp is enough of an answer for her that this lie won’t be easy to keep.

The hoodie that Donghyuck had been wearing is forgotten on the floor for a second before he’s pulling it up to his chest to cover his body. Glowing tanned skin is barely visible under the dim lights of the guest room that they are probably in, but just before Donghyuck can scream at her about what she’s doing there, she rushes to the top of the bed, splaying a hand on his mouth and speaking a little too close to his face.

“Vanilla Ice, I know you don’t necessarily like me and that we aren’t really friends, but if I asked you for one big favor including you not screaming after I pull my hand off, would you do it?”

Donghyuck doesn’t like cooperating, that’s for sure, and when he sticks his tongue out, she doesn’t relent. His eyes squint, grabbing her wrist and pulling her hand off his mouth before speaking softly. “Explain in a sentence that doesn’t excuse yourself and I’ll think about this favor. You’re…suspicious.”

“What would you think if I accidentally linked you with me?”

“I asked for an explanation, not a question.”

She places her hands on her knees, ignoring the fact that it’s weird that she’s with Eunbyul’s cousin in an empty room, on her knees, standing in front of him as he’s shirtless. Nothing sexual about this, though.

“I may have lied to my ex…situationship.” She answers, looking to the side and inspecting Aida’s guest room, that might as well be empty and yet, still feel cramped and humid. She doesn’t like lying and the anxiety that comes with it. “Felix finds it glorious that I haven’t had much of a dating life after him. Or any dating life, whatsoever. So, while we were playing ‘Never Have I Ever’, I made it seem like I had sex after him. Hence, he was asking me whom I was sleeping with, you just popped inside the room and then…”

Donghyuck presses his lips together before sighing. “You…I was just trying to sleep after drinking and you got me in this kind of trouble?!” He whispers-yells before plopping himself next to her. He lets the hoodie pool on his lap, completely forgetting to cover himself and from her peripheral, Donghyuck is soft in all the perfect ways. “Felix is an asshole if he is pissed off about that, you know that, right? You slept with him, then with someone else. It’s called the cycle of life.”

She toys with the ripped edges of her shorts, playing with her bottom lip before dramatically throwing herself backwards on the bed. “That’s what you don’t get, Vanilla Ice.”

He doesn’t relent about the name like he did years before, instead asking: “I don’t get what isn’t explained to me. I’m a genius, but not like all the fucking time.”

Looking at the dark ceiling, all the bundled up emotions come into confusion for her. Because yes, she feels at ease with not doing anything more than just touching, but at the same time…she wouldn’t mind people believing otherwise so they would just get off her back and ignore the obvious heartbreak that came with her thing with Felix.

“I’m a virgin.” She confesses, rolling her eyes. “And you can laugh at me all you want. I just want people to believe I’m not; not because I’m ashamed, but because that’s the only way you can poke fun at assholes. Make them believe that there was someone much better than them that did get into your pants and they didn’t. It’s silly, immature, all of that, yes Donghyuck, I know-”

“Uh-huh, go on.”

“This is when you stop me.”

“No, I want you to think about what you’re doing.”

She turns around, only to see that he had laid down as well, staring at where she had been looking before. “I’m a stupid virgin that still has some resentment about the fact that her first love was someone who never really loved her to start with.”

Donghyuck stays silent for a few seconds, turning to look at her and quirking an eyebrow. That small tick that she always noticed on him. “Felix is an asshole. An asshole who will always win no matter what you do. He will get good money, a happy family, and also be the popular dad in the block. That’s who he is. You didn’t shape or change him, but him not being yours was of help for your future, even if it doesn’t look like it.”

“Yeah…” She mumbles. “I’m sorry for threading you in all of this.”

“Fuck yes, but here’s what we’re going to do.” Donghyuck puts his hoodie on, rubbing at his tired eyes and sighing deeply. “I’ll drunkenly step out to the party, because you’ve sobered me up with this whole plan, and I’ll say some stupid comment about-”

“No.”

“What?”

“You’re not making sexual comments about me.”

“I can say your ass is nice or something like that. I promise it won’t be like the worst shit.”

“How about this? We can go about this silently and keep your feminist reputation intact.” Donghyuck’s lips quiver up the slightest at that. That may be a smile, but when she stands up and states her plan to him, he loses that smile. “I give you my bikini bottom and you put in in your pocket. Ask one of the gossipers to take care of your jacket and boom, they find the pair of panties and-”

“Ew!”

“Donghyuck, they are used panties, but I’ll buy you another jacket, I promise. You won’t even have to touch them.”

“That’s…how do you even come up with these things?”

“Some guys keep memories of who they slept with.”

“I am not one of those guys.”

She picks up his jacket from the floor and then, struts towards the bathroom, hearing Donghyuck’s complaints and steps behind her.

The party ends up with Donghyuck leaving his jacket with Soohyun, the nursing student that no one tells their secrets to and yet, she’s aware of everything, before he’s off to sleep the drunkenness off. She’s with Yangyang, asking him for his jacket to wrap around her hips when she says:

“Donghyuck is a panties-collector! Who is wearing a yellow bikini in this place?” Soohyun’s voice lingers with mischief and when her sharp eyes settle on her body, she knows the dots have been connected.

Now, Donghyuck will be marked as the hook up that got her to forget about Lee Felix.

LIFE DOESN'T GET ANY EASIER, AND ADULTHOOD FEELS LIKE CLOSURE. THE PRESENT.

She would have never realized that what she just had was a dream. The confession from Henry Cavill himself as he sputtered out his apologies for a fake love was quite frankly accompanied with a warmth that she would have loved to hold onto. Nonetheless, it seems like the moment with the actor is cut short when she feels a pair of strong arms wrap around her waist, belonging to the shaking shoulders that hug her from behind.

Eunbyul had moved in with her all those years before she had broken up with Yangyang and she had been quick to change places so it would only be the two of them as roomies. It felt rather odd, if she was honest. Eunbyul had always lived in a relationship, sharing houses with Yangyang from the moment they all graduated high school, but having her best friend by her side was always a good thing to wake up to.

Now, their friendship is not precisely any closer because of this. Law school involves a lot of hardships and while both her and Yangyang continued down this path, Eunbyul didn't. She married the idea of having her own bakery and now, she owns a little boutique bakery downtown, which has a few clients, if she does say so herself. They don't spend much time together, and she definitely doesn't slip into her covers like this.

"Byul…" She trails, sleepily patting a hand around until she finds Eunbyul's shoulder. She pulls her closer, resting her chin on the top of her friend's dyed light brown hair. "What's the matter?"

"Yangyang texted me." Her shoulders shake even more with every weep she lets out, and while she knows that Eunbyul's chubby body emanates warmth, her heart has been cold for plenty of years. "...I…He said he could only see himself with me. Why does he do this? It's like I can't ever get over him."

They are both her friends, and that makes it a little difficult to be opinionated. She knows both of them were faithful to their relationship. As a matter of fact, she thought they would be forever, one of those stories that one would hear in upbeat songs on the radio.

"...You two were great together, Byul, and I do believe in returning to a place if you recognize a little too late that it was your home."

"It's just…how does he know I am his home?" That question is whispered between them. "He has never had anything else. Anyone else. How will we know if…if he won't want to be with someone else later on or sleep with someone else or…?"

"All valid questions to be asked in a relationship." She prompts, sighing deeply and letting the tips of her fingers play with the curls of her friend's hair. "But those doubts will come with any man that decides to settle down with you. Regardless of him being Yangyang or not."

"I know."

"Then, if Yangyang has always felt like the one, why not try it with him whom you have a bunch of history with and apart from that, he actually really wants to be with you?"

"I broke up with him so he would be with other people and realize that he didn't just want me."

Okay, she should not have scoffed, but she did. Eunbyul is perhaps the biggest romance enthusiast she knows and then, she dares say shit like this. "Said no one ever."

"Hey!"

"Eunbyul, who the fuck wants the love of their life to sleep with someone else?"

"Me!"

"Cuck alert."

A smack lands on her chest and she hisses when Eunbyul accidentally hits her boob. "That's the main reason why you are single."

"Out of many others." She answers, only to have Eunbyul sigh.

"I love him." Those words would be nice to hear. At times, she wonders why she has never been loved. Is it her personality, her immense will and need to be successful? Is it the throbbing of her heart that falls a little too fast? She would never know.

But at this age, very close to being a lawyer, she would have imagined that she would have been loved.

"I know you do."

"It's been two years and I can't get rid of that."

"How do you un-fall in love with someone who did no wrong? That is just nonsense, you."

Eunbyul groans, pushing her body upwards before sighing. "Is 'How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days?' on Netflix?"

"Doubt so."

"We are illegally downloading it and sighing over Matthew. Alright? Alright. Movie night."

That is how she spent the entirety of her midnight watching rom-coms with Eunbyul instead of sleeping before a grand presentation.

"Donghyuck," His mom mumbles from her spot at the counter, head hanging low and fat tears falling onto the marble surface. "My God, my son…I just want you to have a secure future and you continue with 'The Dry Flower'. You won't have anything to eat one of these days!"

It hurts him to see his mom like this. For all he knows, he wishes he could go back to when he was seven and his mom would clap for him, cheering him on for a dream that she’s entirely against as of now. It’s complicated, wanting a hug so badly but also having to defend his dream. Surely, he won’t be the most well-known drummer to date, but he will mean something.

“Mom, I promise it won’t get that bad. You know how I am, I…”

“That’s the thing! Life is not about how you are, or how you think you are, it’s about what you do so you don’t go through hardships. It’s about being smart!” She rubs at her face with pent-up frustration and Donghyuck sighs deeply, placing his hands on the edge of the counter to stop himself from hugging her.

“I know, but I can’t be smart and unhappy.”

“Happiness is fluctuant, Donghyuck. You can’t be happy all the time and on the long run, this won’t make you happy.”

“How do I know if I don’t try? I’m sorry, okay?! So fucking sorry that I didn’t go to college like all of my younger siblings. I wish I could have been a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher, but I can’t. For the life of me, I can’t simply not try.” Donghyuck answers, hating the raspiness of his voice and the knot that grows on his throat. He looks to the side to stop the tears from falling, but they burn at his bottom lashes. “I’m sorry. I…I promise I will find a place soon and if I eat or don’t won’t be any of your business.”

“It will always be my business!” His mom replies. “Donghyuck, you have a way of making things sound like you’re going to die tomorrow. You can do the whole drumming thing on the side and go back to school.”

“I’m not book-smart.”

“To get a degree, you have to have the wits, and you’ve got them, honey.”

“...I don’t want to, mom, okay? I don’t.” He responds, opening the fridge and picking up the bag of pastries he had bought for his girlfriend. He stands by her side, watching how older she had gotten, a few wrinkles appearing on her face, wearing bigger clothes and tighter feelings. His plump lips spread on her temple, sighing deeply. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t say that he loves her, but he does. Instead, he gets on his bicycle, hoping for a miracle.

Hoping to be somebody so all of this could change.

Youth was supposed to be easier, wasn’t it?

Mr. Montero will have her head, fry it and then kick her out of law school. Yes, she’s claiming it, and yes, she’s also one step from doing the same with Eunbyul after she left her car-less (because, for some reason, Eunbyul can’t make a decision for the life of her but she can surely grab her car at five in the morning to go meet up with Yangyang). That was four hours ago, she’s running forty-five minutes late and Eunbyul isn’t picking up her phone.

Not that she’s angry that her friend is getting laid, but still.

The thing about small towns is that it’s a little difficult to get a ride. Taxis and their high prices leave more than just a few college students grabbing the bus, who is also extremely late, and she’s tired of waiting. She tried walking there, but the heels she opted to use for her presentation (against her will, but Mr. Montero and his oh-so-wise-mind says that law students should look their best always) dig into her soles and leave her begging to rub cream on the blisters appearing on the skin. Hence, she’s crying a little bit and almost cries a little louder when she sees a familiar face from afar.

Lee Donghyuck had never made her feel so relieved to look at somebody. In fact, she rushes after that bicycle, screaming his name until he comes to a halt. Drenched in a beige hoodie that is probably too thick for today’s weather, he lets his foot step on the concrete before he looks over his shoulder. He doesn’t look as relaxed and uninterested in the world around him as he usually does, instead widening his eyes when he sees the tears that bathe her face.

“Is everything alright?”

She could have asked, but she stands in the back of the bicycle, hoisting herself up in a way that she’s half-sitting on his seat and holding onto the hood of his shirt before deciding to wrap her arms around his waist. “I have a huge presentation that is worth twenty percent of my grade and I’m not exactly passing this class, so if you drive me there, Donghyuck, I swear I will never bother you again.”

He blows a small fraction of air that moves his disheveled bangs away from his face before he makes up his mind. “It’s what you always say and you always come up with something new.”

But he starts moving with will, and she has to accommodate her body so her chest is not squished to his back. It’s not like she wants Donghyuck to feel her body pressing up against him. “Eunbyul decided that stealing my car was a good idea.”

“Eunbyul?” Donghyuck questions, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen Eunbyul do anything even remotely bad.”

“You don’t know her. Put Yangyang in the fraction and she’ll do just about anything, Vanilla Ice.”

“And here I was thinking that since you called me Donghyuck before, we’d be skipping the nickname.”

The air blows at the strands of hair that she had worked so hard on brushing, but it seems like this day is not at her mercy. She stares at the rays of sunshine that fall on Donghyuck’s chiseled cheekbones; he looks rather great today, but just when she’s about to reach for one of the pastries hanging from the bicycle’s handle, he clicks his tongue.

“Not for you.”

“I haven’t had any breakfast?”

“So?” He replies with the same condescending tone before sighing. “I’m…It’s my first month anniversary with my girlfriend, Yejin. Those are for her.”

She furrowed her eyebrows at that. Donghyuck had never been open about his relationships and she was certain that he had never lasted more than a week with somebody. Much like her, he lived off situationships.

“You have a girlfriend?”

“I can manage to have somebody, you know?”

“I’m sure you do, you’re not bad looking.” She answers, pressing her cheek to the top of his head and then sighing. “I’m sorry for the proximity, I’m just trying to keep my hair intact. The wind is insane today.”

“‘I have a girlfriend’, I say, before you inherently make me look like a cheater to half the town.”

“Everybody in this town knows we’ve been friends since high school, Vanilla-”

“We’re friends?” He asks, a bit surprised, and it takes her a moment of thinking. To everyone in this town, Donghyuck was the man that took her virginity in a set of parties that they attended to, perhaps a bit closer than friends at some point (though grandly wrong at that assumption, that is), but someone whom she is really close with. It’s not precisely wrong.

“Yes. I know more about you than most people and I think we care about each other enough.”

“That’s being acquaintances.”

“You know what, Vanilla Ice? Fuck you. We’re not friends at all if you don’t want to. Saving my friendship bracelet, or rather, I can give it to you so you can pull it up your ass.”

Donghyuck chuckles loudly. It’s been a while since she has heard that noise and it reminds her of the times he spent binge-watching YouTube videos on the sofa while her trio of friends were trying to do work. He makes a laugh sound so sincere that she’s almost in awe. Donghyuck blurs his words to make himself look less attached, but he’s also inherently transparent.

“We can be friends.”

“I don’t want to anymore.” She huffs, only to have him shaking his head.

“You’re friends with Yangyang. I’m sorry for second-guessing you a bit.”

“Don’t you dare talk shit about Yang.”

“I’d kick his ass if I could, but I sadly don’t care about him enough to do so.” He stops his bicycle in his tracks, looking at two roads. “Left or right?”

Right. This moment feels right.

With the sun bathing the two of them and their eyes connecting briefly, she replies: “Left.” Because that’s what they will always be. Opposite roads.

WORDS THAT CAN’T BE SAID SHOULDN’T BE WRITTEN.

Be damned the day she couldn’t say a thing. When it became easier to spend her time studying at the local swimming pool that the landlord had coincidentally decided to add to their apartment complex; that was the time everything went to hell and back. Because that’s when she met the nephew of one of the old ladies at the complex, and he was handsome.

Capital H.

He’s also extremely unapproachable in every way. Thomas, the little kid that sometimes glues his bubblegum to the elevator doors in hopes of keeping them together for longer so he can talk to somebody (as he says, his parents don’t get home until very late and he spends most of his time alone), had given her some background on Nakamoto Yuta. Twitch streamer for story games, who posted a bunch two years ago but also has disappeared a bit now, just when his career was starting to launch.

It’s not a surprise that he’s always drinking a certain brand of an energy drink or that he almost always is recording what he is eating or drinking a bit. Typical influencer nature. However, she can’t say she was not a bit distracted as she was getting ready for her exams. This last month has been hell as she watches him push his black hair back, give one of those smiles that squares his jaw and make him look the ever-more-thrilling, with his t-shirts almost always painting the outline of a nice pair of abdominals.

Dead.

She almost failed a test because she’s been spending her time being stupid.

Okay, this idea came from Yangyang sarcastically…but she had followed through with it. She rambled a lot of stupid shit when given the chance, so she wanted to put those words to paper and get over him by just emptying her heart. Sometimes, she wrote something sweet, then it was something a bit risky…

And as she’s inspecting the letters of the page she had been trying to read the last hour as he listens to his typical rock records at a medium volume that can be tolerated by most, she doesn’t expect to hear cackles nearing her. Full-on laughter that has her looking up, feeling droplets of Yuta’s hair falling on her face as his eyes become crescent moons.

He never talks to her. Or at least, never a conversation that is of much use.

However, tonight he sits on the chair next to hers, waving a piece of paper in the air that has her widening her eyes.

She never signed the papers, she’s certain.

“I came to the realization that my secret admirer wrote in purple and you use a purple pen today.” Yuta announces. She knows his name because Thomas is a grand fan. God, she wishes she had given up on those letters now that she feels her heart racing because she had called him a bunch of names. From cute to hot, to absolutely breathtaking. “And it makes sense, considering you look up too much from your book.”

“I…What? No. No way.” She shakes her head. Fuck, what had she written today? She always left the letters under his gym bag, always brought to him when visiting his aunt.

“Lie to me, but this?” He spares a look at her notebook, pointing at her handwriting. “Coincides with this.”

“Hey! Privacy!” She closes the notebook snugly, pointing at him. “I know laws. Don’t make me use them against you.”

Yuta quirks an eyebrow, leaning back on his hands before laughing softly. “Use whatever you want against me, baby.” The pit of her stomach shouldn’t dance at those words, much less when she remembers what she had written on today’s note for Yuta.

I wish I was the honey you pour on those cinnamon rolls your aunt always gifts you; that way, I would always stick to you mouth.

Never listen to Yangyang’s advice ever again. That’s the newsflash she’s receiving as of now.

“I’m Yuta.”

“And I’m gracefully out.” She tries to stand up, clinging her notebook and textbook to her chest, but Yuta wraps his fingers around her wrist, pulling her back every so delicately before fluttering his short eyelashes.

“Come on, don’t do that. I’ve kept all the letters you’ve given me, and now that I can give the person a face…I wouldn’t mind a date.”

The good decision is to avoid relationships.

She knows this. That’s always the good answer. However, it has been a while since she has felt the warmth of someone’s skin against hers, and it has as well been extremely long since she has had someone kiss her goodbye. It could be nice, and it could also be an opportunity with Yuta.

Damn her for saying yes.

The worst part of being with someone new is that she goes to places where she doesn’t belong.

Two months after she started seeing Yuta is when things started to feel different. Eunbyul had been nice enough to invite her to a cabin she’d be sharing with Yangyang and a few other friends, where Ritz cookies with whipped cream were promised—she preferred them with pepperoni, so she’d bring some herself—, and she’d have a few talks while passing the brief weeks in which she’d be free from her semester. She’d feel like more than her textbooks, but she had washed away the idea of that trip for something with Yuta.

Granted, she knows that Yuta has some kind of fame. Not enough to have paparazzi after him, but like one or two people want to take pictures with him as he’s seated on a plaid picnic cloth, rolling up a joint and bringing it to his lips. His hair is longer than any of her ex’s, he is also incredibly touchy whenever he wants to, with a hand on her waist and leaving a flutter at the pit of her stomach. He wears a floral shirt tucked into ripped jeans and he’s…a daydream.

The kind that kisses her velvet lipstick off, and the man that spent most of his days talking to her online. They rarely see each other often because of clashing timelapses and busy schedules, but now that she sees him…she wants him to be the rare good decision that she makes. She knows that he’ll either be the person that settles with her—finally, God fucking finally—or her biggest heartbreak.

She has learned from Yuta, as his thumb caresses the sliver of skin that is unraveled from the waist of her black and yellow sunflower sundress, that he is the total opposite of her. She is preparing herself to defend divorce cases; to figure out who is right and who is wrong and raise her voice for those who need sheltering in that situation. However, Yuta sees his life for what flows and doesn’t—he just got his engineering degree a year ago and he's making real money off Twitch streaming.

He doesn’t see far ahead, and all she can see is the light at the end of the tunnel. If it isn’t there, she’d inherently panic.

And this music festival that he wanted so desperately to go to with a few of his friends—Johnny and Yoonoh, whom she hasn’t seen now that they have found their respective dates—is not the kind of scene that she frequents. Yuta smells like the joint Johnny had given him, and his eyes are dazed when he turns to press a fleeting kiss to her lips.

He flows and flows and flows. She’s scared that one of those times, he’ll fly away from her fingertips.

“What’s with that face?” Yuta asks, pressing a kiss to her cheek and her heart does summersaults, because she rushed two weeks into knowing him to give him a kiss and now, two months into this…thing, she can’t wait for Yuta to figure himself out. To make this grand event for him an even more enormous moment for her.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been to an event like this.” The farthest she had gone was that summer in which Yangyang spent almost every weekend partying and bringing her along. At some point, she had become his chauffeur and Yangyang had thrown up so badly into his own backpack that he had completely forgotten to wash it off. He promised not to party anymore when on the first day back to school he had brought the throw-up-filled backpack with him. “…I…You know, I’m happy because I’m with you, but at the same time I want to be alone with you.”

He chuckles a bit, putting down the joint and turning it off with a step on top of it. “We are alone.”

“No, like…” She could say it. Without music booming and his friends around and his mind elsewhere. “Just forget it.”

He tugs at her hand, softly, lips puckered up when he asks: “Come on, just…tell me. I want to know everything that is on your head.”

Would he want to know the anxiety? The recurring insecurities? Would he want to know that he has taken over every piece of her dreams and she’s not sure that she can get rid of the image of him anytime soon? Cupid had thrown an arrow directly at her heart and the worst part is that if she rips it apart anytime, she’s scared that it will rip it out of her chest.

“I wanted something quieter, maybe.”

Though, the moment that Yuta brings her closer and tells her that it’ll only be a few more minutes, she feels liquid pouring down on her. Yoonoh is not too far away, with dimples on his cheeks carved so deeply that it looks like there is no tissue or muscle there in his chiseled cheekbones. His flannel shirt is opened as he spritzes the recently opened bottle of champagne on the couple.

She closes her eyes. Fuck drunken Yoonoh, she thinks, hearing Yuta’s sweet laughter and trying to mask the same smile. Maybe, she just needs to loosen up.

“Yoonoh!” She screeches, standing up and plucking the dress away from her chest so it doesn’t contort a little too closely to her skin.

“You two were flushed. Needed to ease up from this heat.” Yoonoh brings the bottle to his mouth and pours a good chunk before she sighs deeply.

Love is a slave to patience.

Maybe, that’s all she’s lacked, patience.

And even those she’s annoyed, she brings her face down to steal a kiss from Yuta, who quirks an eyebrow and tells her: “I’ll kick his ass, don’t worry. I know Yoonoh can get annoying when he’s had a few drinks on him.”

Please, do, she wants to tell him. Instead, she shakes her head. “I’ll go to the restroom at the restaurant we went to, okay?” There’s a seafood place near this festival, considering that it’s by the beach, and while the stars have taken up the sky and she doesn’t want to go on her own, she also doesn’t want to bother Yuta.

He takes her phone from the picnic cloth before placing it in the little purse she has dangling from her shoulder. “Send me a text when you get there.” And with a kiss on her forehead, she tries to convince herself that Yuta’s heart beats as quickly as hers does.

It has to, right?

Long has it been since Donghyuck has felt that crippling need in the pit of his throat to weep and cry. He’s older, so he has tried to garnish more of a timelapse before he reaches that point, but…when a friend betrays you this way, it hurts deeply.

Renjun’s hair is shorter than how it was when they first met. It’s a deep blue with glimpses of black, sticking up at different places while he hits the stack of papers that include their lyrics against his hand. Past his empty eyes, Donghyuck believes he sees glimmers of who they used to be. Renjun was the guy in theater club that skipped his classes to go play with him when the real school band was over. He was the man that came up with the name ‘The Dry Flower’. His eyes were once red from crying with Donghyuck because they had booked their first gig.

“I don’t want you in the band anymore, Hyuck.”

They were about to play their biggest gig to date. A beach festival in which they were one of the first people to open, but as he is in his best leather jacket, with his hair sleeked back, his drumsticks ready to play for him, Renjun says this. As if it doesn’t weight him down. As if Donghyuck hadn’t heard him minutes ago.

“What the fuck?” He asks with a sarcastic smile on his face, pushing forward until he is face to face with Renjun. “I think you’ve forgotten I was the one that got us here, Renjun.”

“We didn’t want a front-man.” Renjun announces, frowning deeply. “That’s the problem. You think this is a one-man show—”

“No, I don’t, but you don’t know how much I’ve given up for this band. Or you do, but you’ve decided to forget just now.” Niamh and Renjun are just a foot away from graduating, and Jooyeon had her own music store. Niamh is engaged to Aida, now seated on her lap, their eyes elsewhere but on him. They had totally planned this.

“That was up to you to decide—”

“You don’t even have a drummer for the gig!” Now he’s desperate. He should have walked away twenty minutes ago when this argument had started, to keep his pride intact, but he wanted this band. For the longest time, this band had been his family.

“We have found someone.” Renjun aspires, whispering at first, and when Donghyuck asks him to repeat himself, he does with a straight face. His hands are shaking and meanwhile, Renjun is calm. Composed. As always.

He hates that Renjun has it all together and he doesn’t.

So, he thrashes all the memories he has held with one of his best friends. The nights they spent talking about how they aspired to be like The Strokes or Queen. The birthdays in which Renjun sent him voice messages saying he hates him to death but that they’ll celebrate that night. The hugs they shared when getting gigs, or the moments in which creating music felt cohesive. Because he was the Paul to his John, and now—

Now, Donghyuck is launching himself at Renjun, using his forearm to back him up into the wall backstage, speaking into his face as tears threaten to spill from the corner of his eyes.

“Fuck you!”

His vision blurs, forgetting that the face his punch lands into is none other than Renjun’s. He feels his own body being pushed backwards, Renjun’s slim body falling on top of his, and he swears he hears Jooyeon screaming for the two of them to get over this. Her short hair moves with each tug she gives to get Renjun off of him as he lands another punch, but it’s to no avail.

Friendship wasn’t supposed to end like this, with security separating them and Donghyuck staring at a group of people that stabbed him behind his back. Jooyeon and her widened eyes, that inspected him as if he had gone insane. Niamh, always the most sensitive, crying her eyes out and covering her face. Renjun’s cheekbone flourishes in a deep pink and he wonders if his tan skin mirrors the same wound.

The only thing that keeps them connected as of now.

Security drags him away, only letting go of him when they were in front of the restaurant a few feet away. Donghyuck spits in the floor, finally letting his hands cage his face and his shoulders shake with each weep that leaves his body.

He doesn’t have a band anymore.

Shit, does he have a dream anymore?

The world is weightier and it crumbles to the point he wants to hide himself. Rushing, he enters the restaurant, ignoring the waitress that tries to get him a table as he goes to the bathroom.

His best night just turned out to be his worst.

Someone enters the bathroom just as she’s washing her hands. In fact, she doesn’t react at first. Indeed, she prepares herself for a drunken talk with a girl who probably wears one of those pleated skirts that are trending right now, but when the door is shut with a bang and she hears incessant sniffling along with a smack against one of the stools, she knows whoever has entered means business.

And there could have been a hundred people that entered through that door, but she never expected it to be Donghyuck. Her heart hammers against her chest when she sees his black hair pooling on each side of his face, longer than the last time she saw him, clinging into the last bits of gel on his head. He is wearing a leather jacket, but the anatomy of him astounds her. His shoulders are shaking, back hunched, stomach contracting before he lets out a loud sob. As if whatever is bothering him rakes through his chest and leaves him void, open for the world to pluck at his heartstrings.

“Donghyuck…” Her voice must have alarmed him, considering he stops pressing his forehead to the stool’s door and he actually turns around. His eyes are so red that they could mimic that of an eclipse. Tears fall down like glitter on chiseled cheekbones and she takes that as a cue to grab his face in between her hands and pull him closer. Before asking him anything, she’s shushing him, because this is Eunbyul’s little cousin, the man that she had seen grow and had bothered for so long. “Shh, everything is going to be alright…”

His hands cling to her back, as if her dress was a second skin, as he hides his face on her neck. She feels the plumpness of his lips right at her pulse when he shakes his head and mutters: “It won’t. My life is over…”

The contraction of the muscle by her heart is enough to have her pulling away, feeling her own tears wield up in her vision out of panic. “Don’t say that, Donghyuck. Not even playing around. Your life is not over.” Rubbing at his eyes, she speaks softly, only for the two of them to hear. Meanwhile, his hands still rest on her waist, looking into her eyes. “Whatever happened, we can get through it together. I won’t leave your side the entire night if that means you…you figuring out that this is just another bad chapter of the book, but not the finale. It is not the end.”

Donghyuck’s lip quivers before he rubs at his eyes, looking up to try and stop the tears. He tries to pull away, but she keeps her hold on his cheeks. “Renjun fucking kicked me out of the band.” He seethes, shaking his head before sighing deeply. “After all I’ve given for them. After all I’ve done. They all continued with their lives because they didn’t care about the band as much, but I followed through with it because I believed that it would sail. Now that we’re halfway there, I’m no longer in the band and—”

“Why would Renjun do that?”

“Apparently, they are tired of me being the front-man and making decisions all the time.” Donghyuck whispers, pressing a hand to his eyes as if not to see her. “And it’s so embarrassing that I’m crying like this but…that band is my whole life. I can’t let my family see that it didn’t work out for me. All these years I’ve fought to let everyone know that I was going to make it. I thought I’d be the greatest drummer but—”

“Now you’re the greatest drummer but out of a band.” She completes for him, unraveling his vision before looking from one of his eyes to the other. He had grown so much, had become so responsible and yet so mortified. Where had his sarcastic smile gone? “You don’t believe me?”

Donghyuck shakes his head, not uttering a single word.

Silence had never fit Donghyuck.

But when his silence overtakes him and rids him of the will of continuing, she is there for him. She presses a fleeting kiss to his forehead, letting her lips linger there, wishing for the Donghyuck that she knew to awaken from inside his brain. Instead, she tries to get him out.

“You’re important.” She tells him. “You’re fun to be around. You’re resilient. You’re worth waiting for.” All that she thinks of Donghyuck is spat out in simple words, pulling away to look at him only to see that he closes his eyes tightly, long eyelashes bathed in tears. “You’re smart and willing. You’re…so many things, Donghyuck, but the greatest of it all is that you’re part of so many people’s lives and I reassure you…none of them want to lose you.”

Donghyuck opens his eyes, brown eyes glistening and he pretends to smile from the corner of his mouth, but she grins back at him.

“There you go, that’s the smile everyone likes.”

“Everyone?”

“I’m a peculiar fan of your happiness. It’s the only reason why I tease you with the whole Vanilla Ice thing.” She confesses, licking her bottom lip before biting on it. “You always roll your eyes but the corner of your mouth lifts up. As if you find it amusing that to this day I haven’t forgotten.”

“I doubt I give Yangyang the same response.”

“I happen to believe I am a little bit more special than Yangyang. You’ve always preferred me.” She answers, taking his hand and dragging him to the sink. “Now, let’s wash up those tears and grab something to eat, okay? You’ve lost weight and all that stress you’ve got bundled up isn’t doing you any good.”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes, tossing his head back. “I’m fine.”

“I know.” She replies. “But good is never good enough.”

And then, he finally laughs when he feels her splashing water onto his face.

CUPID’S ARROW IS A JOKE THAT NEVER LANDS. SEVEN WEEKS LATER.

Returning to her last semester before she turns a lawyer should feel somehow fulfilling. Her mind could have been focused on the textbook that glares back at her from the PDF blinking on her laptop, eager for a topic to be understood, but her digits gravitate towards her phone, unlocking it and checking Yuta’s chat to see if he had answered the text that she hand sent him three hours ago, that he had definitely seen.

Or the one four hours before that.

Or the ‘good morning, babe’ text that he didn’t respond.

In fact, love shouldn’t feel like this. Like an electricity shock that flickers like a broken light. She still turns it on even though it’s only dimly lighting the room up. She sighs deeply, pressing her forehead to the keyboard when searching for key words on their conversation. Nicknames that he had called her. Promises that he had made. Pictures of the two of them that they had exchanged in a conversation that now seems dead.

If they exchange four sentences in a day, it’s a lot.

It’s an emptying feeling. Gravitating her into a pit of feelings that she can’t comprehend. Throwing the phone into her phone as it lands on a pillow, she groans loudly, covering her eyes and digging the heels of her palms into them. Alright, it was her fault for falling for Yuta, or that she knows this is inherently wrong and yet, she still stays here.

It has crossed her mind to leave Yuta, but it’s impossible. Somehow, it feels like she’s the one at blame. She feels like the problem in each of her relationships. The one that fucks it up by putting interest, by not being like other women who make themselves be desired and lusted at even after months of being together. She stands up when she hears her phone buzz from the bedsheets, launching herself into the bed in the most ridiculous of ways and when she unlocks it, she lets a few tears drop.

Yuta hasn’t responded to her text yet. And she can’t even delete them anymore.

Instead, someone else had texted her. It was not Eunbyul, who was the complete opposite of her and is probably sharing dinner with Yangyang at this point, since long having moved in with him again. However, seeing Donghyuck’s name appear on the screen—next to an ice cube emoji, of course—is not as bad.

From: Donghyuck 🧊

Is it bad that I eat the leftover buttercream from Eunbyul’s store? [Attached File]

The picture attached brings a smile to her features. Donghyuck has his eyebrows well raised, a spatula pressed in between his lips and a dot of buttercream on the tip of his nose. She turns around on the bed, letting her hair cascade on her sides before sighing.

To: Donghyuck 🧊

Wish I could do that. I should be studying, but I can’t fucking concentrate.

She puts her phone down. Feminism is put to shame because of her. Why is she standing a man’s doing? Just because she feels like she…she…might be slightly in love with him? That’s stupid, even for her. And scrolling through Instagram doesn’t help as she continues to see Reels about situation-ships.

Stop it, word.

From: Donghyuck 🧊

Must be because you’re thinking of your stoner boyfriend. You know that you’re a lawyer?

To: Donghyuck 🧊

Future lawyer. Your point?

From: Donghyuck 🧊

Weed’s illegal. You’d have to put him to jail.

To: Donghyuck 🧊

I’m not like this ‘cause of Yuta.

From: Donghyuck 🧊

[Attached music file].

The room is filled with that popular song that Yangyang has been humming under his breath the last week. Boy’s a Liar or something of the like. A smile appears on her features, even when he’s not precisely wrong. What could Yuta be doing all these days, spending time at home, when there is nothing he enjoys more than going out?

To: Donghyuck 🧊

Men are snakes. Purr.

From: Donghyuck 🧊

Slay girlie.

More laughter leaves her lips before Donghyuck writes once again.

From: Donghyuck 🧊

But for real, I’m going to the karaoke bar with a few friends and I’m sure you’re not going to do any more studying. Come with me? We’ll sing your song.

To: Donghyuck 🧊

My song?

From: Donghyuck 🧊

Just come. Please? I want you there.

It’s not a surprise when she accepts, putting on the biggest sweater she has in her closet—half because of the weather and the other half because she doesn’t feel like showing off with how bad she feels—, a pair of leggings and then she’s out the door. Prompting what happened these past few weeks for her to be vengeful, wishing for Yuta to react to her going out with someone else without telling him. Perhaps, she’s just clinging onto what they used to be—or what she thought they could have been—. The brisk bites at her hands as she waits for a taxi to pick her up.

Dating is the hardest thing she has done, but she tries to erase that thought out of her head as she imagines the good things to come. She’ll go to Eunbyul’s store, close with Donghyuck—since he found a job there after being kicked out of The Dry Flower—and just have a good time.

Donghyuck’s boozed. He’s the conceptualization of it.

Ask him what’s the meaning of the word conceptualization? He has no fucking clue, but as he stands on the only table there, with his boots disregarded and showing his stupid striped socks, he couldn’t care less.

She’s seated right across from him, with the same glass of water that she had ordered early on her hand, watching him with widened eyes and a bit of a smile on her face. He’ll be honest, he had never looked at her with intent or from up-close, but the last few weeks ever since their exchange in the bathroom, and the time that they had spent away, months maybe, he sees her with a different gaze.

Her hair is shorter than how it was when they were younger, eyelashes less coated in mascara and way less curled than they were before. She exchanged cheap red lipstick for a nude, darker shade that match the real tone of them. The sweater she wears probably leaves her skin damp, but the little glint of sweat around her nose makes her look adorable. Donghyuck wishes she just wasn’t so bad at picking men.

Because there he is, choosing a song as one of his friends—to be honest, he had just tagged along with Mark’s group because they were good fun, but he doesn’t consider them that close to him—asks him to. He turns around, making his dramatic entrance and singing while looking at her. When she realizes which song it is, she cackles immediately, tossing her head back and yet, not stopping looking at him.

Yes, he wishes that the only way he got her to look at him wasn’t by singing Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice, Ice, Baby’ but he knows that’s the only way he can get her to remember who he is.

He moves his hair around, parting his legs and reciting the songs like the palm of his hand. He gets off the table, extending his hand and taking hers in his even when she covers her face. Donghyuck feels a blush rise up his cheeks, could be the beers he has had or the fact that he is looking at the screen to remember the next verse because of his mind is a blur, his tongue is intertwining in words that he can’t let out at this moment.

When the song is over, the moment isn’t. Donghyuck splays himself next to her side, their knees touching and his eyes immediately going to her profile. He expects her to see her looking away, but her eyes are already on him, looking from one orb to the other and he might go insane—

God, since when was she this hot? This beautiful?

He remembers being annoyed at her, much more at Yangyang, but she was friends with Eunbyul for a reason. Then, he pretended to be her first time at a party because she was still into that asshole Felix. Now, she’s dating another asshole and he wishes nothing more than for her to open her eyes.

“You’re blushing?” She questions, splaying a hand on his cheek before pinching it softly. She’s in awe, but she can be even more surprised when he lets his fingers spread on top of her own, closing up her palm to his cheek so she cups it with more intent.

“Maybe.” Donghyuck slurs out, chuckling a bit before pushing his face forward the slightest. They are only breaths away, her mint mixing with his beer. “How does one get you to blush?”

She chuckles at that, shaking her head. “It’s been long since that’s happened.”

He can’t imagine not bathing her in reasons as to why look at the world in a romantic glare, and maybe he’s insane for it. Donghyuck pulls her hand down, trying to stop the beating of his heart and the stupidity that threatens to slip from his lips and ruin what possibly is some kind of…friendship? “I can make it happen, truthfully.”

“I don’t think Vanilla Ice has it in him.”

“Vanilla Ice doesn’t. I do.” Donghyuck replies, and maybe it’s the invitation in her eyes when she lets go of his hand and stands up, looking over her shoulder before walking away from the karaoke room that has him following after her.

Donghyuck doesn’t have a second to think when he catches her by the forearm before she walks away. Her chest collides against his own, taller than he was when they were younger, and definitely in a position that they never had been in before. His black t-shirt becomes his axis as she looks into his eyes, cutting the distance between the two and capturing his bottom lip in the softness of her own mouth. She kisses with gentleness, a bit of trembling to her body that he stops by pulling her closer, molding her hips with his own, back contorted to the dip of his stomach.

Donghyuck wishes it didn’t feel fitting for him; everything that she does, he means. From running her fingers through his hair, to the way her body shakes, heart racing against his ribcage. He pulls away to look at her closed eyelids before dipping in again. Her hand disappears under his shirt, touching the skin that he knows he’s insecure about, the places in which he hid his overthinking…

She touches him like this means forever, and he doesn’t even know what that means.

He pushes her to the wall, her back landing softly as his leg gets lost in between her own thighs. A small trembling breath leaves her mouth, opening her eyes and looking at him as his thumb traces her bottom lip.

She’s not his, and she proves it when closing her eyes tightly and saying: “God, what am I doing?”

He’ll be an interrogative, even an insecurity for her. A secret that she’ll broom under her memories to never get out. She had touched him as if she meant all those words she said at the bathroom. That he was kind and irreplaceable, and here he is, being a band-aid to a wounded heart.

“Excuse me?” Donghyuck asks, pulling away the slightest and laughing sarcastically at her words, though it doesn’t last long.

“Donghyuck, I—”

“You say it as if I’m fucking disgusting to kiss.” He compliments and she doesn’t say a word, looking over to the side and biting that lip that he wants nothing more than to kiss. “Look at me.”

“No. I…I can’t. I’m seeing someone, Donghyuck.”

“Someone like everyone else you’ve had. You don’t know how to see someone who truly respects you.”

Now she looks at him, glaring directly through his heart. “Donghyuck, you don’t know how this shit is.”

“Yes, I know how you are. You stay and feel guilty for acting with your heart once just because you believe tying someone who doesn’t want you to you is going to make them stay.”

“Don’t say stuff like that!”

“When have they ever stayed, huh?” He asks, only to have her pushing at his chest, pointing a finger at him.

“Well, I’m not sure you’d stay either! It always starts like this, with promises of being different and I always end up hurt!”

She shakes her head, giving a few steps backwards away and towards the entrance. He calls her name softly, clicking his tongue at not knowing precisely what to say.

He could start with what he feels. Hey, I’m not sure when these feelings blossomed, but I am not willing to kiss anyone else but you. Not willing to be of anyone, but yours.

“Thank you for reminding me.” She adds. “No one fucking wants me as more than a moment—”

“I could say the same about you.” Donghyuck replies, crossing his arms over his chest, hating how prideful he can be. “You called me so many beautiful things, even fucking kissed me back, and yet…I’m not enough to make you change your mind.”

He hates to see the tears that she tries to make disappear by blinking, or that she doesn’t have any words to say. Not even an excuse as she picks up her bag and turns around.

She leaves.

Don’t they always?

BLAME IS ALWAYS SHARED. THREE DAYS LATER.

The peak of her idiocy comes when she looks at her phone while in class.

She’s seated at the very back, jotting down notes on her laptop about what her classmate is explaining, but she gets distracted. In fact, all she has been able to think is the way Donghyuck’s lips spread on hers, how his body molded perfectly to hers and how bad it feels to cling to Yuta in hopes of making her feel the same. The same way even when he doesn’t text her as much anymore, or how he has been avoiding seeing her for the past few weeks.

But looking at her phone gets her to look at his social media, because that’s the hobby that she has partaken on to feel a little closer to him. His Twitch, most of the time unused, blinks with the appearance of a new stream. He’s playing one of his favorite videogames, as relaxed as ever, as if they weren’t going through a point in their…who is she kidding? This is also not a relationship, just like everyone else she has had. And there she is, withstanding shit from a man who doesn’t even want to call her a boyfriend.

Who, coincidentally, also hasn’t responded to her ‘good morning’ text again. Great.

She looks at that conversation, then clicks back into Yuta’s Twitch stream, careful not to have the volume up. His now red hair is tied behind his back, one of his legs propped over the desk as he has one earphone on and the other tossed on top of his knee. His eyes cast down on the screen, though she sees his phone from her peripheral, on a corner of his lit-up neon desk.

So, she writes the text, even with a pattering heart and fear of making a mistake. Yuta is not the only man in the world, and this anxiousness that follows after her has been enough to make her crazy. Even break her sly friendship with Donghyuck.

To: Yuta Nakamoto.

You know what? I’m not here to stay with a man who would much rather stream on his forgotten channel than answer my text. I hope you have a good one, Yuta. It’s over.

She would want to say that she was the better person and that she didn’t stay in the stream until she saw his phone screen light up and him stopping his game to look at the conversation. His eyes widen for a fraction of a second, frowning his eyebrows before tossing a look at the camera and putting the screen face-down.

That’s an answer, right? He couldn’t give less of a shit and it could be easier to curse him out, call his phone and make a fool of him in the middle of the stream, but she puts her phone down as well. It feels liberating not to live through a screen, and she’s damn happy to do so.

One less worry, and more time for herself, finally listening to her class once again and writing in her computer. Heart weightier, but liberated from its confining chains. It’s easier to love oneself, she tells herself, or perhaps her career who will give her much more than a man.

Now, the problem is that her life is more than the complicated mess that Yuta made it out to be. In fact, she had messed it up a bit, too. Donghyuck roams her head when she gets out of her class, with zero messages from Yuta, but also nothing from him.

It feels worse not to have the possibility to text Donghyuck, because she knows the things they said and how hurtful they were. She knows she touched portions of his heart that he never let anyone see, much more after his break-up with that girl he had dated all those months ago.

Though, for the time being, she’ll concentrate on her exams and nothing more. That should do it. No men allowed in her head.

HOW DID THAT SONG GO AGAIN? WE DON’T TALK ANYMORE? A MONTH AFTER.

Eunbyul just had to make things difficult and offer free sweets for her best friends, didn’t she?

Donghyuck rubs at the same spot on the counter that he had been working on all those minutes ago after she had gotten here. Like every Thursday, when she wants to spend some time gossiping with her best friend and braid Eunbyul’s hair as she speaks her elbows off. He rarely looks at them, considering that Eunbyul is the one to serve her the all-time-favorite, Caramel Cupcakes, but Eunbyul is down with the flu and her best friend is still coming, nonetheless.

Today, she is wearing a suit. She has worn more of those nowadays, considering that she’s working on her thesis and also interning. Information that Donghyuck got to know about thanks to his cousin, and he pretended he didn’t care, but he would not lie to himself and say he is not a little bit proud. Even though he can’t bear to remember that night in which everything came crumbling down.

At the end of the day, according to Eunbyul, Yuta and her were over just a few days after that night at the karaoke bar. Not that she knows about the shared kiss, but she had spoken from the bottom of her heart saying how sorry she was that something like that happened. Donghyuck wasn’t surprised, but still.

Worst part is that she came to the bakery just as they were about to close, and she’s looking at the menu as if she isn’t going to pick the same thing as she always does. She doesn’t call him over, instead standing up and letting her heels ring in the silent golden bakery. The leftover pastries glisten behind the glass, waiting to be microwaved and enjoyed before the shop closes, but the only client is her.

And Donghyuck’s breath traps in his throat when she looks into his eyes. As always, concentrating on one eye and then the other. As if she can’t take all of him in just in one go.

“I want a croissant.”

Donghyuck shakes his head, stopping his motions on the counter and fixing the beige apron around his waist. “You never have a croissant. I saved you a Caramel Cupcake.”

Alright, that’s stupid. He can’t believe he said it out loud. Silence prolongs between the two, eyes staring at one another before she clicks her tongue.

“Why would you?”

“You always ask for the same thing.” He responds quickly.

“You hate me, Donghyuck.”

“I never said I did.”

“But you do.”

“I’d like to say I do, yes.” He tries to play it off coolly, only to have her laughing a bit. She leans forward, playing with the collar of her gray jacket.

“I don’t hate you.” She tells him, licking those nude lips that he has to stop looking at because she’s totally not interested in him. “And I’ll take the caramel cupcake, sure, but the croissant, too.”

He turns around, ignoring her as he starts the microwave with the croissant inside. He packs the cupcake up in those pretty see-through boxes with yellow ribbons that Eunbyul had ordered for her shop.

“Why don’t you hate me? I said a bunch of nasty shit to you.”

“It’s easy to say I hate you. Harder to do so, I think.” She answers, and he doesn’t see her, but he imagines her lips parting and sighing softly. “Because the things you were telling me weren’t wrong, Vanilla Ice.”

He seethes through his teeth, turning around and spreading his hands behind him, crossing one leg over the other. “You have never seen me as anyone else than Eunbyul’s little cousin who had a video of him rapping, haven’t you?”

“I hadn’t.” She says and he swears he sees her patting the tips of her ears, as if checking if she’s blushing. “…Until someone decided to kiss me and make things complicated.”

“You kissed back.”

“I did.”

“Then?”

“We made it complicated. There, better?”

“Worse.”

“Agreed.”

The microwave beeps in time for him to cut the conversation, turning around and packing in another bag with the bakery’s name imprinted on it the croissant. When everything is done, Donghyuck serves it in front of her, their fingertips barely touching when placing it upon her hands. She won’t eat there, that he is sure of.

She parts her lips, as if to say something important, before she looks down at the sweets on her hands. Instead, she spreads her ribcage in a long breath before saying what disappoints him entirely, yet the most fitting thing to say in this situation.

“See you, Donghyuck.”

With that, she leaves. As if nothing happened. At this point, he may start to believe that nothing will ever happen.

Yangyang just had to propose to Eunbyul on Halloween, didn’t he?

The thing is…all would have been alright if he hadn’t decided to involve everyone in his Halloween proposal. It was going to happen at their house, of course, but he wanted it to be in the middle of a Halloween party, with everyone dressed up as the cheapest costume they could find. Yes, that’s precisely Yangyang asked for—because he didn’t want to scare Eunbyul off, he said, but he also wanted it to be in an important date and Christmas was a little too far away—.

Now, the problem was that she wanted to be Wednesday and the costume that she bought online had come two sizes smaller. Instead, she’s left with a dress that doesn’t close behind her and a black coat on top of it to cover up the fact that she can’t breathe completely without feeling the fabric tear a bit. It’s either that or wearing Yangyang’s sexy Spiderman costume, and she doesn’t think it’s a great idea…

The celebration downstairs booms with laughter and the brief sound of music, with the closest family and friends hanging out, but she wants to see her two best friends get engaged.

Okay, she’s getting the dress off.

Though, her own hands and a bit of fidgeting is not enough to get the second skin off. Yes, because this black dress counts as a second skin now. A bit more moving and a few jumps in front of the mirror are interrupted by the door opening, a screech leaving her lips when she sees a man in all black clothing with a pumpkin on his head, with eyes and a mouth carved, but still.

“What the fuck?!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” The voice is completely familiar. Donghyuck fumbles with the doorknob, eager to get out of the room before she calls out his name. That makes him stop, though he turns around slowly, comical considering he hasn’t taken off that damned pumpkin head.

“I can’t get this dress off and it’s literally killing me. I can’t breathe—” She speaks a little too quickly, huffing when extending her arms behind her back to ease herself from the tightening fabric.

“Alright, I’ll help you. Stop moving.” Donghyuck gets the pumpkin off from his head, tussling his hair up with a hand—light brown strands as of now, long and gorgeous in their messy stance—. He nears her, turning her around and from the view she gets on the mirror of the two of them, his gaze lingers on her back the slightest before he bites his bottom lip. “Would it be okay if we tugged down? I think it has more of a chance of going down your hips than up.”

“O—Okay.” She answers, letting his strong hands settle on the fabric around her waist and tug down, bringing her arms down. “Ouch!”

“It’s moving. Just…stay still. I’m sorry for doing this.” His legs spread when kneeling behind her and she goes where her mind is going, but Donghyuck’s hands keep working on tugging the dress down, the sleeves now off, skin tainted and burning, while her arms spread on front of her chest to cover her bra.

“I hate that I’m in this situation.”

“I’m not looking, I promise.”

“That’s the bad part, I guess.” She jokes around, though Donghyuck doesn’t laugh, looking at her through the mirror before looking up.

“I was about to say something but you’re like half naked—”

“Just say it and get it over with.”

“Don’t play around, that’s all.”

He gives a few more tugs until the dress pools at her feet, her hands clinging onto the coat and spreading it on top of her body like a robe before turning around. “Thank you.” Donghyuck nods curtly, about to put on his pumpkin mask again before she says: “Is it that hard to believe that I find you attractive, Donghyuck?”

He stares at her, blinking slowly, before he raises his eyebrows. Then, his hand finds leverage on his nape. “I mean…you’ve never been into me—”

“In the past, I hadn’t.” She tells him, getting closer and tightening her hold on her coat. “But me going every week to Eunbyul’s bakery has to mean something, right? I miss us, Donghyuck. What we were in those weeks. What we could have been in that night we kissed but…” She trails off. “I don’t want someone who won’t take me seriously and if you do the same as everyone else, I’m afraid I won’t be able to try again.”

She can’t believe that the arrow that Cupid apparently throws had landed on Donghyuck, how he gives a step forward too and looks from her lips to her eyes, down again. “I would never hurt you. Not again.” For some reason, from him, she believes it. He could be his own self, perhaps fights would ensue, but she knows he is the most truthful person she can find.

“I would ask you to promise, but I don’t want to hear any more promises.”

“That’s not wrong,” He spreads his hand on her cheek. “Because if we are going to try this out, I plan to show it to you.”

Her lips connect to his own, relishing on the feeling of his hand dropping from her cheek to her neck back to her nape. Her heart doesn’t hammer, it feels tranquil, with anxiety going out the window as Donghyuck smiles against her lips.

For the first time, she might be called a girlfriend.

And for the first time, she realizes that sometimes love hides in the people she knows, not the people she doesn’t.

#haechan scenarios #haechan x reader #nct scenarios #nct x reader #yuta scenarios #yuta x reader #writing #nct au #nct fluff #nct angst #slice of life!au #haechan au #haechan fluff #haechan angst #long long fic ahead

172 notes · View notes

ambear9 · 9 months

Text

fic stats meme

tagged by no one

rules: give us the links to your fic with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the least words.

the most hits

Can I Borrow and Egg? (44,175 words) E

“Can I help you?” Derek really didn’t want to open the door, but the smell of the person on the other side was intriguing and he needed to know who it belonged to. “Um sorry to bother you, but um do have an egg I can borrow” The guy was wearing fuzzy batman pajama pants and a red zip-up sweater zipped only halfway with no shirt underneath like he just threw it on to walk over here. “Borrow?” Derek raised an eyebrow “Do you plan to return it?” he was trying really hard not to look at the small patch of chest hair that he desperately wanted to touch. “Well no, I plan on buying more eggs when I get my Jeep working again then I’ll return an egg to you, not the exact one” “Derek give the poor kid an egg” Laura yelled from inside the house “I’m an adult” The guy called back “Not a kid”

second most kudos

Passing Notes (7,577 words) E

“And Stiles, as for the paper due next week, I don’t need to know about circumcision” “Got it” Stiles was going to have to drop that class now, even though, yes he did take it because he was bored and needed another credit and Professor Hale was one of the best-looking people he has ever seen, especially when he was wearing his black-rimmed glasses, and the way his long sleeves shirts were cuffed right below his elbow, “Enough of that” Stiles mumbled to himself after running into a plastic trash bin and almost falling over.

third most comments

"I didn’t know it was possible to fall in love with someone without even seeing their face" (33,755 words) E

Stiles didn’t like answering unknown numbers but he was bored and hoping to mess with a scammer. Turns out it was a wrong number, but he felt bad for the guy so we helped him with his computer. He thought that was the end of it, but it turned into one of the best years of his life.

fourth most bookmarks

Coffee & Camo (17,219 words) E

Stiles owns a coffee shop and has a crush on his regular customer. but then the customer stops coming in and Stiles has no idea what happened until he gets a letter in the mail from Sergeant Derek Hale.

fifth most words

Trying to See Through the Rain Coming Down (32,376 words) E

“I need to file a missing person report” “Okay” Stiles didn’t look up from his book, just grabbed one of the papers off the shelf behind him and handed to the man “Fill this out and I’ll get an officer to come out and talk to you” “You’re not even going to look up? My sister is missing and you’re just going to keep reading your stupid book” he yanked the book out of Stiles’ hand and threw it across the precinct almost hitting the Sheriff who had come out of his office to see what the yelling was about. “Sorry” Stiles stood up “It’s just that” “Can I help you?” His dad asked trying to diffuse the situation before Stiles was the next thing thrown across the room “I’m in town visiting my sister and she went to the grocery store Friday afternoon and never came back, she isn’t answering her phone and I can’t find her anywhere” Or the one where Laura dies and Derek is left to take care of her twins with the help of an officer and a newly bitten werewolf.

fic with the least words

Donuts (1,552 words) E

Stiles got an idea while out getting his morning coffee.

tagging: @theinternetisfulloftrash, @just-another-busy-fangirl @7thleveldown, @evanesdust, @phantomlove908, @theboboshow @teacupghost5

and anyone who wants to share

#sterek #stiles stilinski #derek hale #teen wolf #fanfiction #ao3

53 notes · View notes

stevenbasic · 8 months

Text

Growing into the Job, Post 352: That was Then, This is Now, p4

“So, Morgan looked pretty disappointed, don’t you think?” I chuckled, trying to loosen my goose after closing the door to his office behind the big blonde nurse and turning back to him. I’d just walked in on the two of them - well, the three of them, Gianna had been watching over the computer - getting ready for some naughty time. Immediately I’d felt a weird jolt of something dark inside me, something possessive and, like, territorial. Morgan looked ready to just eat him up from there between his legs, had actually already half-torn off the new scrub pants I’d bought him. He looked both shocked and, bless his heart, thankful to see me. But it wasn’t the sight of the two of them, together, that really bothered me, I think. The thought of one of my girls, like Morgan, being with him & tending to him if he needed it actually could make me feel kinda good. I think it was seeing that Gianna was there that set something off in me. I mean, I don’t think I reacted badly, or did anything weird, but I definitely wanted to turn that computer screen off as quick as I could. If Morgan was going to suck him, I didn’t want him looking at Gianna, listening to Gianna. Me. Me me me.

Bye Gianna, we’ll talk to you later. I’d switched off the power to the screen already.

When I did turn black to Jay - door closed, now - and handed him his warm milk for the morning (not Katarina’s this time haha!) he was still stammering in apology, his face was so adorably red. I laughed him off as best I could, but I was still feeling those twinges.

This boy is mine, I thought, as a flash of Gianna passed through the she-wolf part of my head, back off.

Weird! I told him to drink his milk and not worry about it, stepping around to his side of the desk - pulling it back into place after Morgan had pushed it away - and set my laptop up in front of him. I crouched down aside him so we could both see it’s screen, and he could have a good view down the generous top of my cool new white dress. In case you need a reminder of where you belonged, or who you belong to. It made me feel better, when his eyes darted down between them, and then had a hard time coming back out. That’s right, lots to look at, huh sweetie? But, here, let’s concentrate on my computer…

I was so excited to show him!

“Wh-what’s this?” he asked, as my screen sprung to life.

“I’m going to give you a tour of the new offices!” I sang. I’d just gotten it myself, the file from the construction team with the virtual tour of the new office wings. I’d been over there, working with the construction people a lot over the past few weeks, many of the girls had. But Jay hadn’t seen anything yet, aside from maybe some early blueprints. They were nearly finished with all the major stuff anyway, we’d be opening soon, but there was still a lot of painting and decorating to be done. This 3-D animated walkthrough had that all in place and pretty, what it’d look like in a few days. I’d glanced at it quickly with Marisela and Josie in my office before coming here, and had immediately wanted to show it to him, too. I brought it in on my laptop instead of sending him the file because, well, my computer is bigger and better than his. I clicked a few things and the animation started up for us.

“So here we are,” I began, as the video file went full screen and the POV camera zoomed in on the big, beautiful new glass front doors from the parking lot. It was all computer/generated but looked a lot like what it really did. I glanced over at him; he was paying attention well. “Big doors, huh? They’re twelve feet high, but glide open so easy - and we come into the new front atrium…”

I’ve been waiting for this for so long.

“Oh my god…” he immediately marveled, and my face nearly split open with how huge my smile felt. He looked amazed! The camera came in through the entryway and right away you could get a sense of the scale of the enormous new welcome space, what patients would see when they first walk in. All in white-ish marble, the atrium was super-fancy, with a ceiling that soared up into the new third story and beyond. Balconies lined the upper levels, a beautiful altar of a reception desk beckoned from across the white stone floor. Natural light filled the space, pillars made the whole thing look really impressive, and gateways to the new wings lay ahead and off to the left. But, haha, probably what was making him most speechless now was what soared up up and up behind the reception desk. Forty-feet tall with its arm extended and looking off to some great distance, a 'Far Horizon’ haha.

“Is that…you?!?” he blurted, the awestruck shock in his voice and the new race to his heart so freaking satisfying that I nearly screamed. He liked it!

“Haha no that’s not ‘me’..!” I answered, as the camera came deeper into the atrium and slowly started to pan up, and up, and up. I actually blushed, noticing just how, uh, voluptuous they’d made her. “That’s a statue - it looks just like white marble but it’s really a cool amal-…amalgam, plastics and stone and like they can do so many things with it. Anyway, do you like the dress?!? I helped choose it out…”

His eyes were wide. This is exactly what I wanted to see! Exactly the reaction I wanted from him. Awe, I think they call it. Yes yes yes, the statue is beautiful, and so is the big podium dais thing it stands on, making it rise even higher above everyone. It’s even better in real life, so impressive, so…monumental and perfect. But, even though it was just onscreen and really just an animation, the virtual tour video here gave a pretty good idea of what it was actually like.

“It looks just like you…” he said, slowly, jaw gaping and clearly amazed. And maybe a little scared.

“Well, I was, like, the model for it,” I began, “We did a shoot for it with the artists way at the beginning. They based it on my figure and, like, my face. But, really, it’s not me. It’s more, like…I dunno…”

I mean, it’s all in stone. But, yeah, it does kinda look like me. The boobs for sure. And…it’s forty feet tall.

Jay was speechless, as the camera breezed up the crazy curves of the giant amalg-...stone lady that would now greet all our patients as they came into our new offices. The dress, a classic wrap that clung to m-…her body like a really tight toga, was really magnificent, made the whole thing look so majestic, like it was out of some Roman temple, and made her look like a huge ancient goddess. That’s what we were going for, right?

Jay was still flabbergasted. The idea of a medical building having a forty-foot statue of its Office Manager is ridiculous, right? He was trying to wrap his head around it, understand that though I was the model for it, and haha it’s like got my hairstyle, it wasn’t actually me. “So, it's, like an everywoman?” he attempted, explaining it as much to himself as asking me, “This is a medical facility, so, like, it represents female…health?”

“Sure, Mmhmm, health,” I agreed, nodding in encouragement. I wanted him to like it, and I didn’t want him too freaked out (a little is okay haha). “Female health.”

And strength, and female power and authority.

”uh, okay, I get that,” he nodded, slowly accepting that he’d be seeing this giant, walking past her feet every day. “It’s not you, it’s just…yeah.”

“Yeah, for sure,” I agreed, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice, and my lady parts under control. It’s totally me.

“Here, let me show you some of the other stuff,” I finally said, after the camera had panned back down the statue, was again at m-…her feet. “So, after patients are greeted at the front desk by Aubrey and the girls, they’ll be directed to either the ‘Women’s Health’ wing on the left, there, or the ‘Evolution’ one, back there behind it.

“Those are, uh, really impressive entryways,” he said, stunned by the gorgeous, modern details with classical styling that highlighted the atrium and would lead patients to where they needed to be. “Now, uh, how would you get to our practice here?”

“Oh, to geriatrics?” I answered, clicking a couple things and swinging the camera to the right. The small door that led to our current offices was there, yes.

“That looks a lot smaller…” he commented.

“Well, we didn’t want to intimidate your ol-…your current patients,” I replied, “they like things the way they are, for now. So we kept it modest, familiar….” It does look pretty overshadowed over there, huh? “But hey! Let me show you this, it’s so cool…”

=================================

More at my Patreon

#growing into the job

50 notes · View notes

bonesandthebees · 1 year

Text

new file added to au’s I will probably never write but are fun to rotate in the brain microwave:

qsmp pacific rim au

instead of kaiju, you have alien creatures that shift and warp their giant forms and sometimes look like literal binary code to people although no one can agree quite on what one looks like. they just know it when they see it. and you also have the federation running the jaeger program with our good ol friend cucurucho overseeing it all

ft. pilot pairings like

Jaiden and Roier who have always been a great duo until the son they've been coparenting was critically injured in a recent attack

Forever struggling to find someone he’s drift compatible with until a French pilot named Baghera gets transferred to the base

Charlie and Mariana who were a great pilot team until their daughter Juanaflippa was killed in a binary entity attack on the base itself, and the two both went off the rails the next time they tried piloting. long story short they both freaked out and accidentally took out a support beam, killing Tilin and a few other workers. it was deemed to be partly a glitch through the drift system and not entirely their fault, but they were both banned from piloting for the forseeable future

Quackity and Luzu were supposed to be a pilot duo, but Luzu went missing before they could ever get in the jaeger and hasn't been seen in months. Then Quackity's child Tílin was killed unintentionally by Charlie and Mariana's breakdown, and since then he's been deemed too unstable to pilot. Somehow Wilbur, a random computer tech who isn't trained to be a pilot, is the only person they've found that's also drift compatible with Quackity. But again, Quackity isn't allowed to pilot atm, and Wilbur has no interest in getting in the giant robot death machine. He has a daughter to take care of after all.

Phil has been a pilot longer than most and at the moment is piloting with Missa, who is much newer to piloting

Tazercraft are a very well-renowned pilot duo worldwide largely because of how high their drift compatibility is

but there's not just pilots! (also this is getting long so gonna put this under the cut)

cellbit is a biologist that studies the entities, but after he gets transferred to the base he starts getting suspicious of what's going on 'upstairs' with the federation itself

baghera is the only pilot in the french group. the rest of the guys are the engineers for her jaeger

felps, who was a biologist alongside cellbit, also went missing shortly after arriving on the base. people think both he and luzu are deserters but cellbit keeps insisting felps wouldn't just leave like that

maxo is a software engineer who is supposed to focus on the jaeger drift system but he also keeps dabbling with an AI he built himself in secret

bad is kind of like HR/social services for the base, and therefore it's kind of his job to babysit everyone's kids if they're busy with other stuff and will also usher them to a safe room during any attacks

foolish and vegetta are both jaeger engineers who met on the base and very quickly fell for each other. they're like the romcom portion of the whole thing

fit is a geologist trying to figure out where the fuck the entities are coming from

and of course there's the kids

there were a lot of kids made orphans by the initial attacks on major cities. there's an 'educational' program the federation has set up to allow a few kids orphaned through these attacks to live at the shatterdome and learn the ins and outs of jaegers when they're young as unofficial prep for the jaeger academy

because of this many people on the base did not intend to adopt kids they just kind of. bonded and eventually took them in.

for bobby, jaiden and roier were already copilots so when jaiden started bonding with this kid she met in the shatterdome roier soon followed thanks to the drift sharing

juanaflippa thought charlie and mariana were the coolest pilot team around and she just kept following them until charlie was like "is it unethical to teach a child how to shoot a gun? Idc I'm gonna do it anyway" and that sealed the bond

juanaflippa and trump both died in the same entity attack on the shatterdome

phil had wilbur long before the first entity attacks ever started, but during his time at the shatterdome phil quickly took a liking to chayanne and put in a request to adopt him. once he and missa start piloting together, missa gets parental feelings for chayanne seeing him through phil's memories and the two just unintentionally become coparents

part of why wilbur refuses to be a pilot is because he grew up with his dad as a pilot and knows how terrifying it is as a kid. he also never intended on having a kid at least until the entities were defeated because who would want to bring a kid into a world like that, but then he met a shy orphan girl at the shatterdome named tallulah and he was a goner.

people are very surprised when they learn bad and dapper are not biologically related. the two act exactly alike but no, dapper was an orphan bad ended up getting really really close to

when the shatterdome was still trying to find luzu quackity felt very listless since he didn't have a copilot and couldn't do anything. he ended up spending time with tilin, although he was always hesitant to label himself as a father. when tilin died though he was heartbroken

baghera is a more recent transfer to the shatterdome and stumbles across pomme on her first day. the little girl says one thing in french and baghera is like "oh my god she's mine" while the rest of her engineering crew are like "who is this random child why are you carrying her" (but they all end up warming up to her pretty quickly)

okay this ended up being way longer than I meant it to be god why is pacific rim so fun to rotate in the brain microwave

#au ramblings #qsmp #qsmp pacific rim au

96 notes · View notes

drgngutz · 1 year

Text

Cybernetic Soulmate - V

BEN Drowned x Reader

Soulmate AU – Implied Feminine Reader

Ben is gone; at least that’s what Jadusable might believe at first.

Masterlist

Previous Part

Benjamin Lawman

BEN Drowned

It was strange to finally be scrolling through my computer after being restricted for so long. When he had found his way outside of the cartridge and into my computer, BEN had always found some way to mess with it, screwing with my files, making me question reality with every loading screen or missing pixel. Even after I put him inside that cartridge again, it felt like there was something leftover; something that was still there, and I still couldn’t tell if what I was seeing online was real or fake.

Without it, though, everything was absurdly fine. I felt okay. I no longer felt the constant watching as soon as I stepped into my room when I got home, nor did I hesitate like I used to when typing the password of my account to log in. Even looking at the 4chan post seemed so… normal.

So why did it feel so wrong?

It didn’t make any sense. I had trapped him, I had given that girl the cartridge, and she would destroy it; he would be gone. For good.

Looking through the comments and responses to my posts were helping me to enforce the idea that I was safe. I could easily responded to each comment now, perfectly ordinary, without any mishaps; I pushed the button and the thread was sent, without any altered words or blank messages.

I felt relaxed for the first time in weeks. He was gone. He was actually gone.

MaskywasHere: I’m scared that we haven’t heard from you yet. You good bro?

gingersnaps-obsessed12: I’m too impatient for this crap. It’s like a masterpiece I can’t even- I must have more

DrgnGutz: Holy shit, dude. I mean, no way this is real, but it's a great story, really.

KittyGirl<33: OMG! R u alive???!

Ifrit: I’d like to hear more from you via email, if you’re interested in sharing more of your story :)

I mostly responded to the concerned comments with simple, easy replies. Nothing too complex, most of them I just assured I was alright or that everything was fine before moving on to the next; I ignored the more inquisitive questions for my own sanity. The responses were never ending, a constant cycle of scrolling down further into the abyss of loading more comments; all of which I had never seen before, no thanks to BEN and meddling with my perception of the outside world.

Everything was filled with his absence. Everything was all right again.

That stupid fantasy was wiped away in an instant the moment I looked away from my computer for a second, before looking back and seeing a new window opened to cleverbot. I swear, I could feel a chill run up and down my spine as the room dropped a few degrees.

Bursting from my seat, I rapidly move the mouse and hover over the bright red ‘X’ to close the damn thing, nerves lit up with alarm.

“Fuck… Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I scream at the computer as the window refuses to close, slamming down on the left mouse button with my whole hand and sending it down to the floor with a clatter.

“This isn’t happening.” I begged at the screen, shaking my head and backing away as if I had been burned.

Oh, but it is.

Verging on hysteria, I lunged for the power button, landing harshly on my knees and nearly pushing it inside of the PC from the force. This was a dream, a nightmare. The after effects of what had happened to me, my brain was just tricking me right now. I would hit this button, and it would be over. Really over this time.

I cried out in despair when the damn thing refused to turn off.

“What the fuck… What the fuck do you want from me?!” Screaming at the bright pixels, I stood back up from the ground, fists clenched at my sides.

Just to talk.

“Leave me alone.”

A little rude for a ‘welcome back,’ but, I suppose it can’t be helped.

“Go fuck yourself.” The longer it went on the more I began to realize this wasn’t in my head. I pinched, squeezed at my arms, the pain registering fully enough to know this wasn’t a nightmare.

Ha. Do I disturb you that much?

“How did you get out?” I was yelling at the screen at this point, surprised my parents hadn’t walked in and asked what the hell I was doing up so late at night screaming so loud.

Wouldn’t you like to know?

“Tell me. Tell me right now, or I swear…”

You’ll what? Put me back?

You can’t now. It’s too late.

“Asshole. You’re a fucking asshole.”

It’s amusing to watch your distress.

“You were supposed to be–” It dawned, right then and there. He was supposed to be gone, destroyed, for good. Something was wrong. Had she messaged me at all since yesterday?

I scrambled for my phone, scrolling through my emails and finding nothing; not since she first contacted me about the cartridge in the first place.

“Where is she? Where’s (Y/n)?”

Who?

“Don’t play coy with me, you little shit. What did you do to her?!” I was raging at this point, all forms of fear converting to defense in an effort to ward him off. It would never work, of course. I had tried it before.

I’m not telling.

“Did you trick her, too? Trap her inside that fucking game, like you did to her brother, Matt?”

You were so eager to get rid of me, you didn’t even think twice about what would happen if it was in someone else’s hands.

“I should’ve destroyed that cartridge myself.” I snarled at the screen, eyes scanning over his next reply as it scrolled onto the site.

Yet you couldn’t. How funny.

“Shut up. You murderer, you killed her, just like you killed the rest.”

Even if I did, that’s none of your concern, is it?

You should be more worried about yourself.

“If she’s alive, I hope she comes to her senses and puts you back in that fucking game, just like I did.”

I told you, that can’t happen anymore.

It’s too late. I’m free now.

I am everywhere now.

The screen explodes into a dialect of code bouncing off of other code, glitching and warping into itself as the machine whirs with an overload of power. In a last ditch effort, I try to draft a new email to her; maybe it’s not too late, maybe I can get to her in time before–

The draft closes itself, and my phone powers down. The dread swallows me up with hot and cold flashes as the small screen lights up with text.

That won’t do you any good.

The entire house is painted black, the electricity shutting down and leaving me to bask in total desperation.

#ben drowned #creepypasta #ben drowned x reader #ben drowned x you #ben drowned x female!reader #soulmates #x reader #fem reader #female reader #soulmate au

71 notes · View notes

fandom-alley · 1 year

Text

You're So Gorgeous | Part 1 - Dating Apps

Summary: Penelope and Emily sign Spencer up for a dating app without him knowing. Spencer was not anticipating to meet someone he was interested in so fast. Category: Friendship, fluff Pairing: Spencer Reid/OFC also Spencer & Friends Warnings: Small amount of BAU case mention Word Count: 2.5K Part Two AO3

“Ugh.” Spencer threw his new cellphone onto his desk in frustration. “Why is this thing so complicated? What ever happened to a simple button? The whole thing is a screen.”

“What’s going on, boy wonder?” Penelope asked, having heard his cries of frustration while walking through the bullpen.

“I can’t figure out how to use this phone.” He replied, pointing to the offending device laying uselessly on a stack of case files.

“Is that the new iPhone?” She asked, eyeing up the sparkling silver phone. She made her way closer to his desk to pick it up and examine it. Flipping it back and forth in her hands as if it was a piece of rare history.

“Yes. The seller told me they no longer support the technology of my old one and I was forced to upgrade. But I can’t even figure out where all my contacts are.” He complained.

Spencer wasn’t one for big advancements in technology. Despite how fast computers were compared to twenty years ago, nothing was a match for how fast he could read through a physical book. Plus, the way the weight of a book felt in his hands, the way the pages slipped through his fingers, was unmatched. No computer could ever give him that feeling.

“What’s this about a new phone?” Emily said as she joined them at his desk.

“Boy wonder got the new iPhone but even with his IQ of 187 he can’t figure out how to use it.” Penelope quipped.

“Well, there’s no one better to teach you then Miss Penelope Garcia here.” Emily said with a clap to Penelope's shoulder.

“Exactly! You’ll need your contacts transferred over from your last SIM card, that’s why you can’t find them. And probably a few apps downloaded as well.” She glanced up at Spencer as she rambled and noticed the dread written on his face. “Tell you what, how about I take your phone for a while and do all that stuff for you, and when it’s lunch time I’ll show you how to use it.” She offered.

“Please and thank you. I’ll buy you lunch.” Spencer pleaded, giving her the puppy dog eyes.

“Consider it a date! See ya soon, my pretty.” She said, and with a flourish made her way back to her office with Emily hot on her heels.

Spencer didn’t even consider for one moment that the pair would do anything else with his phone besides set it up.

He went back to working on his case files, with the old reliable stack of papers. Scratching blue ink onto page after page as he wrote down the events that went unfolded on their last case. In no time he was finished up, then grabbed some off of Morgans desk, who’s stack of papers was starting to pile so high it was at risk of toppling over.

By the time lunch rolled around, Spencer was so hungry that he didn’t even question the mischievous looks on Penelope and Emily’s faces as the trio made their way into the popular cafe downtown for food. The smell of brewing coffee and fresh baked bread greeted them as they walked through the doors. Spencer took a deep inhale, never able to get over how delicious it smelt in there.

As promised, he ordered and paid for Penelopes lunch, and did the same for Emily as well. He figured she helped with the phone stuff since she had disappeared into Garcia’s office with her and wasn’t seen for the rest of the morning. And if she hadn’t, well, then Spencer was being nice and treating his good friend to a delicious meal.

The cafe was a popular choice with the BAU team. Not only for lunch, but for breakfast and coffees as well. They were open nearly 24/7, serving the freshest coffee all the time, so of course it was the number one pick for a quick place to go.

With the orders placed, Spencer joined the girls who had taken a seat at a window table. He sat beside Penelope, who wasted no time pulling out his new phone from her purse, sliding closer to him so they could both view the screen. Emily leaned over the table to try to get a better view, but eventually sat back in her seat and drank her coffee when she couldn’t quite see the screen.

“Alright, so this is where you find your contact list, and this is where you’ll go to quickly see previous messages. This is your email, so you can easily check it while out on a case.” explained Penelope. She had him tapping all the apps and widgets, getting him familiar with the navigation on his new device.

She was still coaching him through everything when their food was delivered to the table, so Spencer sat the phone down next to his plate so he could eat.

A ding came from the phone as he was chewing on his turkey sandwich, drawing his attention to the top of the screen that was flashing with a notification.

“Jessica thinks you’re cute.” He murmured, reading the message out loud. “Who the heck is Jessica?”

Spencer looked up to his friends, turning his head back and forth to look between them, waiting for one of them to reply. Emily made herself busy rearranging her burger, pretending they didn’t place the toppings on it correctly. And Penelope tried her best to keep staring out the window, trying to be engrossed it the people walking past. But it didn’t take her long to give in to Spencer’s stares.

“Okay fine. We signed you up for a dating app.” She blabbed.

“Penelope! I thought we would at least be able to finish our meals before you broke.” Emily complained.

“Why did you sign me up for a dating app?” Spencer scrunched up his eyebrows in confusion.

“Well, obviously to get you out dating.” Said Penelope. She tapped on the phone screen to open the app as she talked. “See, look. Here’s your handsome face as your profile picture, and this is a quick blurb about you to gather more interest, even though they probably don’t need it after seeing your stunning face.”

Spencer zeroed in on the red numbers at the top of his profile. “What do these numbers mean?” He asked her.

“Oh that! 99+ people are interested in you. For the sake of the basic app’s capacity, they don’t show numbers above 99 unless you pay the premium price. And this number, 75, is how many people you’ve already matched with.”

“What? Already? I’ve been on the app for three minutes.” He was shocked.

“Well, we might have taken the liberty to swipe yes on a number of eligible ladies before we came to lunch.” Penelope said sheepishly.

“How did you know I would even be interested in them?”

“We didn’t. But that’s kind of the point with dating apps. You just swipe yes on as many people as you feel like, wait until one of them matches with you, and then start a conversation and hope for the best.” Emily said with a shrug.

“This is ridiculous.” Spencer reached for the phone, shaking his head and wanting to exit out of the app.

“Just give it a try!” Emily grabbed the phone before he could get to it. She tapped around for a few seconds, just out of Spencers grasp as he tried to reach for it by leaning across the table. “Here, she looks nice. I said ‘hi’ for you.”

Emily slid the phone back to Spencer. Hesitantly, he picked it back up and looked at the screen. Her picture was, he had to admit, very beautiful.

It was a candid shot, possibly from a recent vacation, with a white sand beach and blue water behind her. She had long and luscious wavy hair, longer than he’d ever seen on a woman before. But then again, he was used to working with his BAU girls, who, apart from Penelope, usually kept their hair on the shorter shoulder length side for job convenience.

This girls smile was radiant. Whoever had taken the photo must have said something really entertaining to get her to smile so wide, crinkling the corners of her eyes. Spencer was entranced. He scanned the rest of her profile with a quick glance. She only had a few words in her description blurb.

Over achiever who loves to read and hike.

“How come she doesn’t have a last name?” Spencer asked when he realized at the top of her profile it just read, Avianna - 31.

“For privacy reasons they don’t let you, and leave it up to the people talking wether or not they want to disclose anything more personal.” Penelope explained.

As Spencer was eyeing up her picture again, the phone lit up with a new notification that led with her name.

“I think she replied to your message, Emily.” He said. He clicked on it, which brought him to their chat. He tilted his head a little to side in contemplation at the sight of her message, a little bit confused on how the dating app worked, since he was now looking at a skill testing math equation. “Do you normally have to answer a math equation to continue on with a conversation?”

Emily burst out laughing, almost spitting her coffee out onto the table. “Excuse me?” She asked between breaths.

Wordlessly, Spencer slid the phone over to Emily, who just started to laugh more.

“Let me see that.” Penelope grabbed the phone from the table and quickly read over the chat. “Oh, that’s hilarious. Spencer, you have to go for it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s testing you. Or more likely every guy who messages her. Asking a question right off the bat will give her information on if the guy is worth the hassle on getting to know. Usually it’s something more along the line of ‘are you married?’ Or, ‘are you an axe murderer?’ A math question is new.” She chuckled.

He also wasn’t sure why she would ask him a math equation over something more related to dating, but he respected it. Whatever worked for her, and if he answered correctly maybe he would find out the reason.

He typed out his answer quickly, showing his work process like he was always taught in school, before giving the final answer.

"How did you get that answer so fast?” Emily asked.

“It’s an SAT question.” Stated Spencer.

“Do you think she’s a teacher?”

“I guess the only way to find out is to ask her.”

Spencer didn’t receive a reply right away. So the three of them finished up their meals and went back into work. About an hour later, the quiet morning was over and they were called into the round table room to discuss a case. The second body of an older male was found, right here in Virginia, and the local PD were asking for help figuring out the unsub’s MO.

The meeting was quick and to the point, thanks to Garcia’s fantastic as always presentation of evidence. Hotch assigned Spencer and Derek to go to the morgue, so the two boys got into the SUV. Derek drove there swiftly, in the hopes that they might be able to solve this one by nightfall.

About halfway there Spencer’s phone dinged again in his pocket. His stomach tingled in nervous anticipation for Avianna’s reply.

Wow, consider me impressed. I was not expecting a real answer. But I’ve got to be honest, I’m glad, because if that’s what you actually look like in your picture, you are gorgeous.

Spencer felt the blood rush to his cheeks as he read her reply. Somewhat unsure how to proceed, having never done this before, he typed out a message back to her.

Spencer - Thank you. If your picture is to be believed as well, you are very beautiful. Avianna- I’m blushing Spencer- Honestly, me too. And my partner is starting to look as me weird. Avianna- Wait. Partner? Are you already seeing someone? Please don’t tell me you’re married. Spencer- Sorry, no, I meant my work partner. I’m single. Avianna- Phew, you had me worried there for a second. But you’re working! Don’t let me keep you. I should probably get to work as well. Message me later and we can keep chatting? Get to know each other a little bit. Spencer- I would love that. Good luck with work. Avianna- You as well!

“What’s got you smiling so big over there?” Derek asked from the drivers seat.

Spencer wasn’t sure if he should tell the man. He didn’t know much about Avianna yet. Didn’t even know what she did for work. Their conversation was quick and didn’t reveal any personal information about either of them. But then again, Penelope had set this up. The BAU’s biggest gossip. So if he didn’t tell Derek, he would know by tonight anyways.

“A girl.” Spencer said simply.

Derek swerved the car as he looked over at Spencer in shock. He had to grab the handle to keep from bumping into the door as Derek straightened out the wheel.

“What?” Derek asked loudly. Spencer chewed on his lip as he contemplated how much he was going to tell his friend, before deciding he should just spill it all.

“Her name is Avianna, and I’ve met her on a dating app that Penelope and Emily signed me up for at lunch time. We’ve had one conversation, just now, and I don’t even know her last name yet.”

“Wow. So you’ve known her online for like, two hours, and she’s already got you smitten.”

“One hour, forty minutes and seven seconds.” Spencer corrected.

“Once again. Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“What makes her so special already?” Asked Derek as he turned down a one way street, getting closer to the morgue.

“It’s hard to say. I’ve never used a dating app before. I’ve never even used a cellphone that much, if I’m honest. But, there’s something that just seems so genuine with her already. I mean, before she even answered my ‘hi’ she was asking me a math equation. And then once I answered, she said she was glad I did because she finds me gorgeous.” Spencer told his friend.

“What about her? Is she pretty?” Derek asked.

“Beautiful.” Replied Spencer. At the next red light he showed Derek her profile picture on his phone.

“My man!” Derek said with a clap on the shoulder.

“She told me to message her again when I was done work. So, let’s hurry up and get there to solve this thing so I’m not sending that message at two in the morning.”

“On it, pretty boy.” Derek said with a laugh, and he pressed the gas peddle a little harder. “You know, the girls are going to freak out that you’ve been talking to her and they don’t know it yet.”

“Oh I know. But they signed me up for this without my knowledge. So they can wait a little longer before they know she messaged me back.” Spencer stared out the window at the passing buildings, a smile blooming on his face. It was a rare moment that he would rather be texting on his phone than rereading case files, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what to say next.

Hope you enjoyed! Please like or reblog to show support! <3

#spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x original female character #spencer reid #spencer reid/original female character #spencer reid fanfic #part two coming soon #i will come back and add a link when its posted #penelope garcia #emily prentiss #spencer reid & friends

64 notes · View notes

marvelslut16 · 2 years

Text

The Accidental Husband II

Pairing: Steve Harrington x reader (for now), Billy Hargrove x reader (eventually)

Series synopsis: (Y/N) is all set to marry her high school sweetheart Steve Harrington when a ‘glitch’ in the County Clerk’s computer system says she’s already married to none other than Steve’s high school tormenter, Billy Hargrove. (Y/N) has to jump through hoops to get her annulment papers filed in time for her wedding to the ‘perfect’ man. But will she fall in love with Billy while spending time with him in order to get him to sign the aforementioned papers? Or will she have the ’perfect’ life she’s been planning with Steve since they were in high school?

Word count: 2.7k+

Warnings: Swearing probably. Mentions bulling and beating up. Poor writing. Spoilers for season 3 if you haven’t seen it yet. Steve is OOC to fit with the plot. Spoilers for the movie the accidental husband.

A/N: The reader is a year younger than Billy and Steve. This takes place in 91. After a year I have finally posted the second part to this series. Please let me know if you want to be tagged in it, I have a strict upload schedule for both of my series now.

Part 1

The weeks following the interaction with the lady in the nail salon you don’t think of her once, not even telling Steve that Billy lives near enough to you two that his future wife went to the same salon as you. Your life has been too busy to think about Billy, you have an evaluation coming up at work and Steve keeps evading wedding planning at the last second, leaving all of the decisions up to you. One thing he does decide to do with you for your wedding, is something he’s legally forced to do, which is to obtain your marriage license. You have a day off from work and Steve’s on his lunch break, so you take advantage of the gap in both of your schedules.

Steve is dressed up in a black suit with a forest green tie, and emerald cufflinks, the exact opposite of the boy you fell in love with in high school. On a normal day you would wear a pair of jeans or overalls, a t-shirt, and a cardigan for both work and running errands, but today you're matching Steve in fanciness. You're wearing a gray skirt suit, with a pearl necklace and a pair of pearl earrings- a gift from Steve’s mom on your engagement. The suit is stiff and unbearably itchy, the tweed fabric rubbing your skin raw every time you shuffle or readjust your stance.

After waiting in a line for thirty minutes, with Steve nagging and complaining that it was taking too long every three minutes like clockwork- you finally get called to file for your marriage license. You triple checked this morning to make sure you had all the necessary documentation so it could go as smoothly as possible, but none of that matters now. Not when this isn’t something that can be solved with something as simple as your birth certificate.

“I’m what?” you practically shriek at the poor man sitting across from you, lucky for him he’s behind glass or else you would have lost your senses and climbed over the desk to get a look at his computer yourself.

“You’re already married,” there’s a slight lift to his lip as he reiterates himself, almost as if he’s smug that all of this is happening to you.

“Says who?” you're trembling with an oncoming panic attack so you reach for Steve’s hand, but he’s moved away from you at the news, acting as if you somehow got married behind his back.

“The state of California,” the man deadpans, wanting you to get out of the seat in front of him so he can move onto a new couple.

“That’s impossible,” Steve speaks up, voice oddly controlled. “We’ve been dating since high school, there’s no way she’s married. You must have the wrong (Y/N) (Y/L/N).”

You nod frantically to the man, twirling your engagement ring. You can feel the eggs and toast you had for breakfast start to rise from your stomach and up your throat. This couldn’t be happening. You aren’t married, you’re supposed to be marrying the perfect man, your dream man, in two months.

“(Y/N) (Y/M/N) (Y/L/N), born in Hawkins Indiana,” the man says, after typing in your name again and coming up with the same answer.

“How do I fix this?” your voice goes up an octave on the word fix, your breathing picking up and sweat starting to accumulate at your hairline.

“Annulment forms,” he pulls out a giant stack of papers and pushes them through the whole at the bottom of the glass divider. “Both parties need to sign them and then get it notarized, and bring them back.”

“Who’s her husband?” Steve asks gruffly, angry at the situation in front of him and over the fact that he should have been back in the office twenty minutes ago. The guy presses a few more keys before revealing the name of your husband.

“William Neil Hargrove,” you can hear your heart pounding rapidly in your head as the world starts to spin, you think you’re about to faint. This can’t be happening, this is just a nightmare. “You think you’d remember your own husband.”

“What?” the sheer volume of Steve’s holler and the pain the loud sound causes your ears, informs you that this isn’t a nightmare- that this is real and that it’s happening to you. The guy hands you Billy’s address, he’s about a thirty minute drive from your apartment. “Of course he’d live by the beach.”

Steve leaves with a scoff, leaving you to scramble and grab the three hundred pages of paperwork that you and Billy Hargrove would have to fill out. What are the odds that this computer malfunction would have you married to Billy of all people? Maybe it has something to do with Hawkins in both of your records and the two of you going to get marriage licenses around the same time.

“I know a good lawyer,” Steve assures after you’ve walked out of the building.

“That really can’t be necessary, all we have to do is sign the papers and return them,” you try to reason, not wanting to have to deal with any of Steve’s stuffy and judgmental ‘work friends.’

“It is if we have to keep this quiet,” he glares at you and speaks through gritted teeth. “I have an important business deal in the works and I can’t have this mess screwing it up. And I’m sure it won’t look good to your principal, employing a woman who’s dating around while she’s already married.”

“That’s not true and you know it!” the mere accusation from him hurts, whether he meant for it to or not. You’d never do that, you’re not that kind of girl. And if he thinks you're capable of that, does he really know you anymore?

“I know it’s not, but that’s what it looks like (Y/N),” he hails a cab, turning to you and sighing as the yellow car pulls up beside you. “I have to get back to work and you need to go see Billy.”

Steve slides into the cab without another word, slamming the door before you can protest seeing Billy alone. Steve doesn’t even hug you or kiss you goodbye, something he would normally do. Billy is back in your lives for three seconds and he’s already screwing up everything you’ve ever worked for.

You change before you head to see Billy, a skirt suit is definitely not the first impression, or second first impression, you want to make. Deciding on a flowy black sundress with sun flowers all over it, pairing it with yellow and tan wedge sandals- matching the yellow of your shoes to the flowers on the dress. There's a tightness in your stomach the closer you get to his address, if you weren't so angry that you couldn’t get your marriage license an hour ago, you would swear you were actually nervous about seeing Billy again. You used to swear to Steve that you never found Billy attractive, for the sake of your boyfriend’s ego and confidence, but you were lying back then. Even with that ugly mullet Billy was undeniably sexy; the half unbuttoned shirts, the tightness of his jeans that perfectly hugged his ass, and the air of confidence he walked around with made him irresistible.

Upon arriving at Billy’s apartment complex his neighbor informs you that he’s never home during the day, kindly pointing you in the direction of Billy’s favorite beach. Luckily you spot someone who looks eerily similar to the Billy you knew in high school walking into a cute beachside bar, so you don’t have to walk around the beach aimlessly in wedges trying to find the man. Entering the bar you're taken aback by how homey and cutesy it manages to feel; there are strings of little lanterns hanging from the wooden beams above you, tiki torches line the perimeter of the room, surfboards signed by famous surfers are hanging behind the bar like a back splash, and there are two types of seating- on your right are the typical high top tables you see in every bar, the seating on the left are multicolored plastic beach chairs set up sporadically in four inch deep sand. The windows to your right are open, letting in the cool sea breeze and filling the bar with the comforting scent of salt water. The thing you find most notable is something that people would typically not notice, the color of the walls. The walls are lined with fishing nets, life preservers, and even some starfish, so people wouldn’t notice the blue color of the walls, the same blue as your nail polish. Steve would hate this place, or at least the California Steve would hate it, but you love it.

Your eyes dance around the room taking in the beauty of the atmosphere of the bar, before your eyes finally land on Billy. You never imagined you’d see him again and yet he looks just how you’d expect a twenty-something year old Billy to look; he’s cut off his mullet and his hair is far more sunkissed than it was when you knew him, he’s still rocking the half unbuttoned shirt and his jeans still accentuate his ass. The hoop in his ear looks like the same one he wore in high school, but the gold chain around his neck has been traded in for a wood bead necklace. No. he doesn't look like you expected he would, he looks way better, the smirk pulling at his lips as he reaches across the bartop to grab himself a bottle of beer could stop traffic.

After a few seconds of shamefully ogling the man in front of you, you snap yourself out of it and walk towards him with purpose. He doesn’t notice you approaching, too busy talking and joking with the male bartender. Billy seems to be sitting taller, less weight on his soldiers now that he’s away from Neil.

“Billy Hargrove,” you say once you’re standing behind him, even though you had menat it more as a question than a statement. You had an entire thirty minute drive to his apartment and a ten minute walk to the bar, and yet you still couldn’t come up with anything more creative than just his name.

“(Y/N) (Y/L/N), is that you?” he turns around on his barstool with a look that you can only describe as a smolder.

“The one and only,” you internally cringe at your awkwardness, why can’t you manage to hold a simple conversation with an adult. Then again, there’s nothing simple about the coming conversation.

“My girl said she ran into you while she was gettin’ her nails done,'' his pink lips wrap around the opening of his beer bottle as he takes a swig. “I told her there was no way that little pumpkin ever left Hawkins.”

You glare at Billy at the use of your fathers nickname for you, you hated it to no end and he knew that. Billy would hear you complain to your dad for the nicknames and the hovering he did, just like you heard everything Neil said or did to Billy.

“Moved here the summer after I graduated,” you shuffle your feet awkwardly. “Wanted to get away from all the shit that happens there.”

“You want a beer? Jimmy get her a beer,” he instructs the smiling bartender before you can even open your mouth to respond to the question.

You gratefully take the beer Jimmy pops open for you, it’s cold and refreshing on this warmer than normal spring day. It’s been ages since you’ve last had a beer, probably not since the keg at Tina’s halloween part your junior year. The following year and a half in Hawkins was too hectic to party and drink. After moving to California you didn’t have a drink until you turned twenty one, and by then it was always expensive red wine or fancy champagne at one of Steve’s work parties.

“This beer is fantastic,” it’s a little heavy on the Hops side, but it tastes cheap and perfect. “I haven’t had a beer since we were doing keggers in Hawkins.”

“No shit,” Billy muses, running a hand over his chin as if he were reminiscing the few keggers he went to during his time in Indiana. “So what brings you to this fine institution?”

“Right!” you sit on the bar stool to his right, pulling the annulment papers from the painted canvas bag you grabbed while you went home to change. The bag was a gift from your first ever group of students, back when you were student teaching.

“What’re these?” he asks at the loud thump of hundreds of pieces of papers landing on the wooden bartop.

“Annulment papers,” you let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Funny thing happened when I went to get my marriage license today. They told me I was already married. To you.”

“What are the odds, huh?” he takes another swig of his beer.

“It’s pretty crazy,” you push the papers closer to Billy. “You just need to sign these and you’ll have me out of your hair for the rest of your life.”

“Finish your drink and we’ll catch up,” he gives you one of his perfected smirks. “Then I’ll sign the papers.”

“As long as you sign them,” you sigh and take a swig of your own beer, it soothes the anxiousness rising in you. “I don’t know why you want to catch up, we barely talked in high school.”

“We can fix that now,” he leans towards you, wetting his plush pink lips with his tongue. “So who’s the lucky son of a bitch you’re gettin’ hitched to?”

“Steve, uh,” you pause wondering how he’ll react to the name, your hand comes up to anxiously rub the back of your neck. “Steve Harrington.”

You watch as the kindish smile he has falls from his face, before he quickly replaces it with a forced one. You still don’t get why he has always hated your future husband. Steve hated Billy because he came to Hawkins fists and words swinging, targeting Steve particularly when he was the most vulnerable. How could Billy’s only motive for attacking Steve be to get popularity?

“You’re still with that pathetic little bitch?” he gives you a look that you can only describe as disappointed. But why? Why does he care, all he needs to do is sign the damn papers and you both can marry the loves of your lives.

“Hey now! Steve is a caring man, one that can provide for me, that’ll take care of me.”

“Well ain’t that just love,” he scoffs. “Providing for ya ain’t love, it’s the least his pathetic ass can do, especially after what happened at the mall.”

You tense at his words, trying to ignore the memories that his comment has stirred up. You don’t respond, focusing on the label of your beer bottle instead, pulling at the edge of the label that was already starting to peel back before you ever touched it. You clear your throat before taking a large gulp of your beer, you can practically hear Steve and his mother telling you how unladylike you look at that moment.

“Can I have a shot?” you ask Jimmy, who’s been quietly and awkwardly lurking on the other side of the bartop. “I really don’t care what it is, as long as it’s strong.”

He looks a little apprehensive at your request, granted it is a little early in the day to be pounding back shots, and to an outsider the mere mention of a mall shouldn’t want to make someone drink. But Billy nods at him, so Jimmy complies, grabbing a clear liquid from the top shelf and pouring me a larger shot than you would get at any other bar.

The rest of the day is a blur of shots and talking to Billy about everything that has happened to you since you last saw him. You tell him things that you would never tell him if not in a tipsy haze. Like how you haven’t been back to Hawkins since moving away, or that one time at a college party you got drunk after a fight with Steve and made out with a random couple, even telling him that life with Steve is boring and monotonous- something you’ve never been able to admit before. The last thing you remember is hanging off of Billy and singing ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane’ way off key to him and the rest of the bar- now full of patrons being that it is now close to midnight.

@justfangirlthingies @mysterious-adventurer @obsessedsadgirl

#billy hargove x reader #billy hargrove #billy hargrove x y/n #billy hargrove x you #billy stranger things #stranger things #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfiction #billy hargrove fanfiction #billy hargrove imagine #steve harrington

372 notes · View notes