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#new temporary roommate as in. this is not even day 5 of her living here
ka0ila · 4 months
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| Smoke Break
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warnings - depression, smoking, angst, hurt, argument, sensitive topics, suicide attempt(lmk if theres more)
summary - you and seungmin had a messy argument, you thought you’d just take a small smoke break, but was it just a smoke break?
pairing - roommate!seungmin x depressed!reader
• m.list
© Ka0ila 2023 — all rights reserved. i do not allow translations, or any kind of distribution on other platforms. this is my only account.
i tried. i really, really tried.
i really tried to be better, not for me but for him.
i really tried believing everything will be merry if i just worked hard, i did.
but i’m breaking, breaking down pieces by pieces each day, hurting everyone around me, looking at all the disappointed faces.
i really tried, really tried be someone he’d want.
someone mature, successful, peaceful to be with.
but me? i’m depressed, struggling, and draining to be with.
he left 5 days ago for his business trip to Paris, leaving the house to me. i came back from work the day before he’s gonna arrive and find a messy apartment to myself. i sigh keeping my bag putting my hands on my face huffing.
i need to clean this, i can’t give him more reasons to hate me.
i had really fallen in love, but i know if i ever end up having him, i’ll completely ruin him. i can’t have anyone stay, i have no promises to make, i can’t even promise myself.
i pick up the pair of socks on the ground, followed by my old shirt and slowly steadily started cleaning the place.
i never really smoke at him, i don’t want him to know i smoke, it’s disgusting, but i’m so into it i can’t get out. a small smoke break won’t hurt? right?
i made my way to the balcony, mesmerised by the beauty of the skyscrapers and apartments. i always found myself coming back to new york. always. for some reason i always end up here, and i don’t hate it. i love this city truly, but i hate the memories attached to it. looking at a couple walking down the road i take a puff.
A second one wouldn’t hurt right? second became third, third became fourth, fourth became fifth, there was nothing to stop me, nobody to care for, no fear to get caught, then why stop?
“(y/n)?” i flinched, seungmin? but he wasn’t coming till tomorrow?
i hurriedly throw my cigarette out,
“seungmin? you’re early.” i try to act normal as a puff came out of my mouth.
“you’re smoking?” he frowned, it felt as if he was taunting. i didn’t say anything, words betrayed me, i stood there still.
“do whatever but not in my apartment.” he said scoffing. why was he being so mean? oh so he didn’t care at all? his apartment?
it hurt my ego, and i let it get the best of me.
“your apartment seungmin? where you are rarely in? sure. I will smoke wherever i want seungmin” i mock. he was staring at me, disappointed?
“i have work (y/n) , not like you— fuck why am i even arguing with you? you’re just an useless roommate who can’t keep the apartment clean for 5 fucking days or have the decency to not smoke in the apartment.” he leaves.
i stare, stare and stare blanky. i freeze at his words, but i was really trying, i really was. i stood still, processing.
i felt something on my hand, water? was i crying?
i slowly walk towards my room’s bathroom, a cold shower bath would really help right now.
as i was laying in the bathtub, i go down and down, slowly, and i didn’t protest, i let it happen, i look at the ceiling, did i really want this? to live like this? fake hopes? pain? temporary happiness?
i said alot to her, i couldve handled it differently, fuck. i heard her open her room’s door, i saw her walk into the bathroom through the door creak. i should probably give her some space, fuck i felt guilty. i knew she wasn’t doing good lately and used it against her? thats not who i am i wanted to look upto me, to be safe with me.
time passed, i was growing anxious, was isn’t she coming out? it’s been 45 minutes, it’s worrying me. she always took quick baths, why is she still there. something inside me, an instinct, a voice forced me to go into the bathroom, it told me something’s wrong, i knew it.
“(y/n)? (Y/N)” she was deep inside the water, eyes closed, fuck fuck, hearing my voice she got up gasping for air.
she tried.. drowning herself?
“what the fuck are you doing?” i put my hand on her back to support her get up, she was crying, her eyes were red,
“i swear it wasn’t intentional i couldn’t.. i couldn’t stop it seungmin, i swear please” she was holding my hands, begging, whimpering and crying,
my eyes fall on her dark circles, then her sad eyes, then her dry lips, she lost weight? how did i never notice?
“it’s okay, it’s okay i’m here baby, it’s okay”
i pat her head slowly taking her in my embrace, kissing her forehead time to time, “it’s okay, i’m not mad, i know you didn’t mean it, you’ll be okay”
“let’s get you out of here, hm? let’s get you on the bed”
she looked so tired, so weak.
i pick her up and lay her down on her bed, dressing her up in fresh clothes. I lay beside her, gently caressing her forehead and hair, looking at her sleeping face. i place a small kiss on her nose,
“i love you seungmin” she mumbled in her sleep as she nuzzles into my neck,
“i’ve always loved you (y/n)” i said as i rest my chin on top of her head, soothing her hair.
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posted after a while haha, felt like writing, getting it out lol, sort of a rant—? hehe.
likes & reposts are appreciated <33
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how to tell new temporary roommate that her new friend bringing a bottlefed kitten with fleas into my home is inappropriate
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saintobio · 3 years
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wastelands. (5)
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↳ suna rintarou x f!reader
summary: after a viral pandemic wiped out half of the world’s population, a group of abandoned young adults embark on a life-threatening journey in hopes of finding a safe permanent home. unfortunately, for you and Rin, love is only a temporary option.
genre: heavy angst, unrequited, post apocalypse au, 18+
cw: profanity, zombies, gore, blood, guns
notes: enjoy the pain in this chapter! reblogs are very much appreciated <3
series masterlist -> part six
No one could ever understand the emotional suffering you were going through. 
Maybe because giving a damn about your feelings was the last thing they would do, after all, each one of you had to suffer from your individual pain to an extent that could last you years of longing. You lost families and friends from this brutal outbreak, shelter was temporary and food was scarce, even worse, you weren’t guaranteed of another day to live in this world. Everyone was left scarred and traumatized.
Perhaps it was good to ask yourself: why still hold on to Rin? There was no reason to. He found his one true love and she was his sole purpose in life, not you. Never you. As much as you avoided crossing paths with them for the past 2 days, the house felt suffocating. The woes of your heart could not be ignored while your presence was constantly disregarded by the person that meant the whole world to you. Rintarou Suna had always been your world, your galaxy, your universe that you could not let go of. You spent another sleepless night thinking back of the time where you first grew feelings for Rintarou and you wanted to just question yourself why it had to be him out of all people? 
You were clearly not meant for each other. If Suna was to write a book about his romance, you would not even be on the background because everything revolved around Sophia. She was his and he was hers. You were nobody’s. You only had yourself. 
It would be a little bit better if Asher was here with you. At least, if your love for Suna was star-crossed, you still had a brother to pay full attention to. With Asher by your side, you wouldn’t feel so alone.
You couldn’t even begin to think about how the agony etched in your heart was mixing with the resentment you had towards the couple. Never in your life would you wish ill on somebody, but the amount of insensitivity you were receiving was plain heartless. You could barely tolerate seeing her sitting on his lap while talking about the things they missed about each other. It was ironic how for the past few months, you were the one on his lap receiving those trails of kisses on your jaw believing that Suna liked you. He didn’t. 
Sophia was and would always be the protagonist. 
Today, when the guys asked if you wanted to join them in playing poker at the rooftop, you had to decline because you would just feel out of place. They didn’t really beg for your presence either way. The laughter, the banter, and the company they had from Sophia was enough. Although slowly, the other guys were beginning to feel how sulky you had become which you found yourself pathetic. Last night, Kita accompanied you to dinner because you made an excuse of not joining the rest of them. He wouldn’t explicitly say it, but he seemed to be measuring the possible paroxysm of sad emotions that you were trying your hardest to conceal. 
Osamu was your new roommate who slept above you on the bunk bed because Atsumu would not share the master’s bedroom with him. You didn’t mind being in the same room as Osamu. After all, he was the first one to ever show some sympathy towards you—not because you asked for it, but because he was simply perceptive and considerate towards you.
For now, you’ve had enough of moping around even if Suna had not genuinely looked at you again since Sophia’s arrival. It irked you how the girl never once acknowledged your presence as if you were just a ghost roaming around. The first time you've ever ran into her alone was right now when you were trying to grab a can of lemonade from the fridge. She just came to the kitchen at the perfect time while the rest of the guys were at the rooftop. 
Her caramel eyes were already glued on you when you turned around to find yourself face to face towards the only woman that shrouded Rintarou’s mind. Her expression didn’t give away her thoughts—there were only so little emotions shown from her inscrutable countenance. She was all smiles and genial to everyone except for you. 
“Hey,” her barely inaudible greeting made you place the can on the kitchen counter, “I knew you were going to be around him.”
There was venom in her voice that made your eyebrows furrow. “He was the one who showed up at my house and took me with him.” 
Your clarification didn’t really matter to her because she only viewed you as someone who was trying to snake her boyfriend in the middle of an apocalypse. However, since that was brought up, wasn’t she the one who originally stole the letters from you? “I bet you’re disappointed to see me, then.” Sarcasm was evident in her tone. “It took you a freaking zombie apocalypse to ever get your chance to be alone with him.” 
It was sad because you always thought of Sophia so highly back in high school, and yet, here she was being the lowest of the low. “It’s not like he knew you were alive.” 
“And you grabbed the opportunity, right?” Her eyes were taunting as she fleered. “While we’re upstairs, Atsumu slipped saying that you and Rin shared a room. So, did you sleep with him?”
You kept your guard on. “No,” you lied, knowing how Suna could never forgive you if you spilled the truth. In your head, you wanted to say: you were dead to him while he did it with me. But your mouth chose the words, “Does it hurt you so much if he undressed me with his eyes?”
She was taken aback by your rebuttal and was outwardly upset at your audacity. Her jaws have clenched and it was only a matter of time before her palm could meet your cheek. Don’t you dare sleep with my man, that was all she could think of. 
You already have. In the bed she was sleeping on. In the shower. In the Hummer. Suna was always the one to initiate sex with you and he asked for it a lot. He clung to you for physical comfort more than she could ever imagine.
It wasn’t your plan to ever involve yourself into a confrontation with Sophia because you deemed yourself unproblematic. You wished to stay away from her and Suna’s relationship, but if she was going to be a bitch to you, you ought to return it. She was not aware of the amount of rage you were keeping inside. 
“He doesn’t like you,” she proclaimed, beautiful but unforgiving caramel eyes piercing through your soul, “never has, never will.”
“Is that why you claimed that my letters were yours, too?” you questioned, finally releasing the topic you have been dying to address with her. The only positive thing about Sophia being alive was the chance to confront her about this. “Thanks for letting me know just how awful you are as a person, Sophia. I thought I was gonna die thinking you’re the nicest person on Earth.”
Panic flashed before her eyes at the mention of the letters that started her relationship with Suna. A relationship that was built from lies on top of lies. The sudden rigidity in her stance reflected her guilt that earned her 4 years worth of the relationship that she was bragging about. The relationship that could have been rightfully yours had she not stolen it from you. “That was years ago,” she retorted, gulping the weakness in her voice like she was afraid of something. “E-Even if you tell Rin that you wrote them, he wouldn’t care. You’re just gonna hurt yourself ‘cause you know he’d still choose me so it’s better to just forget about it.”
Such a vile woman underneath that pretty face. “But why do you sound worried that I’m gonna tell him?” 
She blinked thrice in the same second, fixing her composure. Was she going to cry? Her eyes were glossy. “Don’t ruin it for us. He’s happy with me.” Something within Sophia flickered as fear bathed her eyes. “At the end of the day, he chose me. He loves me and he promised forever with me.” 
Knowing that those words would leave a sting in your chest, your hands were balled into fists at the volume of anguish and vexation that you were feeling inside. Your mouth was parted as you tried to answer back, but Suna’s tall descending figure from the stairs cut you off. 
At once, he was at Sophia’s side, worried about the expression on her face. “What’s wrong? Are you crying?” he asked her, an arm secured on her waist before turning to you. Only, when his eyes met yours, they were accusing. His fox eyes bore into you possibly with the conclusion that you made Sophia cry—that you said something that upset his precious girlfriend and now he was upset too. “Y/N, what’s going on?”
There was a shift in Sophia’s expression. “We’re fine,” she spoke affectionately, smiling it off. She sweetly clung to him and averted the intense atmosphere. “I just talked about my experiences at the camp and it made me cry recalling it.”
Lies. Fucking lies. 
But what added to the bruise in your heart was how easily he believed her. Or how he kissed her on the forehead. Or how he wiped the tears on her rosy cheeks. The only thing he could give you was a smile. A half-hearted one, just for the sake of being casual. “I thought you guys were fighting for a sec.” 
You wanted to laugh. Fighting over you? You never dreamed of being so bent over a boy that you fight another girl for him, but it was really just the case and you were ashamed.
Sophia was quick to deny, however, “Of course not! I’d never do that.”
There was a staring contest going on between you and Rintarou because you were sickened by the fakeness in Sophia’s mien and he seemed to be attempting to discern your thoughts. His gaze on you had turned soft and full of concern like he had just come into realization of the gravity that Sophia’s return had thrown on you. She had all of his attention for the past 2 days that it probably surprised him that you still existed in his life at all. What does he plan to do to you now? Still, you no longer wanted to spend another minute of seeing her wrapped in his arms. 
So you fled away from further heartache and protected your heart from the plethora of pain.
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It was, maybe, 11PM. Or half past 11? You couldn’t tell because there was no clock inside the room. You were covered by the warmth of your blanket as your eyes dug holes on the bunk bed’s roof. Maybe Osamu is sleeping already? He didn’t really snore unlike Atsumu so you couldn’t figure out.
Deep thoughts about the earlier confrontation ran through your head like a hamster galloping in an endless wheel. While you couldn’t forget how Suna looked at you as if he still had an ounce of care with how you feel, you already broke Rule 5 long before you set them because you were far too attached to him that it was hard to just avoid his presence. 
Spending the past four months with him could have been the happiest moments in your life if only the apocalypse did not take place. A traverse across Japan with just you and him could have been a beautiful scenario if the world was different. Truly, it was unfair how the only time you got to gain Suna’s attention was because there was no one else to pay attention to. Lives were lost and your only role in his life was to keep Sophia’s place warm until she returned. 
And now that she has, you lost track of what you were to Rintarou. 
“S-Suna!”
Your breathing ceased. Your face, pallor. 
Another moan followed. “Sophia...”
The walls were thin and the bunk bed was pressed against the wall for you not to hear that precisely. As if the situation was not already excruciating for you, the echoing moans of Rin and Sophia brought another wave of torture that deeply imbued your heart and soul with a pain that turned them into shreds. You never thought that you could hurt this much in your 21 years on Earth. 
“I fucking missed you...” You heard their hushed voices as the bed creaked from their passionate kissing and love-making. At that moment, you wanted nothing else but to light the whole house on fire until everything burned into ashes because that was how the pain scorched your body unsympathetically. Hearing the thumping against the wall, the whimpers of pleasure, the sound of Rin’s name falling from Sophia’s lips. The I love you’s... You could die tonight and it might just be the only way to end your torment. 
You were crouched in bed with the blanket over your head, trying to block off every sound you could hear next door as you could no longer endure another second of it. Nearly breaking into muffled sobs, you paid no attention to everything else but the fast rhythm of your heartbeat that swallowed the entirety of your suffering. 
Osamu had climbed down from the bunk unnoticeable until he lay next to you, peeling the blanket to reveal your doleful, shiny eyes. His gunmetal orbs pitied you and it hurt more because he knew just how badly it wrecked you. It may be unreasonable to react this way since Suna and Sophia were in a relationship—having sex as a couple who hadn’t seen each other for months was normal. It was normal.
But when a few days ago, you were on the receiving end of Rin’s intimacy, you knew you had all the right to feel hurt. Osamu could see that and the comfort he brought when pulled you into his arms alleviated the tiniest chunk of ache from you. At least, for now, you sought his warmth. His palm was on your ear, covering it from the sounds that almost had you weeping. He was your solace in this night full of heartbreak and he didn’t mind how your hands have balled into his shirt while he whispered, “Wanna talk about something else? Anything?”
You recognized the offer as his sole attempt to block out the noise.
Shaking your head, your voice came out raspy, “J-Just hold me ‘til I sleep, please ‘Samu...”
“I will.”
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You wished you didn’t wake up after that, but the commotion coming from outside forced your lids open to see Osamu peeking by the window. The room was still dark and you could barely see anything aside from the moonlight that illuminated just a portion of the room. Sitting upright from the bed, you squinted and adjusted your line of sight towards the grey-haired twin’s figure. His tenebrous silhouette obstructed your view.
“What’s wrong?” you inquired, yawning. It was followed by a shower of screeches and curses from a man and woman. 
Atsumu and Sophia. 
“Shit!” Osamu cussed, picking up the nearest gun and gesturing for you to get up in haste. “Y/N, we need to go. Do you have a gun?”
“Wha... I...” You scrambled, looking around and realizing that your Colt .45 was on the room next door. Fuck. “Wh-What’s going on?”
You stumbled to your feet as Osamu swung the door open to reveal a ghastly, snarling creature leaping towards him. With a gunshot to its face, it plummeted to the floor and you were filled with dread from the imminent danger that awaited you. “Zs infiltrated the house, let’s go!”
How the fuck did that happen?
Your mind was spiraling from trepidation as you reached for the baseball bat before following Osamu’s cautious trail. From what you could hear, there was a ruckus going on downstairs and it was Sophia’s screams that overpowered everything else. You listened to Suna’s voice trying to keep her to safety, making sure that his girlfriend would not be harmed. Of course, it was Sophia’s well-being over anything else. Over you. Over your fucking life.
“Ggrh!” A living dead appeared by the stairs and Osamu was fast enough to send a salvo of bullets into it, killing the zombie in an instant. The miasma of rotten flesh reached your nasal cavity that later resulted into your suppressed gagging. You could only fear the amount of Zs that had gone into the house during your sleep. 
“They’re all safe in the car, just stay behind me.” Osamu walked down the stairs while holding the gun close to his chest. You were his tail as your footsteps matched the careful ones he took. The house was pitch dark by the time you reached the living room and decaying corpses were sprawled all over the entrance to signal how the rest of the group laboriously killed all of them. What was once a neat home that you took shelter in for the past two weeks had now turned into a complete mess.
Sophia’s voice came back from outside of the house, “Rin, come back! We’re leaving! Where the hell are you going?!”
“I can’t fucking leave her there!” was his growling response.
A wide-eyed Rintarou appeared by the door as you and Osamu avoided the cadavers along the floor. His distraught eyes searched for you before he turned to his friend. “They’re all in the Hummer. You have the key to the G Wagon?” 
“Yeah, it’s with me.” Osamu patted his pockets and reached for the key, withdrawing it from his pants as both guys urged you to walk with them. There was no time to waste.
Except, when you stepped further out of the house, you felt a slimy grip on your foot to see an incapacitated Z latching on to you. “AHHH!” A scream of terror escaped your lips as you tried to slam the bat against the zombie, pounding its face like you would batter a piece of meat. Half of its face was peeled and the eyeball bulged out its socket—blood splattered all over the floor as you mushed the Z’s head frantically.
“Y/N!” That was Suna’s voice that preceded gun shots towards another beastly creature, presuming its death.
You sprinted extremely fast away from the house, unexpectedly tripping into a plywood just by the front porch. Your right ankle twisted painfully as you shrieked, “Ngh! I-It hurts!” The baseball bat was long discarded from your grasp.
It hurts so much. You were limping when you dragged your feet to follow Osamu who rushed inside the G Wagon adjacent to the Hummer. He was unknown to your predicament because the man was focused on exchanging instructions with his twin brother who was already in the Hummer. Just then, the howls of incoming hordes of Zs got louder from a distance.
They’re coming.
You trembled, horripilation of dread tingling down your spine. Sophia was yelling for Rintarou’s name, Atsumu was instructing for Osamu to back the vehicle closer to you, Aran was yelling for Kita to get into the other truck. Everyone was panicking on their own.
It was Suna who carried you in his arms and made a beeline towards the backseat of the Hummer to where Sophia was. You refused to look at him in the eyes as you protested, “Let me go! I wanna be with Osamu!”
“We don’t have time!” Suna’s deep voice rang on your ear but you still pushed him off.
Your foot was sore, but so was your heart.
“I said let me fucking go,” you gritted, feeling his strict inhale before he turned on his heel and sat you on the backseat of the G Wagon. The zombie snarls resonated louder as Suna stood in front of the car, hesitating whether he should join you or his girlfriend in the Hummer. You gave him an answer by slamming the door on his face.
And by then, Sophia angrily yelled for him to get into the other car with her while his gaze lingered on you. How dare he try to even bring you in the same car with his girlfriend? Did he want you to suffer hearing their I love you’s or make-out session again? For 7 years, you’ve never truly been mad at Rintarou except for now.
It was the immense flush of anger, relief, and exhaustion that had your head collapsing against the backseat. Your body was stretched out as your chest undulated with heavy breaths. The G Wagon was already moving at this point and you could hear the Zs banging against the clear windows, desperate for human flesh. You didn’t worry too much knowing that Osamu was driving fast enough away from the zombie infested place.
The gated neighborhood was bound to be invaded by those walking corpses, anyway. All of you just didn’t expect that it would happen today while you were in the midst of your 3AM slumber.
You closed your eyes and winced from the soreness of your foot until a worried Kita turned to you from the passenger seat. “Hey, Y/N. I have a bandage on my duffel, do you want me to wrap it on your foot?”
Eyelids falling heavy, you nodded. “I-I’m not infected, by the way,” you weakly muttered, earning his gentle smile.
“I know.” He rummaged through his bag, reaching for the bandage before nudging Osamu. “Don’t lose them.”
Osamu groaned. “‘Tsumu’s driving too fast.”
You pressed your palm against the seat to act as a leverage for your body. Upon sitting up, Kita asked you to carefully place your foot on the cupholder so he could tend to your inflamed ankle.
“I really thought I was gonna die,” you admitted, watching Osamu look at you from the rear view mirror. What if you didn’t wake up in time? Would the Zs have devoured every single one of you? The house provided great comfort for you during your stay there, excluding Sophia’s arrival, but you were looking forward to knowing where this next journey would lead you. Everything was temporary in this world, not just your address but also your mere existence. “Um, where are we—?”
The Hummer was speeding just ahead of the G Wagon as the two vehicles followed each other closely, entering the highway in the hours of darkness. A hundred and twenty minutes more until dusk.
“Aran has the map,” Osamu answered while your ankle was being wrapped with a bandage by Kita. “We’re heading to the Tokyo camp.”
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Asher.
Asher is alive. I’ll see Asher. Asher is alive. I’ll see Asher.
For the hours you’ve agonized inside the car, you were manifesting that today would be the day that you would reunite with your brother. You had high hopes that he was safe in the refugee camp and that you could finally embrace the only living family you had left. With all the pain in your heart, seeing Asher would be the best comfort you could ever receive.
You wondered how your poor little brother was coping after the demise of your parents and how he saw them turn into Zs with his own eyes. He was only juvenile. 12 years old by now, turning 13 in 4 months. You hoped that you would live long enough to celebrate his birthday, in spite of the apocalypse, he deserved to spend a happy one.
Kita and Osamu had been reassuring you that you would finally get to see your brother while you were on the way to camp. It was a 4-hour drive and you managed to fall asleep in between those hours with an empty stomach.
It didn’t matter how hungry you were. All you could think of was to see Asher. If Suna found Sophia, you have to find Asher. That was the only consolation you needed.
Perhaps you’ve just become numb after your heartache peaked last night when you heard the man you love pleasuring himself with the woman he loved. It’s normal, they’re together—you kept telling yourself those words to remind your place in his life. But did you really deserve to go through this much? A person could only take so much and you were so close to breaking down.
Arriving the camp had your heart skipping heavily as soon as you saw the tall cemented walls behind a barricade made of bamboos and roof scraps. You opened the window and put out just a tiny bit of your head to get a full view while hearing Osamu and Kita’s mumbles. It was quite a huge camp, and a very secured one, with twice the shield against possible zombie invasion. It was situated in the middle of the small forest haven away from the city and certainly without any traces of blood splatters or fetid smell. It wasn’t olid, but the air quality wasn’t exactly as clean either.
Asher. You wanted to make a run for it just to find your brother. However, before you could even open the door after Osamu parked the car outside, Suna was already opening your door and making a haste effort of checking your ankle. The act of ‘concern’ gave you a sense of surprise.
“How’s your foot?” he asked, arm resting on the window with a look of worry. “Look at me.”
As much as your pulse quickened from his mere presence alone, you chose to ignore his question by pushing him out of the way so you could walk out of the car. For the first time in your life, you found it better to ignore Rin than pretend that you were alright. You were limping with a broken heart but you endured it all and would continue to endure it until your brother was on your arms. No one else mattered, not even Rintarou Suna.
The rest of the guys followed closely behind with Aran telling you, “Y/N, this might be one of the two camps they took your brother to.”
You turned to him in curiosity, dragging your swollen feet as you trod. “Wait, there’s another camp?”
“Yeah, from what I heard,” he answered, throwing the duffel on his arm, “but the other one’s too far up north. Asher might be here.”
He better be or you would lose it.
Just before the group reached the entrance, Atsumu caught up with your slow pace as he offered a pack of M&Ms for you. Amusingly, he looked pretty somber. “Peace offering?” he said.
You replied with a question, “For what?”
“For making you feel shit if I ever did.” Atsumu’s glance towards his twin brother made you realize that Osamu might have told him all the things you’ve had to put up with back at the house in Aichi and you just couldn’t ever get mad at Atsumu. He was oblivious to his actions and was clearly just very happy to reunite with a close friend.
And speaking of the ‘close friend’, Sophia’s arm was secured on Suna’s waist while his was around her shoulders, planting a kiss on her forehead as they walked a few steps behind. How sweet. It was absolutely laughable how he would act like he cared about you one minute, then go back to his girlfriend’s arm on the next. You were never this bitter, but it wasn’t a great feeling to always be the nice one when they barely regarded your human feelings with sensitivity.
Going inside the camp wasn’t a quick process. Members of the military ushered all seven of you after a tedious series of verification. They checked the contents of your bag, checked any signs of zombie infection—if your eyes were frenzied or if you had even the tiniest bite, it was an instant kick out of the camp.
You spared yourself the details of what they would do to infected people who tried to get inside the refugee camp.
When you finally did get inside, you looked like a deranged woman as you went ahead and checked every person you could see. There were quite a number of people in there and your eyes were roaming around the place in desperation. It was a literal camp like what a summer camp would look like if it was a vacation. There were cabins, fireplaces, and other amenities that the Miya twins had already shamelessly run to with excitement.
“Asher, where are you?” you muttered to yourself, walking on a 360 circle before Kita patted your back.
“We’ll help you find him, but we need to settle to our cabins first,” he reminded you like a parent. Right. Settle on a place. The girls and boys would stay on separate cabins and you were already dreading the thought of sharing a bunk bed with Sophia who was probably burning holes through your skull right now.
Ironically, Suna was walking side by side with you despite your insistence of distancing yourself from him. His eyes would glance at you every now and then, as if wondering why you were being cold and impassive towards him. God, you still loved him after all this time. After everything he did, your heart wanted him. You wanted to hug him, kiss him, tell him you only felt safe around him.
“Y/N?”
It wasn’t Rintarou’s voice that called you this time. And as you turned around, Suna was stiffening as rigid as a statue from beside you.
“Haru...”
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general taglist: @x-cloudyyyy @iwazubean @cottonheadedninnymugggins @centvry @kageyamakock @sunnsettee @bluesylveon2 @tsukkisfatsimp @cuddlesslut @mysteriousparker @asdfghjkl7things @02hhsailor @anejuuuuoy @minswags-posts @chemnerdkuroo @misssugarless @deeznutss @tanakax123 @oikawa-bubs @lust4keiji @black-kuroover @stel9 @tsumuuwu @daylghits @semibaby @crescenttooru @ems1des @the-golden-jhope @wonyoschubs @bakus-stuff @melty-kisses @softy-woo @dekuspet @kittycatkrissa CLOSED
wastelands taglist: @6mattsun9 @kity @kuroosbb @agaashesmilktea @strawberries-en-cream @daddywaizumi @hokageyamz @ermahgerd-larry-and-ziam @omisemi @aonenthusiast @oikawaisamood @atsumusoup @chaiteabeebee @bongofrito @yoshikomoonara28 @rinstars @suhkusa @shrimpypenis CLOSED
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omgggg can you share ur list of things you’ve read ? 😭 i feel like i’ve hit rock bottom thinking i’ve read everything
Alright, here we go, these are a few of my favorite reader-inserts I have saved on my AO3:
Multi Ships (collection of one shots/love triangles)
Dear Diary: Bakugo VS Midoriya VS Todoroki. Reader had her heart broken by Bakugo, moves on and develops feelings for Midoriya that might be mutual?, and now Bakugo likes reader but is a fucking dick about it and Midoriya is an oblivious green bean. Meanwhile Todoroki is just a sweety, acting like a real friend and being there for reader during the drama (that he sometimes causes). Angst alert, just pure angst. I love it as much as i want to pull out all my hair cause of these idiot children. (Wordcount: 77415 Status: Incomplete)
The Void You Left Behind: Past Kirishima/Reader, Bakugo/Reader. Reader was married to Kirishima who sadly died while on the job. Bakugo and reader mourn together and help each other to move on. The grief in this was so realistic and well done, you will feel like you were hit by a truck. I cried and had to take breaks. (Wordcount: 71016 Status: Complete)
Million Reasons: Past Bakugo/reader, Midoriya/Reader. Bakugo and reader were married, but Bakugo (a total dick) cheats on reader and was abusive towards reader who ends up leaving him, changing jobs, and now working for the current number one hero Deku. Warning: Domestic violence, abusive and manipulative behavior. (Wordcount: 55693 Status: Incomplete)
MULT-FANDOM COLLECTION (my-american-hero): Multiple story collection, not just bnha. Author’s tumblr account.
BNHA College Reader Inserts series: 5 works, all in college. Really like the Bakugo/Reader centric fics in this one, reader doesn’t take his shit. (Wordcount total of all works: 62691 Status: Series incomplete,  but only one of the works isn’t complete.)
Baby no Hero Academia: Multiple stories of our favorite characters being parents. (Wordcount: 72822 Status: incomplete)
My Hero Academia Images: multi story collection. If you like these, look at the other works by this author. Some are choose your own route stories with different endings for each ship. (Wordcount: 240426 Status: incomplete)
My hero academia one-shots!: smutty and fluffy one shots with multiple characters. (Wordcount: 155424 Status: complete)
Boku no Hero Academia One-Shots/Imagines~! (lady-Bakuhoe): one-shot collection. Didn’t realize right away that I had been reading lady-bakuhoe’s stuff for months on AO3. (Wordcount: 39963 Status: complete)
Ship Centric:
Bakugo/Reader
Bakugou, Katsuki ( Alpha!Bakugou ; Omegaverse )(AO3 Link) (Tumblr Link): Smut one-shot, omegaverse, alpha/omega, daddy kink. (Wordcount: 5087)
Wolves Among Us: I’m pretty sure everyone knows this one, still putting it down. Werewolf!Bakugo x Human!Reader, Fantasy AU. (Wordcount: 334465 Status: Incomplete)
Bakugou Household: Domestic Bakugo just being the best dad. (Wordcount: 37867 Status: incomplete)
Types of Love: A bunch of one-shots about different types of love with Bakugo as the center subject. (Wordcount: 10243 Status: Complete)
Sex is a learning, even for shitheads.: Porn with Plot. Focuses on the evolution of the relationship between reader and Bakugo and their sex lives together, from first learning how to do the sex and controlling quirks during to exploring kinks, likes and dislikes. (Wordcount: 73453 Status: Complete)
Speak (Katsuki Bakugou x Reader): Soulmate Au- first words tattooed on body. Reader isnt too thrilled about the resident gremlin of 1-A is her soulmate. Smut included. (Wordcount: 153848 Status: Complete)
Knockout: I just started this one today, but I like it so far. Underground kickboxer au, kickboxer!Bakugo meets card girl!reader. (Wordcount: 85297 Status: complete)
His Tyranny: Fantasy au. Barbarian King Bakugo is power hungry, looking for anything to boost his strength, takes reader, a girl with a strong and dangerous magical ability, from the tower she was locked away in. (Wordcount: 76038 Status: complete)
Dakimakura: Bakugo develops a crush. Porn with plot. (Wordcount: 48657 Status: Complete)
Secret Admirer: Reader leaves Bakugo love letters. Things get steamy when reader gets caught. (Wordcount: 2278 Status: complete)
Kirishima/Reader
How to get a boyfriend?: Reader is Bakugo’s little sister and wants a boyfriend, she has her eyes set on her brother’s manly best friend. (Wordcount: 22431 Status: complete)
A Helping Hand (author’s tumblr https://thetrashyartwitch.tumblr.com/): No quirk au. Reader wants to better herself by going to the gym and develops a crush on Kirishima who was just being himself and being kind to reader. This gets a gold star from me, I read this over and over and I still love it so much. (Wordcount: 5707 Status: complete, one-shot)
Rising Sun (Btw, don’t bug the author about updating, they already get hounded about this one and other fics. The wait will be worth it.): Fantasy au and arrange marriage between princess!reader and dragon!Kirishima. Reader is in an entirely new environment and culture, getting to know her new kingdom and husband. (Wordcount: 14667 Status: incomplete)
Crimison|Ink (Kirishima x Reader) : I know I posted about this one before, but I will post about this again. I read this so many times, I have it downloaded on my phone to read offline. I don’t even know where to begin to describe this one, I just love it so much and can’t wait for it to come back. I don’t want to say I have a favorite, cause I love all of these… but if I had to choose *cough* this one *cough*. Summary: “Kirishima and his band of heavily tattooed brothers own and run a very well known tattoo shop together. One day a girl wonders into the shop in search of a tattoo to mark the start of her new life. Soon enough she’ll learn that this ‘family’ business is more than just buzzing tattoo guns and ink, and finds herself caught up in the middle of it, all while having to deal with a certain sharp-toothed pain in the ass.” Warning: violence, blood and gore, toxic past relationships. (Wordcount: 119179 Status: incomplete)
Oranges: Omegaverse, alpha!female!Reader/Omega!Kirishima. Mutual pining childhood friends who are oblivious towards each other’s feelings while everyone notices. (Wordcount: 19695 Status: Complete)
Anger Management: smut one-shot, reader is pissed about something at work and uses Kirishima to get rid of the rage by riding him till she’s no longer angry. (Wordcount: 1509 Status: Complete)
The Pizza Delivery Guy: Modern and College Au. Reader’s roommate Mina puts in to send the cutest delivery boy over. Best customer service experience ever. Pure fluff and flirting. Wanna see more. (Wordcount: 1607 Status: Complete)
Better Late Than Never: Dumb dumbs pining over each other both thinking they are just friends. (Wordcount: 2996 Status: complete)
Boyfriend Me: Short and simple, i live for the fluff and awkward kirishima. Accidental confessions and lack of words when around your crush. (Wordcount: 701 Status: complete)
The Heat of a Dragon: Pure smut with fantasy dragon!kirishima… who has two dicks. (Wordcount: 2464 Status: Complete)
All in his head: Reader has a mind reading quirk and Kirishima has a surprisingly dirty mind, sexy times ensues. (Wordcount: 1415 Status: Complete)
Fatgum/Reader (warning: all are smut fics)
First Time: This was my first fatgum fic I ever read and it’s still one of my top faves. Reader and Fatgum finally take steps into becoming intimate. Fluffy porn with plot. Size difference, totally a size queen’s go to fic. (Wordcount: 5394 Status: complete)
Sugar : Another first time fic, this time with a baker!reader in the middle of her kitchen. Size difference. (Wordcount: 6241 Status: Complete)
Dine and Dash: Celebratory public sex. (Wordcount: 2883 Status: complete)
Brick Walls are Great Support: Public sex in an alleyway. (Wordcount: 3006 Status: complete)
Drizzle: Valentine’s day sexy times with food. (Wordcount: 3017 Status:Complete) 
Temporary: Omegaverse, Omega!reader goes to a heat/rut house and meets alpha!Fatgum. (Wordcount: 3367 Status: Complete)
Not a typical Office Romance: office sexy times. (Wordcount: 2006 Status: complete)
Midoriya/Reader
Warmth of You: collection of Deku/reader one-shot smuts. I actually love this author a lot, does some of the best bottom Bakugo fics I have ever read. If you like bakudeku, check out their other works.
“Just Friends” : Jealous Midoriya doesn’t like being called just friends and reminds the reader that they are way more. Smut. (Wordcount: 3492 Status: complete)
Sero/Reader
Hero Santa: Best friends become something more during movie night in a blanket fort. Fluffy smut that makes me smile. (Wordcount: 4936 Status: complete)
Hoodie [SeroxReader]: post-break up, the only thing left behind was one of Sero’s hoodies that Reader still wears. Angst. (Wordcount: 3284 Status: complete)
Sour. Sweet. Gone.: no quirk and college au. Sero and reader are both pining idiots who go from friends to enemies to lovers. (Wordcount: 10448 Status: complete)
Tape residue: fluff smut, friends to lovers. Sero misread some signals but it all ends well. (Wordcount: 3410 Status: Complete)
A Seronade of Misunderstandings: Sero plans the most romantic and cheesy way for the first time but reader thinks his secretive behavior means he’s cheating. (Wordcount: 3420 Status: Complete)
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5 May 2021 Additions to Reylo Fluff
These fics have been added to the Fluff lists located in the following lists:
Fluff Part 1 Titles A-G
Fluff Part 2 Titles H-M
Fluff Part 3 Titles N-S
Fluff Part 4 Titlez T-Z
A merry Reylo Christmas by MeadowHayle (AO3 2018  Rated M Complete, 24 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey and Ben are roommates and celebrate the most wonderful time of the year together. For Rey it's the first real Christmas with friends and family and she wants to make up for all the things she missed as a child. Ben tries to help as best as possible, giving her a Christmas experience she deserves.) That's mine! by CrystalDen (AO3 2021  Rated E Complete, 3 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: When their new supervisor came from a different department, it had been a temporary solution to fix the swift exit of their boss. No one really cared that it was, well, a dude. A very tall, quiet dude with big features and a churlish expression. Gathering around the main hub of their floor to make introductions, Rey found herself mildly invested. He’d be around for a week, two. Maybe a month tops. It’s been three, and Rey just wishes he would go the fuck away.) Go And Catch A Falling Star Chapter 59 by Ayearandaday (AO3 2021  Rated G Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: This chapter was born during a video about how pockets on women's clothing shrunk through history. Modern Rey would be outraged to know that womankind used to have pockets big enough to stash a loaf of bread. Imagine all the snacks they could fit! But she would have to make do with her boyfriend's pockets. Yep, that's basically the plot. Warnings: if Reylo babies bother you, you might want to skip this one.) A World Where There Are Octobers by Ben_Solo_Good_Boy_Sweater_Emporium (AO3 2020  Rated T Complete, 12 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey is a ranch hand helping Han when the prodigal son returns.) Deliciously Dateable by Hellyjellybean (AO3 2021  Rated M Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey hosts a Youtube show eating theme park foods. Ben is her producer and cameraman. The internet ships them thanks to their crazy chemistry even though Ben’s rarely on camera.) A Season of Frost & Warmth by shewhospeakswiththunder (AO3 2019  Rated T Complete, 6 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben and Rey attend a costume party and there is contention between them; also including descriptions of season-appropriate cooler fall temperatures, warm clothing, and pining.) Free Fallin' by SageMcMae (AO3 2018  Rated M Complete, 5 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: A modern AU with pilot Ben Solo and brewery owner Rey who meet with disastrous first impressions, but somehow find themselves unable to deny their intense connection. Taking a leap of faith is a gamble. Taking the plunge towards love is a free fall.) and they were roommates by myownlittleinfinity (AO3 2021  Rated E Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: When Ben loses a bet to his roommate, Rey, he has to eat her out for 30 days.) Butter Crisp Sandwich by DarkMage13 (AO3 2021  Rated M Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: “Mr, I insist you join me for a tea party today, at precisely noon. My teddy will be there.” Ben glanced at the boring clock on the wall. Ten minutes until noon. He swallowed in fear. There was no escape.  Or: Ben Solo cannot say no to an adorable hazel-eyed little girl's request for tea.) the way I see you by ocjones (AO3 2021  Rated T Complete, One-Shot, Historical AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben glides a finger over the painting’s shining face. It’s long since dried, having traveled the slow journey of hills between Naboo and Mortis, yet the varnish is so glossy it almost feels wet to the touch.And there she is: a soft-looking woman, her breasts pillowing over the top of her corset, her hair held lightly back with a band and flowing out behind her. Her delicate fingers grip a book, clasp it in her velvet-clad lap. The smile on her face is as gentle as her portrayal. His wife.) melting snow by makeshiftcandy (AO3 2021  Rated E Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: “Rey?” Ben said, his voice suddenly right there, just in front of her, and no, oh no, he couldn’t be here, shouldn’t be anywhere near her because–“Alpha,” she whimpered, watching as the portion of his body visible to her froze.) Sweet Things by DarthBaker23 (AO3 2021  Rated E Complete, 3 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Alpha Ben enters a bakery and finds himself obsessed with a sweet scent. He's obsessed with the delicious smelling scent but can't find its source. He tries every pastry in the shop but eventually turns to the bakery owner, Rey, for help. When he finally meets her in person, he gets a big surprise.) Rey's Braids by Magdalane (AO3 2021  Rated M Complete, 6 Chapters, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben's little girl falls in love with braided hairstyles. He watches video from the popular YouTube channel in which Rey teaches different braiding techniques. After weeks of failure, he DMs her on Instagram, desperate...) Cashmere by ladyofreylo (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: “Technically, Cashmere is a dating service. It’s for women who need escorts—literally, a date—to events. There are many women out there who don’t have partners or don’t wish to come out as lesbians—and they want to have a man on their arm. However, Cashmere is unofficially a place to find sexual partners who are vetted and cater to a variety of tastes.” Rose paused. “It’s great because they only hire the best-looking men, with great bodies and great sexual skills. It’s hard to go wrong. I’ve known a guy or two who worked for them. They are gentlemen and very skilled lovers.” Rey is looking for someone to take her virginity. When she calls Cashmere, they send Daddy Dom Kylo Ren...) Penetration Testing by SageMcMae (AO3 2019  Rated T Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Tired of their difficult boss, Phasma, Hux, and Mitaka hire Rey to help their CEO Ben run a security test but forget to tell him. “Good morning, Mr. Ren. I’m Rey Niima. I’m here to conduct the penetration testing you requested.” "Excuse me?” “We will begin with a preliminary assessment of your system, conduct the initial penetration test, after which I will provide a gap analysis to highlight the areas requiring improvement. I’ll make sure to list them out in priority order so you improve your performance.” “My...performance?”) Lip Balm by Jammy_Dodger (AO3 2020  Rated G Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Ben HATES the lip balm Rey uses. He's been throwing it out, hiding it, trying to find ways to make her stop using it. So he ends up going to Sephora to buy her some new lip balm, but he comes out with VIB Rogue status, a curling iron, a hair dryer, a flat iron, heat protectant spray and a lot of stress. Ben hates shopping but he'll do it for Rey. Fluffy.) Homestead Fire by ladyofreylo (AO3 2020  Rated E Complete, One-Shot, Prairie AU, Quick Synopsis: In this story, Ben Solo is a homesteader trying to court O. Kenobi's adopted daughter whilst on the prairie. He believes he will make Miss Rey a good husband. He shows her how when he stops by to chop wood and build up her fire.) Coffee by Jammy_Dodger (AO3 2021  Rated T Complete, One-Shot, Modern AU, Quick Synopsis: Rey sits next to Ben in the coffee shop bc he doesn't talk or bother her. One day he doesn't show up. Rey waits for him. Someone else sits in his seat& hits on her. Rey is annoyed. Ben shows up late, tells the guy he's in his seat. The guy refuses to move. Rey gives Ben her Seat, and then sits in his lap. She continues to read her book and he reads his. She asks for his number. They date. He goes to the coffee shop bc he still lives with his parents. Rey's apt is going to be condemned. They move in eventually. She still sits in his lap.)
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Here are some amazing bottom Louis fics posted or completed during the month of July. We really hope you enjoy this list and that you give these fics a lot of love.
Happy reading!
1) Your Good Time | Explicit | 3070 words
Louis nodded along with what the guy was saying, apparently his arousal taking over his brain to mouth filter as he said, “Who would want to hide a fit bloke like you? That guys an idiot.” Louis scoffed, dramatizing the word ‘idiot’, giving the guy a sly smirk. The guy leaned an arm against the bar, turned his body to Louis and fixed him with a curious look before he held out a hand.
“M’Harry.”
Louis and Harry meet in a bar when Harry's date is an ass. Inspired by Temporary Fix by One Direction.
2) I Push You To The Limits | Explicit | 3846 words
Louis is a brat who likes seeing his boyfriend get jealous and possessive over him.
3) Overkill | Explicit | 4354 words
Louis was never going to get over how fucking attractive Harry was. How glorious his big, tall, curvy body was. The feeling of Harry behind him, hot and heavy, trapped on the tube after they’d been somewhere during rush hour. His thick hands, full of pretty rings sometimes, handing Louis a cup of coffee, then getting one for himself.
4) Too Nervous to be Lovers | Mature | 6445 words
Louis doesn't want to spend quarantine with Harry, his straight roommate, who doesn't even acknowledge his existence.
5) Fratboy In Love | Mature | 6830 words
Harry Styles was a frat boy who loved to sleep around and flirt with boys and girls. Louis was a good uni student who loved to stay in and study and wasn't much of a partier.
Insert his best friend Niall who talks him into going. Louis gets drunk and ends up sleeping with harry. The next day he leaves before Harry wakes and tries to avoid him at all costs. Thinking Harry wouldn't care since Louis was just another conquest. But what if Harry did care. And actually have a crush on Louis. Read and find out
6) My Sunflower | Mature | 7057 words
Louis would rather be sunbathing at the beach with his friends, not slaving his spring break away in his father’s flower shop.
7) Waiting | Explicit | 8023 words
Louis Tomlinson was Harry’s omega, of this Harry had always been sure. Unfortunately for Harry, Louis seemed to think they were just best friends. The six weeks that Harry has to live with Louis were going to be rough.
8) Shine Light Upon Your Ground | Explicit | 8506 words
Note: The fic pairing is Louis/H, which the reader can picture as Harry or Henry Cavill.
Louis sighs again and fiddles with the bracelet on his wrist, twisting the charms around and petting the fake diamonds.
“How much for a night?” A deep voice suddenly asks him. The man who approaches him is already pulling out his wallet and flicking through a bundle of bills. Louis, who had been sitting at the bar completely innocent and minding his own business, lets out an offended, strangled sound.
“Excuse me?” He demands, straightening up in his seat. The hem of his dress creeps further up his thigh but he pays it no mind.
9) Glistening Under The Sun (You're My Honey Soaked Love) | Mature | 8996 words
“Oh Petal,” he picks her up nuzzling the top of her head with his cheek as she nibbles on the lavender, “How lucky are we? I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy, the only thing we have to be sad about is that soon I won’t be able to hold you like this,”
10) Connected To The Heart | Explicit | 9059 words
Note: This is an coda scene for this fic.
“Your stage cue is way too close for you to be wearing that look you’re wearing,” Louis informs him. He can’t stop himself from looking up at Harry through his eyelashes, the silk of Harry’s dress shirt brushing against the backs of his knuckles.
“Twenty minutes,” Harry agrees. His breath is minty from the gum he was chewing earlier, fresh and warm. “Twenty minutes can be a long time, baby.”
This time, Louis has to force himself to roll his eyes. “Not nearly long enough for the way you always want to fuck me.”
11) Fuck U Betta | Explicit | 11438 words
There’s something about having Louis like this, exposed and desperate, that makes a primal urge bubble up from deep inside Harry’s chest. Desire mixed with something else, something unquantifiable. It’s the thing that makes them want this, need this. Nothing else will satisfy them or quench their thirst.
OR the one where Harry likes the thrill of the chase, Louis likes to be chased, and everyone gets what they need… in the end.
12) Kiss Me In Your Chevrolet | Explicit | 11569 words
"Yes, Lou?" Harry asked, rubbing his tired eyes. A gust of wind came through the open windows, sending chills down Harry's arms as a light rain began falling outside. He closed his eyes again and let his head fall back to the couch arm rest.
"Can we go there?" Louis asked, probably pointing somewhere. Harry opened his eyes and felt his heart jump in his chest, a magazine page a couple of inches away from his face. Startled, Harry closed his eyes and breathed heavily, trying to collect himself.
Harry blinked a few times to focus his eyes on the page Louis still held in front of his nose. "You want to go to the Grand Canyon?" He furrowed his eyebrows, tilting his head to the left to look at Louis' face.
13) Pull The Trigger | Explicit | 12007 words
Note: This fic is a sequel to this fic, which is #16 on this list.
Louis has never been alright with killing. Will that change when he learns what it's like to be the one holding the gun?
14) Open All Night | Explicit | 12537 words
It’s six in the morning when Harry finally makes it back home.
Harry's a bartender, Louis' got a nice ass and a shit taste in men. They make it work.
15) Among Other Things | Explicit | 16073 words
“Harry, it’s 7:45, oh my god, my class starts at 8:15,” and Louis wants to cry. Harry’s busy under the bed trying to find the tiny silver key but Louis knows that fate just hates him and he needs to find a way to get up. “Harry, I—fuck,” Louis whines. Harry stands up in a rush.
“I can’t seem to find them. It. The key.”
Or, Louis’ the teacher of Harry Styles’ daughter. Their paths shouldn’t cross like this. This meaning Louis showing up to school handcuffed to a headboard.
16) A Bullet And It's Gun | Explicit | 18156 words
Note: The sequel to this fic is #13 on this list. 
Louis’ parents arrange his marriage with Harry. He’s fully ready to accept that he’s going to be a sad and lonely person for the rest of his life. But then Harry starts proving himself as more than just an asocial man with money.
17) By Such Slight Ligaments | Explicit | 26764 words
Note: The fic pairing is Louis/Henry Cavill.
A late night visit to a patient sets off a series of events that will turn Louis' world upside down.
... Here there be monsters.
18) At Your Fingertips | Explicit | 27384 words
He finds himself wrapped up in sheets in bed on Thursday night, staring at the familiar name on a new story that was posted the night before.
His fingers twitch, ready to hit play and surrender to his impulses, saving the regret and turmoil for later.
And still he hesitates, internally praying that he’ll somehow gain the strength to exit out within the next few moments before he inevitably loses his patience and hits the button.
Three…
Two…
One.
Play.
19) Forgot My Roots Now Watch Me Bloom | Explicit | 28334 words
Lonely transit worker Louis pulls his longtime crush, Peter, from the path of an oncoming train. At the hospital, doctors report that he's in a coma, and a misplaced comment from Louis causes Peter's family to assume that he is his fiancée. When Louis doesn't correct them, they take him into their home and confidence. Things get even more complicated when he finds himself falling for Peter's brother, Harry. Loosely based on the movie "While You Were Sleeping".
20) Push You Out, Pull You Back In | Explicit | 31544 words
Harry hates feeling vulnerable. Louis is set on breaking through his tough facade.
21) Baby Blue | Explicit | 39439 words
Harry Styles takes his time coming out to greet them. Louis only knows what he’s seen on file and what he’s heard them talking about, but he fully lives up to the image he had inside of his head.
He saunters down the front steps of the farmhouse in his Levi’s, brown snakeskin boots curving out from underneath the denim Louis’ sure he had specially made. He’s got on a plaid button-down tucked into the jeans because of course he does, curls spilling out from either side of his cowboy hat around his sunglasses and country-tan skin.
“Harry Styles,” he drawls, extending a hand to Louis’ manager, “Pleased to meet ya’ll.”
22) Lidocaine And Palm Trees | Explicit | 44653 words
Heat, fake tans and lots of traffic.
Harry never expected to earn his living this way when he moved to LA.
Louis didn't think he could ever be the same after his divorce.
A lighthearted story about two guys trying to find themselves in the vibrant, sprawling city of Los Angeles, with a side of technical porn industry stuff.
23) Sleeping On Our Problems | Explicit | 67369 words
Louis sleeps with Harry and they have more than just catching feelings to worry about.
24) Truth Would Be | Explicit | 91869 words
“You want me? I’m not a… a thing to be owned!” Louis stuttered, still very angry and confused.
“Hmmm…” The alpha tapped his lips as if he was contemplating something. “Last time I checked, the debt was paid off and the only thing I had asked in return was… you. So technically I do own you.”
“You are crazy…” Louis muttered as he began to back towards the door. Harry’s impossibly green eyes turned a shade darker, but his tone was still teasing and light when he said, “Maybe I am…”
The I-paid-off-all-your-debt-so-you-are-mine AU in which Omega Louis wants to be left alone by Alpha Harry but it's super complicated when he starts to not hate the alpha all that much.
25) Collision | Not Rated | 224594 words
Note: This fic was finished in 2018, but two new epilogue chapters have been added.
Mythology/Fairytale!AU in which Louis is a dainty fairy with a temper who wants to be intimidating and Harry hurts people. Naturally, they hate each other.
Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.
You can find other monthly roundup fic rec lists here.
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Serva me, Servabo te
save me and I will save you
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pairing: photographer!Taehyung x f.reader
genre: angst, smut, slight enemies to lovers
word count: 7.3k  |  reading time: 40 min
chapter summary: flash backs clear the mystery of their first encounter, they fight over it, and then things get a bit heavier
warnings: there’s finally some sexy stuff going on yall, alcohol usage, metions of cheating, some dirty talk ig, some not very fluffy smut, almost angry fucking, dubious I’d say, fingering f.receiving, oral f.receiving, kinda dom!Tae, name calling kink? idk
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Chapter 5: Irresistible urges of the past
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3 years, 2 months, and 14 days ago at 7:35 pm
The party was Yoonji's idea but you never complained. Well, okay, you complained a little bit. But that was only when you heard the approximate number of guests that had been invited so far and argued your small, shared apartment would probably collapse from the total weight in it. You offered to move the function over to the bar down the street, but apparently, that's not a house-warming party.
"How on earth are so many people coming, anyway? We have, like, five friends at most. And that is including the lunch lady."
Yoonji gave you those puppy eyes. "Well, actually, Jimin just made an Instagram story to get the word out, not thinking many would wanna come," she mumbled under her breath, almost like she was trying to avoid giving you the explanation. "But it turns out ever since that video he did, lots and lots of people wanna be his friend now."
You exhaled hard, making a pathetic sound. "You gave the guy you've only been seeing for a couple of weeks permission to invite people to our party?"
She pouted at you. "I thought you liked him. Plus, he offered to do this for us. We barely know people here, Amy, this party is going to be the best to see new faces."
You chewed your lip as you were setting the drinks on the table in a nice order and contemplated your roommate's words. "What do you need new people for?" you whined. "You already have a best friend and a hot boyfriend."
Yoonji bumped her shoulder on your arm playfully. "But you don't. Who knows, maybe you'll like one of Jimin's friends."
You rolled your eyes at her, but that didn't cover up the smile that had started to form. "Doubt it," you objected. "Models are not exactly my type."
You heard Yoonji laugh from the kitchen. "Jimin's not a model!" she shouted back. Then peeked her head around the doorway to raise an eyebrow at you. "I mean, you're not entirely wrong."
People that you had never even seen before started showing up at your place, and without fail, they all asked where Jimin and Taehyung were. Rude, you thought. That was not their party; something that could easily be deduced by how they weren't even there yet. Also, when had Jimin become so popular all of a sudden? And who the fuck was Taehyung?
At about an hour after the place was already packed and your roommate's boyfriend had finally made an appearance, Yoonji just so happened that she was constantly MIA, and the task of welcoming the people that kept and kept on coming, fell entirely on your shoulders. A task that briefly seemed not so bad when you opened the door and a brown-haired, pretty boy stood in front of you. You guessed models were indeed invited to that party, the only explanation you could come up with for why the most handsome man you had ever led your eyes upon was looking at you and smiling.
"Is this Yoonji's and... Amy's party?" he asked and you were taken aback by his deep, raspy voice that countered his charming face.
"Yes," you said, letting him in. "And are you on the bride's or the groom's side?" You hated the joke the moment it left your lips, a moment too late to take it back. Five full seconds spent with a cute boy and you were already acting weird.
But the boy laughed, and the sound quite literally lifted your spirits. "I am with Jimin if that's what you're asking."
"Of course you are. Jacket?" You offered your hands up for him.
"Oh, right, where can I leave this?" he asked as he slid the piece of garment off his shoulders. You opened the door right behind you, a door that normally led to a small storage space, but you had turned into a temporary closet with all the jackets and purses you had shoved in there. The boy leaned next to you as he tried to find somewhere to leave his outerwear without just dropping it on the pile on the floor.
"Let me," you offered, taking a random jacket that hung from the ironing board, abandoning it on the ground, and replacing it with the pretty boy's one. That's pretty privilege for you.
He chuckled. "Whose was that? Is that okay?"
"Who cares, it's my house."
"Oh," he exclaimed, watching you more closely as you closed the door again and turned to him with your lips awkwardly pressed into a thin line. You pinned your body on the wall, waiting for him to move or say something. "You're Amy?" You nodded, and the boy burst out a big smirk. "Well, well, well..." he rasped. "I'm gonna kick Jimin's ass so hard. He didn't tell me Yoonji had such a cute roommate."
The way your entire face felt like it had caught on fire in a split second almost scared you. It definitely made your eyes widen and your head go into a defense mode; you had never flustered before, of course your brain would think it was under attack. And of course you would reply with something stupid again, like snorting and saying: "Right. And you are?"
"Kim Taehyung, freshly graduated and aspiring big photographer," he proudly introduced himself. It all suddenly seemed to click and you barely held yourself from gasping right in his face. He extended a hand to you, and you took it, ready to shake it. Instead, he surprised you by bringing it to his lips and planting a soft kiss right between your knuckles. "Enchanté," he whispered with his dark eyes piercing yours.
The stupid fire all over your face got worse. So worse all you could do was quickly pull away and scoff at him, but also laugh. "That was too much!"
"Sorry," he chuckled and gave you a big, boxy grin. "I was trying to make you swoon."
You couldn't help but mimic his energy. "Does that ever work on anyone?" Well, what a liar you are. It had literally turned your stomach into a knot.
And Taehyung, almost as if he knew that, smirked at you. "You'd be surprised."
Okay, so you may have overreacted a tiny bit when you took off running away from Taehyung. There could possibly have been other ways to go about it, like gently pushing him off and telling him this was a mistake, trying to talk, or even staying silent. Your head was spinning so hard as you stumbled down that path wishing you don't get lost in the foggy state your mind had dipped in due to the haste. And it had almost cleared, you had almost stopped to think about this rationally and wait for the photographer so that you could walk home together, but the longer you thought about it more clearly, the faster you ran. You didn't even know if it was fear or shame that was powering your flight, but it had to be one of those.
The further you stayed locked in your room, the later emotion became more and more prominent. You saw Taehyung emerge from the trees sometime later and get in the house, you heard him on the downstairs floor, you saw the lights turn on and off... He was everywhere, and you were hiding away, terrified and ashamed. How could you ever meet his eyes again? But most importantly, how would you face yourself in the mirror? You knew that was the worst part of the whole situation; you let your own self down.
3 years, 2 months, and 14 days ago at 1:23 am
You returned on the corner that Taehyung and you had been occupying all night long with a drink in your hands, swaying around and trying to survive the mob of drunk college students that were doing what you were sure they thought was dancing in the middle of the living room. Some of the drink spilled on the way and you're not sure if it was because of all the bumping on people or the way you had started seeing everything double and losing your balance pretty easily.
"What the hell happened to my chair?" you whined as you found the photographer sitting there alone when you had specifically asked him to save you the seat.
He shrugged. "I couldn't defend it, sorry." Then he spread his legs wide and pat his thigh, looking up at you with a smirk. "Just sit here."
You didn't think twice; sat down on his offered position, swinging your legs to the side to completely lie on his lap and an arm around his neck for balance. Your face was inches away from his, so much so you could smell the alcohol in his breath, his hands instantly on your waist and hips to pull you close. But it felt so comfortable. Since the moment you met, you hadn't left each other's side, and you hadn't stopped touching. Touching as in holding hands while talking or pushing him while laughing, playing with your clothes or stroking each other's hair. It seemed like there was always an excuse, or, better yet, constantly a need to touch.
"Ugh!" he gagged when he took one sip of the drink you had brought right to his lips. "What is this shit?"
You giggled. "Tequila."
"Is it just tequila?"
You kept giggling. "Actually, we ran out of soft drinks so I mixed it with water."
His mouth dropped open and he started laughing, too. "Of course! Why wouldn't you!" His hands around your body squeezed you tighter and you had to squirm around, still a need to get even closer.
"It's not that bad," you proclaimed, then took a sip from the same straw and had your entire face scrunch up. "See?"
Taehyung had gotten serious, staring at you intensely, as he slowly brought the straw right on his tongue yet again. He took a generous gulp, then offered the drink to you, his eyes fixed on your lips and the way they wrapped around right where his had just been. His stare gave you goosebumps, and you pressed yourself even closer, your hip flushed right against his lower abdomen.
"You know I don't drink," he said in a whisper. He didn't need to speak louder, you were right there. "I'm only doing this for you."
"Well," you mumbled as your fingers ran through the back of his hair. "That makes two of us doing something we don't usually do tonight." And you meant it. You never did this; whatever this was. Sitting on a cute boy's lap that you had only met a couple of hours ago, ready to devour him with the first chance you got. And boy, would you devour him.
"We haven't done anything yet," Taehyung noted, his hand dipping between your legs to pinch your thing.
"Yet," you murmured, pressing even closer to him, feeling his erection grow against your hip.
Your eyes alone could communicate. And all they conveyed was the urgency to get out of there. The need to be alone. Your entire body burned with that need, or maybe it was the alcohol. With no words spoken, you both got up, holding hands not to get lost in the crowd, and searched in the apartment for an empty room. The bathroom was locked, the kitchen busy, one bedroom filled with boys playing video games and the other with smokers. Taehyung pulled you towards the exit; he wasn't about to let the moment escape him. He would get you in his car or even back to his place if he had to, just to get his hands properly on you.
But you didn't have time for that. You needed him right away. So you opened up that makeshift closet and shoved him inside. Space was limited and your bodies were naturally pressed together. The moment the door closed behind you, you realized how dark it was; the light switch being outside, forgotten. You felt his hands ran up your body, trying to blindly find your face with haste like he was being chased.
His lips found yours. And you indeed devoured each other. He had you pinned against the door and his fingers through your hair as he kissed you like a starved man. You know how first kisses almost always suck? How it takes a while to find the right rhythm, to lean into it just enough to match the other's technic? That was nothing like that. It was the best kiss you had ever had, it was so perfect and so right. The way his lips moved over your own and his tongue stroked you, it was like you had done this a million times already, or simply like you were made for each other.
Nothing could stop you now. Not even your common sense that would advise you against fucking just anyone in that tiny space, when everyone was still outside. But common sense had left you long ago. Your body was being controlled by an innate, animalistic hunger. And you moaned his name as you straddled his waist and let him suck hickeys into your neck. And you thought about how this is the best thing that had happened to you as you started taking off his belt.
You heard it again; a thump in the room. This time it was certainly not just in your head. You looked around -let's be honest- scared out of your mind because the last thing you needed right now was for something to be hidden in there with you.
"Tae?" you asked in a low voice, just in case he was playing a stupid prank on you. But you were met with silence.
Until it happened again, a louder tap, and this time you determined it was coming from the window. Slowly, while keeping your body as far away as you could, you got closer. You stared at the glass, trying to figure out why it was making that sound. Then you saw it; a small pebble clashing on the pane and disappearing just as fast. You opened it immediately and leaned outside.
"What the hell?" you shouted when you noticed the shadow-covered man standing in the garden under your room. "What are you doing down there?"
Taehyung tossed away the stones he had in his palms, straining his neck to look up at you. "I wanted to talk to you."
"And you thought -instead of just coming to my room- it'd be easier to walk downstairs, get outside and throw rocks at my window?"
"I thought you wouldn't let me in if I just knocked on your door," he explained.
You groaned. He wasn't wrong; you would have probably continued to hide away and avoid him. But he didn't have to be so dramatic about it. Well, not that you are one to talk. "Ugh, just- get your ass in here," you shouted back.
"You're gonna talk to me?"
"Yes."
"Promise?"
You groaned again. "Yes!"
You saw Taehyung run inside as if he was afraid you would change your mind in the meantime. Perhaps you would. You really didn't want to talk to him. What would you even say? You had no excuse to give him, or no excuse you wanted him to know, anyway. All you wanted was to pretend he wasn't even there until morning came; then you could drive back home and go back to pretending you didn't even know each other.
"He is crazy," you mumbled to yourself as you decided you couldn't evade this anymore. "No, that man is certified insane!" you kept on complaining to no one as you opened your door and dashed away.
You ran into him in the middle of the staircase. Stood there, just a step away from him, with your arms folded over your chest, keeping your eyes anywhere but on him.
"So?" you spat.
"I wanted to talk to you," he said in a whisper, a tone that sounded like he was guilty of something.
"Yes, I got that. You can talk now."
He looked down at your feet. "Here?"
You scoffed and moved past him, jogging down the stairs and taking a turn towards the kitchen. The boy followed you diligently. When you reached the room, you immediately grabbed a glass and filled it with water, chugging it down in one go and going for a second turn. You really wished this was something stronger, looking around to see if you could spot a bottle of some kind of liquor. You would need it if you were to have the conversation you thought you would.
"I have a confession to make," Taehyung announced after he decided the silence was enough.
You froze, the glass of water still against your lips, and you looked at him from the corner of your eyes. "Oh, please," you groaned but still couldn't move. "No more confessions from you."
He sighed, walking until he got right in front of you so that he could look you in the eyes for this. "I remember your party."
See, this is exactly what you feared the most. This...This conversation was what was making this place truly haunted for you.
"What?" you weakly breathed.
"Your... welcoming party? With Yoonji?" he continued. As if you didn't know what party he was talking about. "I remember everything about it."
"But-"
"I wasn't that drunk."
The glass hit the counter with such force, for a second you thought you had broken it in your grip. But it had just provided a loud noise as you gaped at the boy in front of you. What were you supposed to say, now? Where to start?
"You didn't even remember meeting me!" you called out.
"Yeah I- I lied."
The worst part wasn't that he was pretending he didn't know who you were. No, that was low-key genius and you would have done the exact same thing if you were quick enough to think of it when you found yourself in that sitting room, across the person you least wanted to see. The worst part was that you had believed it. You felt like such an idiot. You had believed it and thought it meant you could have a clean start.
3 years, 2 months, and 14 days ago at 1:44 am
You didn't want to stop, but you still did, when Taehyung's phone went off. When he pulled away, gasping for air and apologizing. You thought you were having a moment there, you know, a moment where no matter who was calling, it wasn't important enough to pick up. But he apparently didn't see it that way. He took one look at his screen and asked you to be quiet.
Maybe your eyes accidentally caught the pet name on his contact for a split second, or maybe it was the girly voice that came muffled from the speaker, but your head started spinning without warning. And the space was suddenly too small, and it was choking you. You found the knob before he realized what you were doing, and with your body weight on the door, you were launched outside; into the light that burned your eyes. A girl was standing on the other side of the hallway, looking at you with judgement in her eyes and her phone in her hands, then immediately averting her pretentious gaze. A hand tried to hold onto your shirt to keep you back, but you escaped.
You stumbled through the place, not sure where you were trying to go or who you were trying to find, solely trying to keep yourself up and not barf on the new carpet. You wanted to get away, but where could you go? You lived there. You heard Yoonji's laugh before you even saw her, sighing in relief when you spotted her in the kitchen and letting your body fall on hers.
"Baby, baby, everything alright?" your roommate called for you, but you just held onto her without a word. She tried to bear your weight as best as she could, holding onto the counter so that you wouldn't both plummet onto the floor.
Another hand rubbed your back. "Did you drink a little too much, Ames?" It was Jimin's sweet voice. You whined into your friend's neck before you pulled back to look at her boyfriend.
"Jimin, is Kim Taehyung your friend?" you asked him.
He frowned, a little confused as to how the conversation got there. "Ye- yeah. He's my best friend. You met him, right?"
"Yeah," Yoonji responded for you. "I saw them talking earlier."
You took a deep breath; everything seemed to be against you at that moment, even the air itself, and you were trying so hard to not crumble. "Does he have a girlfriend?" you dared ask, even though you thought you might vomit if you heard the answer.
"Who? Tae?" Yoonji mumbled. You nodded, and she gave you a smirk right away. "Ohh... Why do you ask, baby? You interested?"
You rolled your eyes as both of them started teasing you. "No," you tried to tell them.
"Why, was he flirting with you?"
"How does he get every girl like that?"
"No, guys-"
"I don't blame her. He's so hot."
"Hey! I'm right here!"
"Just answer the damn question!" you yelled at them, and they finally stopped. Jimin looked at you with the same frown again.
"He does," he said and everything that was spinning in the room stopped abruptly. "Sorry, love. I promise you'll be the first to know when they break up."
Everything was foggy, and you felt numb. So numb, there was absolutely no thought in your head. You barely noticed the couple turn their heads to the door, barely realized who it was they were looking at.
"No, thanks," you whispered to Jimin then and pulled Yoonji away. "Bathroom," you simply stated and she carefully took you there, avoiding successfully the boy that was the topic of your conversation. For the first time of the many, many more that followed. All those times you stayed clear of gatherings you knew he would be at. All those times you changed your way, left a coffee shop, stayed silently in a corner in places there was nowhere else to go. You never told Yoonji exactly why you didn't want to be in the same room with him again, but she was very supportive no matter what.
You weren't sure why, either. Whether it was your hurt ego, your high standards for the people surrounding you, or the shame you felt every time you met his eyes, you couldn't tell. One thing you knew for sure was how you vowed to never fall for that again. Not from Taehyung, and not from anyone else. No more hooking up with random fuck boys at parties. No more associating yourself with people you don't even value enough. Kim Taehyung was an asshole, and you didn't care what he did or who he did it with, but you would rather be caught dead than be caught with him ever again.
Yet there you were. With him.
You cleared your throat. "And you're telling me this now because...?"
The photographer frowned, mostly at himself, clenching his jaw and looking at the ground. "Well, because you kissed me and ran away as if your life depended on it. Thought it might have something to do with that."
"Right." You bit the inside of your cheek, nodding slightly as you tried to think of what to say. Truly, what could you say? There have been so many things torturing your mind, but you didn't know which of those would be worth saying aloud. "Okay," you simply mumbled. "Are we done then?"
You tried walking past him but he held you back. "Wait, wait, hold on. You promised we would talk."
You just looked at him with your eyes wide. "You said you had a confession to make. You made it. There’s nothing more to say about that."
"Yes, there is."
"Like what?"
Taehyung snorted, finally letting you go. "Like what your problem with me is!"
You released a bitter laugh. "I thought you said you remember everything about that night."
He licked his lips and ran a hand through his hair. "It's been three years-"
"And you stay lying to me." He looked at you intensely but you didn't back down. You might not have wanted to have this conversation, but now that it was happening, you wouldn't cower one bit.
"Look," he started, taking a step closer. "What I did was wrong. Both to you and to my girlfriend. I understand, it was very shitty and I don't have any excuses. I'm not here to give you any excuses."
"Yeah, 'cause there is no excuse for such a thing," you bit back.
Taehyung sighed at your attitude, somewhat losing his patience, but continued. "Right," he mumbled through his teeth. "I told her what I did and we broke up. Actually, she forgave me and wanted to stay with me but I insisted on breaking up because I didn't want her to be in a relationship where I made such a mistake, I wanted her to find someone better."
You shrugged, folding your arms over your chest yet again and tapping your foot on the floor. "Alright. Good for her. What do you want, a cookie?"
"No-"
"You really did less than the minimum, there, buddy. I don't know what you want from me right now."
"I- nothing!"
"Then why are you telling me this?"
He paused, opening and closing his mouth again, clearly not knowing how to reply. Maybe he expected a different reaction, or maybe he was nervous and it all translated into a type of irritation, but he was starting to look angry. "Because!" he said in a louder tone. "Because you keep treating me like that, you're acting like I'm this huge asshole, and I get it- first impressions are hard to change, but I'm not! I'm not that asshole you've made me out to be and quite frankly it's starting to get pretty annoying."
You chuckled. What else were you supposed to do? You couldn't believe what you were hearing. "Excuse me, but I have the right to believe anything I want about you. If I have a certain idea of who you are and it's not affecting you in any way, then what's the problem?" You saw Taehyung roll his eyes and turn away, his hands on his hips as he shook his head and sighed. "If I think what you did is bad enough for me to never change my mind about you, then that's my opinion."
He was mumbling his words out, not being able to form a sentence long enough for it to make sense. "But that's- you-" He kept grunting and shaking his head at you until he finally spoke up. "Three years!" he announced. "It's been three years, Amy, and you're still punishing me for this. Alright, it's your opinion to determine the gravity of it, but don't tell me it doesn't affect me. Not when you've been avoiding me for three years."
"I haven't-" you tried to lie.
But he knew better than that. "Yes, you have. Every time I wanted to come along with my friends, something always came up and you'd bail. You didn't even show up at Jimin's birthday for crying aloud! Because you knew I'd be there. And I wanted to talk to you, apologize to you. I liked you and wanted to make this right and you never gave me the chance." He took a deep breath after having given his monologue in a haste, almost like he was scared his words would bail, too, if he wasn't quick enough. "And then you're wondering why I pretended I didn't remember you?" You blinked at him when you realized he was waiting for an answer. You had none to give him. "What was I supposed to do, huh? What could I have done that wouldn't have resulted in you getting back in that car and driving away?"
You stayed silent, looking at him through your lashes, then averting your gaze again. You sniffed your nose a couple of times as you were trying to get your thoughts straight. Kicked the floor once or twice as you felt your body squirm under his stare; he wouldn't relieve you from the scrutiny. "I..." you finally mumbled. "I'm not interested in reconciling with you." You gulped but noticed his stance and expression didn't change at all. Like he expected those words. "I'm sorry if that's what you wanted to do, and that I prevented you from even trying. But I won't change my mind about this."
He licked his lips, looking at you with a serious frown, then simply said: "Why?"
Why was he even asking? Was it not obvious? "Look, I simply don't like people who do things like these. I don't want them as boyfriends, or friends, or anything. Nothing personal."
"But that's what I'm trying to say!" he insisted. "I'm not like that." He came close, so close his face was hovering above yours merely inches away, staring into your eyes with a sort of urgency. An urgency for you to understand him. "I'm not normally like that. That night... I don't know. That night was an exception. I really don't want to give you cliché excuses, but I thought you knew. I thought you felt it, too. I'm not crazy, right? There was something there that you felt, too?"
You gulped again, looking him up and down with fire all over your face. Because you knew instantly what he meant. But it had to take a few moments for it to actually sink in. That it wasn't just you. And that he, too, was unable to keep his hands from you that night. It certainly didn't justify his actions or lessen your disdain for him. But at least it felt a tiny bit good to know that you weren't just a naive little girl who had fallen for the pretty boy's trick, just like dozens of others.
"That still doesn't explain..." you started saying, keeping your opinion openly still the same, yet not denying his words.
"I know it doesn't!" he was quick to say. His eyes traveled all over your face, the tone of his voice having calmed a bit. "It was very douchy of me and I don't expect to be forgiven for it. Which is why I didn't stay with that girl." You jumped slightly when you felt his hands land on your arms. But you didn't pull away. "But I don't understand why you have to be so harsh on me. It's been three years, and this is still obviously bothering you. You haven't let it go even a little bit."
You looked away, taking a step back, but he quickly made up for it. "It doesn't bother me," you said, tongue in cheek.
"Well, it clearly does," he insisted. "When you are cold to me one moment, kissing me the next, and then running away like I hurt you."
"You did hurt me."
The words left your mouth before you could stop them. Before you even knew what you were saying yourself. He hurt you. You had never admitted that before. Always blaming your anger and aversion to him on your morals or whatever. Yet that was the true reason you didn’t want to see him, and you didn’t want to talk to him, and definitely not kiss him again.
Taehyung paused, taking a deep breath. He leaned nearer as he looked down at your lips as whispered. “I know,” he said in a sweet voice as if to reassure you. “I know.” That meant you weren’t crazy. “But why is it still hurting you now?” You tensed up at his question. “Why do you care -about me- so much that this is, to this day, an open wound?”
You scoffed. But you couldn't say anything. You tried pushing him away, and for a moment he let you, but then he was right in front of you again. Even closer, perhaps. “What are you…?” you murmured, looking quite lost. Especially with the close proximity that was driving your mind into a frenzy.
“Do you still like me?” he asked, straightforward.
“No!” you called immediately. But he didn’t seem convinced, raising an eyebrow at you. "I’m not still hurt. I just… I told you. I simply don't want anything to do with someone like you. So it's fine when you keep your distance, but it's not fine when you kiss me. I said I don't want- ."
"Yeah, yeah, you don't want a boyfriend nor a friend like me," he interrupted you to finish your sentence. "Not that I ever offered to be either of those."
Your cheeks flushed and you looked away immediately so as not to get caught. "I- I didn't say I wanted you to."
Taehyung chuckled. The sound almost scared you more than when he was shouting earlier. Because you knew a casual, flirty Taehyung was always more dangerous. "You know, you kissed me!" he reminded you.
Your mouth dropped in a dramatic way. "You seduced me into kissing you!" you complained.
And the boy laughed even harder. "Seduced? Is that your way of saying you couldn't resist me?"
You tried to fight back at his remarks that clearly only served the role of firing you up -whether that was with anger or something else, you weren't sure. And then he had the audacity to wonder why you still didn't like him? But your voice cracked, as you backed until your body hit the kitchen counter and your hands held the edge tight. "Is not!" you managed to get out.
Taehyung’s arms trapped you in that counter, his hands holding onto it on either side of your body until you were caged between them, as he leaned even closer, standing one breath away and staring at you with a smirk on his lips. It was clear then, he wasn’t trying to talk anymore.
“C’mon,” he rasped, a voice so low that it vibrated in frequencies hard to hear. “I know you can’t resist me. You couldn’t do it three years ago and you can’t do it now.”
Your palms hit his chest, trying to push him away from you as you breathed heavily, hearing your own heartbeat in your head and feeling your control slipping through your fingers. But you still couldn’t form any words. Your brain had shut down when it came to that. Just spinning around as Taehyung kept getting closer. What the hell was he trying to do?
"I'm just saying… There is no one here to judge you for it. No one will know you went against your morals," he purred, a hand leaving your side briefly to swipe your hair off your shoulder and caress your neck in the process. The contact made your palms clench into fists, his shirt pooling under your grip. And there were two ways you could go about this; either push or pull him.
“Tae…”
“Go on then,” he said in a teasing tone. “Show me how much you hate me, princess. How you despise me and everything I stand for. Resist me.”
You did hate him. And you hated being proven wrong. So, those two together should result in you pushing him away and going to your room. Right? You should resist that man, it couldn’t be so hard, anyway. So tell me why the way he was looking at you made your knees buck? Why his words filled your stomach with butterflies, his scent numbed your brain like a hallucinogen? Why you couldn’t resist him.
Tell me why you pulled him in by the shirt.
He didn’t hesitate to wrap his lips around yours. Didn’t waste any time to hold you by the waist and press his body on yours. This was the third chance he was given for this and he was about to make it work. And he seemed to have been waiting for it. He already knew what to do, how to hold you, how to kiss you in order to make you moan in his mouth. It was the party scene all over again; as in, you were devouring each other in a sort of urgency, bumping your lips together like you were drunk and had just found the person you were feeling the craziest chemistry with, grinding on each other as if you were trying to merge together.
And maybe he was right; you could never resist him.
Your fingers dipped into his soft locks and he moaned your name. He snaked his arms under your thighs to push you up, letting you sit at the edge of the counter. He immediately filled in the gap between your legs, hands rubbing up and down your back, while you started kissing down his neck, making sure to mark him as if he was yours. He hissed and growled every time you bit him, riding your shirt up to get a feel of your skin underneath. Then finding your hands, intertwining your fingers together, and pushing them past your body, almost like he was trying to confine them away from him. And you hated not being able to touch him, hated how he pushed your body back to have you almost lay on the counter completely, and you couldn’t move. Because you wanted more.
And maybe he was right; no one would ever know about this. So perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to do this. This mistake. Taehyung.
“Princess, if you plan on regretting this and running away again, you better tell me now,” he rasped while kissing your collarbone. “I might not stop later.”
He was giving you an out. And normally you would have taken it. But at that moment the only thing busying your mind was that implied promise of what was to come.
“You better not,” you mumbled, more to yourself, but heard him chuckle when he heard it, too.
His hands clenched harder around yours before he released you in favor of grabbing your ass and your thighs. He squeezed you close, pulling you until your crotch was rubbing against his clear erection under his pants, and all you could do was whimper. Still kissing his neck, that sweet spot under his ear, biting his lob, and hearing him grunt at the way you were making him feel. Your hands, free now, could run up his toned arms and enjoy his body like you wanted to for a while.
He pulled his head slightly back to look into your eyes. His seemed so unfocused, so dark, like he had gotten high from you. “You want me to make you feel good?” he asked with a smirk. You weren’t sure if he was asking for permission or just building the anticipation.
“Can you?” No, you weren’t making a plea. You were questioning his skills. And he picked it up from your tone immediately.
“Can I?” he snorted, his eyes turning to the ceiling before he let his fingers slowly and very slightly brush your naked belly, moving further down. Your entire body squirmed with the rhythm of his fingertips. “You shiver every time I touch you. So, yeah, I think I can do anything I want to you.”
You immediately punched his chest, pushing him away. “God, I hate you.”
But his smug smirk wouldn’t back down. And he wouldn’t let go of you. “We have already established that,” he murmured, as he lowered his head down- and farther down- until it was right in front of the fly of your pants. And your stomach was sucked in the entire time, your whole body, actually, as if you were trying to take up less space. As if you were trying to pull away from him, even though at the same time you could feel your lower half burning from want, and your lips were already missing his.
But then he looked up at you too, as he was bent down there in front of your crotch, to stare into your eyes through his lashes with a hotshot grin and his tongue between his teeth; and you forgot how to breathe. And then he unbuttoned you with his mouth, biting the zipper and pulling it down slow enough for you to feel every vibration on your body, without ever breaking eye contact; and you thought your soul left your body.
He was back at his normal height, pushing your pants down while licking his lips and examining your face. “Alright, princess,” he spoke in a low tone. “I will give you my best, on one condition.” The pants were completely off and he was working on your unimpressive underwear next. “Every time I do make you feel good, you have to say my name.”
He had gotten you all naked from your waist down, yet he still hadn’t even glanced there; kept his eyes stubbornly on yours. But when you tried to press your legs together, feeling shy and exposed, he was holding them tight. “That’s your condition?” you wondered, not seeming too hard to do. You were probably going to do it anyway.
He leaned down, keeping his lips close enough to rub on yours when he spoke. “Yes. Every time. I want you to keep reminding yourself who it is that is making you feel this way.” When he kissed you, it worked almost as a distraction to how one hand crept in between your thighs and pressed around your folds, yet avoiding the place you needed him to touch.
His lips moved at the same rhythm as his fingers, his tongue slipping in your mouth right as he finally moved them closer, getting them all dirty with your wetness. Index and middle finger rubbing up and down, brushing against your clit and over your opening but never giving into either. You hummed in frustration as you bit down on his bottom lip, your hips trying to move forward, trying to get more.
“What did I tell you?” he whispered, increasing his pressure on your clit just for a moment, a moment long enough to make you gasp with your mouth open over his.
“Tae…” you breathed.
“Say it,” he insisted.
“Taehyung,” you moaned, closing your eyes as he started moving his fingers in circles over the sensitive bud like a reward.
“You’re so wet, already,” he observed, something quite obvious from the sounds the simple movement was creating. “Is that all for me?” He pulled his head back to watch your reaction better, smiling when he saw you nodding. “Good girl,” he purred, rewarding you yet again with sliding one finger easily inside.
"Oh,” you moaned, your body immediately arching towards his. You still needed more. The better it all felt, the more you wanted from him.
The photographer inhaled sharply through his teeth, stilling his actions. “Amy, what did we say?”
“Taehyung,” you immediately obeyed. And you didn’t need to be told twice. “Taehyung,” you moaned, again and again, as he worked his magic into you. As he kissed you in that way no one had ever been able to replicate. “Taehyung,” as he pushed a second finger in to stretch you out. “Taehyung,” as he found your g-spot and massaged it softly as if he was working with something fragile. “Taehyung, Taehyung,” as he made you come, once, twice, thrice. With his fingers inside you, on your clit, his mouth french-kissing your pussy, his tongue dipping in and out as he lapped at your juices.
All while you had to make yourself think of who exactly was fucking you like that. Who was making your legs shake, your head spin, your sight and hearing unclear. Whose hair you were pulling, whose teeth you had marks of on your thighs, whose name you were screaming.
Kim Taehyung.
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sapphicwhump · 3 years
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Deception of Luna
Fandoms: Destiny, Destiny 2 Tropes: F/M, trauma recovery, heavy angst, light fluff, creepy whumper, cosmic horror elements, whumpee/caretaker intimacy TWs: flashback, explicit noncon, implied death of loved ones, implied misogyny
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        Lich-5 considers herself to be quite lucky. At least with her assignments on Luna; not so much with her loot. She speeds across the lunar surface on her Sparrow towards Archer’s Line, having just received a bounty to clear out the Fallen there. There are three of the usual crimson phantoms en route this time; each one cowers and screams in terror as her Sparrow plows by. To her, these nightmares are just nameless red silhouettes that occasionally make creepy noises; none of them are the slightest bit recognizable. The larger ones, the ones that appear as long-dead enemies rather than Guardians, have names she can recognize from her historical studies, but nothing more than that. Despite her own experience, Lich knows that most of her fellows don’t see them that way.
        The Pyramid of Luna is a nasty piece of work, to say the least. She would call it sadistic, but it would be improper of her to anthropomorphize such an alien being. The nightmares it spawns are drawn directly from the Guardians’ most painful losses; vanquished nemeses, outlived mentors, lost loves, and a myriad of others now walk again on Luna. In every case, their passing had left wounds on the people they left behind, and now the Pyramid has made those wounds fresh again.
        The worst part, Lich thinks, is that doing so offers it no tactical advantage. The Pyramid doesn’t need to crush Guardians’ morale; it could crush them all very literally if it so chose. This thing’s kind had caused the Great Collapse of humanity’s golden age; surely the Last City of today would be no trouble for it to exterminate. The only thing keeping them all alive is this Pyramid’s continued desire to bide its time. And in that time, it’s chosen to reopen their old wounds because it’s fun.
        The reason Lich-5 considers herself lucky is because she doesn’t have many wounds that can be reopened. She'd been resurrected just after the Red War, into a world struggling to recuperate, to make some amount of sense out of the tremendous loss. Her roommate Windy isn’t a particularly old Guardian by any means, only a few years her senior, but that still puts his resurrection date solidly before the War. She doesn’t pry him about it, but she’s aware that the majority of people he knew had been permanently Returned To Light by the forces of Dominus Ghaul. Windy avoids assignments on Luna like the plague, as do many of her elder acquaintances. She’s met Guardians who were resurrected in the Dark Age, now hundreds of years old, who have pushed on through every defeat humanity has ever faced since the Collapse. Lich herself recently turned three.
        Will she live to be hundreds of years old? If she does, how much will she lose in that time?
        She’s coming up on Archer’s Line now. There’s already some Guardian activity here; in the distance, she can pick out the dull gray bulk of a male Titan’s armor against the background of lunar dust. Ignoring his presence, she drives into the old K1 Logistics facility and gets to work.
        Clearing the facility takes under ten minutes. She emerges from the front entrance with her armored Warlock’s robe dotted with scuffs and splattered with Fallen Ether. Her bounty objectives aren’t quite complete yet; there are still a few Fallen skittering around the Lunar surface that’ll have to be dealt with. She’d think that life-or-death combat would be too stressful to become boring, but when that death isn’t much more than a temporary (if painful) setback, the repetitiveness of it can get a bit dull.
        Just gotta get it done, then I can relax. The rewards from these last few bounties should be just enough to afford that fancy new armor set she’s been working towards, and then she won’t have much to do until the next big crisis inevitably hits the Sol system. She’s already thinking of a few new science projects she could start work on during her extended down time; monotonous work like this does little to satiate her burning curiosity.
        The Titan she saw earlier seems to be approaching the K1 facility now. He’s welcome to loot the place if he wants; she only went in to get her bounties done. It’s nice to see another Guardian out here; the presence of an ally makes her feel slightly less alone in this gray hellscape, even if they don’t interact.
        The boxy silhouette of his armor strikes her as oddly familiar. It’s possible that she’s seen him somewhere else before; there aren’t an unlimited number of Guardians in Sol, and Lich has met quite a lot of them.
        Wait a minute—
        Recognition shoots through her neural network like arc lightning. Instantly, her every piston is tense, all sensors on high alert. It’s him. Why does he have to be here?
        She takes it back. Having another Guardian here isn’t nice at all, not when it’s him in particular . Lich quickly ducks back into the empty facility, taking cover from the imminent danger behind one of the large storage containers strewn about. She needs to be in a place where he isn’t in her line of sight.
        Maybe she isn’t so lucky. Of course the phantoms wouldn’t reopen old wounds, only for another Guardian to do it instead. Taking stock of her emotional state, she abruptly realizes how much she’s shaking. She forcibly steels herself, struggling to regain her composure while cursing her own weakness. Simply seeing a Titan, even if it’s him, should not frighten her to the point where she’s struggling to even function.
        Lich is ashamed to admit to herself how much sway he still holds over her mental state. His existence is a disgusting muck polluting the back of her mind; just being reminded of him feels like wading through a stagnant pit of human sewage, from which she can never truly escape because it’s in her head. Thinking about it more only makes it worse, causes her to sink deeper. She can forget him, at least temporarily, but then eventually something random always jogs her memory and she'll be back, trapped again in that pit of sewage.
        She considers abandoning her objectives and transmatting back to her jumpship, still safely parked at the landing zone. But it’s this part of Luna that needs to be cleared of Fallen, and that fancy new armor set won’t be on sale forever, and she really shouldn’t be so pathetically weak to let this get to her. No, she’ll stay, to earn her extended down time if nothing else. She just needs to calm down and wait here until he—
        “Oh hey, Lich. Long time no see.”
        If Lich had a heart, it would have stopped beating at that exact second. His voice, just his fucking voice, almost throws her back there all by itself. He’s so insufferably casual with his greeting, like she’s just any other acquaintance to him.
        “Hey. You mind leaving me alone?”
        “Woah, relax. I’m just finishing up these bounties.” Condescension drips off of his words like spoiled milk.
        “Yeah, well, please stay away from me while you do that.”
        His tone sours, sounding almost disappointed. “Well you’re being awfully frigid.”
        “Of course I fucking am!” Lich fumes, rage momentarily cutting through her fear. “What did you expect, that I’d be nice to you!?”
        The Titan pauses. “Well… yeah, kinda. I at least didn’t expect to be jilted like this.”
        For a brief moment, Lich sees red. Her trembling has elevated to a truly intolerable level, and she’s currently about five seconds away from drawing her Dawnblade on this man. She knows that getting violent with him would almost certainly end poorly for her, though. With great effort, she puts together a facade of something resembling calmness.
        “Look… I think I’ve got a pretty good reason for not wanting to see you. Please leave, and never try to interact with me again. I know I’m never gonna get justice, so I just want to move past this and get back as close to normal as possible. You’re making it rather difficult to do that right now.”
        “Justice?"  He cocks his helmet to the side in what looks like disbelief. As if he has any right to act surprised by any of this. She can practically feel him rolling his eyes at her underneath his blank faceplate, and it makes her synthetic stomach turn. “Fine, fine. If you wanna be like that, it’s not my problem.”
        He proceeds deeper into the K1 halls, finally giving Lich a reprieve from his vile presence. She turns to leave in the opposite direction, but stops short when she catches the Titan muttering a final insult under his breath.
        “Fuckin’ melodramatic bitch.”
        She whirls on him. “Fuck you, asshole!” she spits over her shoulder, still heading for the facility’s exit. “If I ever see you again, it’ll be too soon!”
        The Titan is mercifully quiet. Lich is almost at the door; just a few more Fallen slain, and she’ll be able to go home and do her best to forget that she ever saw him again.
        “No, fuck you.”
        Lich barely registers the Titan’s words in her audio receptors, and she doesn’t notice the suppressor grenade roll between her legs until it’s too late.
————————————
        Windy’s day has been restful, to say the least. He lays sprawled out on the couch of his and Lich’s shared apartment, his usual combat armor doffed in favor of boxers and a tank top, lackadaisically swiping through the datapad in his hand. On one tab is the sidearm section of Omolon’s digital storefront; on another is a gallery of images displaying a nude Awoken. He lifts his can of alcoholic liquid from the coffee table and pours the last of it down his throat, sighing in satisfaction. It’s kinda nice to stay home for once while Lich goes out to grind away at bounties.
        Fuck, he needed a day like this. He’s been seeing less than his fair share of action recently, but continuously dodging Vanguard assignments on Luna has been anxiety-inducing enough on its own. After his first visit, he vowed to make every effort he possibly could to never return. The Vanguard had assigned him a strike against the Hive on Luna today, and so he had to call in one of his favors for a friend to take his place in the fireteam, hence his current position at home while Lich is out and about.
        An Incoming Communication notification buzzes at the top of his screen, and he quickly closes the pornography tab before answering. It’s from Phylactery. That’s odd; Lich’s Ghost hardly ever lets themself be seen, and speaks even less. If Lich had a message for him, she’d give it herself.
        “Hey, how’s it going?”
        The Ghost doesn’t waste any time on pleasantries. “Lich needs immediate evac from K1 Logistics on Luna.”
        Windy instantly bolts up from his slouched position. “Wait, what’s going on? Can she transmat out?”
        Phylactery is doing their best to keep their tone clipped and curt as usual, but Windy still picks up on the desperate way they hurry over their words. “No, she’s currently catatonic. We’re stuck here until someone can provide an evac.”
        “Catatonic?"  Windy balks. “What the hell happened down there?”
        The Ghost’s distress is evident. “I’m not quite sure. Lich saw something; I think we were attacked, but she still isn’t cognizant enough to give me the details. I felt something suppress our Light. I was knocked unconscious, and Lich… she’s not recovering. We need you here as soon as possible.”
        Fear grips Windy’s gut. Suppressed Light means that an RTL is on the table. He’s got enough dead friends walking around on Luna without Lich joining that long list.
        “It’ll take me awhile to get there; can you call any nearby Guardians for backup?”
        Windy can detect a wince in Phylactery’s tone. “No, this… isn’t the kind of thing that a random stranger would be able to help with. Might make matters worse, even.” the Ghost quietly speculates to themself. “What she really needs right now is someone she trusts.”
        Well that’s cryptic. He knows he’s not getting the full picture of events, and stumbling blindly into danger has always been more of Lich’s thing than his. He doesn’t exactly have time to press the Ghost further, though.
        “Already on my way. Just gimme like twenty minutes to get there.”
        “Right, thank you.” Phylactery seems relieved to no longer be discussing it.
        Windy is already in motion as he hangs up the call. He drops the datapad on the cushion beside him, then vaults over the back of the couch in his usual manner. He doesn’t bother taking the time to change out of his boxers and tank top before exiting the apartment; he’ll don his armor in his jumpship. The residents of this housing block have seen far weirder things than his underwear, anyways.
        Fuck. On Luna. Guess I won’t be able to avoid it after all. Dread constricts around his gut like a snake as he approaches the Tower’s hangar, a sensation that he knows won’t dissipate until he and Lich are safely back on Earth. For now, he tries to shove it down as best he can. His current priority is making sure that his roommate doesn’t get RTL’d; once she’s safe, he can go drown his worries at the nearest bar and put this all behind him. He distracts himself by planning out the route he’ll take there, what drinks he’ll order, who he might meet up with...
        As he’s exiting the Earth’s atmosphere, Windy briefly speculates that maybe finding a therapist would be a better use of his time than just getting drunk again, before he blasts off at near-light speed for Luna.
  ————————————
        Lich-5 awakens to the sensation of an immense weight on top of her, as if she’s trapped underneath a boulder. She’s laying stomach-down on the couch where she fell asleep, being pressed down into the cushions by the heavy object above her. She’s in an apartment typical of one of the Last City’s massive housing blocks, although not the one she shares with Windy. Night has long since fallen outside, casting the living room in darkness. What little illumination remains bathes everything in an odd vermillion.
        The Titan’s apartment is small, but his couch provided an adequate place to crash for the night after a particularly wild bar crawl. Lich can’t get drunk, but flying her jumpship home while exhausted would be just as dangerous. When she proposed the idea of crashing at a nearby friend’s place, one particular Titan was eager to offer. He’s new to her group of drinking buddies, and so it struck Lich as unusual that he would so readily invite her over. Once at his apartment, she figured out his reason pretty quickly.
        Tucked away in her backpack at the foot of the couch, Phylactery sleeps soundly, enjoying a well-earned rest after a long day’s grind. Lich is currently not being afforded that same rest. The weight on top of her shifts around erratically, fiddling with something, trying to get it open. She’s nearly driven to panic, but her fear keeps her frozen in place. Just pretend you’re still asleep, her mind unhelpfully provides. Play dead, and soon the predator will go away.
        The predator does not go away. She feels a sudden spike of pain, and the irregular shifting of the weight quickly becomes paced and rhythmic.
        Lich can’t pinpoint when or how her view shifts, but at some point she finds that she’s above herself—literally. She’s watching the scene unfold from a third-person perspective, her disembodied consciousness hanging a meter in the air over her incapacitated frame. She can’t compel herself to move a single piston or servo, her physical form refusing to comply with her immobilized will.
        Long ago, in a time before she could remember, Lich had had nightmares in which she was pursued by an extreme danger, only to find her limbs paralyzed and unresponsive to her attempts to flee. This is a lot like that, only it’s not a nightmare; this is real life and the danger is directly on top of her. There is no chance to flee; she’s already been caught.
        The Titan’s head, now free of its helmet, rests on the couch next to hers. Despite the warmth of his breath, a chill runs through Lich’s system. She can feel his wet lips graze against her artificial skull as he begins to speak.
        “The Light does not hold its wielders to any standard of morality.” he whispers into the side of her head, where the ear would be if she were human. There’s a horrible wrongness in his tone, like multiple beings trying to speak through one mouth. “In the Dark Age, the Warlords inflicted terrible violence upon the innocent, just as he inflicted violence upon you.”
        The motion gradually escalates in speed and magnitude, pressing Lich further down into the couch cushions with an oscillating rhythm. Her pain briefly increases as the pace picks up, but it quickly turns dull, and a sensation of warmth grows in its place as her own body turns against her. He’s speaking again, those wet lips and warm breath directly on her audio receptor. He doesn’t pause for air as he produces the words, regardless of his physical exertion.
        “In Light, there is only pain.”
        There’s a groan from above her, and the weight slumps, ceasing its rhythm. Lich silently breathes a sigh of relief, although she’s still far too overwhelmed with disgust to really be relieved by any of this. She knows on some level that it’s only been minutes, but her dilated sense of time has stretched the ordeal into what felt like hours.
        The floorboards creak next to her, and the Titan exits the small living room, although Lich still remains effectively paralyzed. A heavy exhaustion has seeped into her chassis, now even worse than the one she was trying to cure by crashing here. Still unable to will herself to move, it isn’t long before unconsciousness claims her again.
  ————————————
        Windy summons his Sparrow within the second he touches down on Luna. His stomach churns as he exits his jumpship, doing his best to keep his eyes on the ground and away from the lifeless red Guardians hanging motionless over the landing zone. The Pyramid must know this is a center of Guardian activity, and so the nightmares swarm here like some kind of macabre flock.
        He passes three more of the crimson phantoms on his way to the dot Phylactery marked on his heads-up display. He gives each of them as wide of a berth as he reasonably can, trying to keep them in his periphery while still steering the vehicle on course. If he looks at one too closely, there's a decent chance he’ll recognize it. He fails to give the third one enough room, and winces under his helmet as it wails at him for help in a voice he’s pretty sure he can put a name to.
        Phylactery’s coordinates lead him to the K1 facility at the far end of Archer’s Line. A short distance in, he finds his roommate’s distinctive hive-bone helmet lying discarded to one side. It’s not until he proceeds down a hallway and searches behind a storage container that he finds the Warlock it belongs to. She doesn’t appear to be in any immediate physical danger, although he wouldn’t think it purely by her posture; she’s curled up in a fetal position on the floor, trembling violently, the shutters over her optics squeezed as tight as they’ll go.
        One of the red phantoms looms over her cowering form. This one is clearly a Titan, and Windy can’t restrain his relieved exhale when he fails to recognize it. It does not turn to acknowledge him as he enters, keeping its blank gaze fixed on the ball of a Warlock curled behind the box.
        It takes Windy a moment to realize that Lich is crying. Her digital optics don’t feature tear ducts, but the anguish in her soft vocalizations is unmistakable. It’s a sound that he doesn’t hear often, but still far more than he’d like.
        Windy steps straight through the phantom towards his friend, passing through it as if it’s not even there. The spectral Titan’s body offers no resistance and induces no sensation. The thing recoils in a mimicry of pain, then disperses into maroon wisps as if it were mist. The instant it vanishes completely, her optics fly open.
        The first thing that Lich sees is Windy leaned over her, right where he had stood, offering her a hand.
        "W-windy?" She accepts the hand graciously, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “What are you doing here?”
        “Phylactery told me you needed an evac.” The somber concern in his tone catches her by surprise, and she briefly feels a pang of guilt for causing him to worry this much.
        Lich emits a single humorless laugh, barely holding in a sob behind it. “Yeah. You could say that.” She’ll have to thank her Ghost for their forethought later. She takes a moment to collect herself, brushing the lunar dust off her robes and trying in vain to suppress her shivering.
        “You didn’t have to come for me.” she tells him frankly, refusing to meet his sympathetic gaze. “I know how much you hate this place.”
        “Lich, it’s fine. There is nothing in all of Sol that could make me leave you behind.”
        For a moment, Lich looks like she’s about to cry again, before she closes the distance between their bodies and embraces Windy in a tight hug. He tentatively returns the gesture, protectively wrapping his arms around her back, and her hold on his torso quickly turns into a death grip. She’s no longer crying, but he takes careful note of the way she still shivers and shakes in his embrace.
        Lich buries her face in the crook of his neck, hiding away from the world in the rough fabric of his Hunter cloak. Her chemical receptors flood with the particles that cling to the garment; it smells like his shampoo and sweat and the dust of a hundred worlds, all composing into a unique odor that is very distinctly Windy. His smell is grounding, bringing her attention back to the here and now.
        “So, did the nightmares get to you?” he asks, tracing his fingers over the top of her fiberglass cranium in the way he knows she likes. He immediately withdraws his hand when she unexpectedly flinches away from the gentle contact. “I thought you hadn’t lost anyone.”
        Lich shakes her head gently against his cloak. “I, uh… I saw him again.”
        Windy’s blood freezes. Then the phantom Titan was—
        “Oh shit, Lich, I’m so sorry.” He suddenly feels very conscious of the way he’s holding her.
        Windy can’t forget the morning that Lich had nearly collapsed into their apartment, utterly disheveled after a long night out, and he had to delicately explain to her that sex is not a required payment for a male friend lending you his couch to crash on. Working through that day had been a painful experience for them both, although Windy has no illusions about which of them had it worse. Despite his seniority as a Guardian, dealing with this particular type of violence was entirely outside of his expertise. To his knowledge, aside from him and Phylactery, she’s never told another soul of what happened that night.
        “This fucking Pyramid.” he spits out venomously, staring out at the lunar expanse beyond the facility. That fucking Titan. Hate festers within his ribcage like rot. At the time, he’d had half a mind to bust down the Titan’s front door with his Golden Gun in hand, ready to vaporize both him and his Ghost. But Lich needed him more than that Titan needed a bullet, and so the obligation to support her had stayed his hand.
        With the Pyramid, though, it’s so much worse. Even though he couldn’t act on his impulse against the Titan, at least there had been some degree of hope there. With how utterly infinitesimal he is compared to the Pyramid’s world-ending might, he doesn’t even get the luxury of a revenge fantasy.
        "It was like—" Lich begins to speak, but stops short as her chassis is taken by a violent shiver. Windy can almost feel the intensity of the chill that runs through her. "Like being there all over again."
        His attention snaps back to her, and all the hate goes cold. His rage is not what Lich needs right now. Staying angry is impossible when she’s still so visibly distressed. He mentally reminds himself that this is her pain, not his; she’s the one who gets to have the revenge fantasy, if she so chooses.
        “Yeah. I... get what that’s like. It sucks, but the suck is ultimately temporary. You’ll get through this.”
        The pair are silent for a moment as Lich’s mind swims. She really wishes she could take his words to heart, but the memory of him freshly burned into her mind is all she can focus on. She tries to clear her thoughts by concentrating on the steady rise and fall of Windy’s chest, while her own remains eternally still. She reminds herself of what’s real: he’s here, holding her in his arms, and soon they’ll be home safe. The danger has long since passed, and was never even here in the first place.
        “I feel disgusting.” Lich voices the thought aloud, her gaze remaining firmly downcast. “I’ve felt disgusting since that night. I don’t know if it’s ever gonna go away.”
        Windy winces, sucking in a quiet breath through his teeth. "That… I lack experience with. But, from the experience I do have, I can tell you that it’s not true." Now he’s the one to strengthen the embrace. Through the heavy weave of her robes, he soothingly runs a hand up and down her mechanical spine, and is relieved when she relaxes into the touch rather than flinching away. "You’re smart, and beautiful, and brave, and you can be really really annoying when you want to be, but I still care about you. You’re the furthest thing from disgusting that I can imagine. What he did doesn’t make you any lesser as a person; you’re still the same Lich I’ve always known.”
        Lich tries to form a response, but words fail her, immediately getting caught in the knot that’s formed behind her speakers. She settles for simply holding Windy close, savoring the feeling of their arms wrapped around each other. Some part of her is still trapped in that sewage pit, but it’s further away now, distanced from her by the closeness to him. For the briefest moment, she believes with absolute certainty that everything he said is true, and almost manages to clamber her way out.
        “Y’know, if Guardians really are amoral, you’re a pretty good counterexample.”
        “Hm?” He turns his head towards hers with a raised brow.
        “Ah, nevermind. Symmetrist ramblings.” Windy can’t help but notice another chill run through her.
        It’s a long while before Lich feels stable enough on her own to leave his arms. When she finally begins to move away, he retracts his protective embrace, allowing her to separate from him without resistance.
        "You ready to head home now? I'll ride with you to the landing zone and fly us back to Earth. We can pick up your jumpship later."
        Lich releases an extended sigh, exhaling her residual tension into the thin lunar atmosphere. “Sure. Thanks for all this, by the way. I… needed to hear that.”
        He gives her a warm, relieved smile. “Don’t mention it.”
        Lich finally escapes from K1 Logistics with her hand firmly in Windy’s. While the Sparrow is intended to be a single-occupancy vehicle, that’s never stopped particularly affectionate Guardians from riding them two at a time. Lich and Windy share the single seat, with her clinging to his back, holding on with her arms wrapped around his midsection.
        The ride back to the landing zone is short, but both Guardians savor it. The red phantoms don’t cause either of them much distress on their return trip. Holding each other close, the nightmares seem just a little bit fainter.
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boymeetsweevil · 5 years
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(Welcome to) Camp Lonely Heart
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Grouping: Camp Counselor!Reader x Camp Counselor!Taehyung
Word Count: ~15.6k lmao 
Warnings/Themes: walkie talkie sex + masturbation, graphic public sex in a field, descriptions throughout of breast play, 69ing, riding, fingering, creampie sorta, some bullying, some angst, concerned older brother Minho, OC is kinda flaky
Summary: It’s possible to find love in all sorts of places: In bars, in school, on apps. But what about through a walkie talkie?
Part of the Masterlist for Group 2 of the @btssmutclub Summer Project
A/N: sorry its late! tagging @classickei and @chimchurro
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A noogie from his older brother is the first thing to welcome Taehyung when he arrives at the admin building for the first weekly counselor meeting. He sits through it patiently because he knows Minho means well and it’s better than those times where he just cups Taehyung’s face tenderly and says absolutely nothing. But this is why he insisted they arrive separately.
With Minho’s arm tossed over his shoulder, Taehyung makes his way into the familiar conference room. Despite the fact that this is his 3rd year as a junior counselor, the fact that the conference hasn’t changed since it was built in the 80’s still surprises him every time. The people inside it change fairly frequently, though. There’s always a steady rotation of counselors for both the boys’ and the girls’ camps on their respective sides of Lake Lonely Heart.
A smattering of people are already seated and chatting amongst themselves before the introductory meeting starts. As more people trickle in, Taehyung acknowledges them from his corner seat. Some veteran staff from the boys’ camp naturally come to his and Minho’s side of the table, greeting Minho mostly.
“How was your trip up, son,” asks one of the senior staff, Cref.
“It was good,” Minho gives a genuine smile up at Cref before giving a pointed look in Taehyung’s direction.
“Oh,” Cref’s eyes dim noticeably, “And how was your trip, Tae?”
“It was fine,” Taehyung’s answer matches Cref’s in its lack of warmth.
“I see you kept that little ponytail thing you had last summer.”
“Yeah.”
“Shame,” Cref huffs before turning to some of the other boys’ staff that arrived while he was talking and gesturing to Taehyung.
“Cref can you really talk when you’ve still got that comb-over?” The comment sends the other boys’ staff who’d been listening into a tizzy and Cref scoffs before turning on them to compensate. Meanwhile, Minho gives Taehyung a covert pat on the back.
None of the girls’ staff seemed to be watching the exchange with the exception of one girl who must be a new hire. Taehyung doesn’t recognize her face from last summer and though she’d been snoring softly when Taehyung first arrived, she looks at some of the jeering boys’ staff with a bit of muted disapproval. The look is brief because almost instantly another one of the counselors near her pulls her into another conversation. The sour tinge her features had disappears and leaves a gentle and open expression on her face as she listens to someone tell her about what to expect with her sleeper cabin.
There’s something nice about her face even though nothing specific jumps out at him as super beautiful or sexy. The soft way she smiles is subtle, almost like the turn of lips could have been a trick of the light. He wants to know what a full-blown smile would look like. Taehyung likes to think that he would have gotten up to talk to her. Eventually. If it weren’t for the camp leader entering the room with the dreaded Talking Stick.
“Alright everyone,” the camp leader shouts energetically, halting all conversations. “Veterans don’t spoil anything. Newbies, one of you raise your hand and tell me what you think this is,” she grins and wiggles the bedazzled stick in a wide circle.
Taehyung sighs and settles back further into his chair, ready to endure yet another round of icebreakers and name learning games.
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“Here’s your humble abode for the next few months,” Moe grunts as she pushes the door of the cabin in. She smiles shakily before mumbling something about the paint job being so new that the door wouldn’t budge. A few hits to the door with her shoulder help it swing open.
The cabin looks nearly identical to that of Moe and Moe’s roommates. A pair of bunkbeds sit across the main room from one another. There’s some simple wooden furniture and a nice view of forest on the girls’ side of the lake in the front window by the door. The bathroom has two shower stalls and two sinks. The cabin is clearly made to hold four occupants.
“Are my roommates on their way?”
You walk in and admire the posters on the wall. They must have been left by some other counselor some number of summers ago.
“So, uh, you actually get this whole cabin to yourself.”
“Huh? Like I’ll be sleeping here by myself?”
“Yeah. I know its weird, but it’s not on purpose. The rooming system isn’t the most efficient. People fill the first cabin and then we fill the second one and on and on. When we got your answer, it was late and we’d perfectly filled 3 other cabins before this one. And since your position was the last one we filled before closing the apps, there weren’t any other people after you who could have been placed here.”
You try your hardest not to look too dismayed at your lonesome living situation. But, truthfully, one of the things that made you consider taking the position was the friends you were hoping to make on he job. The job testimonies on the Camp Lonely Hearts website mentioned that some of the best times of being a counselor were the times had in the cabin with coworkers after dark. With you being new to the city and this being the first summer in a long while where you weren’t forcing yourself into a boring 9-to-5, you wanted to take a chance on something inspiring instead. And you really wanted to make friends because city life alone was taking a toll on you. The chance to be a ‘youth leader for the young women and men of Camp Lonely Heart’ seemed like just the right thing.
Now, though, it looked like you would have to work a little harder to make the lasting connections you were expecting to fall into your lap the first night on the grounds.
“I’m sorry sweetheart,” Moe says when some of the bouncy pluck in your shoulders seems to leave you with the sigh you let out. “You’re welcome to bring a sleeping bag and sleepover in cabin 3 any time.”
“Thanks, Moe.” She leaves you to unpack with the slow setting sun.
Everything seems clean enough under your quick inspection. You take over the bathroom with your toiletries and towels. The bunk bed is less uncomfortable than you thought it would be, and there’s an outlet near your little writing desk, so you’re able to plug in and set up your boombox. There’s no wifi at the camp, and while it’s an experience you’re looking forward to, you can’t live in total silence. You did, however, bid all your friends a temporary goodbye on Facebook after explaining where you’d be for the summer.
You switch the boombox onto radio mode and extend the boosted antennae. It picks up a classics station that you unpack to. The job is over quickly given that you only had to pack a few undergarments and pairs of shorts to rotate with the t-shirts that they give to counselors so people don’t confuse some of you with campers.
When boredom starts clawing at the edges of your brain, you snoop through all the little corners and crannies you ignored when you first arrived and were busy with settling in. You don’t find much. You find a shoebox with a bunch of office supplies under the other bunk bed, a supremely large beetle carcass on your window sill, and a solar powered walkie talkie in the bottom drawer of the writing desk.
The walkie talkie obviously is the most intriguing find out of all of your finds, but you don’t see its mate in the cabin. Surprisingly enough, it powers up, but it has a low battery. You fiddle with the channels and mumble a wimpy little ‘anyone there’ into the first one. Figuring that no one is there, you lower it from your ear and move to go make your bed when the device sounds.
“Hello?”
The voice is deep and smooth. You’re so spooked by the response that the walkie talkie slips from your hand and clatters to the floor with a loud clunk. You let out a curse and bend down to pick it up only to find that the transmission was cut off from the impact. With the hopes that you can revive the device, you stick it in the bathroom window where you know it will get the most sun during the day and pray it's not broken.
Before you head to bed early, you go over your schedule and how you’re going to present yourself to the kids the next morning. It takes a while for you to memorize your schedule because your mind is slightly preoccupied,  wondering what the person on the other end must be thinking of your sudden departure.
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You were worried that it would take a while to adjust to your position and that the kids would be intimidating, but quickly you realize there was nothing to worry about.
You love your girls more than you could have predicted. They took to you instantly since you were the youngest among the counselors. Even the 17-year-olds, who are the oldest campers there, flocked to you too during parts of the daily schedule that you weren’t leading. Many of the girls in high school would drag you to their table in the mess hall during dinner or the free period before lights out to ask you for school advice and questions about the more mysterious parts of life. It instills in you a strong sense of responsibility that you didn’t think was possible. You didn’t think you’d ever find teenagers endearing.
The camp itself is kind of like a hazy afternoon dream. The nature around you is beautiful and the air is crisp. If you take a 20 minute trek away from the main grounds, you stumble into the camp’s medium sized lavender field. It’s your favorite place to be at any time of the day because the air is thick with the scent of the purple flower. The first time you see it, you’re joining one of the other junior counselors, Jade, to grab some plants for craft time.
“You’re gonna trap flies like that,” Jade gestures to your slack mouth.
“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that we barely even get grass on the sidewalks at my new apartment. And this is...so beautiful.”
You can’t help it really. The sweet scent that had been coating your nose and throat since you were halfway up the trail just increased ten-fold and has stolen the place of your breath.
“Yeah, it has that effect on people. But you get used to it after working here long enough and the smell starts to fade. You might even get a little sick of it.”
You shake your head to clear it and try to fathom the idea of being sick of lavender. The rows of plants are lush, huge, and neat. You walk through the small plowed paths between each bush looking for the most fragrant patch you can find. There’s what looks like a few other counselors from the other side of the lake wandering through some nearby rows, looking for the same thing you are. You tap Jade’s shoulder when their backs are turned to you and whisper.
“They’re from the boys’ camp, right? Do you know those guys? ” Jade turns and squints into the distance before straightening up immediately.
“Oh my god, yeah, that’s Minho. He’s the yoga instructor for the boys.” Her tone takes on a wispy, dreamy quality. “He’s so nice and so cool. And, like, really funny.”
The man in question has on a shockingly bright Tiffany blue t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to beat the heat. And perhaps showcase his sculpted arms. He looks tall and broad from your vantage point, but he doesn’t seem extraordinary at first glance. Maybe he’s really great once you get to know him.
“What about the other one?” The slightly shorter man with the tiny ponytail and coke-bottle glasses catches your attention more. Even though he’s fairly far away, you can tell he has a nice profile. Jade squints again and hums in thought.
“Mm, I don’t know. I think he’s one of the newer guys. I don’t really remember his spiel from the intro meeting. Do you know him?”
“No,” you give him one last look before squatting down and getting to work. “Just curious.”
***
“—and then move this finger here,” Taehyung nudges one of the camper’s fingers until it’s sure to make the guitar in his hands sing that way he wants. “That’s the last part of the chord. So from there you can play that song we went over in musical hour. Did you take notes?”
“Yeah.” The kid in front of him is probably no more than 16, maybe a baby-faced 17. He looks too nervous for an impromptu guitar review during free time.
“Kook, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Jungkook hangs his head a little in embarrassment. “Just...what if I suck at guitar?”
“Then you suck at guitar,” Taehyung shrugs. “It’s okay to not be good at things. Especially if you’re just learning them for the first time.”
“I know, but I really need to be good at this. I have to be able to learn a song in less than a week by the time camp ends.”
“That can be kind of fast depending on the song. Why do you need to learn songs so quick?”
Jungkook’s round cheeks heat up and he eyes his peers who are playing jacks at one of the dinner tables. “There’s this girl...”
Taehyung hums knowingly and smiles down at the kid. “I see. Did you tell her you could play guitar?”
“How did you know?” Jungkook’s are wide as he eyes Taehyung like he read his mind.
“Just a guess.”
The camper nods. “I told her I’d learn her favorite song and play it for her when she gets back from vacationing with her parents. But I obviously don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Well, I can’t promise you that you’ll become a prodigy before the end of camp, but I’ll let you borrow my guitar every day as long as you promise to practice like you mean it every time.”
“If I do that, do you think I’ll at least be able to learn her song?”
“I’ll personally help you learn the song.” Jungkook’s shoulder relax instantly once he realizes he’s in good hands.
***
“Star, it’ll be fine. Really,” you try your hardest to get the tiny middle schooler to stop shaking without drawing attention to her as you bring her into the admin building. “Once your mom picks up, I’m sure she’ll understand and she’ll bring your hormones over.”
“I know,” Star’s frame shivers with the force of her hiccups, her eyes pink and watery. “But I can’t believe I forgot them at all. She didn’t even wanna let me go because she was worried I’d lose them.”
“But you didn’t lose them, sweetpea. You forgot them. Kinda different.” The little sobs, now intermittent at best, halt as she processes your logic.
You show Star to the telephone used for emergency contact or extreme cases of homesickness before stepping away to let her have some privacy with her mother. In the meantime, you let the borrowed keys of Moe’s truck swing from your fingers while you explore the halls of the admin building.
It feels odd roaming the various wings of the building when you’re not there for your Wednesday morning staff check-ins. The layout isn’t any different from those days, but you rarely get to see the other parts since you usually just make a beeline for the conference room.
The white painted cinder block walls and the linoleum tiles give you flashbacks to your own adolescent days in school. As does the un-ironic use of retro inspirational posters—though you suppose they weren’t retro when they were first put up. A few doors leading to utility closets or other, smaller conference rooms. While hunting for the staff lounge, you find a counselor you recognize from your side of the lake talking covertly with a counselor presumably from the boys’ side. Your roll your eyes when they give a disdainful stare for breaking their private moment and keep snooping.
At the end of the hall is the communal laundry room. The lines for it are usually awful on Wednesdays. You peer in just to see what it is you don’t have to deal with since you have your own unit in your little cabin. In that moment, you catch someone holding up boxers. You recognize them as that Minho guy that all the counselors seemed to have fallen for.
“Did you find any extra detergent, Tae?” He turns to you then and realizes you’re not who he thinks you are and you’re out of there as quickly as possible.
When you get back to the phone, Star is waiting patiently with no more tears and news that her mom will be dropping off her hormones and some homemade fudge.
***
Breakfast is served to the counselors at asscrack od dawn so that they can get the mess hall ready for the campers and complete the first things on the schedule for the day. Usually it's not so bad, but today’s early rise is hard for Taehyung because Minho brought some of the other counselors into their cabin the night before and they didn’t leave until late.
So when Taehyung stumbles into the mess hall looking for pancakes, he hasn’t given any thought to his morning appearance. He fixes his plate and sits across from his brother since the spot next to him is taken by Cref.
Taehyung’s wearing an old t-shirt that’s gone through many of his more experimental phases with clothes. The previously white t-shirt is now a soft apricot color after a night he was practicing with dyes a few years ago and the sleeves are thin in the places he took scissors to the shirt.
“Nice lingerie,” Cref sneers down his nose at Taehyung while he picks at his breakfast meat sleepily. “You know, I think I saw something at the mall a few weeks ago.”
A few of the guys sitting on the side laugh, some even dumbly repeat the joke under their breath as they chuckle into their breakfast.
“Fuck off, Cref.” Taehyung’s sigh comes out deeply tired. More tired than one could be from one night up too late from a noisy roommate’s friends. “It’s too early for this.”
“Yeah, Cref,” Minho pipes up, eyes locked on Taehyung’s sleep-puffy face and messy long hair. “We all know you don’t personally have the ass to pull off anything in a lingerie shop. And you definitely don’t have anyone’s ass to pull them off of either. You just sound sad, man.”
Cref stammers at Minho’s comment, not missing the subtle way the jab went a little deeper than it normally does when the two are just ripping on one another for fun. He admits defeat and sends a little nod in Taehyun’s direction. The same guys who were giggling earlier look on at Minho with some awe and are quick to jump on Cref for his non-existent ass as well.
When Minho kicks him under the table, Taehyung gives him a small thumbs up before taking his now half-eaten plate away to dump.
***
Dinners are normally spent at a table off to the side with the campers because they want to be able to treat you less like an authority figure and more like a wise older sister. But tonight you’re eating with the other counselors because you’re missing adult company. It’s been hard to have any of the bonding moments you were hoping for and there’s not much time during the day to have them when you’re trying to patch up skinned knees and guide macaroni projects.
Even though everyone is friendly enough and does try to make sure you feel included, you can’t help but notice how peripheral you are. After a few weeks, everyone has their designated dinner seat, so you were forced to pull up a chair to eat. Once the plates were cleared, you still felt a little left out. Apparently everyone makes a habit of staying up a little later than you so they can have time to unwind and talk about the day together in the other cabins. Apparently, people even share bunks occasionally so that they can visit non-roommate staff for the night.
You know you’re really not part of the group when the conversation becomes 80% inside jokes and you can’t recognize or understand a single one. The girl next to you attempts to explain the first few, but it slows the conversation down and you can tell that people are losing their patience when a story has to halt for you to catch up on nicknames or events. She stops explaining after the 4th one and you don’t really blame her. Maybe you should have spent dinners with them more. Or maybe you shouldn’t have gone to bed so early; even on the nights where you felt the exhaustion in your bones.
While everyone laughs about something someone said one night earlier in the summer, you construct a mental pros and cons list in your head. You could stick around and try to scrape through every single thing everyone says until you get all the jokes and can understand why random things like the brisket you’re eating is so funny. Or you can accept that you’ll probably have to forge these connections individually and not feel bad about getting well-deserved rest when you need it.
You opt for the latter and genuinely explain to everyone that while you had a nice time, you’re feeling a little fatigued. No one looks like they’ve caught on, but no one looks too upset to see you go either. The conversation continues to flow as you leave the dining hall, no need to fill the space you left because you didn’t really leave one. The walk from the mess hall to your cabin is short and brisk and you feel as though you’re not sure you made the right choice. You hope sleep will clear your head.
But before you get to the little fork in the foot trail that separates the other cabins from yours, you get struck with a current of rebellion. If you’re going to be lonely, you might as well make the solo time as fun as possible. So you sneak behind one of the cabins, searching for the cooler you know is wedged under the raised foundation. The first night there, someone showed you the booze that they brought in behind the camp leader’s back during the strict luggage inspection. If you recall correctly, you remember this girl saying that her boyfriend drives up during the weekly meetings and drops off new cases of beers for her to scoop up under the guise of a “bathroom break”.
When you open the cooler, there’s several 40s sitting in a bath of ice. It’s not your drink of choice, but beggars can’t be choosers. You take two for good measure and skip off to go drink on your porch with the radio blaring from inside the cabin.
***
“Tae, come on. You haven’t pulled your trunks out once since we got here.”
Minho whines fairly well for someone of his stature and it’s convincing enough with the pouty lips and the puppy eyes that Taehyung really does consider it. ‘It’ being swapping his pajamas for some board shorts and heading out to the lake for a night swim. Apparently the water will be refreshing in the thick and heavy heat in the night air. One of the other counselors had promised a smuggled beer, but Taehyung isn’t really interested in tempting fate.
“I don’t think I’m up for it,” Taehyung says while pushing Minho out the front door of their cabin. His biggest fans Jay and Dan are waiting outside and groan when Minho turns back again.
“You sure you don’t want to come? Maybe you’ll end up having fun. You never know.”
Jay whispers to Dan then. “I don’t know why he’s always so obsessed with bringing him around to stuff. It’s not like he adds anything to the mood, you know?”
It’s loud enough for Taehyung to hear, though he doesn’t think it was supposed to be heard. Minho instantly shoves Jay into Dan, who both go stumbling off the steps of the cabin porch. A moment later his eyes admit defeat and he pats Taehyung’s shoulder.
“Do you want company? I can stay in and you can, like, teach me the color wheel again.”
“Really, it’s fine. I’m gonna do some reading. I brought a few books that I’ve been wanting to crack open. And I’m kinda tired. Don’t worry about me.”
***
By the time you’ve finished half of your second bottle, you’ve migrated back into your cabin. Drunk-you is a little paranoid and worried that the camp leader will show up out of nowhere and see you intoxicated. Although, as you flop onto your bed, you’re not sure that’s such a bad thing. At least then you’d have company, you muse.
The bottle hangs from your lax fingers and you take a look at your surroundings. The screen door is facing out towards the lake and the view shows that the boys’ side of the camp is still awake with the lights from their own cabins shining like small beacons back at you. Then you look back and there’s the four walls of wood. You wonder briefly if its pine or oak before realizing you’re a little too drunk if you’re trying to distinguish between types of lumber. You do appreciate the wood’s warm tone and the natural striations that add some intrigue to the otherwise bland walls. If it weren’t for the abandoned Kiki’s Delivery Service poster on one wall facing your bed, you might think you were in a wooden version of solitary confinement.
Your head turns to rest more comfortably on your pillow and you gaze up at the little writing desk below the window that faces the woods behind the cabin. A little blurry shadow obscures some of the view of the forest and you sit up to see it better. It’s the little walkie talkie you discovered on the first day.
Drunkenness and boredom compel you to leave the softness of your mattress and stumble over to the window. The walkie talkie spent several weeks in the sun, so you figure it can’t be out of battery. You also figure it can’t have actually been destroyed from the meter it fell from your hand to the floor that one day. So you flip the power switch with blind hope and squeal excitedly when it turns on. Pressing the ‘talk’ button, you hop around the main room of the cabin and hum into the first channel. The song you’re singing is a broken version of a tune your grandfather used to always have floating in the air of his house from his record player. The melody sloshes together at certain points like the contents of the bottle you continue to take generous swigs from.
***
Taehyung’s reading in his bed, trying to tune out the sounds of distant splashing and shouting coming from his co-counselors by the lakeside. When he picks up the sound of sloppy singing, he wonders if Minho has come back to the cabin for a towel or to try to convince him to come back out again. But the door of the cabin doesn’t swing open. Taehyung is confused for about 5 more seconds before he’s eyeing the dark space under his bed suspiciously. There, underneath a sheet that fell down the crack between the mattress and the bed, is the walkie talkie that’s been collecting dust since the night before the camp session started.
He shifts an arm down behind the bed and disentangles the device from the sheets and dust bunnies. Sure enough, the broken lilting of the soft tune is coming from the walkie talkie. To say he’s surprised is an understatement. A few weeks prior, he’d turned on the walkie talkie by accident and a moment later someone’s voice sparked from the speaker. He was intrigued enough by the voice to leave the device on during the day, charging it often in case whoever was on the other side would want to tune in again.
Now, the fog of sleep rises to make room for this little mystery. He doesn’t try to speak just yet. Instead, he lets your voice continue your rendition of a few songs mashed into one from a famous jazz album. When your voice putters out because you forget where the rest of the tune’s trail leads, Taehyung smiles to himself.
“I really—hic—wish someone was there,” your whisper crackles through the speaker.
He worries a bit about scaring you off again, but the urge to speak outweighs the worry. He holds the device up to his mouth hesitantly. “Someone is.”
“Oh.” You don’t seem nearly as startled as you were last time he spoke up. “The void speaks.”
“Believe it or not, I’m not the void.”
“Well,” you hiccup more into the walkie talkie and the sound is funny and tiny. “I suppose you’re not if you say you’re not. But who’s to say the void isn’t just a consciousness trapped in a reality that won’t answer back.”
“Wow. Do you normally philosophize in the midnight hour while drinking?”
The sound of you taking a large swig from your 40 washes into his side. “How did you know I’ve been drinking?”
“Call it a hunch,” he grins up at the slats of the mattress above his own.
“Well, what are—what are you doing?”
“Me?” For some reason the question takes him by surprise. “I’m just reading.”
“Reading what?”
“N-nothing.” He stares down at the book he was reading. “It’s just an art book.”
“What kind of art?”
“Uh, Van Gogh,” he trails off, waiting for your reaction.”Van Gogh’s art.”
“Oh, that kid. Nice one.” You let out a burp, but otherwise sound completely serious.
Taehyung can’t help the laughter that takes over him. It’s not that your reaction was stupid, but it was so unexpected and nonchalantly ridiculous that his brain can only react with laughter. You grumble at him through the speaker, but don’t actually take offense. He laughs for so long that you’re silent on the other line when he finally calms down.
“Sorry,” he wipes at his eyes, “I didn’t mean to laugh at you like that. I just...I’ve never heard anyone do something like that.”
“‘s okay,” your shrug is practically audible.
“Hey, you’re not a camper from the girls’ side, are you?”
“Are you asking if I’m one of Camp Lonely Hearts’ young women?” Your voice takes on a strange lisp in attempt to sound hauty.
“Yes?”
“Well, sadly I’m not. I’m a counselor over there, though.”
“I think this is the first time I’ve talked with one of you guys this whole summer.”
Back in your cabin, you have the walkie talkie resting against your ear after having fallen back into bed. Your feet are at the wrong end of the mattress, but you don’t care because the sound of the deep voice on your little radio is soothing and pairs well with your beer exhaustion.
“Mmm, me too.”
Your breathing slows and evens out, lengthening in Taehyung’s ear. He lays the walkie talkie down then, realizing that you’re probably on the verge of falling asleep. From the sound of it, you probably fell asleep with the ‘talk’ button still activated. He switches his walkie talkie off after mumbling an awkward ‘goodnight’ and lays the device down on the ground near his bed. He falls asleep quickly that night.
*** After waking up slightly hungover but not hungover enough to be without memory of the night before, you panicked.
Whoever this mystery person was on the other end of the walkie talkie, you had babbled dark philosophical nonsense at them for a good five minutes before doing who knows what else. You were so embarrassed you could hardly swallow down the overlooked eggs they served you for breakfast that morning. Being on kitchen duty didn’t help the upset stomach. You felt nauseated by your dopey antics and the smells of the meat and eggs you were frying for the campers’ breakfast.
The only thing that settled your stomach was the resolute plan you made to apologize to the mystery person over your lunch break. You hoped to all that was good in the world that the other person wasn’t a camper that was so scarred by your actions that they already reported you to the camp leader. Although, something about their tone when they asked you if you were a camper the night before made you think they were a counselor like you. It was the nerves and the hint of disappointment that even drunk-you picked up on. Nerves and disappointment about what, though?
With all your musing, you’re spaced out during physical education period and get brained by a volleyball. It’s actually a blessing in disguise because it means you get sent home and don’t have to work the dinner shift. The walk back to your cabin is full of you patting the tender skin of the back of your head while you practice your explanation for why your dignity is still actually intact and why you’re not as weird as you may have seemed last night.
But when you get back to your cabin, you find that you’re more nervous of the idea that no one picks up than the idea that they do pick up to give you a piece of their mind. Still, you switch the device on because you want to explain yourself. The first channel crackles to life again and you press the ‘talk’ button.
***
“I’m telling you, if these kids would just put their phones down, their spinal alignment would be so much better. You ever looked at their little shoulders? They looks like fucking mole hills. Makes me wanna cry.”
Minho is trying as best he can to remain still despite how much the topic of young people’s posture riles him up. Taehyung appreciates the effort, though, as it makes Minho’s silhouette much easier to capture on his canvas. On nights when there isn’t much to do, Taehyung takes out his paints and sometimes gets his older brother to be his model. In exchange, Minho gets to rant to a whole person about the dangers of office chairs on the coccyx or whatever the sexy new topics are in his chiropractors' digest.
Tonight is one of those nights and Taehyung’s managed to fill the canvas with three different poses and has also learned why he shouldn’t ever cross his legs for extended periods of time or diss nursing shoes until he’s tried them. But before he can ask Minho to find another position to hold, the walkie talkie by the foot of his bed fires up; on from when he turned it on as soon as he got back into his cabin for the day.
“Hello? It’s me,” your voice calls tentatively out into the air.
“Ooooh, who’s that?” Minho’s eyes turn into little semi circles as he grins at Taehyung. The mocking coos are inaudible to you because Taehyung hasn’t pressed the ‘talk’ button and he’s glad for that too. He quickly flips Minho the bird before scooping up the little device and leaving to sit on the porch.
Time stretches thin as you wait for an answer. The seconds are long. Long enough that your face is hot with unnamed shame and you’re reaching to switch the device off when—
“Hey. Sorry about the delay.”
“Hey!” You pull back automatically before remembering you’re the one who initiated the call. No backing down now. “So, I’m—I’m sure you remember the other night.”
“I do,” he snickers and recalls the way you’d bumbled around verbally. “Are you back for a repeat performance?”
“Uh, no. I actually wanted to apologize for being so weird yesterday. I was kinda drunk and I didn’t think about the fact that I might be bothering someone by turning this thing on and talking into it.”
“You didn’t bother me.”
“I didn’t?” You were just about to venture into the next part of your prepared speech, but now that you don’t need to, you’re at a loss for words. “That’s...good to hear. Are you sure? I can be kind of a lot when I’m drunk.”
“I really didn’t mind. It was a nice change from—I mean, it was funny. And nice.”
“Nice? I can’t remember the last time someone said I was nice.” The laugh behind your voice is subtle, but it sweetens the tone of your already pleasant words until Taehyung is smiling again.
“Glad to be of service, then,” he shoves a hand in his pocket.
“You sound nice too,” you blurt out. The sound of your feet hitting the floor in a little dance of embarrassment are thankfully too soft to reach Taehyung’s ears. “I mean—”
“Thanks. So,” he clears his throat softly, “do you like jazz?”
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From that night on, you and Taehyung begin talking with one another via walkie talkie. Every night, a few hours before sunset, one of you will send out a little message to the other. Nearly like clockwork. Nearly because there are some nights where the conversation gets put on the back burner. Those were unusual nights, though. On one of those nights, the older counselors wanted to host an ABBA karaoke night with some of the older campers in the dining commons and you couldn’t miss it because 1) the 17-year-olds really like you, and 2) you can completely body an ABBA song despite the fact that you were never an avid fan growing up. Another one of those nights Taehyung couldn’t make it because Minho dragged him out of the room to play flashlight tag in the woods. He didn’t even have time to change out of his paint-stained shirt, much less shoot you a quick warning about not being able to talk. Although you didn’t like being left hanging, when he explained why he was busy the following night, you completely understood. Because, really, how often does an adult flashlight tag opportunity come up?
Even still—on nights like those you both miss each other’s voices.
99% of the time, though, you both make time for talking with one another. When you both are in, you talk about anything and everything. From family and life outside the camp to joke competitions that have Minho snorting to himself from under the covers even though he’s supposed to be asleep. The number of movie and book recommendations you’ve swapped only to find out that the other person was a fan is almost too high to not make you wonder if you’re actually stuck in some cliché young adult summer novel.
These days Taehyung’s cheeks hurt from smiling so much. Usually he doodles what he thinks you could look like in his Moleskin while ignoring Minho’s weird soft looks or wiggly eyebrows. Sometimes he’s not up for sharing his cool new digital pal with his brother and he’ll migrate outside, to the back of the cabin, and endure the bugs so he can enjoy your voice in peace. The only downside is that Minho won’t let him live it down. The countless jokes about his new lady friend only get worse when Minho slips up one breakfast and lets all the other counselors know that Taehyung’s been avoiding the group to talk to you. The raucous applause was one thing, but Cref’s fake pride that Taehyung managed to capture female attention was enough to have him kicking Minho under the table for his indiscretion. But it wasn’t all that bad.
You’re fairly content with the way things are as well. You’ve managed to get your boombox radio to play a local ‘best of’ jazz station and it reminds you of your myste when you’re not talking with him. It's only until you catch yourself trying to recall Taehyung’s appearance that you realize what you’re missing. That is, you don’t know what he looks like and that makes you feel odd. In theory, people don’t need to know what their friends look like. Pen pals and mutuals on social media sites don’t always know what their internet friends look like and still manage to talk for years and feel a real sense of closeness. But you keep wondering. Is he tall, is he brunet, is he pretty?
The thought keeps plaguing you until one day the question just tumbles out of your mouth. It’s a Tuesday, and you’re getting ready for bed because you have to be up earlier on Wednesdays for the weekly meetings. Taehyung had just been telling you about a flip that the arts director did that morning off the pier. It was a grisly story of broken legs and nose bleeds and how Taehyung  became both the arts and music counselor until further notice. You’d been trying to listen diligently but you couldn’t help drifting off. You’re trying to picture Taehyung’s face solely off the timber of his voice when that same voice blares a little louder than normal in your ear.
“Yo, did you fall asleep on something?”
“How tall are you?”
“Uh,” is all you get back from him. And it’s honestly an appropriate response to such a blunt change of subject.
“Sorry, that was kinda rude of me. It’s just that I realized that you’re probably the closest person to me in this whole camp and we’re not even on the same side of the lake...I just realized I don’t even know your name. And I definitely wouldn’t be able to pick you out in a crowd.”
“That’s—that’s true,” he gnaws thoughtfully on his lip and Minho raises his surprised and bespectacled gaze from a physical rehabilitation manual. “I’m Taehyung.”
He’s not sure how he managed to spend weeks talking with you nearly every night only to never ask for your name. When he was alert and talking with you, he felt no gaps, he didn’t even think to ask. But, Taehyung thinks, maybe the thought came to him when he was on the fuzzy border of sleep and wakefulness. When he was most open and sometimes the yearning slipped out. He doesn’t say any of that to you, of course. He just listens to you reply with your own name and repeats it to you until you’re praising him for the way it sounds on his tongue. Minho makes fun of him and whispers your name in a squeaky voice that’s supposed to be Taehyung’s.
“I like your name,” you chirp. You’re so happy to have one more piece to the puzzle that is Taehyung that you almost forget your original question. “So, Taehyung, what do you look like.”
“I’m 5’10.5,” he starts. “And I have...blond hair. All my friends tell me I have a perfect face–”
“Is that so?”
“–and a great chest-to-waist ratio. I don’t wear makeup, b-but if I did my MAC shade would be NW30.” Minho narrows his eyes at Taehyung, but the younger man simply turns away.
“That’s nice?” You sound a bit baffled by the description as well, but you try to take it in stride and picture it.
The resulting image in your mind isn’t exactly what you expected, but you guess you can’t be surprised that he looked different from how you imagined when you didn’t even know his name. You rattle off your own appearance, though not quite so awkwardly. When you’re finished, you wonder what he imagines with the description you gave. What does he think, you wonder. Do I sound nice?
Taehyung, on the other hand, realizes instantly who you are. You’re the girl that was falling asleep during the first meeting. He remembers watching your head lolling back and forth during the icebreaker and trying to contain his laughter when the camp leader shouted loud enough to wake you. He remembers your boisterous laughter at the third weekly meeting when someone thought it would be funny to round up 5 squirrels and release them into the conference room to watch the mayhem unfold. If he’s being honest, he’s actually more excited with the connection he’s made now. He’s glad it’s you. It makes sense.
“Well, I guess this will make tomorrow’s meeting a little more fun, right?”
“Huh,” he snaps out of deep thought. “Why?”
“Because now we can talk to each other in person.” Your voice is brimming with excitement and it’s easy to hear even through the half mile of distance and the static-y connection. “I’ll be able to find you now.”
“Yeah,” his voice trails off guiltily but you don’t catch onto it because you’re busy smoothing out your sheets.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Taehyung,” you bid him goodnight with extra giddy emphasis on his name now that you can actually use it. It’s cute and should probably bring a smile to his face, but as he turns off the device, he can only purse his lips in frustration.
The sounds of sheets rustling remind him of his brother’s presence and he lets out a sigh, waiting for the lecture that’s about to come.
“So,” Minho begins slowly, “How come the person you described was cousin Jin when she asked you what you looked like?”
“In my defense, I...”
“In your defense, what? I’m really curious about what your explanation is.”
“I didn’t want her to be disappointed. And no one’s ever been disappointed by Jin’s looks, so when I got nervous I just gave her his greatest hits.”
“I heard. The foundation thing was a little much.”
“Yeah,” he sighs.
“Why do you think she would be disappointed?”
“I don’t know. I guess if for some reason the appearance stuff was important to her, I thought it made sense not to leave things to chance. In case that would mess things up.”
“But what if, to her, lying is even worse than having an ‘ugly’ friend,” Minho asks with air quotes included.
“Then...I fucked up big time.” Taehyung holds his head in his hands for a few minutes before eventually looking up helplessly. “But I didn’t do it to spite her or anything.”
“Did you really just do it because you thought she would be disappointed? She doesn’t sound that shallow to me, and I don’t know her like you do.”
“Yes and no,” he groans and tosses himself onto the mattress. “I mean, I wanted to seem good in her eyes. Someone she might...like?”
“Someone she might like? She does like you.”
“Someone she might,” Taehyung eyes Minho softly, “want to be with.”
“Ah,” he nods sagely. “So it’s like that.”
“It’s like that.”
“Then you know what you need to do.”
“Yeah. I’ll tell her tomorrow. During the meeting.”
***
Taehyung figures that the idea of preserving his friendship with you being so important will make confessing his lie to you super easy. But when he lumbers into the meeting room the following morning at 6:30, the nerves take over. He grows silent. He stays silent when you come in looking too chipper for a normal morning meeting. And when you spend the majority of the meeting studying the face of every counselor from the boys’ side of the camp, looking for the man described to you on the phone yesterday and not finding him. And when the meeting officially adjourned and you’re standing around hoping for some sort of explanation. Silent when he eventually slips out while Minho is in the bathroom and someone has started chatting you up.
He knows that eventually he’ll have to face you—figuratively speaking. The floor will probably have a trench plowed into it from where he paces the area in front of his bunk anxiously. Sundown is soon and normally you’d be tuning in at this time to see what his plans are for the night and talk about each other’s days. But as the minutes tick by, his walkie talkie stays quiet. Minho pins him with an expectant look before mumbling something about going to go hang out in someone else’s cabin. Maybe he thought Taehyung would benefit from the privacy, but the empty space on the other side of the room just makes him more aware of how the ball is in his—and only his—court. He picks up the walkie talkie and presses the ‘talk’ button.
“You there?” When he gets no response at first, he presses again. This time, he just calls your name pleadingly. Surprisingly, you pick up.
“Is this Taehyung?”
“What? Yes, who else—”
“Or maybe this is Mr. tiny waist dorito face SPF 30. Can’t tell who’s who these days.”
He ducks his head. The smile in his voice is self-deprecating. “It’s me. Taehyung.”
“What can I help you with this evening?” Your voice is sharper than it normally is, but subtly so. He almost wants you to just yell at him instead.
“I just wanted to say sorry.”
“For friend-catfishing me?”
“Yes. For lying and for not coming clean at the meeting when I first saw you.”
“Why didn’t you say anything at the meeting,” your voice wavers a bit, traitorous in the way it shakes. “I was looking for you.”
“I know. I really was gonna tell you. You can ask Minho. But I just got scared all of the sudden. Like as soon as you saw me, you’d regret the decision to ever talk with me.”
“Tae, I wouldn’t do that. I really...I care for you. Something like that doesn’t just go away because what you pictured in your head isn’t 100% reality.”
Your words are simple, but he feels comfort from them. The grip he had on the plastic of the walkie talkie loosens significantly and he lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
“I still haven’t been completely honest with you, yet.”
“What is it now. Do you even work here?”
“No, no,” he chuckles and the sound drives you to chew on your thumb. “When you asked me what I looked like that night, I described my cousin to you.”
“Yes, ok, we’ve established that you’re not really Mr. Dorito head. What else is there,Taehyung, you’re making me nervous.”
“Hear me out.” You huff but otherwise settle for tapping your foot rapidly to channel the nerves productively. “I told you that I did that because I thought you wouldn’t want to be friends with me. But that’s not the only reason.”
“Okay,” you trail off.
“I did it because I thought maybe if you thought I was handsome, it would make it easier for you to, uh, return the feelings I have for you. I...like you. In a like-like way.”
“I see.”
Now it’s your turn to stretch the pause out until Taehyung’s fisting tufts of his hair in his free hand. The walkie talkie is probably going to leave a red imprint on his face from how hard he’s pressing it to his cheek, but he doesn’t even register the discomfort.
“I really don’t like that you lied to me,” you begin. “But, since I really like-like you, you can be on probation.”
The sound of exaggerated gagging sounds from the entryway of the cabin where Minho has been eavesdropping for the last five minutes. Taehyung doesn’t even bother to chastise his older brother for getting into his business and instead lets laughter bubble passed his lips.
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Not too much changed after the night you both confessed to one another. Supposedly that’s a sign that you had a good foundation for your romantic relationship. But there are little changes and they’re noticeable. Much to Minho’s chagrin.
Most notably to everyone involved, since that night, the tone of the walkie talkie conversations shifted. Now your voices have become a little more hushed and Taehyung absolutely refuses to pick up the device unless he’s alone, whining until Minho leaves the cabin or is truly asleep. If the talks go on late enough, midnight moonlight lays a forlorn, whispered feel over you both and things become a competition for who can be the mushiest. The air is made of breathy laughs that bleed into sighs and unironic use of ‘No, you hang up first’. It’s all so rosy and the happiness you feel starts to stain your cheeks and smile. The other counselors notice too. A few give you meaningful looks like they’ve caught on. Moe, especially, looks proud to see that the dour cloud that was hovering over you has dissipated some. Others don’t quite have it right. They ask you if you’ve been sneaking weed into the camp. You don’t give up your secret for either of them. Mainly because you could face disciplinary action, but also because you don’t want the next time there’s a meeting to be turned into a spectacle. It’s not lost on you that you still don’t know what Taehyung looks like. But you were being sincere when you said that you didn’t need that to care for him.
Still, the curiosity wears on the edges of your consciousness every now and then. You can’t quite ignore the idea that you guys are sort of dating—that you may have a boyfriend at the end of this summer—and you still can’t tell when you’re in a room with him. Despite this, you feel a visceral attraction to him growing from what was a gentle simmer to a boil the longer you exchange pillow talk with him. At the right moments of the night, your hands itch to feel the solid weight of him, of any part of him. To have something other than the intangible rasp of his voice when he spills his feelings to you over the walkie talkie.
***
The Sunday night before the last week of camp finds you, of course, on the walkie talkie. Unlike all the previous conversations, there’s a bittersweetness that you’re trying to swallow down. You’ll both be busy with preparations for the end of the summer festival where both sides of the camp meet—this year on the girls’ side of the lake—to celebrate a summer well spent. This means you won’t have the time or the energy to talk to one another before the big day. If it wasn’t for the fact that you still hadn’t met up properly, you wouldn’t be bemoaning the brief absence so much. But with the end of the camp session rapidly approaching, questions linger in the air. It’s not clear what happens to what you have with Taehyung once you’re not close enough to use walkie talkies to talk with one another every night. So you cherish every minute you get with the man, even if its just his voice.
“I wish we could just keep talking forever,” you whine half into your pillow, half into the balmy night air. You’re trying your best to combat the heat with your sheets kicked down to your ankles and your lightest sleep clothes on. The tone you use is one you might normally be a little ashamed of, but you’re feeling extra needy.
“I wish we could have worked on the same side of the lake,” Taehyung counters after a quick glance toward Minho’s bed. Still unmade and empty because the man in question went to go smoke on the dock. “This whole separating the camp for the kids’ sake is dumb sometimes.”
“Yeah. I wish I could’ve seen you teaching songs to the kids on the guitar.”
“I wish I could see your face while you listen to the songs I rec’d you.”
“And I wish I could see your paintings.” Taehyung turns back to see the canvas he’d filled yesterday with paint swatches, trying to remember the exact hue of your skin from the first meeting in which he knew you were you.
“I wish we could just see each other.”
“Me too.”
“And touch each other.”
Your mouth drops open wide. He’s been flirty in his own way, but never so outright.
“Oh my god, Taehyung, are you drunk?”
“I don’t drink,” he replies simply. Your cheeks feel too warm and you have to pat you face to give yourself a semblance of control.
It’s not that you haven’t entertained the idea of being intimate with Taehyung, but it was a bit difficult when you still couldn’t match a face to his name. Perhaps that was just a ‘you’-issue, but it frustrates you and, until now, kept you from getting very far with your fantasies. But with his voice in your ear that night, you think maybe you could get there. Already your skin is taking on a feverish heat, sweat starting to prick certain areas.
“What would you do if we could. H-how would you start?”
He palms himself deftly over his shorts and lets his eyes fall shut in indulgence. “Are you in bed?”
“Yes.” Your breath is bated. A hand trails down the top you’re wearing to lift the hem up, exposing the dewy skin of your torso. You pick at the elastic waistband playfully, eager to hear what Taehyung’s plans are for you.
“What are you wearing?”
It’s a benign question, but it still speeds up your heartbeat. His voice is somehow silken in its depth while tugging raggedly at something inside you.
“Um. I’m wearing a camisole and some shorts.”
He hums appreciatively. “Well, first, I’d take off your top. I’d pull the straps off and push the rest down slowly. I’d kiss your neck and your skin all over. Until I get to your breasts.”
Your fingers slide under your shorts to find the crotch of your panties. A growing wet spot greets the searching pads of your fingers. “And then what?”
“Easy, easy.” He smirks. “I��d take my time on you. I bet they’d feel so nice in my hands. Probably soft and warm. I’d put my mouth on them, lick them, suck on them. I’d pinch your nipples until they’re hard and you’re moaning.” Sure enough, a moan floats up through the speaker on Taehyung’s end. “Then I’d kiss your stomach and your hips and then I’d get your shorts off. Are you wearing panties?”
“I am, yeah.”
“Shame,” he pouts. “I’d take those off too. I’d kiss your thighs and then I’d kneel between your legs and I’d taste you. Get you all over my tongue.” His erection throbs with the image and he has to squeeze himself at the base to keep his cool. With his words momentarily halted, you jump in.
“All that sounds nice, but I think I’d like you under me more.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I want you on your back on the bed and I want you naked. And then I want to sit on your face. I wanna grind on your mouth for a bit and then I want to get you in my mouth too.” His breath hitches sharply in your ear. From the sound of it, he’s stroking himself slowly and leaning on and off the ‘talk’ button. “I want to feel you in my throat. I want to gag around you while I stroke you.”
Taehyung’s whines are high as he fights the urge to fuck into his hand quickly and chase the high he feels pulsing under his skin. “Are you—ngh—are you touching yourself?”
“Yes, but I wish it was you. I’ve got my fingers inside, but it’s not enough when I could have you do it. I want you to stretch me out. I wanna ride you after. I’m gonna ride you one day for real.”
“Can’t wait for that day,” he sighs, tossing his head back.
Taehyung spits into his hand to aid the glide. His hand moves quickly over his length, under the fabric of his bottoms. The slick sounds show up in the background noise of your cabin, egging you on. You bring your fingers to the apex of your lips and ghost them over your swollen clit. The first touch has so much anticipation behind it and has your back bowing off the mattress. Like a feedback loop, your moans set Taehyung’s hand in action and trigger his groans, which bring trickle after trickle of arousal down to wet your hand.
“I bet you’d feel so good. You sound so wet, god. You’d probably squeeze my dick so tight and good.”
“What would you do,” you gasp into the little radio, rolling a nipple under your satiny top. “Tell me what you’d do while I sit on your face.”
“I’d fuck you with my t-tongue. And I’d give some attention to your ass. It would probably look so good from where you’d be sitting. Bouncing on me while I fuck your mouth.”
“Fuck, Tae. I want you so bad.”
“I know,” he hisses through gritted teeth. “Add another finger for me and play with your clit with your other hand. I want to hear you come. Be loud for me.”
“I’m so close. I’m—”
As soon as you heed his instructions and add another finger, you’re able to re-angle your hand and hit a sensitive spot along your walls. The sudden onslaught of pleasure makes your volume increase by double. Taehyung’s erection jumps at the sound of your orgasm.
“Did you come?”
Your heaving breaths through the speaker are answer enough. He soldiers through, trying to catch up to you. So you help him along.
“If I were with you, I’d hold your dick right on my tongue so I can taste all of it when you come. Or maybe you want to come inside me. To fill me up and get me all sticky?”
“Fuck,” he grunts one, twice and then his mouth drops open as he spurts over his hand. The thick white of his orgasm leaks through the gaps of his fingers to make a mess. His body tenses with a few of the aftershocks before he flops bonelessly into his pillow. “I can’t feel my toes.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to walk for a while either.”
Taehyung pouts up at the top bunk. “If we were on the same side of the lake, we could have just done this in the same bed. Then at least we’d be immobile together.”
“How romantic.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with taking a lazy day off.”
“Maybe not normally. But with the festival coming up, I don’t think we really have that choice.”
“That’s true.”
“But,” the smile is audible in your voice, coy in its sing-song tone. “The next meeting is coming up soon. And we can maybe see each other there.”
“Yeah, we can.” Sleepiness makes his eyelids heavy, but he fights it as best we can. “I wanna see you so bad. Wanna hold you.”
“We can be really brave and hug in the parking lot outside the admin building.”
“I’d swim across the lake if it meant that was the fastest way to see you.”
“Aww. You’re such a sap when you come.”
“Only for you,” he mumbles. His cheek presses into his pillow as he loses his battle against sleep.
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By the time Wednesday rolls around, you’ve been swamped with preparations for the festival. When you’re not busy avoiding paper cuts while designing decorations for the mess hall, you’re fighting off campers who want you to spoil the movie that the boys have chosen for the group as a whole to watch together. You go to bed at night without word from Taehyung, but you’re too tired and too familiar with the work he’s most likely doing to feel upset about it.
You’re so busy and your mind is so full that you don’t even realize that you should be looking for Taehyung when you go to sit down in the conference room. It’s only when you’re zoning out while the camp leader gets progress reports from the boys’ side that you realize you haven’t heard his voice in several days and you’re still not hearing it during the meeting. So you tap your fingers and wait for the meeting to adjourn. And as soon as it does, you make a beeline for Minho. Despite never having spoken with him directly, you’ve heard enough about him in and out of meetings to know what he looks like. Though, even if you hadn’t heard anything from your fellow counselors, you’d heard enough about him from Taehyung. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear similarities in the way that he and Taehyung talk. You suppose that’s what happens with siblings.
“Hi,” you greet him when there’s a lull in the conversation between him and some older counselor from the boys’ side.
“Hi, yourself.” Minho’s eyes widen as he registers your voice. It’s the only part of you he has direct experience with, but he has quite a lot of experience with it. He takes in your appearance with a grin, happy to finally meet the person who’s ensnared his baby brother’s affections.
“We’ve never met before, but my name is—”
“I know who you are. I hear Taehyung talk on the phone with you every night.”
“E-every night? Like even Sunday night?”
“Uhh,” his eyebrows raise at the sudden question. “No, actually. Not Sunday night. I was staying at someone else’s cabin. Why?”
“No reason. Listen, I just wanted to ask you if you knew where Tae was. I was planning on finally meeting with him face to face, but that...didn’t happen. And there’s not much time left.”
“I mean, there’s always after the summer. You both live in the city.”
You give him a non-committal noise that he doesn’t really like the sound of, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s not about to butt into his brother’s relationship just because he’s older. Even if it seems like you’re maybe not on the same page about what happens after camp ends.
“Well, he’s not pulling another fast one on you if that’s what you’re worried about. He told me not to tell you, but he got sick off bonfire weenies last night. So he’s probably still at home shitting his pants while he makes banners for the festival.”
“Thanks for that.” You blink away the image Minho’s words bring up and focus on the task at hand. “So I guess I probably won’t see him until the actual day of, then.”
“Probably. Since he’s covering the old art director’s tasks in addition to the musical stuff, he’s pretty swamped and this hot dog thing might set him back a bit. He definitely wants to see you, though.”
Minho tries his best again not to overstep and reveal too much. Not about the rampant diarrhea, but about the way Taehyung’s been scribbling frantically in notebooks for tasks that weren’t assigned to him for the fest. Nor does he tell you about the 3 a.m. guitar sessions. Or the tender way he sees Taehyung pick up the walkie talkie sometimes, holding it in his hand as thoughtfully as someone can when running on 5 hours of sleep.
                                                    (Festival Day)
“Come on, we’re gonna miss the concert!”
A camper pulls you by the wrist from the small station where face painting was being held to the center of the makeshift festival grounds where a stage has been set up.
People have been pulling you around since the wee hours of the morning. By now you’re used to just letting your body follow the person pulling you, but the slight twinge in your wrist is starting to worry you. You replace your wrist with your hand and the camper merely pulls you along harder. There’s already a large amount of campers and counselors from both sides of the lake surrounding the stage where some performances are about to take place. Somehow the 11-year-old holding your hand manages to weave you both through the bodies until you’re only a few feet from the platform.
After a juggling act done by two of your favorite campers, a lovely comedy routine where Moe roasted her ex-husband Cref, and a trio of high school yo-yo experts, the prep for the final performance begins. Apparently, Camp Lonely Heart had an anthem that all the campers learned in their music periods so they could all sing together during the final days of the summer. Since you were never present for the music sessions, you didn’t really know there was a song. Luckily for you, Jade gave you a sheet with the lyrics printed on them earlier that morning. You didn’t have any time to memorize them, but you got a good look and they seemed like pretty typical camp lyrics.
You spot Minho making his way to the front of the stage easily. He’s got a small glittery sign that says “That’s my little brother” and a few of the guys around him snicker when he waves it at the counselor and camper on stage. The words on the sign are slow to register with you, so it takes a moment for you to put two and two together to get Taehyung. But you do. And when you do, all you can hear is your own blood rushing in your ears and all you can see is him.
He’s seated with a guitar resting casually in his lap. His hair is long. Longer than you imagined it would be. It’s also lighter than you thought it would be based solely off Minho’s own dark chestnut locks. He’s handsome, though. With the honeyed skin and the large, expressive eyes behind vintage frames to offset the manly geometry of his other features. The young boy next to him on stage must say something nice or cute, because his whole face lights up. You marvel at the boxy shape of his mouth while he laughs.
In the background noise, you hear the camper, Jungkook, make a little speech about this summer and camaraderie and how long it took for him and Taehyung to prepare this original arrangement of the Camp Lonely Heart anthem you’re about to hear. But it all sort of washes in one ear and out the other. Instead you’re watching Taehyung bounce his foot with pre-show nerves and smile occasionally at what the other counselor says. Then he’s being handed the mic and he’s looking out into the audience. You lock eyes after a few beats, and he holds your gaze like he’s trying to see if you know who you’re looking at. Maybe it’s your awestruck expression. Or maybe it’s the stupid smile on your face when his voice comes through the mic and you’re hearing the voice you’ve grown to love pour through something other than shitty walkie talkie speakers. But either way, his back becomes a little straighter while he greets the crowd and tells them he hopes they like the song.
Everything after that is kind of a blur. You don’t sing along and instead watch Taehyung sing back up to Jungkook’s pretty tenor stylings. Minho was screaming when the song ended and threw some snipped sunflowers wrapped in cellophane onto the stage at Taehyung and Jungkook’s feet. In that chaotic moment of applause, you slip out the crowd after making sure Taehyung’s eyes are on you. The path you make is clear: a beeline straight behind the cabins on the trail that leads through the small foothills. With the festival going on and all the campers in one place, counselor supervision has to be tight. No campers allowed past these parts.
After giving him a few minutes to catch up, you can hear his footsteps are close behind you. The trek is short and you come up to step past the gates that open into the camp’s lavender field. It’s been a while since you last visited it, but the smell is just as fragrant and lovely as it was the first time. Your heart rate slows down slightly. Anticipation makes everything in you coil taut, full of sharp and tiny vibrations. You feel giddy. When his footsteps thud softly and finally behind you, you release your breath and turn around.
“It’s you.”
“Me,” he confirms with his palms open like an offering. An offering that you take immediately.
Your launch yourself into his open arms and he huffs as he takes the impact. The hug is tight like you’re worried he’ll turn into mist if you’re not careful. His arms are sturdy around you and he pulls you in even tighter so he can get closer. He runs the tip of his nose along your temple, revelling in the way the summer sun mingles with the scent of your soap and you. It’s a small detail but it’s exciting. Here you are, in the flesh, in all your glory. Your arms and bare legs are covered in small splatters of dried paint from the last minute changes you had to make to some of the decorations this morning. And your counselor’s t-shirt has a few rips and frays in the seams from all the wear and tear it got over the summer. The flyaways in your hair and the way you sway as you hold him are all catalogued. Even in this more life-worn state, he can’t stop looking at you.
You pull back after a long while with your heart still beating in your throat. There were so many things you planned on doing when you first met Taehyung for the first time, but now you’re overwhelmed. Perhaps it’s because, in the back of your mind, you’re worried about time. It feels very fairytale-like, the way you only managed to come face to face on a special occasion. Like a good dream that will come to an end at the beep of an alarm or a fantasy that collapses into tatters at the stroke of midnight. You try to remind yourself that you’re not in a fairytale. This is real life and you have more than midnight because you have the internet and public transportation. But is that enough? You shake the thoughts out of your head, trying to focus on the here and now because it may be all you have.
“I liked your song,” you finally say. Both his hands come up to cup your face.
“Thanks. I practiced a lot for you.”
“It paid off.”
He takes a deep breath and accepts your compliment robotically before letting his eyes flit back down to your upturned mouth. “Can I kiss you,” he sighs.
“Please.”
The kiss doesn’t actually start for quite a few moments. As soon as he has your permission, then he decides to take his time. Your eyes are nearly closed and he admires the pretty shadow your eyelashes cast on your cheeks. Impatience scratches at your nerves, but you try to go with the flow. He tilts your head in his hands like he’s calculating the best angle to kiss you from, knowing he’s driving you crazy from the little frustrated huffs you let out. Chuckling, he ghosts his lips over yours once before fully pressing forward.
As soon as your lips move together for the first time, you both let out twin sighs. Instantly, like a choreographed dance, arms and hands move in tandem to bring each other closer. You experiment with the long hair that flirts with the back of his neck before following its path and dipping your fingers beneath the collar of his shirt. He responds with large hands spreading over the small of your back, fingertips digging in before lifting and then digging in again like a game of  practicing restraint.
You press your chest to his in an effort to get closer to him and unwittingly tease him with the promise of more unexplored softness under your clothes. He opens your mouth up with his own and nudges a subtle rhythm against your tongue. You moan and he mirrors the sound earnestly.
“I don’t think we can make it to the cabins,” he mumbles against your mouth.
“That’s fine,” you lay both hands on his chest and enjoy the firmness you find before pushing him back towards the tall rows of lavender. “I don’t need a bed if you don’t.”
“You’re something else.” He pulls back then with a wet sound. His lips are slightly puffy and shiny from kissing you and you grapple with the urge to bite them. You lose the battle and he shivers at the feel of you nipping at him. “Fuck.”
Once he and you have stumbled far enough back amongst the fragrant bushes and you find a soft enough patch of flattened lavender, you lower yourself to your hands and knees. He scrambles to sit beside you before immediately pulling you back in. You straddle his waist and rest some of your weight on his thighs while you peel off your shirt and bra. His hands smooth over the curve of your side once the skin is exposed, noting the way you arch into his touch. With an inquiring look, your hands move to the fly of his cutoffs. He lays back and then lifts his hips, impressively with you still seated on his lap, to pull his bottoms down and off. You do the same with yours and return to your perch as fast as possible.
Taehyung’s fingers find the soaked center of your panties and you rock your hips against the heel of his palm when he wriggles a finger in experimentally. He lets out a low appreciative whistle at how wet you are. You get wetter still when he grinds up into your clit to get you to lose some of the control you’ve garnered since leading him to the field. The feeling forces you to lean your hands on his abdomen, fingers fisting in his shirt.
“I want you inside me,” your moan shudders with the rhythm of the little circles you gyrate onto his long fingers. “I wanna ride you like I promised.”
“Are you sure you’re ready? We have time until we need to go back for clean up.”
“I know, but I want you to fuck me a couple of times before that happens.”
“I don’t have a condom, though.”
“Are you clean?”
“Yeah...You?”
“Yes,” your mouth drops open when he scrubs at a particularly sensitive spot on your slick walls. “And I’m on the pill. If you want, we could...”
“If you don’t mind.”
“I want it,” you assure him.
He takes off his shirt while you massage your breasts and take in more of his body now that it’s on display. The long hair framing his face falls prettily in his eyes after the shirt displaced it. Once it’s off, he pulls your panties to the side to admire the crystalline sheen that coats your lower lips. You shoo his fingers out of the way and pull the fabric to a more ideal angle before lowering yourself onto his length. The skin of his erection is hot to the touch and parts your lips easily. Your hips move in stuttering pushes forward to bump your clit against the swollen head.
“Oh, fuck,” his hands fly up to comb through his bangs. “God, this—you’re so sexy.”
“You are too. I don’t think I can wait any longer.”
With that, you raise up just enough to grip his length and line him up with your entrance. Instantly you realize his girth is a bit of a challenge, so you’re not as quick as you’d like when you take him in. But the slick aids things and your pelvises are snuggly slotted together after a few moments and some deep breaths. Taehyung’s hand flies to the slight bulge in your lower belly, enjoying the way he seems to fill you already.
You rest your hands on his ribcage again and get your bearings. With an efficient readjustment of your weight so you can freely work your thighs, you begin bouncing on him with no pretenses. His answering moan is louder than he clearly intended because as soon as it’s out, he bites down on his tongue. It’s clear he doesn’t want to make it obvious where you are and what you’re doing, but he’s having trouble containing himself. There’s sweat already starting to prickle under the surface of his skin and his hands feel restless just minutes into your ministrations.
Taehyung settles for muttering quiet curses and gripping your rapidly circling hips with bruising force. He can barely keep up with the pace you’ve set, but he does manage. He thrusts up to meet your every downstroke, though it’s not without an obscene slapping sound. The fact that he’s so visibly affected by your movements gets you wetter every second until he almost slips out a few times. You adjust your rhythm so that’s not a problem, but your thighs are burning with the effort. Taehyung sees through hooded eyes that you’re losing steam and seizes his chance.
You’ve opted for sitting and grinding with him inside you when he starts to shift. His arms come to envelope you and keep you steady as he sits up. Then you’re suddenly on your back. You want to protest about the dirt, but the ground looked clean and dry and doesn’t make your back itch, so you let it happen. Taehyung repositions himself among your splayed legs, hitching one up to wrap around his hip. He grabs the ankle of your other leg and lifts it slowly, testing your flexibility and giving you time to tell him where your limit is. When your ankle is hovering level with his shoulder, you give him a cheeky smirk at his wide eyed expression. He punishes your silent brag by sucking a rough hickey into the skin just above your ankle before resting it on his shoulder. The very fact that he’s pretzled you like this turns him on and gives him a slight energy boost. He figures you must have stolen some of his life force with the way you rode him earlier.
“Little succubus,” he spits through gritted teeth as he begins pistoning his hips against yours.
You let out a shameless laugh that quickly devolves into a low moan with the way the new angle feels. He’s not going to last much longer if you continue to squeeze around him like you’re doing, but he’s fairly certain you’ll finish first. Certain because his hand moves down between your bodies to tweak at one of your nipples. He noticed earlier how your eyes fogged over while you played with yourself in the same way. Leaning over, he continues to thrust into you while pulling the nipple between his teeth. He rakes over it lightly and your leg tenses before falling back down with a thud. You don’t seem to notice and instead your abdomen spasms with the waves of pleasure that begin lapping at you without ebbing back. The feeling merely builds until it explodes the moment he minutely clenches his jaw and bites. It’s a small amount of pain, but it takes you by surprise and pushes you over the edge.
With your walls milking him, he follows your high soon with his own. His breaths come out in deep huffs in your ear, heavy with bass. You test your limbs and the shifting makes you aware of the come he filled you with. When he pulls out, the sensation grows and you’re moaning weakly as it leaks out. He takes his lower lip in between his teeth as he watches the evidence his orgasm drip from your puffy center. He kind of wants to push it back in with his tongue or his fingers just to watch it drip out again, but he knows you might still be sensitive. So he settles for stroking your hip bone lovingly.
Grabby hands creep into his peripheral vision. It’s you silently asking for him to come lie with you, and he does. He presses sweet kisses against your lips until you sling a leg over his hip and add tongue. His dick twitches with the promise of second round, rubbing against the soft skin of your inner thigh. Normally, he’d need more time between orgasms. But you’re kissing his neck and for some reason the smell of your sweat combined with lavender is a miraculous pairing and has the blood flowing back south. A quick glance at his wrist watch tells him that there’s still a good 45 minutes and he flashes the little screen to you. Your answering grin is the rest of the motivation he needs.
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The festival day ended two days ago. Following your rendezvous, you both smoothed out your clothes and shook the grass out of them before sneaking back into the campgrounds smelling suspiciously of lavender and ‘something else’ according to Moe. You managed to somehow avoid her keen nose just like Taehyung avoided his older brother’s wiggly eyebrows.
Clean up was an absolute bitch that night, so you both went to bed without hitting each other up. And the following day was for making sure all the campers were packed up and shipped off to town or picked up by their guardians. That was somehow more exhausting even though there wasn’t any cleaning or sweaty sex involved. It was probably the giant bonfire you had and the 40s you threw back that night with your co-counselors. It was probably the most fun you had with them in a while. You were up into the wee hours recounting all the chaos from the last week and the shenanigans that resulted from having the counselors from the other side of the lake involved. No one mentions you slipping away for over an hour, and for that you’re thankful.
But the headache you wake up with the next day has you silently cursing the whole camp. You don’t need to spend a long time packing, and you’re out of your cabin in record time. Hitching a ride with one of the other early risers, you find yourself at the admin building with plenty of time to kill until you have to walk to the nearest bus stop. There’s donuts and bagels and a basic fruit plate in the conference room and you stealthily sneak some food out while the camp leader interrogates other counselors about how they felt the summer went. You even resort to filling out your evaluation form in the hallway to avoid the camp leader’s hawk-like gaze. You’re still seated on the floor, counting the dots in the pattern on the linoleum tiles, when Taehyung’s characteristic sneakers appear in front of you.
“You going home?”
It’s an awkward question, but it technically shouldn’t be. The last moments in the lavender field were spent with you skirting around his questions about where in the city you lived and what your plans for the fall were. It seemed pointless to tell him all that and act as if you were guaranteed to be able to pick things up where they left off once camp closed for the summer. With your back turned that day, you missed the way Taehyung looked at you after struggling with the feeling of not knowing you. Despite the fact that he felt deep in his soul not more than 3 hours ago that he knew you.
Couple this with the fact that you did have down time after the festival ended, but you said you were busy when you weren’t and you end up where you are now. Suddenly uncomfortable in front of the guy you’d been opening yourself up to for months because you never really got to breach the subject of what would happen when the summer ended. Now you’re realizing these are probably your last moments with what you had with him at Camp Lonely Heart.
“My bus is coming at 2,” you say eventually. He tries one last time.
“That’s hours from now. I can...I could drive you instead. I’m going into the city anyway.”
Yes, your brain wants you to say. Take me home, and then come in and stay with me. You want to utter the words, but your tongue grows heavy and clumsy. So instead you say something stupid.
“The ticket’s non-refundable.”
“Oh.” His head lowers to stare at his own shoes. “Yeah, that’s...I get that. Money, right?”
“Yeah.” You stare down at your shoes. You fight to find a redeemable moment, something lighter to end the summer on. “Hey, uh, look what I brought when I cleaned out my cabin.”
Taehyung stares down at your seated form while you fish through your little backpack for something. He’s not sure why the moment he was dreading before officially meeting you is happening now. The rejection he was hoping to avoid by remaining a nameless, faceless voice is now slowly rearing its ugly head.
“Look!” Your voice is a bit too enthusiastic to come off as 100% genuine, but the sight of the walkie talkie that started it all does make Taehyung smile despite himself.
When he pulls out a matching device from the side pocket of his messenger bag, the uncomfortable atmosphere lifts a little. Minho shows up then, keys jingling in his pocket. He calls for Taehyung and looks at you curiously.
“Are you coming with?” Before you can explain, Taehyung answers for you.
“She can’t. She’s gotta catch the bus.”
“The bus that’s going into the city? Where we’re also headed,” Minho asks with an incredulous smile that’s got none of the usual sweetness in it.
He looks at you for a better answer, one that makes more sense, but you don’t volunteer one when suddenly put on the spot. The slump in Taehyung’s shoulders betray the weak smile on his face. To Minho, the whole situation positively reeks of a similar situation his baby brother got into when he was younger and much less careful with his heart. He’s not 100% surprised at you, though. He saw this coming in the last few days when there were no calls from you and Taehyung’s eyes lost their summer shine. Minho pins you with a look of disappointment that you feel deep in your bones before he gives you a second chance.
“Tae, can you go start up the car?”
There must be something in Minho’s voice that you miss because Taehyung surprises you by only hesitating for a second before taking the keys and turning on his heel. You can feel Minho’s eyes on your face the entire time you watch Taehyung leave, but you can’t bear to face him until he’s gone.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know,” you answer honestly. “I just panicked when he asked if I was coming, so I said no.” He sighs in what you think is understanding, eyes closing momentarily before opening again. This time, his face is slightly more patient. He thinks he knows what’s going on.
“Do you want to ride home with us? With him?” There’s something else in the question, and you see it and grab at it, even though the implications scare you.
“I think so. I want to spend more time with him before I have to go for good. We didn’t really...talk about how this would end.”
“Does it have to end?”
“I mean, you know what they say about summer flings. Plus, this all happened in a really weird environment. Who knows if all of this was only possible because we just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Mm, yeah. It sounds like you guys were lucky in that regard,” he crosses his arms. “But you can take luck and build on it with actual effort and make something solid.”
You open your mouth to protest, but you can’t think of anything to actually say because he’s right. So you pick up your backpack and zip it up and gesture for him to lead the way to the car. A tiny bit of prideful approval bleeds onto his otherwise grave expression. On the way to the parking lot, your mind swirls with thoughts about the ways that this thing could fall apart. About how a summer haze made everything possible or how the distance that can’t be covered by walkie talkies will be the end of you and Taehyung. You look up to catch Taehyung’s profile as he waits for Minho in the driver’s seat. You also catch the way his face goes from a flat mask of indifference to surprise to badly concealed joy at the sight of you trudging behind his older brother. He rolls down the window while Minho makes a beeline for the back seat.
“You’re coming?”
“If that’s okay.” And you do wonder. Is this okay? Can we really do this? Can we make it?
“Y-yeah, of course,” seems to be Taehyung’s answer to all your questions, even the ones unspoken.
While you make your way to the passenger’s side, Taehyung whips his head around to stare at his brother.
“What did you say to her?”
“I’m not telling you, but just know that you may owe me for life after this.”
“Alright,” Taehyung concedes as you get in and strap in for the ride.
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Thanks for reading through these collab pieces with me. Plz also go check out the pieces @polaritae wrote on the masterlist link above!!
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J.I.L.
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Roomies for Too Damn Long
Summary: They can’t take her to the Avengers, so Steve has another idea.
Word Count: 1823 words
-.-.-.-.-
Washington D.C – April 5th, 2014
Jeneva didn’t realize how much she missed until she found herself in a car, driving somewhere in D.C. She had missed driving. She missed the feel of the sun on her skin and how obnoxious busybodies in the streets could actually be. Isolation for so long truly made her forget what was normal.
“Forgive moi, but ain’t the Avengers located up in New York?” It only made sense for her to stay there. There would be constant supervision for an ex-prisoner, access to their resources – it would make sense.
“We aren’t going to the Compound.”
Jeneva looks away from the window, catching Steve’s eyes in the rearview mirror. There was pain there. Worry about his decisions. She chuckled. “They don’t know.” Slumping in her seat, she crossed her arms and watched what little reactions she could get out of the man. “Y’have a weird dynamic wit’ your amis, chere.”
“Tony wouldn’t exactly encourage this sort of thing,” Sam told her, looking at her from the passenger seat.
“Why would he? He doesn’t have anyt’in’ t’gain from it.” She looked back at Steve. “So what? Hookin’ moi up wit’ an apartment?”
The two shared a look before Steve turned down a road. Up ahead, she could see an apartment complex. Most likely, where she would be staying. “Something like that.”
---
“And this is your room,” Sam told her, opening the door. Jeneva stepped inside. The room was a basic guest room. Nothing too extravagant which she preferred anyway. And there was even a desk with a laptop. Setting the file next to it, she looked back to the doorway.
There, Sam and Steve crowded looking almost like proud parents. Almost. It was mostly Sam.
“Uh…merci,” she said, chuckling at that proud grin on his face. “So this is y’all’s…brilliant arrangement?”
“It’s temporary. Once you find Bucky, you can do whatever you want,” Steve told her, pushing himself off the doorway. She watched him walk away before looking at Sam.
“Charmin’.”
“Cut him some slack. Bucky’s that one guy who means everything to him,” Sam explained, leaning against the doorway. “And our last time with the guy, he wasn’t in his right frame of mind.”
“Yeah, no shit.” She hesitated, glancing at the bed before looking at him. “Are y’comfortable wit’ this? I know the whole t’ing is Steve’s idea, but I’m not goin’ t’impose just t’fulfill our deal.”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t mind. Besides, having a roommate for a couple weeks could be fun.”
---
July 4th, 2014
Jeneva blamed Sam for her difficulty in finding Barnes. She had no doubt in her mind that he managed to jinx her. He just had to say two weeks. Well, two turned into three. Then a month. And so on because that’s how time works.
“Baise-moi,” she snapped, kicking the blankets and paperwork that surrounded her. The blankets fell to the floor as the papers flew into the air, quickly finding a home on the carpet. She rest her elbows on her crossed legs, massaging her temples. She just wanted to find him. The sooner that happened, the sooner she could go on with her life.
But it was hard to focus with so much static in the air. The lights flickered, shutting off and finally giving her a sense of peace.
“Jeneva!”
It was nice while it lasted.
She looked up as the door swung open. “Hiya, Sammy.”
“We talked about you shutting off the electricity, Jen.” The first time she’d done it, her glowing, cat-like eyes had scared the crap out of him, but he quickly got used to it. The problem was her eyes were the only thing about this situation that he got used to.
Jeneva grimaced. A couple seconds passed and the lights came back on, earning a sigh of relief. He was about to turn to go, knowing she preferred her space, but then he noticed her…well, everything. The mess on the floor, how she was hunched in a disaster of a bed, and the fact that her body language screamed, “Fuck the world.”
“Come on.”
She looked up as he gestured to the living room. “What?”
“I ordered pizza and I’m about to watch that John Wick movie.” Gesturing to her, he explained, “You look like you could use some unnecessary violence.”
“That’s how you’re celebratin’ July fourt’? Really?”
Sam shrugged. “I’m interesting like that.”
Jeneva sighed. “Look, Sam, y’don’t have t’be nice t’moi – “
“I know. But sometimes walking away from a thing actually helps you solve it faster. So get off your ass and watch a movie with me.”
Jeneva groaned but couldn’t bring herself to argue. Crawling out of the bed, she let him shove her out of the room like a mother hen. “There’s alcohol with the movie, right?”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
-.-.-.-
March 10th, 2015
“Why is it taking so long?”
Jeneva winced as she heard Steve’s voice from the living room. She didn’t blame him for being frustrated. It had been a long time since they saved her from the Raft and she had nothing to show for her work. She’d gone out a couple times – to New York in case Bucky wanted to relive his childhood. To the middle of nowhere USA in case he wanted off the grid. The thing was, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he kept moving, never staying in one place for long. It made sense at least.
“Steve, you’re having her find a guy nicknamed ‘the ghost’. Cut her some slack.”
There was silence. A small huff. “I know. I do – I understand that. I just…”
“I know. But you haven’t been here. That girl is pouring over every little bit of information she can get her hands on. When she isn’t asleep, she’s looking for him. Her time is invested in this and she wasn’t bullshitting you when she said she’d find him. Barnes is just really good at hiding.”
She looked up at the map on her wall. Little pins of various colors showed where she could possibly find him. Based off his history with HYDRA, she had very little reason to believe he was still in the United States. Her gaze shifted to Europe. It would make sense. He had spent most of his time there.
Maybe it was time to shift her tactics.
-.-.-.-.-
April 14th, 2016
“You have some of the worst ideas.”
Jeneva rolled her eyes as she took a sip of the coffee in hand. Sure, maybe taking a couple visits to Europe was a little extreme. Especially when they had nothing to go off as to where Bucky could be, but she was running out of options. She didn’t want to be sent back to the Raft and, while Sam promised Steve would never do that, she had been at the hands of people making promises.
And she’d been at the hands of those people when they were angry.
“I t’ink y’the only person that would call Italy a bad idea, chere,” she teased as she looked down the streets. Her energy had taken a dip, so he had recommended stopping for caffeine. She could already feel herself buzzing from it, but of course the enjoyment was short lived when she heard Sam complain again.
“You realize that the only reason we were able to do this is because you have a plane, right?”
“’Ey, y’the one that helped moi get it and my ot’er shit out o’ storage.”
“Believe me, I might be regretting that.”
She smirked. “Liar.”
Sam didn’t say anything, sticking close to her as they abandoned their empty cups and went back to work. “I don’t know how you came up with this and thought it was a good idea, Sparky.”
“Better than stayin’ cooped up in that apartment and gettin’ no good or bad results. Just a lot of empty answers.”
“But what made you think Italy?”
“One o’the assignments he was given,” she muttered absentmindedly, recalling the politician the Winter Soldier had been assigned to kill.
Silence fell for a while. Both of them knew that this was a lost cause. Three days of scouring small towns, places that would make sense for him to be hiding.
And still they found nothing.
“Jen,” Sam finally spoke again.
She huffed, jumping slightly when she felt his hand on her shoulder. “Yeah, I know.”
“We’re going to find him,” Sam assured her, having absolute faith in her abilities. Jeneva was too stubborn for him to think she’d fail. “But I think it’s safe to say that we can cross Italy off the list.”
Glancing at him, she ran a hand through her tangled mess of hair. He watched the slight tick of her jaw and how that gold in her eyes flickered. Her frustration was a little obvious. “Let’s just get out o’ here.”
Sam looped an arm around her shoulders, squeezing her gently. “You got it.”
“And Sam,” she asked, looking up at him. “’Appy birt’day.”
He snorted. “Don’t get all mushy on me now.”
-.-.-.-.-.-
June 22, 2016
Jeneva’s eyes were glued to her phone, brow furrowed. It didn’t make sense. She’d been studying this man’s file, hunting him down for two years. There was no way he bombed the Vienna International Centre. Right? She couldn’t have been that oblivious to him.
But then her screen lit up, showing Sam’s face covered in birthday cake.
She swiped to answer, holding the phone to her ear and looking around. Maybe the press was wrong. It wouldn’t exactly be the first time. “Sam?”
“Hey, you saw?”
Jeneva huffed. “Kinda hard t’miss.”
“Please, tell me you aren’t out looking for him.”
Jeneva shrugged. “Wasn’t gonna waste a trip t’Romania.” She smiled at a little girl who was admiring the wild curls in Jeneva’s hair, giving her a small wave before the kid ran off to catch up with her mom.
“Jen!”
“It’s not hurtin’ anyone,” she muttered.
“He bombed the UN meeting.”
“I don’t t’ink so.” She walked backwards, rolling her eyes as he kept going on and on about her risking her life. “Sammy, chill. ‘M a mutant. What could happen?”
No sooner had the words left her mouth than she had accidentally bumped into someone. As she spun around, she heard a soft ‘sorry’. She looked up, catching a glimpse of the man hiding underneath the baseball cap. Before she even had the opportunity to apologize, to say that it truly was her fault, he was already moving. And she was amazed.
She blinked as he crossed the street, looking both ways. There was no way it happened that easily.
“Hey, Sparky, you there?”
Jeneva swallowed, finally realizing that Sam was still talking to her. “Y’wouldn’t believe what just happened,” she murmured, watching as the man she had been searching for for two years purchased a newspaper. Something so simple.
“What?”
“I found him.”
18 notes · View notes
scarletfish · 4 years
Text
don’t worry, you will
Summary: Two weeks ago, Juno was engaged. Now he's quarantined with a complete stranger who can't operate a microwave and has no sense of personal space.  And they were quarantined (oh my god, they were quarantined!)
Pairings: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, background Vespa/Buddy in future chapters Word Count: 3000 Chapters: 1/5 Warnings: canon-typical alcohol abuse, depression AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24016468/chapters/57779629
A/N: Thanks @space-city-traffic for the prompt, and @pipis-pods for the suggestion that Juno and Vespa communicate and become friends 
Chapter 1
Diamond paid you $1520 . Your Venmo balance is now $1520.  
Fiancee. Rent. They’re the first and last things on Juno’s mind. He realizes he’s been sitting in the parking garage for over ten minutes, idling and staring at the alert on his cracked phone screen. He turns the car off.
His car with a long crack in the windshield. Everything is goddamn broken. He gets out of the car, pauses. Gets back in the car.
This calls for a detour.
***
Twenty minutes later, Juno is ready to take his newly acquired liquor to his room so he can introduce it to his newly acquired headache, but he still has one more stop to make.
Hyperion Apartment Complex twists eight stories high, and the tacky light grey brick facade is almost reflective at night. Semi-nice rooms in a mostly bad part of town. Hyperion city makes cheap look beautiful, the way fast-food commercials brush up plastic meat with shoe polish and glue. Diamond had always hated it.
Juno shoulders into the leasing office with two large grocery bags. The front desk is empty, and everything is fading or peeling. He rings the bell and sits on a peely, faded chair to wait. Might as well put the whisky to good use.
Taking a swig, he looks out the floor-length windows to the filmy outdoor pool. (Rita swears security fished a body out of it a couple years ago. Juno told her she needs to stop watching so much Law and Order.) For the hundredth time, he wonders if this is even worth it. She's going to ask questions, it's inevitable, and he doesn't know how to answer them. Doesn't know the answers himself.
He starts poking holes in the plastic grocery bags with his thumbnail. Takes another swig. Then a couple more-
“Boss!” Rita bobs into view with her tablet in hand, Cheeto dust on her bright purple jacket.
Since the police force scandal, Juno runs a small PI business from a shitty downtown office, which is where he met Rita. To this day Juno’s not sure how or when she wormed her way into a position he wasn't even offering. He’s also not sure when she sleeps. As far as he knows, the part time leasing office representative is her third job- she also does... something with computers.
“Rita,” swig, “I need a favor.” The shorter woman has already started talking, anticipating their usual back and forth.
“And I know I ain’t supposed to call you that here, but you are my boss, and I don’t think my other bosses-- wait, huh?” Confused by the change in script, Rita eyes the half-empty bottle of whisky in Juno’s hand. Her eyes jump to the clock.
“Mista Steel, are you okay?” One pro of hiring Rita: she’s very perceptive. Con of hiring Rita: way too perceptive.
“Fine. I need you to check someone out for me.” Rita’s eyes immediately light up.
“Oooooh, boss, another case already? Is it gonna be as exciting as the one with Mista Prince Julian? Are we gonna get to travel? I’ve always wanted to go somewhere exotic, like Maine, or Florida-” Juno cuts her off before she can get going.
“He was a dramatic politician with a cheating husband who ended up dead, Rita. Not everything is a Netflix rom-com.”
There's a bitterness in his tone that might not have been there a week ago, but the smaller woman doesn't notice. She's already sunk into her desk chair, head propped in both hands, sighing dreamily as she swivels back and forth. Time to bring out the big guns.
Juno reaches into his shopping bag and pulls out the chips, dangling them in front of Rita’s heart eyes. She snatches. He raises them just out of reach.
“Focus. It’s not a case. There’s this guy I need you to find. I’ve got name and place of employment. Can you do it or not?”
Rita pouts. “But boss,” she whines, “you don’t even need me for that, you can just Google his name like I showed you. I thought we were gonna do something exciting.” Juno pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah, well, Google isn’t gonna cut it this time, because,” I wasn’t really paying attention when you showed me that, “because, he’s highly secretive. And, that’s potential name. And potential place of employment, my source isn’t very,” he almost chokes on this last word, “reliable .”
The gears start turning. “Secretive… hang on Boss, is this another high-profiler? Have you been holding out on me?” She lowers her voice (not much). “Boss, this is about a case, right, you just can’t tell me because they might have tapped the phones!?”
What… who does she think they are? Juno drops his head into his hands to rub his temples. When Juno doesn't immediately contradict her, Rita continues in her stage whisper.
“Don’t worry Boss, Rita’s got your back! I’ll have this secretive criminal tracked down before they even know we’re on their case!”
“It’s not a case.”
“I’ll be as quiet as… as those monsters in The Quiet Place! Except they ain’t so quiet when they’re attacking people, but neither are we when we’ve got the bad guys cornered and we’re ready to take them out-”
Besides the recent political debacle with Julian and his missing husband (that one was a high-paying scrap tossed Juno’s way by an old friend), most of the cases he’s hired for are affair investigations and insurance fraud.
He’s certain neither he nor Rita have “taken anyone out” ever ... unless you count that time he tried to teach Rita to drive stick shift. Or the Hot Tub Debacle. But those were accidents.
Juno slings the bag of snacks onto her desk. “Just find out whatever you can about the guy, okay?”
“Fresh shrimp flavored?” Rita squeals, “Aw, you’re the best Mista Steel!” She digs into the large bag and talks around a mouthful of orange crumbs while Juno tries not to vomit in his mouth.
“Shipping ish ‘aking fore’er wi’ this crathy thirus thing goin’ gon,” she swallows, “speaking of, have you been watching the news Boss?”
“Every morning with my sunrise yoga. Listen Rita, I’ll check in with you tomorrow, okay?” Juno’s limbs are… heavy, suddenly. Maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s because he hasn’t slept well in that last, oh, ten years... or maybe it’s the weight of that single text, sitting in his phone for almost a week now. Looking at Rita, he thinks of telling her everything. Just spilling his guts right onto the scuffed linoleum floor.
The engagement. The text. The Craigslist ad. The man he’s supposed to be meeting tomorrow.
Rita’s still chattering on, and her voice cuts through the haze. “-but you never told me the name of Mister Criminal?” She happily shoves another handful of chips in her mouth. “Oooo, or is it so secret you need to write it down on a piece of paper and then I can read it and eat the paper-”
“Peter Ransom. Might’ve done a job for Vallas Vicky’s hotel recently.” That’s all he knows. “And he’s not a criminal Rita, he’s just a normal guy.”
Rita’s dialogue wanders around to closing borders and something about Italy, but Juno’s already moving towards the door (it shuts a bit harder than he intended). He doesn't know why he's so upset with Rita, when all she's done is try to cheer him up and offered her help. He makes his way back to the parking garage elevator. It smells like cotton candy vape and something vaguely mossy. A group of ragged kids is flying down the incline around the corner on penny boards.
Juno takes another swig of whiskey in front of the chrome doors and jams the elevator button about twenty times before he remembers.
Of course the fucking elevator is down for the weekend.
He wants to sit at the bottom of the stairwell and drink himself into oblivion. He want to wallow in this feeling for a moment, the feeling of the universe kicking him while he’s down.
Instead, he drags himself to the stairwell, drudges down the second floor hall, and practically collapses through the door.
An eager chittering greets him from the cage in the living room. “Hey, Smallfry.”
Diamond wouldn’t go near the ball of fluff (“It’s so dirty Juno,”) so when they moved in together eight months ago, the rabbit was a launching point for multiple arguments. Juno drops his grocery bag of Timothy hay and carrots by the cage, not bothering to stash it in the kitchen.
He pointedly doesn’t look in the smaller second bedroom that Diamond claimed as an office space. He doesn’t look at their shared bed either, because the sight of the rumpled sheets will just wrap around his ribcage and squeeze and squeeze until he can’t breathe again and everything is spinning-
Juno takes another swig and collapses on the couch. And then, because he wants to hate himself a bit, he thumbs through his phone to his fiancee’s most recent text. No matter how often Juno reads it, it never changes.
3:56AM: Diamond
Juno. I’ll forward my part of two month’s rent before the month is over. That should be long enough for you to find a temporary roommate, at least until the lease expires at the end of the year. Do what you’d like with the furniture.
Ex-fiancee.
***
Juno bolts upright, disoriented and confused. The decorative couch pillows left lines on his cheek, and he’s nursing the beginning of a monster headache. He gropes around for his phone. 7PM. It’s only been a few hours.
It feels like days. Months. Years.
Juno shivers. He left the door to the porch open, and a cool fall breeze is raising goosebumps on his arm. A nearby screen door slams, and heavy boots tread the balcony next door. “Hey piss-bucket, you been day drinking again?”
The green-haired nuisance next door is only loud when she chooses to be, so Juno knows she's hoping to stir him out for a cigarette or two. He wonders briefly when Buddy will be back. Vespa only gets this chatty when her partner is gone for long periods of time on work trips.
He toys with the idea of stepping out. Hey Vespa. How're the axe-throwing students? (She refuses to tell him what she does for work, so Juno assigns her a new job every night.)
She’ll respond with something like, Great. If your failed PI business finally tanks, we could always use some new targets.
Maybe if Juno gets drunk enough, he’ll tell her why he’s not planning on ever being sober again. Tell her that he’s such a fucked up human, his fiancee ghosted him three weeks before the wedding with no forwarding address. Over text.
She’ll have to laugh at that. It’s the goddamn joke of the century, and Juno’s the punchline.
He jumps violently when his phone starts ringing. “I know you can hear me, Steel,” Vespa sneers from her balcony.
Juno groans at the name lighting up his screen. He was wrong- he’s not the punchline. Fucking Mick Mercury is.
He almost sends it to voicemail, but at the last second he crosses to the balcony door, wrestles the screen closed as Vespa flips him off (“What, too busy getting wasted alone?”) and finally slides the door shut with a bang.
He leans against the wall by Smallfry’s cage.
“Whaddya want, Mick.” Juno’s brain struggles to keep up with the excited babble streaming out of the phone.
“Juno! That hit we got on your listing? The Peter guy? He messaged again!”
No one’s outright asked Juno, “Did your fiancee ghost you three weeks before your wedding over text?”, so he’s not lying to his friends, per se. He just isn’t ready for the inevitable string of I-told-you-so’s from Rita and Vespa, who have hated Diamond since the moment they waltzed into Juno’s life ten months ago and stomped all over his heart with their designer boots.
Mick, bless him, is blissfully ignorant of Juno’s recent string of unfortunate life events. He’s blissfully ignorant about most things, actually, but his unending stream of well-intentioned business ventures mean he knows how to advertise.
Juno isn’t sure who Craig is, or why he keeps lists of random shit online. All he knows is that he can't afford rent on his own, and Mick owed him a favor. A lot of favors.  
“Let me guess, he's found something better and he's not interested anymore.”
Fuck Diamond for putting him in this situation. Even if he deserves it. Even if he should’ve known better.  
“No, Juno! He says, and I quote,” he clears his throat and reads dramatically, “‘Juno, would it be possible to move our rendezvous sooner? Due to personal issues I find I’m in need of accommodations a bit sooner than expected, and your ad did say the room was available post haste.’” Mick drops his voice back to normal. “He wants to meet sooner!”
“Yeah, I got that Mick. ‘Post haste’?”
“I went for a 'trustworthy but not desperate' vibe, ya feel?” Juno is quickly wishing he read and approved the ad before Mick posted it across the internet in his name.
“All right Mick, whatever, sure, just let me know when you set it up for.” There’s a long, telling silence. “...Mick?”
“Okay so here’s the thing,” and with that, Juno knows the universe is screwing with him again, “I kinda already told him you could meet him tomorrow morning? At eight? And I gave him the address of the apartment?” His words get faster with each blow.
“You gave him the address? Goddamn it Mick, I thought we were meeting for coffee somewhere first so I could make sure he’s not some wackjob who wants to hack me to pieces and wear my skin as a suit!” Juno’s less worried about becoming a potential skin suit and more worried about waking up before noon with the spectacular hangover he’s got planned, but he’s not going to tell Mick that.
“Oh Juno, you’re so,” he chuckles, “you’re hilarious! Skin suit. Ha! You’ve been watching Law and Order with Rita again, haven’t you?” Juno resists the urge to slam his head into the wall and end it all.
“Anyways, get some sleep tonight and make a good impression on our friend tomorrow! I’ll pass him your number. And hey, maybe you could mention my new Hair-in-a-Can line? One good turn and all that. The recall went real smooth with the last one!”
“Mick, hang on, listen to me-” Juno’s cut off by a loud crash in the background.
“Sorry Juno, gotta go, the cans are a bit more,” a high-pitched scream, “uh, high-pressured than we expected, good luck pal, don’t be a stranger!”
The line goes dead. Perfect. Juno eyes Smallfry.
“Not like I have anything worth stealing, huh? Unless he deals in small, neurotic rabbits.” He restocks Smallfry’s hay before he’s too drunk to remember. Vespa's convinced that a hungry rabbit might be inclined to chew through the apartment wall and go on a carnivorous hunting spree.
“My last roommate had a rabbit. It got mad when their sister’s rabbit got a nicer cage, so it chewed straight through the bars and,” she snapped her fingers, “chomp chomp. Nothing left but rabbits feet.”
“Bullshit.”
“What are you Steel, the rabbit whisperer? Okay, maybe it was a gerbil! Whatever, same difference.”
Then he grabs an extra blanket from the hall closet (it really is starting to get cold), two bottles of liquor, and the TV remote and settles onto the couch for another long night.
***
The best mornings are the mornings Juno wakes up still drunk and pleasantly fuzzy. This is not one of those mornings.
His alarm is playing quite loudly, meaning it’s probably been going off for quite some time, and two things happen in quick succession as his brain painfully struggles towards consciousness.
He rolls over in bed to grab at his phone and realizes the bed is actually a narrow couch. He hits the floor with a heavy thump . He's blindly swiping at the floor trying to turn the damn thing off, ignoring the nagging anxiety that he’s forgotten something important... There!
Blearily, he reads the alarm label… “SOUR CREAM.” What?
There’s a sharp knock at his door. His tipsy brain stumbles around in tight circles. He set that alarm weeks ago while cooking… never bothered to re-label it.... that doesn’t explain…
A second set of knocking, more forceful this time, accompanied by a muffled voice.
It’s 7:50AM and he honestly can’t remember why he’s supposed to be waking up or who could possibly be at the door. No, wait… he vaguely remembers…
Mick. The phone call. The desperate roommate.
All at once, Juno’s certain that he doesn’t need a roommate. It’s only four months after all, and the idea of a complete stranger snooping around his stuff, asking questions about his life, getting tangled up with his job, makes Juno’s skin crawl. It’s not worth the money. He can figure that out… somehow.
It’s decided. He’ll ignore the knocking. This Peter guy will eventually give up, he’ll tell Mick to take down the advertisement, and he’ll figure something else out.
Then a noise outside the door makes his blood run cold. He knows that giggle.
“Sorry Mista Criminal, lemme just, ngh-hungh, try that key.” Rita, traitor secretary and ex-best friend, is using her spare key to let this man into Juno’s apartment. The stranger’s muffled voice leaks through the door. “Could you maybe...?”
There’s no time to think. Juno’s only on the second floor, there are bushes underneath the window. If he can get out quick enough, he might be able to avoid a meeting altogether-
“Thank you Rita, you are an absolute gem, and twice as beautiful if I might add...” the door clicks open.
Might’ve been able to. If he’d moved a little quicker.
“Hello! Juno, I presume?”
Fuck.
23 notes · View notes
amateurwordbender · 4 years
Text
I Would Now
Summary: Steve finds himself glad that she isn’t in the middle of target practice, though he knows logically that she could kill him a dozen different ways no matter what she has in her hands. Or with no hands. It probably says something about his sense of self-preservation that this fact makes him admire her more than fear her. 
(5 times Steve dared to ask Natasha a personal question +1 time when he didn’t have to)
also on ao3
thank you to @likearollingstony for beta-reading!
Steve doesn’t think that any of them really planned on moving in. But here they are, nearly a month after the media-dubbed Battle of New York, all six of them living—not permanently, of course—in Stark’s building. 
Dr. Banner was the first to take up Stark’s offer of temporary housing. It seems the two of them had hit it off remarkably well during the whole alien invasion thing, despite the fact that Banner was extra vulnerable to provocation and Stark was extra unable to stop himself from provoking everyone around him. Nevertheless, they’d formed a bond born of scientific jargon, and when Steve arrived less than two weeks after all of them had presumably parted ways, he found Bruce already here, with a personalized private lab that was at least triple the size of the one on the helicarrier. He’d welcomed Steve alongside their host with a small smile and a shrug, saying something about how he could do more good here than he did when he was hiding away in a remote corner of India. 
Steve had arrived with far more reluctance. He’d caught on to the fact that he wasn’t exactly Stark’s favorite person, and sure, fixing falling aircraft and fighting aliens from outer space together had eased that tension, but he still didn’t want to intrude. After SHIELD had thawed him out, they’d given him a place to stay, and it had been fine, for a while. Really, all Steve needed was four walls and a bed, and he definitely didn’t need any fancy 21st century flair. He had a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, full access to a plain but private gym, and he was grateful. 
But after the invasion, something changed. The space was still physically comfortable; that wasn’t the problem. It was just—he’d grown up in the heart of Brooklyn, raised in the bustle of life that only came from being surrounded by people. And his SHIELD-issued quarters were the definition of isolation—likely on purpose to give him time to acclimatize and settle in. But once he really did start to adjust to the new era, to get used to the hollow ache of loss in his chest for Bucky and Peggy that would always be there, once he’d found a purpose in a world that had changed so much yet still needed him to fight, he found himself missing that liveliness. He missed people.
At first, he tried finding housing in Brooklyn again. That quickly became a bust. Prices were steep, modern real estate gave him headaches, and he really didn’t have anonymity anymore. He wanted to be living beside people, not swamped by fans. So he called someone who he knew wouldn’t treat him like a celebrity.
Stark had been surprisingly gracious about the whole thing. He hadn’t asked questions, only said to give him a few days, and when Steve showed up in the Tower lobby with his few personal belongings in a duffel, Stark had already prepared an entire floor for him. It was, as expected, far more extravagant than the one from SHIELD, but he (or perhaps Ms. Potts) seemed to have exercised a great deal of restraint, and Steve’s apartment had simple enough furnishings that he wasn’t uncomfortable. Tony had even included helpful printed instructions by every piece of complicated tech, and Steve had a feeling they weren’t even meant to be entirely mocking. 
Barton and Romanoff joined them shortly afterwards, inseparable as they’d been since reuniting on the helicarrier. They’d each been given their own floors too, but from what Steve could tell, they both spent those first few nights holed up on Romanoff’s. Not that it was any of his business. 
One night, he overheard her explaining to Tony that Clint needed to recover away from SHIELD, to be around people who didn’t constantly watch him like he was going to break or turn on them again. Apparently SHIELD agents weren’t as good at hiding their thoughts as they should’ve been—or maybe Barton was just too good at detecting them. In any case, Steve made sure that he just treated Barton like a normal human being and didn’t try to talk about any of the mind control business. It didn’t occur to him until later that Romanoff had probably allowed him to overhear her for that very reason.
Nobody expected the Norse god of thunder to stay in the—lavish, yes, but nonetheless very human—apartments that Stark offered. The first time, he’d arrived to check in and update them on the Loki situation. The second, it was something vague about being in the area. Then Thor stopped bothering to come up with excuses. Overnight visits increased in frequency, and he even brought his badass astrophysicist girlfriend on occasion. 
Now, they’ve settled into something of a routine. Steve’s starting to get used to this motley crew of roommates—it isn’t uncommon for him to find Bruce sitting by the breakfast bar of the communal kitchen with a tablet in hand, or to spend nights on the weekends laughing as Tony and Thor engage in some kind of drinking contest that the god is always, always going to win. He’s even started to bump into Clint on morning jogs when the weather forces him to run indoors, in one of those unbelievably decked out gyms downstairs. 
It really hits him one Saturday afternoon, as he’s lounging on the top floor of the Tower—recently repaired and redecorated after it was destroyed by the invasion. There’s nothing unusual going on. Steve’s on the couch, capturing the view on a sketchpad that he found propped by his door with his name on it one day. Bruce and Tony are over by the bar, gesturing at one of those floating screens and debating something Steve isn’t going to try to follow. Thor is sitting on the floor with his back resting against the couch, munching on an impressive sandwich and gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows. Even Clint is sitting a few feet away, busy fiddling with a newly enhanced quiver that Tony modified for him. A breeze ripples in from one of the windows JARVIS opened, and Steve realizes with a mild start that it’s the first time he’s truly felt at ease since he woke up in the 21st century.
They’re all getting along more smoothly. Steve would call his fellow Avengers acquaintances, by now. Certainly colleagues who are friendly with one another and happen to live together. But even though it’s getting easier—and they’re not grating against each other’s nerves as much anymore, and maybe they even enjoy each other’s company—there’s still something missing. They’re not exactly a team yet. Steve puts down his pencil, looking around with a frown. Well, how can they be a team, when one of their members is never around? It’s the one thing that hasn’t changed. 
“Hey, Barton.” The man glances up from a twisted metal arrowhead, cocking an eyebrow. Steve keeps his voice casual, though he’s certain Clint will be able to sense the undercurrent of hesitancy anyway. “Where’s Romanoff?”
“Nat? She’s in the main gym.” Clint flips the arrowhead over, index finger tracing a groove in the metal. “Why, do you want to call an official team meeting, Cap?” His mouth has a sarcastic twinge to it that has been appearing more and more frequently as he’s recovered.
“No, nothing. Just wondering.” Steve returns to his sketchpad, trying to put the matter out of his thoughts. If Natasha doesn’t want to spend her time around them, he highly doubts he can change her mind. 
But what if something’s going on? Steve had thought she’d started to warm up to him during the battle, and he remembers genuinely enjoying fighting by her side—as much as anyone can enjoy fighting for their life and all of New York. Maybe she just needs more time to get used to them all. And if something really is going on, he’s sure that Clint will help her with it. 
Still, it just doesn’t sit right with Steve to not check in when she’s pulled back so suddenly from the rest of them. Because she has to be pulling back on purpose. They’re all living in the same building, for crying out loud. And sure, it’s a big building, and she could be staying on her own floor most of the time, but she must be using the gyms, and Steve is down there all the time, doing his therapeutic punching. Or how about when she leaves the Tower? She’s still employed with SHIELD even if Clint isn’t as active with them anymore—she has to leave for work sometimes, right? It just doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Steve almost never runs into her. 
With an internal sigh, he closes his sketchpad and gets up. He knows Clint is watching him leave out of the corner of his eye, but the man doesn’t say anything, so Steve takes it as a hopeful sign that he’s not going to be murdered in his sleep for this.
“JARVIS, take me to the main gym, please,” Steve says as he steps into one of the elevators. It does function manually, too, but with 93 floors to keep track of, it’s easier to just let the AI deal with it.
“Certainly.”
The elevator dings pleasantly as he reaches one of the two residential floors dedicated to fitness—or training, really, even if Tony insists they’re not soldiers. No normal fitness center has a virtual combat simulator or an entire room for archery.
Steve makes his way to the one that could be deemed normal for the average billionaire. Romanoff is at one of the weight lifting machines. Steve finds himself glad that she isn’t in the middle of target practice, though he knows logically that she could kill him a dozen different ways no matter what she has in her hands. Or with no hands. It probably says something about his sense of self-preservation that this fact makes him admire her more than fear her.
Romanoff gives him a nod as he walks in. She looks like she’s been expecting him to arrive; either she and Barton have some telepathic link, or she somehow sensed his footsteps past the soundproof door. Both seem pretty likely, in all honesty. 
“Mind if I join you?”
She finishes a rep and makes a magnanimous gesture. “Not at all. I’m nearly finished, anyway.” She doesn’t seem to be lying or even mildly uncomfortable, but Steve knows better than to trust appearances around the Black Widow. 
“Thanks.” He grabs a pair of boxing gloves, absently fitting them on. He doesn’t realize he’s frowning until she speaks again. 
“Something the matter, Rogers?” There’s an innocent note in her voice. Steve lets out a quiet breath, looking down at his hands. He wasn’t planning on coming out and saying it, but, well, if she’s going to ask him directly… 
“Why are you so determined to avoid the rest of us?” He looks up to gauge her reaction. Her expression hasn’t changed, save for an almost amused tilt to her lips.
“Not sure what you mean.” 
“Oh, come on, don’t do that with me,” Steve mutters before he can stop himself. “Might be naive, but I’m not completely stupid.” 
At that, Natasha does give him a grin. “Relax, old man.” Steve blinks. The comment seems more suited to Tony or Clint, and Steve vaguely registers that she could be using humor as a defense mechanism. But somehow that seems too obvious a tactic for her. “Clint and I are leaving soon, that’s all.” She releases her grip on the machine’s handles and stands. “There’s no real point in mingling if I’m not going to stay.”
“So you’re sparing our feelings?”
“Something like that.”
Steve doubts that’s the whole truth, but there does seem to be a hint of it in her words. He chews on the inside of his cheek as Romanoff walks past him, debating if he should push any further. She’s almost out the door.
“Have you actually talked to Clint about it? Because—he seems to want to stay.” He risks glancing over and sees her pause. But he might have imagined it, because she’s gone a moment later. Steve sighs. Well, that conversation didn’t go anywhere.
The next morning, Steve wakes a little later than his usual rising-with-the-sun habit. It’s been happening more often these days, and honestly, it’s kind of nice that some of his military-ingrained patterns are slipping away. He makes his way down to the communal kitchen to get breakfast and a daily news update from Bruce, but stops short as the elevator doors open. A shock of red catches his eye from the living area.
Natasha’s there, sitting primly in Clint’s lap on the couch, sipping from a tacky holiday mug. Her hair’s pulled up into a loose bun, and she’s dressed more casually than he’s ever seen her. Thor’s lounging on the other end of the couch, laughing at whatever they’re talking about.
She glances up as Steve enters. Her posture remains neutral but she holds his gaze, as if challenging him to say something. Steve looks away first, smiling to himself as he heads over to grab his own cup of coffee.
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daredevile · 4 years
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Illuminate [2/5]
Summary: James Barnes, an upcoming artist in Brooklyn lives a routine life. It’s all sunshine and rainbows until you show up at his building, hesitantly becoming his roommate.
Warnings: Swearing :)
A/N: Well, I haven’t updated this in a loong time. And we’re way past summer so @ruckystarnes, hope you’ll still accept this for your summer of aus challenge lol. So, here you go @halfpasttheworst, I know you’ve been the most excited to read the next chapter, this one’s for you :) [This was in my drafts for the last few months and I never finished it...] Anway, hope you like it!!
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The sunlight created a warm glow around your figure, its intensity slowly pulling you from sleep. You yawned, rubbing your eyes while adjusting to the sudden burst of light. It was quiet, peaceful even, no pitter-patter of footsteps, just pin drop silence. Milton brushed past your feet, his tiny paws gliding on the floor. You walked into the living room, noticing his mug placed on the counter, calling out his name - to your delight - received no reply. You grabbed a pan and began making breakfast. The growling sensation in your stomach grew minute by minute as you added the ingredients. Relishing the calm atmosphere, you sat in the balcony, watching cars and people go.
“Hey, Buck,” A man burst through the door, scaring the living daylights out of you. He noticed your alarmed expression and raised one hand to calm you down, “Oh, sorry. You must be Y/N, I’m Steve,” He dropped a cardboard box on the counter before shaking your hand.
“It’s fine, James does that a lot,” You replied, distracted by the softness of his hand. Steve’s eyebrows shot up before smirking at the mention of his friend’s first name.
Steve walked towards the couch, you appreciated his casual, friendly manner. Wondering how Steve could have a friend like James, someone who’s the exact opposite of him. 
“So, what made you move in here? James is usually picky about roommates,” Steve stared at you intently, his blue eyes speckled with flecks of green and gold. They were mesmerising. 
“Believe me, I can tell,” You rolled your eyes, recalling yesterday’s events, “But, I was desperate and this was my only option,” 
Steve chuckled at your annoyance, “He’s not so bad once you get to know him,” 
It was silent for a moment before you spoke, “Can I ask you something?” He nodded, “What’s wrong with him?” Steve remained silent, his body tensed slightly. “Don’t get me wrong, the guy’s artsy, funny and all - but’s what’s his deal? He seems like someone who’d have lines of women throwing themselves at him.”
“The thing is... he has commitment issues. Almost everything in his life is temporary - he doesn’t like getting attached. He pushes it away before he has a chance to get hurt, it’s his coping mechanism,” Steve’s focus shifted to the cardboard box, “He wasn’t always like this,”
“Let me guess, Lara?” You asked, recalling Steve’s voicemail. He sighed at the mention of her name.
“They were good friends, they understood each other. She took care of him, he did the same for her. They were pretty much lost in their own world. He was convinced she was the one, but...” Steve shook his head, “They fought, argued and soon, they were set on different things. He knew it was coming to an end, didn’t accept it though. I used to find him completely wasted on the couch, destroying the apartment. There was nothing I could do to help him, he just never listened. One day, she left. No explanations,” 
You stared at the ground, catching the burst of colour on his paintings in the corner of your eye. No wonder he was closed off and blunt. It was silent again, neither you or Steve could find the words to talk.
“Oh good, you guys are done talking about me,” James pushed himself off the wall, “Gotta say, my legs were starting to cramp,” His eyes trailed the box, his expression was firm, “Thanks for dropping it off, Steve. I’ll see you later,”
“But—“
“I’ll see you later,” The tone of his voice was set, Steve sighed before standing up. He walked past his friend, patting his shoulder.
You scoffed at his expression, mumbling under your breath while his back was facing you.
“Listen, I need the house to myself. So keep yourself busy for the next 6 to 10 hours. Cool? Cool.”
“What? No!” You exclaimed, he paid no attention to your refusal, continuing to set up his easel.
“Wasn’t a request,” He replied, strands of his dark hair falling to the front of his face as he leant forward.
“Fine, you have problems. News flash buddy so does everyone else. If you think you’re tricking me into feeling sorry for you, you’ve got a long way to go.” You grabbed his arm, annoyed at his lack of attention towards you. He eyed your hands, before sighing. 
“You’re gonna stand there? That’s where my easel goes,” He chuckled at your expression, receiving a glare, “It was a joke,” He raised his hands up in defence.
Swirling the hot chocolate in your mug, you stepped out onto the balcony, listening to the sounds of the bustling city. For a few minutes, your eyes were absentmindedly set on the traffic below, until a sudden burst of music came from inside.
“Seriously?”
“What?” He asked innocently.
“I didn’t realise we were back in 1942. Dude, this music is old. Older than you even!”
A fake-laugh at your comment, “This is a classic, and it’s much better than the shit on the radio these days. Plus, it’s your fault, I told you to leave.” He said, waving the paintbrush at you. “Dude,” He resumes dabbing paint on the palette, furiously mixing colours on the wood. 
“Are you done?”
“Sorry?” You snap out of your daydream.
“Are you done ogling me from afar? If not, sorry to disturb, I know I can be devastatingly handsome. But, it’s distracting.” James sends a smug smile your way, you shook your head to cover the red on your cheeks.
“You wish.” Milton brushed against your foot, satisfaction written over his features.“So, what are you painting?”
--------
“Let me get this straight, he kicked you out of your own house.” Natasha raised her eyebrow, unable to process what just happened.
“Yes, but no, he just needed some space.” You shrugged, checking the time on your phone. Only 5 hours more.
“Oh please Y/N, he’s being a jerk. I can’t believe you’re actually listening to him!” She exclaimed, motioning Wanda to listen. “Aren’t you the same girl who stood in line at Taco Bell to get those free tacos even though there were two hundred people in front?”
“Whatever. Look, it doesn’t matter, I didn’t want to be there anyway.” 
“Now you’re defending up for him. See! This is exactly what Wanda said would happen.” 
“What?” You grabbed the packet of Doritos from the table, a smirk appeared on Natasha’s face.
“You like him.”
To be continued
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trex98dreams · 4 years
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Chapter 11: Housemates
Jackson & Youngji's Apartment.
Y/N’s POV
That night, I told the guys about what happened. I told them I've forgive Jungkook and now that we're okay, I ask Hanbin to take him a tour around since he's new. The guys were kinda worried since I've been out for a few hours and they're afraid that i might get kidnapped by him.
Silly them.
The weird thing is, Jimin doesn't even say a word about him. Maybe because he didn't knew about Jungkook's past with mine. I think he's just upset that i never told him about Jungkook before.
I cleared my throat. "Hey, urmm you okay?" I ask. He bit his lip, an upset pouts were displayed.
"So.. that's Kookie? It's just that.. i don't understand why you never told me about you and him, we're best friends right?" He said.
See? Told you he's upset.
I let out a huge sigh. "Jimin, he's not somebody i should brag about at you, i don't want to look pathetic since you already know, most guy that i had a crush on never ends up with me, and i met him even before you.." i trailed.
"You're not pathetic Y/N. Stop saying that, you know i would never think of you like that. Besides, what's the difference if I know? That doesn't explain why you never told me about him," Jimin said and I stayed quiet.
I zoned out, thinking about those times where he did just as same by hiding his relationship from me. But that was until he panickly interrupt.
"Wait! I'm sorry Y/N. I- i shouldn't say that. We've been in this situation before and i don't want to lose our friendship again. I-i understand if you didn't want to tell me about it.." he rambles. I smile, knowing that he's afraid that he blew off our friendship again.
I look at him and replied, " It's fine, you're just worried and curious, i get that. Thank you for worrying about me, Jimin." I told him and his frown turns into a smile.
I went to the kitchen to help Youngji and Dahyun, leaving Jimin to play video games with Hanbin and Jackson when my phone vibrated and as i open, I smiled, thinking how on earth today could get any better.
1 New Text Message.
From: Oppa♡
Jagi.. how are you doing today? You ok? I miss you so much. Just asking how you were since i'm dying here without you. Call me, I love you sweetheart. xoxo.
...
5 days later.
"What? What do you mean i can't stay there anymore?" Jimin asks panickly. Hanbin massage his temple.
"Listen Jimin, I have told the fraternity, I even help you make a report to the student council so you can stay there but there's no more room! The internship students are back early and there's no way those douche bags are gonna let newbies like you stay at their place," Hanbin stated.
This was new. I have heard about the stupid fraternity Hanbin was at, the only kind one there was Hanbin and his roommate. Jimin was lucky that he got a dorm when he arrives but now that the internship students are back a month early, he's going to be kicked out.
"Ok.. when can i start packing my stuff?" Jimin asks sadly.
"Urm.. i hate to break it to you but they want it to be done by tomorrow morning, Sorry Jimin. I can't do anything, they'll kicked me out too if i react overly, seniors," Hanbin scoffs.
"What about other frats? Not even a single dorm available?" Jackson asks Hanbin. He shook his head.
"I tried looking, asking a few students but they aren't any available right now, so, sorry bro," Hanbin adds.
Jimin let out a huge sigh. He must felt terrible. "Hey, we can let you stay at our place before you can find a new dorm, if that's okay with you?" Youngji offered him but i can see that Jackson strongly rejects those idea.
Jimin shook his head. "Thanks for the offer, But no thank you. You guys are like a married couple. I can't live with a married couple." He joked but i knew his mind was everywhere.
I didn't say anything. It's quiet for about 5 minutes before suddenly Dahyun turns to look at me.
"What?" I ask.
"Y/N, You said you need more housemates right? is that room in your apartment still available?" She asks. I furrowed my eyebrows.
"Yeah.. and what are you implying now Dahyun..?" I ask her.
She giggles. "My idea is, maybe you can share your apartment with Jimin! He needs a place to stay and you need more money to pay the rent. Perfect!" Dahyun suggest.
I think back for a moment. Me and Jimin had just re-build our friendship, it'll definitely be a bit awkward living together with a former best friend. Plus, Seokjin wouldn't like this idea of having a guy housemate but neither less, i can't let Seokjin keep helping me pay the rent when i'm the one whose always here. Poor him.
I think for a minute while Jimin look at me with his puppy eyes.
"Well? Can I Y/N?" He kinda pleads. Maybe it's not so bad since Jimin is loaded and he can totally pay half of the rent without a problem.
I made my decision. "Urmm... ok. But you have to follow my rules because one, I own the place. Besides Seok-"
"Yay! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I promise i'll follow whatever rules you're setting. And don't worry i'll be cleaning if you want me to do it! Thank you so much Y/N!" He cuts me happily.
I shrugged and the guys laugh while Youngji glares at me. As they were talking, Youngji scoots closer, "You sure this is a good idea? Letting him stay with you? What would Seokjin say?"
I look at Youngji.
"Yeah. Besides, he doesn't have a place to stay. I can't let him sleep on the streets right?"
...
The Next Day.
That evening after class, I told Jimin to wait in front of his old dorm so i can pick him up. He doesn't really know where to wait here, so he gladly agreed and as i arrived there, he's already in front of the doorstep, chatting with Hanbin excitedly.
I approach them. "Took you so long, where you've been? Jimin is too excited he basically can't wait to get the hell out of here," Hanbin stated while Jimin looks at me cheerfully.
"Sorry, There's traffic and my class just finish. You ready to go?" I ask Jimin. He nods, pulling the strap on his bag pack and begin to pick up two large boxes in his hand. I saw his suitcase and he tried to reach it but his hands are full, so i offer to help.
"I'll bring it Jimin," i told him. He shook his head, refusing the idea.
"No, it's okay-" but i cut him by pulling the suitcase towards the car and he follows me defeatedly. We begin to load his stuff in the back of the car when i notice someone standing behind us. I turn around to look at who it is, and it was someone i didn't expect to see.
Jungkook.
"Hi Y/N... urm.. how are you?" He asks me nervously. I smiled back at him since we're in good terms now. "I've been doing fine, thank you for asking," I replied softly.
Jimin glares at him sharply but didn't say anything, afraid that if he did, i might get at angry at him for scolding Jungkook because of the past. Jungkook stood there awkwardly, feeling a bit intimidated by Jimin's gaze.
"That's great. I rarely see you around after our... meeting a week ago and i just wanted to know how you've been doing. So, I'll get going now.. nice meeting you both again." He says and turn around to leave.
That's when i notice, he was carrying a duffel bag, one hand pulling a suitcase and behind him was his bag pack. Curiosity got the best of me.
"Hey Jungkook, where are you going? Why do you bring so many bags with you?" I asks. He stops on his track to answer me.
"Oh this.. actually, i was kicked out of my temporary dorm, the fraternity seniors are back, and they won't allow me to stay there even for a day before i find another dorm to stay. So, heh, here I am." He said shyly.
"You too? I though i was the only one!" Jimin exclaimed behind me.
Wow, drastic change Park Jimin.
Jungkook smiles sadly. "So where are you going to stay now? You can't sleep on the street, the nearest motel here is about 15 kilometre's away, and the last bus to go there is two hours ago. Where are you going?" I ask him feeling sorry for the guy. What a shitty seniors they have.
"Urm.. yeah. I'm not sure either. I don't really know anybody here beside you guys. It's okay Y/N, you don't need to worry about me, I'll figure something out. Right now, i need to stay positive. So, thanks for worrying about me," he replied but i looked at him pitifully.
Although Jimin doesn't grew fond of him, he too looks sorry for the guy. Seeing him helpless makes me wonder what will happen to him, it'll probably be hard because he had to settle in this new place, alone.
Right then, my light bulb of idea brights up. Why? Maybe the pity feelings occurs in some part of my mind.
"Hey Jungkook," I called him. He turns around and look at me once more.
"I can help you."
...
Y/N’s Apartment. 8:30 PM.
The elevator door open as we arrived at the 2nd floor which is where my apartment is.
"This is not a good idea Y/N, not a good idea." Jimin whispers as i unlock the door to my apartment.
I choose to ignore him. First, this is my apartment and i can do anything i want to. As the door flung open, I put my shoes on the rack and welcome them in. Them? Oh I forgot, by 'them,' I mean both Jimin and Jungkook.
Yup, I decided to help Jungkook by letting him be the second renter because one, i feel sorry for him and two, there's no dorm available for his stay here. I can't let him sleep at a motel. At first, Jimin strongly rejects the idea, but after we had a small talk, he had to accept him, want it or not. I told him, with Jungkook as an additional, the rent payment will be much more lesser and there's so many room, so Jimin gives up.
And that's how we end up here.
Jimin and Jungkook's gaze were all over the house, first landing on the ceiling, then on the couch and then, the decorations. They enter the house with their stuff and I closed the door.
"Welcome to my apartment, or should I say, Our's now. Sorry if it's not what you guys are expecting," I said and went to the kitchen, picking up a few bowls and put it into the sink, all because i haven't wash it last night. When i looked back at them, Jimin was smiling while Jungkook's eyes were set on the video game.
"What do you mean? This is more than what i expected! I love it Y/N," Jimin said and i smiled at him, glad that he likes it. Jungkook also look at me contently. "Yeah, This place is very nice Y/N. Thank you for letting me stay here," Jungkook stated. I nod my head.
"Glad you guys like it, here i'll be showing up your rooms." I told them and they each pull their bags and suitcase, following my steps.
The living room was in the center and so as the kitchen. So, each wing consist of two bedrooms and one bathroom at each end of the hall. I went to the right wing first, where my bedroom is.
"There are four room in this house, and this one here is my bedroom. So, this is the no enter zone get that?" I explain to them as i showed my room on the right side. They chuckled softly while following their tour guide. Then, i showed them the second room which was across mine.
"That's the bathroom. This is the second room. So, if you guys are interested, help yourself." I said but before i even got the chance to finish, both men quickly went inside shoving each other's shoulder away.
"I'm here first," Jimin told Jungkook sternly.
"What? No way. I saw the room first," Jungkook claimed. They were almost pulling each other's hair before i stopped them.
"Guys, there are other room, you know that right? no need to fight okay, aish, are you guys in kindergarten or something?" I laugh at their silliness. They stopped but still give death glares to each other.
"Let's play rock-paper-scissor to determine who gets the room," Jimin propose. Jungkook, feeling a bit challenged, smirks.
"Game on," he replied.
I shook my head at these silly guys and went to the third room which is on the left wing.
"Come here when one of you loses!" I yelled, laughing softly before i open the door to the third room. A few minutes later, someone knock and enters the room. It was Jungkook. A gloomy expression plastered on his adorable face.
"So you loses huh?" I asks. He nods, pouting a bit. I giggled and showed him the room while comforting him.
"So this is your room, and across yours are the 4th room which is the last one. Oh, and the bathroom are just as the same as on the right wing. It's in the end of this hall which is exactly on the right side of your bedroom. Don't worry, i wash the bathroom each once a week, it's still clean if that's what you're wondering," I told him and he let out a laugh.
He look at me deep in the eyes while putting his stuff down.
"Thanks Y/N. This is too much of a help. Thank you so, so much, i don't know how to repay you," he thanked me and i give him a thumbs up.
After the tours's over, i told them i'll make two more spare keys tomorrow and hand it to them. I also explain to them about the payment and the bills on how to pay and when to pay, basic things about the house over dinner.
I admit, the dinner was a bit awkward and quiet, but we're OK i guess. Still, no one mention about the past. We only exchange a few words about the apartment's stuff but surprisingly, the conversation turns out great. After we finish, they thanked me for the good food and help me clean the tables. Jimin and Jungkook had learn to befriend each other and i was glad about it.
"Hey guys, I'm going to sleep now, you guys should get some rest too, good night," I told them as i went to my bedroom. They smile at me, both thanking me for today, and saying goodnight to me.
"Good night Y/N," I heard before drifting into a sweet slumber.
...
A week later.
I had texted Seokjin saying i have new housemates now, so he wouldn't worry about my allowance money anymore. He texted me back saying he's happy about it and I should cook my amazing bibimbap for them. My boyfriend is so supportive.
Today, we decided to eat at Mochi's since we haven't gone there for a long time. The whole gang was there and we were waiting for Jimin and Jungkook at the park to go celebrate Dahyun's birthday since Youngji and Jackson insist on me bringing them along.
"I'm thirsty, I'm going to buy some water at the machine, who wants some?" I offer while checking my purse. They all shook their head and went back to whatever they're doing. Youngji offers to follow me and I gladly accepts.
We were walking happily when she asks me, "You seems happy Y/N? How are the boys? They didn't do anything weird right?"
I giggled, shaking my head.
"Nah, they're good. They follow every rule i made, even the stupid one about the curtain," Youngji laugh hardly at those words.
"Good to know." She told me.
I was lining behind the machine because in front of me, stood a man who was buying some tinned coke. His back was facing me so i didn't get to see his face.
He push the button repeatedly but his drink didn't came out. I feel a bit sorry since I knew the machine is always like this so i try to help him. I went in front and spam the machine a bit hard. Luckily, his drink came out and he bent down to pick them.
"It just needs a little spam," I stated and Youngji giggles behind me. The man softly chuckled and stood up to thank me.
I look into his eyes as the time seems to stops,
The surroundings seems to cold as he stares at me in a wave of shock.
I wish i haven't help him earlier, I have wish to never see his disgusting face in this world anymore yet here he is, standing a breath away from me.
This is everyone, the worst guy that I used to have a crush on.
The one I hate the most.
The one, I'm too embarrassed to say, I too have fall for his stupid game.
Kim Taehyung.
🍡
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High Fidelity - My Top 5 Heartbreaks
Have you watched High Fidelity on Hulu? I just started but almost instantly my mind shifted from getting to know a character to thinking about my own. My top five heartbreaks. In chronological order.
1. My College Love
If you were fortunate to experience falling in love in college as you're also exploring true freedom, you might identify with this one. Football player. Stole my heart quickly. But, the heartbreak that comes with young love, immaturity, college environment is harsh. On again, off again. He cheats. He comes back. At some point, after 4+ years, my heart couldn't take anymore. Ironically enough, at this same time, his realized the err of his ways and proposed a lifelong commitment. Today, I'm still unsure if it was the infidelity or the absolute necessity to say no that caused the biggest heartbreak. This guy will always have a place in my heart. I'll always wonder what if.
2. The Real World, A Real Relationship
This one started off fun, but without commitment. As the relationship progressed, the more in awe of him I found myself. He was the type of guy who made going to the grocery store fun. He always made me feel like the prettiest girl in the room. He always made me feel like I was his future. Eating out, we always looked at elderly couples trying to determine which one would be us. In the end, 5+ years later, he decided he didn't want a future with me. His words were "I could marry with you and be happy. But, I can't say I cannot live without marrying you, and that's the kind of love I want." He ended up cheating and marrying the girl less than 6 months later. He might be the one ex that I would welcome back into my life without a second thought. He was that guy for me.
3. The Not Supposed to be a Relationship-Relationship
Coming hard off a breakup, still broken-hearted, my new roommate slyly managed to get a coworker and myself alone together late one night. We began seeing each other casually when a routine surgery went wrong, leaving me hospitalized for 2 months. Our relationship was naturally forced into serious mode when he decided to visit me in the hospital, initiating meeting the parents, and a lot of emotional attachment through my sickness and his care. Looking back, this relationship likely lasted 4.5 years longer than it ever should have. We were not meant to be together. But between my desperation for forever and his need to be repaid for his devotion through my hard times, we gave it a rocky go. In the end, I wasn't who he wanted me to be on paper. My family didn't have history he wanted them to have. I didn't dress in high enough fashion to look impressive on his arm. While I was devastated in the moment, and for longer than I care to admit, looking back, the heartbreak was the fear of starting over, of being alone, of not knowing who I was outside of the relationship.
4. The Best Friend Betrayal
I am a firm believer you do not know real heartbreak until you've been betrayed by a best friend. She was my college roommate. We dated roommates. We told each other everything. We talked constantly. We laughed even more. She was always there for me. Or so I thought. After my last heartbreak, I built a new life from scratch. I met new friends. I went out more- ok a lot more. I found my own place. And, when I was looking, I met a guy at a bar on SPD. I wasn't interested initially. I remember accidentally writing my ex's phone number on his hand and having to scribble it out and start over. I remember distinctly telling him I wasn't taller than him so it wasn't going to work. But, his persistence paid off. I went out with him and shortly after we were spending our weekends together. Until all the sudden we weren't. Never, in a million years, would I have guessed it was because he was sleeping with my best friend. She was there for me as I cried over his sudden distance. She encouraged ridiculous "stalking" to see where he was, if he'd found someone else. I cannot imagine how this excited her but the idea of beating me, feeling better, prettier, winning, getting the guy got her off. It was months later that I figured out the truth. It was via a text conversation with her. Nothing was ever said but it was like instantly, I knew. And she knew I knew (insert Friends gif, they don't know that we know that they know). We never spoke again. She divorced her current husband, married this guy, and is gaslighting everyone else now. What's crazy is, I still miss her like crazy. I still miss our friendship. But, I know, I could never face her again. Much less go back to the way things were.
5. The Greatest Love Story This Town Has Ever Seen
My high school crush. We weren't sweethearts. We never dated. It was forbidden by his mother who had no idea just how innocent I was but knew I was older. We passed notes in the hallway. I still have them. Sitting inside my nightstand drawer. He was cocky. And flirty. And smitten. Fast forward 22 years and he finds me on IG. He was married at the time so we only had casual conversations about what we were up to now, laughing about the past, talking about what we wanted out of life. A few months passed by before we spoke again. But this time, he reached out for support as his wife was leaving him. He eventually came to visit me. We texted and/or talked all day every day. The good morning texts. The sweet dreams texts. The promises of I want to be the last guy to ever kiss you. And that first kiss. I don't know if it was my hiatus from dating, feelings of high school me, or chemistry, but if i had a groundhog day, I'd want it to be that day. Nothing special about the day. We met up to go see my cousin who'd just had bypass surgery. He knew him well from their son's baseball teams. But when I got in his truck, I was mid-sentence and fireworks. He was still cocky. And flirty. And I liked it. I trusted him. I believed him. I had been honest about past heartbreaks, fears of opening up, that I had no desire to be temporary. I think he'd have signed in blood that I could trust him. That I would never be temporary. But here we are. Almost three years later. He's moved on. My heart still replays his words. The nostalgia of a high school crush and dreams of being the greatest love story crushed yet still somehow lingering.
Have you thought about your Top Five Heartbreaks? Do you have five? Or, were you lucky enough to marry your first love and live happily ever after?
I'm still searching for my forever. I'm still holding on to false hopes of something that was likely never there. But the one thing I can live with is in all of these relationship, I was loyal. Faithful. All in.
And, I may be the common denominator in these relationship, but I know that I did not fall short of loving wholeheartedly. And well, that's something.
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megamanxfanfics · 4 years
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The Hiatus
I’ve been dreading the idea of writing this, but the fact that I am at all means that I’m coming out of my funk and am looking onward towards moving ahead, and hopefully forward, once again with this project in the future.  I’m afraid I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.  Wouldn’t you know it?  Life got in the way again.
It seems that every new Writing Season, something always happens to me to shift things around and make it near-impossible towards writing Mega Man X.  I’ve been mulling over how to talk about all of this without getting too personal on an MMX blog.  But the fact is that what happened to me is very personal.  And very complicated.  So I’m gonna just go for it, while keeping it in simplest terms.
I broke up with my girlfriend last month.  Which means I had to move out...
I can say that with dry eyes now, and without a heavy heart.  It was a smooth break.  Very mutual.  We both knew it needed to happen, because we weren’t happy at all. (Always doing our own thing, making separate plans... etc. etc. etc.)
But back to this.
I recall back in November I had posted a Writing Exercise - What X Remembers, in an attempt to kick-start my motivation for this project.  Needless to say, it didn’t work.  I can tell you right now that I wasn’t exactly busy.  I was burnt out.
Yes, I’ve been wanting and wanting to start this thing, but in the planning phases, I’ve also been afraid of it.  Because I don’t want to mess this up. Or it’s too confusing, or disjointed.  And I know how I get.  I harp and harp on things until it’s perfect, or feels good enough to present.  And... frankly, I was in a position where things were so bad at home, that I just wanted to spend time with her to keep everyone happy.
I would also take advantage of ‘Me-Time Monday’ as I used to call it when she’d be out doing her own thing.  Except my creative outlet for those days would be working on music, which is my first passion.  I’ve taken on a massive project of adding vocals to a lot of old music I had written, and even now I’m maybe half-way through that.  And there were definitely certain Mondays that I wasn’t even in the mood for music...  I certainly wasn’t in the mood for X.
I was depressed...  She was depressed...  But why?
Well... this blog, isn’t exactly about that.  But what I can tell you is that we were just going through this mundane routine every day.  Even our weekends became routine.  And neither of us were fun to be around any more.  Even upon realizing it and trying to do different things.  ‘Go out on a date, Dummy!’  That’s what I would tell myself.  But even nice events didn’t work.  She’d complain about being tired, or full or we wouldn’t talk at all.  That... was the extent of our interactions.  Outside of that, we’d just watch our shows, which would entertain us, and make us laugh.  We’d hold hands and stuff, sometimes.  But even then... it didn’t really feel romantic.  As one friend put it best, “It sounds like a friendship...”
And we both realized that last month.
So you could say that from November-February, I had slowly been working at getting my motivation toward this project back up.  Despite my daily toils, I was driven to bring myself to do the things that make me happy.  I had even reread most of the Writing Diaries, all the way up to Season V again, which took me down a nice bit of Nostalgia Road.  Reading about the Process of this Project is just as fun as reading the actual episodes for me.  It’s the Journey, not the Destination, after all.
But like I said, then February happened and we just imploded.  Everything immediately broke down.  My living space, my comfort zone.. where I was going to be!!  I didn’t know what to do.
In week 1 I took out the time to hang out with all of my closest friends.  I told everyone who needed to know first.
In week 2, I started seriously looking for places.  And that was equally exciting as it was exhausting.  However, I did find one thing that wouldn’t be ready for the next 2 months!  And that also freaked me out.  Now I had a pseudo-time table on my hands, but it was a little too long.
In week 3, I cracked.  We absolutely got into a fight in our shared space.  Things were so smooth as friends and roommates.  We had still shared our King Size Bed, and kept it completely civil, since nothing romantic was happening in the bedroom anyway...  But, at some point, some Social Media Drama occurred and I actually started acting like an Ex.  It was becoming very clear to me that living together any longer was going to destroy my Mental Health.  So I made the choice to get out of there, sooner than anticipated.  That Friday, I put a bag together and stayed at my parent’s house.
The original plan was to ride this out as long as possible and move into the 2nd Bedroom while I start to leisurely pack, as I keep looking for places.  But instead, all this drama accelerated my schedule and forced me out of that house.  That weekend, I came back to grab the rest of my clothes and relocate my TV back to my Parent’s house... Which takes me to week 4.  
In week 4, I focused on helping my brother with an After-school play.  I changed my work hours for him and everything, but on top of that, I had an unexpected interview which could’ve changed everything!!!  You see, I’ve been looking for better jobs at the same time as looking for new places.  And that’s what made this so stressful.  That’s even partially what caused all this drama, because one night I tried complaining about it to her, and she didn’t really seem to care much.  We were acting like exes to each other, and I really couldn’t handle it.  So once we got into a fight, that was the wake up call.  We’re not together anymore.  We can’t do this any more! Literally.  It was time to get out of there and move on.   Well, the job interview wasn’t in the cards... but it’s for the best, because it would’ve made this new place that I’ve been hoping for, not make sense any more.   That weekend, I got together all of my books/movies/games/comics, electronics, pictures, etc. etc. while she had put together boxes of the kitchenware I get to take.  By Sunday Night, basically all of my stuff was out of there. I couldn’t believe it.  It was very therapeutic and bittersweet.
This takes us to Week 5 - last week.  The commotion has slowed down to an abrupt halt.  I’ve been very tired.  Technically I have all the time in the world for MMX now, but I’m just not there yet.  And I probably won’t be for another month.  And I say that now, because I’m literally in between places.  All of my stuff is in boxes at my Parent’s house, but this other place that I saw is in the process of coming through.  Their time table accelerated a little bit.  I got news yesterday that the place has been painted, and that new carpets will be installed on 3/23.  As I am basically move-in ready, but also really want this to be the place, I worked with my new Landlord and asked him if I can start to leave boxes this weekend.
And that’s what I did today.  Today I left the first installation of boxes into that house’s basement.  It will be the new location I call my home, and the best part about it is that it’s only 5 minutes from Work.  That’s HUGE.  [But that too is temporary, as I still need a better job.]. One day at a time though, right?
This is primarily the reason why I’m writing today.  I feel that the brunt of this Transition Period has reached it’s Apex, and from here, it’s gonna be pretty smooth sailing into the next place, as I become acquainted with my New Normal of 2020.
I’m also writing, because admittedly, I have been thinking about MMX6 again, and rather than catch up with the rest of the diaries, I just read the last one.  Where I actually regressed into plot points again and still couldn’t answer certain questions, like what those stupid teleport portals are.  I mean, how much of an explanation do I really need?  It’s Mega Science!
I’ll be honest.  I could start tomorrow, and I’d probably feel pretty good about it, until I hit my first slump.  Which will most likely be the Central Museum stage.  And then I won’t want to do anything.
No, my heart’s just not in it yet.  I don’t want to start MMX6 on my laptop.  I want to be fully set up and Comfortable in my New Place when I start Season VI properly.  The silver lining is that I have all the time in the world for this and my music, now.  And I’ll have to feel out that situation too, because I desperately want to do both.  And that’s part of the conflict too.  Both projects literally interfere with each other, because I only have enough time and energy for one or the other on any given night.
Keep in mind, once I have my own place, everything’s on me.  That’s cooking, dishes, laundry and of course self-care, right?  So that involves the necessary shower, and of course entertaining yourself.  And that means yes, actually pulling myself away from my hobbies that I tend to wrap myself in so much.
I’m not blaming this project for losing my girl, or my music.  Hell, I’m not even blaming myself.  We just weren’t a good fit for each other, but we sure tried to be.  For 5 Years!  There was a lot of good in those 5 years too.  But she changed a lot.  Me too.  But her, more...  In a less fun way.  Very easy for me to say, of course.
These things happen.  People change.  And we truly made the healthiest choice to end it when we did.  It was really just a logical conversation about what isn’t working, and both of us literally agreeing that this doesn’t make sense any more.  My friend last night put it best.  “I think your relationship just ran its course.  You both saw it through to a complete end, and it was really good that you chose to end it when you did, because neither of you were happy any more...”
And there it is.  I suppose I’m ending this on that note.  One day I’ll be ready for MMX6 again.  But today is not that day.  And instead, I’ll be playing the MMZ/ZX Legacy Collection in the meantime.  =P.   And no.  Don’t get any ideas.  I have NO intention of writing an MMZ Anime.
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