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#imagine getting to see /the/ red peril that soft ??
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A Billy Butcher Christmas 2/?
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Chapter 2
Billy looked out the window as if he was seeing the Christmas lights for the first time and the expression on his face lightened just a little. “Ah,” he sighed, and turned back to you. “It is, isn’t it.”
"I’m sorry the job didn't work out the way you wanted,” you snuggled closer to him determined not to let his lack of Christmas spirit get you down. “Maybe I can cheer you up and we can make some good Christmas memories." When you looked up into his dark eyes you caught a fleeting glimpse of real warmth but it was soon swept into a maelstrom of other emotions you couldn’t quite pin down.
Abruptly he stood up, leaving a draft of cold air in his wake. "I were just thinkin' of somethin' I need to run by M.M. I'll be right back," he said in a somewhat grumbly voice as he left the room.
There was suddenly a lump in your throat and a prickle of tears behind your eyes as you gazed back out at the lights. So much for your -
Billy’s gruff voice suddenly interrupted your thoughts. "Ho ho ho...” he intoned with a deep voice. “I really kinda like me girls on the naughty side."
When you turned around the most incongruous sight met your eyes. There was Billy with a Santa hat set at a jaunty angle and a Christmas sack of something slung over his shoulder.
A warm laugh bubbled up through your tears, now tears of joy, and you hastily wiped them away. “Billy…” You were at a loss for words, so instead you stood, throwing your arms around his neck. His free hand slid around your waist, holding you close as you hugged him and as soon as you were able to collect yourself you pulled back to look at him. “What’s all this?” you breathed, eyeing the red sack.
His eyes crinkled with his smile. "Your very own somewhat deranged Saint Nick bringin' you a sack of well deserved Christmas joy. Oh and uh...ya can take the saint part at yer own peril." He set the sack on the couch then sat down next to it pulling you into his lap. "Ya wannn see what Santa brought ya for Christmas, little girl?"
You giggled and couldn’t help grinning, feeling those happy tears prick at your eyes again. His lap was warm and it seemed everything before forgotten. “Well I like my Santa kind of naughty as well, so that’s perfect. I -“ You were so overwhelmed that he did all this for you that you lost your words for a second. “Yes let’s see.”
He grinned as he opened the sack and pulled out the first bright beautifully wrapped package. You could just imagine him charming the store clerk into wrapping it for him. The thought made you smile. You carefully unwrapped the package knowing Billy was probably about ready to tear the paper off himself so you could see what's inside. Finally opening the box and parting the tissue you caught the first glimpse of satin and lace in Christmas red.
You pulled the material carefully from the box, it was impossibly soft and beautiful, and you held it up. It was a red satin nightgown, short with thin straps and trimmed with expensive red lace. You honestly loved it, and you had a feeling he would love it just as much. “Billy, it’s beautiful. I love it, thank you.”
He grinned that charming grin that brought out his dimple. "Glad ya like it, darlin'. I thought it'd look gorgeous on ya. I'm hopin' you'll try it on for me later." He winks at you, his dark hazel eyes twinkling with pleasure.
"Now, let's see here," he says opening the sack again and pulling out a prettily wrapped package about the size and shape of a bottle of perfume.
You took the gift and so carefully started to unwrap it. There’s no way…you thought to yourself. But it was. Your favorite perfume in a perfect small glass bottle. Really it was the only perfume you’d wear. There had never been any other you’d liked but you’d ran out of your own bottle a couple months ago and hadn’t wanted to spend the money on new one. “Billy,” you whispered, taking the cap off and smelling the scent. “How did you know?”
"I remembered how good it smelled on you everytime I nuzzled into yer neck and...I hadn't smelled it for awhile. I do notice little things sometimes," he chuckled softly. "I'm glad it makes ya happy. Happy looks good on you." He shakes the sack out and one more pretty package tumbles out. It's long and sort of flat and rectangular...like a box that would contain jewelry. You carefully open the box and there's a little stylized golden sun with diamond accents on a gold chain. "That one's to remind you that your me spot of sunshine every day." His large hand smooths up and down over your back.
“I always want to be, if you’ll have me,” you murmured softly, turning the charm between your thumb and finger. “It’s perfect. Will you help me?” you asked. He took the necklace as you turned and pulled all of your hair to one side. You hadn’t felt this happy in quite awhile…he did all of this for you. He lifted the necklace over your head and you felt his fingers brushing the sensitive skin at the nape of your neck while he fastened the clasp.
"Let me see, darlin'," he said softly. You shift in his lap and turn so he can see the front of you. "Ah, it looks good. Suits ya." His smile was so genuine and warm. Then, tucking a couple of fingers under your chin, he tilted your head up to him leaning in and brushing his lips over yours.
*_*_*
Lettuce know if you want more! 🎄❤️
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wispstalk · 2 years
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"Oh!" Coradri leans at a perilous angle to point out the watchtower window. "There's his magelight. What are we wagering?"
"The Ruby Throne."
"Nah, you lost that on Sundas when we played bar luvahr, remember?"
"Ah, so I did. It's changed hands so many times I've lost track." Martin rubs at his jaw, thinking. He hasn't a halfpenny to his name – hasn't since Kvatch, in fact – so parceling out the White-Gold Tower has become their habit. "Council seat?"
"Ooh, Councillor Coradri has a nice ring to it. Deal. And if you win, I'll give up the palace gardens." 
When the gears of the heavy wooden gate groan to life, Coradri flails out an arm and shouts to Arcturus, "No! Not yet!"
In the yellow candlelight from the western tower, Martin can just make out the Blade's wave of acknowledgement. 
The commotion halts. Soon comes the soft crush of footsteps in the fresh wild snow, the red glow of Tanis's magelight spilling on the drifts, and the man himself trundles up on his snowshoes, returned from his week at the Arcane University. 
"What gives?" calls the Hero of Kvatch. "S'just me. Let me in."
"What's the password?" Coradri shouts down.
"Oh, it's uh...." He snaps his fingers as if to spark up his recall. "Piss off, I think."
Beside him, Coradri lets out a sharp short laugh, a victory crow. Martin groans; he'd been certain the man would reply with some obscure insult in a foreign tongue. 
"Damn you, Tan, you can stay down there and freeze. You've just cost me the gardens," he calls down.
"What?" The man below them shakes his head and leans on his hiking staff. "You two scuttleheads ought to be looking behind you instead of toying with me."
Martin smiles. "Why, so some ruffian can sneak through to the safety of our fortress?"
In the faint light, Martin can just see the lopsided grin, the careless shrug of his shoulders. "Fine. Your loss."
He glances over his shoulder. Nothing but the quiet sleeping temple, braziers illuminating the courtyard in pockets of subdued glow. Secunda coyly slipping from behind a veil of clouds, the silent still arms of the mountains and the black sky beyond–
And ribbons of ghostly green light, twisting across the heavens like eels.
"Woah," Coradri whispers beside him, then shouts over to Arcturus: "All right, you can let him in now!"
The gates creak open, heavy boots echo off the stone steps. Tanis drops his gear with a heavy thud at the threshold of the watchtower room.
A broad grin and cold-flushed cheeks greet them as he lowers the wolf-trimmed hood of his cloak. He sweeps Coradri into a bear hug, lifting her from the floor, then folds Martin against his chest and cards his fingers through Martin's hair.
Time later to hear of dangers on the roads, Oblivion gates sighted and closed, gossip from the city, the spellcraft he learned, the oddities he found to haul back. For now Tanis slings an arm over their shoulders, bundling them together against the bitter chill, and they crane their necks up to see the North's grand display.
"I didn't know you could see the aurora this far south," Martin comments.
"Me neither," Tanis replies.
"They're so pretty. Imagine the show they must be getting up in Skyrim," Coradri says.
They all speak softly, awestruck, so as not to detract from the sky's stately performance.
"I saw them out on the Sea of Ghosts once," Tanis says. "Running poppy-tar and skooma from Dawnstar to Jehanna. Hard seas out there, where the ice sheets are, but that night the water was smooth as a looking glass. It was like..."
He trails off, circling a hand through the air as if beckoning the right words. Above them, the sinuous lights, dancing through the star-sprent sky to a cosmic song not meant for mortal ears, defying his attempt to pin them down. 
"Well, you see them," he finally concludes with a laugh. "They're not really like anything else in the world, are they?" 
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swartzsword · 2 years
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Gotham Night | Part 2
Harely Quinn X Reader
Warning: Violence, Language, Sensuality, Peril
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 890
A/N: Thank you for all the love on my first post! I am trying to post a new part daily, so If you have any requests or questions let me know! This is an original FanFic, and a continuation of my last post.
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The chill October Gotham evening air fills your lungs as Harley stares at you, her blue eyes almost glowing in the evening sunlight. She looks as beautiful as ever, her pale skin emitting a soft glow as she smiles, you see her mouth the words,
"I love you."
Her sillouette stands out against the Gotham skyline. She is wearing a marveouls bright red dress, a modest, yet seductive article, that fits her body as if it was made for her. Two thick shoulder staps that pull up her breasts with just a small amount of clevlege, form fitting her hourglass waist before frilling out at just halfway down her thigh. Exposing her toned legs before her knee high black boots leave the rest to imagination. The setting Gotham sun causes the skyscraper shadows to spread across the rooftop, brining a chill to the air.
Harley steps towards you, as if in slow motion, batting her long black eyelashes in your direction. Her pigtails blowing softly in the evening breeze. With each step, it seems to get darker and darker. Butterflies fill your stomach, your eyes fixated on the goddess in front of you. The sunlight is gone now, causing the air to grow cold.
A silouette emerges from the darkness from behind Harley, its blue eyes glowing in the darkness. Harely doesn't seem to notice, still moving towards you. You try to let out a noise, but it seems as though your body is frozen. Terror fills your stomach as the sillouette expands, as if it has wings...almost like...
"Wakey Wakey!"
Your eyes shoot open as Harley plops herself onto the bed, causing the springs to whine with strain. "Come on sleepy head, we got some stuff to do!"
Relief washes over you as you realize it was all just a dream. "Good morning Harles." You smile as you wipe the sleep from your eyes. Harley gives you a small peck on the forehead before standing up and walking towards the window. She is already dressed, wearing small black denim shorts, an old "Gotham Knights" baseball T-Shirt that she slopply cut into a tank top, and converse (one red, and one blue). You climb out of the bed, pulling on your T-shirt and jeans. Harley spins around to face you. "Sweetums, I got some good and bad news, which one do you want first?" She gives you no time to respond. "The bad news," She says immediately, "is that Mr. J is not very happy about me running off with you...and the little party we had with his henchy men last night." She frowns. "The good news is that Gotham is a big place, but Mr. J and Batsy know all about it, so we gotta take a little vacation."
"Where are we gonna go?" You ask with confusion. You have lived in Gotham your whole life, and were kinda nervous about leaving. You didn't have much in the city, but you had Harley, and that was enough for you. "I dunno," she responds, "but we will figure that out, but first, let's go get some yummy egg sandwi-" Harley's eyes widen, staring at the air vent that is right above the bed. "Harles?" You turn around to look at the vent with her. Faintly, you see a small red light, blinking between the iron grates covering the hole.
Suddenly, Harley grabs your hand, and sprints towards the window leading out to the fire escape. She pushes you out the window, frantically climbing after you. "Shit!" she exclaims, looking over the railing. 20 feet below, you see a dumpster, filled with garbage from the local deli that serves the delicious egg sandwhices that Harley adores. Climbing onto the railing, she looks at you, "Baby, we gotta ju-"
BOOM!!!
The blast sends Harley and you flying over the railing, off the fire escape and down towards the dumpster. With the wold spinning above you, you hear Harley grunt as she lands on the pile of garbage filling the grimey dumpster. You land immediately after, safely, onto the bags. Harley looks at you, smiles, leans foward, and plants a sloppy, lipstick filled kiss onto your lips.
You both climb out of the dumpster, and sprint down the alley, taking a left and out into the sunny Gotham streets. You have no idea where you are going, but Harley seems to. After running for blocks, Harley pulls you into an alley. Winded, she looks at you. "Welp," she says between breaths, "so much for egg sandwhiches, huh?" It causes you to crack a smile, before asking, "What do we do now?" Harley furrows her brow. "Hmm, I dunno puddin', let me think."
Your stomach drops. Harley has never called you puddin' before, she has usually preserved that name for the Joker, back when she was with him, that is. Harley is now pacing the alley. "That mean old Mr.J!" she mutters under her breath, stomping her foot, "how dare he try to hurt my Puddin'! Can't he see I don't want him anymore!" "Baby," you say, walking up to her, "don't worry, I'm okay." Harley's big blue eyes look up at you, her pouty lips full and red. You can't help it but hug her.
She sighs and smiles, wiping a single tear away from her eye, and says,
"Let's get out of here puddin'."
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222feb5 · 9 months
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CRYING WOLF
Maxime was a peculiar child, first because she didn’t speak and then because when she
started to, it was in confusing and frustrating riddles. Around the age of four, she had conceived an elite ability to weave the fabric of her imagination into the minds of others; in other words, she was a liar. Even as a toddler, she could convince adults of terrible untruths. An early and highly memorable instance was during one of the family's annual summers in Germany. We had arrived at our aunt’s farm a couple of weeks earlier than usual and our favorite climbing tree was bearing fruit, bright red little berries that we had never seen before. Being able to pick fruit at the farm had always been a huge perk for the kids, but now it included a clause. Our aunt, this garden's keeper, made it clear that this summer not everything was to be eaten... while we could still enjoy climbing the massive tree, under no circumstances were we to taste or even pick the berries, lest they fall into the grass and be discovered by a rogue sheep. Even sheep could be killed by these berries. I avoided them at all costs, choosing skinnier branches if they had fewer bunches, choosing a broken arm over accidentally poisoning myself.
One afternoon, I am enjoying tea with the adults when Maxime stumbles into the kitchen. “I ate the berries,” she tells us. She is stone-faced. My mother and her sister Ulrike, equally concerned and alert, run to her, looking like reflections of each other as they examine each side of Maxime’s face. While they search for red stains at the corner of her lips, my uncle calls the German poison control department. He describes the tree to the person on the other side of the telephone; whether my sister is deceiving us or not is still unsure, but the toxicity of the berries is confirmed, and perilous. Time might be running out, and Maxime’s clamped shut mouth is offering neither evidence nor confession. 
The kitchen has become lively with everyone’s pacing,and I am excited to see how this will unfold. “Maxime,” someone finally thinks to ask her, “if you ate the berries, how many did you eat?”
She sticks out her pudgy hand and slowly presents one dirty index finger. One finger, one berry. This information is repeated back to poison control- a sigh of relief. One berry will do.
Instances like these would repeat themselves numerous times throughout the years, and our reactions became accordingly milder. Did you bury Daddy’s Rolex? It’ll turn up later, my parents assured each other. Did you eat a seashell? Maybe if you eat enough, you will turn into a seashell, we told her. But one evening, Maxime’s stories eventually turned into a nightmare. We were at our favorite neighborhood seafood restaurant, horsing around as we waited for the tourists to give up their tables. My little brother had been learning karate and was eager to show off his moves to anyone who would give him their attention. Little Samurai Jack landed a blow a little too close to home, and Maxime ended up in tears- it wasn’t an unusual scene. After a few minutes of attempts a reconciliation, we were called to our table, my sister still in tears.
Maxime’s schemes were well known and the easiest thing to do, we had learned, was to ignore them until she gave up and moved on. Calamari and shrimp were ordered and enjoyed in front of her- my parents offered her an olive branch, the rare opportunity to enjoy a soft drink if she agreed to stop messing around. But Maxime continued to sulk at the table, her chicken fingers growing cold in front of her. Not until dessert did we consider the possibility that something was seriously wrong with my sister. I asked my father for a dollar and waved it in front of her, since she had said she couldn’t move her arms. The teasing produced nothing, and we asked the bartender to call an ambulance. Her pupils confirmed my parent’s worst fear, that she was concussed from getting knocked down by my brother. An entire hour had passed since she had first complained about not feeling her arms, but now she couldn’t even talk. Before she was loaded into the ambulance, I saw her eyes rolling back into her head, and I made a promise never to tease her ever again.
Scrambling into the backseat of the Mercedes, for the first time in years my little brother and I put aside our differences and tried to comfort each other. When she gets out of the hospital, we told ourselves, we’ll give her our favorite Pokemon. Inflated with this new sense of chivalry, we hatched a plan for a Gameboy marathon, all for our little sister’s wellbeing. Heck, we’ll even take the day off of school tomorrow; just to train the Pokemon for her, we told our father. “Maybe,” he responded, “you’ll just remember this next time you feel like kicking your little sister in the head.” It may have been the breakneck speed at which our father was driving, or the melodramatic lights of the ambulance, but something inspired Little Rene and me to grasp each other’s arms. “MAXIME....” he cried, “MY ONLY SISTER....” My little brother’s misguided sentiment slightly disturbed me, but it wasn’t the right moment for a squabble. Perhaps he too may have suffered a slight concussion. It was a good thing, I thought, that we were already on the way to the hospital, our sedan catapulting through the dark night, one red light after another.
The ambulance’s sirens quieted, and I busied myself trying to identify the back of my mother’s head through the vehicle’s blurry rear windows. Poor Maxime; I reflected upon my own encounter with those burly EMT technicians.
A few years ago in the middle of the night, I had demanded an ambulance in the midst of a particularly gripping anxiety episode, convinced that my throat was slowly tightening up and choking me. Maybe a random allergic reaction, maybe an octopus had made its way through our sewer system, as I’d seen on the Animal Planet a few days before. The poor fellow featured on “10 Most Dangerous Animals” had consciously slurped down his assassin, but I was convinced that it didn’t take a perverse appetite to get murdered by these rogue, hyper-intelligent cephalopods. Once lodged in my throat, he’d use his eight tentacles to block up my air passages, I explained to the technicians. But they couldn’t find the octopus, nor anything else explicitly wrong with me, not even a temperature. “But her anus,” my mother had protested, “take the temperature from her anus.” Looking back, I don’t believe this to have been a genuine request, but a strategic attack on my resilience. All buts aside, the hysteria ended shortly thereafter, having modestly refused to pull my pants down in front of the two worn-out strangers. We waved them goodnight from the front porch, watching the brake lights disappear into the distance. “That,” my father remarked, “was an expensive mistake.”
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wanderfan2000 · 1 year
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“They did it, they actually did it!” - Me, watching the final adventure with Ash and Pikachu.  Do you know how hard it was to draw this without bursting into tears? It definitely was! T-T 
When I was watching the final episode of Ash and Pikachu in the mini series, Pokemon: Aim To Be a Pokemon Master, I though I was going to cry, but the moment I saw the end tag, that’s when I immediately started to cry happy tears of joy! Ash and Pikachu have done it! =‘3 I even started hugging my Pikachu plush like there was no tomorrow.
I remembered first discovering Pokémon, thanks to GameBoy Video, (I’ll bet EVERY 2000s kid knows what I’m talking about.) But at that time, I wasn’t quite into Pokémon yet until I saw myself seeing my first glance at Pikachu and this new world, filled with these super powered animals, I knew a new obsession was going to begin…
Flash-forward to 2010, I watched my first Pokémon series, the one I watched was the final DP series they had playing on Cartoon Network at the time, Pokemon: DP: Sinnoh League Victors and I think you might say, from then on, I was hooked on this show! 
I wanted to have a Pikachu plush, just like Ash had Pikachu for his partner. So one day, while I was watching the second OG series, the Orange Islands on the old Pokémon.com website, I remembered a package came in the mail. I noticed it was on my family’s doorstep, and this was WAAAAAAY back when we lived in a little red house on a little hill….in the middle of a parking lot. XD (NTM, I lived in TWO parking lots a lot for my 2000s childhood. But I didn’t mind.) 
Anyway, I took the package into my mom’s room. (This was way before I got my first laptop. Because if I wanted to play on the computer, I’d used my mom’s.) I opened up the box, and there, laying down with a happy smile on his face was Pikachu! ^_^ 
I was so happy, I finally had my first Pokémon plush and since I had Pokémon Water War playing in the BG, I decided to trap my Pikachu plush inside of a Landry basket with a pillow on it, pretending the electric Pokémon was captured in an electric proof jelly jar. (Funny enough, it actually wouldn’t receive this name until the Johto Journeys episode, Fighting Flyer with Fire.) Yeah, to be honest, I had a talent for recreating things and Pokémon was going to be one of them…
As the years went by, I started collecting everything that had Pokémon on it, especially Pikachu, because I was OBSESSED with the electric powerhouse and I wanted everything merchandise that had him on it. I even started playing the main games, spins off game as well as LOVING the films and the Pikachu shorts! ^_^ Nowdays, I even try to get the old vintage Japanese merchandise and USA merchandise that was created by Hasbro, Jakkis Pacific and even the company who makes Pokémon toys today. ^_^ 
For the series, I followed along with it a lot, the current ones playing on TV as well as the old ones on Pokémon.com, since then I’ve fallen in love with the anime series and I have a HUGE soft spot in my heart for Pokémon: The Johto Journeys…that was the first OG series I remembered watching a lot on Boomerang from back in the day. I still remember hugging my Pikachu plush while watching it, we were Pokémon watching buddies. ^_^ 
But now as the series has finally concludes to a close, I wanted to thank the ENTIRE Pokémon staff and EVERYBODY who worked on this to give us this wonderful series that we have followed a young 10 year old boy and his Pikachu aiming to become a Pokémon master as they met new friends, evil enemies, heart-pounding perils and endless excitement! 
As much as I would love to go on about my Pokémon story, I know something that’s even better to end it: 
“This is just the beginning of the amazing adventures of Ash and Pikachu. Their journey is destined to be packed with non-stop action, millions of laughs, heart pounding perils and endless excitement. Together they will encounter fantastic friends, evil enemies and meet creatures beyond their wildest imagination and as their story unfolds, we'll unlock the magic and mystery of a most wondrous place: the incredible world of Pokemon!" -The Narrator, Pokemon S1E1: Pokemon: I Choose You!  “Thank You Ash and Pikachu for everything!”  1998-2023. 
- Adia, a Pokemon fan and lover since 2010.
“Pi, Pikachu!” “Gotta Catch Em All!”
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adonis-koo · 3 years
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Star Struck
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| 1 |
↳ Summary: You’re a creature of habit, you plan everything from each hour to each day, so you can imagine the chaos which ensues after you discover a random guy leaking black goo in a ditch- who just so happens to be an alien.
↳ Pairing: Jungkook/Reader
↳ Genre: lowkey strangers to lovers, alien!jungkook, fluff, smut,
Word Count: 12k
Tags: before anyone asks, yes tentacles are involved because I’m a proud monster fucker, jungkook has separation anxiety from Mc :(, he’s immediately whipped, and he can’t speak any human language at first oops, he like,,,tries it for a second before MC goes 🏃‍♀️ this is unedited and for that im sorry bc yikes
___ | Next
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In many cases, you could recall how you got into situations. For instance, when you were late to your mid morning lecture, you had zero excuses- not that the professor cared at all when you walked in with a bag of mcdonalds and a venti latte from starbucks. But the principle of the situation remained the same, you knew your actions would cause you to be late. You understood the consequences of your actions. 
The same could not be said for when you took in the curious male who didn’t understand a word you said.
“What do you mean you just- picked him up off the side of a fucking ditch!” Jimin flailed his hands as you twisted around to face you, the male was examining his hands as if he had never seen them before, not paying either of you any mind. 
You held up your hands as you replied, “I did!” You shouted back, immediately gaining the males attention as his eyes flashed between you and Jimin, “He was just…! Laying there! I don’t fucking know! What was I supposed to do? Leave him, look he’s hurt.” You pointed out the obvious wounds he sported. 
“...He’s bleeding black goo Y/n! Have you never seen a horror movie before oh my god!” Jimin grabbed his head as his voice became dramatic and peril, “You’re practically number one on his kill list! He’s probably here to abduct us and- and butt probe us or some shit!” 
You raised your brows defensively as you crossed your arms, “Look at him!” You pointed a finger at the male making him flinch a little, leaning a little away from you where he sat as his expression shifted, looking as if he was a kicked puppy at your tone, “Does that look like a butt probing alien to you shit face?” 
“Maybe!” Jimin snapped back, “He ain’t human that’s for fucking sure! Just…!” Jimin flailed his hands, “Just look at him!” 
You groaned as you rubbed your face, you knew it looked bad! You hadn’t meant to stumble across a body when you went out for your morning walk which you had been trying to do in an effort to be more mindful and healthy, but it seemed to only lead you to stressing the fuck out. 
You turned to look at the male, he looked anything but alien, well- for the most part. His eyes looked up at you almost glossy like, they were big and doe like, his lips plush and his hair dusted his eyes yet almost looked like a raven blue. 
He looked human, mostly. The part that threw you off was, for one the black goo that trickled down his skin- maybe if you were a photography major you’d scream how aesthetic it was and just take a picture before leaving him to die, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case and here you were. 
The other part of him was, well....the bits that glowed. You would’ve honestly mistook him for a horrible Avatar cosplayer that had a little too much last night had it not been for the black goo, the strip of glow emitted from his body all the way from his hands up his arms, and you assumed back to his shoulders as well. 
Most might have considered it tattoo’s and maybe you could pass it off as such if it weren’t for the constant soft hue purple, it shifted between blue occasionally but remained purple for most of the duration you had spent with him. 
“What the hell are you even gonna tell Seokjin!” Jimin grabbed his head as he began to pace, “He totally won’t let this- this thing stay with us!” 
You glared as you stomped over to the male who straightened a little, the marks on his skin suddenly tinging red as you turned to face Jimin, “Seokjin can shut the fuck up! And so can you! For all we know he’s just into special effects and can’t speak English you xenophobic fuck!” 
“I’m Korean you whore!” Jimin dramatically shouted as he walked across the apartment, for what reason? You weren’t sure other than to make a point and raise his voice, “I know Asian when I see it and that’s not it! I’m headed for class and when I get back he better be back in his fucking UFO.” 
You rolled your eyes as you kneeled down to look at the male, the marks had flared back to it’s constant state of purple once more as he blinked, “I’m sorry about him,” You apologized sheepishly, “He ah...he’s an asshole,” The male only tilted his head a little, “I’m...Y/n.” You felt a bit dumb talking to him. 
You didn’t want to assume he couldn’t understand you but...well...He just seemed so, curious, innocent even. His eyes peered around at his surroundings as if he had never seen them before. Not as if he hadn’t been in your home but, as if he had never sat on a bed, his body would bounce a little as if testing the springs only to find out they’d bounce and his eyes would light up. 
He had been playing with the light switch on the wall of the apartment when you first got home, he didn’t seem to understand you necessarily but he responded well to the tone of voice because when you told him to stop he seemed to understand. 
He had tried to speak a few times, but...Well, Jimin may have had a point, it didn’t sound like any Asian dialect, at all. It didn’t even sound like any language you had even heard of...Even if he looked like some sort of Asian ethnicity, which you supposed was the strangest part about this. He looked human, but he didn’t sound human. 
He spoke in a sort of throaty tongue that seemed frantic at first, but he must have quickly realized you couldn’t understand him and had opted to mute ever since, “What’s your name?” You asked, only to sigh in response as he blinked unsuspecting of whatever you had said. 
Sitting down in front of him you sighed, “Okay nevermind, we’ll figure out a name to give you meanwhile- hmmm, let’s get those fixed up yeah?” You stood up, noticing he wasn’t doing the same, leaning down you went to grab his hand. 
The marks on his arms suddenly lit in a deep maroon red as he jumped back making you screech- whatever thought of you assuming he was human went out the window at the sudden burst of...of....tentacles pushing out of his back and pulling in front of him like some sort of shield. 
“Woah! Woah holy shit, oh my god!” You flailed at the sight of his narrowed eyes and his defensive stance as you held out your hands in sign of peace, “I’m not going to hurt you! I- I just want to fix your wounds okay!” You fumbled out the words, “I’m your friend, yeah?” 
His eyes squinted a little further as he glanced between your hands and your hand, tentacles like you had seen- no you weren’t gonna go there- they looked almost- No. You weren’t gonna say it, you weren’t even gonna think it. They were almost glass like, but looked as soft as silk, probably deadly and something you shouldn’t touch. 
They restricted a little and much to your surprise he parted his lips as he slowly spoke, “...Friend…” As if testing the word on his lips. You raised your brows in surprise, if this man was an alien then...he was a really quick learner. 
You nodded rapidly as you spoke,” Yes! Yes! I’m a friend! Friend’s don’t hurt each other. Just...let me…” You slowly approached him, trying not to watch the four tentacles that emerged from his back keep your attention away from his face, the markings on his arms glowed a dimmer red, as if his initial reaction calmed down, slowly it melted back into a soft purple hue as his eyes carefully watched you grab his hand as you repeated, “Friend.” You gave it a little squeeze, his brows furrowing as he looked at his much larger hand encasing yours, to your face before back to your hand which held his. 
“Friend.” He echoed back tilting his head a little before his eyes suddenly lit up in understanding, nodding frantically he replied, “Friend!” His expression of anger was like the night to the day of his smile, which was bright and almost childlike, as if he suddenly realized what the term friend meant, “Friend!” He squeezed your hand back causing you to squeak at the immense strength he had, the symbol that curved on his hand suddenly shifted to a dark grey as his eyes quickly became worried.
“Friend?” His voice gentler this time as he stood up, practically towering over you as he peered down as if you were a little puppy, concerned he had hurt you. 
“I’m okay!” You nodded, feeling your voice a pitch higher and your face felt hot despite knowing full and damn well you were not going to fuck this alien, yet you had definitely watched too much hentai in your life to at least not let the thought cross your mind once. He was good looking, by human definition anyways, “Lets um...let’s just get you into the living room.” 
Curiously he followed you before you had him sit on the couch, he gave a little bounce to the cushion as his brows furrowed before his lower lip jutted into a pout- obviously realizing this surface wasn’t bouncy….How could an alien be in your house, who nearly killed you with the tentacles from his back….look like this...
You briefly wondered this question as you frowned, grabbing the first aid kit before sitting back down beside him, his marks suddenly glowing purple as his eyes curiously watched you pull out a rubbing alcohol wipe, you paused as you looked at his big doe eyes that looked at you so innocently...If he reacted violently to his hand being held you knew damn well this was going to be a bitch to convince him you weren’t trying to kill him…
“Look…” Your voice drew his eyes to yours as he focused on your words, “This is gonna...hurt...a lot okay…?” You offered a semi awkward half smile, gesturing to your own bicep where it was bleeding on him before gesturing to him, “Pain…” You nodded a little, making him nod, his eyes darting to his own before back to you but you could tell by the look in his eyes he had no idea what you meant.
“Pain.” You pinched his skin making him jolt, his eyes darting between your small fingers and you as he frowned, marks mixing with purple and red, “Pain…?” He mumbled, rubbing a hand on his head, suddenly he began speaking in his tongue, his voice deeper and throater then when he repeated anything in english. 
Maybe talking to himself, he wasn’t looking at you as he sighed, “Pain.” He spoke more firmly as he looked at you, seemingly a little lost, you held up the wipe as you gave a defeated smile, “Pain.” You nodded, knowing he would definitely understand what the word meant once you got this over with. 
To say he reacted violently, was a very poor understatement. 
His marks were lit up a bright red and his tentacles had emerged from his back once and he practically flew to the other end of the couch in defense as he howled in pain as he examined the large wound on his bicep, “Friend!” He cried out in anger, eyes glaring at you and tentacles covering his body as if he was a wounded animal. 
He had ended up destroying a few knick knacks around the house, a chair and a few photo frames while you attempted to chase after him in effort to clean his wound while he ran away like a puppy avoiding a bath. Obviously he knew you weren’t dangerous enough to try and hurt but...it seemed his pain tolerance was...extremely low. 
Eventually you had gotten him to behave and sit down, as he glared at the floor, marks glowing yellow as you felt him wince and jolt with every dab of the wipe, “Friend.” he mumbled with gritted teeth before he spoke in his native tongue, something you assumed was probably not so nice at you. 
“The feeling is mutual pal.” You muttered, not knowing what he said but knowing, deep in your heart, your feelings were most definitely the same to one another. He did little to resist your touch afterwards, eyes furrowing as he watched you carefully bandage his wound, occasionally he’d poke- not at the wound but the bandage, his fingers would pinch the material and he’d cock his head as if examining it. 
“Have…” You frowned a little as you tilted your head, gaining his attention, “Have you never been to Earth?” You were going to be extremely upset if you woke up in twelve hours and Jimin told you that you were on an extreme LSD trip and you just imagined a really hot alien in your head. 
His eyes lit up in the same way they had earlier, “Earth?” He raised his brows, lips parting before he suddenly looked around again, “Earth!?” He suddenly cried out as he stood up, looking around before going to the window and peaking out of the blinds, “Earth…” He suddenly spoke in his native tongue once more as he ran a hand through his hair before turning to face you, “....Human…?” He had said something else you couldn’t understand besides the singular word. 
“Yes…?” You nodded making him almost whine as he grabbed his head, as if in disappointment, you offered a weak smile. You supposed if you were an alien that had seen galaxies beyond imagination you’d be pretty disappointed at seeing Earth too. 
He sighed as he frowned, looking around the apartment before straightening back up as he looked at you, pointing to himself as he spoke, “JK.” 
You blinked a few times, unresponsive as you frowned, “What…?” Your face scrunched as he bounced a little, repeating the two letters once more as he pointed to himself somewhat harsher, your brows raising before your lips parted, “Oh…! You’re JK! That’s your name?” You gave a smile as you nodded.
His smile was like a child as his fists curled up as he nodded rapidly, not understanding a word you said but it looked as if you understood, “Y/n.” You slowly prounicated your name as you pointed at yourself. 
JK had attempted to say your name, multiple times actually, but his brows pinched in frustration, having a hard time with it, but oddly enough it was quite endearing to watch him repeatedly try and say your name, even after you have found yourself on your phone, typing in the nearest place to eat while trying to figure out how to break it to Seokjin that an alien would be boarding with you guys for awhile.
What else were you supposed to do…? Call the police? You looked at JK with a frown, he seemed oddly innocent and you’d feel guilty doing that to him, his brows pinched as he fumbled over your name once again as he puffed a breath in frustration, the marks on his arms glowing a deep hue of light orange. 
“JK.” His gaze snapped to yours as he tilted his head, you offered a dull smile as you spoke carefully, “Eat?” You pointed to your mouth before stomach, JK rubbed his head briefly mirroring you as he rubbed his stomach a little confused. You hummed as you searched around before finding a leftover candybar on the coffee table, “Eat.” You pointed at it before taking a bite. 
“Eat.” JK had an easy time saying that word with a nod before he suddenly seemed excited, bouncing his spot as he nodded wildly, “Eat! Y/n…!” His nose suddenly scrunched at messing up your name again. 
His attention was brought back to you at the sound of you giggling at how cute he really was for someone that nearly killed you twice within the last hour, “Yeah, it’s almost dinner time, we should get something to eat, I’m starved and Seokjin banned me from the kitchen.” You gestured to him to follow you as he cocked his head, not understanding a word you were saying. 
You pulled one of Seokjin’s hoodies from his laundry basket as he handed it to JK who frowned, looking at his own clothes before back at you, as if silently asking why he needed to change. No nevermind the fact he glowed like a fucking lava lamp, “Hide.” You pointed at his arms as he frowned, looking down at them. 
“Hide!” You emphasized as you pointed towards your own arm then to his before it suddenly clicked as he nodded, sighing as he spoke in his own tongue the throat sound of something like mild disappointment and you could understand, but it was necessary. 
JK all of a sudden pulled the shirt over his head nearly making you scream, the sight of compact muscles and tan skin that almost had an iridescent sheen glowed, your body suddenly feeling extremely warm as JK fumbled a little confused. 
He frowned as he tilted his head, why were you covering your eyes? He looked down at himself before back at you, was....was he not supposed to change right here? He pulled the sweatshirt over his head, saying something that made you pick up in relief to see he was changed. 
You grabbed your chest as you groaned, “Don’t do that again.” You were in too much a dry patch and desperation to be alone with an alien that had tentacles and a face like that. 
Now with his marks being covered you just needed something for his hands...You frowned a little before something occurred to you, going over to Jimin’s gym bag you grabbed the finger clothes he always used to lift barbells with. 
His fault he was a pussy that didn’t want to get callouses. 
You handed them to Jk as he tilted his head, first examining the fabric before he slipped them on, looking at them as he snorted as if amused before saying something that sounded an awful lot like he enjoyed wearing these. 
“Eat, now.” He perked up at your words as you nodded and he excitedly followed you as you grabbed your bag and phone before exiting the apartment building. JK was beyond fascination, looking around as if he had never seen anything like this place, even going so far as to wonder off a few times, immediately making you hold his hand once more to keep him next to you. 
Other people also stared at him, but mainly because he was acting weird, you shoved him a little and he seemed to understand to stop. 
But he still took a few peaks before his feet halted, making you nearly yanked back as he stopped, his lips parted and his eyes were all big and doe like in awe as he stared out over the sunset, speaking once more and you frowned. You wished you could at least pick up a few words of his own language, JK was honestly impressive in picking up so much in so little time. 
You smiled a little at how fond he appeared to be looking out over the sunset before you tugged his hand which was still in yours, he looked down at you before pointing towards the sun as you nodded, “Yeah it’s pretty, but let’s go eat, I’m starving.” 
“Pretty.” He repeated before looking back out over the sun as he repeated the word again as you tugged him along. Entering the Panda Express it was nearly empty given it was six o’clock already and the dinner rush had left but that was good, you weren’t sure you could control JK in this type of environment. 
JK only observed you as you ordered for the both of you, watch the mouth watering food slide down the servers before you paid for your meal, leading you both to sit the back of the store where glass paneling was up for JK to keep looking at the sunset as you set his box in front of him. 
Fried rice and orange chicken was never a bad combo for the first time eater. JK observed you as you held up your fork, plowing into your food as you sighed in contentment before a noise of amusement escaped you at the sight of JK pinching his brows as he struggled with holding his fork. 
His eyes darting to you as his lips parted a whine escaping him as he messed up your name again making you laugh even harder, you waved a hand before you set down your fork, leaning over the table as you spoke, “Okay fine, fine, no need to get so pouty. Here, you just...place them like this.” You fixed his long thick fingers that fumbled a little before they properly gripped the fork. 
“Okay? Like this.” You held up your own before scooping up a pile of rice with it, Jk mirrored you, puffing a breath in slight frustration at the sight of the rice falling from his fork a little, “If you’re mad about this I guess it’s a good thing i didn’t get us chopsticks.” You snorted as JK focused on his food. 
You watched in curiosity as he took his first bite, his brows furrowing for a moment and his held tilting as if he was heavily focused on how it felt in his mouth before his brows shot up and almost immediately began scooping more food into his mouth like he was a fucking starved man held captive. You were surprised at how fast he was devouring his food but you only smiled softly as you began eating as well, enjoying the rest of your meal in silence. 
JK had even ate the rest of your food once you were finished, you just sat there in your seat, your knee hiked up towards your chest while you ran a hand through your hair absentmindedly while watching him devour the rest of the food. 
“Good?” You called out, JK’s eyes finally leaving your box of food, rice sticking to his upper lip making you smile a little as he rapidly nodded, looking like he was drunk off fried rice and orange chicken, probably not even paying attention to what you said. 
By the time JK was finished he slumped in his seat, stretching out as a yawn escaped his lips, his eyes closing briefly before he sighed, looking out over the glass paneling as if something troubled him before his eyes darted back to your figure and back to the window.
You wished you could speak fluently in whatever language he spoke so you could ask what he was thinking about, once all of the innocence had melted off his expression in those child-like moments of glee, he was left like this, as if he was tired and maybe even lonely. 
How did he even get here? And did he need to get back? To where he was originally going? You thought back to his disappointment when he realized he was on Earth, and if you could stretch for a reach, you’d say he obviously had another location in mind before...whatever happened. 
“Hey,” you called out, drawing his attention as he raised his brows, “Home.” 
He tilted his head as he echoed the word, “Home?” You stood up as you nodded with a small smile, knowing damn well you wouldn’t be able to avoid Seokjin forever. 
JK stood up mirroring you before you guided him to where you threw your boxes away and he had even helped clean up the table before you both exited the shop, it was now dark out and the walk home was quiet as ever. But you enjoyed it, his company at least, you didn’t really have a lot of friends outside Jimin and Seokjin, who were your best friends since middle school and you all now split rent on an apartment close to campus. 
You opened the door, peeping in as JK stood there mildly confused, Jimin and Seokjin sat on the couch watching a movie much to your disappointment, opening the door fully you pressed a finger to your lips at JK as he tilted his head before you quietly shut the door. Grabbing his hand as you gently tugged it along. 
“Where in the absolute fuck do you think you’re taking him you horny fool?” 
God dammit. 
You grabbed your head with a groan as JK frowned, almost immediately concerned as he looked around, Seokjin stood up with his arms crossed, “He told me all about the goo monster here.” 
“He’s not a monster!” You screeched making Seokjin snort as he raised a brow, “...He’s an alien.” 
“Wearing MY sweatshirt!? That’s balenciaga!” Seokjin cried out, pointing an accusing finger at JK who looked a little concerned, looking at Seokjin then at you who he shuffled a little behind like a puppy with a tail between his legs. 
You felt an immediate wave of protection come over you at the sight of the action as you stood in front of him, despite him towering over you, “Would you stop! I’ll get him clothes tomorrow! Just leave him alone, okay, he’s hurt, he doesn't know anything about Earth and he just…!” 
“He’s not a dog Y/n!” You pressed your lips together as you looked away from Seokjin who glared at you pointedly, “We don’t know what this thing is or his intentions.” 
It was difficult to imagine JK’s intentions being anything but good when he was delighted at finding out your bed was bouncy, or the take of friend rice and orange chicken, or his excitement at the sunset, “He isn’t here to kill us! I can promise you that...just!” You squeezed your fists as you sighed, “Just trust me, okay? He’ll stay in my room and i’ll get everything he needs.” 
“Until what!?” Seokjin shouted at the lunacy of your words and you understood, it wasn’t everyday someone stumbled across an unconscious alien in a ditch, “Until what Y/n!?” 
“Until he’s able to speak enough English for us to know what the fuck he’s doing here, hell if I know Seok!?” You raised your arms, you...you hadn’t thought about his words yet, admittedly, “He just needs somewhere to stay until he understands more about Earth and how it works here okay? Listen…” You shuffled in your spot as you sighed, “The moment he poses a threat….i’ll deal with it okay? We can call the police or whatever and report it, but he’s been docile the whole time…” Okay that was a stretched truth but what they didn’t know wouldn’t kill them. 
“Jesus christ,” Seokjin groaned as he collapsed back on the couch as he sighed, “...Fine, just make him use Jimin’s sweatpants.” 
“Hey! I didn’t consent to this!” Jimin whined who had been admittedly just sitting back and enjoying the fight between you both as he almost always did, serves the hoe right. 
You said no more not wanting to push things further as you grabbed JK’s hand once more guiding him down the hallway as you pushed the door to your room open, his eyes lit up a little at the familiar sight, hurriedly he went to the bed as he bounced on his as he laid down, burying into your blankets and pillows with a content sigh as if he had been aching to lay down all day. 
You felt a little bad at the sight knowing you should’ve probably let him rest sooner, choosing to sit down on the floor you opened up your laptop before you began working on the paper that was due by tomorrow afternoon that you had chosen to ignore since you had came across JK this morning. 
By the time it was late night JK had been in a deep sleep, obviously deducing that humans weren’t that dangerous of a species to keep himself awake over. You yawned yourself as you shut your laptop, rubbing your eyes before you looked at your bed, frowning as you sighed. Grabbing the pillow that had fallen off the side of the bed as you laid on the ground. You had slept in worst places before. 
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You sighed in contentment as you rolled over on the nice soft surface, warmth filling you and sleep had been particularly forgiving to you last night. Man what had been so forgiving today to let you sleep this good?
The memories of yesterday had filtered to your mind too quickly making your eyes snap open, you had fell asleep on the floor how did you get in bed!? You searched frantically for the puppy like alien who was absent from where he had been collapsed here last night.
Fuck this better have not been that bad LSD trip! It would have you fucked for months that Jimin would really let you believe there was a hot alien guy you made up in your head. You quickly padded down the hallway almost frantically before your eyes were met with three heads of hair on the couch. 
“Die! Die!” Your mouth moved multiple times but you couldn’t form a single coherent sentence at the sound of JK’s nose wrinkling and buttons being mashed as the three boys were sitting with controllers in hand. 
“Which one of you fuckheads taught him that word!?” You growled finally, knowing JK was your age and probably even hundreds of years old depending on how his species aged and he understood the concept of killing but shit! You didn’t like hearing him say it like that when he seemed so naive and innocent about everything else on Earth. 
Seokjin and Jimin both whipped around sheepishly at the same time before they started immediately blaming one another as you gritted your teeth. You would’ve continued to glare at them both if it not been for JK’s cheeriful voice, he had immediately perked at the sound of before hurrying over, “Y/n!” His pronunciation had gotten better and it was difficult to not smile at the triumph in his voice as if knowing he had improved before stating your name again, “Game…!” He pointed at the TV before his controller. 
You nodded, “I can see that…so I guess he’s suddenly not a threat anymore?” You sneered at both of your bestfriends, JK frowned a little as he looked between you three, obviously confused as to what was going on. 
Seokjin looked mild, pretending as if he hadn’t heard what you said, prideful bitch, “He’s okay. Better at Jimin in Overwatch if you can believe it, maybe I’ll just let him be my duo instead.” 
“Hey fuck off!” Jimin glared at him, brushing his shoulder in somewhat offense before he spoke, “He is good though, wouldn’t stop saying your name this morning though.” 
“He couldn’t say it yesterday,” You explained before turning to JK again, offering him a weak smile, “Play.” You pointed at the TV in encouragement, who were you to tell the man what to do? You just rolled out of bed and needed something to eat before you interacted anymore with those two idiots. 
JK looked excited as he ran back over to the couch before he spoke, “Play! Y/n play!” Your lips parted at the way he strung the two words together so easily, he was catching onto the language...fast...like extremely fast. His species was obviously intellect enough that this was a skill of theirs, or so you assumed for him at least. 
“No play. Eat.” You pointed at yourself before the tiny kitchen as you walked away hearing a noise that sounded like a whine from him. 
“Hey you're making breakfast for all of us right?” Jimin called out, making you glare him down and if lazerbeams could shoot from your eyes he’d be a pile of ash, he held out his arms as he spoke, “Damn fine, so much for sharing is caring in this household huh.” 
You rubbed your eyes ignoring him as you yawned, immediately making a cup of coffee before turning to the fridge only to jump at the tall boy standing in front of you peering down wide eyed and curious, “Eat.” He said singularly before he offered the world's cutest smile that you couldn’t begrudge as easily as you could Jimin. 
Fuck! He was asking you to cook for him and he had a cute almost bunny-like smile and he looked so endured and hoping you would make him something as good as Panda Express, which there was no way you could but jesus you were willing to try. 
“Breakfast,” You pronounced slowly, knowing this was a bit of a harder word for him as he tilted his head and repeated ‘Eat’ once more before you shook your head, “Eat, breakfast.” You tapped the clock on the stove that ticked away, showing it was ten in the morning. 
JK only rubbed his head in confusion before shrugging, he sat patiently in the stool at the counter as he happily watched you cook away. You didn’t make anything too fancy, just breakfast sandwiches for you both before you set his plate down in front of him, a happy smile on his face as his nose crinkled. 
Not even hesitating before he dug into the meal which you had purposely made him two given how big of an appetite the man had, something akin to pride swelled in your chest though at the sight of JK nearly devouring the sandwiches happily, Jimin stepped into the kitchen looking offended as he sputtered, “Oh so you’ll make breakfast for the hoe that can hardly speak but you won’t for your best friend, I see how it is. Is it because you know I won’t fuck you and he probably will?” 
“Shut up!” You hissed immediately, unable to even enjoy your own food because of your head ass best friend who only smiled viciously at how flustered you were. JK was naively munching on his food not understanding a single word either of you were saying and not caring either when his face was stuffed with food. 
 Seokjin entered the kitchen making himself something to eat as well, “Hey, are you guys going to that party tonight at Beta Tau?” He tilted his head as your nose immediately wrinkled, you used to do frat parties back when you were a freshman but since then you just couldn’t keep the high pace anymore or the sleazy guys. 
“I’m going!” Jimin called out, before tapping his chin as he looked towards JK before you, “Hey, we should bring JK along, give him some good socialization!” 
“Uh no, that’s a horrible idea,” You shook your head immediately, “And I never said I was going either, and if I don’t go he’s definitely not going.” JK tilted his head in curiosity, knowing his name had been brought up before he between you both. 
“Boo you whore,” Jimin tossed a piece of bagel at you as you dodged it, his nose wrinkling as he pointed his butterknife at you, “You’ve just been nursing your wounds ever since Mark dumped you. You know it’ll be good for you and him.” 
“I am not nursing wounds!” You hissed out, feeling like a black rain cloud was piling over your head as you crossed your arms, “And it is a bad idea, JK hardly knows anything about Earth, taking him to a frat party is like tossing a baby into the ocean.” 
“Umm all I hear is bullshit babe,” Jimin scoffed as he rolled his eyes, “Besides, a little party never hurt anyone, it’s our job to show off what Humans are capable of after all.”
“At a frat party…?” You frowned as you sighed. 
“He’s not a baby Y/n,” Seokjin frowned as he looked between you both, “Just because he can’t speak english and he’s unfamiliar with how we live doesn’t mean he isn’t intelligent, i’m sure they have parties where he’s from. If this is about Mark that’s kinda selfish to hold him back.” 
You weren’t…! You weren’t babying him! And this wasn’t about Mark! You just…! You weren’t in the mood to see him, especially attached to Lisa, who you had already thought was hot as it was but instead of going for you she went for your boyfriend and now they were together, 
It had been a pretty big blow to your ego. 
“Fuck fine! We can go what the fuck ever. I have to go get him clothes today though if you don’t want him bumming off you guys though.” Jungkook was still wearing his clothes from yesterday and he didn’t look the least bit concerned though he watched you guys curiously. 
Jimin pumps his fists in victory as he shoved the bagel in his mouth, “You guys do that then, it’ll be a good bonding session, anyways I have a lecture I’m already late for peace.” He threw up a peace sign before quickly exiting as you huffed, you thought it was weird he was here at 10am on a friday morning. 
“Bond?” JK perked up looking at you in excitement as your brows furrowed a little, how could he pick up random words so fast? Jesus, he’d be enrolling in college just to see what it was about within the weeks if he didn’t chill out. 
“Something like that,” You muttered, “Finish your food though,” You gestured to his sandwich before you picked up your own taking a bite, “I need a shower first but afterwards we can go out and get you some new clothes.” 
JK frowned as he looked down at his clothes once more, obviously slowly beginning to understand you more and more as his lips jutted a little, clearly he liked his clothing he was wearing. 
Maybe they just didn’t change clothes where he was from? It was difficult to say, regardless you shook your head finishing up before you went to your room. JK followed you around like a lost puppy as he had finished eating before you. 
You had paused at the door to the bathroom as you frowned, JK looking as if he’d totally come in if you’d let him, “Go play.” You pointed towards the living room where Seokjin had resumed Overwatch. 
JK frowned as he looked between the living room and you, “Bond.” He pointed at you making your pupils widen a little, what was that supposed to mean? He shuffled a little more, nearly chest to chest with you as you craned your head to look at him, jesus he had to be 6’3 in the average pool of 5’9 men, “Bond.” He said more firmly. 
“No.” You shook your head, your smile became awkward and your body movement became flustered, what was he talking about, “You are gonna go play with Seokjin.” You pressed a hand on his chest, pushing him back a little, his lips quivering a little and hurt in his eyes as he looked down at your face as if in search, “And I’m gonna go shower.” 
You couldn’t stand to look at it any longer before you quickly shut the door, locking it as you groaned, pressing your back against the door. Why did he have to look at you like that…?
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“JK! Stop wandering off,” You lowered your voice a little as you tugged him along, your hand in his again as he had been exploring the store, “We’re here for clothes,” You held up the hanger you had in your hands as he frowned. He had been moping ever since you wouldn’t let him shower with you this morning. 
Or whatever his intention was. Regardless it didn’t change the fact that he needed clothes and despite being poor you were willing to throw out some money for him, but only because he was so cute. 
“Come on, let’s go to the dressing rooms, my arms are getting tired.” You tugged JK along who only pouted, obviously wanting to explore more than get things, but this was kind of a necessity. You gently pushed him into the dressing room, handing him the clothes as he frowned, his eyes looking down at the clothes then at you. 
Sighing you groaned, stepping into the small room with him before shutting the door, it wasn’t too cramped but you were uncomfortably close with him, “Okay….umm you obviously don’t understand the concept of trying on clothes so…” You flailed a little before tugging on his sweatshirt, he frowned before his eyes brightened a little. 
Understanding the message he pulled the sweatshirt over his head, your face immediately heating as you tried to not ogle his sculpted body which was muscular but slim, his shoulders broad but it suited his delicate small waist. 
You now had a good view of the marks that ran up his arms, they curved into a crescent at his hands and ran all the way along his arms, up his shoulders before curving to his back. You had changed his bandages this morning after you got out of the shower and admittedly they had healed a lot faster then you had assumed they would. 
 Whatever thoughts about his wounds however left your head as you nearly squeaked at the sight of tentacles immediately protruding from his back. Four to be exact, they were of a clear substance for the most part until your eyes followed further to their base where you noticed it matched the glow of his marks. 
A subtle pink and JK’s eyes a little bashful as he mumbled, “Bond…” His tentacles stretched forward a little as if in search for you before you squirmed towards the wall, trying your best to not let your horniness get the best of you in this situation. 
“U-ummm if you’re asking me to marry you the answer is gonna be no.” You held out the shirt in front of you to act as a semi shield to his advancement. Despite the language and cultural barrier JK seemed to understand your rejection as his lips quivered, his eyes dimming as he lowered them in acceptance. 
The tentacles immediately retracting back into his back as delicately took the hanger from you, fumbling to get it off and wow, way to make you feel like a dick. He wouldn’t even look at you as you sighed, relaxing a little as you grabbed the hanger pulling it off for him, “I’m gonna just let you do your business in here if you understand.” 
You exited as you grabbed your face, why did you feel so bad for rejecting him? You groaned as you leaned against the wall opposite of his room. Probably because you didn’t fully understand what he was trying to do if you could just speak the same language, and understand why he was here, maybe you wouldn’t have felt so bad. 
Seokjin kept saying he wasn’t a baby but...he was just so clueless as to how Earth worked, you couldn’t help it....You sighed as you rubbed your face, you just wished things could be easier. You had an afternoon lecture you needed to go to and you weren’t sure how JK would fair on his own and it admittedly gave you anxiety just thinking about it. 
He was curious by nature and you wouldn’t have a doubt he’d get bored easily just stuffed in your little apartment. JK opened the door to the dressing room, his gaze still cast on the ground as he handed the stuff back to you and you could only assume they all fit. You made sure they did because they were all at least two sizes too big for him but hey, they had to be comfy at least. 
Neither of you spoke as you paid for his things, holding the bags as you began walking back home, you didn’t like how quiet it was between you both and JK didn’t wander off not once as he let out what sounded like a sad sigh, his eyes looking up towards the sky as he mumbled something in his own language before back towards the ground. 
You felt like you kicked a puppy. 
You set his things down on the table as you looked towards the clock, you needed to get ready for class and honestly, you were gonna treat yourself to some starbucks after all this crap, “JK,” He peered up at you a little before his gaze became downcast, not looking at you but you knew he was listening, “I have to go to class…” You pointed to yourself, “You...need to stay...home.” You worded it carefully, his lips trembling now and you weren’t sure if he was going to cry or not, “I’ll be back!” You rushed, hurrying to the couch where he sat as you grabbed a remote. 
Pulling up Netflix as you shuffled around, deciding to put on a documentary for him on the ocean to keep him busy, maybe his language would improve meanwhile or...or he’d learn something, hell if you knew. 
JK frowned, sighing as he lowered his gaze in acceptance, reaching out you sighed, grabbing his face to make him look at you, “I’ll be back.” You spoke, your thumbs tethering over his skin which felt so soft and subtle, almost even more soft than any other person you had ever met, the glow of the TV made that iridescent tone reflect just a little. 
He really was the prettiest thing you had ever set your eyes on. 
He said nothing before you gave his face a little squeeze before letting him go, pressing play on the TV as he turned to watch, his expression slowly melted from sadness to that curious expression as he tilted his head, a purple glow from the crescents on his hands as he watched in fascination. 
You smiled a little before you grabbed your bags and slowly closed the door. You’d just hope he could figure out how to use the remote if he wanted to watch something else. 
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Class was slow and you couldn’t help but wonder what JK was doing the whole time much to your frustration, you needed to focus on taking notes as midterms were coming up and you would absolutely fail if you didn’t pay attention. 
The whole class dragged on for two hours and in order to try and do damage control for your lack of attention you ended up going to the library to study more and make flashcards as you had originally planned before your life fell apart due to an alien binging on netflix back at home. 
You eventually got a peace of mind when you pushed your earbuds in and put on music to help you focus. Proud of your work you leaned back in your chair as you sighed in contentment before your eyes finally landed on your phone, not thinking much before your eyes nearly popped out of your head. It was almost seven in the afternoon! Fuck! You’d be leaving within the hour to get to the frat. 
Shoving all of your shit back into your bag you hurriedly zipped up before running out of the library, fumbling the whole way home before you entered the house in a rush. Much to your surprise though Seokjin and Jimin were already ready and JK looked happy to be around them both. 
What you didn’t expect for what you had bought him to look so good, he was wearing a fitted shirt and jeans, Jimin must’ve let him borrow his leather jacket and those fingerless clothes adorned his hands, “Hey hold still!” Seokjin spoke as he kept combing his hair, obviously styling it up, “I should’ve gone into cosmetology for being this good at turning trash to gold.” 
“Not everyone wants to look like Tinky Winky on steroids Seok.” You called out as you plopped your bag down in the ‘study corner’ which you and Jimin invented as a way to justify your laziness and Seokjin had said you both were on thin ice but he’d allow it because he also was lazy. 
Seokjin whipped around, those bratz lips of his parting in offense as you shrugged, holding up your hands, not about to apologize for the healthy dose of truth he needed at least once a day. 
“Y/n!” JK cried out, immediately running over to you making Seokjin groan as he grabbed your shoulders, frantically checking over you as if making sure you weren’t hurt. You frowned as you looked down at yourself. 
“I think he was worried about you.” Jimin was licking a drumstick at the moment while sitting on the handle of the couch, “He wouldn’t stop saying your name when I first got in and he looked like a scared puppy. Had to convince him that it was not a good idea to go look for you like he first suggested.” 
“Suggested?” You frowned as you looked back up at the tall boy who immediately cupped your face making you squirm a little, perhaps startled and a little touch starved, “Umm I told you I’d be back…” Not surprised he didn’t understand you but still. 
You gently grabbed his wrists, tugging them away from your face as you smiled awkwardly, trying to not think about the fact that this man looked even hotter then before, if that was even possible, “I need to go get dressed.” 
“Nope, nu uh, I’m not finished with you.” JK was yanked back with a whine as Seokjin grabbed him by the collar as he had attempted to follow you, much to your relief because you didn’t need another episode of earlier today. 
You didn’t take too long to get dressed, choosing to stay casual as you typically would given you didn’t plan of staying long and hey, if all hell broke lose maybe you’d get yourself and JK mcdonalds on the way back. 
Pulling the flannel over your shoulders you stepped out of your room, Jimin incessantly jingling his keys as he spoke, “You took too long, we’re gonna be late!” 
“You’re late everywhere we go you whore.” You rolled your eyes, grabbing JK’s hand as you all left the apartment, he still seemed a bit confused as to where you all were going but had no complaints as you both sat together in the back of the car which he inspected.
Pressing the button on top of the ceiling only to immediately squint with a whine at the light, you pressed it again turning it off as you looked at him, “Stop touching things.” He pouted a little, choosing to grab your hand as he mumbled something in his own language. 
The ride was short and you couldn’t stop dreading what might possibly happen at the party, one scared with JK and it was over, the police would get involved and they would take him off to some lab where he could get tested and poked and prodded and the idea was upsetting to think about. JK hadn’t been here for more then a day and somehow you decided taking him to a party was a good idea? 
You crumpled in your seat, looking outside the window as you watched the party rage on in the house. Of course you wanted to avoid your ex but that wasn’t your main worry for the night. Opening the door you stepped out, JK quickly following after you as you called out, “JK...stay with me okay?” 
He nodded though you weren’t quite sure if he understood, regardless he seemed happy enough to hold your hand as the three of you entered, the music was blaring and the crowd was big tonight given it was a friday and everyone could cut loose. Not the wildest you had seen but certainly not the smallest. You looked at JK in concern but much to your surprise he only looked around in curiosity as he nodded, “Party?” He asked as he raised his brows. 
You nodded, “Yeah, it’s a party.” You called back over the music, looking around for somewhere a little more quiet but Jimin cut in, grabbing JK’s arm, “Hey, we’re playing beerpong and I need to know if he has good aim.” 
JK was immediately tugged from you as you glared at Jimin his smile cheeky, “Chill, he’ll be fine, looks like he’s used to this kind of scene. Maybe he’s a space fuckboy. We’ll watch him go relax.” JK looked back at you mildly concerned but you gave him a reassuring smile as you nodded, despite not fully agreeing with it. 
Could JK even drink? You felt stressed but then again you did pour rubbing alcohol all over a wound that could have reacted like acid to him, you supposed if he knew something was dangerous he would avoid it, or so you could only hope. 
“Bitch! Why haven’t you been answering my messages!?” You jumped at the sight of the blond looking ready to mow you over, Solar’s heels clicked against the ground as she nearly ran for blood at the sight of you. 
Cowering a little your lips twisted into a sheepish smile, your best friend glaring down at you and a pout adorning her lips, you hadn’t meant to ignore her texts the whole day but other things had obviously taken precedent. Should you tell her? 
“It better be for a good reason.” She pointed at you accusingly before you made your way to the buildable table set out with drinks on it, purposely avoiding the jungle juice you knew for a fact probably had that shitty bang energy in as you grabbed a bottle of benchmark, sure it was cheap and tasted like shit but didn’t that sum up your whole personality?
“Well…” You took a breath, your expression contorting a little as you looked up at Solar who waiting expectantly, why the fuck not? If anyone could keep a secret it was her- hence her promise to Kim Jenny in 5th grade that she wouldn’t tell you that she liked the same boy and ended up helping her ask him out. 
Which you only found out about last year in a drunk truth or dare session and you marked your own words that the next time you saw Jenny you'd slap her across the face. Which you ended up not, instead you were still drunk and ended up crying with her because her dog had died earlier that day. 
Still, the principle remained, Solar would keep it a secret. Taking a long chug of the mixed drink a warm burn settled in your throat, “I discovered an alien and- he has tentacles that literally fucking explode from his back.” 
Solar nearly snorted out her drink as she began laughing, “Girl you watch too much hentai. Seriously, what’s up?” Her laughing died down before an uncomfortable silence sat between you both, your lips quivered only a little as you looked up at her, her expression immediately dropping, “You’re joking…” 
“I wish I was Sol…” You took another long drink. 
“You’re joking!” She shouted, her lips dropping, “Okay no, tell me everything! Where is it? What does it look like? You better not be pranking me right now…!” 
You waved a hand, walking as she quickly followed as you recalled the events of how you found JK and what had ensued in the last 24 hours before you paused at the beerpong table, pointing at JK. Your face warm at the sight of a cocky smirk on his face, obviously his team winning as he landed yet another shot assuming by the sound of the other teams groan. 
“That...Y/n…” She turned to you deflating a little at the sight of him, obviously hoping for something a little more...alien like, “You’re such an ass!” 
“He is! You just can’t see the shitty avatar cosplay beneath all the clothes! He does have tentacles again, by the way...I am not crazy!” You grabbed your chest in offense, “You wanna know what I’ve been doing the last 24 hours, there it is! Trying to figure out what to do with an alien that keeps trying to bone me.” 
“Bone you?” Solar raised her brows before she scoffed a little, her brows raised as she took a sip from her cup, “Thought being a monster fucker was always your thing?” You shoved her a little, making her snort in amusement, again, if you could just figure out what his motive was and...maybe have a decent conversation, “Let's say he is an alien...not that I believe you but let's say he is...what are you gonna do about it? I mean really….?” 
You rubbed your head as you frowned, “Well...I don’t know.” you confessed with an awkward expression as she sighed, “I just…! I’m assuming he probably has his own plan…! But generally I’m hoping as he learned english- which is extremely fast by the way- that he’ll eventually tell us what happened and where to go from here I mean…” 
You frowned a little, something sad stirring inside you, there was nothing holding JK back from just leaving you all one night when he’s found what he needs, or figures out where to go or...whatever it is he’s doing here, “If he even stays here long enough…” 
Solar hummed before tapping her cheek, “That’s it, I’m playing against him, he hasn’t missed a single shot.” You tried to call out to her but it was useless, when Solar was determined, nothing would stop her.
You sighed as you turned away, feeling too much anxiety from watching JK to try and come in further especially if he caught sight of you. JK surprisingly enough seemed as though he had fun a lot of the night, you had stayed curled up in a corner on your phone most of the time brooding while nursing your drink which had admittedly helped you relax a little. 
Eventually though, good times always come to an end, this being no exception, “Hey babe, long time no see?” You stared down at your phone, scrolling through instagram as you ignored the sound of Mark’s voice, “Awwh c’mon, don’t ignore me.” 
You inhaled sharply, closing your eyes before you put away your phone, looking up at him as you raised a brow trying to ignore your heart racing just a hair, “Can I help you?” You asked, trying to act as if this totally wasn’t freaking you the fuck out. 
“You sure can,” Mark flirted, sending you that wink that was the very reason you had spun out in the first place with this guy and god you couldn’t deny his flirty nature always got the best of you, “Me and Lisa were hoping for a third in bed tonight and I thought, what girl would be better than my main girl.” 
He smiled, delicately holding your chin with a proud look and for a half a second you had forgotten how much of a bitch he was, that was until your mind lingered on the word ‘main girl’ to which your lips curled slowly, “...Main girl?” You scoffed immediately slapping his hand away as you shouted, “Main girl!? Since when was I the main girl!?” You watched Mark groan as you shook your head, “Uh no! You came up to me! You don’t get to act like this and you were the one that left me in the first place, why don’t you go back to your main girl!” 
“God you’re so over emotional-” You didn’t even let the little gaslighting fuck finish before you splashed him with your drink, a scoff escaping him as he raised his brows, “Are you fucking serious Y/n?” 
“Yeah, fuck you.” You shoved him before walking out of the kitchen, what a piece of shit! How dare he act all put out when he was the one that approached you, in a total douchebag way at that! You weren’t sure where everybody had went and at this point it was almost ten o’clock and you didn’t care! You just wanted to take a warm shower and go to bed!
You stepped down the stairs of the frat house and into the cool night as as you heaved a breath, scoffing as you rolled your eyes, this was exactly why you hated going to frat parties at Beta Tau now because you almost always ended up in an argument with Mark. 
Stupid little fuck. You muttered it to yourself as you wrapped the flannel around you, your eyes warily finding that of a drunk elderly man who definitely appeared in his forties, alone and his eyes immediately finding your lone figure. 
You kept your eyes on your phone as you slowly approached in hopes of walking past him, you hated parties, you hated going out at night, you hated the fact that you let yourself get so heated in the moment, “Well aren’t you just looking pretty tonight sweetheart.” You sighed in exasperation at the sound of his voice calling out to you.
“Thanks.” You offered dryly, not even attempting to smile because you knew it would just sound like that much more of an invitation to him and yet, even your singular dry word was enough of  a green light to him. 
A hand suddenly wrapped around your upperarm yanking you over as you squeaked out, “How about I take you back to my place? Show you a good time yeah?” He reeked of beer and your nose wrinkled as your expression twisted and your hands trembled. 
“Sir- I..I really need to get home…” You mumbled, not wanting to provoke him but your fear was getting the better of you by the second as you tried to keep yourself from panicking. You’ve never gone out tonight and you should’ve stood your ground regardless of who went were. 
His hands squeezed on your arms eliciting a noise of pain from you and you couldn’t even look at the guy as he growled, “Or I could go home with you sweetheart, or better yet. Why don’t we go over here…! Ow you bitch!” You had smashed his foot with your own but it wasn’t enough for him to let go of you. 
Instead his grip only got tighter making you cry out in pain as your eyes stung with tears, wishing he could just let you go...Within seconds though the man was nearly ripped away from you and a larger figure had wedged between you both, “Leave.” It was a one word command that was clear and demanding from JK, you couldn’t see his face and you weren’t sure you wanted too. 
JK was shoved back from the guy and taking this as an offense, you nearly jumped back at the sight of tentacles bursting from his back, your eyes bulging at the sight, not a single rip in his clothes as if they were transparent yet a lightening of bright fiery ran streaked through him. Your lips nearly dropped though because they obviously weren’t too transparent as JK used them to slam the guy into a wall with enough force to drive him unconscious. 
“JK! Hey! Woah holy shit!” You grabbed your head, JK whipped around, anger still evident on his face but his concern had taken over as he called out your name, what he hadn’t expected as for you to drag him into the alleyway. 
Tentacles still gracefully flowing behind him as if they were underwater, your eyes darting everywhere and anywhere for anyone to have possibly seen and yet…! “Don’t you ever do that again!” You hissed, grabbing your head in stress, if anyone saw that…! Anyone it was over! “Someone could’ve see you!” 
JK might not have fully understood what you said, but he could understand a few words here and there and your tone of voice, his expression darkening and his lips twitching in anger and disagreement, “Hurt!” He growled back pointing at you. 
“I don’t care if I got hurt!” You cried out, running your hands through your hair, anxiety shot through your veins, “You can’t do that!” You pointed at his tentacles, “You aren't human! Humans can’t do that!”
“Hurt!” He growled even louder, now grabbing your forearms in demand, firm enough that you couldn’t pull away but gentle enough that it didn’t hurt, “Y/n hurt!” He emphasized as best he could, his nose wrinkling in frustration as he spoke, “Protect!” It was spoken a little word but you understood overall what he meant. 
“Yes you can protect me that’s fine! But you have to act human!” You pointed at yourself, shaking his arm away before forcefully rolling up his sleeve, the marks which were burning red, “Human!” You snapped as you pointed at your own bare arm compared to his, “Not human!” You pointed to JK’s, “You can’t be that careless!” 
You were just lucky that the guy was drunk and hopefully wouldn’t remember any of this, JK’s lips twitched as if he still didn’t agree with you, snapping something back in his own tongue as he roughly shoved his sleeve back down before he went on what sounded like a long rant, the tentacles retracting into his back once more as he threw his arms up and you stepped back a little. 
You had never heard him so...vocal...or angry before...Which you had brought on yourself, you understood he thought it was the right thing to do and it would’ve been fine had he not decided to get his four other tendons involved. You above anything else, didn’t want JK to be taken from you. JK kept going though in his tongue, directly all of his- what sounded like unpleasant words at you as you crossed your arms, looking at the ground with gritted teeth and ignoring the way your eyes were attempting to blur in tears. 
Even if you couldn’t understand him you were positive you didn’t like or agree with whatever he was saying. You fixed your flannel that had been ruffled from the man as you sniffled harshly, trying to ignore the wet warm tears that began trickling down your face. JK had paused from his rant before frowning, watching the liquid trickling down your face as you closed your eyes. 
Puffing a breath he sighed, figuring it wasn’t any use in trying to talk to you anyways, Orion tongue was beyond ancient to human civilization which is why he hadn’t bothered trying to say any sort of phrases in his own language. 
JK couldn’t stand seeing you like this, from what he observed on- if he assumed he was correct- the TV, humans often depicted this as sadness. Unable to stand this gesture JK did what he had watched, wrapping his arms around you in a form of human affection as he set his chin on top of your head, wetness staining his shirt and he held a silent victorious moment at your reciprocation to his affection. Trying to bond with you had been such a pain in the ass with the language barrier and you almost always looked uncomfortable any time he tried to initiate a bonding session. 
True the locations might have been inappropriate but he was excited, he wanted to find a mate and soon, after all that was part of the original plan, even if it wasn’t supposed to be on earth. You had mumbled something he couldn’t quite figure out until you had mentioned the word Home, as in the place you slept. JK nodded, assuming that was where you had intended on going in the first place. 
He had caught sight of you leaving the house extremely upset and he wanted to tag along in hope that maybe with some alone time at the house, you’d both finally be able to properly bond, he could feel his scaling warm a bit and he could even spot a tint of pink from beneath his gloves much to his embarrassment. 
Knowing this was a human affection JK kept his arm wrapped around you as you both walked home, your hands on your eyes as you sniffled a little and you hadn’t spoken the entire walk back making him a little sad. Your voice was soft and pleasant on his ears which often picked up too many odd and miscellaneous sounds. 
Pulling off your flannel you sighed, muttering something that he leaned in a little to focus on understanding, knowing it sounded something like an apology. JK only offered a small smile, “Friend?” He spoke softly, he liked that word, it was the first one you had taught him after all. 
You nodded, looking severely tired as you repeated the word back before padding to your room to get changed, little by little JK understood more and more about humanity on Earth which wasn’t exactly new, but rather...a bit archaic by Orionia’s standards.
JK had made sure to go into the room with the odd looking boat to change into clothes, knowing it always elicited an odd reaction from you whenever he changed in front of you. Getting into something more comfortable he could appreciate the human need for comfort. 
Feeling a bit timid he peeped into your room where you laid on your bed, looking half asleep but you gestured him in much to his excitement, understanding bonding wouldn’t likely happen now that you were too tired but he appreciated your company, you made things much easier for his stay on Earth. 
Pulling out your lap held device JK tilted his head, oh…! This was like the mainboard back on the ship, just a smaller version of it, a computer? But a lap verison? He furrowed his brows a little, the name on the tip of his tongue as his nose wrinkled. Much to his delight though you typed up the same place where he had been watching educational videos earlier today. 
He only hoped you’d stay this time, he had been extremely worried the Arbitrator's had found you, your friends however had said multiple times you were just at ‘Class’ whatever that was. And they seemed calm enough and if they knew your routine then...he had no reason to assume they were conspiring with the enemy. 
Much to his happiness you laid back down as you stretched out before curling up, your eyes closing as he clicked onto the video of the ocean, as he had learned Earth held quite the exotic lifeform in the sea. 
It was nearing 11:30 which you had pointed at the clock earlier today except now it was dark out, JK could only deduce there was certain names for eating at certain times of the day, he tapped on his chin, scrolling down the assortment of human entertainment. Wanting something to figure out how to win your affection to be his mate. A loud piercing screech nearly jolted him out of bed, holding his head as he frantically looked towards you before feeling relief fill him. If you couldn’t hear this then…! 
He fumbled as he hurried to the window, pushing through the blinds as he peered out, seeing a large flare being shot up into the sky in a deep hue of blue and purple, that acted as something he saw on a video. A firework, if he remembered correctly. JK perked up, Taehyung and Namjoon must be okay, this was what…? At least ten miles south, in human terms? He remembered that much from the academy. 
JK nearly ran out the door before he paused, his eyes looking over your sleeping figure he...he couldn't just leave you here...and…! He perked up, “Y/n!” He called out, jostling you awake as you rolled over with a groan, “Y/n! Home!” He spoke determined, if he could get you to go with him then he could explain everything. 
“What? JK seriously? This better be important.” You groaned as your eyes tiredly cracked opened at the sight of doe eyes looking at you urgently, he nearly ripping you out of bed with a squeak, “Home!” He spoke as he brought your shoes to you before pointing out the window, “Home!” 
...Oh...oh god, this was going to be a long night, wasn’t it…? 
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cipheress-to-k-pop · 3 years
Note
Hi, I absolutely adore your writing and it’s quite inspiring and making my imagination go WEEWOO!
Could I request something for YJ With Dick? So like a headcanon or one shot (which ever you prefer queen) where the reader is quite reserved, snarky and can get angry real fast. They have feelings for Rob and they are especially snarky to him to hide their feelings, but they eventually start to open up more and during the events of episode 24 (you know, the one at haly’s circus), they open up to him and they confess? And he does the same?
Flower Language
Pairing: Dick Grayson as Robin x Reader
Warnings: Blood and injuries and plant death.
Word Count: 3.8k words
A/N: This is kind of my take on the Hanahaki disease, kind of. This was so much fun to write honestly, I didn't realize I like all this floral stuff so much. It also reminded me of another 'True Love's Kiss' trope I wrote for Dick Grayson as well. Also I changed the episode this was based on because I’ve already done something based on the episode with Haly’s circus @hanbedumbaf I really really really hope you enjoy it! Sorry it was so late, I finished it a month back but it was in my queue.
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Adrenaline was a common feeling to you. A little too familiar. The life of a superhero puts you in peril more times than you would like but it was the only life you had known. You knew the familiar feeling of sweat forming on your skin and your heart pounding so loudly that you could hear it in every step you took.
However, when you heard the pounding, it was because there was a supervillain, usually hairy, chasing after you and determined to get your head on a stake.
Although, feeling your heart jump to your throat was becoming more familiar whenever you were around a certain someone. Robin annoyed you to no end, whenever he was around you couldn't help your face from growing warm and your lips from tingling to form a permanent smile on your face.
Having a crush was irritating, you couldn't think or even function without thinking of him. It was frankly humiliating, you were always so gung-ho about being bold and to the point and yet whenever you were around Boy Wonder, you couldn't help but bend your personality to something you felt like would appeal to him more.
Sometimes, you couldn't even stand yourself.
And so, as a pathetic act of rebellion, and maybe as a clear-cut sign that you had no idea how to handle emotions or anything similar to it, every time your heart got just a little soft, your tongue got a whole lot sharper. Probably not the best way to win a boy’s heart. But you weren't here for a romance story.
It was also a true sign that you had no idea how to flirt, thinking that borderline insulting witty banter was the way to go. Or perhaps it was a way of controlling your emotions, since being bitter and snarky was the thing that came easiest to you.
You seriously needed better tactics.
It was also your oblivious mistake thinking that Robin only saw what you wanted him to see. He was raised to be a detective, of course he was more observant than that. Papa (or let's be real, Alfred) didn't raise no fool.
You made the mistake of thinking Robin saw you as strong and independent and bold, just as the rest of them did. But he saw much more than that.
Robin was distressed by the number of crying faces around him, the kids were inconsolable which was understandable because of just how many things went wrong in the past couple of hours. To be quite frank, Robin was a couple seconds away from having a fit himself.
"Shh, little one," He heard distantly and his neck practically snapped. You were crouching in front of the few who were crying, with a small nurturing smile. It was the first time he had seen you out of uniform, usually referring to you as Antheia, named after the goddess of flowers, but this wasn't she.
"I know you're scared, my flowers, but I promise, we will find your parents." You soothed, gently wiping away their tears. They still looked up at you apprehensively and with uncertainty.
"I'll show you a magic trick." You began, grinning as the kids began to smile back at you. You pulled a seed out of your pocket and held it between closed hands, using a bit of your powers and felt it grow in your palms. When you revealed what you were holding, they collectively gasped.
A bud of a flower now rested in your hand. You smiled at their innocent eyes and held it to them, "Now I'm going to need your help for the next part. Everyone has to blow on the flower."
They nodded eagerly, crawling around you and on the count of three, everyone followed your instructions. And low and behold, the bud bloomed into a beautiful blossom right between your fingers.
One of the girls clamoured into your lap to hold the flower herself and you chuckled, wrapping your arms tightly around her, "You know what this flower means?"
They shook their heads, "It means faith, and hope. If you have faith and hope in us, then you'll get something beautiful in return."
For once, they look contemplatively and you chuckled, feeling pride at the fact that you managed to sow some wisdom in their minds. The girl that had been sitting in your lap turned in your grasp, with the flower in her hand and then reached up to tuck it behind your ear.
"For me?" She nodded happily and you smiled widely, kissing her cheek, "Thank you, petal."
Satisfied that you were able to calm them down, you gently placed the girl back on the floor before moving away from the group. Just as you were about to join the others, you ran into Robin. You didn't know he had just seen the whole thing.
Pulling the flower from behind your ear, you handed it to him, "You know in some cultures, this flower means to pick up the slack and stop looking like a confused chicken." You snapped.
Business as usual.
Robin looked back to the flower you had slipped into his hands, you had said it meant faith and hope, and you had given it to him. He looked back up to see you shuffling away from him quickly, a blush on your face. He smiled.
You were more nurturing and kinder than you let on, it was like it was programmed into your personality and yet you never showed it when you knew they were watching. That wasn't the only part of yourself that you were hesitant to show them.
And the more Robin observed you, the more he realized that you used flower language to depict a lot of your emotions. It was a silent way of letting them out, without having to tell other people what's really in your heart.
You thought you were sly about it, but nothing went under Robin's radar.
Everyone was watching a movie on the flat screen in the rec room. You hadn't realized you were so tired, the movie was boring, something that M'Gann had picked and you hadn't slept the night before, busy patrolling your city.
Your eyelids began to droop before you could even understand what was going on, your head lolling as you drifted in and out of consciousness.
Robin hadn't realized that he was napping through the movie until he felt a weight on his shoulder. He nearly jumped awake and glanced to his side to see you sound asleep, breathing gently. He nearly chuckled, was this what you looked like when you weren't scowling at everybody?
His heart skipped a beat, god, were you beautiful. The smell of flowers vaguely hit his nose and he noticed the red gardenia plant growing steadily in the corner of the room.
'Red Gardenias means a secret love,' Robin recalled from a book he had read, 'It's a secret way for someone to say I love you.'
He glanced back at you still sleeping peacefully, face completely relaxed and briefly wondered if your powers were taking the lead on your emotions and making gardenias grow around the cave. Or were you dreaming about something?
Something in his heart grew, here you were sleeping against his shoulder, making symbols of a secret love grow around the room. This had to be a sign of something, right?
Before he could contemplate it any further, you squirmed and then began to stir. Your eyes fluttered open, hazily taking in your surroundings before they landed on the boy beside you and widened in size, skin darkening with a blush.
"Why the fuck didn't you wake me up?" You snapped and turned on your heel to stomp out of the room without even waiting for a response from him. The others who noticed the way he was just staring at the place you were in surprise. You always do such a 180 when you're around him and conscious.
"Wow, sunshine's crabby in the morning." Wally commented from beside him. When he didn't get any response, he looked over to see Robin with a silly smile on his face.
Dick couldn't stop himself from grinning. The gardenias were still blooming.
***
"Antheia, do you think you will be able to stop the plants from growing any further?" Batman turned to face you, only to find you staring at him with a hazy, blank expression.
"Antheia?" Robin called but you didn't even flinch, your eyes were locked onto the holo-computer, seeing the thick vines that were twisting and turning. Their call was overwhelming, you could feel them grow even beneath your feet. It was like a siren was blearing through your head.
You couldn't tell what they were trying to say, it was like they were muffled. It was confused and lost, following Ivy and it was happy listening to her. And yet, it was feeling pain, the Justice League was busy pruning her as we speak. It was scared, crying out for someone to help them and you felt obligated to help. Your mind was getting heavy, throbbing with an oncoming migraine.
"(Y/N)!" Your eyes snapped open and focused onto the boy in front of you. Everyone was staring at you in concern and you blinked, suddenly not able to remember what the hell was going on. You were just trying to focus on something other than the screams and cries of the plant.
"......What?" You asked a little dumbly, noticing the concern on Robin's face. The plants were still crying. You couldn't get the painful sound of their screams out of your mind. You felt like curling up into a ball and crying.
"Batman asked if you would be able to stop the plants?"
"Oh, um, no." You answered in a distracted way that made his face pinch with worry. His hands were still grasping your shoulders tightly, keeping his face in close proximity to yours. You didn't even realize, too out of it to even notice.
Robin on the other hand felt his cheeks get uncomfortably hot the more you stared at him with those innocent, beautiful eyes of yours. If Batman hadn't been breathing down his neck, he was sure he would've kissed you in the moment.
Unfortunately for him, his dad always knew how to ruin the moment. And he would continue to for the rest of his life. Until death do them part. Even after the two of you grow up and live together, the Batman would find some way to interrupt your fun.
"Robin?"
"Huh?"
"The mission."
Oh. Right.
***
"Robin!" You screamed when one of Ivy's plants wrapped around his neck and slammed him against the trees. They didn't let up curling tighter around his throat. Fear struck you as he began choking from breath and you knew you had to do something.
Suddenly murderous intent took over you and you glared at Ivy who returned it with a smug smirk of her own. Oh, how you'd rip that smirk off her face.
"Okay Ivy, you wanna play? Let's play." You ground out, slamming your hands against the vine around Robin's neck and it began disintegrating beneath your fingers. He fell to the ground, gasping for breath and you tuned out the sound of the plant crying as it died beside him.
Ivy heard it just as loudly as you had, she screamed and more plants lunged towards the both of you.
"Go help the others! I'm about to snap this twig." You spat at Robin, using your powers to kill the roots as it reached you. It was working slowly, your powers weak to the pain of the plants around you. Even as every cell of your body told you not to, you clenched your fingers into fists and watched as the creeper feel to the marsh, dead.
You engaged in battle with Ivy. Plants were screaming for mercy all around you but you couldn't stop for even a second. Life around you was trembling but you had to keep fighting the villain in front of you because if you hesitated for even a second, many more would die.
Thorns scratched your skin, drawing blood and curled around Ivy, sinking barbs into her skin.
"Face it girlie! You're never going to overpower me!"
"Oh, I'm not trying to overpower you, just distract you long enough for Robin to get rid of the control system." You replied, just as smug as she had been at the start of the fight. Now you got to see her face melt into one of panic just as Robin jumped over her head and to your side with a grin identical to yours.
"Cover your ears!" He sang, wrapping an arm around your shoulder and ducking, covering your body with his own. You were grateful for it; you weren't sure you could even keep your body upright at the moment.
Then you heard the explosion and your heart stopped. Every single fibre of your body burned red hot fire as you heard screams and cries around you. Bile was crawling up your throat and your breathing got thin. They were sobbing a heart-broken wail and your eyes misted at the mere sound.
Without realizing it, you were gripping onto Robin's hand, brows furrowed together. The sound of the explosion cleared, the Injustice League was captured and he pulled you up to stand with the others.
It was silent for a moment. You had won.
And then the consequences of your actions hit you.
Everyone's necks snapped towards you when you let out a heart-wrenching sob. Robin, who was standing right next to you caught you just in time before your body hit the ground. Pain exploded in your chest as you began wailing against him.
"(Y/N)? (Y/N)! What's wrong?!" He panicked but you didn't respond, crying into his chest as you gripped his cape in an iron fist. Everything hurt and all you could feel was sorrow and guilt.
The other heroes crowded around you but your eyes were screwed shut, tears making your eyes sting. Robin held onto you tightly, pulling your body against his as you continued to cry.
"What's happening?" Artemis murmured, looking around to see the environment change before her eyes. Everyone else followed her lead to see how leaves began rotting, then the trees. The smell was pungent. Thorns and weeds were crawling up the dying trees, pulling them into the swamp.
"(Y/N) please, what's wrong?" Robin whispered in your ear but you couldn't hear him. The sounds of plants screaming and wailing was echoing through your mind. How they begged you to save them. How they begged you to stop.
And then it got hard to breathe, your chest constricted and you were wheezing. Robin had to watch in horror when petals and blood poured from your mouth. You were choking, throwing up and sobbing in his arms, and he was unable to do anything to help you.
"Flash get her to the Batcave." Batman said gruffly, he was shocked and worried for you but didn't say anything, not wanting to scare his son more, "Sending you the coordinates now."
"Alfred prepare the med-bay."
Dick watched with a sinking heart as he handed you into Flash's arms. It took him a few seconds for his mind to stop whirring, he was still kneeling in the swampy marsh when the team huddled around him.
"It's gonna be okay." Wally murmured, wrapping an arm around his shaking body.
"We just have to hope for the best."
***
When the others had gotten back to the Cave, you had just been moved there, after being looked over by Alfred. He joined you in the med-bay, wanting to keep an eye on you. But as of yet, you still had to wake up.
Dick wasn't supposed to be listening to the adult’s conversation, but he couldn't help himself, he had to know if you were going to be okay.
"The situation is undeterminable, sir. But as of now, the flowers that are clogging her respiratory system keep growing. If we don't find a cure for this, it's inevitable that she will suffocate and pass."
His heart stopped. Die? You couldn't die, not when he still had so many things to tell you. For so long, he hadn't told you of his feelings, wanting to keep the relationship between the two of you professional. But now more than anything, he wished he had said something.
There were so many things he didn't get to do with you yet. You had yet to give him a bouquet on your first date. He wanted to lay in bed with you, smelling fresh flowers as you told him what different plants symbolized. He had yet to see moments where you can't control your powers and make plants grow around the cave.
He hadn't even given you a flower yet.
"Rob listen, I did some research on this 'disease'." Wally said, falling into step with him, "It's called the Hanahaki disease."
"That's fiction Wal—"
"But that's the best we've got right now." Came his curt reply and Dick's heart clenched.
"Hanahaki disease is a fictional sickness that only occurs when someone is suffering from unrequited love. The victim will cough up flower petals that symbolize their love. This disease is only cured when the victim's feelings are romantically returned." Wally read off his phone before turning to Dick with a smile.
He raised a brow, "What?"
"You have to kiss (Y/N)!"
"What!?"
"Yep! You have to return her unrequired love!"
"Wally that's ridiculous, kissing someone doesn't cute anything."
"Well, it's the only thing we have. And for (Y/N), we need to try anything." He said, pushing him towards the med-bay. His voice was tight and tense, like he was holding onto his as his last hope and Dick prayed that it would work when the door of your room came into his sight.
You were asleep and if he hadn't known any better, he would've thought you were healthy. Wally closed the door behind him, leaving Dick alone with you. The only sound in was the beeping from your heart monitor and your light wheezing. It was getting harder to breathe.
Dick inched his way closer to you, watching as your eyelashes fluttered gently in your sleep. Leaning over the bed you were lying in; he pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead before moving his head in line with yours.
"God, please let this work." He whispered and your bottom lip was caught between his. It was feather-light but yet, electricity was buzzing through his veins and fireworks went off in his mind.
For a minute, nothing happened and his heart clenched in his chest before he kissed you a little harder. This had to work because they didn't have any other lead. Dick felt you exhale feebly against him and he almost gave up hope.
But then you took a deep breath, stealing the breath from his lungs and he pulled away quickly to see your eyelids fluttering open. The colour was returning to your cheeks and your eyes were sparkling up at him. You smiled gently and he blinked away tears of relief. Thank goodness.
'His eyes are blue' You thought, staring deeply into them. They were beautiful, alluring. You didn't know why but just looking into his eyes was addicting. Was this what it felt like to be so deep in love? That even his eyes were enough to captivate you?
"I'm so glad you're awake." He muttered, cupping your cheeks firmly and planting another kiss on your lips. You giggled lightly, heart overjoyed to find the boy you had been in love with for so long had returned your feelings and you responded to the kiss eagerly, placing your palms over his hands and leaning into him.
With your regaining strength, you felt a flower materialize in your hands. The stem between your fingers brought you comfort just as the scent of the flower brought you back life.
When Dick pulled away, you delicately slipped it into his hands and he turned his attention to it, blue eyes softening when he recognized this particular flower in his hands.
"It's an Aster." You whispered quietly, lips brushing against his and he chuckled. It was the only flower you thought of when he came to your mind, "Get it?"
Dick turned his eyes away from the blossom and looked at you again. Your heart jumped, noticing just how much love he held in them. Eyes you could swim in, overflowing with love for you. Suddenly you were overwhelmed, feeling adoration and attraction. You needed to be closer to him, even though he was pressed against you.
Your fingers curled into his collar and pulled him closer to you, slanting your lips over his in an open-mouthed kiss. Dick gasped against your lips, startled for no longer than a second before sinking against you and wrapping an arm around your waist to pull you closer.
Your lips moved gently against his, the blushing flower trapped between both your bodies. The smell of fresh flowers clouded Dick's mind with everything that was you. Your hair, your smile, your lips. If you kept kissing him like that, he was certain he'd forget his own name.
And then you pulled away and Dick noted that you were as beautiful as a fresh flower. Your skin was glowing with life and your tired eyes were twinkling. You smiled sleepily at him, eyes closing shut and he lowered you back to the bed. Immediately, you slipped back into slumber, exhausted from the day's events.
He watched for a couple seconds, making sure you were able to breathe without any problems before realizing he should tell the others that you were okay.
He slipped out of the room quietly, stealing a final glance of you sleeping peacefully in the bed and a huge smile grew on his face, "She's awake."
It was only then he noticed just how colourful the room had gotten in the few minutes he was with you.
The walls were covered with vines and roses of different colours, camelias and carnations of different shades. It littered the room, not leaving a single inch of the wall untouched and scattered petals all over the floor like confetti.
Different creepers hung from the ceiling, dusting all the superheroes with sparkling pollen and colourful petals. Not to mention there were stems crawling up the Justice League members, flowers hugging their ankles lovingly.
Batman looked a lot less intimidating with petals in his cape and a rose stuck behind his ear. Robin blushed at the sight of everyone giving him knowing smiles.
"We noticed."
Aster: This flower became a symbol of love when in Greek mythology it was placed on the altars for the gods. So now, when you send a bouquet featuring this vibrant bloom, the message of "Take Care Of Yourself For Me" is implied. It conveys deep emotional love and affection for someone.
Forever Taglist:
@simonsbluee
DC Taglist:
@emmacata
@p--e--a--c--h--e--s
@sometimeseverythingsucks
@sokkas-honour
@unstable1902
@lostgirlheart
@missdisapear
@tadpole-san
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soft shinobu headcanons
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Synopsis: nothing much other than you making the wisteria girl crack her tough shell <3
Request (sent via DM’s): Hmmmmm, soft Shinobu Headcanons please?
Pairing: Shinobu x GN!reader (they/them)
A/N: this blog has existed for a hot minute and I already got a request (not complaining tho, I love Shinobu). This is more like an imagine rather than headcanons but it’s too late to change that I’m sorry— . Anyways I hope y’all shinobu simps got your juice, enjoy!
TW: light swearing, other than that it’s all fluff
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Let’s be real here, Shinobu is not a softie at all (to strangers at least, close friends is a different case)
She’s a strong and independent woman who can and will kick your ass. She’s a Hashira for a reason anyways
But that all changed pretty quickly when you walked into her life
Hashira or not, the moment you entered the demon slayer corps, she was the first person you talked to
She’d treat you like how she would with anyone else, carefree and laid-back nature, a tad bit of teasing here and there, all with a soft smile
But you knew that under that smile she was only giving a slight facade
When going on missions you’d usually be her backup, as you were still pretty new into this whole demon slaying world
And during those times you’d get to talk to her quite a bit
Most of the conversations were small though, as the work of being a demon slayer always had your hands tangled up
You walked around the small town with the butterfly girl, looking around and keeping your senses on high alert as you scanned the area to look for the demon. “So uh— where do you think the demon could be?” You asked attentively.
“I’m not sure… we’re gonna have to keep watch for th—“ the insect Hashira’s words were halted as she heard the familiar footsteps she grew to learn about during her expeditions, of a demon. “We can chat later— we have to follow the demon.” Shinobu spoke as her light steps turned into a quiet sprint.
You sighed to yourself, trailing behind her ‘there goes my plans of making small talk with her…’
You don’t know why, but you’ve taken a liking to the purple haired warrior, and you were determined to make her shell crack
The two of you were already good friends anyways, so all you had to do was get to know here a bit more
Shinobu has also taken some interest in you too, as she started treating you like how she’d treat Giyuu— but less mean of course
She’d poke light fun at you, tease you, and throw joking insults towards your direction
However the playful facade still feigned over here every-time you spoke to her
And you were willing to change that
Well one day, you both, along with Giyuu, were assigned to assist the Mizunoto slayers back at Natagumo mountain, where the spider family crawled around
You quirked an eyebrow at the task you were given. “Natagumo mountain? Isn’t that the place where the rookies are at?” You questioned, holding onto the hilt of your sword lightly.
“I supposed so… ara ara~ and here I was thinking they didn’t need our help, such a shame I must say.” The insect Hashira cooed to herself playfully. Giyuu just sighed to himself as he looked up. “Well we should get a move on it, we don’t want to peril the lives of more people now don’t we?”
Upon arriving at the place, you managed to keep surviving slayers safe, and meeting two unique souls. A red haired kid with red eyes and a demon girl with a bamboo muzzle
They were quite unique in your eyes, but Shinobu tried to attack the demon girl
Luckily, Giyuu came in time to save the poor girl, as you stood directly in front of the pair, holding your sword tightly
You sighed to yourself mentally as Shinobu started bullying Giyuu lightly
However Shinobu never let her smile waver as she saw you two defending the younglings, but you knew that under that smile her attitude was quite sour at the moment
The water Hashira told you to chase Shinobu away while he took the other two to a safer area
You agreed as you chased away the butterfly girl away from them, a slight wave of guilt piercing your heart for going against your friend
Her smaller figure let her dash through the trees with ease as you bolted after her, but Shinobu’s heart sank a bit knowing you are going against her, however she wouldn’t falter so easily
As she hops away into the starry night over the forest, you caught her off guard by appearing right in front of her and tackling her out of the tree she was hiding in
The position you held her still in was… questionable to say the least
You held her upper body in your left arm, as your right hand was holding your sword, with your fist locked behind your back, making Shinobu bend over slightly and loose her grip on her sword. Her arm was jammed between her head and your arm as she gripped onto the sleeve of your haori
You could tell by her shaking and tone in voice that she was upset, but you didn’t know what to do about it, other than talk to her
“Why are you doing this, Y/N? You know it’s against the demon slayer corps to help demons, and you’re preventing me from killing that demon. Why is that?” Shinobu asked, slight desperation lacing her tone.
You just sighed to yourself, and replied back. “I will let you go and then explain to you, but you have to promise not to run after the demon.”
If it was any other person, the insect Hashira would’ve just gone dashing off without a second thought, but instead with you, she complied and agreed as you let her out of your grip. “Alright then… explain.”
You explained to her that they seemed like good people and how the kids you encountered were different, and how Giyuu said they were different and unique
The feeling of meeting them was oddly familiar to you in a sense you could say
Shinobu didn’t know what to say, other than just crack a smile, but it was genuine.
“I’m sorry for thinking irrationally. I just didn’t want to see someone I cared for die to the hands of a demon again.” The purple haired girl spoke, sincerity present in her tone.
You were quite surprised at this behavior, going to speak to her, but the ravens that were trained by the corps already interrupted you about the two kids you saw earlier
You were gonna speak to Shinobu further, but she had already disappeared into the night, which left you dumbfounded
However you sure did just process what happened
You finally cracked her shell to reveal her true feelings <3
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Hi lovely 💖 I have a request for some reca for the community. I have no idea how to search for it but I have a burning need for fics involving John being a confident flirt or coming on to Sherlock and S being a blushing disaster. I know I’ve read some before (like the one where John is a wereslut lmao) but I can’t think of anymore. Anyone in the remaining hive mind got ideas? 💖💖💖 thank you for doing god’s work in these trying times and always being wonderful.
Hey Lovely!!
Ahhh I think the fics on my John Centric Fics / Sex God John masterpost might be good! 
Here’s some flirting fics, so thank you for the excuse to start a new list!! <3 Of course, if anyone has any suggestions, please add your own! <3
FLIRTING
Sherlock and John Go Clubbing by wendymarlowe (E, 4,716 w., 3 Ch. || Clubbing, Dirty Talk, Dancing, Coming Untouched, Coming in Pants, Bi John, For a Case, Friends to Lovers, Flirting, Sherlock is Lost for Words, Sexy John, Mutual Pining, Possessive John, Floor Sex/Hand Job/Frottage) – John pinched the bridge of his nose - even for Sherlock, this was a new level of no bloody boundaries. “You want me to go with you to a gay club, wait around twiddling my thumbs while I let you get pawed by a criminal, then out-flirt him and talk you into coming home with me instead?” Part 32 of John and Sherlock's Kinky First Times
The Effect of Memory by testosterone_tea (E, 6,430 w., 1 Ch. || Praise Kink, First Kiss / Time, Fluff, Smut, Virgin Sherlock, Love Confessions, Confused Sherlock) – John has temporary amnesia coming off of anaesthesia after an operation and not only does he not recognize Sherlock, he starts flirting with him! After John recovers, he doesn’t remember the incident at all. But Sherlock does. Confusion ensues.
To Quote Malcolm Tucker; or, Get The Fuck In or Fuck The Fuck Off by kim47 (T, 8,484 w., 1 Ch. || Jealous Sherlock, Flirting, Cockblocking) – Sherlock is cockblocker and a prick tease and John is not amused.
A Brand of Gold by aquabelacqua (M, 12,757 w., 1 Ch. || Mutual Pining, POV John, Phone Sex, Texting, Masturbation, Long Distance, Drunk Texting) – What am I doing? he wondered. The answer came back at once: Flirting. He let the vital, missing piece snap into place as surely and as cleanly as if it had always been there. He was flirting with Sherlock Holmes.
The shape of the world around us by Salambo06 (E, 15,058 w., 5 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting || Lumberjack John / Botanist Sherlock, Different First Meeting, John Has a Beard, Light Case Fic, Flirting, First Kiss / Time, Masturbation, Love at First Sight, Horny Sherlock, John’s Bum, Bottomlock, Tenderness, Virgin Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Shy Sherlock, Sexual Fantasies) – Looking through the bush, Sherlock felt his heartbeat quicken as a man passed in front of him. Sherlock frowned, trying to get a closer look despite the bush. The man was wearing a red plaid shirt rolled up to his elbows, and Sherlock couldn't take his eyes off the man’s arms. Muscular, slightly tanned with golden hairs along his forearms. For some unknown reason, Sherlock found himself imagining them around his waist, holding him tightly. Closing his eyes for the briefest second, Sherlock shook his head. Opening his eyes and looking back to where the man stood only a moment prior, he found himself alone. Great, now his only chance to find his way back to town was gone. “Why are you wearing a suit?”
Second Chance by SilentAuror (E, 15,816 w., 1 Ch. || Post-HLV, Post-Divorce, Friends to Lovers, UST, Romance) – Now that John's divorce has gone through and the dust is settling, Sherlock thinks that he would very much like to see if there is any possibility of moving their friendship in another direction. The only thing is, he has no idea how to go about doing that...
Out of the Woods by SilentAuror (E, 20,471 w., 1 Ch. || Post S4, Romance, Slow Burn, Flirting, Drunk Sex, Practical Jokes, POV Sherlock, Bottomlock, Possessive John, Pining Sherlock, Frustrated Wanking, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, First Kiss/Time, Virgin Sherlock, Love Confessions, Soft Sherlock, Dancing, Bum Appreciation, Hanging out with the Yard) – Sherlock is fairly certain that John has taken to flirting with him of late, but can't be entirely certain of it. At least, not until a case takes them into a forest, along with Lestrade's team and something happens that will change everything about their lives...
You're On the Air by prettysailorsoldier (M, 20,616 w., 1 Ch. || Unilock, Matchmaking, Radio, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Sherlock POV, Pining Sherlock, Flirting, Bisexual John) – The Consulting Detective and The Woman dominate the airwaves of their university radio station, doling out advice on everything from meeting the parents to sexual positions. When their ratings start to dip before the holidays, however, manager Mike thinks it's time for some fresh blood, and who better to fill in the gaps than rugby captain--and notorious flirt--John Watson? Part 1 of 25 Days of Johnlock
Guilty Secrets by Ellipsical (E, 55,086 w., 16 Ch. || Post-TRF, Drumsticks, First Kiss/Time, Love Confession, Self-Sexual-Discovery, Anal, Rimming, Orgasm Denial, Butt Plugs, Cooking, Furniture Sex, Bath Sex, Rimming, Double Penetration, Prostate Massage, Anal Beads, Dancing, Romance, Tantric Edging, Internalized Homophobia, Case as Foreplay, Anal Beads, Tickling, Dancing, Dry Coming, Romance) – John has a prostate exam and discovers something surprising about himself. Experimentation follows. Sherlock wants to help. They're in love. You know the drill.
A Hundred Crimson Sols by elldotsee (E, 55,536 w., 16 Ch. || Astronauts AU || Mars Exploration / Space Travel, Slow Burn, Shy Sherlock, Scientist Sherlock / Biomed Engineer John, Alternating POV, Mutual Pining, UST, Angst with Happy Ending, Domestic Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injuries, Suicidal Ideation, Zero-G Sex) – Will Holmes is a chemical researcher recognized widely for his contributions to the new Mars exploration program. Thanks to his ground-breaking developments, the IMMC (International Mars Mission Corporation) is one step closer to Martian colonization. Will and his team of scientists are headed out on the first of three manned missions before the first group of settlers arrive. Three days before launch, one of the crew has to be replaced. Will panics because...new people. The replacement is of course one John Watson, biomedical engineer and space hottie who was pretty sure he had retired from actual space exploration and was now content to work in the nice, quiet research lab. Can the crew survive this TOTALLY ROUTINE trip? Will they be able to endure each other for the looooooong trip in close quarters? Gonna be a wild ride... prepare for blast off. Part 1 of SpaceBois go to Space
floating through a dark blue sky by Lediona (M, 58,966 w., 15 Ch. || Notting Hill AU || POV John, Celebrity Sherlock, First Date / Time / Kiss, Past Drug Addiction, Angst with a Happy Ending) – Of course, I’d seen his films and always thought he was, well, brilliant -- but, you know, a million miles from the world I live in. Or, when John is the owner of a travel book shop and the famous Sherlock Holmes stops in one day.
31_Days_of_Porn_Challenge_2017 Series by distantstarlight (E, 96,540 w. across 31 stories || Prompt Ficlets, Assorted Kinks, PWP) – A collection in response to the 31 Days of Porn Challenge issued by AtlinMerrik! Thanks for doing that because this has been buttload of fun (that joke never gets old). All stories will be brief stand-alone one-shots.
A Further Sea by i_ship_an_armada & ShinySherlock (E, 125,492 w., 23 Ch. || Historical Pirates AU || Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Doctor John / Pirate Captain Sherlock, Sailing, UST / RST, Masturbation, Action / Adventure, Mild Angst & Peril, Romance, Shaving, Molly/Janine, Bottomlock, Hand / Blow Jobs, Past Drug Use, Slow Burn, Mild Violence, Facial Shaving, Happy Ending) – Here be a tale of adventure for both body and soul, but beware if ye be not of stout heart, for this be piratelock, ya savvy? Luckless ship's surgeon John Watson takes a chance, and finds himself eye to eye with The Ghost, the scourge of the seven seas and a definite thorn in the side of the blaggard, James Moriarty. But when John finds there's more to this most cunning pirate than be meetin' the eye, he has to choose... is it a pirate's life for him?
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allegra-writes · 3 years
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"Bad together"
Prologue: Benjamin Reilly
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Peter Parker x Reader
General audiences
Warnings: none.
"And if I'm dead to you
Why are you at the wake?
Cursing my name, wishing I stayed"
My tears ricochet - Taylor Swift
"... It's a disaster! Look at her! It's like someone took a look at Black Cat, selected everything that made her sexy and then took it out!"
Black Cat. The name froze the young photographer on his tracks right outside his boss' office. He hadn't heard that name in a long time, the last sighting had been well over a year ago. He would know.  After all, it had been him, the very last person to have seen Felicia Hardy, alive or dead.
"What are you talking about? That looks hot af, not to mention badass!" Jade's persuasive voice reached his ears, making him smirk: It was no secret the chief editor had a soft spot for the young intern. And, on her part, the petite brunette was a firecracker. Poor old Jameson didn't stand a chance. "Come on, dad. Single handedly taking down three of the Kingpin's goons? That's impressive. It deserves to be one of the slides!" 
"Not if we don't get a higher quality picture. That blurry video is good enough for a thumbnail, but not for a slide" Slides were a big deal, they were the Dailybugle.net's equivalent of a front page, and if J. Jonah Jameson took something seriously, it was his web site. He prided himself in the quality of the "receipts" of his "tea", as if that validated the trashiness of the bullshit articles he posted, more fiction from hyper imaginative wannabe writers than serious work from real reporters. 
"Well, then let's get the pictures. Where is that star photographer of yours?" 
The photographer rolled his eyes, typical Jade. As if the queen of cool didn't know his name. As if she hadn't graced his bed a handful of times already. 
"That's a good question. Dolores, get me Reilly!"
"I'm here, Jonah" Ben finally stepped inside the office, throwing an envelope on Jameson's desk before throwing himself on a chair across it. He could feel Jade's eyes on him, almost like a physical caress, trailing from the long, slick back curls on the top of his head, to the muscles of his arms, threatening to rip open the seams at the sleeves of his white t-shirt, to his jean clad thighs. Still, he didn't turn to look at her, refusing to give her the satisfaction. 
"What do you have for me today, boy?"
Ben gesticulated vaguely with his head in the direction of Jade, and Jameson caught the hint. 
"Jade, out!" 
"But, dad, my story!" The petulant reply left her mouth before she could stop it, undoubtedly the product of years of habit. But she had the grace to look embarrassed and leave the office without another word, trying to save whatever professionalism she had left. 
Once she was gone, Jameson opened the envelope, flipping through the various pictures of a masked figure swinging around New York in a black and red suit. 
"Hmmm… these are good" the older man praised, staring at the images of a frustrated robbery at 5th avenue
Ben snifled nocomitically,
"There was a fire at 16th avenue happening at the same time" He offered, "we could use that. Spider-Man forgets his roots and leaves his old neighborhood to fend for itself, running off to save some pretty socialite…"
"Oh, that is excellent! See, this is why I like you, kid. You have initiative. Unlike these snowflakes out there. Oh, but Spider-Man is a hero. Hero, my ass"
"Well, when you watch your so called hero sit back and do nothing as your life gets destroyed" Ben shrugged, "the rose colored glasses tend to fall off…"
Jameson made a face at that,
"Yeah, about that… I'm sorry. For the role the Daily Bugle played on that…"
Ben shook his head, 
"You thought you were getting the truth out there. It's not your fault to have been played, along with half the world. Plus," he added, sounding genuinely enthusiastic, "you gave me this job. And now we can really tell the truth"
"Even when our idea of the truth is somehow different" The older man scoffed, flipping around a picture of Spider-Man sat on what appeared to be a hammock of his own webs, eating a hamburger and reading something that looked suspiciously like a comic book, "Still hung up on that high schooler theory of yours?"
"Well, if it talks like a brat and acts like a brat…" Ben took out another envelope, this time containing a few burger king wrappers and, effectively, a spider-man comic book. 
"Where did you even get these?"
"Harlem" was Ben's curt reply, and Jameson knew that was as exact a location as he was going to get. 
"So you still believe this is a copycat? Some kid playing dress up"
Ben simply shrugged again. 
"Well, there seems to be an epidemic of those lately" Jameson admitted, indicating Ben to come closer, passing a tablet to him, "Jade just handled me this, take a look"
Ben took a deep breath, steeling himself, already knowing what he was going to see in it. Yet, a part of him couldn't help but hope to be wrong. To hope the silver haired figure facing three much bigger, stronger looking ones as he pressed play, wasn't the same one he had spent weeks memorizing last summer. Wasn't the body he had found solace in, when everything fell apart, once again, for the hundredth time in his life. 
To hope it wasn't you. 
But when in his twenty-two or so years of existence, had things ever gone his way? 
Ben felt the screen crack under his fingertips.
"I've heard of her" he lied through his teeth, "didn't even think she was real, to be honest. Extremely elusive, and cunning." That much was true, "I don't understand how something as mundane as a security camera managed to catch her…" 
Unless you wanted to be caught, that was. 
"Well, I don't care if she's the fucking Loch Ness monster, I want an HD picture of her on my desk tomorrow to go with Jade's article. I already have a headline: New Catastrophe Jen wreaks havoc on Hell's Kitchen" Jameson's eyes lit up with glee as he weaved his hands up in the air, like writing on an invisible marquee. 
Ben snorted
"Don't you mean Calamity Jane?"
Jameson's face fell, the color rising to his cheeks, characteristic vein popping on his forehead. 
"I meant what I meant, boy! Now, what are you still doing here? You have 24 hours to get me that picture"
"I'm going to need 72," came Ben's unphased reply, "and I want twice what you pay me for the spidey pics"
Jameson's vein looked about ready to explode,
"48 hours. And deal."
Ben jumped from his seat and bolted out of the office before his boss could change his mind, not realizing until it was too late that he was on a collision course with a sweet looking short haired blonde girl. 
"Watch where you're going! Jeez!"
"Me? You're the one who crashed against me!" 
Ben rolled his eyes, but crouched next to the girl anyway, helping her gather the papers that had been sent flying on impact back together.
"Peter? Oh my god, is that you?"
Of course. What an idiot, he should had recognized that annoying, shrilly voice the second he heard it. It had caught him off guard, something he knew he couldn't afford. But how could he had ever imagine he could run into Betty fucking Brant, Yale cum laude, in the freaking dailybugle.net headquarters of all places?
"Sorry, sweetheart. You must confuse me with someone else…" He mumbled, lowering his head even more in a vain attempt to hide his face.
"Of course not!" She insisted, "You're Peter, Peter Parker, we went to Midtown together!"
"Miss, I have no idea what you're talking about…"
"Don't be silly, Peter!" She chuckled, completely deft to his tone or the way his whole demeanor had changed the second she had called him by the old name. "How have you been? Oh, just wait until I tell Ned, he's going to be so-"
CRACK.
At last, the tablet that had been in peril ever since Jameson had put it in Ben's hands, the one that contained his assignment, met its demise, both broken halves falling to the ground, along with all the papers he had picked up for Betty. It was several moments before he could get the shaking of his hands under control, before the tar black rage inside him subsided enough for him to be able to move without shifting. But it had.
"Peter Parker is dead." He deadpanned, dark brown eyes finally meeting Betty's stunned blue ones, "Tell Ned that, he'll probably be glad to hear it"
With that, he stood up and walked away, leaving a confused and agitated Betty behind. 
To be continued...
332 notes · View notes
isayamasideblog · 3 years
Text
On a Beautiful Mountainside, I Love You
How easy it was to run. Runaways. That’s what they are. 
Mikasa never thought it’d happen like this. On that night, in the Marleyan refugee campsite, that fine line that settled so comfortably between them was crossed. 
“What am I to you?” 
The vulnerable rasp of his voice scraped Mikasa’s ears in such a striking surprise that she couldn’t grasp if this moment was real or not. Never did she think that this would happen, never did she believe that a feeling she kept hidden within layers of stoicness would have a spotlight shining on it. 
At first, “Huh?’ was all that came out of her, that single syllable accompanied by red splashes of embarrassment taking the front seat on the suppleness of her face. 
What could ever spur Eren to be so vulnerable with her? Was there something pushing him to ask her this? And if so, what? 
He knew he loved her, nonetheless he held the belief that she didn’t have to love him. She didn’t have to see him how he wanted to be seen by her eyes, because how selfish could that be? Since his position in the world steered him away from anything normal, and from anything that offered him a peace and tranquility that strayed farther from him with each passing day. 
Yet, on that particular night he wondered ‘what if.’ 
What if she felt the same way for him? What if he was more than family to her? A world filled with what ifs and what nots, what if he dared to walk on the edge of a sword with those words. And so, he asked on that night beneath the star broken sky what it was he was to her. 
In the back of his mind he knew that if she chose the answer he dreaded then he’d have nothing to hold on to. He’d have nothing left but to move forward and become what he seemed destined to become. This something terrified him and what terrified him most was how this something settled inside him.
Therefore, now with Mikasa in front of him, and him feeling at his most vulnerable and filled with a desperation that pushed him to say what he believed to be nonsensical, he asked, “Or am I just family?”
He expected another “Huh?” from the poor girl who looked near ready to pass out, but instead a determined face replaced her shocked one and she slowly drawled out a confession. 
It wasn’t an, “I love you,” it was a, “Just the two of us,” because an I love you was not needed between two people when those words were echoed with every action they did for one another. 
So when she uttered those words, he smiled and took her hand and ran. Her skirt flowed behind her and both their coats flapped against the warm Marleyan breeze as they left everything behind. 
Where to? Anywhere. 
Not once did they look back as they ran through the refugee camp, and not once did the thought of turning back occur in their minds. Not even as they sat on the boat with their knees pressed to their chest and their clammy hands intertwined, did they think to go back.     
The boat took them to a place far away, a place whose name they had yet to learn to pronounce. Still, they walked through the unfamiliar quiet town. 
They both took in the scenery and tried their best to not look like outsiders as one pulled the other along. Hand in hand, just like when they were little kids. They unconsciously kept walking towards the mountains because deep down they felt that something was waiting for them there. A new life, a way for them to escape the hell that called their name. 
Up in the mountains there was a scene so beautiful, a view that was so new yet somehow familiar and reminded Mikasa of her first home. Eren knew. He knew that this was to be the place where they’d settle and build their home. 
The rush and adrenaline that impulsed them to run slowly faded away as their heavy chests heaved and breathed when they were finally able to pause and breathe in the crisp fresh mountain air.   
“This will be our home,” Eren panted as Mikasa squeezed his hand and gave him one sharp confident nod. Our home, she thought. 
Piece by piece they built their home. Mikasa would watch as Eren’s titan would pull the surrounding trees from their roots and set them haphazardly on the grass. And both would spend their day cutting and sanding the blistering wood into a smooth finish, and soon their cabin home was completed. 
The weather had turned cold on the first night in their new home. The howling wind knocked against their window and both were content that the time they slept outside at least gave them good weather. 
The moon outside was full and Mikasa and Eren stood inside the cabin awkwardly next to each other, until Mikasa shivered. Eren exhaled and moved to start a fire and Mikasa watched him with endearing eyes as he did. Patiently, she waited and saw how Eren took a match and dropped it in the wooden logs and began to work on the fire. 
He stood in front of the chimney fire and turned to her as he said, “Come over here,” and Mikasa went to him. 
That night she felt vulnerable, she felt soft, she felt like she could fall asleep staring into his eyes. 
She reveled in how Eren’s thumb swept her cheek, wiping the fresh tears that began to fall without her consent. And she closed her eyes as she felt his plush lips against her lips, and when his warm hand intertwined over her hand, did she have a desire for more. 
Carefully, she moved her fingers to intermingle on his freshly cut hair and she pulled him closer to her. He tried to hold on to his breath as she moved her lips down his neck, and he felt the ever growing fire at the pit of his stomach impossible to control. 
“Mikasa…” he breathed. 
She smiled at him and moved to kiss the corner of his lips as her eyes held a yearning, a lust, an invitation for him to do more. 
She watched as Eren’s fingers moved to unbutton her blouse one button at a time, and soon each layer of clothing was shed and thrown carelessly around them as their heated bodies yearned to get closer. 
As Mikasa laid bare before Eren, he couldn’t help but smile at her shyness. He moved to hover over her, feeling the way her body shivered beneath him and he softly cooed, “Mikasa… you’re beautiful,” before bending down and kissing her. 
Eren enjoyed the feeling of her nails digging at his shoulder blades as he slowly entered her and he never stopped looking at her reaction, wanting to make sure that he wasn’t hurting her. 
“If I’m hurting you, tell me…,” he said between groans, “So I can stop.” 
“I’m fine,” Mikasa sighed against the crackling fire, as her eyebrows contorted trying to get used to Eren’s length.  
They could hear the cricket’s music outside the window and they could feel the warmth of the fire against their heated bodies as they moved against one another. 
They ceased to be two as their shadows painted against the wall blended into one being as they gained carnal knowledge of each other. Years spent imagining how they’d feel, how they’d become undone and how their moans would sound in between breaths, were laid to rest. 
His heavy breathing met her quiet sighs as they continued to take each other in and learn what they liked. Eren took his time moving around, learning and remembering what angle made Mikasa squirm the most, and which speed made her take her lip in between her teeth. 
While Mikasa realized that every time she ran her fingernails over Eren’s backside he’d hiss in delight, and when she’d nibble at the skin on his neck he’d groan weakly against her ear. 
Lovers on the run, burning their love down as the fire near them burned to nothing but embers. The soft sunrays seeped through the curtains kissing at their naked skin as they rustled to wake up. 
Foolish smiles, sleepy lust filled eyes, and soft touches trailing raised skin filled the quiet cabin as Eren mouthed, “Morning,” to Mikasa. 
A routine was created: making love late in the night, waking up to lazy sideways smiles, and taking all they wanted from the other with a regret they got accustomed to.    
Mornings were filled with them tending to the garden they were growing. They’d share a cup of coffee and talk about the things they still needed for their home, and their afternoons were accompanied by trips to the nearby lake where they’d fish. 
Hours became days, days became weeks, weeks became months, and the love they kept underneath secret longing glances became kisses on the cheek and arms around their waist. Behind those mountains the trust they shared in battle became an open declaration of love.    
On that mountainside they whispered their I love you’s, on that mountainside they lived a quiet life without the perils of war at their heels and they were very happy. 
122 notes · View notes
kalee60 · 3 years
Note
If it inspires you... maybe you could write an established relationship Steve and Bucky where they are completely in sync when it comes to the battle field and the kitchen but there’s one place they are like fumbling idiots. I don’t know where. No hard feelings if this sparks no ideas lol 😂💖💖💖
Oh Kay - this wonderful prompt you gifted me could have gone in so many different directions. And it most definitely inspired me to write something...
But it's neither a clever take on your words or a twisted storyline, therefore I have no apologies and I went the obvious route when filling your idea 😂 (why does my brain always try and get these boys naked?)
So this turned into something a little longer (of course), a little more ridiculous than anticipated, and features some very well intentioned Avengers and two idiots helplessly inept in love...
The fic made it to almost 5.5k and is also on ao3 here (with all tags necessary) if you prefer to read there instead, it'll be part of my stucky bingo fills - 'Sex Magic' and rated E for explicit sexual content 😉 so proceed below with caution...
Oh it's also the first time I've ever tried established relationship... hopefully I've pulled it off!
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Steve was happy. 
He finally had a home to call his own, a brilliant team of coworkers, a place in the future and he had Bucky Barnes. After more years than Steve could count, Bucky and he had finally found themselves on the same page - different century, but on even ground. They’d kissed in the heat of the moment after a brutal mission, stated their affections clearly and decided after a breathless confession - to give forever a go.
Having been on the battlefield together for years, Bucky at his six and always there for Steve when he needed, and Steve, having had Bucky’s back no matter the situation (or trouble it got him into) - meant they had a solid base to grow from. And as soon as Sam took over the mantle of Cap, Steve was free to be himself for once, and although Nomad made appearances on the odd occasion, he and Bucky still fought flawlessly together, seamlessly, almost at one in their movements.
It was magical.
But not only were they in sync when under pressure and danger, that same energy continued into their modest but homely kitchen in their brownstone as they unlearned that boiling was the only way to prepare food. They wove around each other, hot pans and knives flashing in a dance as intricate as fighting while they spun about the kitchen, preparing dish after dish, including sweet treats for themselves and cat treats for Alpine.
Bucky and Steve were essentially one unit, an extension of the other in every aspect of their lives - except one…
They’d shared their first kiss, a declaration of intent less than a month earlier on the battlefield in the midst of chaos, and Steve had never felt sweeter lips against his. But it wasn't just the kiss that floored him, it was the all-consuming knowledge that Bucky was his, would always be his, that they were made for each other - that's what made it a perfect moment.
Afterwards, when they'd arrived home tired from the week-long operation, 'congratulations' and 'about times' ringing in their ears, they sat on the sofa staring at the other until Steve leant in, cupping Bucky’s cheek and slowly pressed forward. Bucky having the same idea, lurched up and they smacked heads hard enough to see stars. Chuckling with small smiles, they tried again, with Steve accidentally biting Bucky's tongue, and the third was a kiss so awkward and sloppy, it made Steve feel like a thirteen year old practising on the back of his hand again.
Steve wasn’t sure how he'd got it so wrong.
Bucky had laughed it off at the time, asking Steve if he wanted to watch TV, and with nothing left to do, he agreed. For two overly large war-torn men, they fit wonderfully; wrapping limbs around the other, holding tight like they'd never let go again. It was soothing, comfortable - right. And as Steve pressed soft lips to the crown of Bucky's hair while a documentary played in the background, he wondered why their attempt at kissing when alone, without an audience hadn’t worked.
Steve could only put it down to nerves.
Bucky was his best friend after all, he was the only one who remembered and knew Steve, knew everything about him in fact, there were no secrets - except for the almost one hundred year pining between them. The awkwardness had to be because of a change in dynamics, they were now more, they wanted more, and were so nervous and scared to adapt to something new, it had become an issue of self-confidence.
It would get better.
It had to.
The next morning when Bucky left for a briefing, he placed a kiss on the corner of Steve’s mouth, and when Steve jerked his head to the side to capture Bucky's lips, he somehow managed to press his teeth into the soft pink flesh, tasting blood. Bucky pulled back with a huff of laughter and licked his lips to capture the red stain before leaving with a wink and a goodbye. Steve flushed red, the heat on his cheeks burning enough that he jumped up and organised an impromptu run with Sam to escape the memory. The whole time Steve lamented to a cackling Sam, that he'd somehow forgotten how to kiss.
Sam was a dick.
It had officially been three weeks, three full weeks of 'dating' and even though their actual dates were wonderful, full of laughter and fun and exploration, it was when they crawled into bed next to the other that suddenly every kiss, every touch was fraught with danger and peril. And maybe it was because they were both supersoldiers, both familiar and unfamiliar with some of their strengths, they'd overlooked they were still prone to the usual calamities that befell non-serumed folk, they just bounced back quicker.
So when Bucky ground down hard enough it bent Steve's dick practically in two - well, it wasn't pleasant, and took over an hour for the tears to stop streaming, all while he yelled to a panicked Bucky there was no way he was calling Dr Cho over it and that it would heal.
It healed, but Steve winced each time he went to the bathroom for the following two days.
The love bite Steve sucked into Bucky's upper thigh on the way to taste his gorgeous dick for the first time, erupted into a blood blister almost immediately and Bucky instinctually jerked away, kneeing Steve in the temple.
He only saw stars for two minutes, but the mood died in a flurry of apologies while the mark on Bucky's skin disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
By Steve's count, they'd tried a total of ten times to initiate sex, to make each other feel good, and every single time something had happened to thwart their attempts.
Steve wondered if the universe was trying to tell them they were not supposed to get physical. That they were destined to be best friends without any benefits.
But Steve wouldn't give up without a fight.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“You can stop laughing now,” Steve said with a sigh, taking a sip of his espresso while trying to ignore the spluttering of his other best friend.
“Oh I know, but I can’t. You kicked Bucky in the hip so hard it somehow threw his body out of alignment and he was walking with a limp for two days. And not the type of limp you want.” Sam was practically heaving in mirth by that stage.
“Why did I come to you for advice? I'm leaving.”
"No, no don't. I'm glad you came to me. But Barnes? I understand your reaction because I'd kick him so he couldn’t walk for days too - but obviously under different circumstances,” Sam added when Steve scowled at his words.
"I don't get it though," Steve complained with an exaggerated shrug. "We sync so well everywhere else. Christ, we even snuggle in such a natural way, that neither of us have had a real nightmare in a month. We are more than ready for the next step. Sam, you have no idea how much we want to take it - but the minute we try to get… intimate - it falls flat."
Sam took a long sip of his iced coffee, thick cream bobbing over the surface as he tilted the glass up. Steve winced at how sweet it had to taste, but he said nothing, remained quiet, knowing that Sam would have some advice at least.
"Maybe it's the way you say intimate? I'm joking, jeez Steve, don't give me your disappointed face. Look, I think you should set the mood, you know - music, candlelight, silk sheets and no distractions. Maybe some aromatic oils too, do the whole, 'I think you're sexy and I want you' gesture - make it obvious you find him desirable.”
“Aromatic oils?”
Sam smirked and waggled his eyebrows, “for a special massage of course.”
Steve flushed at the thought of having Bucky’s naked skin and hardened muscles under his hands, sliding and slipping as he loosened him up, ready to make Bucky fall apart, make him languid and hazy with want. Sam coughed and Steve realised he was letting his imagination run too wild, especially in front of company.
“You know what? I think I chose wisely for my replacement.” Steve grinned as Sam ducked his head, a pleased look gracing his features. “Thanks, Sam. I’m sure it’s a timing thing, we just need to make it sexy.”
Sam clapped his back, and with a wide toothy grin and a wink, said in a low deep voice, “you’re an overachiever Steve - you’ve got this.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Steve in fact, did not have it.
Maybe his first mistake was to massage Bucky on the sofa, not in their bed. He used too much oil and when Steve raised himself up, eager to flip Bucky over and finally take his hard dick in hand, the vinyl fabric in conjunction with Bucky’s skin was soaked and slippery. Steve found himself sliding and flailing uncontrollably, right off the sofa to smack his face into the coffee table, the mood disappearing in a peal of Bucky’s laughter. Steve couldn't even blame him, it would have looked a sight.  
After a long hot shower where Steve contemplated his choice in friends and their terrible advice, Bucky and he sat on a freshly cleaned sofa and watched Animal Planet while eating Thai. They ended up cuddling under Bucky's weighted blanket, falling asleep entwined, and just before Steve blacked out, he wondered if maybe Sam wasn’t the right choice for Cap after all. His plan stunk.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“You do know I’m not that kind of Doctor, right?” Bruce reiterated for the third time, and Steve shrugged in response.
“I know. But at this stage it’s worth a shot. So Doc, any advice for me?”
Bruce sat back on the lone stool in his lab, hand cupping his chin as he thought. At least Bruce appeared to be more contemplative than Sam had been. “Have you tried to romance him? Take Bucky out for a nice dinner, partake in some Asgardian wine to loosen things up, before dancing, showing him that you're a gentleman - prove to Bucky how special he is to you. In my limited experience, the rest will flow from there with no problems.”
Steve nodded along as Bruce spoke, holding Bucky against his body as they danced across the floor wouldn’t be too different from fighting together, and they were in perfect harmony while out in the field. Bruce’s idea made perfect sense to Steve, had more of a familiar feel from Bucky and his early life, before the war than what Sam’s had. Sam's suggestion centered on the physical between Steve and Bucky, whereas Bruce was suggesting something subtle, emotional.
“You know what Bruce? Thank you, I think it might just work.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
It did not work. 
Halfway through their fifth dance as their bodies started to meld together, barely moving on the dancefloor, holding each other's gaze as they whispered words of desire to each, Steve leant forward, their lips barely touching. And as Steve took in a breath, feeling Bucky’s returning exhale on his lips, the back wall blew out in an explosion, Bucky headbutting Steve in surprise, and suddenly they had Hydra operatives swarming them. Steve, as he took out three hostiles with his shield, wondered if he should talk to Dr Cho about the effects of concussion and if he could suffer them, due to his head seemingly taking the brunt of recent mishaps. 
Bucky and Steve fell into tandem together, their natural ability to fight kicking in, keeping the other safe. It was much more natural than dancing and Steve sighed, knowing romantic nights out might not be the right course of action for them. 
It took three days of intense fighting to take down the Hydra faction, and afterwards they were both too tired to speak more than a sentence, and fell into a deep sleep curled around the other immediately. 
~*~*~*~*~*~
Steve ignored Tony's unsolicited advice to take Bucky to a ski chalet and teach him how to toboggan, knowing freezing conditions and a small metal tube wouldn't be the best way to loosen them both up to get frisky. Plus Steve was still trying to work out how Tony even knew Steve had asked other people for advice about sex? Maybe JARVIS was spying again, though the AI had promised Steve he wouldn't.
But what was worse, was Peter Parker, at barely even twenty years of age coming to Steve, red faced and stammering, saying that he thought Steve should take Bucky to laser tag and the arcade to have some old fashioned fun. 
Steve at that point was at his wits end, so he tried Peter's plan. When Steve was confronted with all the bright, colourful and confusing machines, he almost gave up. Actual 'old-fashioned' and Peter's idea of it, were poles apart. Though, Steve found he was really good at Tetris and Bucky excelled at zombie shooting games. But it was when playing laser tag it all fell over, Bucky and Steve getting too competitive, and a tad physical, which ended up with them being kicked out and banned, after having to apologise to a bunch of wide-eyed yet excited fifteen year olds. 
Bucky's exclamations that there wasn't that much blood, fell on the deaf ears of the twenty year old manager who reprimanded them, saying that at their age they should know better.
It did not induce a night of passion afterwards. Although, Bucky purchased a console online and a bunch of zombie games that evening, including a bundle that included Tetris, so it wasn't a complete bust.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“So basically what you’re saying is that nothing has worked? You’ve been tiptoeing around each other for what? Almost two months now?” At Steve’s nod, Nat grinned, crouching down and did a handspring, legs wrapping around his neck, pulling him to the floor. “The way you are with each other, I honestly would have guessed you’d been screwing for years. If I didn't know you better.”
“That’s not helpful. I’m serious. We have a real issue.” Steve looked up from his twisted position directly into her green eyes and sighed, she loosened her legs and Steve ran a hand over his face and stayed on the ground. “What if we’re just not meant to be?”
Nat’s expression softened as much as it ever did, meaning her left eyebrow turned down for less than a second before reasserting itself into a perfectly sardonic position.
“Okay, my advice for what it’s worth, and just note that I’m extremely offended that you didn’t come to me first, I mean Sam - come on. But let it happen naturally, organically. Just like it took you a hundred years to own up to your feelings, wait until it feels right to have sex.”
Steve groaned, and stood up, “I’m not waiting another hundred years, Nat.”
“Jesus, Rogers. Fine. Go see Wanda then.”
“Wanda?”
“Use that big brain of yours, not the small one. She’s a witch, I’m sure she can help you out.”
Steve knew the surprise on his face wasn’t feigned. He’d not actually thought Wanda could do spells or the like, but the more he thought about Nat’s words, the more it appealed. Could some magical interference help them?
“Thanks, Nat - I’ll definitely think about it.”
In the space of him finishing his words and a smile forming - Steve was on his back again, Nat’s thighs wrapped around his neck as she squeezed with intent.
“You’ll see that I was right.”
~*~*~*~*~
That night when Steve tried to let things happen naturally, organically as Nat had suggested, Steve slid a hand up Bucky’s side, light as a feather, only for Bucky to squirm in laughter and throw his head backwards, smashing into Steve’s poor battered nose - which broke. It healed within seconds, but blood spurted out in a gush, coating the back of Bucky’s hair and neck. It took an hour to clean up.
~*~*~*~*~
He went and saw Wanda the next day.
~*~*~*~*~
“Well, I’m one lucky girl, first a visit and latte from James this morning and now you this afternoon with a pastry.” Wanda took a bite of the flaky dessert, one Steve knew was her favourite. “Alright Steve what can I do for you today?”
Steve’s immediate reaction was to ask why Bucky had been there, but knew that the two of them had a strong connection, Wanda helping Bucky through some of the residual trauma with her powers, and then their fast bond over Alpine - Bucky’s terror of a stray cat that took up residence in their apartment. Or took over would be more apt.
“I… err, I need your help with something... delicate.”
Wanda gave Steve the smallest smile, a knowing look in her eyes and Steve lost his train of thought for a moment, not sure he really needed another Avenger to know about his intimacy issue with Bucky. He almost chickened out, but Wanda leaned forward and grasped his forearm.
“It’s okay, Steve - you can tell me, ask me anything.”
Sighing heavily, Steve steeled himself, he was out of options.
“Alright -” Steve laid out plainly what had been happening, the awkwardness, the injuries, the sheer unluckiness they’d suffered each time they’d attempted to move their relationship forwards physically.
“And you came to me for...?”
“Help, I guess,” Steve said and looked at Wanda pleadingly, “Can you? I mean, with a potion or a spell or something of the like?”
Wanda slumped back in her chair, mouth opening to speak, but nothing came out, she remained silent. After a minute, she swallowed audibly then looked up at the roof, and if Steve didn’t know better, he would have thought she was rolling her eyes at him. Yet he knew that wouldn’t be the case, Wanda was polite to him, always had been, they were a team. Friends. Only Nat would take those liberties with him.
“Alright,” Wanda finally spoke and stood up, walking over to her kitchen cupboards, pulling out jars and bottles holding different liquids. And before Steve knew it, he was holding a small glass vial filled with a substance that smelt like vodka, but had rosemary and a slice of orange and a few other items bobbing around inside.
“What’s this?”
“Well you asked for a potion, didn’t you?”
“Really? I actually didn’t think you’d -”
“- Do you want the sex magic or not?”
Steve grasped the tiny bottle in his hand, careful not to crush it in his huge meaty hands.
“I do,” he said quickly and stood, pulling her into a warm hug, which she returned readily.
“Just take half an hour before you want to… well, you know.”
“Thanks, Wanda, you were my last hope.”
And as he walked out  the room, Wanda called out after him, “you’ll be fine Steve. I know this will work for you.”
~*~*~*~*~
It worked. 
Bucky was on his knees, mouth wrapped around Steve’s thick dick, swallowing and licking like his life depended on it. And Steve, well, he couldn’t articulate, could only stare down into those familiar grey-blue eyes that gazed at Steve like he was a conquering god, stare at the way saliva dripped down Bucky’s chin as he drew in as much of Steve’s hardness as possible, Bucky’s plush lips stretched taut until they’d lost most of their colour.
It was the most glorious sight of Steve’s entire life.
He didn’t want to think about Wanda in that moment, but he was eternally grateful to her. Bucky had disappeared into the bathroom about half an hour earlier - leaving enough time for Steve to drink the potion in one go, and before he knew it, almost half an hour to the dot, they launched at the other. For once there were no injuries, awkwardness, or pain - just hungry kisses, curious hands and moaning. A lot of moaning and grinding.
Then Bucky dropped to his knees, yanking impatiently at Steve’s pants until they all but ripped off, and sucked him down in the same breath.
Throwing his head back, Steve looked to the ceiling, fingers tangled in Bucky’s hair as Bucky hummed and gasped around his dick, sucking loudly, slurping and choking at times. But Steve couldn’t keep his eyes away for long. Bucky was too compelling, too perfect.
“God, you have no idea how you look right now do you, on your knees, mouth full of me?” Steve husked and involuntarily pumped his hips a few times. Bucky’s eyelids fluttered shut as he listened to Steve’s words, not complaining about the added pressure. “Born to take me, weren't you, Doll?”
Bucky practically squirmed on the spot, moaning and whimpering and Steve realised through the haze and bliss of what Bucky’s clever tongue was doing to him, that Bucky clearly had a thing for pet names.
“Do you want this large dick inside of you sweetheart? Do you want to sit on it? Take it deep into your body, let you take control and ride me until you come?” Steve should have been taken aback by his words, about where his filthy mind was taking them. But he was running his mouth, not thinking, letting what felt good flow off his tongue. And Bucky - he loved it.
Popping his mouth off the end of Steve’s dick, tongue immediately lathing up and down the shaft so as to always have a point of contact, he moaned loudly, wantonly. “God yes, Stevie - want you to fill me up, stretch me, want to feel you for days after, I want you to own me…”
Steve growled possessively, his fingers tightening in Bucky’s hair, pulling back so Bucky was jerked away from his dick, Bucky whining at the loss. Oh christ - that jar of sex magic needed to be marketed - it was phenominal. Steve had never felt so in control of a situation, so ready for anything, not scared, just willing to make Bucky feel good. “I want that too, baby, want everyone to know you’re mine.”
Yanking Bucky upwards, Steve devoured his mouth in a kiss, completely surprised that the potion had worked so well. Not only were they finally on the same page, they were doing it with no shame, telling each other exactly what they wanted and when, pleasuring with sensations and not overthinking, and the teasing - it was natural, it felt right. And Steve knew he was forever in Wanda's debt for the gift of her magic.
“I want to watch you prepare yourself, gorgeous. Want to see your fingers sliding in and out of your tight hole - a hole I’m going to own from tonight onwards.”
“Jesus, Steve, you’re killin’ me here.”
“Not quite yet, I’m not. Give me an hour and we’ll circle back to that.”
“Don’t speak to me like a rookie learning the ropes.” Bucky grumbled.
Steve smiled, “But aren't you?”
“Jerk.”
“Punk.”
Steve swallowed the rest of his retort when Bucky stripped naked to crawl up on their bed, spinning around to lay amongst the pillows, spreading his legs wide like he couldn’t wait to be railed. And Steve was unable to tear his gaze away from Bucky’s hole, his gorgeous and perfect entrance, one that would be puffy and leaking before the night was out - the superficial damage caused by Steve and no one else. A tight sensation welled in Steve’s gut, lurching when Bucky grabbed the lube, pouring liberally before starting to finger himself.
That was the point where Steve knew he'd made a grave mistake.
He wasn’t going to be able to watch Bucky open himself up, Steve was too wound up, too impatient and also too much of a control freak. He needed to ensure Bucky did a good enough job, knowing his girth alone was more than most people were used to. So when Bucky was two fingers in, sweat beading, eyes never leaving Steve’s face, Steve jerked forward and climbed up on the bed, positioning himself between Bucky’s legs. He lubed up his fingers to test the tightness himself, Bucky’s eyes opening in shock at the probing.
“Steve…” he stammered, “What are you doing?”
“Helping.”
Bucky sighed out a breath, relaxing into the intrusion as Steve pressed a finger in next to Bucky’s, and Steve shut his eyes, groaning; Bucky was so tight and hot, perfectly wrapped around Steve’s finger. Steve knew he was going to lose himself in Bucky’s body, was going to transcend, never be the same again and he couldn’t wait.
Steve ensured Bucky was a writhing panting mess before he even contemplated sliding into his tight heat. No matter how much Bucky asked for it, no matter the pleading, the begging (of which Bucky did so prettily, especially with the beginnings of frustrated tears in his eyes), Steve wanted their first time to be free of pain and injury, and by god was he going to deliver.
When he deemed Bucky ready, who pouted back to declare he was, hours ago, it only confirmed a surly Bucky was absolutely gorgeous to Steve, and Steve pulled him down the bed, spreading Bucky’s legs wide. Bucky sank back, allowing himself to be positioned, holding Steve’s gaze hotly as Steve pressed the tip of his dick against the loosened muscle of Bucky’s ass.
The first testing push felt like Steve was going to split Bucky in two - there was no way he would fit. But Bucky grabbed Steve violently by the back of the head, holding him tight in his superhuman strength.
“Don’t you fucking dare stop - not now.”
“Alright, sweetheart,” Steve said placating, “just don’t wanna hurt you.”
“You won’t.” Bucky replied adamantly, and Steve still wasn’t sure until Bucky husked out, “Trust me.”
And Steve did. He trusted Bucky more than anyone else in the world, the universe, and so he continued to press past the tight muscle and...
Oh.
Oh fuck.
He wasn’t expecting Bucky to feel so good, so tight, so perfect. Steve kept pushing, further and further, almost endlessly until he had to pull out an inch to gain more leverage, and the whole time he did this, the whole time he tested and pressed forward again, Steve watched Bucky’s face, looking for signs of discomfort. He saw none.
Bucky was slack-jawed as he stared into Steve’s eyes in a completely blissful state, and pride welled up inside of Steve, he was making Bucky look like that, giving Bucky what he wanted, desired. Steve and no one else.
It was both heady and compelling.
When Steve could push no further and was fully seated within Bucky’s body, he took a breath, then another, and although his instinct was telling him to thrust, take, pound, he didn’t. He’d promised Bucky something.
Grabbing Bucky’s waist, he spun them quickly; Bucky yelping suddenly at the change in position, and looking a little dazed, he ended up straddling Steve, thighs stretched taut over Steve’s large frame.
“Ride me baby.” Steve said simply, and Bucky melted, falling forward to kiss Steve’s lips passionately. Steve held Bucky close as a tongue snaked into his mouth, lips frantic and hot on his, so Steve jerked up into Bucky’s body, reminding Bucky of what he was supposed to be doing, earning him a gasp directly into his mouth.
Sitting up, Bucky pressed his hands against Steve’s stomach for leverage, and tested his breadth of movement, wiggling side to side before he started to move in earnest. Soon Bucky was bouncing on Steve, pulling up and slamming down, taking the pleasure he wanted for himself, and Steve, he lay back and watched the love of his life take every inch he could, and adored it.
After a while, sweat started to pour down Bucky’s temples, his eyes squeezed shut tightly in concentration as he speared himself again and again on Steve’s hardness, wringing pleasure out of every pore, and Steve knew Bucky was close - could tell by the shortening breaths. Licking his palm, Steve reached forward to grip Bucky’s gorgeously rigid dick as it bobbed freely before him, mesmerizing in its movements.
Bucky snapped his eyes open, capturing Steve in his intense gaze, a pleading spark in them, and what Bucky was asking for, Steve wasn’t sure - so he grasped harder and began to stroke. He was methodical, brutal, unrelatening and soon Bucky was clenching around him as come erupted from his dick, coating Steve’s stomach in sticky stripes, and Steve was desperate to taste. So he did. 
Trailing a finger through the mess while Bucky caught his breath, Steve relished Bucky holding him deep within his body, clenching and twitching around him as Steve slid one wet and come soaked finger between his lips, moaning at the unique and tangy taste. It was pure Bucky. His essence, and Steve was addicted already.
“Oh Buck, I’m going to suck you so good one day. You’re the sweetest thing, aren’t you?”
Bucky nodded his head in return, sated and hazy, his breathing returning to some semblance of control, and with a refractory period only superserum enhanced soldiers experienced, Bucky’s dick started to fill again, not quickly, but enough Steve knew from experience that the sensitivity would have abated enough to touch - to continue.
“My turn,” Steve growled, spinning them back over, crushing Bucky into the bed under his weight.
Steve didn’t wait for a response, just immediately pounded hard into Bucky’s limp, open and languid body. And at odds with the rest of his self, Bucky’s dick hardened against Steve’s stomach with every stroke, but Steve had become lost in the sensations, in how good it felt to be encased in Bucky’s heat, his warmth, of finally being closer than ever before for the first time and he couldn’t think straight.
Grabbing Bucky’s chin in one hand, Steve pressed their mouths together, panting into Bucky’s as he whispered words of love tempered with a stream of filth that had Bucky’s eyes rolling to the back of his head.
Thrusting harder again and putting all his strength behind it, able to without hurting Bucky, Steve went into a frenzy as Bucky writhed and moaned underneath him, nonsense words falling from his throat. Steve held on as long as he could, but it was too much, had taken too long to finally be inside of Bucky, and with a litany of ‘oh god’s’ Steve came deep inside of his lover, his friend, his forever and basked in the moment, knowing it was all thanks to a little potion bottle. 
As he caught his breath, inhaling Bucky’s scent, smiling down and kissing his lips reverently, Bucky looked up at him grey-blue eyes full of wonder and happiness.
Their smiles couldn’t be any larger.
Maybe magic wasn’t so bad after all.
~*~*~*~*~
“Judging by the way they couldn’t keep their hands off each other this morning at the team breakfast, I assume you gave Steve and Bucky some help and advice?” Nat asked Wanda as they sat in a wine bar downtown that night on their weekly catch up.
Wanda smirked, holding her glass up in a cheers to Nat. “Yep, Bucky came to me yesterday morning and Steve in the afternoon. Both seeking the exact same help.”
“And did your ‘sex magic’ work?”
“Of course it did - I used my best Vodka.” Wanda affronted that Nat would even question her, knowing the redhead was really teasing.
“What about the spell you used?”
“Well, I wriggled my nose for theatrics, added a sprig of dried rosemary that was stuck to the back of my fridge, and made my hand glow for a second. Some of my finest acting work I think.”
“Those boys just needed some inner confidence - I knew it would work.”
“Of course you did.”
“Damn straight. Tequila shots here please!”’ Nat yelled to the barman who looked way too eager to assist, even though the bar was packed. Nat left a hefty tip when their drinks landed before them less than a minute later, and picking up the glasses she handed one to Wanda. Wanda knew she was going to regret their night the next day. 
Clinking their glasses, Nat declared, “to sex magic and dumb idiots in love.”
“And to us for being excellent enablers and smarter than the lot of them.”
“I couldn't agree more.”
Wanda woke up the next morning wishing she could infuse potions, if she was able to, then her headache might not be so epic. She hid under the covers for the rest of the day. 
Romanoff was a bad influence.
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ravenvsfox · 3 years
Text
Things Fall Apart; the Centre Cannot Hold
Summary: He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.
(Adam's perspective throughout Mister Impossible, as his worry reaches a fever pitch, and the two versions of himself begin to converge)
Word Count: 9.5k
Warnings: mi spoilers, death/suicide mention
A/N: batshit middle books my beloveds. adam pov or bust 😌
Read on AO3
In high school, Gansey would very occasionally call Adam in the middle of the night.
He would speak low and fast, his panic pinched between thumb and forefinger and held at a respectable distance. Adam would smother the receiver with his palm and step outside of his family trailer, listening hard for movement at his back.
The news was always the same: Ronan Lynch was on his latest rampage or bender, exercising his dark talent for bullying his way into people’s lives and then breaking down all of their windows and doors trying to get out again.
Gansey would fret and apologize, guilty for luring Adam out of his wolf-den, guiltier for neglecting his duties as Ronan’s warden. Adam would wait tiredly on the line for Gansey’s anxiety to exhaust itself, and then dutifully join the search party.
He would step into his beaten tennis shoes and pry his bike from the fence, silencing the silvery shock of metal on metal, and avoiding the reedy whir of the spokes by holding the whole thing aloft until he reached the gravel road.
From there, he would venture out into the abandoned Henrietta streets, the crunch of his tires cutting clean through the woolly midnight silence. He often circled the perimeter of the park nearest Monmouth, stepped through the great dark portal into St. Agnes, and nipped under the old bridge, squinting into the darkness for the challenging shoulders, the oil-slick BMW gleam, the slump of a body or clatter of bottles.
This is a part of Gansey that I admire, he would think. And with equal fervour, this is a part of Gansey that I resent. This blood attachment to Ronan, who was not even attached to himself. The insomnia that seized two heads of the lopsided Cerberus that Adam, Ronan, and Gansey were all part of, a restlessness on either side of him that shook him awake over and over again.
He chased Ronan’s shadow, hating him. Hating his thoughtlessness, his privilege, his chokehold on Gansey’s interests, his purposefully and continuously ruined potential, and yet bristling with anxiety at the idea of finding him bleeding.
They hadn’t known then that he was a dreamer, but they’d felt the ear-popping pressure of his grief, glimpsed the hulking animal of his self-loathing, urged onwards by the twin spurs of Declan and Gansey, the past and the future, digging into his sides.
Adam had seen Ronan, teeth bared, hurling himself at rock bottom, and he had rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pulled him back by the collar.
Things are completely different now, but he still finds himself sleep-raw and petrified, reaching after Ronan in the dark.
He examines himself in the mirror of the communal bathroom in Thayer hall. The overhead lights are an unflattering yellow, the sink has a long dark hair stuck to its basin, and Adam’s face is gaunt and bruised with lack of sleep.
He’s losing it, a little bit.
He takes his own pulse, focusing on the faraway burble of the ley line. Everything, lately, seems far away.
As if through a stranger’s eyes, he slips from the seafoam tiling and bleach tang in Thayer’s North bathroom to the accordion door of the trailer toilet, the creaky cubicle shower, his gawky, hurt reflection in the burnt-out light. This version of Adam had to watch his best friend’s best friend escape suicide watch and get screaming drunk in public, treading mud and malicious dreams all over Monmouth manufacturing.
He can still smell the salt tang from teenaged Adam’s ocean of disdain.
Now that he loves Ronan, his irritation has only gotten sharper, more deadly. Ronan performs each perilous swan dive into the unknown, each foolhardy act of self-sacrifice, as if the people who care about him aren’t gasping spectators. It makes Adam furious.
Perhaps neither of them have changed as much as they wanted to believe. As Gillian keeps advising the crying club—with the confidence of a seasoned psychiatrist—progress isn’t linear.
He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.
He slides fingers over his temples, smooths a knuckle over each eyebrow to ease the tension he always carries there. Sleep is a little knot of gristle lodged at the back of his throat; he can’t swallow it and he can’t spit it up. It never used to be this hard to put his problems to bed. He would worry the weight on his chest into small pieces, and go to sleep knowing that even the worst things about his life were organized correctly.
This time though, he’s out of sorts, divided, always busy but always spinning his wheels. He has a white-hot secret pressed to the roof of his mouth.
Every time he folds himself into bed, his subconscious helpfully reminds him that Ronan might be dead. And then a highlight reel plays in his head like an In Memoriam: Adam’s hand cupping Ronan’s nape, a barn silhouetted against a melancholy sky, a fistful of dreamt light, a dozen hard-won smiles and a hundred easy ones, a white handprint on a flushed thigh, a colourful joke to placate a brother, a kiss pressed to a dream’s forehead. All of that—gone. And Adam, at Harvard.
He highlights long patches of text in his sociology textbook, drinks a sensible amount of jack and coke at Eliot’s birthday party, declines Gansey’s calls by sending cheerful and conciliatory texts, and drifts through the library with his hand knotted in the strap of his satchel, looking for something that he can’t really articulate. He reads the same line of theory over and over and over and over, feeling like he’s scrying, like his focus isn’t his own.
He did all of this before Ronan went missing too, but now it’s a whole different class of performance. It used to be, I’m convincingly attentive, I’m sipping overpriced coffee on the way to class like a good Ivy leaguer, I’m making an impression on my professors, I’m forging friendships. Someday I will cash in these relationship tokens, and it all will have been worth it. It felt impossible that his life could be so simple and rewarding.
Now he thinks, I’m studying for finals and my boyfriend is being hunted by people whose job it is to kill him. I’m drinking a latte and the only people I’ve ever loved have left me, and I'm alone again. I’m putting my hand up in class and somewhere, Ronan’s life is changing, rapidly, dangerously, without me.
He lies to everyone, all the time, and tells himself that this life he’s building is more important than anything.
Once, as they cleared placemats and mugs full of stagnant coffee from the kitchen table, Ronan—still cobwebbed in his most recent dream—had detailed the sensation of hovering over himself afterwards. He was unable to manipulate his physical body or even really recognize it as his own, and his consciousness, detached, had its own limbs, its own intentions. He was like a parasite trying to wriggle back into its host.
Whenever Adam consults his double in a bit of glass, he imagines himself as a nimble dreamer, peering down, working to bring a fantasy to life. He can see his own outline, a slick college student with a flat, pleasant affect and a gaggle of soft-shelled friends. He plays his role impeccably well, but he can’t fit himself into it. If he passed himself in the hallway he would not stop.
Looking in the mirror now, he feels a red pang of fear, then a supercut of the ways he used to let himself love and be loved, then resentfulness hot on the heels of his worry.
His reflection withers, and he looks deliberately down at his hands. It’s a Tuesday, and he needs to sleep, or his tightly-scheduled Wednesday will be a misery. It’s a Tuesday, which means he hasn’t spoken to Ronan in—he stalls. Call me, he thinks, miserably. Just call me.
He can deal with a multitude of challenging and improbable situations if only he can see them clearly. Ronan is, for whatever reason, keeping him in the dark.
The not knowing is bad. It’s not how he functions. It’s not how they function. But instead of dwelling, he puts his back into the narrative that is now his reality: Impeccable student. Devoted friend-group. Tough break-up. Bright future.
Ronan isn’t here. Can’t ever be, physically, so far from the ley line. Adam has to be.
“Croissant, as ordered.” His gaze snaps up, connecting—not with his own image, but with clever, horn-rimmed Gillian. “They tried to foist it upon me without butter, if you can imagine that.” She deposits a crinkly brown and tan paper bag in front of him, and then two little plastic pots of butter. Adam regards the squashed shape of the bag’s contents with confusion.
It’s— “Is it Tuesday?”
“Wednesday,” Eliot corrects airily, licking jam from their thumb.
“My god, Adam. Whatever happened to your infallible circadian rhythm?” Fletcher asks. “You are the Swiss timepiece by which we measure our days.”
A terrible wave of vertigo strikes him, and he’s grateful to find himself sitting, at one of two conjoined wrought-iron tables in the courtyard near Thayer. He can feel the ley line breathing for the first time in a long time.
He must have gone to bed after his late-night breakdown in the bathroom. He must have. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was. His hand strays to his hair. Wet. He’d woken, showered, and met his friends for breakfast, and he can barely remember it.
“Sorry,” he chokes. “Sleep deprivation is catching up to me, I think.”
“Aw, chicken,” Benjy says affectionately. “I’ve sung those end of term blues. The profs think we’re machines. Don’t even get me started on Dr. Fraundberg’s Lit Crit for assholes.”
“Whyever would we?” Eliot says. “We want to make it to class before noon.”
“Har-har. You wound me. Adam you’d better get a tissue ready, I’m about to tear up.”
“Also,” Gillian says, pointing her be-honeyed knife in Eliot’s direction. “Speak for yourself. I want to make it to class never.”
“Your presentation is going to be exceptional,” Fletcher tells her. “Your rough draft already drove me into paroxysms of jealousy. I don’t know why you’re so concerned.”
“I don’t just want to pass,” Gillian says. “I want to win.”
“Admirable,” Benjy sniffs.
“You’re being awfully quiet, Adam,” Eliot says, at length. He’s aware that they’re all trying very hard to act like they don’t notice how poorly composed he is.
“Can’t a man savour his pastry, Eli?” Fletcher rumbles.
“No, that’s fair,” Adam sighs. The four of them peer at him expectantly, eyebrows arranged into an array of benign and non-threatening shapes. “It’s possible I’m having a slight breakdown,” he says, adopting the grim hyperbole of a student for whom finals are the beginning and end of their emotional upset.
Everyone at the twin tables indulges in a bit of mild laughter.
“What a coincidence, so am I!”
“Well if it’s only slight, I’ll stow my concern.”
“Harvard or personal?”
He smiles faintly, and says, “kind of both. The personal is political, or something.”
He thinks he’s laying it on thick, but Gillian grins at him. “'Atta boy.”
Fletcher goes to take a sip of his tea, but chokes when his phone lights up with an incoming text message. “Criminy, is it eight already? Starting the day with a bang, as usual. I’ll meet you at Weld this evening, yes?” he asks, shaking out his tweed jacket and thrusting an arm through it, securing the remains of his bagel between his teeth with his other hand.
“Of course,” Adam says. Fletcher gives him a thumbs up, mouth charmingly stuffed, and sweeps away across the now bustling courtyard.
“Hey magic man,” Eliot says. “Will you do a reading for my sister tonight? The break-up with Margot is hitting her kind of hard. I’m pretty sure she just wants to be told she’ll find love again.”
Adam watches the juddering impact of Benjy kicking Eliot under the table.
He shrugs. “First come first serve, but I’ll give her the friends and family discount.”
“You’re a prince,” Eliot says, blowing him a kiss. Adam tries to imagine any of his friends from Henrietta doing such a thing, and can’t. “Come along Benjy. Bookstore or bust. They’re giving out discount computing textbook codes at sixty dollars a pop.”
A slip of paper for sixty American dollars. Adam’s head aches profoundly.
Gillian waggles her fingers at their friends as they depart, then she turns and fixes Adam with that familiar amateur therapist look.
“What?”
“Are you sleeping?” she asks bluntly.
“I’m a very good sleeper,” Adam says wryly. “Ask anyone.”
“But are you actually doing it?”
“Yes, Gillian.” Liar, liar. “Do you want me to keep a dream journal as evidence?”
“Oh, yes please.” That shark’s grin. “I’d pay to know what the fuck is going on up there.” She taps her own temple to indicate Adam's guarded mind.
He spreads his hands between them. “I’m an open book.”
She hums, only half-smiling now. “I dunno. That Southern charm. I’m never quite sure if I should trust a politeness that perfect.”
“On that note,” Adam says, standing. He’s relieved to find that he’s wearing matching socks, and his pant legs are rolled just so. There’s a tiny streak of yellow on one of his shoes, and with a jolt he realizes that it’s dream-crab guts. He presses on. “Thanks for the croissant. And the psychoanalysis. Send me the bill.”
She salutes him with her coffee cup. “You couldn’t afford me.”
He laughs, and turns, and then spends the whole walk to his 9 AM class trying to straighten all of the haywire compasses in his brain so they point due north.
His assignment is in his bag, pressed neatly into a navy blue folder. He has three classes today, a meeting with his supervisor at three, a study block set aside from four to six, then dinner, then tarot readings all evening—his phone rings. His treacherous heart leaps. Ronan.
He stops mid-stride, scrambling for his cell in the front pocket of his bag.
“Hello?”
“I—oh—Adam! I didn’t expect you to pick up. How on Earth are you?”
“Gansey.” He exhales through his nose. “I’m just on my way to class.”
“Fantastic to hear your voice. How’s—not that one, Jane, the I-90—exactly. How’s Harvard? Are you batting away job offers yet?”
“Constantly. How are your nature hikes and hippie communes? Contracted any backwoods diseases yet?”
“Charming. I’m actually in remarkably fine form, health-wise.”
“Is that a brag?”
A guffaw. “More of a curiosity. It’s actually part of the reason I’ve been trying to get in touch. Have you noticed any surges of power from the ley line lately? I mean, of course you have, but do you have any idea what’s causing them?”
He frowns, pinning his cellphone between his good ear and shoulder as he heaves open the ancient door to the physics building. “I could give you my best guess.”
A beat, and then, “I’m listening, Parrish.” Something about the way he says it makes homesickness pulse painfully in Adam’s chest.
He finds a semi-secluded stone slab bench behind an empty stairwell, and slings his belongings across it before he replies, “Dreamers.”
“Dreamers,” Gansey repeats, but it sounds like he’s saying of course! “Plural?”
“At least three.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure yet.”
“Ronan hasn’t spoken to you,” Gansey guesses.
“Not—in a few days.”
“Is everything alright?”
He swallows, and is horrified to find tears burning at the back of his throat. There’s no pretending with Gansey. It’s why he never calls him.
“Adam,” he says quietly. “Is he in trouble?”
He struggles with his composure for several long seconds. “Possibly.”
A world-weary sigh. “I really wish you had called.”
“Yeah, well,” he says vaguely. He checks his watch. 8:23.
“So he’s playing with others. Why would Ronan want to do that?”
“I think—he’ll do anything not to feel powerless.” He understands as soon as he says it that it’s the pockmark in the windshield from which all of the damage is splintering outwards. “And people take advantage of that.”
Gansey makes a thoughtful noise, somewhere a thousand miles away, and it clicks in a lock and opens Adam’s shoulders up. Maybe he doesn’t have to be alone in this fight. How could he have forgotten careful, persistent Gansey?
“Well. He’s certainly not powerless. I almost feel back to my pre-Cabeswater self. Everything is pleasantly linear. And Blue is—lighting up.” In the background, he hears her say supercharged with relish. “I can only imagine what it’s like for full-blooded dream stuff, with all of that energy at their disposal.”
“I don’t know if I like it,” Adam says carefully. “It’s good for a while, helping all the Matthew’s of the world, and then what? Where does all of that diverted power end up? What makes dreamers qualified to harness it without their worst nightmares manifesting?”
“You’re worried about the Lace.”
The last time they spoke, Adam had told them briefly about his last scrying session, warning them to look out for the hateful, faceless thing that had pierced his cells and magnified all of his pain and fear until all he could possibly do was scream.
“I’m worried about Ronan. I know he’s in over his head, and I know he won’t believe it until it’s too late.”
“Sounds like someone I know. Don’t bite off more than you can chew with this, Adam. I know you’re enormously busy.”
It stings, a little. “I’m still going to—I’m obviously still going to make time for him. Especially when he’s—“
“Struggling. Yes. I understand perfectly.” It occurs to Adam that, unlike his well-meaning Harvard friends, he actually might. A needling murmur in the background, and then, “listen, Blue’s telling me that you should get in touch with the psychics, and Mr. Gray.”
He nods. The rhythm of problem-solving is soothing his frazzled nerves. “I’ve been considering it. I’m also pretty sure that Declan has been keeping his own tabs on things.”
“My money’s on yes,” Gansey says. Adam half-smiles. His money has been on a lot of things. “Poke around when you can. See what turns up. I’ll give Ronan a call, not that it’s ever done me much good before.”
“I’m pretty sure he ditched his phone.” He checks his watch. 8:24. It feels like it’s been much, much longer than a minute. There is so much day ahead of him.
Ordinarily, he would be compartmentalizing better than this. No feverish Gansey phone calls directly before class. No pleasure with his business. No finesse when logic will do the job just as well. But the subterranean, black-eyed Adam is still within him, tethered to the ley line and to his friends, and he wants very badly to fix this.
“Ah, Ronan,” Gansey sighs. “It’s always got to be him, doesn’t it?”
“I know,” Adam says narrowly. “If he’s not looking for trouble it’s looking for him.”
“You sound like Declan.”
Adam makes an offended noise in the back of his throat. Blue must be leaning across Gansey, because she says “that’s a new low,” almost directly into the receiver.
“I’m hanging up now,” he says flatly.
“Update me if anything changes? We’ll come home the moment things go south.”
He resists the urge to check his watch again. “Don’t cut things short on my account.”
“Well. Don’t disrupt your studies on Ronan’s. I’ve never known you to put your future on hold for anything.”
“I’m not—“ he stops. “Ronan is a part of my future.”
“Good,” Gansey says warmly. A test, then. And like most tests, there was never even a possibility that Adam wouldn’t pass.
______
It’s easy to tell when a dreamer is suffering.
As the energy from the ley line ebbs, dreamt creations judder and bolt like horses loosed suddenly from the service of a carriage, galloping towards safer pastures. If the dreamer is in more immediate peril, the dream simply folds its limbs into an agreeable shape and passes into sleep.
In the wee hours of Thursday morning, Adam lies awake in bed, dangling his hand between the wall and his bed frame, feeling along the subtle unfilled crack in the plaster. A flagpole casualty, from the day that everything stopped being enough for Ronan, and he slipped away on a dreamt current like a dark Ophelia.
He’s being dramatic.
He feels the drywall flaking, and digs his thumbnail into the split, wanting to rip the whole wall open with his fingers.
He keeps picturing Matthew’s half-lidded eyes, cloudless and blue as a wide prairie sky. The slouch of his posture, the tarnished golden head, the body briefly without a pilot.
Matthew had looked—Adam turns in bed, taking his chalky hand from the wall and fisting it in the sheets. He had looked like a faded old pillow, tucked unobtrusively into the chair by the window. He wouldn’t respond to Declan’s call, fluttering his drowsy lashes, and Adam had thought, ah. This is how I find out. His heart slumped over in his chest, dizzy with sudden grief. The tarot cards in his hands were dead leaves.
This is what happens when your life is tied to my brother’s, Declan had said, diverting his horror into scorn as he often did. The death of any one member of his family ensured the destruction of another. It had always been that way.
Matthew eventually roused, and Adam had closed his eyes and turned his face towards the ceiling until he could be normal again. He felt suddenly foolish for peddling lies to college students when magic was so obviously in the room with him.
Earlier, he had called Maura over lunch, and she vaulted right over small talk to ask him, with concern, about his loosening grip on his psychic inclinations. She’d said, “You do know that the ley line isn’t the source of your problems, right? Give yourself some credit. You can fuck things up in a completely non-mystical way.”
She pulled the Magician, reversed, and the eight of wands, and then, without further comment, passed the phone to Mr. Gray.
Unexplained weaponry, he’d reported. The Lynch brothers loosed on two separate worlds at the same time. Buttoned-up Declan for the first time unbuttoned, schmoozing with an array of dangerous and connected people, trading in secrets just as his father had. Purposeless Ronan for the first time with a purpose, wading out from the murky waters of his dreamspace and bringing the tides with him.
Bryde, the name in the corner of everyone’s mouth, joined all at once by Ronan’s and Hennessy’s.
Renegades, liberators of dreams, scorchers of earth. He could see, easily, why this would appeal to Ronan. A mission, finally. A father figure to guide his hand. A world that wanted his dreams, and wouldn’t crumple under the weight of his unusual ambition.
When they were teenagers, Aglionby was just another one of Adam’s jobs, but it was one of Ronan’s nightmares. He would go to school, a hooded bird of prey, seething with resentment and squandered ability. He longed for the Barns because of what they represented: the childlike belief that his family would never die; the possibility for creatures like him to roam free; a landscape powered by unconditional love.
Bryde, Adam knows, must be offering him the same relief. Exquisite flight, after the cage.
It’s not possible, is the thing. It’s a pipe dream. A Niall Lynch fairytale.
Foresight has never been Ronan’s strong suit. He gets it into his head that a solution is right up until the point that it falls apart in his hands. He throws himself entirely into belief. It makes him an extraordinarily loyal and trusting person. It also makes him stubborn, rash, and susceptible to manipulation.
He believes in one facet of something, and the rest follows. He can’t just take a sip—he downs the bottle.
Adam is a boy on a bicycle in November, needing to find Ronan alive so that he can hate him without feeling guilty about it. He never stops oscillating between resentment and love, reality and unreality, understanding and disappointment. He wants to be normal so that he can choose to be abnormal. Sometimes he wants the cards without the magic.
He closes his eyes and remembers a slumbering mouse against an angular cheek. He imagines Matthew like that, perpetually immobile, perpetually innocent, like a taxidermied puppy. The pieces of Ronan’s consciousness that will linger after his death, statues in a graveyard. Tamquam—tamquam—
What would Ronan be without his dreams? Here, Adam thinks. He’d be here.
He stays in bed for another wasted hour, and then stands up, disoriented, in the dimness of the room. Fletcher is snoring softly. Someone outside their cracked window is shuffling over the concrete stoop. His upstairs neighbour is playing tinkling soundtracks while he sleeps. Adam can’t be here anymore.
He plucks Fletcher’s laptop silently from its charging station, tucks his bare feet into stiff leather shoes, drags the cardigan from his desk chair, and lets himself out into the hallway. The glare from the overhead light pins him against the wall for a moment.
He shuffles half-blind down the hall and upstairs to the solarium, nearly losing one of his unlaced shoes in the stairwell in the process. The lights are blessedly shut off up in the attic, and he feels his way to the nearest of the tables hunched in the shadows. Aching with fatigue, he sits, unfolds his stolen laptop, and gets quietly to work.
He’s never had the time nor means to be truly proficient with technology, but he extracted a handful of leads from Mr. Gray, and he’s been in touch with a friend of Benjy’s—a computer science grad student and hacking hobbyist.
He chases key phrases down rabbit holes and assembles news articles, tracking Ronan’s movement by his “unexplainable” signature (code for mind-fuckery, joyful innovation, and dark humour). Adam is a practiced note-taker and serial obsesser, so it’s barely a strain to find Ronan—whom he knows better than anyone—cropping up all over the continental United States.
“What are you doing,” Adam murmurs. The sky lightens gradually to periwinkle. He has work today, but his shift doesn’t start until noon. His mouth is bone-dry, and his head feels cotton-stuffed the way it always does when he’s pushing his body to its limit.
When it’s late enough in the morning to be socially acceptable, he messages Benjy’s friend with the bare bones of what he’s looking for: a project under wraps, a lonely last name, a suppressed pattern. They correspond, remotely, until Adam is reading government files over watery coffee, wearing sweatpants, dress shoes, and a cardigan with cracked elbow patches.
He pores over it all, cross-referencing dates, and ignoring the widening sink-hole in his chest.
Industrial espionage isn’t at all Ronan’s usual brand of destruction. Highly controlled, not much up-front gratification. A little more political than Ronan usually leans. A lot more ambitious. Whatever their agenda, ley energy is flowing more easily now that it's unobstructed on such a large scale. Adam has been feeling its effects rippling all the way out to Boston, a persistent background pressure, unavoidable as a migraine.
It’s clear that the Moderators are desperate to eliminate Bryde’s party. Their reports are a comedy of close calls.
Slowly, Adam begins to understand the scope of things.
Billions of dollars in damages, manmade structures ripped from their foundations. Magical fugitives hunted by a team that specializes in murdering the targets they call Zeds. Visionary headlights pointed towards certain apocalypse. A world that is always awake, but always, always feels like it’s dreaming.
It’s pretty much exactly as he feared. Night terrors. The Lace. Beasts and legends. Adam holds his head in his hands. It’s more than what Ronan must be imagining. It’s more than Aurora waking happily in Cabeswater, powered by the swaying trees. It’s the indiscriminate waking of every incredible thing that’s ever been dreamed.
He’s struck by a wave of hopelessness that rushes all around him and tears at his hair. Ronan, dreamer of baubles that dispense music and light, cars that go very fast, and menageries of curious creatures, recruited to a cause that transmutes creation into chaos. Ronan, promising to wait, and then running full tilt at a future that can’t possibly keep Adam in it.
His dream half is going to destroy his human half, and he’ll take everybody else down with him.
If he could just see him, maybe—
His jaw creaks, teeth clenched tight against the emotional groundswell. The late morning sunshine strikes him, and he feel more like a vague, pale shape than a person. Like a dream, maybe.
Alter idem.
If Adam can’t reach Ronan, maybe the Moderators should.
He feels the weight of that awful thought burning a hole through his stomach lining. He can’t think about it. He needs to go to work.
_____
The next evening, he experiences a surge of power so acute that it nearly puts him in a coma.
It’s another Wednesday night, and another batch of his peers hitch polite smiles to his heels as he passes them by, winding his way up into the high, arched sunroom at Weld hall. They’re all wishing for magical solutions for their mundane problems, the opposite of Adam in nearly every way.
He bumps knuckles with Benjy and Eliot in turn, pulls up his chair, and knocks his last reading from Persephone’s deck, mostly out of habit. He consults his phone idly as his friends try to make pleasant conversation, holding up a finger when he finds a new batch of texts from Gansey.
John Amos power plant in WV shut down Monday
Intense. maura said she could’ve brought HER dreams to life afterwards
no word from Ronan yet? Leads from Declan? pls advise
I’ll assume no news is good news
He puts his phone in his satchel and fastens it closed. Every new scrap of information he gets feels like a stroll through Ronan’s security system at the Barns—hopelessness compounding and compounding until he staggers out the far end weeping.
He needs to focus on something productive. He nods at Benjy to start letting people inside, straightening the notebook where he usually scribbles his observations. Here, he is an adjudicator: powerful, organized, and reserved, tallying points and offering constructive critique.
His curious audience starts pouring in then, amateur wiccans and wannabe believers, aggrieved last-resorters and skeptics following friends’ recommendations. It’s a brighter collection of characters than Aglionby could ever have hoped to foster.
Gillian texts him to say that she just passed Weld and his line-up was out the door. He is a prim and unobtrusive con artist, a false prophet, and business is booming.
Eventually, a bespectacled girl who looks anywhere from five to ten years his senior sits across from him, tucking a bag armoured to the teeth with candy-coloured enamel pins between her feet.
“Hi,” she says nervously. “Anna.” She stretches her hands out in front of her, then thinks better of it and drops them into her lap.  “I’m not sure how this usually goes, so you might have to hold my hand a little bit.”
“No problem,” he says smoothly, passing his deck across the tabletop. “Just go ahead and shuffle. Concentrate on what you want to ask the cards.”
She does as directed, struggling a little to keep the papery stack in check. Not a natural born card sharp, then. He studies her neat black shirt, tucked precisely into a plaid skirt. A Marilyn mole drawn on just above the corner of her mouth. A pride flag pin he doesn’t recognize next to a cat wearing a cowboy hat, and the word “rude” in cursive.
She holds the deck fleetingly to her chest, eyes squeezed shut like a child making a birthday wish, and then plops it in the centre of the table. A card slips near the top, slightly uneven, and Adam plucks it free.
He hums thoughtfully. “Eight of cups. Okay. So you’re having some trouble with letting go.” She frowns and nods once, quick.
He lays out the rest of a simple five card spread neatly between them. A couple of stray swords, the chariot, a wand.
“It seems like things are stagnating in your personal life. Maybe your friend group used to feel like your family, but you feel like they’ve lost interest in you. And you love them, but Anna, if you’re being honest with yourself, you’re pretty sure you were done with them before they even started pulling away. Right now you’re kind of just going through the motions. A couple of years overdue to convocate, right? Everyone else moved on to greener pastures.” He taps his thumb thoughtfully against the bones of his opposite wrist. “It’s not even the loneliness that gets you. It’s the not knowing. Are you supposed to chase after them? Is there another community out there for you? There is, you know.”
He notices another card spilling loose, and he grabs it without thinking. The Magician again. He thinks, huh, caught in the coils and dust of Persephone’s overturned cards.
And then the waking world disappears.
Adam is airborne, tumbling up into the atmosphere on a geyser of ley energy, whipped by branches and light. He throws his arms out to stop himself, but he’s only a projection, so his momentum doesn’t slow.
Something—Lindenmere? The cosmos?—shows him a series of images: an upturned nose made from oil and turpentine, a coiled old tree stump, a red-haired woman grinning toothily and then exploding, a rose the colour of warm dark skin, a pale scar-split hand cradling a silky head, the animal haunch of something black, a terrible voice booming turn back—
He skitters away, panicked, and bumps into his own body. Or not his own body. A double, blinking confusedly in the bathroom mirror.
His doppelgänger turns to leave, and Adam reaches after him, through the mirror, following himself into a version of Thayer which is not Thayer. Everything is alive, in this reality. Energy sings and saws its fingers together.
It’s a memory, but it’s also the present, and it’s also a nightmare. Wake up!
Obediently, the city wakes.
He gasps, although he doesn’t have a mouth. It’s the heaving first breath of a sleeping witch, like Gwenllian turning in her grave.
Adam struggles against the current of wild power, thick and pungent as gasoline. Everything feels more intense near magical artifacts, dream stuff, supernatural fault lines, and it is with great effort that he hunts for something familiar, something heavy enough to bind him. He was unprepared for this, and although everything around him is bitingly familiar, he's lost. He wheels around and around, reaching for his most trusted tethers—Gansey, Ronan, Blue, Persephone—
Persephone.
He follows the lingering perfume of her intuition, feeling blindly for those old handholds in her tarot deck, that familiar grip, like the hilt of a trusted weapon.
And then he finds himself looking again at the girl, Anna, her fate bunched around her narrow shoulders. And then at his own empty body, a glowing card clamped between his fingers. As soon as he’s aware of looking at himself, he’s looking out of himself, and he stands up quickly, overturning his chair.
“—Adam? Jesus Christ, are you okay?”
“What on God’s green Earth was that?”
A palm between his shoulder blades.
“Don’t touch me,” he chokes.
The hand retreats. A murmur: I’ve never seen him like this.
“Is it—is it bad? Am I going to be okay? Is it bad?” Anna keeps asking, horrified.
“You’re fine,” he manages to say. “I’m sorry.” The ‘o’ in sorry comes out a little wide and swerving.
“You went blank,” Benjy says, voice high with residual panic. “For like—ten minutes. Beyond hyper-focus.”
“I thought it was a gimmick,” Eliot says. “But a ten minute gimmick? What is this, Las Vegas?”
“I got carried away. I have to,” he swallows. “I need a minute. I promise everything’s fine.”
“Do whatever you need to do,” Eliot says quickly. “But, fair warning, I’m going to ask you a hundred questions when you get back.”
“And then I’m going to ask another hundred,” Benjy says. “Magic man.”
“A riddle, inside an enigma, wrapped in a sweater vest,” Eliot muses. He can tell they’re still shaken. He’ll have to deal with that, later.
“I'll be right back,” Adam says, touching them very lightly on the shoulder as he passes. The ley line is bursting, and he feels so flushed with its vitality that it almost makes him sick.
He stumbles past them, all the way out of the building and into the street. The winter air tears at his thin shirtsleeves, nips at his sock-less ankles. He shields his eyes against the sun, watching a bird swoop low overhead. A silvery, seagull-sized thing, but with knobby legs that taper into—he squints. Hooves?
He keeps moving, propelled by the mad urge to catch the bird, to pin the wild magic down so he can understand it.
Adam walks for what feels like a long time, trying to find the source of all of this haemorrhaging power. He spots a couple of fidgety-looking students, a few more curious creatures. Somewhere, faraway, there’s music crooning, and it sounds exactly the way a hot shower feels.
He stops in the middle of Oxford street, head cocked towards the natural history museum across the way, the orderly buildings, the sparse evening foot traffic. Business as usual. All of it screaming with energy.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a parade of scuttling creatures marching towards an invisible destination. Frowning, Adam crosses the street, chasing the peacock blue shimmer from an unfurled wing. He slows, stooping in the alley to pick one of the strange insects from the stream. He peers through a nail-sized hole in its head. Its spindly legs wave fearfully for a moment, and then it goes limp in his hand.
The ley energy punches out of him, and he sits back on his ankles, winded.
Adam gazes down at the jewelled beetle in his palm, its siblings scattered out like shell casings around his knees. Dreams, all of them. Briefly, impossibly roused in a dead city. He stands, letting the beetle drop from his hand and bounce across the concrete. He kicks them all hurriedly behind a nearby bench, mind racing. Bugs from an exhibit next door, no doubt. Dormant animals, transplanted from their habitats and pinned in place for decades.
What kind of ecoterror was wrought to bring about a flash flood of energy in a drought? How must Ronan be feeling, out there in the world, wracked with waking dreams? What unimaginable monsters were just stirring in the shadows because of him? Is Bryde one of them?
His lives are merging. The distant rumbling of thunder is overhead now, and the downpour is rolling in. There’s no way he’ll be able to keep dry.
Standing in that alleyway by himself, drained and ordinary again, he feels terribly alone.
He weighs his feelings against his logic for several agonizing minutes, standing still and watchful as a predator. He recalls the jarringly clinical accounts of Ronan's most intimate dreams, the sparsely encoded language in those government files outlining the world-ending dangers of something Adam had, for a long time, shared a bed with.
If something happens to Ronan now, it might kill Adam. If something happens because of Ronan, it might kill everybody.
Another minute, and he has his phone out and ringing.
“Hello?” Declan answers. Oddly, it’s not his usual prickly greeting. He sounds almost jovial.
Adam looks out into the darkening street, feeling like a death omen, a shadow across someone’s doorstep. “We really need to talk about Bryde.”
______
It’s the worst possible time for Declan to be withholding information from him.
Adam had graciously tipped his hand and Declan was, infuriatingly, holding back, as if this was a low grade in Ronan’s high school algebra class, and not the cataclysmic fuck-up of a powerful dreamer.
Declan, so uncannily like his brother in vulnerable moments like this, had thought of Matthew first. A world where dreams could stay awake, he’d marvelled. As if they could afford to think so small.
Once, Adam had awoken to find his arm glued to the bedspread. Ronan had dreamt a bee-less hive in the night, and it was oozing a steady stream of honey into the sheets between them.
“Score,” Ronan had said, when he’d rolled back into his body. “Sting-free. Fucking vegan.”
“What happens when we don’t want any more honey?” Adam had asked, critically. Ingesting dreams always felt like a slippery subject. “Does it shut off like a faucet?”
It didn’t. Ronan filled a dozen amber jars full, and then abandoned the hive in a dusty kiddy pool in one of the barns near the back of his family property.
A month later, Opal had crept in through a window looking for trouble, and emerged, shrieking, in a viscous flood of syrup.
Combing the mess out of Opal’s fur, her little legs slung across his lap, Ronan had complained about the magnitude of the clean-up job he would have to do, the special honey hoover he would have to create, what a waste of a dream it would be. Adam reminded him of his faucet idea.
“Too late for that, Parrish,” he’d griped.
It was their pattern. A marvel, too good to be true. Adam, the skeptic. Ronan, too in love with creation to care about consequences.
Eventually, it will all be too late.
Ronan will pursue this liberation fantasy, this golden daydream, even if it never stops oozing. Even if it makes the whole world uninhabitable.
______
That night, Adam tries to scry for the first time in months.
He gently pushes the crying club—only tenuously placated after the tarot incident—to have drinks without him, claiming stress-induced fatigue. He leaves his study notes open and blinking on the bed, lights a sad little tea light, and casts himself out into the ether.
Straining hard, he searches for the familiar contours of Ronan’s dreamspace, plucking the distant strings of the ley line and listening for the particular timbre of Ronan’s consciousness.
He doesn’t like walking this tightrope without a net, but Harvard isn’t exactly flush with psychic spotters. He keeps a delicate balance, far from his body, inching closer and closer to Ronan’s mind, the safe plateau at the end of this rope.
Eventually, he finds himself in a grey bedroom. It's full to the gills with water, there's a toy sailboat bobbing past at chest height, and storm clouds huddling nervously on the ceiling. Adam’s hair plasters instantly to his scalp.
“Ronan?” he calls, sloshing through the curiously luminous water. It starts raining harder. A familiar, curly-headed child stares at him through the darkness, eyes sharpened into silver points in the moonlight. “Ronan?” he asks again, gently this time.
A muffled sentence, a sad, crumpled expression, and then Adam is staring at a closed door.
“What—let me in! Ronan!” He pounds at the door. “Come on!” He can still feel rainwater, unnaturally warm on his neck.
A voice in his head, not Ronan, whispers, turn back.
“No,” he snaps, knocking harder. “Just let me—“ A sudden gust of wind in his sails, and he’s ejected from the dream altogether.
He pinwheels for a horrifying, weightless moment, struggling to tune back in to the feeble light from his stubby candle, and then dragging himself, hand over fist, back to his dorm room.
“Fuck, Lynch,” he says, when he has a voice. “Don’t be stupid.” He recrosses his legs, shaking off the pointless, clinging feeling of rejection.
When he tries to reach out again, searching, searching, Ronan’s expecting him. He never makes it past the threshold.
Back in his body, he knocks his candle over, relishing the controlled destruction, the spill of wax, the sizzle of the squashed wick. A fire he can actually put out.
______
The next time Adam scrys, Ronan looks like himself. Maybe a little scruffier, with what looks like a tunnel piercing on his right ear, and a rare openness to his posture. He’s lounging in a pasture up against a sleeping cow, boots up.
As Adam watches, he tips his shaved head back into its mottled hide, and the sun makes his eyelashes into lit matchsticks. He loves him very much. He’d almost forgotten.
“Don’t lock me out,” he says quickly. Ronan opens his eyes, and when he sees him he smiles instinctively.
“Adam,” he says, vaguely. And then he locks him out.
“No,” he cries. “Would you listen to me.” He feels for the fissure in space and time, the pocket where Ronan is dreaming, sweetly and inaccessibly, about the only home Adam has ever known.
Nothing gives. Nobody replies. He crawls back to Harvard, weak with misery.
In the next dream, Ronan is older, driving a boxy jeep over a foreign landscape. Rolling Irish hills, skies humming with artificial energy. A woman who can only be Jordan Hennessy, chattering in the passenger seat.
Then it’s Ronan with his head in his dead mother’s lap, stroking the downy wing of a black swan.
Then Ronan and Hennessy again, opposite one another in a sunny gallery. One of them examining an impressionist portrait no bigger than a postcard, the other examining the exit.
Then Ronan, discovering Matthew’s corpse in a dim hallway, blinking furiously at the stranger crouched over his prone body. “What did you do?” He sounds like a kid reprimanding his sibling for getting them both in trouble.
Every time Adam gets close, some defence mechanism stops him, like a firm hand against his chest, pushing him away again and again.
He doesn't know what to do except keep trying.
______
Blankly, he looks down at a sink full of tinfoil and uneasy water. In pieces, he becomes aware of his surroundings—green stalls and laminate countertops, a row of hundred-watt lightbulbs, and somebody rattling the locked doorknob.
“Adam, are you in there?” Fletcher. “We’re going to be late. It’s nearly ten. Adam?”
“Just a minute, sorry,” Adam slurs. He stares closely at his face in the mirror until he recognizes his own features. He has an exam at 10:30. He glances down at his watch. 9:52. He had been so sure that he could just drift for a few minutes, maybe catch Ronan before he woke up. That was almost an hour ago.
He drains the sink, hands shaking, cuffs getting damp. The lightbulb filaments float behind his eyelids when he blinks. He throws his satchel over his shoulder, smooths his hair up and out of his eyes, and rubs the bags under his eyes until they hurt.
When he lets himself out of the bathroom, Fletcher is directly outside, tapping a nervous rhythm on his hips. His hands fly from his body and into the air at the sight of him.
“Adam! Thank god. I’ll cancel the search party.”
“I got lost in my notes,” Adam says, as they both make for the stairs.
“Of course you did,” Fletcher says warmly. “A supremely Adam move. I just hope you’re taking care of yourself. Gillian thinks you might be—well—not spiralling, but—“
“I’m handling it.” He takes several mental paces backwards. “Uh—poorly, clearly. I’m sorry Fletcher, I didn’t mean to snap.”
Fletcher, to his credit, recovers quickly. “I can’t imagine going through my first semester of college and a break-up at the same time. You’re a stronger man than I.”
Adam rather doubts that Fletcher can imagine going through a break-up at all, but he nods conspiratorially. They hop down the last few steps and out into the chilly sunshine together.
“You’d be amazed what one can do out of necessity.”
“Too true. We all have our hidden depths, don’t we,” Fletcher says thoughtfully. For a moment, Adam considers telling him—something, looping him into this tangled web with him, but then he says, “now, chapter twenty-three wasn’t on the outline, was it? I beg you to say no. Lie, if you must.”
And Adam is a student again. He doesn’t have out of body episodes. He doesn’t carry wads of tinfoil in his trouser pockets. He doesn’t keep deadly secrets from people whom he is mostly pretending to like and understand.
They walk onwards, towards a test which Adam will rouse himself for long enough to ace. Then he will think of the next thing, and the next. Appease these school acquaintances of his. Tinker with finicky car engines. Make flash cards. Drift into the beyond using one of Fletcher’s three-wick candles from pottery barn. Text Declan, who activates Ronan’s accountability in a way that Adam does not. Call Gansey, if he can bring himself to face his disappointment.
And clear away his feelings, which keep pouring out of him like so much honey.
______
Ronan hangs up on him, and Adam holds himself in the biting wind outside the library for a very long time.
He’d thought, if he could only speak to him, that he could begin to undo Bryde’s poisonous influence. They know each other. They’ve known each other. Ronan would listen to Adam’s fears as he always does. Adam would appeal to Ronan’s heart, which tends to ache for helpless things. They would see how lost they had become without each other. Adam would be allowed back into Ronan’s dreams, and Ronan would be allowed back into Adam’s future.
Why didn’t you text back?
As if they’ve been suspended in time since Ronan’s last tamquam, and none of it—the running away, warding his dreams against Adam, abandoning his phone, trusting a complete stranger over his friends and family—had ever happened.
It’s absurd. He should have expected it. Ronan was searching for a reason to stay, and when he looked for his reflection, his second self, Adam wasn’t there. For a single moment, he wasn’t there, and now he’s paying for it.
Impatient, wrathful Ronan. Leaping from the moving vehicle because Adam was going the speed limit. Going rogue, and then calling Adam with all of these stinging accusations, like he was the one who’d been abandoned.
He thinks again of Bryde manipulating Ronan, preying on his loneliness, his love for his brothers, his fear of himself. This big bad rumour, older and crueler than the Lace itself.
And Ronan letting himself be manipulated, putting on blinders, using Adam’s brief silence as an endorsement for a glorified joyride with unthinkable global ramifications. Self-destructing because things got a little too quiet.
Adam feels hot rage taking ahold of him with its sticky fingers.
Then he thinks of Ronan saying I need to see you, his thin, frightened voice finding Adam from somewhere out there in the city, and his anger goes clammy.
There’s no way Ronan will call again. Negotiations were off as soon as Adam refused to house them both from the Moderators.
And now, without Hennessy, Ronan is the last arrow in Bryde’s quiver. He’s going to be the explosive that brings everything down. He’s going to be buried at ground zero.
If I'd replied an hour sooner, would he really have waited? If I’d gone to school closer, would I have noticed him disintegrating? If I explained that my dream isn’t what I thought it would be either, that he’s the only thing that feels real, would he have said it back to me?
After everything that’s happened, am I going to be the one who gives up on Ronan Lynch?
Everything is so fucked.
He calls Declan.
He picks up on the first ring. “Parrish—”
“He hung up on me,” they both say at the same time.
“Mother of God,” Declan moans. “Then there’s no hope. He thinks I sold him out to the Mods.”
“Did you?”
“No. I did exactly as we discussed. I negotiated for his safety. I thought—I mean, you said it yourself, Adam. Being anti-apocalypse is a pretty solid platform.”
He shakes his head. “Ronan won’t see it that way. He’s not like us. He doesn’t want to be moderated even a little bit.”
“Believe me, I know that. The way he was talking—about the world screwing them over, all of them, dreamers. That’s not the way my brother thinks. That’s all Bryde. And now he’s taken him—Christ—Christ knows where.”
“He wanted to see me,” Adam feels compelled to say. “He was trying to come here.”
“He said that? That's good,” Declan says, relieved. “Where—“
“I let him get away,” Adam says, through numb lips. “I let him go.”
______
He texts Gansey, things have gone south, and then he turns his phone on silent.
His puts his fingertips to the floorboards, a knobbly hand on either side of a scrying tableau: the leaping flame of a candle, a well-organized pile of cards, his overturned phone and discarded tie. He’s just finished crying, and he feels volatile and ill-prepared even as he ties himself to the flickering light.
His mind races through the night like a skipped stone. Vaguely, he pictures a vast body of water and a glittering mountain range, with no horizon line in-between. Darkness reflected in darkness.
“Ronan,” he calls. The dreamspace whirs and grinds its gears and won’t reply. “You know this is wrong. You know, or you wouldn't be hiding from me.”
It’s all water out here in this sublime mirror-space, but it’s also warm, like the steam rising from a hot spring. Something is moving, changing things on a chemical level.
For a moment he thinks he sees himself, a wan doppelgänger with its hands raised. But it’s not Adam. It’s Bryde. Cool, sturdy, a pale Atlas holding the dream together on his back. He recognizes him instinctively.
Adam deliberately throws his mind closer, into the terrible heart of this fire Ronan is creating. Smoke whispers and catches all around him, and it’s even harder to tell the difference between things now. No horizon, no seam, no reality, no death.
What have you done? What are you doing?
The heat is quickly becoming unbearable. Adam is stretched too thin, and the fire is fraying him, eating through each fibre of his connection to reality.
Ronan, please, I need you to stop. I’m losing my grip. Listen to me.
And then, without any warning at all, he collapses on his dorm room floor.
He hacks and retches, lungs full of phantom smoke. Everything feels very wrong. He thinks for a second that he’s blind, but it’s not his vision, it’s another, less tangible sense, it’s—
He scrambles backwards on his hands, heaving. He tries to pull himself up onto his bed, head first, then chest, but he has to stop with his face buried in the comforter.
Ronan is—he must be—he’s—
“God, no, oh my god, no, no.”
He needs to throw up. He needs to call somebody. There’s complete silence in his head.
He was slingshotted back to Cambridge, swatted back along the zipline to his body, because there was nowhere else for him to go.
He’s sure, in a very non-magical, intuitive way, that every dream in the world has just collectively collapsed. Adam staggers to his feet. There’s a smoke alarm going off, somewhere. A background hum of electricity groaning as it shuts off. A high, scared voice.
As if in a trance, he goes to the window.
There are five dead lightbulbs in the nearest row of street lamps, what looks like a sleeping child out in the middle of the square, and a woman clutching her chest and sitting slowly on a bench.
Panic is deadening his senses, crawling blackly into his mouth and nose and eyes. He thinks of Matthew sitting weakly by the window. Opal slumped over a stump in the woods. Chainsaw falling from the sky like a stone. Gansey’s Cabeswater heart decaying in his chest. Ronan, either dissolving into nightwash or felled by a Moderator’s bullet, dead, lost, or powerless.
Every morsel of magic, every innovation, every cherished friend, every sacred place, turned off like a faucet.
The world outside, drooping and disconnected, is now exactly as ordinary as Adam has been pretending it is.
The ley line is gone.
61 notes · View notes
mandoinevarro · 4 years
Text
An Overdue Debt
Words: 4.3K
Rating: E
Warnings: Smut, fingering, mentions of violence, spoilers for The Mandalorian
a/n: rip IG-11 but im different
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The Mandalorian had gotten used to finding you on his cot. On the nights he’d manage to make it back to the ship, after capturing quarry or escaping bounty hunters chasing the child; after making it out of every peril that crossed his path within an inch of his life day after exhausting day, he’d climb the ramp and find you on his cot.
Usually, by the time the hunter had shut the hull and carbon frozen his bounties, the baby would already be asleep, the ship orderly, and all controls double-checked and ready for takeoff. You were thorough. It seemed to him like you had a sixth sense. From the day he’d hired you, he’d seen you tinkle with every item in the sad collection of the Razor Crest’s old and overused equipment that would’ve fallen apart otherwise. You would oil his gear, check controls, and do any number of things to facilitate the smooth sailing of his ship.
He hadn’t heard the kid cry in weeks. Before the tiny infant could get a chance to work some tears out of his sooty eyes, you were already feeding him, burping him, or providing him with whatever it was that would sooth the surging tantrum immediately. It amazed him how you seemed to be able to fix just about everything you’d touch with those soft little hands of yours. The same hands that he would imagine fondly tracing every dip and scar on his chest and raising goosebumps on his skin, on the days when he’d feel particularly lonely.
Little by little, you’d repaired, oiled, and mended your way into the Mandalorian’s existence, making yourself a crucial part of his everyday life. It only took a couple of weeks for the bounty hunter to realize how essentially fucked he’d be if you ever decided to leave for a more promising and peaceful future than he could ever offer you. Sometimes, he’d study the patched up cables that stuck out of bullet holes on walls and the monitors that had stopped glitching so often ever since you’d focused your attention on them. He would envy the lifeless machinery then, for having the privilege of benefitting from your careful ministrations. The Mandalorian had wondered whether you’d also be willing to offer your healing touch to him, who—as far as you knew from the beskar that covered every inch of his human self and the modulated voice that filtered out all emotional depth—was half a machine himself.
Eventually, he had obtained his answer.
You’d responded to his mute question after he’d gone back for the kid in Nevarro. The bounty hunter had told you to wait for him on the ship, but hadn’t mentioned his intentions in the gray city. He’d only left you with the ominous instruction to take the Crest and never come back to the planet if he wasn’t back in an hour.
After three and a half hours of shooting his way out of the contained battle he’d unleashed near the gates of the city, he hadn’t expected to see the Razor Crest unmoving in the darkening horizon, right where he’d left it. He definitely hadn’t expected the rush of relief that made his spine dissolve when he found you still waiting for him once he’d climbed back through the hull—your eyes sunken in their sockets with concern and your lips chaffed from anxious biting—nor the way your gaze softened at the swampy child he knew you’d both learned to love.
You hadn’t asked any questions when you took the baby and carried him to the cockpit to cradle him in your arms. You hadn’t talked to him as, once in hyperspace, you and the Mandalorian had crafted a makeshift crib together for the sleeping kid from a rectangular metal container and some old rags. Adrenaline and urgency still beating like drums in his ears after such a close encounter with death, he hadn’t dared say a word either, out of fear of what he might reveal to you in his delirium.
But you’d known.
Somehow, among the aftershocks of fighting and below the cluster of stars and supernovas that shifted like snakes in hyperspace, you’d managed to see through the helmet and figure out exactly what he needed, like you’d done so many times with busted motors and faulty sensors. After finishing the crib, you’d taken its unconscious owner down to the hull. The Mandalorian had sentenced himself to his chair to try and still the punchy beating of his heart, that he knew had more to do at this point with the knowledge that you’d put your own life on the line to wait for him than with his altercations in Nevarro.  
But you’d come back.
You’d silently slithered your way back into the cockpit and stood right in front of him with trembling legs, looking for his eyes behind the visor. Wordlessly, you’d unbuckled your belt, slipped your pants down, and climbed onto his lap. His fingers had dug into the leather arms of the chair as you’d started moving on top of him in gentle circles. He remembered blushing at how fast you’d been able to get him hard and how all the blood had dropped from his face to his genitals when you’d lowered his zipper and freed his swollen cock. He remembered the persistent smell that had crawled underneath the helmet when you had shoved your underwear to the side and guided him inside your dripping folds.
Mando had fucked you then, with quick, hard thrusts and a vice grip on your ass that had most likely left bruises. He’d fucked you every single night that followed, as well. After freezing whatever bounty he would manage to catch and setting coordinates for the Crest’s next destination, he’d descend the ladder to find you. He never needed to tell you a thing, since you would just shove what little clothing was necessary as soon as you’d catch a glimpse of him and present your body to him, to do as he pleased. Night after night, you’d welcome him wet and willing, perched on whatever surface you two would see fit for your fucking. So, after trying the pilot’s chair, the floor, and several storage boxes, he’d gotten used to finding you on his cot.
Mando knew he was always rough with you. Whether he was coming back from a hunt or from a stakeout, it was always stress, anguish, and burning lust at the mere sight of you that guided his every movement, and they translated to a fistful of your hair or a sudden bump against your cervix. From the first time, he’d lost himself in the dizzying sensation of your slippery walls around him, clenching tighter with every thrust and squeezing every drop of sanity out of him. He’d become addicted to the clammy sound of your cum around his length as he took out all of his frustrations on the stretch of your pussy.
He would only ever take you from behind while you knelt in front of his bunk or against a wall, spilling his seed outside, every time. He’d never actually seen you naked. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about it—the curiosity of how gorgeous you probably looked like with no clothes on haunted his every waking thought—, but he knew it wasn’t part of the unspoken deal you two had struck. Out of pity, he assumed, you’d offered yourself to him as a stress reliever, and nothing more.
At first, though, Mando had been surprised at how often and loud you’d moan for him; later he’d figured it was just another way you’d though of to please him. The whimpers would float around the recycled air of his empty ship and bounce on his helmet, unable to pierce through the tough beskar. So he would take what he could get and tried his best to shut the desire for a more profound intimacy that he ached for. Until, one day, it could no longer be held back.
After his clash with Moff Guideon and the army of Imps, it took Mando a few hours to grasp that he had survived. Somehow, hugely outnumbered and wounded, the bounty hunter’s own small army had managed to defeat the enemy troops and get away with the child, not without two losses that still hung too somber on his guts for him to process properly. He sat on his chair with his son resting next to him for hours, watching space break down to pieces from the cockpit. He thought about IG-11, how he’d lifted his helmet and seen his most secret self through red sensors. Mando remembered how much he’d wished for you at that moment, wanting nothing more but to replace the droid’s neutral features with your own lovely ones. He’d known his son was safe and had made peace with his impending death, but he hadn’t been able to shake a feeling of unfulfillment for knowing that he’d never gotten to truly see you or feel you.
But he had survived.
So Mando sat in the cockpit until he lost track of time, almost hoping that—as always—you’d simply guess what he yearned for and provide it for him.  But, eventually, when you didn’t magically appear in front of him like the first time, he knew it was his turn. Nervousness stifling his movements, he climbed clumsily down, stopping every once in a while to reconsider. What if he offended you? He’d never forgive himself if his stupid requests drew you away once and for all. But temptation was gripping his heart hard, and he knew that he’d never know peace again if he didn’t at least try to get this one favor from you.
When he jumped down the last steps of the ladder, he didn’t find you in his cot. You stood in front of him, as if you’d been waiting. You didn’t push your pants down or move to kneel at the entrance of his bunk like you always did. You simply looked into his visor with a hesitant expression, waiting for him to make a move, for a change.
His voice was tight and unsteady when he finally said, “I want… Can—can I touch you?” He cleared his throat and couldn’t help the telling dip of his helmet as he absorbed your figure in front of him. “I mean really touch you. And…and see you. Please.”
Your shoulders slacked and you moved your head to the side in confusion, like you had been expecting literally anything else. And then, once you saw the way his helmet hung defeated and his hands were clasped in front of him, almost as if he were apologizing for asking, your face went back to its natural comprehensive expression. Except something else was growing in your eyes that made your pupils expand and darken.
“Yes,” you breathed out, with a begging tone that mimicked Mando’s own.
Mando’s lungs collapsed at your permission; he hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding his breath. He looked around, trying to figure out a way to quickly engineer a surface comfortable enough for you, but you simply sat cross-legged on the floor looking up at him with inviting eyes that got his heart pounding a little faster. So he knelt down in front of you and unclasped his cloak to lay it in next to your legs. It wasn’t ideal nor how he’d imagined it—nothing about this situation was—but he was determined to make you feel as comfortable as he possibly could.
You clutched his pauldrons as leverage and shuffled on your knees to rest them on the worn fabric. You reached down with one hand to remove your shoes and socks, before trailing it upwards to your belly and grabbing the hem of your tunic. Mando quickly caught your wrist.
“Wait,” he asked, “let me.”
You simply bit your lower lip and nodded, and Mando liked the way your cheeks turned pink when his gloves grabbed the bottom of your shirt and pulled it up. Every new inch of your skin made it harder for him to keep his hands on the cloth instead of the soft flesh that he was seeing for the first time. When he got your tunic far up enough that it went past your breasts, he had to force himself to keep going, instead of immediately rolling the tips in his fingers. His already half-hard cock twitched at the thought.
By the time your head poked out of the tunic’s hole and he discarded it, his body was burning inside the armor. He trailed his gaze across every crevice of your upper body, stopping at some softer-looking spots he quickly decided were his favorite. You apparently noticed, because the blush on your face was darker than before and it spread to your chest. Mando found your pigmented skin endearing. Maker, after weeks of burying himself inside your most private places, how was it possible that this was the most intimate moment you two had ever shared? And why was he so much more fucking nervous right there than any of the other nights?
He reached his hands out slowly to unbuckle your belt, but looked up at you for permission first. Still biting your lip, you managed a small smile, but your teeth were digging deeper with anticipation that made the gentle expression falter. So he removed your belt and pushed down your pants, taking your underwear with them. You shuffled awkwardly on your knees to slide your them off your legs and would’ve toppled over if he hadn’t grabbed your arms and held you steady. You laughed nervously at your clumsiness and grabbed his arm for balance, as your other hand stretched behind you to pull the trousers off completely and throw them to the side.
The hand on his arm let go and your back straightened again. And there you were, bare in front of him as he’d asked, your skin covered in goosebumps from the cold air of the ship. Like staring into a mirage, he instinctively grabbed your wrist to make sure you wouldn’t evaporate in front of him. Stars, for all the hours he’d spent mentally sketching a picture of your nude body, he could never have expected this. Mando’s eyes traced the lines of your neck and dropped to a pair of smooth shoulders that he would’ve paid good money to lick. Your heaving chest caught his eye, and he went dizzy with the way your nipples hardened under the attention. He skimmed lower to your belly, and would’ve gladly stayed there if he hadn’t caught a glimpse of something glistening between your thighs. His breath audibly hitched at the modulator when he recognized the clear slick of your arousal.  
Once you understood what the visor was directed at, your shoulders hunched and you shuffled uncomfortably in your place. The movement snapped him out of his trance.
It was Din Djarin who stared straight into your eyes when he finally said with a disbelieving, low voice, “I’m sorry, it’s just…You’re so beautiful.”
You smiled fully for him then, your lips plump with arousal and your body arching towards him more confidently to try to coax him to reach out.
“Please,” you pleaded in a raspy tone he’d never heard before, “touch me like you wanted.”
That was all Din needed. His hands approached your body, before he reconsidered and took the gloves off first. Fuck, where to begin? He wanted to feel everything at once, brush his fingertips down your neck and grab your thighs hard and press a hand into your belly. He wanted to grasp your round tits and trace a finger down your spine to make you shiver. Most of all, he wanted to sink his digits into your wet heat and feel you squirm over them.
He settled his hands on your shoulders instead, like you’d done moments ago. The bare-skinned contact made you both tense, until he started caressing up and down your arms to try to relax you. You let out a shaky breath as his calloused hands tickled your skin with a feather light touch.
“It’s smooth,” he mumbled, “your skin. I—I didn’t know.” The helmet was trained on your chest, though, and his hands followed, two large palms settling just above your breasts. Din felt your heart beating faster and faster against his palm to the beat of his own unstable huffs that he knew you could hear. He glided his hands lower, grasping your tits with a strength that painted a stark contrast to his previous, careful fondles. The sensation worked a gasp out of you that pierced beskar and cloth and went straight to his cock. Encouraged, he kneaded the fat and pinched your pebbly peaks, earning him another, louder whimper.
Fuck, why did it feel that good? Din could already feel his array of problems slipping further and further away at the sensation of your hot skin against his, not to mention the sight of your mouth gaping and your half-hooded eyes. A scent he already knew well crept into his nostrils and settled on his lower half, reminding him of the growing lubrication between your legs.
He traded your breasts for the curve of your ass and, when he squeezed, he pulled you closer to him, your chest hitting the cool surface of his armor. You yelped at the cold contact, but the surprise turned into pleasure when he started grabbing handfuls of you to press your body tighter against his. His fingers slipped down to the backs of your thighs and sunk on the pillowy flesh between them, making you buckle forward as a reflex and wrap your arms around his neck. The flesh underneath his palm was soaked and boiling, but it wasn’t until he parted your thighs and shoved his metal cuisse between them that he thought you were working up a fever.
Before he could give you any instruction, you buried your head in the crook of his neck and started rubbing your core on his cuisse. It was an awkward angle that only offered so much friction, but the way you moaned for him sounded like it the sensation was melting you. Every desperate little noise was absorbed by his pores and climbed to his head, making him drunk with the knowledge that he could do this to you.
He needed more.
“Lay back.” He placed his hands on your hips to stop your grinding. You threw your head back to look into the dark visor, flushed and confused.
“But—” you started, before Din placed a hand on the small of your back and pushed you with his other one onto the worn cloak. You relented and laid on the floor panting, watching him through long lashes and pressing your legs tightly. Towering over you on his knees, Din grabbed the tops of each thigh and massaged them carefully, both to coax them open and to continue reveling on how your body pulsed alive under his touch. You were writhing and moaning under him, too busy rubbing your legs together to ease some of the throbbing between them to understand what he wanted from you. As much as he enjoyed watching you completely exposed, desperately trying to pleasure yourself, he needed to see. He needed you open to finally take a look at the heat where he’d been losing himself for weeks.
Din pinned down your ankles to the floor and looked straight to your face.
“Please, just—just let me see.” He slowly slid your feet towards you, making your knees flex and your legs bend. Back to reality, you swallowed hard and nodded, propping yourself on your elbows to see exactly what he’d do.
Din pushed your ankles to the sides, revealing little by little a blushed, pulsating cunt. He only stopped once your legs couldn’t open any wider. Your outer lips were plump and swollen, while your inner folds glistened wet and pink under the artificial light of the ship. Your clit was sticking out completely, imploring to be touched. Din felt something stab his chest. He held his breath and felt his member grow fully erect at the erotic sight.
“Fuck,” he hissed through his teeth, “f-fuck, is this what I’ve been missing?” He placed his palms on your inner thighs, where he could feel the warmth radiating from your cunt. “Huh?”
You furrowed your eyebrows and opened your legs a little wider. “You never touched me,” you whispered, “I thought you didn’t want to.”
“Maker.” Din’s gaze was trained on your pussy, unblinking. “It’s the only thing I’ve wanted.” When glossy arousal oozed out of you at his admission and pooled on his cloak, Din felt his mouth salivate. He ran his tongue over his lips.
“Then do it.” You sounded desperate now.
Din watched you intently—searching for a reaction—when the index and middle finger of his right hand made a V shape  over your outer lips, before pressing hard against them. It was difficult for him to decide whether to focus on how your head dropped on the ground and your breath hitched, or how your inner lips spilled outside around his digits and your lower muscles hardened under his touch. The pressure made more of your arousal seep and coat his fingers, as he worked them back and forth over the outside of your core. He knew he was leaking precum but couldn’t bring himself to remove his right hand from your cunt nor his left from your thigh, so he simply pressed his legs together, hoping the sight of you wouldn’t be enough to make him cum.
You were pushing against his fingers, silently asking for more, and Din was happy to comply. He removed his middle finger as his index brushed your soaked slit from the bottom to the top, stopping right below your clit. Exasperated, you slapped your palms over your eyes.
“Mando, please,” you whined, “do something. You can’t just—” Your own moan cut you off when he brought down his left hand to pull your inner lips open and gather some more moisture. Fuck, he had a clear view inside you. He could see your innermost walls drowning in their own juices turn a dark pink, almost purple. He used both hands to open you further. Deep inside you, your tight hole clenched around nothing, spitting out more and more fluids.
Stars, Din didn’t know anyone could get this wet, not even when he used to mindlessly fuck you. His hands were drenched already, but, greedily, he still gathered more slickness and rubbed it on his finger, across his knuckles. He wanted it everywhere. He scooped more and smeared it all over your folds and inner thighs, still avoiding your bundle of nerves. Fascinated by your body and trying to ignore how his cock strained against his pants, he lifted his hands to coat your tits with your own cum.
You were almost crying beneath him, but you seized your opportunity when you felt his wet hands against your chest. Suddenly, you grabbed his wrist and yanked it down, pressing the heel of his hand against your neglected clit. Your eyes closed as a broken sob of relief escaped your throat. You moved your hips against it, using his body for your pleasure as he’d done so many times with yours. Din was delighted.
“Been so good to me for so long,” he muttered, as his other hand creeped stealthily back towards your slit. “I want to pay you back.” The primal sound that left you when he sunk two fingers inside your snug hole made his cock jump and get itself a little wetter than before. He willed himself to ignore it and focus his attention on the long fingers inside you. He pushed them as far as they’d go and them some more, while you were still grinding against his palm.
Din was sure he was going to black out from lust when you started moving faster and his fingers curled into something that made your eyes roll to the back of your skull. You were breathing quickly, high little mewls leaving your lips as you clenched tighter and tighter around him. His torso leaned down to see how he was stretching you open.
“B-but I liked it,” you blurted all of a sudden, catching your companion by surprise, “I like it when you f-fuck me—” you groaned when he couldn’t help himself and added another finger, “—when you fuck me angry. When you—when you take it out on me.”
Din didn’t answer. He couldn’t when your words sank deep into his stomach and braided his insides. He only moved his fingers faster and deeper, letting your walls distract him—once again—from the difficulties of his turbulent life, as you pulled tighter around him.
Tighter—tighter—tighter—and—
Din was sure it was your own orgasm transferring over to him when you came undone with a loud cry. He didn’t stop moving his hands into you as spasms took over your body, but he felt his own organs contract and release waves of pleasure into every corner of his ragged body. It was only after you stopped shaking and he took his creamy hands away from you that he noticed a dark, moist patch on the crotch of his pants. You noticed it too, and managed a brief, breathy laugh before falling back on the floor, pulling the cloak to cover you and closing your eyes.
Din slapped your leg gently to stop you from falling asleep before standing up.
“We’re not done yet,” he told you plainly, as you stared at him with confused, tired eyes. “I haven’t tasted you.”
He clicked a few buttons on his arm, and the hull became pitch black.
–––––
Edit: Part II here
@artaxerxesthegreat​
2K notes · View notes
charmed-asylum · 4 years
Text
🐍 Envious Lover 🐍
Summary: With no where else to go Loki has only one last option to save his home and that you. What can worst then going to your ex, a goddess of gods.
Loki x Reader ( goddess)
Word count: 3,733
⚠️WARNING ⚠️: Goddess being everyone goals, Loki being a jealous sassy boy, Thor being his adorable self, sassy reader , goddess reader, I little of bow chicka wow wow, angst, and a lot more I can’t remember
A/N: I wrote this for the @finleyjayne rainbow writing challenge. I have dyslexia so if something wrong please tell me. This is also my first fanfic I have ever wrote. I had a lot of fun and I just gain more respect then I had before for fanfic writers. Thanks to @kity for pushing me to do it. Also thanks to @hellcaster901 @deceitfuldevout @linkispink1995 for being wonderful to me during this process ❤️ you guys. Alright enjoy and CONGRATULATIONS TO FIN for this wonderful achievement!!!!! ( also check out master list for some goodies)
Tagged: @alagalaska @linkispink1995 @deceitfuldevout @hellcaster901 @alias-b @opheliadawnwalker3
Divider by: @firefly-graphics
Master List
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You stood tall like a stem of beauty. Your hair was glowing with a dark lust in the bright dying sun. You were a mystery. Your eyes were keepers of souls and secrets, and your voice was made of silky waves of desire. You were a siren and with one sound– even one as quiet as a whimper or soft moan– any man would be forevermore trapped in your grasp.
“Who, father, should I give a good night kiss for such a surprise? Cry of a tear as the lady finds such men without a breath,” you asked softly as you walked down the hallway covered in ivy. Loki rolled his eyes. He couldn’t deny you were the woman of his dreams. Unfortunately, he was also far too stubborn to ever admit this.
You were still bitter after the untimely death of your fiancé. You spent your days hosting high-end balls and festivities. You spent your nights playing with the hearts and passions of the endless stream of men begging to please you.
“Aren't you the whore of all things gold,” Loki said, his words laced with sweet venom.
“You know, when I was born of triumph at the end of all galaxies, my mother looked me dead in my eyes and told me that I was dangerous. Want to know why little boy?
“Oh please do tell me why, pet,” he said as he rolled his eyes. He was intrigued by you and the idea that you had a bit of a dark side only made him want you more, but of course, the god of mischief wouldn’t let you know that you had power over him.
“Because even though I may look like only possession or pet, I am more. So much more in fact that all gods come to me. They bow down to me, pray to me, and hope that I bestow my love onto them. Whenever there is no one left, I am their sole hope and their end. As they sleep at night in a room full of guards, they are unaware of how easily I could slip inside their room and slit their throat. How easily I could sink my teeth into their necks. How much I want to inject them with the green venom that drips from my painted lips. They have no idea how precarious their situation is whenever they are in my presence.” You said as you glared down at him.
“And do you kill them?” Loki asked as he cleared his throat. You smirked at him as you sensed his fear and attraction to you.
“Maybe one day you will know the answer to that question. Until then, all you need to know is this: I am not a whore of all things gold as you say. I am hope and peril all wrapped into one. I am an empress. You are in my kingdom. So act as such,” you said as you walked past him. Your head held high as you ambled into a garden full of gold and green.
He turned to follow you and tried to act as disinterested as he could, but the sway of your hips made him feel the blood rush to his face and other parts as well. With each step closer he could hear the loud boom of commotion. There was loud music drifting through the air. It was another party. Loki knew that while you basked in a lively and over the top way of life and love from admirers, it was all just a facade. That victorious smile and eyes that sparkled with grave darkness told him everything he needed to know. You were just like him: alone.
“You say such harsh words. Are you not going to enjoy such a garish party? What is the cause of the celebration today? Oh, I know! It must be that you got a brand new pair of shoes or a tiara maybe,” Loki said with a cocky smirk. He was trying to egg you on because if he can get you angry maybe you will reveal what he suspects to be behind that mask of yours.
You walked by a pond in the center of your garden and gently sat on a rock. Below you, your reflection looks back at you, judging you with a mirror of truth. Your long dainty fingers with gold claw-like nails dip a few fingers in it to disturb its image. He wondered if you had even cared enough to listen to his words.
“Do you know why I love this pond?” You asked, not waiting for an answer before you continue. “It has to do with the unpredictability and volatility of life. Everything can change. It only takes a second for the odds to flip to another’s favor, but this,” you looked up into his dark eyes. “It always remains the same.”
You took your hand out of the water, “You came for an alliance and my loyalty is with you, as always, but this time it can’t be against him,” you said and pointed at Thor, who was too busy playing with the snake in his hands to notice. You smiled at the gentle playfulness of this giant. Even with all he had been through and everything he still will endure he remained the same hopeful man as before.
“Isn’t she gorgeous? It was a present from your dear brother. It follows me as I go. Just like the one who gave it,” you said laying back with lust in your eyes. Loki licked his lips as you gave him a seductive wink. He took a deep breath as he tried to ignore the way that seeing you like this made him feel. You were flirtatious by nature, and you loved taunting and provoking men until they go mad.
“We come here in the hope that you assist us in fighting our dear long lost sister, Hela. Surprisingly, she’s more of a pest than you,” Loki said as he tried to gain back control and push you further away.
“Did you know that once your dear brother turned into a nasty green snake in order to scare off my suitors? He stopped when one of them tried to catch and cook him. After that he cried like a baby for hours,” you said with a smile.
“Oh, Thor. Do you mind giving me and Loki some time to talk? There’s ale and a huge feast inside. Do make yourself at home, love,” you said, your eyes not leaving Loki’s.
“Yes, my lady. Brother, I feel this lady can be the woman of your dreams and maybe make love by the fire on her bear fur rug in her chambers.” Thor said gently, putting the snake down. Loki’s face burns red as the embarrassment of him talking in his sleep and you find out what he dreams of is revealed.
“You idiot! You’re not supposed to repeat that out loud,” Loki hissed.
Even though your face remained neutral, you took enormous pleasure at this new revelation. Your mind returned to the sensual thoughts which you had had for years. You pushed your shoulders back and walked close to Loki and turned to whisper in his ear, “who knew red was such a beautiful color on you.”
You laughed as you watched Loki once again struggle to find words. You placed a small four-leaf clover behind his ear and gently placed your hand on his cheek. It had been so long since you last felt each other’s touch. After one touch it all came rushing back. All the long nights in the thrill of a secret affair. Loki's hands followed yours. Hands rough from many years of labor he went through wrapped tightly around yours.
“I’m sorry it took me so long, my dear. Things didn’t go to plan as I hoped. I thought of you every long night,” Loki said placing his lips to the back of your soft hand.
“I could tell you that you dress like a poser. You try too hard. Not like a king you are destined to be. Still, you gallop around making a joke of me. Playing pretend. I waited and had to be chosen as a bride you know,” you said in a deep tone. For such an innocent and gorgeous woman, any man or beast would be fearful if they ever tried to cross you. That in itself made him obsessed with you. His other hand dipped behind you and brought you closer to him.
“I know. You know your mine and still, you choose to always play with me. I may be the god of tricks but I don’t like it when I’m trick on. Sad that fool had an untimely death Huh” Loki said with eyes full of ideas.
Your eyes flutter a bit through your thick long lashes before biting Loki's finger. Giggling a bit you pull away and turn a few times, your gorgeous evening gown turning into a forest green cocktail dress.
“You made me shear tears. I promise you that won’t ever happen. If so I turn you into my plaything like that “you said snapping your finger before walking towards the party.
Mumbling under his breath he ran after you. Before you could step foot into the grand ballroom Loki turned you against the wall and held you tight. Those eyes turn darker than the midnight sky. Lips parted just for a before snapping back in place. Everything about him so addicting.
“Pouting and snapping your fingers doesn’t look so flattering on you. I’m done with this chat. You're a fool with tiny tricks, maybe you could do some for entertainment. Once you grow up then I shall speak to you only when you're being reasonable, Loki!” you said before storming off. That right there drove Loki over the edge. Even with all his tricks and harsh words you always cave in but not this time. You meant what you said. Even your eyes smile all used to be the brightest for him. No matter what you were always on his side. Maybe this world you create shape was more a prison than a simple paradise he first imagines.
Most of the night he couldn’t find you in the sea of people. Till he hears a familiar laugh echoing throughout the room. Rubbing his forehead he prays to high gods alike that he wasn’t embarrassing himself.
To his surprise, it was far from it. Thor stood in the center of attention telling stories lively of battle he played a role in. What made Loki's eye twitch just a little bit more was who Thor had to hug tight to his side but you. You laugh at the mimicry of everyone around you. As if you could feel his eyes on you playfully slap Thor peck before wiping a tear from his eye and feed him another green grape. Hand resting on his chest rubbing little circles laughing.
Loki had to think for a second each time you found someone or thing to replace him he would find ways to either manipulate them to leave or just got rid of them altogether. Could he do that to Thor? Hell yes with the pleasure she might take care of two problems once and for all. But he had more pain than you and his dear dopy brother.
“Oh, Loki. Sweetheart. Please come, your brother was just telling us of a green giant they call a Hulk and it's smashing you like a rag doll” you said into your glass of champagne.
Letting out a deep breath. He looks at the two very disappointed. “That beast is far too dangerous than most beasts you ever saw. You too would be a stump. Pet” Loki said with his arms cross over each other tapping his foot.
“I don’t know. What bolt here telling me isn’t so bad. Sounds cute” You said in a baby voice with a hand on your hip and a resting bitch face.
He glances around before grabbing a glass of green champagne and gulping it in one sit. They had no time to play. All this time could be spent figuring a way to save their land before it is too late. Throughout the night he watches as you gracefully walk around talking laughing ignoring him.
“Dear brother if my time on Earth has proven any knowledge besides they are helpless beings. This thing they call emotions. Lady Jane and my fellow teammates talk a great deal. Maybe if you say I’m sorry for whatever she will forgive you instead of demanding her and her attention solely on you” Thor said drinking some ale.
“Do I look like a lost puppy like you? I can do many things but to apologize to her when she should be but in my debt for me of all things but to fancy her. No, I -“ he stops when he sees you slip away from the party “will do that right now,” Loki said running off after you.
With a gentle touch of green smoke, you disappear before his eyes. Well, this wasn’t something he didn’t see coming. Hours he spent looking high and low far and near for you. Before he finally decides to give up he saw a dim light at the end of the emerald cover walls hallway. A familiar song melody dances in the air. The closer he got he could see your back through the crack in the door as you look at something in your hands.
“If you're going to lurk, at least be slick with it,” you said, your back still facing him.
“Wasn’t looking for you, more like a bathroom. For a fortress, there aren't many. I want to leave one last surprise for you” Loki said, leaning against the door, locking it.
You roll your eyes and walk by a gold satin curtain. A second later arriving from behind with a more revealing outfit. Loki's eyes nearly his socket when you face your backside towards him.
You comb your hair I’m in front of a mirror, “What Thor said earlier is that truth, do you wanna take me raw on my Kermode fur rug? You old kinkster” you look at him through the mirror while combing your luxuriant hair.
You said one thing, but your tone meant another. God how he wishes it didn’t work the way it did. From the innocent but deadly eyes to the way your hands play with your hair, to the way your mouth moves when you speak. God was he in trouble. But he needs you right now. Maybe it was more than he thought or wanted to admit.
Before he knew it you had gotten up and was standing chest to chest to him. Reaching close you look up in his piercing sad but serene eyes then glance to his moist lips. SLAP Loki curses under his breath as he looks at you glared into your eyes. Raising a finger he frowned a bit, “are you out your mind” he hissed. You shrugged your shoulder and smiled, bitting down on your gold frost nail.
“No, I am. I told you that rage and anger will get you nowhere. How dare y-” before you could finish your rant Loki grab you by the waist and shove his mouth onto yours.
Shock by this action you tumble back onto that so rub with him. Even as the pain rushed through your backside you didn’t care as you grabbed tight to his back clawing tight. Marking him. Your mouth dancing with his sucking the air out of one another. His hand slipping to the back and unclipping your green with a gold trimming bra. With his pale long fingers trail his hand from your waist up to cup you breast gently as he left bite marks onto your neck. A deep breathless moan came out as you grabbed onto his long black hair. Looking up to your eyes he smirks and starts to continue to attack your body with such pleasure. “How dare you make me have to come back and you go flaunt yourself around. I thought we both knew your mine and not one else” he said biting down right below your left boob.
“Fuck Loki shut up for once and continue what you're doing. You never officially told me I was yours as you left me behind. So....S...Stop your whinnying” you said pulling him closer to you and bit his neck.
“But you’re wrong before I left I gave you that ring on your finger. Love and that means your mines, not your idiotic ex and most definitely not goodie two shoe brother, Thor’s” Loki said in a scathing tone.
One hand grips tightly around your neck as the other gently grabs some fat off your thigh. Your body curves into his touch begging for more. Each breath was shorter than the last sweat dripping down his forehead. And right as Loki ripped off your thong, you pushed yourself so that you were on top straddling his lap gazing down at him. A huge grin appeared as you grab both hands and move them above his head, your hips rocking back and forth as you kiss him, each one pulling more and more force with it. Instead of moans and curse words, you giggle softly.
“Say it. Say what I want to hear and I’m yours no more games tricks and lies. Say it and this thing you're so proud of would be more than costume jewelry. I will be yours forever and I would stand by you as you become victorious my true king” You hissed. His eyes darkened as he watched you continue to attack him with each hump. Stars of the night started to fulfill his vision and he could see green mist cover the ceiling. Before he could say anything else a cruel comment or a backhanded compliment he shouts out your name. So loud even those in your party could hear it. Thor looks around and smiles into his cup knowing that once the act is done not only would he be in favor of his dear grumpy brother but owe many thanks to you.
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Loki looks up to you from the floor both of you basking in such glory after hours of nonstop pleasure. Turning onto his side he leaned his hand on his head and watch you, sitting at your vanity table. You were rubbing lotion with gold leads onto your smooth skin. What he imagines and what happened was way beyond his dreams. Even he has to admit maybe leaving you so long ago was a bad mistake. One he hopes to never do again.
With that, he decided it was the time of being a fool, and once again the man the king loves to hear you say he is.
“My love stopped what you are doing and looked at me. I have something far more important than that” he said taking your tiny hands into his. You look at him with such awe and desire.
“I am not one to say such words or to admit such things. I grew up in this world alone feeling like I was more a burden than a child. With all this, I grew darker as tar. My heart was cold as ice. Even with that, you love me. Even when I’m thrown down and laughed at, you show over and over your loyalty. For so long I thought it didn’t matter. Hell-bent to not cave into their ways. But as I made my journey to that world my brother fell so in love with, I then realized my mistake. I thought if I can be a ruler of one world alone. Worried you won't see me as fit as your husband. Instead, I was lonely and felt deep into the darkness you are so gracious to help me from. I even miss the friendly banter I and my brother have a share. In all I’m sorry. You're not only my pet but my queen. And I hope you huh show you for the rest of my days” Loki said onto his knees pleading.
Coming close you place a gentle kiss him on the lips. Looking up with a huge smile. Finally hearing the words you've wanted to hear for centuries. Loki took your ring and moved it to the wedding finger and picked you up. Your arms wrap tight around his neck pepper kissing him giggling like a little child.
“Loki you silly slick snake. I made up my mind I was coming with you the second you step foot onto my land. This world has been lonely and parties are no fun without you. And I hate that sister of yours and would love to see her eyes as she takes her last breath. And while your dear brother is busy with her we can plan to take over. Once and for all. With you finally king and me by your side as queen. Now let me go so I can collect my prize from Thor. And we can be on our way” you said with a wicked grin on your face.
“YOU WHAT!”Loki said, stunned but also turned on by the trick you played on him.
Touching his cheeks she nodded yes.
“Thor and I had a bet. After he asks me to be a part of this club of yours revengers. He thought as a stubborn prince you would last longer and I said within the hour. I will always know you better than you do yourself” you said pitching him cheek a little.
Shock not only did you trick him but you got his brother enlisted as well with your plan.
“I can’t believe you got me. You naughty pet you. I should punish you for this or maybe I will reward you” Loki said.
Getting up you waltz across the room to the bathroom and turn, “Oh dear prince. Let us take care of this pest problem then you can do with me as you please.” You blow him a kiss and a flirtatious wink before disappearing into the bathroom.
He always thought his true home was Asgard but it was you.
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hpdabbles · 4 years
Text
Ronald “Pretty one” Weasley
I couldn’t stop thinking about a conversation I had on discord and so here. Ron Weasley becoming the Pretty Weasley
“Alright, you know what? I will not allow this.” Harry said one night after walking in on Ron trying on the robes his mother sent. The Yule Ball was but two weeks away, with neither of them being able to find dates yet, Ron had hope to try on the robes and see what they look like.
He felt utterly miserable staring at his reflection and Harry wouldn’t stand for it. His friend walked over with a set jaw, a firm frown and a stride that promise he would burn the world down if needed to get what he wanted. Ron often wondered how Harry could be so intense all the time, wasn’t he ever exhausted? “Off with the robes Ron.”
“I-I’m sorry?”
“Off with the robes. You aren’t wearing those. Burn them if you must.”  Harry repeated planting himself before his friend, hands on his hips. Briefly Ron thought of his mother when she was on a rant about the twins. “I’m going to get you something better to wear.”
A rush of shame and outrage sprung through the red head’s body, his face clouding over. He can’t figure out what to do with all the emotions, so he lashes out. “I don’t need your pity!”
“It’s not pity! You’re my best friend! I want to help”  Harry insists and it was only due to the fact he has seen the same expression on the Boy-Who-Lived’s face when he attempted to convince Ron he hadn’t put his name in the goblet.  
The red head pursed his lips but he nodded anyway. He could always find a way to pay his friend back, because he would be paying him back. Ron refused to be anyone charity case. “Fine. How exactly are you going to get me new dress robes?”
Harry practically lit up as if he thought of a brilliant idea. “Okay so I’ve been thinking a lot about this. We can’t leave the castle but you know who can? Dobby!”
At once the little house elf appeared in the room.  “Harry Potter has called for Dobby?”
“Yes, Dobby, you are a free elf yeah? Would you be able to leave Hogwarts and buy something I need?”
“Dobby has no master! Dobby can go buy for Harry Potter” The little elf chirps and Ron is honestly surprised by Harry’s idea because he hadn’t even consider the house elf to be able to leave the castle at all. “What is Harry Potter needing?”
Harry’s green eyes twist to lock with Ron’s ocean blue, and they crinkle as his friend gestures at him. “Dress robes for Ron. Something. Something really nice.”
Dobby freezes then frowns.  He gives Ron a calculating look which is something the pureblood never thought he would see on a house elf. He feels himself hunching over, a reaction of anyone staring at him for too long. 
Dobby snaps his fingers and a measuring tape appearing at his side.  “Dobby works in kitchens now, but Dobby would buy Malfoys robes when Dobby was not free. Dobby can find Wheezy robes. Dobby will make sure to find ones that work with Wheezy’s skin tone and eyes. Arms out Wheezy!”
“Um” Ron says throwing his arms out in a straight line at either of his sides. Harry grins taking a seat on the bed as the measuring tape zip and zaps around him. “Thank you Dobby. What do you mean with my skin tone and eyes.”
Dobby wrinkles his nose. “Dobby learned all about that while working for Malfoys Dobby did. Wheezy never dresses for the right colors, but Dobby knows which is best. Dark or falls yes, not bright.”
Ron had no idea what that meant but after a few minutes, the house elf proclaim he was finished and would be off to commission a outfit for the Weasley. Harry gave him a few galleons to pay for it, then he carefully folded up the old robes Mrs. Weasley sent Ron, to throw into a box under the red head’s bed, never to see the light of day again. 
“Now, what to do about your hair....” Harry starts but Ron raises his hands to his head, backing away from the other male who has picked up a pair of scissors. 
“Oh no! You are not coming anywhere near me with those mate!” 
“But-”
“No Harry”
“Fine” The boy huffs. He placed the scissors back on the night table near him and throws himself onto the bed. “I suppose we can find someone else to do it.”
That was easier send then done. Alas over the two weeks where they were waiting for Ron’s pending dress robe order, the two could not find someone who could do a decent cut and someone Ron trusted enough near his hair. They were so distracted with helping Ron for the big day they forgot about finding dates until Hermione reminded them the day off that Harry had to be on time with his date before hand to do the first walz.  
“oh no, I forgot about the date” His best friend whispered in horror as the two boys got ready. Ron himself was also in peril. The dance was to start in two hours and there was no sign of Dobby, his hair was still long and he didn’t have a date. Harry at least was wearing the robes his mother bought with his money and while he didn’t look like huge celerity of his status at least he had the proper attire.
“We are both so-wait. We both don’t have have...a date” Ron starts stating at Harry. The Potter stares back with a blank expression, bless his soul but the boy could be so dense.  “Mate we could go together.”
“Together? Wouldn’t that be...odd? Professor McGonagall said I needed a date, so people would think you and I are on a date.” Harry says slowly. He’s body language gives away to his discomfort but Ron knows Harry isn’t oppose to going with a bloke, he is just worried about how others will react. He gets like that whenever something from his upbringing comes to mind. The Weasley rolls his eyes.  
“Those muggles really do have everything backwards don’t they? Mate no one will care if you and I are male. Half the school is bent.”
“What really? Is this like the twins thing?”
“Twins are not that rare Harry. Almost every family has at least one set of twins in every three generations.”
“They are rare. In the muggle world at least.”
“Good thing we aren’t there then.” Ron then remembers he hasn’t gotten robes and wilts, throwing himself on the bed. “Though if Dobby doesn’t come back soon I understand not wanting to be seen with me in those dreadful dress robes Mum sent.”
“I’m not embarrassed by you Ron. Never. Your my best friend.” Harry says earnestly and the red head can’t help but crack a smile at that. He knows he has insecurities that can’t be resolved with simple words but sometimes Harry makes them a little bearable. “If you want to, please be my date. I rather it be with someone I know anyway.”
“I...” What does one say to that.  “I guess it be cool”
Ron cringed as the words left his mouth but Harry relaxed. The Potter looked at the time on the clock and shrugged. “May as well shower Ron. Whatever your wearing won’t matter if you smell like sweat.”
“Hey! I do not smell!” The red head shouts offended but the teasing eases something in him and he finds himself gathering what he needs for shower. Harry’s laughter followed him into the bathroom, until later when Ron was stepping under the water, Harry knocked on the door.
“I’m going to meet you there!” 
He shouted back a agreement, unable to hear of Harry walked away or not as he shampooed his hair. Half-way into scrubbing his body, a soft pop was heard and Ron screams as Dobby rips away the shower curtains. 
“Dobby brought Wheezy- stop screaming it only Dobby- Dobby brought Wheezy’s robes and Dobby will be helping Wheezy hair.”  The little house elf proclaims as the teen desperately tries to cover himself. “Out! Out! Much to do, Wheezy mustn’t be late!”
“Let me at least put some pants on!”
The House elf plants the boy into a chair, and snaps his fingers into three rapid sessions, a comb, sessions and a spray bottle flout around the Weasley who eyes the items with true free.  “Dobby do you know what you are doing?”
“Dobby has personally cared for Lucius Malfoy’s hair since he was seven! Dobby knows what to do!” 
Thinking of the man’s long fabulous hair “Alright...”
Later Ron is rushing to get to the meeting point. He barely had time to check his reflection since Dobby insisted on another shower after the haircut, and that he help him into the dress robes. He was also spread with some kind of cologne but when it came to see how he look he was honestly stun.
The fall color- which turn out to mean colors ranging from red to browns in different shades. Ron’s were dark red with dark brown- dress robes Dobby picked out for him fit him to the perfect cut meant to highlight all of his best features. They hugged his upper chest and arms but it wasn’t like the hand-me-downs that he got from his siblings who were all broader and shorter then he.
For as long as he could remember Ron had always felt like he was a weed kind of built, tall but scrawny. He never imagine getting clothes that were meant to fit him made him look so different. He seems lean.
His hair was cut shorter now too, not in layers that he had worn since young but more posh and even. Ron never thought he would look good like that but the cut made him look nice, make his eyes pop and his freckles stand out. 
He liked it. 
He really did. 
For the first time, he felt good. 
Harry was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs the other champions and their dates already there and Ron was surprise to see Hermione hanging off of Victor Krum’s arm. Merlin but she looked like a goddess. 
Ron felt himself flattered for only a second because Harry looked up and his already large eyes widen.  “Ron! You look amazing!”
The others were also looking stun and with more confidence he made his way to his best friend. Hermione claps her hands  “Ron, you look great. Confidence makes you very fetching!”
He felt his face heating up. Harry presses his shoulder to his, short the boy may be but it makes it easier to speak “Thanks ‘Mione. You look beautiful.”
Around them more and more people start to hand out compliments and Ron thinks, this, this might be his thing. He could be the pretty Weasley. He could learn how to dress well and maybe he could ask Dobby to teach him. Maybe Ron could even learn how to make his own clothes, or make modifications to the hand me downs so they fit as they should. So he could look lean all the time. 
He knows it could be shallow but...
but he deserves to feel good, to look in the mirror and like what he sees. At least that's what Harry says as they stumble through the first waltz grinning at each other for being goofs and Hermione encourages his idea later while the three get some punch. 
She claims it doesn’t matter what others think because it’s self-care and self-love, something she is always up for. Ron gives her a goofy smile, and then Harry invites him to another dance, while they are dancing- this song a upbeat one and not a formal waltz thank goodness- his best friends stares a little at him before blurting.  “Ron, I think I like girls and boys.”
The red head raises a brow,  “yeah? Is it Cedric?”
Harry shakes his head.  “No. I won’t tell him yet I just...wanted you to know. Have I told you how nice you look?”
“At least a dozen times mate, but thanks.” He laughs as the two spin around avoiding a different pair.  “Tell that bloke soon yeah? You deserve someone nice.”
Harry blushes “I’ll tell him. Thanks Ron.”
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