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mickeyswhore · 7 months

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I'm Gonna Kill You

A/N: My first time posting a fic in this brand new side blog, if you enjoy it, please consider reblogging it and if you want more you can follow me.

Summary: Randy is your best friend in the entire world, Billy doesn't enjoy the power he has over you and decides to do something about it.

Billy Loomis x Reader

Warnings: toxicity all around, a splash of daddy kink, filming without consent, a little bit of degradation, death (I mean it's Scream) but nothing gory, let me know if I missed anything else.

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GIF by @coppoladelrey.

You and Randy were born on the same day, your mothers went to High School together so the two of you were bound to become best friends. Your friendship with Randy is great, the two of you spend most of the time together and you barely ever fought. There is one massive problem in your life and you weren’t even aware of, Randy loves you, he loved you since you stood up for him in kindergarten but you were obvious to his love, Randy was happy to be just your friend but that doesn’t mean he would allow you to have a love life.

You trust Randy with your life, if he says that someone is not good for you, you listen no questions asked. Randy takes full advantage of the power he has on your life, a sick power

play that you weren’t even aware of. If pressed on the issue, Randy would swear up and down that it is for your own good, but he knows the truth, he’s too scared to admit his true feelings but more than happy to cock block you without you being aware.

Being a virgin was one of your main concerns in your otherwise uneventful life, you had Randy as your best friend and a few acquiescences mainly Sidney, Tatum, Stu and Billy. You loved hanging out with them even if you weren’t as close, Stu made you laugh to the point of almost peeing your pants, Sidney and Tatum were extremely and the three of you went shopping at least once a fortnight. The only person you didn't spend time with was Billy, not because you didn't like him, quite the contrary he simply intimidated you too much to allow you to exchange pleasantries with him, his piercing chocolate brown eyes made you all warm and tingly inside.

You never said anything to Sid and Tatum because Sid and Billy used to be a couple in Elementary School and Tatum was her best friend, Stu was too much of a jokester to take anything seriously and he would run to Billy and the two of them would probably laugh, not because they were cruel but simply because Stu would never take this seriously. Then there was Randy, the only person that knew everything about your life except this major crush on Billy Loomis but life goes on.

Casey Becker and her boyfriend were murdered and the whole town was on edge, and Randy was going on and on about horror films and you thought it was in poor taste, this isn’t a film! People are dead! So you gave him the bullshit excuse of getting your period and you basically qucicked him out of your house.

You decided to go to a coffee shop and just be alone for a change, you said hi to the barista gave her your order and after getting your drink you were sitting down by the window. You weren’t thinking about anything in particular but Billy Loomis came to the forefront of your mind, as he usually does. His eyes, his lips, his hair. As if it was on queue, Stu Macher spots you from across the road and ran towards the coffee shop.

“Stu, how are you?” You smiled seeing him, maybe that meant Billy was nearby? Stu didn't miss your eyes wondering, looking for Billy.

“I’m good, you know? Hey, would you like to hang out? Tatum is busy right now and you’re super cool, so…” Before you could he was getting your bag and helping you get up, you simply laughed and followed him, you truly enjoyed his company.

You’ve to Stu’s house a couple of times but only with Randy, maybe this was a good opportunity to actually be friends with Stu. He opened the door for you and allowed you to get in, he was helping you remove your jumper when you heard Billy’s voice.

“Where the fuck were you? Did you bring the…” Billy stopped in his tracks when he finally saw you, and Stu couldn’t stop grinning. Billy wanted to get alone with you for ages but Randy was always there, Stu really did him a solid.

“Oh man, I totally forgot I ran into her and totally slipped my mind. I’ll be right back, you don’t mind being here with Billy, right?” You looked at Billy who was already looking at you and you looked down and shook your head. “Okay, bye.” And just like that Stu was out of the house.

You still kept your gaze down, playing with your shirt. It was so hard to keep eye contact with Billy Loomis.

“Hey, we can watch something on the TV.” You simply followed Billy but still keeping your gaze down, Billy thought you were the hottest girl at school and now he has you all to himself, he really needed to thank Stu later. The two of you sat down and Billy decided to break the silence. “You don’t like me very much, do you doll?” You finally looked at him with a frown on your face and Billy was smirking. “There she is.” He whispered with a hint of a smile on his face, his thumb went to your chin and goosebumps rose all over your body, Billy wasn’t blind to the effect he had on you.

Billy wanted you since the two of you were freshmen, but Randy was always hanging around you like a leach, in Billy’s eyes. He wanted to kill Randy as his and Stu’s first victim but Billy wanted Randy to suffer after hearing the two of you talking. Randy let it slip rather loudly that you and him were still virgins and Billy thought Christmas came early. He wanted you for the longest time and finding out he was going to be the first man in your life, to touch you, to make you cum? His cock got incredibly hard just thinking about you moaning underneath him, riding him and eating you out like you were his last meal.

“I like you, Billy…it’s just that…” You took a deep breath, how could you explain your predicament?

“You don’t want to hurt Randy’s feelings?” Billy almost believed his own tone, it felt so sincere and honest, he almost wanted to laugh at the relief on your face.

“Yes, we’re not dating or anything.” You wanted especify, and Billy smiled. “But he’s my best friend, literally since day one. And I have no idea why he doesn’t like you very much.” You started playing with your nails and Billy raised your chin to look in your eyes, his piercing gaze was giving you burtterfiles in your stomach.

“We can take this slow, yeah? I want to do this right and take you out for dates and you be my girl, yeah?” Billy looked at you expectantly, and you nodded biting your lip. After that, he kissed you. He couldn’t believe that he finally got the girl of his dreams.

----------------------

It has been months since you and Billy started dating, and you couldn’t be happier even with the killings getting progressively worse. You had Billy to protect you, so things weren’t as scary. The only problem was Randy, he comes to your house unannounced and Billy has to hide and it’s always when the two of are about to fuck, it seemed that Randy had this radar to find out when you were about to lose your virginity and it was driving you and Billy insane. You were more than ready for this and Billy had major blue balls for months.

The two of you were now at school, talking in the hallway. Billy wanted nothing more than to take you to the nearest bathroom and fuck you in the stall but he knew that you deserved much better than a quick and cheap fuck, you were his dream girl.

“I asked my parents for the lake house this weekend and they allowed. I can pick you up right after school, is that okay?” You nodded and smiled, you couldn’t believe how romantic and thoughtful your boyfriend was. The two of you were very good in not having PDA at school but you were so excited that you kissed him and Billy was more than happy to oblige.

His hands went to your waist and yours went straight to his hair, Billy’s hnads were about to land on your ass when the two of you heard his voice.

“Unbelievable.” Randy yelled and you stopped kissing Billy, you had a guilty look on your face but Billy was angry. “You’re with him? Mr. I am clearly a serial killer.” Billy was about to beat Randy up when you stopped him.

“Look, Randy. I am so sorry for not telling you before but saying this shit about Billy is not cool. If you can’t accept him, don’t talk to me again.” You grabbed Billy’s hand and walked away while Billy had the biggest grin on his face. Once the two of you were outside, he hugged you.

“Are you alright? I know how important Randy is to you, I don’t want to get in the middle of your friendship.” Billy was selling this so well, and you just smiled and shook your head.

“You’re the best boyfriend ever! And no, don’t ever say that, Randy will come around eventually. I don’t want this to stop our little getaway.” You were going to handle Randy later after you spent time with your boyfriend.

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Billy’s car stopped right in front of the house, it was so pretty and quiet you loved it. Billy took both of your suitcases and guided you to the front of the house. The door was opened and everything inside was very rustic, it was perfect and apparently Billy’s parents had people come and clean in preparation of your stay there, they were always so thoughtful. Billy put your suitcases on the floor and looked at you.

“So, do you want a tour of the house?” He smiled at you.

“Start with the bedroom.” You jumped and wrapped your legs around his waist and Billy did exactly that.

He opened the door and dropped you on the bed, even though you were a virgin Billy could tell that you liked it rough. Every bite that was a little too rough, you had to stop yourself from moaning and rubbing your thighs together, every whispered ‘good girl’ on your ear made you sigh and bite your lip and one small ‘my little slut’ made you moan.

“I’m gonna fuck you right now, baby. Is that what you want? I wanna hear you beg.” Billy started kissing your neck and biting it and nodded your head fervently. You wondered if people could die of horniness for a second. “Use your words, baby. Tell me what you want from me?” Billy was taking off his shirt and still kissing you.

“I want you to fuck me, daddy.” You put your hand over your mouth, he wasn’t supposed to know but Billy had the biggest grin on his face.

“Yeah? You want daddy to destroy your little pussy even though is your first time? Is that what you want?” Billy finally started removing your clothes, leaving you in just your bra and panties.

“Please, daddy. Fuck me, I need it please.” You didn't care about sounding needy, Billy was your boyfriend and you loved him and he loved you.

Billy’s cock was so hard and you could see how big it was even through his underwear, your mouth was watering at the sight.

“Does my needy little slut wants me to fuck her throat?” Billy removed his underwear and you could see his cock leaking with pre cum, it has been so long since he fucked anyone.

“Yes, please daddy.” You got on your knees and looked at him with the biggest innocent eyes he has ever seen, fuck Billy could cum right now just by looking at you.

“Open your mouth, baby.” You did exactly that, you licked the head of his cock tasting his pre cum and you slowly started to take him in your mouth. Billy was very patient and you took his cock so well, Billy out his head back and groaned loudly. He also made sure that the camera was at the right angle.

Billy’s hands went to your hair, you were hollowing your cheeks and also playing with his balls. He held your head in place and started to fuck your throat, the noises you were making were pornographic and Billy loved every second of it.

“Oh, fuck I’m gonna cum.” Billy removed his hands from your head but you kept sucking his cock. “Fuck, baby.” Billy came, thick ropes of cum down your throat and you swallowed it all. You were still on your knees and you opened your mouth you to show Billy that you swallowed it all. “Fuck, how did I get so lucky?” He helped you get up and kissed you passionately, he finally removed your bra and took one nipple in his mouth, now it was your turn to get your hands on his hair, Billy carefully laid you on the bed and removed your panties.

Billy opened your legs started sucking on your clit, he was relentless and again your handd went to his hair. You were moaning and panting, the feeling of his hot, wet tongue on your pussy is like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Billy was enjoying very much seeing you fall apart with only his tongue.

Your moans started getting louder, and the grip on his hair got stronger. Billy’s tongue was working faster to bring your orgasm quicker, he also inserted a finger to slowly start stretching you out. He was was observing all of your reactions, how your legs were shaking and how your moans were louder by him finger fucking you.

“Billy, I think I’m gonna…” You knew your body very well, but this was different.

“Come on, baby. Cum for me, cum all over my face.” Billy sped up his ministrations on your clit and you pulled his hair and you came hard, your eyes were shut and pleasure that you never felt before ran all over your body. When you finally came to it, you felt under the bed wet, quite wet. When you looked over, you started panicking.

“Oh my God, Billy I’m so sorry. I have no idea why this happened?” Billy shushed you and kissed your forehead.

“No, baby. You just squirted and it was hot as fuck.” He kissed you and he laid on the bed again.

Billy pinched your nipples and you moaned into his mouth, his hands were all over your body and vice versa. Billy was about to burst, he was painfully hard again and he couldn’t wait to fuck you.

“Are you ready, baby?” Billy put his hand on your cheek and his eyes were looking into yours and you’ve never felt more connected with him before.

“More than ever, Billy.”

“Okay, I’ll go slow. Let me know if it hurts, alright?” You nodded and Billy positioned his cock at your entrance, he was looking at it then at you.

You felt his thick and veiny cock on your pussy, Billy had to contain himself and not cum at that second. Your velvety walls milking him, Billy was groaning and moaning in your ear, inch by inch his cock was entering you. Billy was fully inside you now and stopped to compose himself, your pussy felt like heaven to him. You on the other hand was almost passing out from the overwhelming pleasure his cock was giving you and you wanted, no, needed more.

“Please move, Billy.” He obliged and started moving slowly, the last thing he wanted was to hirt you. He found a comfortable pace for him and you. “Harder, please.” You wrapped your legs around his waist and with that all of his self control was gone.

Billy started punding into your pussy with reckless abandon, your nails digging on his back the noises coming from felt like you were in a porno.

“Do you like that, baby? Is that what you wanted my dirty little slut, huh?” His filthy words were driving you insane. You started clenching around him and Billy started laughing condescendly. “You like that, huh? You like being my little slut?” You only nodded, the pleasure wouldn’t allow you to speak, the noises were louder and louder. “Are you cock drunk already, baby? You can’t even speak right, can you? I want you to cum on my cock, baby.” Billy’s thumb went to your clit and started making hard and small circles, he wanted to see you falling apart.

“Billy, I’m gonna…” You didn't finish your sentence, and you came on his cock and Billy helped you ride out your orgasm. Billy started chasing his own orgasm, you were sensitive but the line between pleasure and pain were blurred and that resulted in more pleasure for you.

“You’re gonna take my cum, aren’t you baby? You’re gonna let me cum deep inside your pussy, imagine if I got you pregnant?” You clenched around him and Billy laughed. “You want everyone to know that you’re my little slut? Walking around with a big belly and huge tits full of milk?” Billy stopped and came with a groan, he was breathless. He kissed you and removed his cock out of you. He laid down and pulled you over to him, he started kissing the top of your head and caressing your arm.

“Did you enjoy that?” You asked and Billy could sense the vulnerability in your voice.

“That was the best thing that ever happened to me, you were perfect baby. I love you.” He kissed your forehead and you mumbled ‘I love you too’ and you fell asleep rather quickly. After making sure you weren’t going to wake up, Billy got up and stopped recording, he couldn’t wait to put his plan into action.

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Randy was pissed, your mom told him that you went on a trip with Billy. I mean what were your parents thinking? Allowing you to be alone with that serial killer? But you were about to come back and Randy was going to do everything in his power to break the two of you up. You never dated anyone before, you couldn’t! You belonged to Randy and he was going to make sure of that, no matter what.

Randy got in his bedroom, he found a tape that was odd he didn't recognise it. He put it in the VHS anyway, and he recognised you immediately, on your knees for Billy Loomis, Randy was about to take the tape and show it to you how Billy is gross and you should break up with him, but he got a call.

“Hello, Randy.” The modulated voice said.

“Billy, you sick fuck. I’m gonna fucking destroy you, she’ll never look at you again.” Randy was screaming, he couldn’t wait to destroy your relationship, that way you would fall for Randy and realise no one but him is good enough for you.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that Randy.” The voice was tauting him and Randy was furious.

“And why is that?” Ghostface opened his closet and was right behind Randy.

“Dead men tell no tales.” Randy turned around but only in time to be stabbed in the neck, after that Ghostface grabbed the tape and left Randy’s house.

Billy was with you when you heard that Randy was killed by Ghostface, he comforted you and said that everything was going to be okay.

“I was angry at him the last time we saw each other, I’ll never forgive myself.” Billy shused you and said that it wasn’t your fault and you couldn’t have known.

Billy held your hand through the funeral and made sure you didn't fall apart, you were so lucky to have in your life. Billy was overjoyed, he had his girlfriend all to himself and he didn't have to hide or worry about the nerd that hanging over her, everything was right in the world.

#billy loomis x reader #billy loomis x you #billy loomis x female reader #billy loomis x y/n #billy loomis smut #billy loomis imagine #scream 1996 #billy loomis

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lovelyhan · 10 months

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— starcrossed losers (a teaser) ⟢

at age fifteen, you’re betrothed to a prince named jeonghan. at age twenty-five, you’re set to marry him. so, when your father gives you a chance to find love all on your own, you immediately take it. now if only jeonghan would stop fucking sabotaging every relationship you’re trying to get into.

★ FEATURING; jeonghan x reader

★ WORD COUNT; 1k words

★ TAGS; princess!reader, enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, emotional romantic and sexual tension all in one lmao, angst, smut (in the future scenes, this teaser is sfw!)

★ NOTES; so my blog won't die in my absence nd slight inactivity from writing, i decided to leave you guys a snippet of the third n last part of my royalty series <3 as always, content in my teasers are not final and can be subject to change so heads up on that!

this is part of the it’s complicated series.

It’s several hours past midnight when you hear three gentle but firm knocks on the door to your bedchambers.

Annoyed, you stare at the collection of unopened gifts stacked high on your vanity. From delicacies from the neighboring kingdoms to the most expensive collection of cosmetics in Ancarra, your guests certainly knew how to curry your favor. But not even their lavish presents can dispel the pure vexation that’s been making your blood boil the entire evening.

Not bothering to answer the door, you whisk yourself into the plush seat tucked underneath the dresser. There’s only one halfwit currently residing in the castle brave enough to disturb you in the dead of night, and with how terribly tonight’s festivities went, you’re in no mood to extend your hospitality to anyone—much less Seraphia’s exasperating, insufferable, scheming—

“Isn’t it a little too late to be testing out swatches, Your Grace?”

You try to ignore him. The way his silken dress shirt dangles half untucked from his trousers. The self-satisfied look on his face when he notices you fumbling with the cherry red rouge you’re applying to your lips.

But try as you may, you cannot ignore Jeonghan when he reaches a hand in front of you, nimble fingers wiping off the excess color that you accidentally tinted just a few millimeters from your lip line.

Not when his smoldering stare holds yours captive in the image reflected in your gilded mirror. Not when you can’t even find it in yourself to resist when he gently grabs your chin and forces your gaze to marvel at the man himself.

“Sulking again, Princess?” Jeonghan sneers and you want to hate him for it, but you can’t. “I saved you from a man charged with treason three times in a single decade. Why are you pouting at me like I took away the love of your life?”

“Because you’ve made it your life’s purpose to make mine miserable,” you snarl, putting as much venom into the words as you can. “Minghao isn’t a traitor. If he was, he wouldn’t be sitting on top of the Rènxìng empire. He wouldn’t even be daring enough to show his face here for the sole purpose of courting me.”

He sighs as if meaning to be sympathetic, but you’ve long seen past the ruse. “Poor little thing, still being played like a fool all because you abhor the idea of one day becoming my wife. Tell me, didn’t you find it odd, how persistent he was in pursuing a woman who’s already spoken for?”

“I am not spoken for,” you interject, trying not to crumble from how his thumb lightly dabs at your lower lip. “Not by you. Not by anyone. Father gave me a choice—”

“Yes, of course. Everyone knows the story of the Ancarran Princess who’s chained to a troublesome foreigner. So troublesome that she had to beg on her knees just to get the king to reconsider,” Jeonghan coos, face inching ever-so close to yours.

“But as it turns out, all the other men you’re trying your damnedest to replace me with are even worse fiends than I.”

Your lungs burn as if they’ve been set aflame and Jeonghan is merely adding more fuel to the blaze. “You’re despicable.”

“And you, Your Grace, are much too gullible,” he chuckles, each breath fanning hotly against your skin. “I’d say just give it up and surrender, but you’ve been fighting against me since we were children. Putting an end to our very interesting relationship in such a boring way wouldn’t make good for the history books, no?”

All of a sudden, you remember something that Soonyoung told you in passing. How Jeonghan is someone who cherishes his loved ones deeper than one would otherwise expect. He loves his homeland. He loves his family. Above all, he loves his people.

With how he keeps reeling you back from all your attempts to escape your engagement, any other person would assume that he loves you just as much.

But how are you supposed to believe that someone like him is capable of love when all he does is thrive off your misery?

“This new rouge you’re testing out,” he murmurs, as if it’s remotely acceptable to just shift the conversation after what he just told you. “It’s the kind that takes days to remove once it dries, no?”

“In what way does it concern you?” you grit.

The despicable prince simply hums. “Oh, nothing. It’s just that I’m quite curious about its actual longevity.”

You can practically hear your heart stutter to a stop when he closes the distance even more—only a hair’s breadth separating your mouth from his. You’re clueless as to how it happened, but you suddenly find your fingers coiled around the front of his shirt. Looking for purchase. For solid ground.

But you should know better than to anchor yourself to someone as unpredictable as Jeonghan.

“If someone were to ruin it in the next ten seconds, would you even be more furious than you are now?” he whispers and you can feel the ghost of a smirk against your lips. “Or would it garner the opposite effect? Would you finally melt into their arms? Would you let them tear all your defenses asunder?”

Your pulse is roaring in your ears and all of a sudden, you can’t remember how to breathe. His intense stare is pinning you in place no matter how badly you want to escape. The scent of expensive champagne lingers on his lips and you find yourself craving for a taste.

But you can’t. You can’t want that. You can’t want him.

This is the man who’s made your life a living hell for as long as you can remember. The man you’ll be cursed to sit beside in a throne room forever if you don’t do anything about it fast.

You know these facts perfectly well, and yet…

Your eyes flutter closed as you hook your wrists across the back of his neck, letting your arch-nemesis fall deep into you.

this is part of the it’s complicated series.

want to be added to the taglist? leave a reply <3

#seventeen smut #seventeen fanfic #jeonghan smut #jeonghan fanfic #svthub #jeonghan x reader #seventeen x reader #lovelyhan

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wildemaven · 7 months

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he makes life better | joel miller

-> pairing: no outbreak!joel miller x reader

-> word count: 1335

-> content warning: 18+ blog; bad day, annoyed with work, dealing with flat tire, joel being sweet, lots of fluff

-> note: this is for my sweet friend @gnpwdrnwhiskey hoping this brings a smile to her face 💞 this isn’t beta’d either so it’s probably filled with mistakes lol.

masterlist

Joel ❤️: How’s your day going Honey?

I’m so ready for my shift to be over. I’d rather read the dictionary, front to back, than deal with the shit they have me doing today.

RING

“That bad, huh?” Joel’s voice brings you an instant smile when you answer his call, silently stepping away from the mess that you were dealing with at work.

“You have no idea. It already feels like it’s been the longest week, today has just added to the shit show life keeps throwin’ at me lately. Went to leave for work this morning and I had a flat tire. Ugh! I’m sorry for complaining.” You vent to him, tucking yourself in a secluded corner. You were going against policy by taking a personal call while on the clock, but you didn’t care about company policy or the outcome of you were to get caught at the moment— Joel was your only focus right now.

“Hey, none of that. Don’t apologize for being stressed. Why didn’t ya call me ‘bout your tire?” Joel asked.

You know he would’ve dropped everything the minute did call him, which is also why you didn’t. He had been stressing over starting at a new job site, one of the biggest ones he had been hired for. The last thing you wanted was to add to his already busy day of things he had to deal with.

“You’d already left for work and had that new job you’ve been talkin’ about. Didn’t wanna bother you with it. I called AAA and had them put the spare on for me so I could drop it off at the tire shop. Now, I’m unexpectedly the owner of 4 new tires.”

“I don’t care how busy I am— you need something, you call me, no matter what. Got that, Honey?”

“Got it, Joel. Thank you.” You smile into the phone at his concern for you, always finding ways to make you fall even deeper in love with him.

“Good. Hey, I gotta go. Tommy looks like he’s about ready to break his back. I should probably go help him before he actually does and my insurance takes a hit. I’ll see ya tonight then, sweetheart?”

“Yeah. I should be outta here in 3 hours.” The end to your long shift, almost over.

“That sounds great! I love you, Honey. I’ll see ya later.” You can faintly hear Tommy cursing in the background.

“Love you too, Joel.” You tell him before the line goes dead. Giving yourself a few minutes of quiet before heading back to join your team and the never ending line of customers.

The rest of your shift goes by fairly quickly. Joel’s phone call must have been just the moral boost you needed to sprinkle a little bit of extra positivity into your day.

The minute the clock hit 5 pm, you wasted no time clocking out and logging out of your computer for the day. Deliberately bypassing your usual exit path to avoid any chatty coworkers, Joel and home your main focus of the rest of your day, you weren’t going to waste any time stuck in drawn out conversations.

Your purse thrown over your shoulder, work apron crumpled in one hand and the other holding your empty tumbler that once held the warm delicious coffee you had hoped would sustain you through the day, now wishing it was filled with something a little stronger to help you unwind when you got home.

It’s a struggle trying to juggle your things as you search for your keys, lost somewhere in the depths of your purse along with the rest of your life's necessities. You pause in the middle of an empty parking space near where your jeep is parked to give the search your full attention. After some thorough digging, you locate your keys and let out an exasperated sigh, one step closer to being home.

Taking a step forward as you press the unlock button on your key, you look up to see an unexpected sight. A familiar truck in the parking spot next to yours, and the most handsome man leaning on it. He looks like he came straight from the job sight, too. His peppered grey hair disheveled, but his soft curls were still intact even after a long day. The sleeves of your favorite green flannel are rolled up over his flexed forearms that are crossed against his chest, the fabric stretched over his broad shoulders.

The sight of him is enough to melt away any of the bullshit you had endured over the past week, a completely welcomed surprise.

“What are you doing here?” You ask him, letting your feet carry you the rest of the way to him.

“Heard you were havin’ a shitty day. Couldn’t let my lady end it on a bad note.” He croons, pushing himself off the side of his truck, opening his arms to you.

You melt into him, your face nestled into his shoulder. His rugged scent of musky vanilla and natural pheromones is permanently infused into the fibers of his shirt, it’s your favorite thing ever. His strong arms wrap around you as he presses a soft kiss to your temple, prompting you to straighten up, looking into his amber eyes.

“Hi, Cowboy.” You beam at him.

“Hi.” He says, leaning in to gently mold his lips over yours. “I’ve got a surprise for ya, Honey.”

“This was enough of a surprise for me. What more could I need?” Stealing another kiss from him.

“If I tell ya, it won’t be a surprise then, will it?” He says, tilting his head slightly as he looks at you.

“I guess you have a point.”

“We’ve gotta get going though, it’s time sensitive.” He grabs for your things and walks you around to the passenger door, holding it open as you climb in. “We’ll grab your jeep in the mornin’, if that’s okay with you?”

“Whatever you say, Cowboy.” He leans back in for another kiss, before making his way around into the driver’s seat.

The drive isn’t long. Down some familiar roads that lead to a dirt one off the main highway. His truck travels down the gravel road lined with a barbed wire fence. After a few minutes he’s pulling off to the side and killing the engine.

“You brought me to my favorite place.” Looking over to his side of the truck, where he’s already looking in your direction. Your heart grows at how he thought to bring you here, knowing how much joy it brings you every time.

“Thought you could use it. Look, here they come.” He says pointing to your window.

Off in the distance, the small herd of cows were in pursuit of their evening meal and water break. Mamas with their little rambunctious calves trailing behind, trekking along the same path they travel each evening.

It’s a calming sight. Their heads bobbling with each dramatic step. Tails whipping over their rear ends to swat away the annoying flies. A few stopping mid trek to look in your direction, letting out a long drawn out moo. Their friendly hello, it’s good to see you again, then back on the move.

The sky is painted in pinks and purples as the sun dips below the horizon. Your day feeling less shitty as you sit silently in the cab of Joel’s truck. His hand resting on your thigh while his thumb draws soft circles over thick denim seam.

“Thank you for this. Didn’t realize how much I needed it. I love you, Joel.” You tell him, rolling your head over the headrest in his direction.

“I did it because I love you, Honey. And s’what I’m here for.” There’s a low rumble in the air as he turns the key over, shifting the truck into drive. “Now, how ‘bouts we head on home and I spend the rest of the evenin’ show you all the other ways I love you?”

“Take me home, Cowboy.”

#joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #the last of us au #no outbreak!joel miller #TLOU #pedro pascal #pedrostories #wildemaven writes

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lucyandthepen · 4 months

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last young renegade | jjh

summary: your valentine’s day plans with jaehyun may have gone down the drain just a little. (okay — a lot.)

pairing: jaehyun x reader verse: canon, idol!verse rating: t warnings&tags: reader & jaehyun are in an established relationship, quite frankly there is nothing too out of the ordinary in this fic which is a shocker, it’s a rewritten fic so pls excuse any errors I may not have caught! word count: 5.02k

a/n: happy 2024 friends and family !!!!!! and advanced happy birthday to the man who created valentine’s day, he who is perhaps my first love in nct, jaehyun! this is actually just a fic I’ve been hoping to re-write a bit from before, and since it’s valentine’s themed, what better time to post it!! Enjoy enjoy, and may this year bring more fun, laughs, love (and debauchery) to this blog!

Yᴏᴜ sᴀɪᴅ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ sɪᴄᴋ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛɪʀᴇᴅ ᴏғ ɪᴛ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴏʀɴɪɴɢ, ɴɪɢʜᴛ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴅᴀʏ.

♡ jaehyunnie ♡ I know I said birthday dinner but practice is running so late ㅠㅠ ♡ jaehyunnie ♡ Can we meet after? I’m sorry ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ How about I call you when we’re done? Maybe 11:30?

At times like this, you often wonder if it’s all worth it.

You know thinking that way is counterproductive, not to mention a little unfair. You knew exactly what to expect, getting into an under-wraps relationship with an idol, and so far, it’s lived up to most of your assumptions, and then some. It doesn’t help that Jaehyun, even just by name, tends to attract an unbelievable amount of attention. You know you can’t blame him; it’s not like he wants to be high on the radar every time, either. For some reason, though, you seem to be looking for something or someone to blame, which you also know is a dead end. You have no one to pin the blame onto apart from yourself by frequently generating doubts that keep your mind running around in circles.

It’s not even the sneaking around that gets tiring; it’s the waiting — waiting on calls, waiting on free time, waiting on a good opportunity to do something that doesn’t involve him suddenly getting pulled out to attend to one of many of his celebrity responsibilities. Over the last few years that you’ve dated, NCT has only ever gotten more popular; with that popularity came the fact that the public eye was trained on them, focusing on every microscopic detail of their lives. Jaehyun hates that more than anything, which is why he’s given up on trying to avoid it by practically escaping it altogether, locking himself up in the dorm with you when he has his precious few days off.

While it’s true that you definitely don’t miss having to play espionage when going out for a cup of coffee with him, you’ve also managed to memorize every single inch of Jaehyun’s room, which isn’t good for your mentality, you’re pretty sure. You have to keep reminding him to open the window whenever the both of you are in there, because all you do is stay in and watch English movies without subtitles to see who can understand the most without asking questions (obviously, he always wins) while eating food he runs up and down the stairs to get every other hour. And while him trying to imitate the British accents on these shows is genuinely funny, you’re starting to suspect even he’s starting to get tired of watching Harry Potter over and over again. Twenty hours sounds like a long time unless you spend every twenty-hour period you have together marathoning the exact same films. Much to both of your disappointment, your suggestion to watch it totally out of order did not make it cooler.

Still, you suppose it’s not all bad. Jaehyun also taught you how to play Fortnite on a couple of his days off back to back, and while you hadn’t been as good a player as you both had hoped, he’d still patiently waited for you every time you got lost on the map. He’d even given you his account’s password with the sentiment that this was him ‘taking things to the next level with you,’ and you get to log into his account and play whenever you want; he doesn’t even get mad when you’ve wasted all the stuff he’s farmed on your subpar gaming skills. And, well, the bigger picture was that you loved him. Based on how much effort he put into the relationship, plus the bonus of his trust in you when it came to his Fortnite account, you could at least be confident in that he returned the sentiment.

Except, sometimes, you still wonder if it would be easier for the both of you if he flew solo and didn’t have a girlfriend that tanked all of his player’s ammo and health kits and generally made a fool out of his cute little avatar while he was out breaking his back onstage.

You aren’t sure if Jaehyun’s been noticing the turmoil in you; you’re not that good at hiding how you feel, anyway, but if he has, he hasn’t said anything thus far. You do observe how much more he texts you when he has free time, which makes you feel doubly bad, because you know that he’s spending precious minutes he could be resting with on talking to you instead, which isn’t the best trade-off for someone who’s constantly busy — and thereby constantly tired — like him.

♡ jaehyunnie♡ ___________ I’m going to practice again, okay? Wait for my call ㅠㅠ You I’ll wait for your call ♡ ♡ jaehyunnie♡ I love you ㅠㅠㅠㅠ ♡ jaehyunnie♡ You love me too — a lot, right? I’ll keep my phone now, but I’ll make sure to check that you said so. ㅋㅋㅋ You Right! ㅎ I love you a lot! ♡

When the clock hits 12:01, and your phone is silent, your mind starts working on overtime again. It’s only when the special ringtone you’ve set for him comes to life at half-past midnight that you break your train of thought and put on your socks so you can meet Jaehyun at your front door.

You’ve made a rule — sort of like a deal — between the two of you that apologies aren’t necessary when work holds you up. You’ve cashed in on that deal a couple of times, but you’re both aware that it’s more for Jaehyun’s sake than anything else, and he keeps to his word on that much when you open the door and duck into his car. All he does is smile at you, and you smile back, and for the rest of the car ride, everything seems okay.

He always asks you about your day — unfailingly, at any chance he can. It’s never an off-handed question, either; Jaehyun takes great pride in his memory, and the sweetest thing about him is that he’s dedicated a good deal of it to knowing almost everything about you. Right now is no different. He asks you about your team manager, what you had for lunch; he grills you on if you took your vitamins today and if you got to break in the new shoes you bought online — the ones you’d been pining over for the last three months. He even asks you about the guy from the neighboring department who keeps asking you out for after-work drinks.

“He wanted to go to Hongdae tonight,” you tell him as he slows for a red light. “There’s some new pub of his friend’s doing a soft opening there tonight.”

“You could have gone.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Good.” He glances at you, a grin slowly spreading on his lips. “Because I lied. I might have minded a little. Or, you know, a lot.”

“Don’t tell me after all these years, you’ve turned into the kind of boyfriend that doesn’t let his girlfriend go out without him.”

“That’s impossible for me, and you know that,” he chuckles. “You can do whatever you want, whenever you want. Just not with that guy from the other department.”

“Don’t worry.” You tinker with the little charm dangling on your phone — half of a flat, metal heart dangling from a gold chain that Jaehyun had given you two years back on your birthday. He keeps the other half, but since he can’t freely attach it to any of his belongings, he keeps it wedged between the back of his phone and its case. You like watching him change the backing because he does it so carefully, like he’s worried the other half of the heart is going to break if he rips off the case willy nilly. “I told him my boyfriend and I were going out on a date tonight, so he backed off. Although he did wonder why I keep talking about a boyfriend he’s never seen.”

“And? What did you say?”

“I said it was none of his damn business.”

Jaehyun laughs loudly, and you go along with him, but you don’t miss how tired he looks when he sobers down, the green light illuminating all the shadows on his face as he steps on the gas again.

Nothing good is open this late at night — that is, nothing you haven’t seen before. You hadn’t even expected to go out at all, but since it was the day before Valentine’s Day as well as his birthday (or it would have been, if you hadn’t waited until midnight), Jaehyun had wanted to do something special without having to run into a huge crowd of couples on the day itself. Your only option is this from-out-of-town carnival that’s set up in tents and even has a medium-sized ferris wheel by the edge of the metal barricade. The parking lot is practically empty when Jaehyun pulls into a slot; you joke that he should break one rule and park in two slots, which he smugly replies to by saying he couldn’t park badly even if he tried.

He tucks your hair back behind your ears as he loops the strings of a face mask around them, using another one for himself. Between that and the brim of his cap, you can barely see his eyes. The only knowledge that you have that you’re walking next to the man you love is that he takes your hand in his, slender fingers finding their way between yours.

The carnival is half-closed when you get to the middle of it; there are still a few stragglers, but half the kiosks have their lights off already. There’s a woman dressed in flashy clothes standing on a patch of dead grass a few feet away, and she’s holding a hoop that a ginger cat is jumping through. Jaehyun steers you to them, and you stand there for a good five minute watching the cat roll on the ground and stand on its hind legs, but you can tell it’s been going it at for most of the day because at one point, it just ignores the lady, opting to weave its way between Jaehyun’s and your legs instead. You do have a pretty good time when he picks it up and cradles it in his arms so you can pet it for a second, but it just hisses when its owner approaches and jumps out of his hold, disappearing behind a row of trash bins.

Jaehyun doesn’t have anything in his wallet apart from his credit cards and 50,000 won, and the coin machine operator says he only has enough coins left to break down 5,000 won for the games, so you end up having to jog back to his car so you can fish out some coins from inside his glove compartment. You come up with a grand total of 1,500 won, and you have to sheepishly go back to the coin machine operator to change four 100 coins and a couple of 50s just to get the last 500. Jaehyun tells you to hold onto the three coins so he doesn’t run off with them entirely and leave you destitute.

You learn you can only do three things at most — you dedicate 500 won for the Ferris wheel entry tickets, which leaves you with 500 won each. The both of you agree on choosing one kiosk to play in, and with only about five left that are open, you don’t really have that many options. You end up dragging Jaehyun over to a stall with a pond filled with those magnetic toy fish, but 500 won only gets you one fishing rod. Since it’s your choice, Jaehyun lets you play, but you feel kind of stupid doing it on your own with him just watching you. In the end, he decides to stand behind you, his arms around your waist like he thinks closer contact isn’t even more distracting. You do manage to fish out 10 fish and win a small bear on a keychain. It doesn’t even pass through your hands as Jaehyun takes it from the stall operator immediately.

“That’s mine!” You whine, reaching out in vain to take it from him; he just holds it high over his head. His eyes are twinkling under the shadow his cap casts over his face. “I worked hard for that.”

“Let me keep this one,” he mimics the pleading lilt in your voice. “I’ll put it on my bag.”

“You know you can’t! Give it back.”

“I’ll win you a bigger one,” he promises. “Let me keep this one. It’s cute. It reminds me of you. I’ll kiss it goodnight before I sleep.” He starts to laugh softly. “And then you’ll feel this weird spirit kissing you at like two in the morning, and you’ll know it’s me.”

Your arms aren’t long enough to retrieve it, and you don’t really want to, so you settle with twisting his ear. He takes it in stride even if he over-acts, making pained noises while leading you to the kiosk he wants to go to. It’s a shooting range stall, and he pays his own precious 500 won for a dart gun. He’s barely paying attention when the guy starts explaining how many points are assigned to each balloon color, more concerned with talking to the bear keychain in his hand and pretending like he’s cooing at you. You have to hit him across the shoulder to get him to focus.

“You need to start picking out what prize you want,” he tells you — the actual you, not the animal keychain version — as he lifts the dart gun.

“I’ll wait for you to finish first.”

“No way.” He tilts his head, closing one eye to steady his line of sight. “Pick already. Or just go for the biggest one.”

“You know that Fortnite and dart guns aren’t the same thing, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m well-motivated.” He grins at you, one eye still shut. He looks like a baby pirate. “Go ahead. Pick the biggest one.”

“Why don’t you just shoot, and we’ll see.”

“Pick it,” he insists. “Tell me you have faith in me. Tell me you love me.”

“Okay, I love you,” you agree. “But I have no faith in you when it comes to this.”

“One out of two is fine,” he concedes, taking aim.

All three of you, including the stall operator, let out a disappointed groan when he misses his first shot. His comes with a sheepish laugh as he reloads, suddenly telling you to pick the second biggest prize instead. You can’t even watch him miss over and over, so you pretend to be interested in a bunch of teenage boys playing a game of cups one stall over, trying not to giggle when you hear him get increasingly more frustrated at himself. When you turn back around, you notice he’s holding two small pieces of gummy candy, offering one to you like a kindergartener. He helps you tug your face mask down so you can eat it.

There’s a food stall nearby that, thankfully, accepts credit and debit; Jaehyun fishes out his card to get you a corndog — only one because he’s watching his weight for the upcoming concert, apparently. This is information you hate hearing but have no say in, and he knows this; you know he does because he says ‘don’t worry about me’ totally out of the blue, like five minutes after the conversation ceases to be relevant.

His phone starts ringing when the food comes out, and he takes a tiny bite of it — more bread than hotdog — before he answers. You know it’s Taeyong by the way he answers.

“Hyung, sorry — can we talk later? I’m out with ____________.”

Taeyong says something loud but indiscernible on the other end. You piece together that it’s about tomorrow’s schedule when Jaehyun speaks again.

“I know. I’ll be home in a bit; don’t worry about it. I haven’t forgotten.”

There’s more garbled speech on the other line; Jaehyun gestures for you to keep eating, and you do, but you more concerned with the morphing expressions on his face than you are with the act of chewing. He’s making noncommittal noises in response to what seem to be commands and reminders. You’re pretty much done with the corndog by the time he says ‘Okay, hyung. Hyung — I’ll see you later, okay?’

“Taeyong hyung says hi,” he tells you once he’s hung up the phone. “He says you still need to give back that book you borrowed from him last year.”

“Oh yeah,” you finish off the last of the food. “I’ll drop it off within the week.”

“Don’t worry about it. He doesn’t actually mean it.”

Jaehyun watches you snap the stick in half and toss it in the trash bag.

“We can go home,” you say finally. His eyebrows shoot up. “You’re busy tomorrow. I forgot.”

“I didn’t forget, and it’s fine.”

“It’s almost two in the morning.” You check your phone to verify. “You probably have to be up in a few hours. You need to sleep, or you’ll die, Jaehyun. I’m too young to be a grieving widow.”

“Let’s at least ride the Ferris wheel,” he suggests. Before you can protest, he tugs you towards the rickety contraption, digging the 500 won out of your pocket and handing it to the bemused operator. He lets you choose what carriage you want because literally no one is on it anymore, and Jaehyun asks for the best carriage. You’re not sure how it differs from the rest, but he makes a show out of guiding you into it, and you don’t miss the corny ‘my lady,’ he mutters under his breath.

It’s small, clearly meant for either a tiny group of children or couples who want to be as close together as possible. It’s also not air-conditioned, and only one of the windows is open, so you end up sticking to Jaehyun’s arm on the way up. The view is still great, though, and you feel his hand settle on your knee as the carriage makes it slow ascent.

The ride up is quiet, and you press your face as close to the glass of the carriage as you dare, but Jaehyun doesn’t move an inch. His hand is still heavy on your thigh, but it doesn’t do anything but lay there. When you’re close to the top, you’re hit with the urge to do something romantic — kiss, maybe, tell him happy birthday, or say ‘I love you’ to him in the most sickening way possible — but when you turn to look at him, you have to hold your tongue.

Jaehyun is asleep, leaning against the corner of the carriage, head tilted down a little. His shoulders are rising and falling slowly, and he’s pulled down his face mask a little so he can breathe better; his lips are slightly parted by the slackening of his jaw. His left hand is shoved in his pocket, like he’d passed out halfway through reaching for something in there.

He doesn’t wake even when you move slightly so you can lean back next to him, rocking the carriage a little — not even when you reach up and adjust his head so he can rest on your shoulder. He breathes deeply, evenly, and you wonder if his ear against your shoulder allows him to hear your heart plummet unfairly to the bottom of your stomach.

You have to shake him to rouse him when the ride comes to an end; when he opens his eyes and realizes what happened, he looks mortified. Instinctively, he opens his mouth, but you fling the carriage door open and step out before he can apologize.

You have a deal, and he knows what he shouldn’t be doing.

His grip on your hand is much tighter as you walk back to the parking lot, and he doesn’t let go, even on the road. The trip back is quieter, maybe because it’s late, or maybe because there are a ton of things the both of you want to say but can’t.

He slows down when he gets to your street, but when he stops in front of your building, he doesn’t immediately unlock the doors to let you out. Instead, he turns to you, licking his lips a little nervously.

“Can you…” he clears his throat because his voice cracks a little on the first attempt. “Can you come back with me? To the dorm?”

“I have work tomorrow, Jaehyun.”

“It’s still at eleven, isn’t it? I can bring you home before that. You still have some stuff in my room. You can get ready there.”

“Won’t you be too busy?”

“Just—” he sighs softly. “Can you? Please?”

You don’t know how to say no to Jaehyun, and tonight isn’t a night you’re willing to try. It’s why fifteen minutes later, you’re walking through the front door of his dorm. Donghyuck, sitting at his computer in his room with the door ajar, greets you sleepily as you pass by.

Jaehyun steps in the shower with you; you don’t talk, maybe because you’re worried you might wake the others up if you start a full-blown conversation in a bathroom surrounded by other bedrooms. He just passes you what you need, and you do the same for him, and somewhere in between, he kisses you under the spray of the water.

Later, he falls asleep with a face mask on, and you have to peel it off for him and toss it into the trash. The tip of his nose is shiny, and you want to kiss it, but you know it’ll wake him, and you noticed he’d set his alarm to go off two hours from now. He’s set out a couple of earplugs for you so that you don’t hear it, but you don’t put them in. You want to see him before he leaves, even if it’s in the deadest hours of morning, so you just crawl into bed with him. A minute before you doze off, you feel his damp skin press against your neck, his form curled up against your back.

The alarm never wakes you; the sun is out when you open your eyes, and when you check your phone, you see that it’s already half-past nine. You also notice that there’s nothing from Jaehyun on your screen, but you try not to dwell on that, considering that you’d been expecting to wake up to an empty bed. His side of the mattress is cold, which means that he’s been gone for some time.

You don’t know if it’s just because you’re groggy, but your insides still feel like lead when you sit up. The part of you that nags about this relationship is back at full force when you start thinking about Jaehyun going to a pre-recording two hours after spending the last of his energy on you. You start wondering if you’re doing the right thing if it feels like you’re just dragging him down. Your heart clenches tightly when the worst thought hits — maybe, just maybe, he’s tired of you, too.

But you won’t let him go. More to the point — you can’t. He’s the best part of your life; it’d be a cold day in hell if you decided to leave him.

Even the thought of it makes you feel like dying.

Then again, this isn’t all up to you.

You’re rubbing the sleep out of your eyes — and maybe a couple of frustrated tears — when the door creaks open. You see two mugs and his hands before you see the rest of him come through the doorway. Jaehyun whispers a careful good morning as he sets the coffee down on his table, making sure to push his keyboard away to avoid accidents, before sitting down next to you. You notice that there’s an envelope next to one of the mugs; the flap is slightly open, and from under it, a flash of red peeks out.

His hand finds its way back to your knee — it’s his favorite resting place, he’s told you once. Your lap feels like home, he’d joked. Maybe he touches it every so often because it’s like a reset button for him.

He doesn’t ask if you slept well, or if you want to get ready before having your coffee, or if you’re okay. He just squeezes your knee a little tighter. It’s you that has to start the conversation this time.

“How did it go?”

“It went great. You’ll see it on TV later tonight,” he starts rubbing your thigh idly. “You’ll watch it later, right?”

“Of course. I’ll call you and tell you how cool you look.”

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. When you lapse into silence again, it’s because you’re expecting him to say something, but he doesn’t come out with it directly. You try not to let it show that you’re worried, that you’re skeptical, that you’re wondering if he thinks he’s too tired, too busy for this, too.

You’re expecting him to start how most break-ups start. You know I love you, right? And then the telltale but… would come, and you would have to hold back your tears and smile for him, and tell him you know, and that you understand it isn’t the right time, but maybe one day, someday, when he isn’t everyone’s Jung Jaehyun anymore — only yours.

“You love me, right?”

It’s not what you’d been expecting. Nor is it the playful little text he’d sent — no laughs, no jokes. His expression is somber, mouth pressed into a thin line.

“You know I do.”

“A lot, right?”

“A lot,” you confirm softly.

“Then whatever it is that you’re thinking about us,” he says quietly. “Don’t. Don’t think it. Don’t do it.”

“Jaehyun—”

“I know it’s hard,” his fingers dig into your skin a little. “I know I put you through a lot. I know you think that I’m suffering because of this relationship too. I know everything. But whatever you think I’m going to do, I won’t do it — not ever. So if you’re thinking of it too, I’m begging you. Don’t. Please.”

Maybe he had noticed all this time. A wave of guilt washes over you when you see the pained look on his face; perhaps you were even more transparent than you’d originally thought. You nod slowly to show your understanding, and he continues.

“I know yesterday wasn’t the best you could have hoped for,” he carefully avoids apologizing, although it’s written all over his features. “For me, too. I… I wanted something different. It’ll be better next time. Do you believe me?”

You hear him swallow — his nails are biting into your thigh a little, so you have to gently peel his hand off. Your fingers replace it, tightening around his palm as you nod.

“I believe you.”

“And you trust me, right?”

“With my life.”

“Then can you put your faith in me right now?” He asks. “Don’t panic. Just — just say yes.”

He pats around his pants, finally deciding to slip his hand into his left-hand pocket. Unlike on the Ferris wheel, he manages to extract something, but he keeps it closed in his fist. It’s shaking a little as he takes your hand in his other one, pressing something small and hard into your palm before he curls your fingers over it. His hold keeps your fist closed as he starts talking.

“It’s not immediate. We’ll figure it out. We’ll tell the right people, and they’ll help us tell everyone else — the public, the press. It doesn’t have to happen right now, or any time soon either— not if you don’t want it to. We can take it slow, or whatever. Anything you want — just as long as it’s with me.”

“Jaehyun,” you shake your head, a little dizzy. “What are you talking about?”

He slowly loosens his hold on your fingers, his hand dropping to the same spot on your knee. You’re free to open your fist, and when you do, you can’t help but feel a little stumped.

“I don’t mean now,” he repeats, now sounding doubly worried. “It’s not — It’s just…”

“You’ll get in trouble. We can’t.”

“I won’t. Not if we do this right. Like I said, we can do it slowly. Months — years, however long it takes to do it well. What it is — it’s just… a promise.”

“A promise,” you echo. It does have a nice ring to it.

“That I’m not leaving you. Not ever. And… if you say yes, that you won’t either.”

Your coffee has probably turned cold. Jaehyun is watching you carefully, looking like he’s trying hard not to bite his lip. You look back down at your hand, and he speaks up again.

“You know I love you, right?”

You smile slightly. “No but?”

“No but,” he agrees.

The ring fits nicely on your finger; maybe it’s well-measured from the amount of times he’s held your hand tightly in his.

“Okay, Jaehyun,” you whisper. “I promise.”

When you place your hand on his, he twists his palm, slender fingers gently twirling the ring around the base of your finger.

Minutes later, he hands you your coffee. It’s sweet and milky, the way he knows you like it best. When he settles back down on the bed, you notice his eyes travel to your finger again, a small smile playing on his lips.

Perhaps, in this moment, you finally learn to ask the right questions — not about if it’s worth it, but if he is.

And in this moment, where he sits in silence with you, the sunlight pouring in from his window hitting the tips of his hair and the end of his nose, with the knowledge that his heart is as full as yours, you come to realize that there can — and never will be — any doubt of that.

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heliads · 1 year

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sorry to send in two requests but if you've got the time Luke Patterson x reader where she is his tutor for English or something and he develops a crush, so even when he understands the stuff she's teaching him he pretends to be confused so that the tutoring sessions last longer. And then one day he gets a good grade and she's proud of him but that means the sessions are over so he builds up the courage to ask her out? You can put this at the bottom of the list or not even write it because I know how swamped your requests get, but ily.

do not apologize for two requests!! my blog exists for you!! and jatp s2 may be dead but my feelings for that show are not. xoxo

masterlist

Luke Patterson is currently fighting a one-man war against his English class, and he is losing. Badly. This was not supposed to be his problem class, he was thinking the biggest struggle would be math or science, but surprise surprise, there’s no such thing as a class you can just skate through. He tried to skate through English. He tried really, really hard, but instead of Spark Notes-ing his way through whatever classic book they threw his way, Luke’s staring at a bright red D on his latest essay.

This would happen to be the most recent essay they were assigned, the one Luke pushed off until the last minute because he was too invested in getting some good songs down on paper. He hadn’t meant to procrastinate, he never does, it’s just that whenever Luke had a spare hour or two, it’s always far more tempting to head out to the studio and mess around with some chord progressions than to do homework.

This essay had gone just like all the other ones so far this year. The book had been assigned, the essay followed not soon after, and Luke told himself that he was going to start it on time for a change. The only problem was that he came home late that day after a shift at his job, so he couldn’t start it that day, and then he was studying for a test the next day, and after that he was working on songs. Before he knew it, it was the night before and he was speed writing to get everything down in time. Luke doesn’t even think he had time to proofread before turning in that mess.

So yeah, he shouldn’t really be surprised about this grade in particular. Still, he isn’t pleased about it. He doesn’t want to see the look on his parents’ face when he dodges another question about his grades, nor listen to all the other kids in his class talk about how easy that essay prompt was. Everything just makes him feel worse.

And, if Luke’s day couldn’t get any better, his English teacher pulls him aside after class to talk about it.

“I noticed your last few assignments haven’t been going as expected,” she says sympathetically, “is there anything you want to tell me about that?”

There’s a lot Luke wants to tell her, such as the fact that this class is dry as a saltine and twice as bland. They’ve spent the last few classes just going over social hierarchies around the time when the book was written, talk about boring. If Luke wanted to study history, he’d read a textbook.

He can’t say all that without damaging his final grade even more, though, so Luke plasters on a grin and does his best impression of an earnest student who’s just had a bad string of luck. “Not really, I’ve just been so busy recently that I didn’t have enough time to really ponder the prompt, you know?”

Usually, this is Luke’s best strategy for getting out of these kinds of nonsense conferences. He’ll whip out a few key words like ‘time commitments’ and whatnot and his teachers will fall for it every time.

He might have done this too often, though, because his teacher just nods and refuses to let him go. “That makes sense to me. Do you think it would help to spend a little more time exploring the prompt or connecting the book to the essay topics?”

“Sure,” Luke says vaguely. He’s only half paying attention; he just saw Reggie outside the door mouthing the words what did you do?? as dramatically as he could.

The teacher looks pleased by this. “That’s what I thought. I’ve gone ahead and signed you up for some tutoring sessions, you’ll start this afternoon after school.”

Luke blinks. “Wait, what?” Clearly, he hasn’t been paying attention nearly enough. Since when was tutoring on the table?

The teacher spreads her hands. “You need a little more help and organization to stay on track. Tutoring is the perfect answer to this.”

“Is it?” Luke asks feebly.

“Absolutely,” the teacher decides, and that’s that. Luke tries to wheedle his way out of it through repetition of how busy he is, like, all the time, but it doesn’t matter. She’s caught him in a half-lie and there’s nothing he can do to avoid it.

Reggie’s waiting for Luke outside the door when he finally leaves. “What happened in there?”

“Pure misery,” Luke groans, and contemplates giving himself a concussion by ‘accidentally’ falling down the stairs so he can go home without having to go to tutoring.

Unfortunately, Reggie enlists Alex in keeping Luke free of head trauma, and so he finds himself in an empty classroom later that afternoon, mournfully watching all of the other students leave the school with no doubt wonderful plans awaiting them.

Luke’s just starting to wonder if his tutor isn’t going to show up after all (after fifteen minutes, he’s legally allowed to leave, right) when someone slides into the seat in front of him.

“Sorry about being late,” they gasp, “I just found out I was doing this like ten minutes ago.”

Luke breaks his desolate stare out the window to glance at his tutor and instantly, he feels the crushing weight of shame bear down on him tenfold. It would have been one thing to have a total stranger be his tutor, someone Luke could avoid looking at in the hallways and never speak to again, but he knows this girl. More importantly, he’s thought she was cute for at least the last four years.

This is the worst case scenario, then. Y/N L/N is smart, she’s pretty, and judging by the fact that Luke always sees her in a group of friends laughing at her jokes, she’s funny, too. Definitely someone Luke would want to impress through gigs or shows instead of, say, his crumbling English grades.

“I’m Y/N,” she says, and Luke realizes that she’s probably been waiting for him to say something. Great, he can’t even introduce himself properly.

“Luke,” he answers, “but you probably knew that already.”

Y/N laughs, and judging by the slightly manic tone behind it, she’s just about as composed about the whole thing as he is. That makes him settle slightly in his chair, lowering his guard. “I was told that I would be tutoring you when I was trying to leave class. Ms. Brown pulled me aside when the bell rang and told me about it.”

“That makes two of us,” Luke grumbles.

The corners of Y/N’s lips quirk up before she manages to tamp them down again, and if Luke weren’t totally out of his mind, he might even say that Y/N has the same attitude towards their English teacher as he does. That would certainly make this whole tutoring experience a lot more interesting.

“So,” she says, clearing her throat in an attempt to sound official, “you wanted to talk about essay pointers, right?”

Luke starts to say something about how he didn’t want any of this, actually, but Y/N arches a brow and he relents. “Yeah, essay stuff. The last one didn’t go over too hot.”

Y/N tilts her head to the side, contemplating this. “Did you agree with her grading?”

“Yeah,” Luke admits, “she wasn’t wrong to mark me down, I kind of did it the night before in one sitting.”

Y/N frowns. “Really? Why’d you put it off so long? I thought you liked writing. Whenever I see you, you’re always jotting something down in that notebook of yours.”

Luke grins. “You’ve been watching me? That’s creepy, you know.” He’s obviously holding back a laugh, though, so the comment has no trace of a barb.

Y/N rolls her eyes, although her face looks a little hot at the moment. “Just answer the question.”

“Alright,” he says, hands raised in mock surrender, “you’re right, I do like writing.”

“Then why wait until the last minute to do the essay? I mean, I get not having a ton of time to work on assignments, but if you really do enjoy writing, it shouldn’t be all that bad, right?”

Luke groans. “ This is different. It’s not fun writing,” he tries to excuse himself.

It sounds bad even to him. Already, Luke can see how this is going to play out– she’ll laugh at him, maybe, say that someone who just got a grade like him can’t possibly be thinking about writing and fun in any way at all. She doesn’t, though. Instead, she nods and smiles at him. A real smile. Not mocking in any way.

“What is fun writing, then?” She asks.

Luke blinks in surprise. “Well, writing songs is fun, I guess,” he stammers, “stuff that actually matters, you know? All these essays are the exact same, but songs are all different. That’s why I care about them and not some pointless paper.”

Y/N nods. “That makes sense to me. So you release music, right?”

Luke isn’t sure where she’s going with this, but he’s perfectly happy to talk about music instead of that offensive red scribble all over his paper, so he plays along. “Yeah, me and my band. We try to, at least.”

“Have you ever gotten a review that bothered you? Not because they didn’t like it, but because they disliked your songs for the wrong reason? Like you had a whole story in mind for your album but the critics just ignored it?” She prompts him.

“Yeah,” Luke says, eyes widening with irritation, “Man, it’s so annoying. You go to all the trouble of writing out these ideas, and you make them have a really good meaning, too, and then it’s like they never read it at all. It makes me so mad sometimes, I want to write a column or something in response about how they totally missed my point.”

“Like, say, an argumentative essay about the real strengths of your chosen piece of writing?” Y/N says as casually as she can.

Luke’s about to argue and say that’s not like this at all, but on second thought, it is. It totally is. “Wait, you’re right. I never thought about it like that, but you’re right. Y/N L/N,” he decides on the spot, “I really like you.”

She grins back at him. “Luke Patterson, I like you too.”

That settles it for him. Luke had been annoyed at the thought of having to suffer through tutoring beforehand, but maybe he’ll be alright with it now. Y/N isn’t a part of the oppressive legion of teachers all conniving to make his life a living hell because he wants to be a musician instead of a doctor or a banker, she’s on his side. That makes it all better somehow.

And, unsurprisingly, it is better. Luke actually ends up having a really good time in his tutoring sessions with Y/N. They don’t feel like tutoring at all, more like a chance to hang out with a friend. They talk about Jane Austen and tell awesome jokes, read Shakespeare and spend more and more time together. Luke knows this is only a temporary thing until his grades get back up, but it’s too easy to forget that.

Until, one day, it isn’t. His English teacher hands back an essay with a bright red ‘A’ marked on the front, and tells him that she’s proud of all the progress he’s made so quickly. Instead of a sigh of relief, the only thing escaping Luke’s lips is a desolate sigh. After all, if Luke’s improved to this point, that kind of means his tutoring sessions will be over, right?

Y/N doesn’t know that, though. Y/N doesn’t have access to his grades. All she knows is what Luke tells her, and if informing her of his latest essay win means she’ll stop seeing him after school, why should Luke let slip a single syllable?

So, later that day, when Y/N asks him how the latest essay went, Luke shrugs and pretends to be disappointed. “I’d hoped for more,” he says, “she, uh, didn’t like my commentary.”

“Really?” Y/N questions, frowning slightly, “I thought you were really good at that.”

Luke’s eyes widen, caught in a lie. “Who knows with teachers, right?” He laughs weakly.

Y/N pretends to shudder. “I know, right? I feel like half of your grade is literally just how much she likes you. English classes are always so subjective.”

“Subjective?” Luke asks, grinning and propping his chin up on his hand, “Tell me about that.”

Y/N laughs. “Only if you promise we’ll talk Jane Eyre immediately afterwards. Immediately.”

“I so swear,” Luke intones, holding up his right hand with all the solemnity of a president being sworn into office.

Y/N swats him on the shoulder with her notebook, but she obliges, and maybe they don’t talk about Jane immediately. Maybe they laugh a little longer than usual. And maybe, just maybe, Luke thinks that he’s perfectly fine with obscuring the truth if it means he can have more of this when he needs it the most.

The truth, unfortunately, has a habit of making itself heard regardless of who is inclined to hide it. Luke comes into their usual study spot in the library one day to see Y/N waiting for him, not already in her seat like normal but standing tentatively at the side.

He frowns, slinging his backpack down on the ground and pulling up a chair. “Everything alright? You look like you’re about to run. If you’ve got something planned, we can do this another day.”

Y/N shakes her head slightly. “No, I’m free all day.”

Luke gestures towards the table. “Then sit down, my legs are getting tired just looking at you. We’ve got stuff to study, don’t we?”

“Well, that’s what I was going to ask about,” Y/N says, “Ms. Brown stopped me after class today, said she had someone else she wanted me to tutor. I said I was already booked with you and she was confused. Apparently you’ve been doing just fine for quite some time.”

Luke feels his breath catch in his throat. This is not how he’d wanted Y/N to find out. For what must be the hundredth time this year, Luke sends out a silent curse to all meddlesome English teachers.

“Yeah,” he says as carefully as he can, “I have, but only because of your expert tutoring. It’s like antibiotics, you know? You don’t stop taking ‘em when you start feeling better, only when the prescription is over.”

Y/N blinks at him in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

He runs a hand through his hair, trying not to feel like everything is slipping out of control in an instant. “It was a simile, sorry. A bad one. All I mean is that we don’t have to stop this just because I got a good grade or two.”

Y/N almost looks like she’s smiling, but that could just be Luke being delusional. “I thought you didn’t want to do tutoring.”

“I didn’t at the start, but you’re different. We’re cool. We are cool, right?” Luke starts rambling more and more with each passing second, but he can’t help it. He’s overthinking everything. What if he’s literally just been a tutee this whole time, and she doesn’t think they’re friends at all?

Y/N stares at him a second longer, then takes a seat at last. “Luke Patterson, are you telling me that you like my company so much that you’re willing to keep going to extra English practice just to see me?”

Luke can feel his face heating up, but he does his best to ignore it. “Well, when you put it that way, it sounds–” He still has a little bit of self control left, so he cuts himself off before he can make a truly terrible mistake.

Y/N catches him, though. “It sounds like what?”

“It sounds like I like you,” he admits, and Y/N’s smiling at him, so he decides to take the leap of faith and just do what he’s been wanting to do for quite some time. Since the start of this, actually. “And I do like you. I like you a lot. I might not need the tutoring anymore, but that doesn’t mean I want to stop seeing you. So what if we met up sometime soon? Not for English, for us.”

Luke decides that he likes Y/N’s smile more than anything. “Are you asking me out?” She says.

“I am,” he affirms. “Are you saying yes?”

“I am,” she repeats.

Suddenly, Luke feels like the luckiest kid of all. Maybe he does have to throw in a good word or two for meddlesome English teachers after all. Sometimes they have a way of connecting you with the best people in the world.

requested by @thatfangirl42, i hope you enjoy!

jatp tag list: @rogueanschel, @retvenkos, @callsign-scully, @lovesanimals0000, @amortensie

#luke patterson #luke patterson imagines #luke patterson x reader #luke patterson oneshot #jatp #jatp imagines #jatp x reader #jatp oneshot #julie and the phantoms #julie and the phantoms imagines #julie and the phantoms x reader #julie and the phantoms oneshot #jatp luke #jatp luke imagines #jatp luke x reader #jatp luke oneshot

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gingernut1314 · 5 months

Text

'Tis the Season

Straw Hat Crew x GN!Reader

Summary: You share your holiday celebrations with your crew aboard the Going Merry.

Warnings: fluffffffff, some (very little) mentions of alcohol

Word Count: 1.5K

A/N: Soooo I've gotten into the holiday spirit and needed to write this, so I hope you all don't mind too much! @fanaticsnail thank you for contributing to my holiday cheer with your wonderful x-mas works! (go check them out if you haven't already! Very good!!) I hope everyone has an amazing holiday or can find joy in something that brings you happiness this month!!! 🩷

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Luffy: 🍖

As soon as you tell him anything about the holiday you celebrated back on your home island, he would insist on doing it right then and there

Festive and colorful decorations? He’s stopping at the nearest island to gather supplies and doctorate the Merry to your liking

Hot chocolate and food? Yes please.

Turkey, roast beef, or ham for dinner? Why not all of it?

The food is the most important part of this new holiday, he thinks

He’s getting Sanji to whip up every delicacy you can possibly think of

Fun holiday activities? The crew will be dragged along and they will have fun

He’ll want to double--no triple check that Santa is going to visit the Merry because he sounds super cool and he wants to recruit him onto the crew

I mean, come on! The guy loves cookies and milk and those are some of Luffy's favorite things!

…and he will be very skeptical of you telling him Santa is, unfortunately, not real

Luffy is dead broke so he goes to Nami to beg for berry so that he can get you a gift

Nami, of course, refuses to give him a single coin and tells him to make you something

So he would spend hours making you a gift

He would hand you a drawing of him hugging the life out of you on the Merry

And you would have to have him explain to you what is happening in his creation because all you can make out is the colors red and blue and what looks to be his signature straw hat

You love it regardless and hang it on the wall next to your hammock

Luffy will want to recreate the picture of course, and you’ll be more than happy to hug your captain back

Will leave cookies and milk out for Santa (and will eventually devour what he left out) and will try (and fail) to stay up all night to see Santa

You would find him dead asleep half an hour later and would be sure to leave a few gifts under the too-large tree he had Zoro set up on the deck for him

Luffy will get that guy next year, just you wait and see

Zoro: 🗡️🥦 ⚔️

He is uninterested

None of it is his style

Too flashy and too loud

He’s good to take a nap during the festivities

You will be able to entice him to come and eat the food Sanji was kind enough to prepare

And you’ll entice him further with some spiked holiday drinks

Luffy is all over the holiday, so it won’t take much convincing to sail back to your home island for the day

And while the rest of the crew is partaking in the festivities your home village is throwing in the snow-covered street, you’ll slip away with Zoro’s hand in your own

You will tell him how this holiday isn’t just about joy, food, and festive songs, but about life and death

You showed him back to the ruins of your childhood home, which he had been in mere moments before the villain you had been helping them fight set fire to it

The scorched front lawn was covered in clumps of candles, garland wreaths, rocks, and food, just as you knew it would be

You explained that your village had done this in celebration of the life your family had lived--to remember them and keep their souls filled with joy in whatever afterlife they might have entered

He would watch you light a candle and pull a small trinket from your pocket, placing them both on the blackened steps of your home

Zoro would light a candle and place it next to yours, sitting there with you for as long as you needed

He would even wrap you up in one of his strong arms, holding you tight

Later, you would gift him a bottle of sake

He had no clue gift-giving had anything to do with your holiday, so he would insist you share the bottle with him

He will be sure to get you a gift next year

Nami: 🍊

She would be a little on the uninterested side at first

But after watching how excited you got as you explained to the rest of the crew about the holiday you celebrated, she would warm up to it

She would even warm up enough to allow you to doctorate her tangerine trees with lights and tinsel

The lights were pretty enough, she supposed. The tinsel shiny

And she does love shiny things

Once in the holiday spirit, she would let it fully take her over

Nami would dock the Merry on the closest island and go searching for the best gift she could find you

When it came to you, she hardly thought much about how much berry she was spending

You and your joy were more important to her than a number

You had commented on needing a new pair of shoes a week ago? Bought.

Commented on wanting something so offhandedly you had forgotten the moment you stepped away? Bought and wrapped in whatever wrapping paper she could find that screamed your holiday in its bright colors

She would be very excited to watch you unwrap everything she had gotten you (which you had been very shocked at, but had been told strictly to just unwrap everything and not worry so much)

You would feel a bit embarrassed at how little you had gotten her, but she wouldn’t care because your gift was thoughtful

So thoughtful it nearly brought her to tears

After everyone else had gone to bed, she would take you back up onto the deck and hand you a cup of hot chocolate she had attempted to make (which she had done a pretty good job at creating without the help of Sanji)

The two of you would sit, snuggled up next to each other under a heavy blanket and watch the dancing, multicolored lights adorning her trees late into the night

Usopp: 🤥

Will get into it right away

He loves any excuse to celebrate, so your holiday is already perfect

Usopp is quick to make colored lights to hang up around the ship

And he’ll want to make everyone a stocking, which will be color coordinating and have some sort of special technique that didn’t need to be added in the first place

He loves all the different holiday-themed stories and songs

Throughout the day, he’ll randomly burst into horribly off-tune song and you will be expected to join in

The traditional stories you tell him get the typical Captain Usopp spin to them

But it just makes them that much better in your opinion

They become your crew's stories, making them so special

While the crew eats and drinks holiday drinks, he’ll tell the stories and have everyone, even Zoro, entranced by their colorfulness

You made the big mistake of telling him about Krampus

And now he is utterly terrified of getting kidnapped and beaten by the goat-demon

Though he won’t say he’s scared

He'll be very admit that he isn't

But a loud stomp of the foot against the deck floor from Zoro has the poor storyteller jumping out of his skin and using you as a shield

Usopp is a very good gift-giver

Not only is it handmade, but it is also functional (for once) and it will help you out loads

You give him his gift and he bursts into tears, thanking you and hugging you profusely

Everyone will go to bed, the lights hanging up everywhere only adding to the cozy, homeyness of the Going Merry

And you’ll just be nodding off when Usopp comes crawling into your hammock, begging you with tears in his eyes to keep Krampus away from him

You’ll laugh at him at first, but end up promising to keep him safe while you hold him tight

And he’ll hold you back just as, if not more, tight

Sanji: 🧑‍🍳

Of course, Sanji gets into the holiday spirit

It's a holiday you celebrate and one that makes you happy

And all he ever wants to do is make you happy

You’ll sheepishly bring him your family's old cookbook full of recipes passed down from generation to generation

And he’ll be more than happy to cook you whatever your heart desires

Nothing is too much in his eyes when it comes to you

He’ll insist you help him cook everything, seeing as you are the expert when it comes to these recipes

And you two will share bits and pieces of everything before it all disappears into the void that is your captain’s stomach

He will also be very interested in this mistletoe tradition

He makes it his mission to not only hang the green sprigs everywhere around the ship

But to get you under as many of them as he possibly can, for as long as he possibly can

You find yourself purposely wondering under the mistletoe and lingering there until Sanji notices and rushes over

Though Sanji wants to get you the best gift he can possibly buy, he’s not the best when it comes to gift-giving

Food and physical touch are his love language after all

So he bakes you a sweet treat you had once told him about, one you hadn’t had since your childhood

And it’s the best gift you could have ever wished for because he made it just like how you remembered it

He loves whatever you give him

It could be a stick you say reminds you of him and he would be over the moon, mounting it and hanging it up in the kitchen

Though you are sure to get him a very nice gift, one you had spent weeks thinking over so it was just right

He doesn’t need the mistletoe to show you just how much he appreciates the gift

Sanji makes you both hot chocolate and holds you tight as you two talk in the abandoned and cleaned kitchen

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thelightsandtheroses · 8 months

Text

After Rain | Frankie Morales

Summary: You’ve been afraid for days that Frankie isn’t coming back to you this time, that you might never know what’s happened to him, but now he’s here at your doorway. Warnings: TF spoilers, angst, language, discussions of drug addiction and use, depression, PTSD, dad!Frankie, 18+ blog, minors DNI. Pairing: Frankie Morales x female reader (established) Word Count - 1.3k Notes - This was meant to be a longer fic but I ended up making it more of a drabble! The fic title is from the Dermot Kennedy song of the same name.

“I don’t know man. I’ve got the new baby now, and my lady isn’t into me doing this kind of shit anymore.” Triple Frontier

“Let this darkness be a bell tower/ and you the bell” Rainer Maria Rilke - Let This Darkness Be A Belltower

He comes back broken.

Will drops him off, nods apologetically at you before he goes to his own home to probably make his own apologies.

There’s a faint smile on Frankie’s face as he stands in the doorway wearing a crumpled shirt, his battered rucksack dropped on the floor. You suppose it’s relief that he’s home. There’s something else too; apprehension, uncertainty about the welcome that will meet him because he’s been so much longer than he said, he’s not called you once either.

In the distance you can hear Sofia playing with her toys upstairs, oblivious to what is happening at her front door and you’re hoping your son won’t hear the door, won’t suddenly wake up because he’s only just got to sleep.

Frankie’s had time to shave in his absence and for some reason that is the thing irritates you the most. You’ve been worried he’s dead and he’s been having a shave! He couldn’t text or call, or send a fucking carrier pigeon but he could shave?

You thought they were dead.

You thought Frankie was dead.

You’re about to say something, purge yourself of this rage, when you meet his eyes. There are storms in them; anguish and pain and emotions you can’t even identify.

What happened out there?

“Hey querida,” he says softly after a moment, the low timbre of his voice instantly flooding you with relief. This is the man you have loved for years. He holds pieces of your heart and soul with his own.

You shift yourself to let him pass, place your hand on his body as he moves past you. He’s home.

That’s got to be something, right?

Rain taps on the living room window as you wait for Frankie to come back downstairs. The last few days have seen more thunderstorms and rain than you would normally have expected. When it started, you thought to yourself that it was a reflection on your own mood and worries. You were trying to work out what to do, what could you do if the worst had happened?

Despite the rain, it’s humid. The type of rain that leaves the air thick and your skin sticky.

You take a sip of your drink, wait for the creak on the stairs.

He’s tentative when he walks into the living room, wearing sweats and a faded t-shirt, his shower dampened curls just a shade longer than he usually wears them.

“Mateo needed a change,” he says, “he’s almost asleep again now.”

“Have you seen Sofia yet?”

“Yeah,” he sniffs, “she’s still playing in her room. Promised I’d join her in a bit.”

“She’s been waiting for you to come home. I think there’s been some internal drama with the dolls, something only you will understand apparently.”

“It’ll be Strawberry,” he says, shaking his head. “She’s trouble.”

There’s a moment of silence and he sits close to you on the couch. You can smell the sandalwood shower gel lingering on his skin, the crisp toothpaste on his breath.

“Missed you,” he mumbles, leaning closer. “Missed you all.”

“We missed you too. What - what happened?” So much for easing him gently, you think, but you need to know.

Frankie looks at the floor as you gently take one of his hands in yours.

“Tell me. That’s what this is based on, right? You tell me things, we’re honest with each other, whether it’s easy or not.”

“It was fucked. It was so fucked.” His voice cracks and he runs his free hand through his hair.

“I thought it was just a reccy, that’s what you said.” You resist the urge to say ‘I told you so’ to say that was why you’d begged him not to go.

Frankie relapsed recently. He had then been suspended from work which was how you had learned about the relapse. You hadn’t been sure how the two of you would get through that at the time. You had a mortgage, a small child and were weeks away from your new baby being born at the time. Somehow the two of you had endured it though. Things were strained, you can’t lie, but you were both determined you could get through this.

The reccy had posed more of a direct threat to every bit of progress made though. You were incensed that he thought this was something worth pursuing; that the money was worth whatever it cost him.

Frankie was terrified and desperate about the position you were both in and he still wanted to provide, to be there for your little family. You didn’t want him to do it. You remembered the way he would come back from missions. His recovery was new and tentative, he didn’t need more trauma weighing on this.

He didn’t need more wounds on his soul.

However, it was only supposed to be a reccy, just a few days. He was convinced it would help him, help you all. He said it would buy you both some time while he tried to get his licence back, would help him get through this bad patch - it would give him some purpose. You’d wanted to ask if your family wasn’t quite enough purpose there.

“It went wrong, went bad. ‘S why I didn’t call - I couldn’t.” Frankie exhales and then adds, “Redfly died.”

“Redfly -Tom? Tom’s dead?” Everything in you runs cold and the anger that’s been constricting around your heart fades.

You could have lost Frankie. It could have been him.

The images won’t leave you and you put your hands on Frankie’s hands just to remind yourself he’s here, he’s real. He hasn’t left you.

“Tell me,” you gently press, leaning closer to him.

He doesn’t tell you everything about the mission; he can’t, you expect. He tells you enough to make it clear that things went wrong, that the helicopter crashed and they were stranded, that Tom died at some point in the whole sorry affair. He holds your hand the whole time as though you’re the only anchor to this moment, the only thing separating him from a jungle he’s still stuck in.

Part of you wants to get straight into the car and go yell at Santiago, Will and Benny for their parts in this. For the greed and stupidity and foolishness of this whole mission. Part of you wants to scream at Frankie for this.

You listen to the rain instead, try and calm yourself and put those conversations away for another day.

After his story, the two of you sit together. You know nothing will be the same again; how can it be? Tom’s dead and you know your boyfriend enough to know that the haunted look on his face won’t fade away any time soon.

You’re still hurt, still angry. Frankie’s home though and he’s alive. That’s something, that’s enough for now.

You move closer to him, let him wrap his arms around you. You can feel his heartbeat through his chest, the warmth of his body and scent of sandalwood shower gel, minty shampoo.

You meet his lips; grateful that the man you love is here, that he is alive.

The last few weeks won’t be forgotten easily, you can’t remember ever seeing Frankie this shaken. You’ve never felt quite this close to losing him before.

He’s home, he’s home now.

Hours later, you stand out in the back porch with a cup of coffee in your hands. The rain is finally abating and the air smells thick of storms and stories. You can see thin rivulets of water streaming from the porch roof down to the decking, can hear the trilling sound of the crickets and can see the cracks of sunlight between the crowds.

There’s a long way to go. There will be damage and scars from this trip that Frankie hasn’t shared yet, that he may not even have noticed and there’s no winnings here, no results or money or sense of anything good from this mission.

He is home though. He is home and he is alive and he hasn’t left you.

You look through the kitchen window and see him talking with Sofia, laughing about something as he serves her breakfast. He looks over and meets your gaze with a tentative nod and smile.

You’ll weather this storm together.

Tag List

Everything Pedro tag-list: @harriedandharassed @pedrostories @hiroikegawa @pedrosaidsheispunk @pastelnap

If you want to be added to (or removed from) one of the tag lists, let me know or you can get notifications for @thelightsandtheroses-fics helightsandtheroses-fics if you prefer. If you do not have an age or age range showing you are over 18, I will not add you to this list. I block ageless and blank blogs.

#frankie morales x you #frankie morales x reader #frankie morales x female reader #frankie morales fanfiction #frankie morales #frankie catfish morales #triple frontier #triple frontier fanfiction

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pinkieloveheartpastel · 5 days

Text

Once again, people don’t actually care about black women. Because when it comes down to it, they will do everything in their power to shift the focus onto something else in order to ignore the truth.

“Rap making you uncomfortable doesn’t mean you have to avoid it” are you fucking serious? Black women CAN’T avoid it. We have to deal with misogynoir every single day and then hear about it in the majority of rap music. And then witness black women being beaten and nobody doing a damn thing about it. wtf is this shit. What you see as “just rap music” is the reality of MANY black women.

We are constantly raped, beaten, spat at, called all kinds of slurs, killed, and you want me to NOT be uncomfortable when I hear shitty rap music reinforcing violence against black women? Fuck you and fuck everyone who agrees with you.

—————————

EDIT May 29th, 2024:

• Wasn’t long before some FUCKIN LOSER would reblog this ignoring what I said and instead talking about how all rap music is shit and isn’t art, so let me make this perfectly fucking clear, since nuance isn’t a thing any-fucking-more.

Fuck you too and all the rest of the racist trash you’re with. As a person who writes rap music myself, I criticize rap music because rap music is something I’m very passionate about, besides metal and rock, and I enjoy finding rap artists who aren’t bigoted. I criticize shit because I care and I want to see things change. Not because I think all rap music is trash. Tf??? I also find comfort in listening to rappers who don’t think my entire existence deserves violence, but whatever.

Criticizing a genre is not the same as declaring a whole entire genre trash, and it pisses me off that I always have to clarify shit because y’all just come out of the woodwork salivating at the chance to be racist and ignorant and just all around insufferable.

But if I criticize metal for its history of racism and misogyny (there are, apparently, still so many white supremacists in black/death metal, for example.), oh no, it’s only because of the people in it, not the genre itself. Funny how nuance shows up there but not in rap.

And rap music is, in fact, art. It is poetry like every other genre of music. It’s another way to make music, and every lyric written is a form of poetry. Always has been. To not recognize that is to be blatantly ignorant for the sake of being racist. The point is to not use rap as a way to promote shitty behavior, which bleeds into real life.

If you refuse to read the OTHER FUCKING POSTS (including one I made on my alt blog about how I became alternative) that I had mentioning a few rappers that I actually liked, as well as realize that I said majority rap and not all rap music, and instead decide to take the word nuance and shove it so far up your ass you forget it even exists, then you were already lost and I’m fucking tired. Nowhere did I say all rap music was trash. But I bet you already knew that and just wanted an excuse to be racist and generalize a whole entire genre.

SO AGAIN.

Barkaa (Australian Blak Indigenous Rapper) (I especially love her songs For My Tittas, Blak Matriarchy, and Bow Down)

Cinnamon Babe (Black, Metal and Rap artist) (My favorite songs from her are The Man and Bad Dog)

Raja Kumari (Indian American Rapper) (My favorite songs are NRI, The DON, Goddess, City Slums, etc)

Tkay Maidza (Zimbabwean-Australian Rapper) (Beautiful singer and rapper)

ALT BLACK ERA (Black British Rappers, also teenagers)

Delilah Bon (White British Rapper) (My favorite song from her is WITCH, as well as many other songs like Dead Men Don’t Rape)

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flightlessangelwings · 1 year

Text

Waitress in Distress

Tommy Miller x fem!waitress!reader (no use of y/n)

Word count- 1.5k

Warnings- fluff, mutual pining, flirting, protective!Tommy, harassment, minor violence, takes place in season 1 episode 1 before the outbreak, 1 kiss

Notes- After Tommy’s comment in episode 1 that he defended a waitress from getting harassed, this immediately popped into my head and I had to write it! So this is what if you were the waitress that he saved there! I’m sure others had the same idea, but this is my version of things! I love show Tommy so much and I’m definitely gonna write more for him but I had to get this out of my system now!

Reblogs/follows/comments/asks highly appreciated! Reminder that my blog is always 18+ even if this fic isn’t explicit!

To stay up to date on when I post, please also follow my update blog and turn on post notifications @flightlessangelwings-updates

September 26, 2003

The bar was alive with lights and music and crowds of people enjoying their Friday evening drinks. Sweat lined your brow as you worked as fast as you could to serve your tables and keep everyone happy. Some were in a good mood, smiling at you and thanking you for their drinks. Others seemed to be in a foul mood, and snapped at you more than usual. Even some of your regulars who you usually enjoyed seeing seemed off tonight.

But you shrugged it off, perhaps they just had a bad day. The way some of the men twitched and snatched their beer bottles from you did get to you more though.

“Shit, it’s busy tonight!” you exclaimed to the bartender as you stopped at the bar and poured a fresh pitcher of beer.

“Better than being dead,” he replied back as he shook his mixer, “Tips will be great by the end of the night.”

“Fuckin better be,” you quipped back with a smirk before you turned and headed back to your table.

Before you took more than two steps though, you smacked right into someone. The pitcher crashed to the floor, but before you slipped too, a strong grip kept you upright.

“Shit! I’m so sorry!” You gasped as you mumbled a string of apologies to whoever you ran into, but your name in a familiar voice sent a jolt of nerves through you.

“Hey there sweetheart,” he cooed, “You alright?”

“Tommy…” you breathed as your face lit up in a smile, “Yeah I’m fine.”

Although you tried to hide it, all your coworkers could tell you harbored a secret longing for the younger Miller brother. From the first time he and Joel visited the bar, Tommy caught your eye. He was handsome and kind, and his gaze always felt like it lingered on you for a few moments longer than necessary. He never made you feel uncomfortable either, and many nights when he was there until close, he walked you to your car to make sure you were safe.

“Thank you,” you tried to sound smooth as you regained your bearings, “It’s been a while since you’ve been in.” You quickly turned back to the bartender and asked for the barback to clean up while you reluctantly broke free from Tommy’s embrace and poured a fresh pitcher of beer.

“Well ain’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Tommy’s face lit up as he rested a hand on your shoulder, “You look as pretty as a magnolia in May.”

You fought the trembling in your hand from the nerves that shot through your veins, “Always the charmer,” you laughed off the nerves, “Beer?” you offered the other table’s pitcher to him.

“Do I really drink that much?” Tommy joked, “I’ll just take a bottle. You know the kind I like,” he winked at you as you nodded, “Thanks sweetheart.”

You bit your lip as your heart pounded in your chest. Not trusting your voice in front of him, you turned and headed to your table to drop off the pitcher first. Tommy was by far not the only customer to flirt with you, but he was the only one you filtered back with. And he was the only one who made your skin tingle and your heart race. One of these days you would muster up the courage to ask him out, you told yourself. You had the feeling that he was too much of a gentleman to ask you out while you were at work.

But the blissful state quickly vanished when you arrived at the table with the bitcher that you held onto for way too long, “Sorry for the wait,” you sighed as you set it down in the middle of the table, “We’re slammed tonight.”

At that table sat four men, and they made your skin crawl. You had seen them before, and every time they made you feel like you had to take a shower after you were close to them. Their grins were dark and the look in their eyes told you exactly what they were thinking about you, and you did not like it at all. But, they never tried anything, so you couldn’t do anything about it.

Until tonight.

“Why don’t you make it up to us, huh sweet girl?” one of them reached out and grabbed you before you could walk away, “Damn you smell good,” he stood and leaned in to sniff at the nape of your neck.

“Please let me go,” you tried to sound tough as you pushed him off of you.

He let go, but your freedom was short lived as the other snuck up behind you and grabbed your hips, “Oh come on pretty thing, don’t be like that,” he caged you in from behind as the others surrounded you, “We promise we won’t hurt you.”

“Stop!” you screamed in hopes of getting someone’s attention over the hustle and bustle of the busy bar. Your heart sank when no one seemed to notice your distress, though.

“It’s a busy night,” one leaned in close enough you could smell his bad breath, “No one can hear over all this noise.”

“Wanna bet?’ a voice called from behind him.

When the man turned around, Tommy punched him right in the face so hard that he fell over, his nose already gushing blood.

Your face relaxed in relief, “Tommy…”

“You asshole!” the other man let you go and lunged for Tommy.

“Don’t worry sweetheart, I got you,” Tommy winked at you for a moment before his face twisted into a more serious expression as he kicked the other man hard enough that he fell over as well. The other two leapt up and tried to attack Tommy, but he easily had them on the floor with just a few hits.

Once the threats were down, Tommy ran to you, “Hey,” he murmured your name as he placed his hands on your arms, “You alright?”

You were in a state of shock for a moment that you didn’t register that Tommy said anything to you until he said your name again more urgently, “Yeah,” you breathed as you blinked and looked into his eyes, “I’m fine,” you let go of the breath you didn’t realize you held, “Thank you, Tommy.” This was the second time tonight you thanked him for saving you.

Tommy’s smile lit up his face and it brought those butterflies back into your stomach, “No need to thank me, sweetheart,” he playfully nudged your chin, “Just helping out my favorite waitress in distress.”

“My hero,” you sighed as you laughed softly. It was then that you realized Tommy still held you, and the warmth of his hands brought a comfort that you had only dreamed about until now. As nervous as you were, you decided this was the perfect chance, “Hey Tommy… Why don’t I make it up to you… Tomorrow night?”

“You asking me out, sugar?”

“I am,” your voice was just a whisper as the chatter of the bar seemed to dim away around you and the only thing in focus was Tommy.

“Well shit don’t you know how to make a man feel special?” he felt his face heat up and he was sure you noticed, “But tomorrow sounds wonderful, sweetheart.”

Your face lit up and Tommy swore the whole world stopped for a moment. After months of watching you from afar, waiting for the right time to ask you out, the moment came and you took it before he could. But, he had to admit, other than you being in danger, this was a perfect moment.

But perfect moments don’t last.

From behind, someone grabbed Tommy and yanked him from your grip. He yelled and tried to fight back, thinking it was one of the guys he knocked out, but before he got a swing in, he felt the cold steel of handcuffs on his wrists.

You shouted at the officers, “Wait, it wasn’t him!” you pleaded, “He was deafening me!”

“Sorry ma’am,” he told you in a cold tone, “But he was the one who attacked.”

“That’s bullshit!” both you and Tommy shouted at the same time, overlapping each other.

“Yeah, yeah,” the officer brushed you off, “Come on, bucko.”

“Tommy!” you shouted at him as he was ripped from your grasp. You lunged forward and grabbed onto his shoulders as you rested your forehead against his for a moment.

“Don’t worry sweetheart,” he comforted you as best he could with his hands bound behind his back, “I’ll make our date tomorrow night. Promise,” Tommy placed a quick kiss on your lips before the officer dragged him out the bar. The entire time, while everyone else starred, his eyes never felt you. And your eyes never left him until he was through the front door.

“Tomorrow…” you echoed as you felt the tingle of his brief kiss on your lips.

Unfortunately, the world had other plans in store…

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eddiessluttywaist · 1 year

Text

as if (part 4 based on angst ending)

AGELESS/BLANK/UNDER 18 BLOGS ARE NOT WELCOME TO INTERACT. PLEASE RESPECT MY RULES AND BOUNDARIES

summary: continuation of the angst ending of as if, moves away from how eddie has been acting just so you know 👀

pairing: ex-bully!mean!perv!soft!eddie munson x fem reader

word count: 10,964 words

content/warnings: swearing, mentions of smutty content MDNI (y/n is 18/19), bully!eddie, mean!eddie, perv!eddie, brief threats and violence, rejection, angsttt, depression, very brief mention of unhealthy eating habits, heartbreak, yearning, anxiety, arguing, crying, near death experience, regret, isolation and loneliness. i think that’s all pls tell me if i miss anything!

a/n: i’m sorry this took me so long skbvdjkk enjoy the suffering. credit to whoever owns/posted that picture ^ it’s not mine :)

part one - part two - start of part three - angst ending to part three

Eddie Munson is an asshole.

He’s a cruel heartbreaker, that’s for sure. He’s selfish. He’s mean. He’s smug. He’s ruined love for you.

As much as that sentiment reeked of teenage melodrama, it’s still true. He’s ruined mean guys for you cause you know what to expect from them, and he’s ruined sweet guys for you cause you know better than to know what to expect. Eddie is someone who finds a way to be so sweet and charming for that subtle kind of control, just to turn out to be an asshole through and through. Every nicety and moment of tenderness was only to keep you on the hook for a good fuck; and if things hadn’t spiraled into an apocalyptic shitshow, he would’ve been the one and only reason for your aching misery.

He’s a lot of things. You could go through a list of adjectives that would make your mother gasp and cross herself.

He’s a life ruiner in so many ways—but he isn’t a killer.

Despite how he treated you, you liked to think you still had a good sense of his heart—even if he refused to give it to you the way you would’ve so readily given him yours. He’s smug and rotten, but murder is not something he’s capable of. Some violence? Probably. Maybe. Given the right circumstances. But he wouldn’t kill someone. So you were one of the few who weren’t surprised when news came out that he wasn’t to blame for everything that happened. Sure, there were still plenty of kooks who remained certain that he used his “ties with Satan” to open up a portal to Hell, but as more and more came out about that lab near the quarry—the rarer those types became.

By now nearly everyone’s forgotten about him, or at least that’s how it felt to you. No one talked about him—they didn’t even seem to think about him—but not you. Despite everything, his memory seemed to live on in your head. On repeat some days.

Just to clarify: he didn’t die. His memory didn’t need to be kept alive because he wasn’t—he was pretty damn close when he was found (at least from what you’ve heard), but he wasn’t dead. However, that didn’t change the fact that the people of Hawkins liked to act like he was. He was nowhere to be found for starters, and everyone left in town seemed to appreciate things that way so they didn’t have to address him.

The turnaround was baffling to you. How his name never even came up, and when it did people grew uncomfortable and tried to turn the conversation elsewhere. Even you—someone who decidedly hated his guts months before the day Chrissy Cunningham was found dead—thought he deserved something better than becoming a banned topic after what this town put him through.

You could remember the day he appeared on the news like it was yesterday.

You had been curled up on one corner of the couch of the living room, your mother on the other end, and your father in his La-Z-Boy. It was pitch black in the room with the only light source being the colorful and fuzzy glow of the television. It was unfortunately your mom’s night to watch her program so of course you and your dad were already half asleep by the time her show was suddenly interrupted.

“What the-!” your mom had gasped. “I wanna know what happens! Oh those darn news… people…”

She had trailed off as the reality of the emergency newscast sunk in, no longer reaching for the remote but settling back into her spot instead.

You didn’t really know Chrissy. She was popular and well-loved, and had hundreds of friends. You definitely weren’t one of them, though. Whether it was secretly too beneath her deep down in her innocent demeanor, or if you simply weren’t interested in gravitating around her enough for her to truly take notice of you. She was a sweet girl though. She was a senior like you and the few times you two interacted, she was nothing but kind. And even if she hadn’t been, she still wouldn’t have deserved what happened to her.

You remember your mother nervously toying that necklace she always wore as she watched the news with big eyes. The way your dad sat up more and gave the screen his full attention. The tension and anxiety that made the air in the living room feel heavy; and when you thought your throat couldn’t get any drier and your heart couldn’t race any faster—Eddie’s picture was plastered on the television.

You remember the way your hearing seemed to turn into a faint buzz as the newscaster spoke of the victim’s body being found in his trailer.

“I always knew that boy was trouble.” your dad grumbled out, and you had to fight the urge to huff out a laugh and tell him he had no idea.

Neither of them knew what happened between you two or that there was even a “you two” to begin with. And you certainly wouldn’t have said anything that night because then they’d know in the worst way possible. Admitting it back then at the start of Spring Break would’ve been admitting how deeply you had fallen for someone who was possibly wanted for murder.

Even if it was never explicitly stated that Eddie Munson had shattered your heart (when you were completely falling apart just a couple months before your hometown did the same) your mom had been quick to notice something was wrong. Motherly instincts or something like that—or, y’know, just the fact that you were visibly a mess.

Even at that start of it all you didn’t want to talk about that one particularly miserable day. You would wait until it was late at night to cry into your pillow. You had briefly lost some weight since the whole situation had left you with a solid knot in your stomach, leaving you horribly nauseous and deadening your appetite. The fact that you were constantly lying about being sick to avoid school was what truly confirmed your mom’s concerns.

Sure, you could’ve had a stomach bug. Maybe that’s why you had been picking at your food at dinner. Maybe that’s why you looked so pale and tired all the time. But then throughout the school week you would keep saying you were sick, and with the state you were in she didn’t have the heart to tell you your temperature was perfectly normal. Besides, you never skipped so she wasn’t all that suspicious at first so she let you stay home. You kept lying, though, and she finally felt she had to ask if something was going on at school.

You remember that time when boy problems still mattered so vividly. When Eddie Munson was still a mentionable name, even if you didn’t act like it. When your mom was checking in on you because of him and because her main concern was still little nuances in your behavior.

“Is something going on at school?” your mom had murmured softly as she sat on the edge of your bed.

It was nighttime and the only light in your room was the faint and warm glow of your bedside table, giving a false sense of comfort to the room that was filled with memories of him. Some spots of your room still smelled like him—especially by the window where he would sneak in, and sit on to smoke. It felt like cold spots in a haunted house to you.

“Is someone not treating you right?”

“No, mom, really. I just don’t feel well.” you murmured, and she can’t help but notice how dry your lips look. That little scab where you had been anxiously biting and picking at the skin there—a bad habit that only ever flared up when you were distraught, even as a child. You certainly looked ill, but her instincts were pointing elsewhere. She insisted you drink some of the water on your bedside table before she continued.

“Well…” she had sighed, smoothing out the blanket resting over you. “Is… is it a boy?”

You remember feeling your heart temporarily stop before lodging itself in your throat. You tried to ignore that burning feeling as you avoided breaking down and confirming her worries. But fighting it off didn’t mean that lump wasn’t in your throat. It didn’t mean your face didn’t get all warm as tears began to prick at your eyes. You were oddly silent as you kept your gaze down and shook your head. You were sure you could’ve held those tears in too, but then she got you to crack with a couple simple words.

“Oh honey…” She murmured and pulled you into her for a hug.

You didn’t want to tell anyone. It was embarrassing. It wasn’t even embarrassing—it was humiliating, mortifying. So you weren’t expecting how relieving it was to sob and finally let someone know, even if you didn’t go into detail.

“I thought he really cared about me d-deep down-“ you had wailed as your mom shushed you in a caring manner and rubbed your back.

You still appreciate the fact that she didn’t push. She didn’t urge you to tell her everything, she just let you cry until you were spent and she left to soak a face towel in cool water so she could press it to your flushed cheeks. She held you and murmured reassuringly, especially when you spoke up again—your voice horribly broken.

“I-It’s not fair because he’s perfectly fine and I… I’m…” you choked up after your tone got high with emotion before crumbling again.

“I know, honey, I know… it’s never fair…” she whispered. “But you’re gonna be okay. It feels like the end of the world now, but before you know it it’ll be a little bit better, okay?”

She had pulled back to look at you and wiped the tears off of your cheeks. “And then it’ll be better after that, and even more after that. You’re going to keep healing, I promise.”

In hindsight she wasn’t wrong, but there had still been so many days where you wished Eddie Munson would turn up dead for what he did to you. And now you felt horribly guilty for those thoughts after he had been so close. Even though you still despise him deep down, you hate yourself a little bit too. For letting him in, in the first place. For falling in love and for admitting it. For falling apart because he didn’t feel the same. For wishing he would drop dead.

And there was another thing that burned away at you. Right next to the fact that no one mentioned Eddie, was the frustrating fact that Jason was still talked about and practically canonized. There were portraits of him and Chrissy in local churches and in Hawkins High and sure maybe he didn’t deserve to die, but why wasn’t anyone talking about how he put fire under that ridiculous manhunt? To urge everyone to find Eddie and do who knows what to him?

Steadily approaching a year since Hawkins broke open, you’re scowling as you walk past that portrait of him in school. Having to repeat your senior year after the disaster threw everyone’s educational progress off the rails, you had to deal with that picture a lot. You turn your gaze elsewhere as you head to your last class of the day, and even that little glimpse of his image sparks up memories of his crazed state.

Jason had an inexhaustible vengeance, and refused to let anything—or anyone—get in his way. He had to find Eddie. He had to make him pay.

You didn’t know it at the time, but he had been hunting down Eddie’s closest friends and band mates to get information out of them. That’s how he found you.

“Where is he?” Jason shouted in Gareth’s face as he gripped him by the lapels of his cut up flannel.

“I don’t know!”

“Where is he!?”

“I don’t know!” Gareth insisted before Jason hit him again.

While a restrained Jeff shouted at him to leave his friend alone, Jason tossed him into his drums. A cymbal crashed while the set dispersed in different directions and Gareth was left lying on the floor of his garage.

“It’s gonna be hard to play those drums with a broken hand!” Jason rose his voice again, holding Gareth down by his back and crushed his hand between his sneaker and the concrete floor. There was an audible crunch as Gareth cried out in pain.

“Dustin!”

“What?”

“Dustin Henderson!”

“What?” Jason repeated, urging him to clarify.

“Dustin Henderson!” Gareth shouted again, face twisting in pain. “Man h-he was- he was calling around looking for Eddie! Maybe he found him! Maybe he found him!”

“See that wasn’t that hard, was it?” Jason taunted, but kept pressing his foot onto Gareth’s hand before finally stepping away.

“O-or y/n maybe, I don’t know.” Gareth cried out, cradling his hand that was pulsing with pain.

“Who?” Jason’s brow furrowed as he looked back at him.

Jeff spoke up for him, repeating your name in a panic.

“Y-yeah maybe. I don’t know, I haven’t seen her around him in a while, b-but I caught them fooling around in Eddie’s van once,” Jeff rambled on “And he was constantly messing with her. He… he might be with her. Or she might know.”

The more he thought about it, the more Jason remembered the occasional moment where he would see Eddie tossing things at you in class or pushing up against you in gym. Back in the car, Andy and Patrick chimed in with other things they witnessed. Eddie feeling you up. Eddie shoving you or knocking your books out of your hands. Eddie harassed you constantly. Maybe even being tutored by you (according to Andy). If you couldn’t join them through a mutual hatred for the metalhead, maybe you could at least be forced to give more information—especially if you had some fucked up relationship.

You were home alone despite your mother’s insistence to join her or your father at work. With two deaths and a possible killer still on the loose, she wasn’t wild about you being by yourself. You convinced her you could take care of yourself, especially with all the baseball bats and heavy golf clubs she kept around just in case.

Considering everything, you shouldn’t have opened the front door when someone rang, but you were so shocked to spot Jason Carver through your peephole to think about it. You weren’t impressed, even when he flashed you his best smile. You were just curious why he was here.

“Well, I’ll be quick. I’m sure you have better things to do.” he said with a soft laugh which you were sure he thought was charming. You just kept scowling.

“Yeah. I do,” you said bluntly and there was a flash of anger across his face for a moment before he filtered it through a weaker smile. “What do you want?”

“I just want to know if you have any idea where Eddie Munson is.”

You can’t help but scoff at this.

“No, and I really don’t care about where he could be.”

You’re about to close the door, but he was quick to speak up again and keep your attention.

“I heard you tutor him-“

“Not anymore. Too difficult.” You interrupted, and he faltered for a moment before continuing.

“I’m sure. I know how he treated you. It… it’s horrible really.” He spoke softly and you hesitated for a moment, hand still on the edge of your door.

But then you realized something.

If he knew, then where had he been? Why didn’t he do anything? Even if you didn’t want anyone to interfere—not really. Not to mention after he broke your heart and all ties were cut, Eddie surprisingly let up on the constant harassment. It wasn’t fun anymore. Soon enough he had been avoiding you in the halls as much as you had been avoiding him, but that didn’t mean everything before that never happened. If Jason really took notice of your interactions, where had he been?

“I could tell even then just from how he acted with you that he wasn’t a good person. He’s not a good person. He’s a killer, and he can’t be out here loose in Hawkins ready to claim another victim.”

You stare at him in silence. Your lack of response is clearly testing his patience and he’s parting his lips to speak up again, but you cut him off.

“Why now?”

“What?” Jason laughed this off casually.

“Why now are you suddenly so interested in how he used to treat me?”

“Oh, well I-”

“No,” you interrupted bluntly at your swift decision and with no room for fluff. No matter how much you hated Eddie. “I’m not here for your senseless propaganda. Thanks.”

You went to slam the door, but he kept it open. It touches on a memory of Eddie doing something similar once upon a time to get to you while you were all alone in your bedroom. The only difference is this isn’t Eddie, and Jason is really starting to scare you.

You glance over to see the concern on Lucas Sinclair’s face—you recognized him from the occasional interactions he had with Eddie and then from all the excitement of that recent basketball game he won for the high school team. He was behind Jason, a little off to the side and you spotted the car in the driveway with a few others inside. The fact that he had others with him didn’t exactly comfort you.

“I just want to know where that freak is, okay?” Jason clarified with a smile as if it covered the fact that he was clearly unstable. You could see it in his eyes.

“It’s dangerous with him out there. I’m just trying to help my community.”

“Whatever, Jason. Like I said: I’m not interested in any of this. I don’t talk to Eddie anymore. I don’t know where he fucked off to.”

“I know you’re screwing him. Just tell me where your creep boyfriend is.”

This sudden flash of anger and the contents of his accusation shocked you, but you didn’t let it force your guard down.

“I’m not with him like that. Like I said: I don’t fucking talk to him. I don’t know where he is.”

Jason still wasn’t budging, and you’re suddenly grateful for your mom’s incessant worrying when he took a step forward. You grabbed the metal bat your parents kept by the door right as he’s parting his lips to continue speaking.

“Get off my doorstep. Get away from me. Or I’m using this, Carver, I swear to god.”

This made him hold his hands up in defense and start to back off again, especially as Lucas murmured a swift “C’mon, man, maybe we should just leave her alone.” A sad excuse for a kind smile curved up the corners of the blond’s mouth. It made you sick.

“Just trying to take care of my community. No need to get violent… I’m one of the good guys. If you’re sure you don’t know anything—I’ll leave you be.”

“Well I don’t. How many times do I have to say it?” You snap, gripping the handle of the bat a bit tighter.

He finally started to walk off with an okay okay, but then he turned to look at you one more time.

“Be smart about which side you’re choosing.”

At that, you slammed your front door and locked it. One of the good guys, you think with a scoff. Yeah, sure.

Currently on your walk home, your mind is still swirling with memories of last year. You understood the need to commemorate and show respect, but the constant reminders didn’t help to move on. You hated being here. You couldn’t wait to graduate and move as far away as possible. You wanted to forget about Hawkins. You wanted to forget about Eddie Munson. You wanted to forget how close the world had been to ending.

You happen to glance up as you walk towards your house when your steps become hesitant at the sight of someone sitting on your doorstep. It was no jock ready to berate you. It certainly wasn’t Eddie.

It was none other than Nancy Wheeler.

Eddie was miserable.

Actually, it was beyond just misery. He couldn’t even think of a word to describe everything he had been through and everything he was actively going through—whether that was because he always failed vocab tests due to lazy disinterest or because such a word just didn’t exist. The whole experience took a lot out of him—quite literal chunks out of his body, not just emotionally.

Besides those who had become closest to him, once everyone was focused on the next suspect no one bothered to check back in with him. No one apologized for literally hunting him down with plans of… god, he didn’t even want to think about what they would’ve done if they caught him.

After being resuscitated, he had to be holed up in some secure room of a nearby hospital while he recovered since Hawkins Memorial Hospital was too risky for him. As the days in the hospital went by painfully and with more and more news on Hawkins turning up on the small TV of his room, he wondered if karma was a real thing. He narrowly escaped death and an arrest for a murder he didn’t commit (really the only thing saving his ass coming from the insistence of his uncle and Chief Hopper when he randomly appeared back in Hawkins). It certainly made a guy think about what he’s done.

In fact, all the isolation gave him far too much time to think. Watching the news; constantly pressing the morphine button even though he knew it wouldn’t give him more; falling into pits of depression where sometimes he wished they never brought him back—those thoughts of karma came up. He would eventually brush them off as hippie garbage, but memories of you were sounding off like an alarm in his head. It wasn’t hippie garbage. The concept held some real truth to it, and he knew he deserved everything that happened after he had been so cruel to you because of some stupid, childish need for distance from any sort of vulnerability.

After realizing that, he couldn’t stop thinking about you. He was stuck in Hell on earth with aching wounds he wished would heal faster and memories of a girl he should’ve treated better. He regretted how things ended, and wondered what it would be like right now if he hadn’t ended things with such brutal carelessness. You’d probably be right by his side and making it easier to get through. And when he thought about how much better it would be to heal with you here, something ached deep inside him that even morphine couldn’t touch. He missed something he never let himself have, and certainly didn’t deserve by this point. He knew what kinds of things mattered now, and it didn’t even make a difference because as much as it changed things for him that didn’t mean it changed things for you.

Then one night, it dawned on him that you might not even be alive.

He was sweating from all the pain and the drugs and the heat of mid September of ‘86, when it occurred to him that you could be gone. Having already established a constant pattern of thoughts that revolved around you, it wasn’t surprising that he was up at 2 AM with you on his mind but that intrusion to his pleasant memories or self-loathing put him into a panic. You could be dead quickly turned into you are dead, and he couldn’t handle it. How could he deserve to live, but you didn’t? Maybe because you deserved mercy and he didn’t. Either way, he ignored his crying nerves and scrambled for the walky talky on his bedside table.

He tried just about every channel he was allowed to use, but no one was picking up. Maybe they were sleeping, but he knew he wasn’t the only one in the group suffering from insomnia after everything that happened. Still, he wasn’t granted the peace of a response and he had to lay there just hoping for a chance to make things better—and worry that he wouldn’t get to.

The group that helped him through that horrific Spring break came to visit him when they were able to. It was typically at random, with the occasional stop at his request for certain food or begging for a distraction before he went insane. Lucas was the first one to answer when he tried the radio again early that morning, and he soothed Eddie’s anxiety with the promise of stopping by.

With Max in the hospital and still no signs of coming back, Lucas had his own need for a distraction. He trudged into the dull room Eddie was stuck in, and settled into the chair kept by the bed.

“Is she alive?”

Lucas blinked, wondering if maybe he missed something in his own fog of exhaustion and despair. Really it was because Eddie blurted out in mid-thought without the courtesy of some background, but he still grew frustrated with him. His face bunched up as he briefly bared his teeth in that split second of muted rage. One of his hands made a fist before he unfurled it to rub at his face and shake his head.

“Y/n. Y/n, Sinclair—jesus christ—is she alive?”

Lucas parted his lips and then closed them again, tired eyes staring over at the metalhead as he tried to get his mind to cooperate. Eddie nearly cracked over the hesitation, taking it as a sign that Lucas was struggling to tell him that you were gone rather than trying to remember who you were and if he had seen you around.

“Yeah. Y-Yeah,” he finally murmured and a heavy sigh exhaled from Eddie’s lungs. “I’ve seen her around school. She’s alive.”

“Jesus chr—she’s okay?” Eddie was rubbing his palms over his face again, bangs partially sticking up when he pulled his hands away to gesture with energy he didn’t have to spend.

“Yeah, man, she’s okay. I think—I-I don’t really talk to her, but she isn’t injured.”

Eddie sat with that for a moment, relieved that you were alive and at least fine physically, but his eyes were still sad. Lucas joined him in this bubble of misery, the silence tugging him back to thoughts of Max until Eddie finally popped the bubble again.

“Did… did she join everyone? Y’know in the Great Hunt for the Freak?” he let out a partial laugh, but it was hollow.

“No, she didn’t buy it.” Lucas shrugged and leaned forward to rest his forearms on his thighs.

His eye stung for a moment, watered and then returned to normal. After that fight in the old Creel house, his eye was never truly the same. It healed enough that it wasn’t swollen and bruised, but it was still sensitive and it watered more often. Whenever it did, it made him think of that night and he felt as if he was being punched all over again. It made him think of Max. It made him think of Jason.

Although with the topic on you, remembering Jason made him laugh a little—a soft, amused chuckle breaking through his sorrow.

“Jason actually went to her house. I… I was still with him at that point,” Lucas flicked his gaze up at Eddie with guilt before looking back down. “He wanted to interrogate her about you. See if you were hiding with her or if she hated you enough to join him.”

Eddie swallowed, brows frowning as he waited for him to continue.

“She uh… she threatened him with a baseball bat.” Lucas laughed a bit more wholeheartedly this time.

Eddie’s head sunk back a bit in surprise, big doe eyes even wider and brows raised in disbelief. He said your first name to clarify and even though Lucas nodded, he said your full name with that same questioning tone.

“She threatened Jason Carver with a baseball bat?”

You were meek if nothing else, and as Eddie knew you—you were easy to break. Easy to bend and mold so he never considered the possibility that you were strong. That you could take care of yourself, and you weren’t as weak as you looked. But maybe it was fitting. You appeared delicate and fragile, but were tougher than you looked. Whereas he had that rough n tough, bad boy act just for it to fall apart when he found himself scrambling away from danger. He just hoped he wasn’t the reason you were surprisingly resilient—that maybe it was always there and he just never noticed.

“Yeah. He wouldn’t back off and she said she’d do it if he didn’t leave,” Lucas snickered a bit before his mood was sobered by the other side of this memory. “She uh… she was scared. He was scaring her, and I don’t blame her. He was scaring all of us…”

He was focused on his hands now, toying with them anxiously and he could hear the sigh of Eddie’s puffy hospital pillow as he settled back against it. He was letting it all sink in, and for a moment he wished he was the one to kill Carver instead of the cracking earth. You didn’t deserve the way he treated you, and you didn’t deserve Jason’s intimidation tactics just because you had been caught up with the likes of him.

He hated that you had been scared, he hated that it was his fault, and he hated how much worse he felt now that he knew that you stood up for him even after everything he put you through. Maybe not so much stood up for him, but you didn’t let yourself get dragged into the accusations and mob mentality even if you had every reason to.

This hurt worse somehow, and he was bound to a new bout of pain and suffering.

“I just miss her, I guess…” Eddie admitted to his uncle once the topic turned to you. He felt the urge to repent and voice how badly he wished you were with him right now, and his uncle was the only one he felt safe admitting all of this to.

“The girl that you were spending time with at home?” His uncle’s gruff voice wondered, and Eddie was taken aback by the question.

All he said was there was a girl he had a thing with, which he messed up royally, and he wished he could have another chance. Nothing else, so he looked like a fish out of water now and his uncle chuckled at his reaction.

“I may not be the smartest man around, but I’m not stupid,” he grumbled out, sat in the same chair Lucas had been. “I was aware of your uh… activities.”

Wayne scratched at his stubble, embarrassed to acknowledge just exactly what his adult nephew had been up to—just as mortified as Eddie was over having to discuss sex with his uncle.

“I found her panty things stuck to the inside of the dryer,” Wayne explained further. “And I ran into her one morning when I had just come home from the plant.”

You had been leaving Eddie’s room to use the bathroom early in the morning, not realizing he would be home from a shift. You hoped that with how tired he looked that he would think it was all a weird dream or maybe that he was seeing things. After all, you were back in that room in a flash. Fast enough to be a fleeting ghost, but he saw you and he clearly remembered you. Eddie was grumbling something to himself now about you being careless enough to get him caught, but Wayne was quick to shut this down. He wasn’t known to raise his voice, and he still really didn’t, but his tone was harsher now.

“No—don’t you go blaming that girl cause you insisted on keeping her a secret. Christ, boy—you know, I thought I taught you better.”

Of all the things he could say, this was the worst. I thought I taught you better. Eddie wished he could shrink down to nothing, and he looked down at his hands in shame.

“You should’ve treated her better. That’s on you.”

“Yeah…” Eddie laughed out bitterly “You have no idea…”

Eddie sighed now, hiding his face behind his palms.

“I’m so fucking stupid. I don’t know how I thought that kind of shit was important,” He rips his hands away to jerk them outwards in an exasperated gesture and looks over at this uncle. “It was fun a-and then it was too serious and I just— I— and now I don’t know why I was thinking like that.”

“Well,” his uncle started after a pause to think it over. “you may have been a grown man in the eyes of the law, but that doesn’t mean you were thinking like one. You’re still young. I…I’d like to think you would’ve learned these kinds of thing at a regular pace as you grew up, but—shit—between your parents and especially after all this-”

Wayne gestured out into the air with little energy to his casual motion.

“You’re forced into adulthood. That’s what shit like this does…”

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Eddie finally admits in a rush after a moment of considering his uncles words. He was sure they had some truth to them, but he thought maybe his uncle was giving him too much credit. “I really cared for her— I still really care for her. I was just… I was being-“

“Stupid? Childish?”

“Yeah, yeah okay- geez,” Eddie sighs and looks down at his hands to pick at his nails. “Yeah… all of that…”

“Well… maybe if she really means that much to ya, then be honest. Try again. Really put some elbow grease into it, and maybe—if you’re lucky—she’ll forgive you.”

Eddie scoffs out a miserable laugh and gestures around him in a way that’s far more animated than when his uncle did it.

“Yeah. Cause I’m clearly so lucky.”

What made all of this worse was the fact that he couldn’t even reach out for months.

Being hidden away didn’t only mean a different hospital picked out by Hopper. It also meant no calls, no letters—nothing. He couldn’t risk being found by anyone who was still convinced he was guilty. Eddie insisted it calmed down enough to come back and he had healed enough for it, but Hopper was hesitant and ultimately unyielding.

“It’s bullshit. You guys even said no one mentions me anymore, and it’s not like I’m a suspect.” Eddie ranted to Nancy during her visit, Steve somewhere else in the hospital looking for food.

“I know, but you’ll still stand out right now,” she reasoned. “If you come back, it could stir something up again.”

“What, so I never go back? I have to uproot my whole shitty life because of rumors?”

“Eddie-“ she sighed.

“No, it’s shit. It’s all shit. If I have to stay one more second in this shitty fucking room, I’m gonna start climbing the walls,” he ranted with wild eyes. “I need to leave. I need to live my crappy life. I… I need to see y/n again.”

At that, Nancy perked up. It wasn’t out of excitement, but rather something blowing through her sideways at your name. Familiarity burned at her before it all went up in flames, and she was overwhelmed with memories and guilt.

“Oh my god… y/n…” She murmured to herself with an upsetting sense of nostalgia.

She completely forgot about you in the mess of everything. At first she had been trying to keep you from learning anything that could put you in danger—doing her best to keep it between her and Jonathan. She had already lost Barb because of her own selfish carelessness, she couldn’t let something happen to you too. Then it was all a whirlwind from there and you were suddenly caught up in a past that she forgot existed. A past where a shoebox was just a shoebox.

Her eyes grow sad, her mind filling with thoughts of how she could’ve ever possibly left you in the dust. Sure, you were a newfound friend in high school—whereas her and Barb had been friends for years by that point—but that was no excuse for letting leaving you out of the loop turn into completely leaving you behind.

She’s so caught up in her own regrets that she forgets about Eddie until he’s speaking up again and waving his hand in front of her face.

“Uhh, Wheeler? Hello?”

“Oh- uh… yeah, yes.” She shakes her head, her curly hair shuffling around with the motion, her brow frowning and her lips taut. “Yes. Yes, I know her. You know her?”

“Well uh…” he lets out a nervous laugh, suddenly fearful of the rage of an old friend. “We sorta… we had a thing going…”

He risked a glance over at her, and her expression was anything but sparing. She clearly wasn’t happy with how guilty he sounded, but who was she? She abandoned you for all intents and purposes, even if she didn’t mean to. And if she had been blind enough to never notice what went on between you and Eddie, she had no right to chastise him for it even if she did have the familiar urge to get up on her high horse.

“But uh… I kinda screwed everything up,” he muttered and was back to picking at his fingers while he stared down at them. “Like you wouldn’t believe. And I just… shit, I’m so sick of this place and waiting around.”

“I’m sorry, Eddie, but you can’t go back to Hawkins yet.”

“Yeah, I think I got that,” he snaps bitterly before cooling down again. “I just… I need to talk to her or something. If she could be brought here, or if I could meet her somewhere else. I need to fix things.”

After constant complaining and threats of breaking out of the hospital, Nancy eventually found a compromise to get him to shut up.

Steve came back around the time he had started rattling on again about how he was going to go crazy. Utterly confused as always, he was off to the side and watched as Nance did her best to calm Eddie down again. He occasionally broke through all the noise with his questions, only to get a searing glare from Nancy. At some point, he finally caught on (kinda) and only made things worse.

“Munson has a crush,” he finally said with a snap of his fingers and points at them. “That’s cute. Embarrassing, but cute.”

“I don’t have a crush, you idi-”

“Will you please stop?” Nancy hissed over at him, expression begging for him to keep out of it.

“Why am I even here?” Steve wondered out loud with a sigh and kept eating his suspicious hospital jello.

“Cause I can’t leave this fucking place!” Eddie reiterated, making Nancy groan over Steve agitating the problem that she was just barely starting to settle.

“I’ll- I’ll give her a letter!” she finally offered, cutting Eddie off mid-complaint. Her arms shot up with the raise of her voice, laughing with exasperation. “Just write down what you want to say, and I’ll give it to her!”

“What are you doing here?”

It came out harsher than you intended and even you wanted to flinch at your own words, but maybe it was justified. She completed cast you aside you when you lost a friend. You both lost a friend, and it seemed to make her hate you. Or at least that’s how it felt. Why else would she have avoided you? Why else would she have stopped talking to you?

“I guess I deserve that.” Nancy replied with a soft huff of a laugh, and a sheepish smile.

More news seemed to be coming up little by little about Barb. Once upon a time you thought it all came to a close when it was revealed that she died from a chemical leak, but now there was talk of things that a chemical leak would wilt in comparison to. Things that went on in your own home town that you can’t even imagine going unseen by so many. Or maybe they all saw, but curled up into their comfortable ignorance to avoid it. You couldn’t judge them—you did too. You believed every story you got, even if—in hindsight—they were obvious cover ups every time someone started to demand for better explanations.

You eye her cautiously, hoping your eyes don’t show the sadness that came with such hesitancy around someone you used to know so well.

“I uhm…” Nancy shook her head the way she always did when she needed to clear her thoughts, brows furrowed and nose briefly scrunched up as she glanced at the ground. “I had to bring this to you…”

She was looking at you again, gauging your reaction as she extended her slim arm to offer you an envelope. You’re toying with it in your hands, wondering why there was no name on the back and if you should open it now.

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

You look up at her now, but remain silent. What was there to say?

“I should’ve never left you behind like that... Trust me, I never meant to. I thought I was protecting you and I was, but…” Nancy’s pouty lips scrunch together for a moment. “It wasn’t fair.”

“No, it wasn’t…” you concur, but your heart aches from the look on her face.

Sure, she hurt you but maybe you should’ve been grateful. Even if you wished she would’ve been honest with you, you knew how stubborn Nancy could be when it came to protecting those close to her. Instead of shutting her out, you extend an olive branch.

“Barb would be rolling her eyes at us right now, huh?”

Nancy stutters over her own disbelieving laugh as she glances at you through her lashes.

“Yeah, she would be.” Her nose scrunches again, lips bunched up a second time as her gaze grows sentimental. “She’d be telling us to stop being so stupid.”

“‘You both get perfect grades, why don’t you use your brains outside of school?’” You quote before laughing and she joins in.

“Guess we can’t say she wasn’t honest. She was always pretty straightforward with her thoughts.”

“One of us had to be.”

Nancy nods, and then let’s out a sigh as she rubs her arm and starts to move out of your way.

“Well, I should probably let you get to that-“

“Yeah, this letter that isn’t suspicious at all.” You joke, holding up the blank envelope and she laughs lightly before ducking her head down.

Figuring you were parting ways now, you turn around and open your front door, just to turn around in your doorway when you heard her suddenly chirp out your name. She hesitates again, but then finds her words.

“I… now that things seem to be going back to normal… I… I’d love to try being friends again. Maybe have a girls night.”

A smile breaks out onto your face, and you watch her defenses slowly start to melt away and smooth out the stiffness in her body.

“I’d like that.”

“What did she say? How’d she react?” Eddie asked over the radio, barely even waiting for a second to pass before continuing. “Wheeler? Hello?”

“Can I have a moment to respond?” Nancy quipped back, the crackling of the station breaking up her voice but not enough that he couldn’t hear her frustration. Not that he cared right now.

“What’d she think?”

“I don’t know, Eddie,” she sighed. “She didn’t open your letter in front of me.”

“Shit…” Eddie mutters, chewing at his thumbnail. He wanted—maybe even needed—the instant gratification that Nancy could’ve given him had she stuck around to watch you open the envelope.

Then again, maybe he was lucky.

“It— It’s whatever. I just hope it makes a difference.”

“What…what did you say to her in the letter?” Nancy asked now before shifting her focus quickly. “What did you even do in the first place?”

“Uhh, well let’s see,” Eddie looked up at the ceiling from where he was sat on the edge of his bed as his leg started to bounce. “I was a dick. Yeah… yeah, that about sums it up.”

“Don’t make me regret doing this for you, Eddie.” Nancy sighed and turned down the volume to her walky talky.

“I’m sorry, and I mean it. I’m capable given the right circumstances, remember?” the writing said, then there were a few words that had been crossed out and he followed those scratches of ink with a winky face, concluding with: “Leave that window unlocked, kay? I’ll be back for that necklace so keep it safe.”

Was the world falling apart all over again? Did you actually die and you didn’t even realize it? Everything seemed so unexpected and oddly… nice? Reassuring? Like Nancy showing up and apologizing. Or this letter you had open on top of your bedding.

It was part of a full sheet of paper, likely the bottom third of a page torn off. The handwriting and the comments throughout were enough to immediately make you think of who wrote this—even if he didn’t sign it. But what really confirmed it was the necklace with the red guitar pick hanging on it. You’re infuriated with the involuntary flush reaching your cheeks as memories rush in. All the times he was on top of you, that necklace hanging down and resting on your chest or nudging your chin and lips.

“God, you’re such a good girl for me.” you remember him groaning that one time he watched you sucking on the guitar pick, big eyes staring up at him while he fucked into you.

You had been folded into yourself on his mattress, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes from each and every thrust that fed your greed for him but was inevitably making your body ache.

The pick that was now resting in your palm was suddenly just a thin slab of plastic. The more you thought about it, that’s pretty much all it tasted like it, but you remembered the saltiness of his sweat too. What made it so special in the first place was knowing it was his. It was such an integral part of him—it laid close to his heart where you wished to be, and it was cherished by him which you wished for yourself once too. That moment in his small bedroom when you let it slip past your lips, you hadn’t been sure how he’d react, and to be completely honest you were too fucked out to think at all. But he didn’t pull it away from you, he sunk into you with that shuddering praise instead.

The memory of his words was enough to raise your body temperature, but you fought off that familiar instinct to melt just for him. He’s an asshole. A cruel heartbreaker. He’s selfish. He’s mean. He’s smug. He ruined love for you.

Your stomach bends and curls enough to make you nauseous as the butterflies kick in—then why do I still want him so badly? You were so desperate to take every single ounce of attention—good or bad—that he gave you. Hadn’t you learned your lesson? Hadn’t you been practicing your borderline religious hatred for him enough for it to be real?

You’re not sure if it’s anger towards him or yourself for slipping so easily, but your blood is starting to boil. You remind yourself of all those games he used to play with you and the sentiment of him being a heartless, sadistic fuck plays on repeat in your head so that no softer thoughts can break through. Surely he was toying with you. This was a test of some kind, probably because he got bored and wanted to brush you off like some forgotten toy he wanted to use again.

You needed to prove to yourself that you can shoot him down. Stare into those gorgeous doe eyes and tell him to go fuck himself. Look up at him when he’s giving you that beautiful half-smile and moving his hands to hold your hips, and tell him to never talk to you again.

You needed to show him how it felt to be treated the way he treated you. Maybe it was childish, but some twisted part of you felt relieved at the thought of it. He deserved to have his hopes shattered when he thinks he’s getting what he wants, just to be shut out. He deserved to be humiliated. He deserved to be broken down so thoroughly just like you had been. To be broken down into such a fine dust that even when you were sure everything had been swept back together again, there were always going to be those missing bits and pieces that fell through the cracks or blew away.

As you’re toying with the necklace in your hands, you can’t help but think you’re being too immature. What about last year? Everything that happened to him? Maybe he’s been put through enough? Your brow frowns, and you’re internally cursing yourself for being so horribly incapable of making a decision.

Your hand shot up to cover your frustrated expression, a groan leaving your lips. You wanted to let yourself hate him so badly, but you wanted to feel loved by him so much it hurt.

You think it over for the rest of the night, laying in bed with your hands still clutching that necklace. You’re up for hours, only falling asleep when your body forces you into submission around 4 AM—nodding off and snapping back up just to nod off again. Your last thought is that you had to be strong—whatever that meant. You didn’t have to be mean, but you refused to cave and immediately let him have you in whatever way he wants.

He’s won far too many times, and now it’s your turn.

“If you get caught then I had nothing to do with this—got that, Munson?” Steve whispered as he glanced over at the metalhead, one arm still outstretched as he held onto the steering wheel.

Eddie was too busy taking in the sight of your house and breathing in the fresh night air. It never occurred to him before just how much he loved the smell of chill in the wind, like it might snow soon. Ever since last year he was realizing a lot of things he never knew he loved, and he felt both relieved and crushed by the knowledge. He was sure he knew himself before everything happened. He liked fantasy games, music, and indulging in that metal rockstar lifestyle even if it was just another fantasy he was playing into. He liked having all eyes on him as he made a scene in the lunchroom. He liked being the local anarchistic leader of fellow freaks, and ignoring any other responsibilities. He liked girls he could use like he was some big shot backstage after a show.

He thought everything was about prepping himself for that kind of life. He was comfortable being the asshole who never pulled his weight anymore than he had to if he wasn’t interested enough. He was comfortable being a runner because then he could continue living the way he was used to without anything to come in and hold him back, until his whole life fell apart. Then he was afraid for his life. Then he was afraid for that kid’s life—all of their lives, actually, not just Dustin’s. Then he was suddenly the person charging into danger to give someone else a chance.

And now he was alone. He still had his new group, but they could continue their lives while he was kept hidden away and all he had to do was think about everything he never realized he would miss. Something as simple as recognizing a familiar comfort in the smell of a soft breeze felt heart wrenching. Or laying in a hospital bed wishing he still had that one girl to love him made him horribly aware of how empty he’s always been.

“Hello?” Steve urged with an impatient tone.

Eddie glanced over at him and despite his frustration at the lack of response, Steve felt taken aback by the sight of him. Something about finally seeing him back out of the hospital made him realize just how miserable Eddie really was. Maybe it was because sadness made sense in a hospital, or maybe it was the way the moonlight hit his features the right way and he could see the deeper shadows of his face and his sullen eyes.

“Just… be quick alright? And I was never here.”

“Yeah, Hopper’ll have your head.” Eddie snickered quietly.

“I’m less concerned about Hopper…” Steve muttered as thoughts of a certain young woman being upset with him flashed through his head.

“Women, am I right?” Eddie asked playfully in a mocking manner to anyone who ever seriously shared that sentiment, leaning his body towards Steve before laughing as the brunet nudged him back.

“Will you just go?” Steve laughed it off, shaking his head and watched him finally clamber out of the car.

Eddie snuck to the side of the house where he could spot your window. It had been a solid couple of weeks since Nancy brought his letter to you, and he just wished you would let him back in. He huffed before forcing himself up to make his way towards the window, the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his lips in concentration. He was understandably weaker since the last time he was doing this on a weekly basis, but he pushed through and squeezed his eyes shut in frustration when it wouldn’t open. You kept it locked.

Your whole body tensed at the sound of someone rapping on your window, hand clutching your blanket. It had been long enough that you thought he was never going to come and retrieve his necklace, and you were irritated with your own disappointment. Now you were struggling with the sudden surge of excitement lighting up your nerves, which was making a sour combination with all that built up anger towards him.

When you finally forced yourself to look over your shoulder, you weren’t expecting how badly you wanted to cry. You wanted to let him in and just kiss him. Kiss him until you could pass out from the lack of oxygen. Hold him to you and refuse to let him leave. He wasn’t allowed to make a visit like this and leave you again—physically or emotionally. You couldn’t handle it, and you were surprised at how all these feelings presented themselves.

“What is your problem?” Is the first thing to leave your lips when he’s climbing into your room, and you might’ve been more surprised by your words than he was.

“W… what?” he laughs off your question, shocked by you starting the interaction this way; although realistically he shouldn’t have been.

“Why are you here?”

“Well I…” he rubbed his arm once he was back to his full height, scratching a bit at his elbow. “I wanted to apologize-”

“Why does it matter to you now?” you interrupt, your anger surprisingly not faltering even when his big eyes flit up to look at you sadly like a dejected puppy. You felt so broken when you finally saw him again, you didn’t know where this was coming from. Why—when you wanted him back so badly—you were being so… mean.

“What? Did you develop a conscience all of a sudden? Get hunted for months and suddenly have an opportunity to stop and think ‘hm it really sucks to be treated like garbage, gee I wonder if this is how I made her feel’”?”

Eddie’s expression hardens for a moment, and it’s more familiar to you than any bit of softness he was showing you.

“Y’know, I wasn’t exactly treated all that great in school either. I can assure you, I already knew what it’s like to be treated like shit.”

“Oh so that excuses it then.”

“I-” Eddie huffs, letting out an incredulous laugh before trying again. “That’s not what I said. Shit— I just… I’m sorry, okay? I’m not trying to make any excuses. I should’ve been better to you.”

You stay silent for a moment, arms crossed as you watch how honest he looks when he’s all soft like this—with those puppy eyes hopeful and glossy.

“Why did you do it? If you really cared all this time why were you so hell bent on hurting me so thoroughly?”

“I never wanted to hurt you…” he mutters as he looks at the floor, glancing up when you scoff out a disbelieving laugh of your own. For once this kind of attitude doesn’t fuel his fire, but tamps it down. He felt awful, and what made it worse is he couldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe it.

“I… I thought you were cute before. Just in passing, y’know, cause you were still an underclassmen back then, but…” he glances down at his shoes. “I overheard you with your friends talking about me, and when the possibility of me liking you came up you jus’ laughed about it. Like taking an interest in me was that bad.”

His brow furrows at the memory, and just when you’re about to respond he continues to explain himself the best he can.

“I just… I don’t know, alright? It was stupid but it made me feel like shit. Like as if you would ever give me the time of day. And then it was like you were obsessed with me, and I just…”

“Wanted to make me hurt?” you question and he glances up at you briefly before nodding.

There’s a beat of silence, and he’s hopeful this is you letting everything sink in and understand where he was coming from. That you’d see his sincerity, and take him back because fuck he couldn’t stand being alone again.

“You took my heart and ripped it into shreds because of that?” you finally ask, tone sharp enough to make him cringe. “Because of something I said as a nervous sophomore who couldn’t fathom being liked? Or being seen as interesting? That’s what this is all from?”

“Well- I- but you liked the teasing-” Eddie attempted, and immediately regretted when he saw the fire in your eyes.

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it!”

“I… you… you do it too! Sometimes we overreact! It happens!” Eddie finally snapped back, but tried to keep his frustration within a whisper the same way you were. “Sometimes you overhear a conversation and you make the wrong conclusion! Sometimes you don’t get kissed and you get upset! Sometimes you try to sell a girl drugs and end up on the wrong fucking side of hell opening up! Shit happens in fucked up ways! Things get messed up! I’m trying to fix how I messed up!”

He’s visibly distraught, and even though he knew this wouldn’t be easy, deep down he wished you’d melt into him like always.

“You don’t get to pull that with me, Eddie. I’m sorry about what happened last year. I really, truly am because you don’t deserve it—no matter how much I hate your fucking guts. But you don’t get to use it to distract me with it.”

“I’m not—fuck— I’m not trying to distract you with it! I’m just saying things get mixed up because of assumptions n shit like that. And I’m… I’m sorry I…” he trails off, letting out panting breaths. “You… do you really hate me?”

You hesitate, that broken look on his face almost getting to you, but you’re so sure you know better. You know how he can manipulate things.

“Yeah, Eddie. I hate you.”

He’s surprisingly quiet as he looks at you, an unfamiliar glittering to his eyes.

“And by the way, there’s a huge difference between you spending years hell bent on my misery and leaving me beyond devastated; and me giving you the silent treatment after you fucked me in the middle of the night and didn’t stick around or kiss me or make me actually feel cared for in any way.”

Eddie murmured your name, taking a step forward in a quiet plead for forgiveness. Mercy. Anything but this.

“No. I’m talking right now. Not you. So shut up and listen for once,” you choked out as tears filled your eyes, which felt oddly dissonant to your anger.

“I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. And I don’t want you back in my life,” You listed off with an attitude that surprised him, even if he deserved it. “I’m sorry that Hawkins has ruined your life, but that doesn’t mean you get me back just cause all of this has given you a fucking backbone and a conscience.”

Eddie’s lips part and then close again, feeling like a fish out of water. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do with that aching in parts of his body he didn’t even know could ache.

“Doll, please… I really…” he breathes in deep enough that it turns shaky and burns deep in his chest. “I need a chance. I need a chance to show you I mean it. That I did love you back. That I still love you. That I can make it all up to you.”

You dig your nails into your crossed arms, looking away. You know if you keep looking into those big brown eyes that look so desperate right now that you just might cave.

“Well… I don’t love you anymore. So don’t call me doll, and just leave me alone.”

Eddie rubs his hands over his face, reaching back to temporarily grip his hair to use up some of that rage on himself before he lets go again.

“What do I have to do? What do I have to do to get even one chance? Just one, that’s all I’m asking. It’s all I need cause I swear I won’t hurt you ever again,” Eddie pleads and he’s shocked by his own words, but he doesn’t regret them for even a second. “I-I’ll check in more on how you’re feeling. I’ll ask if there’s anything I can do better. I’ll meet your fucking parents. I’ll be gross and romantic and honest. Please. Just give me one last chance, and I won’t take it lightly. Just don’t lie to me if you still love me. Trust me, I know what’s it’s like to be scared shitless about letting someone in so you’d rather just lie. It’s not worth it.”

He notices that last remark sparks up your frustration and he clarifies speedily.

“And I know that me being like that is the reason you’re hesitant to let me in now. I know that’s my fault, I just… shit, I need another chance.”

The fact that he was so insistent and willing to grovel gave you some comfort, but you’ve learned to not get your hopes up. You stick to your guns, but not as confidently as before. And Eddie sees that.

“Please just leave…” you murmur, even if it’s burning away at you to insist that he go.

He groans, rubbing at his face again but goes to straddle your windowsill anyway.

“I really do care about you. I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner.”

You started chewing at the skin around your thumbnail—a nasty stress-related habit you picked up from someone. You didn’t respond, just waited for him to actually go. You were too busy fighting your urge to crumble at his words that actually felt so sincere.

“I’m glad you’re alive.” You finally offer in a voice so soft you might as well have never spoken up, but it’s enough to ease some of that aching he felt.

“I’m glad you’re alive, too… I was worried you wouldn’t be. Bugged the shit out of Sinclair so he’d let me know.” he admitted with a soft laugh.

“You asked about me…?”

“Yeah… you’re all I’ve been thinking about.”

You bite your lip, swallowing when you realized just how tight your throat felt. You’re unsure of how to respond without giving into him, until you catch a glimpse of his necklace on your bedside table.

“Oh uhm… you came here to get this back.” you murmur, padding over to the nightstand to grab it and bring it over to him. Eddie stares at the pick in your palm before looking at you with sad amusement.

“The necklace wasn’t really what I was interested in coming back for…” he admits with a soft chuckle, eyeing you as his smile falters. “Keep it.”

“But it’s your-”

“Keep it. Please.”

The moment is bittersweet, and you’re thinking about what it would be like if you really gave him a chance to prove he’s being honest with you tonight, but you’re too fearful to take that chance. You do hold onto the necklace though.

“Good night, Eddie.”

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daryl-dixon-daydreams · 1 year

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Words: 7,362 Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader Reader pronouns: she/her Era: S10/S11, The Reapers Warnings: graphic descriptions of violence, injury, blood and gore, language A/N: This is part of a series! You can find the rest on my Master List, the pinned post on my blog.

Summary: The group enters Meridian in search of supplies. Y/N tries to find Daryl and something to help deal with The Reapers, but is waylaid by the enemy.

Your name: submit What is this?

Maggie stopped beside you and you looked up. She gave you a tight smile. “How is it?” she asked.

You let your shirt drop to conceal the wound on your side again. You’d finally taken the bandage off with its moss padding and decided it was no longer needed. You nodded. “Fine. It’s fine. Nothing to worry about anymore.” You glanced over at Negan where he was leaned up against a tree a short distance away, watching you and Maggie closely. “Are you sure about this?” you asked her in an undertone. “Can’t say I’m excited to wear someone else’s rotting face over my face…”

She nodded. “I’m sure. We do what we have to, right?” She looked back at Negan. “We work with who we have to…”

“Hey—” you called her attention back to you. “It doesn’t forgive what he’s done—nothing ever can—but he might have saved my life out here just by getting those supplies.”

Maggie nodded, her expression still grim. “I know. And I’m glad about that.” She managed a tight smile and you grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Alright,” you said, standing. “Let’s get this over with.”

As you approached, Negan smiled, knife in hand.

“What’re you smirking about?” you asked.

He tilted his head. “Walker school is in session. And I’m the professor. This should be fun,” he quipped.

You stepped close into him. “This isn’t a fucking game, Negan. This is life or death. The skin we have to wear was peeled off of corpses—corpses who were once living, breathing people. They had personalities. They had friends and families. This isn’t fun. This is a nightmare.”

Negan sighed. “I’m just trying to make the best of things, alright?”

“Yeah, well keep that shit in your head next time,” you growled. Negan watched you stalk away to stand with Elijah. He glanced over at Maggie.

“Touchy… ready?” he asked.

She glared at him, her jaw clenching, but she nodded.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Daryl stared through the binoculars at the swirling walkers at the edge of the open space. His heart started to pound. This had to be his family… it had to be. There were no more Whisperers, so it was the only thing that made any damn sense. Were you in that horde somewhere?

“Dixon?” Pope snapped.

He shrugged, lowering the binoculars. “Could lead ‘em out a few miles and double back around.”

Pope seemed to chew on that for a moment. “Good. Wells. Go.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

“Wells? Come in. Over.” Leah paced up and down the room. “Wells? Come in! Over.”

Pope was stoic. Daryl could feel the tension thickly in the room, like it was filled with a toxic humidity.

“I’m going after him.”

“There’s no point. He’s already dead,” Pope asserted, snapping out of his frozen state. “This was her. The dead didn’t kill him. She did.”

Daryl’s heart was pounding and he knew Pope was right. Some of you were out there among the dead, enough to gather them and lead them. He could only grit his teeth and hope you were out there too. He didn’t know whether to hope that you were holed up somewhere away from here, away from where he knew this battle was going to happen, or if he should hope you were hidden among the dead and making your way to him. Had you been in that house that day, hidden down in the cellar? Had you heard what he’d said to Leah?

His stomach twisted. If you had—had it ruined everything he’d just found again, everything that was just starting? He’d just been saying it to her strategically—everything he’d done since he and Dog became enmeshed with these Reapers had been for the sake of you and the rest of his family. But if you’d heard him as you huddled down in that cellar, what had you thought? What did you think of him now? He felt a cresting wave of nausea and shifted.

Pope’s radio sounded. “Sir, they’re back. The dead.” Pope stood. “So, she came back. My enemy. Let’s go,” he barked. Daryl fell in with the others and filed out to stand on top of the wall. The horde had returned, moving steadily toward their position.

Daryl jumped as there was an explosion suddenly on the edge of the open space. “They won’t make it here,” Pope laughed.

With a shock of terror running through him, Daryl raised the binoculars to his eyes and began to systematically scan the herd, looking for a sign of a walker that wasn’t really a walker. He felt slightly shaky with fear, and he gripped the binoculars with white knuckles. A minefield. It was a minefield. The imminent danger to anyone in that horde was clear.

Then, suddenly, he spotted two figures that were moving slightly against the flow of the movement of the herd. They shifted outward toward the side as the rest of the walkers continued forward, setting off more mines that exploded with echoing booms and geysers of sprayed dirt and gore. The figures slipped away close to where the wall curved.

He had no way to tell who they were, but at least he knew some members of his family had survived the Reapers’ attacks in the dark that night. It felt like a lifetime ago already. How long had he been embedded here? How long had all of you been stuck out there, probably hurt and starving? Too long. The horrible thought crashed down on him that maybe you had survived the initial attack but were wounded and succumbed to that injury alone in the woods somewhere, no supplies, no one to help you… He wasn’t there. He wasn’t with you when he should’ve been. How had he let you get ripped from him after just refinding you again after all these years? His heart stalled out completely at the thought.

As soon as he had an opportunity, Daryl slipped away, using the excuse of getting his crossbow and bolts. He moved along the top of the wall making a beeline for the direction he’d seen the two figures slip. “Hey,” he greeted the guard ahead. “Ya want a smoke?” And when he dropped the matches and the man bent to pick them up, Daryl thrust his knife into his neck and heaved the body over the wall.

It landed with a thud close to Maggie and Gabriel and Daryl’s face appeared at the top. “Hey! Go around that way!” he shouted down as loud as he dared. “That way!”

He didn’t dare to stay there another second, not even to ask the one question he was so achingly desperate to ask. “Where’s Y/N? Have you seen her?” But instead, he slipped back to the barracks and grabbed his gear, dual knives stowed, crossbow slung over his back, and bolts in hand. Shit was going down and The Reapers weren’t going to know what hit them. But where he’d end up in all the chaos, what role he would play, he didn’t know…

Gabriel had already left Maggie and headed to find the stashed rifle to cover from overhead. Maggie was just about to dash off, away from the concealed hole in the wall, when she heard rustling behind her and spun to see you emerging through the trash heap. Maggie rushed to help you out of the pile. You gladly accepted her hand. You were specked with nicks and cuts from exploding shrapnel, but you didn’t appear to be seriously injured.

She pulled you into a tight hug. “I was worried ya wouldn’t make it outta that minefield,” she admitted, her eyes wide.

You nodded and swiped at a drop of blood running down your neck with the back of your hand. “Honestly, so was I,” you breathed.

“Negan and Elijah?”

“They’re alright. Or they were when I slipped off.”

Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay. You’re set on this?” she asked you for what felt like the hundredth time.

You nodded firmly. “Yes. These assholes are bound to have a well-stocked armory. And I’m not leaving here without knowing Daryl is safe.”

Finally, it occurred to Maggie to tell you that they’d seen him. “We saw him. He killed a guard so we could get inside. He was up on the wall.”

Your expression was urgent and desperate. “He’s alright?” She nodded and your eyes shut for a brief moment. “Thank God… Could you see where he went?”

“No. We were still outside the walls. Couldn’t see anything. He must have rushed off quick. I’m sure they’re expectin’ him to be somewhere.” She hesitated. “Y/N, you might not be able to get to him with all of them—"

“I’ll get to him one way or another. Nothing is stopping me. Just go crack this place open and get to the food. And please be careful. I’ll see you on the other side.” You gave her arm a gentle squeeze and she watched with some apprehension as you rushed off and disappeared into the shadows, moving deeper into the complex.

Maggie had told you she thought the building in the middle of Meridian was most likely to be their base of operations. Your hope was that everyone would be on the wall, watching the spectacle of the walkers, and you’d be able to move through mostly unhindered. If you could just find some guns and ammo, it’d be a nice insurance policy for everything going down.

Back at the wall, Daryl was nearly overwhelmed with internal panic. Another solider was preparing the onslaught of arrows and explosives to rain hell down on the incoming walkers, and his family among them… You could be down there. He turned and stared at Leah, who was looking over the wall at the continued approaching onslaught of the dead. Daryl glanced back at the hwacha.

He couldn’t just let this happen. He had to do something. Something, anything.

“Leah…” he drawled in an undertone, stepping in toward her. “Ya can’t let ‘em do this.” His heart was hammering.

“Why?” she asked, her brow furrowing, confusion overtaking her features.

He licked his lips nervously and shifted. “Some of my family is out there. They’re walking with the dead.”

The words sunk weightly like an anchor to the ocean floor and laid there still. Her face was impassive at first. Daryl rushed on—he had to make her understand. He had to appeal to the Leah who had let that father and son go on their sweep, the one who hadn’t been able to put the woman out of her misery. That Leah would understand. The glimpses of the Leah he’d spent time with in the cabin would understand. She had her own family, and she clung to it. Was there enough of her left in there?

“You’d do anything for your family and so would I. They’re here for the food your group took from them and without it everyone will starve. There are families, kids where I come from. Ya can’t do this.”

But Leah’s eyes grew narrow and cold. Her voice was laced with disbelief and betrayal. “You lied to me.”

Daryl’s blood ran cold. His throat constricted so much he could barely breathe.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Now close to the center of Meridian, you spotted a long, low building ahead. Two guards were walking the perimeter endlessly in a loop. It seemed promising.

You fingered your knife in its sheath, loosening it, and concealed yourself behind a stack of wooden pallets. When the first guard was passing by somewhat close, you let out a short whistle. He froze in his tracks, his hand going to a weapon at his hip. Then you tossed a rock that landed in front of him on the other side. He spun.

“What the fuck is—” But he never finished his sentence. You plunged your blade into his neck and he dropped to the ground and bled out silently. Your stomach turned. It was never easy killing another person, even when they’d been the cause of so much grief and death themselves. The other guard would be rounding the corner of the building heading your way any second. You dashed to cover toward the corner, leaving the body of the first man where it lay.

“What the hell?” The second guard was immediately on edge as he rounded the corner and spotted the heap in the middle of the path. “Ron? Hey—Ron!” he began rushing over. You watched his hand move toward the radio clipped onto his vest and that’s when you threw your knife as hard as you could. You’d been aiming for his head, but your throw strayed and the blade buried itself into his upper arm. He let out a shocked yell and spun.

You needed to end this as quickly and quietly as possible. You rushed him before he could recover from the shock and pain and kicked him as hard as you could in the side of the knee. There was a sickening crack and he toppled with another yell. You gripped the handle of your knife and pulled it from his arm before stabbing it swiftly into his skull. He twitched and then fell still and silent. Out of breath and drenched with sweat from the adrenaline and nerves, you hastily wiped your knife on your pants and frisked the bodies for any keys. You lucked out. The first guard had a small key ring on his belt. You pulled it free and rushed to the nearest door. Your hand was on the handle when you heard a tremendous crash near the front of the wall—the truck. Maggie had succeeded in crashing it into the gate. Walkers would be pouring in now. You needed to hurry.

You tugged the door open and rushed inside.

At the wall, Pope was staring in disbelief at the dead walking right into the front courtyard. He grabbed his radio. “Carver, what the hell is goin’ on down there?” he demanded.

”It’s the enemy. They’re in the walls!”

Pope spat on the ground. Leah had finally stopped staring at Daryl and was watching, riveted, as her family attempted to stem the flow of walkers. His heart was pounding. He had miscalculated… she could give him up at any moment. But he couldn’t let them fire that damn rain of arrows…

Below, Negan and Elijah slipped in with the dead unnoticed and sabotaged the fight whenever they could. A jab of a knife here, a push of a walker there. Elijah had taken shrapnel in his leg and was bleeding heavily. Negan tried to help him limp to some sort of cover.

Pope pressed the button of his radio again. “Carver. You know what to do. Secure the armory. Over and out.” He turned to look at the other man who was readying the hwacha. “Aim the hwacha into the courtyard. Fire when ready,” he said.

Leah rounded on him. “What?! Our soldiers are down there!” she said in disbelief.

Pope only adjusted his stance and looked outward over the chaos. “And their sacrifice will be rewarded in Heaven.”

_ _ _ _ _ _

You were inside the main part of the complex and had been unlocking and throwing open every locked door you found as fast as you could, keys rattling, searching for the arsenal of weapons you were sure these assholes would have. There could only be so many doors, so many hallways, right? Finally, you thought you were on to something. There was a section of an L-shaped hallway that had a couple locked doors in a row, with nothing but hallway on the other side. They seemed to be leading to some final something, and you were hoping that was guns and ammo.

But there was a sudden clank behind you in the building, like a door being thrown open and rebounding against the wall. Someone else was inside with you. “Shit,” you murmured, your heart absolutely pounding as you rifled through the key ring, trying key after key. You thought you could hear heavy bootsteps echoing down the next hallway, or were you imaging that? “Come on, come on!” you urged yourself. Too slow.

A tall figure stepped out from around the corner and you recognized it as the man Leah had referred to as Carver when you were hidden in that house, the one Daryl had been arguing with. He had an almost satisfied look on his face, like a coyote who thinks he’s cornered a rabbit. “Well, look what we have here,” he said, approaching slowly, step by step.

You shoved the key ring into your back pocket and readied your knife. You nodded. “You better radio for back-up, asshole. You’re gonna need it.”

He smiled and scoffed. “That’s cute.” He held his hands out at his sides. “You’re the one trapped back here with a locked door behind you. Nowhere to go. And you’re not her,” he said. “Which means I get to kill you right now instead of bringing you to Pope. Your friend isn’t going to be so lucky.” He was still advancing on you.

“Lucky? You have a weird definition of lucky…” you said. You felt like you were being drawn like a bowstring, waiting to snap or fire.

“No, see, Pope is gonna kill her slow. Real slow. Your little band of misfits has killed a lot of our family. He’ll want to make her pay for that. But you? I’m gonna kill you quick. I’ll snap your neck just like a gamebird. You’ll barely feel a thing.”

“You mean like I killed those two guards outside? They certainly didn’t see it coming,” you said. You saw a flinch of rage pass over his face. “You’re doing an awful lot of talking. Stalling?” you asked, adjusting your grip on your knife.

He pulled his knife and stopped, squaring his shoulders to yours. “Let’s go.”

You threw your knife and it buried into his left shoulder. He hadn’t seen that coming, and certainly hadn’t seen you lunging toward him with a second knife right after. With a yell he was able to deflect your strike and you collided hard with the wall, jarring you for a moment. You ducked as he swung at you, practically falling completely to the floor, and you kicked at his knee.

“Fuck!” he staggered back. You straightened up, readying yourself for whatever was coming. Carver grabbed the handle of your knife that was still in his shoulder and gritted his teeth. He pulled and withdrew it with another yell. You had a split second to react as he threw it, straight and strong, right at the center of your chest. You thanked your quick reflexes. Without thinking, your hand moved to deflect it with the blade of the knife still in your hand. It ricocheted sideways and landed on the floor.

But Carver was now advancing again with a quick succession of steps, swinging his blade with fluid movements that had you staggering back and jerking out of the way. You were already exhausted and you were thanking the fucking universe he didn’t seem to have a gun on him already… but he did have a big fucking knife. You ducked again and it embedded into the wall. While you were still down, he kicked you in the stomach and your breath left you in a gasp, your lungs seizing up. Another swift kick landed in your side as you curled over and that sent a searing pain through you that nearly blacked you out. You vaguely were aware of a warm wetness on your side which surely meant the stitches Negan had placed in the knife wound there had ripped.

You had no time to stop. Without a breath of air in you, you forced yourself to uncurl and slashed your knife through his lower leg, cutting a deep gash on his calf. He yelled and jolted but returned his attention to pulling his blade from the wall. You fumbled back, still slightly prone on the ground, and grabbed your second knife, then you did your best to straighten up on your feet. You couldn’t stand up all the way, still hunched from the kicks he’d landed in your stomach and side, but you met his eyes with determination.

There was a coldness on his face and you wondered if that’s what he’d looked like when he’d killed Elijah’s little sister, when he killed much of your family, likely in their sleep. You felt another upwelling of pure rage in your chest. You lunged toward him, aiming for his neck with your knife, but his elbow blocked you, connecting with your arm hard enough to send the blade flying out of your hand and down to the floor, clattering with a metallic sound that rang in your ears. His elbow next connected with the side of your face and this time your vision did black out for a moment. There was a rush of rustling fabric and the only thing you could do in your blindness was lurch back in hopes of dodging him. He kicked you swiftly in the stomach again and you were back on the floor. Your vision returned in a blur and you scrambled to your hands and knees as he advanced on you. It felt as if your cheekbone was broken. There was a rush of heat and a pounding sensation there.

You still had one of your knives on you and you righted yourself again, this time waiting on the defensive as he wielded his own blade. You jerked back to avoid a swing at your middle. His other hand came across and caught you on the other side of your face with a punch. You fell into the wall, disoriented. His boot landed hard on your back and pressed your front into the wall so you were briefly pinned there. You squirmed until you got a knee up and shoved backwards off the wall with all your force, allowing you to break free. Miraculously, you managed to knock his knife away too and kicked it as hard as you could so it slid all the way down to the opposite end of the hall and stopped against the baseboard.

But despite the loss of his weapon, the hits just kept coming. You’d barely land one blow or feel your knife pass just through his clothing before you were pummeled again. You were realizing that, at least as injured and exhausted as you were, you were out of your league with this guy. Even at your best, this may still have been a losing battle. It was time to get away…

You wiped a trickle of blood from your nose and saw him smile sickly at you. The hallway was a bloody mess. Smears from the fight were on the floor, on the walls, and it was impossible to tell what blood came from who. His leg and shoulder were still bleeding, and your shirt was now soaking in blood from your side that was also running down your pants. You knew you were bound to have other cuts, but they seemed inconsequential compared to the pain in your body and face from the hits, kicks, and Carver throwing you into the walls and floor almost like ragdoll. At one point he’d had you by the hair and you’d only escaped because you’d elbowed him in the groin.

“Give up?” he asked. “I can end this fast for you right now. Just hold still.”

“Fuck you,” you spat back, tasting blood in your mouth from a split in your lip. You had to get past him and get a head start to get away. The guns and ammo weren’t important right now. What was important, was living long enough to see your son again, long enough to find Daryl. You could retake this place without the arsenal if you had to.

Carver chuckled. “You’ve got nowhere to go and you aren’t getting past me.”

You clutched at your side and grimaced, bending to pick up your second knife from the floor. One last try, and at the first opportunity you were gone… “What’s the deal with you and Leah anyway?” you said suddenly.

He froze and the cocky smirk melted off his face. “…What?”

“You heard me. What, you’re trying to get in her pants? I mean, how much clearer can it be that she isn’t interested? She slept with some random guy she met in the fucking woods over you, for fuck’s sake…” You wiped at something on your cheek with your forearm, unsure if it was sweat or blood.

Carver looked enraged.

You adjusted your hold on your knife as subtly as you could. “Is it mommy issues? You just weren’t hugged enough? What is it? Because you reek of desperation.” Carver seemed to regain his composure some and his eyes narrowed. “I knew you were in that house. And I knew that asshole was with you. None of you are leaving here alive.”

You shook your head. “Well, you got two out of three right.” Then you went for it. With one hand you threw the sheath of your knife as a distraction. It toppled end over end through the air, and while Carver was focused on whatever that object flying toward his face was, potentially a knife in his mind, it gave you just enough time to actually throw the real blade. It struck high on his thigh, almost near his hip. You rushed him as he was still realizing what had just happened and landed the sole of your boot on the handle as hard as you could, throwing your bodyweight into it, kicking it in deeper. The blade sunk in and Carver screamed as he crumpled to the floor. You ran as fast as you could, slipping a little in the blood, and sweeping up his knife at the other end of the hall before you disappeared around the corner. You ran and just kept running until you were out of the building and able to tuck yourself away around the corner behind some debris.

With the adrenaline waning after a moment, you began to assess the damage, and the fear of how close you had just come to losing that fight sunk in. You shut your eyes and your head fell back against the wall behind you. You pressed a hand over your side and it was hot and sticky. Your hands were stained crimson. You tried to regain some oxygen.

You could feel your pulse in every part of you, fast and hard, but especially in the tender swelling on your face. “Fuck,” you muttered to yourself, putting a hand up to feel the swelling over your cheekbone lightly with your fingertips. Good chance that it was broken.

You jumped slightly and sank back into the debris even further when you heard the slam of the exterior door around the corner open. You could only hope you hadn’t left an easy-to-follow trail of blood to where you were concealed. You glanced around frantically for another place to conceal yourself farther away.

But Carver hobbled into view a moment later, his radio to his mouth and his other hand pressed into his leg. “Say again, Shaw?! Pope is dead?” There was static and a faint answer but you couldn’t hear it. He hung his head for a moment and doubled over slightly before the radio sounded again. “I—I had one of them cornered by the armory but she got away… Yeah, well I took a few knife wounds!” he added angrily. “I’ll deal with it. I can keep going,” he said strongly. “That community building? Yeah. Yeah, I’ll head there now. I’ll check it out. But let’s get this straight, Shaw—if I see Dixon, he’s a dead man. Over and out.”

This sounded like they had a lead on your family… maybe Daryl. You’d follow.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Bodies. You kept coming on bodies… all of them Reapers thankfully. You didn’t know who was leaving them. Maggie? Daryl? But you followed the trail as silently as you could, also ghosting behind Carver. He was leaving fat drops of crimson everywhere he went, limping through the seemingly empty building.

You were near utter exhaustion now, but necessity drove you on. You fixated your mind on the important things; reuniting with Maggie and ensuring she would be going home to Hershel, keeping Elijah and Gabriel and Negan alive, and finding Daryl. Chiefly in the forefront, was the last. You knew now that his cover was gone, and not just because of what you’d said to piss off Carver. Daryl was being hunted too. You were seized by a terror that froze your blood, that because of your injuries you wouldn’t get there fast enough—that Carver or one of these other fuckers would find him first and—no. No, you couldn’t think like that. Daryl was a warrior. He was a survivor. And rage and fear were your enemies right now just like The Reapers. You’d realized that your anger had propelled you to take too many risks in that fight by the armory with Carver. It was the reason you were so wounded now, the reason your face felt split open, the reason you couldn’t stand up completely straight. You should have realized sooner that you couldn’t beat him one-on-one. You should have withdrawn. But you couldn’t change that now. At least you’d drawn blood… But now you could only keep your cover behind him, stay silent in stealth, and follow. You kept hoping for an opportunity to catch up to him and end it. Move forward. Step by step. Room by room. He was sweeping the building, coming on more and more bodies of his fallen family as you were sure Leah was elsewhere.

A shadow suddenly moved in a hall to one side of you and you sank back into the nearest room, holding your breath. You glanced around the small space and spotted what looked like a closet. You turned the doorknob as silently as you could and slipped inside, straining your hearing.

You heard some shuffling and the wooden floor creaked, but within a minute there were heavy bootsteps leading away. You waited one minute more before peeking out and when you saw you were again alone, you slipped out and returned to the hallway.

You were trying to pick up Carver’s trail again, searching for spots of blood among the dust and piled old furniture. Then there was no need. There was the clear sound of fighting ahead and you clutched a hand over your side, withdrew your knife, and forced your legs to run.

You came upon Maggie and Negan furiously fighting with Carver, and despite his injuries he seemed to somehow still be holding his own and also dealing a lot of damage in return. Elijah was sweating on the floor, clutching his leg.

You stood back a moment, waiting for an entrance. Maggie was hurled to the floor and lay there, dazed for a moment. Negan had lost his weapon and was pulling himself to his feet. Carver still hadn’t realized you were there. He loomed over Maggie, raising a boot as if he was planning to stomp down on her, when you lunged forward and jabbed your blade into his back as hard as you could with a wild yell.

Carver yelled and spun wildly, flinging you off. You lost your footing and slid a short distance away on the ground. Your knife. Where was your knife? It was still sticking out of his back.

Carver leered at you as he stalked over. What the fuck?! Was this guy made of metal? He was still advancing on you! You scrambled backwards on the palms of your hands, trying to put some distance between you and him. He was limping, but still a formidable figure. You struggled to get your hand on the knife you’d taken from him at the end of the last fight, but it was beneath you. As you struggled to withdraw it, he growled and descended on you, his hands going immediately to your neck. Your breath was cut off. He was squeezing as you struggled, scratched, kicked, but he lifted you off the ground. Your toes left the floor and your vision began to shrink and fade. If he squeezed any harder, you were worried your throat would crush beneath his fingers and that would be it. You could feel his sweat dripping down onto you, feel the violent shake in his hands with the effort he was expending to snuff you out. This was it—it was all going to be over. You’d never find Daryl. You’d never see DJ again. You’d failed.

Then, you felt nothing all. All sensation left you. Darkness descended.

Negan tossed the bell down next to Carver’s collapsed form, his chest heaving. He bent over trying to catch his own breath. “God, what a fucking shit-dick asshole,” he said, glancing up at Maggie. She was crawling her way over to your still form on the ground. “Hey—is she—?” Negan broke off and gulped. You weren’t moving.

“Y/N?” Maggie called to you softly, a hand over her face where she’d been struck with the metal pipe. “Y/N?” She grabbed your arm and shook it but you didn’t stir.

Negan straightened up, his brow deeply furrowed. “No, come on…” he breathed. He limped over and took in your beaten face and your side soaked in blood. Red hand prints glared on your neck. Had he been too slow? “She’s not—”

“Y/N!” Maggie clasped your face and then saw that at least your chest was rising and falling. She hung her head in relief. Just then, another door opened down the hall and Daryl stepped out.

“Hey—” He rushed toward the huddled forms of his family. As he came closer, his eyes fixated on a body laying prone on the floor. “Maggie—No!” his voice broke and he froze, his boots suddenly rooted to the floor. You were lying there, completely still, Negan on one side and Maggie leaned over you. One of your sides was completely soaked in blood and even from the angle he was at he could see the swelling and developing bruises on your face. “No. Maggie, she ain’t—she ain’t—”

“Daryl, she’s alive! She’s alive,” Maggie burst out in a hurry. “She’s unconscious, but she’s alive.”

Daryl shifted back and forth a few times in the hall, trying to shake the paralysis that had seized him. But when he saw Carver suddenly stirring behind Maggie, reaching toward a knife laying not too far off, he rushed forward and punched him across the face. Carver fell still again as Daryl shook out his hand.

He turned his eyes to you again. Maggie crawled over to Elijah, who was sitting up watching the scene, shaking, angry and pained tears pouring silently down his face. Negan stood and retreated as Daryl knelt down beside you. His eyes were on the red handprints on your neck and he squeezed his eyes shut. “He did this?” he drawled. He didn’t need to hear Maggie’s answer. He brushed your hair back away from your face and clasped it as gently as he could. “Y/N…” He felt sick. You’d obviously fought tooth and nail since you’d snuck in with the others. His eyes trailed down your blood-soaked clothing. “Y/N, c’mon. C’mon and open yer eyes. I need to see ya. Wake up…” His voice was near a whisper. “Wake up, please.” His plea was heart-wrenching. Elijah squeezed Maggie’s hand and Negan gulped at the sudden tightness in his throat before staring down at his boots. This felt like a very private moment that they were all intruding on.

But then—you stirred and Daryl perked up, grasping your shoulder and smoothing a hand down your arm. “Y/N! Hey—can ya hear me? S’me.”

Now your eyes dragged themselves open. It seemed to take you tremendous effort at first, like they were weighted under some heavy blanket of ice-cold snow, but when Daryl’s face came into focus above you, they flew open wide and you pulled in a gasping breath. Unfortunately, this mostly resulted in a coughing fit that doubled you over and had you clutching an arm around your bruised and tender midsection. Your throat felt raw and on fire. The sensation was like you were trying to breath through a straw.

“Hey—hey, easy,” Daryl was coaching you, his hand on your back. “Look at me. Y/N, ‘m righ’ here. Look at me. Slow breaths, alrigh’?”

You focused on his voice and tried to calm your breathing. When you were able to focus on him again, tears welled up in your eyes. “You’re alright,” you managed. There was a rasp in your voice that twisted Daryl’s stomach. “I’m so happy you’re alright.” Tears stung your eyes.

Daryl felt a knot high in his chest, like he’d swallowed a stone. You were covered in blood and clearly battered, and you were relieved that he was okay. He clasped your face again, his eyes searching, drinking you in. “‘M alrigh’. And yer gonna be now too. S’gonna be okay.”

You fell against him, shedding a few tears that dotted his shirt, and Daryl wrapped his arms around you tightly, just tight enough that you felt safe for the first time since that night on the road when you’d been torn away from him.

“I hate to break up this heart-warming reunion,” Negan interrupted, for once not actually sounding sarcastic, “but how are we getting out of here? We’re not exactly in the best fighting shape at this point. Elijah has a broken leg, Maggie took a pipe to the face, and Y/N nearly just had the life choked out of her by this asshole.”

Maggie stood up, Elijah’s sickle in hand, and started toward Carver. “And he’s gonna pay for all of that and more right now.”

Daryl spun. “No! Maggie, don’t. Not yet. Leave him.”

“What?” She stared at Daryl with a piercing gaze.

He was refusing to separate himself from you completely. “No, he’s our ticket outta here. Don’t.”

“No!” Elijah yelled desperately from his spot on the floor. “No! What he’s done—”

“Ya think I don’t want to jam my knife into his heart righ’ now?” Daryl growled. He looked back at you and you could clearly read the pain he felt at seeing your condition on his face. Daryl’s jaw clenched. “Hell, I’d like to put him down myself with my bare fuckin’ hands… but he’s the only way we’re all gettin’ outta here alive and with what we came for in the first place.”

“Daryl—” Maggie started.

“No, he’s right,” you said, trying to stand, pressing one hand over your neck. You winced as Daryl helped you to your feet. “He’s right. I tried to kill him twice and I failed both times. I almost died both times… in the shape we’re in, if any of them can fight like he can, we can’t hunt them down and all make it out of here. We just can’t. And it’s not like we can cover ground fast enough to sneak out and get away.” You met Daryl’s eyes again. “You’re right.”

Elijah broke down, but Maggie conceded and did her best to comfort him. “Fine. We’ll wait.” _ _ _ _ _ _

“I was so close to their armory—I could feel it,” you said, wincing a little as Daryl dabbed at your side. “I was right there with the keys but—” you shook your head. “Carver showed up.”

“He did all this to you?” Daryl asked, gravel heavy in his voice. He swiped at a smear of blood on your cheek with a bit of gauze and you nodded.

“Mostly. My side is from that night on the road.” You bent and looked at it now that it was clean. The wound was inflamed and an angry red again from Carver’s blows to it. The stitches had torn. “Negan stitched it for me and collected supplies I needed. Kept it from getting badly infected.”

“Mmm…” Daryl hummed, tossing aside some dirty bits of cotton. You studied his handsome face and were relieved to see that he didn’t appear hurt.

“I was worried I wasn’t going to find you in time today,” you said softly. “I heard them over the radio.”

Daryl set down the wet cloth he’d been using on a cut on your forearm and reached for the gauze. He shook his head. “I didn’t know if—I was worried ya were gone that first night we all got split up… I saw the blood on the road where ya’d been and I just—” he broke off and his hand froze, still pressed over the clean bandage he was applying.

“I know,” you said, resting your hand over the top of his. “I was worried about the same thing. And then I saw you when we were hiding in that house—but you were with them—”

Daryl’s stomach turned and his eyes met yours again and they were filled with worry. “Y/N, what I said—”

You stopped him by grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling his lips down on yours. You didn’t care about the pain from the bruises and split on your lip. Kissing him washed it all away and seemed to lessen the other aches in your body. After a moment, he pulled back and studied your expression intensely, his finger tracing down the side of the graceful curve of your neck, hitching on the marks he knew would bruise deeply from that prick’s hands. His chest ached.

“I know you were only saying what you had to,” you said. “To convince her. I can’t imagine what that was like for you, having to act like one of them.”

Daryl hung his head and avoided your eyes. A shudder ran through him as he thought of torturing Frost and being tortured himself. Your brow furrowed and you clasped his face. “It’s alright,” you soothed him softly. “We’re both right here now. Later. You can tell me about it later… if you want to.”

He glanced up and met your eyes again. There was turmoil in his blue irises. He nodded. “Yeah.” He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “I wish I could take all this hurt from ya,” he drawled, looking at the swelling on your face.

You shook your head. “No. I’ll be fine. It’s okay. I’m glad at least one of us is in fighting shape.”

He frowned and grabbed another roll of gauze to cover a cut on your hand. When he was finished, he leaned in and kissed you softly, then left a kiss on your forehead too. “Time to finish this and go home.”

#daryl dixon fanfiction #daryl dixon x reader #daryl dixon twd #the walking dead #twd fanfics #daryl dixon drabbles #daryl imagines #daryl x y/n #fanfics #writers of tumblr #twd drabbles

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mysoftboybensolo · 10 months

Text

Dirtyhands and his Songbird

Ever since I saw @macncheeseass-blog post about wanting a soft Kaz x Reader enjoying domestic bliss, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Plus, I have been listening to Halle’s gorgeous voice in The Little Mermaid soundtrack, and a story formed from it. This is also my first Kaz x Reader fic, so please be kind.

Kaz Brekker, known in Ketterdam as Dirtyhands, Bastard of the Barrel, a man whose heart was as cold as his eyes, was an unmovable and unfeeling man, so said everyone in Ketterdam. Was there nothing or anyone who was able to reach his cold heart? Everyone would have answered, no, there was nothing and no one. But they were wrong.

She was a secret to all in Ketterdam, not even the crows knew about her, and Kaz wanted to keep it that way, safer for her. He hadn’t been looking for her, in fact, if things didn’t go as wrong as they had, he would have never met her, but sometimes, he was glad that it did. It was a few years ago when Kaz was following a lead regarding a merchant, leading him outside of the city, where the peaceful glens lay and quiet was undisturbed. Kaz usually calculated things perfectly but he hadn’t expected an ambush, and he barely made it out alive, with the thugs being dead or near dead. He had to find shelter, somewhere to heal, and he stumbled with his cane helping him stay up, and before he black out, he saw a small cottage, reaching for the door.

The injuries would have had him at death’s door if left unattended, but there was someone who had been there to help. Between unconsciousness and awake, Kaz swore he heard singing, a voice unlike any he had ever heard, so lovely and pure, that it pulled him through the fog of pain and back into the clearness of consciousness. Slowly coming to, he found that he was laying on a couch, a bandage wrapped around his chest, and a face of someone who had knelt beside him, tending to the wound on his forehead. She was lit by the sunlight behind her, and her voice softly harmonizing, continuing her work to help him.

She had been careful with him, and he did not find a reason to recoil from her touch. Instead, he had felt a sense of calm and peace, one he hadn’t had in a long time. When he had fully come to, he had asked her where he was, and she simply replied they were in her home. Her speaking voice was just as lovely as her singing, calm and beautiful. She told him that he had knocked at her door, and she helped him in once she saw how he was badly injured, that his injuries would require him to rest for a few days. Kaz knew he couldn’t stay here, but when he tried to get up, a sharp pain radiated through him, knocking him back down onto the couch, breathing heavily.

“Please,” she said, “You must rest, you have broken ribs and if you move around too much, it can puncture your lung and you will die. If a healer lived around here, I’d have them here in a heartbeat, but as there isn’t one, you need to rest like everyone else.”

“I have to go,” he grunted out, the pain slowly easing, “I have people who will wonder where I am.”

The young woman thought for a moment, then went to her desk and pulled out paper and a pen. “Here, you can write a letter to them, explaining that there is nothing to worry about. The postman comes around in the morning and goes into the city by the afternoon.”

Kaz looked at her suspiciously. “How did you know I am from the city?”

“Your clothes,” she says quite obviously, “It is too nice for country folk, and too dark. I promise, your letter will reach your friends.”

Kaz agreed, writing the letter and careful to not let the woman see the contents, before sealing it and giving it to her. The letter was brief and obscure, simply stating that he took shelter and will be away for a while, that he’ll keep them posted if anything happens. They must have gotten it because no one came around trying to look for him, and he was able to rest in as much peace as possible, given the pain as well as the anxiety of wanting to get back to make sure things haven’t gone straight to hell at the club.

But as much as he was anxious to get back, he also found himself enjoying the company of the young songbird, whose touch was gentle and always avoiding his skin, much to Kaz’s silent delight. What he didn’t know was that while she was tending to him, he spoke unknowingly, calling for Jordie, breathlessly wondering why his skin was so cold and clammy. It didn’t take much for her to understand that he had an aversion of skin from this, and spoke nothing of it, not wishing for him to feel embarrassed at this fact having been unknowingly given. Instead, she treated Kaz like a frighten animal, allowing him to come to her and share whatever he wanted, which at first was not much. He said his name was Kaz, just Kaz, and for the time he was with her, that was all he was. He wasn’t a criminal, he wasn’t a boss, he wasn’t someone who could pretend to not care as much as he did, he was simply Kaz.

A hard lesson Kaz had learned as a boy was that everyone had another side to them, that things are not always what they seem, so with her he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, to see when the not so sweet side of her would come out, but as much as he waited and observed, he saw no fakeness with her, just truth. He couldn’t understand why he felt at ease with her, why he could let his guard down enough that he could smile with her, that he’s trust her to take care of him, to laugh at her jokes and share whatever small pieces of his life with her.

A few days had turned into a week and a half, and still Kaz was recovering in her home. He had started to become accustomed to her ways; getting up early to tend to her animals, then making breakfast, singing as she did her chores, and at every half hour she’d poke her head in to see if he needed anything, if the pain was bearable, before going back to finish her chores. No matter where she was, he could hear her voice, singing for her own pleasure, not caring who heard. He once asked her why she never considered singing in a club or theatre, no doubt becoming a hit with the masses, but she replied that she had stage fright and could never sing in front of people she didn’t know.

“You don’t know me,” he countered.

“You are different. I don’t know why, but you are.”

A broken rib would have taken about three to six weeks to heal, but it was luck that a healer, who was passing by to visit family and knew the young woman, was kind enough to help their friend and do this favor. While Kaz was grateful to be able to move and go back to work, he also found that he was sorry to go and leave behind this kind woman. “My door is open to you whenever you wish to visit, and I do hope that you will.”

“I can’t make any promises, but I will see,” he answered, not wishing to give her too much hope, but also not wanting to crush her hopes. It was a difficult situation that he was now in; on one hand, he should never return, never risk the chance of her getting hurt, or himself for that matter. But on the other hand, no one had to know about her, ensuring her safety, it would be a good excuse to escape the city life, and-damn him for thinking this- he’d miss her too much if he stayed away too long.

He lasted only two weeks before the urge to see her again became too much. In his dreams he could hear her song, calling to him like a siren, and despite his efforts to fight it, even having a few close calls, he finally broke down and went to see her. He told the crows that he was following another lead, that he could be gone for the weekend, and he made his journey back to her cottage. It was exactly as it had been before, peacefully quiet, the flowers by her fence in bloom, and the sound of her singing echoing from wherever she was. His heart clenched when he saw her smile, clearly happy to see him again, and he hated to admit it, but he was glad.

She had the guest room ready for him, made him lunch and tea that had spread through him with a warmth like a hug. “How long may I have you?”

“A weekend, if that is alright.”

“More than alright,” she replied with a wide smile.

For the first time in a long time, Kaz had been able to sleep peacefully, dreams of Jordie hadn’t plagued him as much as they did in the city, the space was much more open so there was no chance of accidentally bumping into someone and the water washing over him. His songbird even had made him an ointment to help his ache in his leg, which had helped him, especially on the days where he was on his feet for so long. She insisted that he didn’t need to help around her home, but he wouldn’t hear of it, mostly because he hated to see her work so hard while he sat and waited for her and helping her had brought out the memories of him as a boy on his family’s farm, coming back to him like a second nature.

The evenings had been the best for him, for she would talk, share how she was an only child and that from illness her parents had left her alone in the world, how she didn’t mind the solitude sometimes, but others, well, let’s say she was glad Kaz turned up at her doorstep. Under the clear and starry sky, Kaz found he was opening up to her, even if it was slowly, but nevertheless, he shared more with her willingly than he had with any other person. She listened and accepted, and as much as Kaz was glad that she wasn’t turning him out, he feared the day when he’d tell her the worst things he has done, that perhaps, someone was good and pure as her would not want to be with someone who had blood on his hands. That perhaps she wouldn’t want a broken man who could barely stand to have his bare hands even brush against another’s hand.

The weekend went by all too quick for Kaz, and it had broken his heart to see the sorrow on his songbird’s face, wondering when she would see him again. Quit her, the voice of Dirtyhands spoke in his mind, quit her like a drug, quit now before it becomes dangerous, before you become a danger to her. “I will see when I can come back, but I cannot make any guarantees.” It was a feeble promise, it could be easily broken or easily kept, the ball was in Kaz’s court, all she had to do was wait.

It was the same every time; Kaz would tell himself to forget her, stay away, but then he’d remember and dream of her face, her touch, but most especially, her voice, and then he’d find himself right back at her place. Weekends turned to weeks, and then, to avoid the growing suspicion of his crows, he would only stop by in the evenings when he would not be working. And each time, his songbird was overjoyed that he had returned to her, somehow always afraid that something terrible would happen. She understood from day one that Kaz was no innocent, that his business often included making shady deals and doing dirty deeds, but he never exploited innocent people, never harmed those who didn’t have it coming to them. He called himself a monster, but she saw him as a necessary monster, and maybe Ketterdam called him Dirtyhands, maybe they saw him as cold and unmovable, but she knew the truth. He was Kaz Rietveld, the boy from a farm, the boy who had nightmares, the boy who craved love and intimacy even if his body shouted no. Dirtyhands belonged to Ketterdam, Kaz Brekker belonged to the Crow Club, but Kaz, just Kaz, belonged to only her.

It was hard to believe that a year had passed since he had met his savior, his songbird, the feeling of disbelief always hitting him in the morning when he woke before her, seeing her peaceful and beautiful face near his. She had been wonderfully patient and kind, helping him to overcome his aversion to touch, and though they have not moved forward as much as Kaz would have liked to, he was proud of himself for being able to sleep in the same bed with her and not have to worry about their skins touching on the middle of the night, that he can reach out to her and brush her cheek with his thumb. He made so much progress in a span of a year, he can make even better progress in the year to come.

“Good morning,” her voice hummed softly, still sleepy.

“Good morning,” he replied, his arm reaching over to lay against her hip. “Sleep well?”

“Mmm hmm,” she murmured against his chest, burrowing herself closer to him. “Don’t want to get up.”

He huffed out a laugh, “That’s alright, neither do I.”

“Then stay,” she sighed, knowing that he would leave for work, “Stay a little longer, stay with me.”

Kaz was always punctual when it came to things, he never liked to be late of he could help it, but he had to admit, the feeling of her body so close, warm, and alive next to his, and to do it without feeling like he was drowning, how could he not take advantage of this moment and stay in her arms a bit longer? He’ll just explain that there was a lead that he had to follow right away or traffic, anything that would explain his late arrival.

They spent another hour in bed, before leisurely getting up to have a cozy breakfast, the scent of warm waffles hung in the air, tea softly waking them up, and the ever beautiful sound of her voice as she sang about the kitchen. It was like being a boy on the farm again, where everything seemed so peaceful, happy, and feeling so loved. He loved her, and she had often told him how she loved him, though how he couldn’t understand why, and they had lived out this wonderful life together, free from the expectations of the world, free from the hauntings of their past. She kissed him before she sat beside him on the window seat, looking out into the golden morning, the flowers gently swaying as a cool breeze blew across the sky, and birds singing their song in a nearby tree.

To anyone from Ketterdam, they would be shocked by the domestic image, Dirtyhands and his Songbird. But to anyone else, especially the couple inside the cottage, she was just a simple farm girl, and Kaz was just Kaz. And it was a wonderful feeling that he wouldn’t trade for all the world.

Tagging: @thedelusionreaderbitch @ell0ra-br3kk3r-writes @babyblue-chaos

#shadow and bone #six of crows #crooked kingdom #kaz brekker #fanfiction #kaz brekker x reader

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creamytinydays · 1 month

Text

The Crush: Spiderman x Everlark - Chapter 7 Sneak Peek

Summary: Mild-mannered student by day, famed thief-turned-hero the Black Cat by night, Katniss Everdeen is juggling taking care of her sister and protecting New York City all while not trying to fail Criminology 101. If that weren’t complicated enough, she’s got a crush on two guys - Spiderman, and the cute nerd she sits next to her in class. What’s a girl to do?

Unbeta’d.

Rated Teen

Tagging some wonderful readers in case they want to take a sneak peek at the last Chapter, which will be posted by Tuesday, April 23! Thank you all SO MUCH for reading <3

@iamareader-01-blog @purpleblueberries @daydreamsandcaffeine @honeylime08

kpkpkpkp

The next week is absolutely miserable. I’ve been subsisting on a diet of ramen, ice cream, and reality TV. I tried to shake off my mood by polishing all of the diamonds in my vault, but I barely got halfway through before I gave up. My heart just wasn’t in it.

The only time I see Peeta all week is during Criminology 101, a few days after the break-up. He sits as far as humanly possible away from me in the cavernous lecture hall, his shoulders slumped, as he mindlessly taps a pencil on the desk. I keep my eyes averted, but when I do summon the courage to look, he’s staring out the window.

I faithfully continue patrolling every night, hoping flirting with Spidey will do me some good. After all, now that Peeta and I are over, I can flirt with Spidey totally guilt-free.

Which would be great, except I can’t find him.

Spider-Man isn’t patrolling by his favorite pizza shop in Midtown, or hanging upside down from the Brooklyn Bridge. He isn’t on top of the Empire State Building, which I had to check by taking the elevator while in costume with some very confused tourists.

Spidey’s never disappeared like this. Sure, we don’t patrol every night, but this is completely new, and worrying. What if he’s in trouble?

I double my efforts, searching the city, and even calling Poison Ivy to see if her underground network has any leads, but there’s nothing. No chatter about his whereabouts, no sightings posted on the message boards. So a week passes, and I’m very close to freaking out and calling hospitals and morgues, when one day I’m prowling the top of the Flatiron building and Spidey lands softly beside me, cool as a cucumber.

“Hey Cat.”

“What the hell!” I try to punch him in the shoulder, but he dodges. Damn those Spidey reflexes. “Where have you been?”

“Around.”

“Oh, come on. You left me!”

He sighs. “It’s been a shitty week.”

“Yeah? You and me, both. It would’ve been better if I’d at least known where you were! I thought you were dead in a gutter somewhere!”

“Aw, I had no idea you cared about me so much,” he says, but there’s nothing flirtatious or playful about his tone.

I narrow my eyes.

“Go AWOL like that again and I’m going straight back to Tiffany’s, the hero life be damned-”

“I needed space from you, OK?” he exclaims. “I’m allowed to be upset!“

I’m so confused that I don’t even know what to say. I card my fingers through the platinum strands of my wig. I’m running through various theories such as Spider-Man has been abducted and replaced with an alternate dimension Spider-Man, or maybe he’s just lost his mind in general, but before I can figure it out, Spidey has tackled me to the floor.

“Stay down,” he says, but it’s too late. There’s a metallic whirring sound above us, way too close, and I realize why Spidey knocked me to the roof. We both attempt to scramble out of the way, but sharp metal talons seize me around the ribs, gripping so tightly I’m fighting to breathe.

“Well, well, well,” says the Vulture.

kpkpkp

#thg #the hunger games #fanfic #hunger games fanfiction #katniss #peeta #everlark fanfiction #everlark #fandom #ao3 #archive of our own #chapter 7 #the crush #spider-man #the black cat #marvel #creamytinydays

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honeypiehotchner · 2 years

Text

Gravedigger’s Daughter (Hangman x Fem!Reader) -- part four

This is so long I am SO (not) sorry. There is A LOT that happens in this part which is why it’s so long, but it all had to happen!!

Also, I hit 4.8k followers last night??? I have gained like 300 followers since starting this fic, which is absolutely insane to think about, but hello everyone!! Welcome to the emotional rollercoaster/occasional whorehouse that is my blog and fics 🤪

Summary: You’re finally back in Fightertown to visit Penny and Amelia, but there also happens to be a group of aviators back at Top Gun. One of which who seems dead-set on wooing you.

Warnings: lots of angst (I’m actually sorry for this), some sadness, Iceman’s funeral, some fluff (omg who knew!!)

WC: 5.3k (whoops)

A harsh jolt back to reality came the next day.

You had just come out of the shower when you heard Penny on the phone, her voice breaking. Your walk to the kitchen is slow, knowing.

When someone dies, it’s a specific kind of voice. A specific kind of hurt.

You thought you heard her on the phone, but you actually heard her talking to Maverick, who is standing in the kitchen, his hair a mess. He has tears streaking his face, and you know.

“Oh, Mav.” You pull him into a hug. “I’m so sorry.”

You had the pleasure of meeting Admiral Tom Kazansky a couple of times. You knew his health was on the decline, but you didn’t realize it was this bad. For him to be gone so soon.

“Thank you,” Maverick replies, hugging you tight.

He explains that the service is tomorrow. They’re taking a few hours off from training so everyone can attend, pay their respects, but they can’t take off the entire day.

That is yet another clue to you of how dangerous this mission is.

Maverick leaves to clear his head, and you ask Penny if she has something you can wear. You didn’t bring anything for a funeral, and you’re certain jeans and a shirt won’t be appropriate. Sure, you could drive the 20 minutes to your apartment and get something, but you know if you do, you won’t make it back. It’ll be too hard.

Thankfully, Penny understands, and says she has something.

The Hard Deck doesn’t open for the night. The whole town feels eerily quiet.

At the service, it begins to rain. You’ve never been to a funeral on a sunny day, so this doesn’t surprise you.

The entire thing is a fog. No funeral is ever easy to get through, and these are especially hard. And when Taps is played, you find yourself immensely grateful that you stayed toward the back of the crowd, so you’re able to fall to the ground without disrupting anything.

Hangman finds you after the service, when you’re standing underneath a tree, leaned against its trunk as you take deep breaths. Everyone is sharing condolences, and you did a fair share before you had to excuse yourself.

You offer a small smile when Hangman approaches you, which he attempts to return.

“How’re you holding up?” he asks.

“I’m okay,” you murmur. “You okay?”

“I’m good. Are you sure you’re alright?”

You sigh heavily. “My dad is buried here.”

Hangman nods slowly. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” you murmur. “Just trying to figure out if I want to go see him or not.”

“Would you like me to walk with you?”

You lift your head, almost telling him no. Because you don’t really need to see your dad. Yesterday was enough with the helmet and seeing Uncle Solomon and walking around Top Gun again. But a bigger part of you wants Hangman to meet your dad, even if you won’t admit it, even if it’s only through his grave.

“Sure,” you reply. If anything, it’ll make it easier to walk over, having Hangman’s company.

Just like yesterday on the tarmac, Hangman holds out his arm for you to take, and you gladly do, leading the way to your dad’s grave.

His body isn’t actually here. Because of the way he died, there was nothing to bury. You don’t know how his helmet survived; you haven’t asked. You don’t really want or need to know the fine details.

The two of you walk in silence. You’re too busy thinking of what to say and you’re sure Hangman doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, so he keeps quiet.

When you reach your dad’s marker, tears well up in your eyes all over again.

You’ve only been here once, and that was with your mom. She went by herself all the time, but once her cancer got worse, she couldn’t make it on her own. The last time she visited was with you, pushing her in a wheelchair, along a piece of carpet you had the funeral director set out for you.

Hangman shifts his arm to wrap it around your shoulders, pulling you into him. This makes the second time you’ve turned and hid your face in his chest, wetting the fabric with your tears. But he doesn’t mind. He holds you closer, tighter.

You’re not sure how long you stand there. Time seems to pass differently in his arms.

But a whistle from the other end of the cemetery catches both of your attentions, specifically Hangman. He stiffens. Sighs.

“I have to go, honey, I’m sorry.”

You nod, lifting your head and smiling gently. “I know. It’s okay. Training’s important.”

He nods, agreeing with you, but he’s frowning. He doesn’t want to leave you. Not when you’re sad like this. “See you at The Hard Deck tonight?”

“Maybe,” you shrug. “If Penny opens.”

“Right,” he says. Another whistle. Last call. “I gotta go.”

“I know,” you reply, taking a step back from him. You smooth your hands over his chest, getting out the wrinkles of his uniform. “See you later.”

“Later, sweetheart,” he promises, taking your left hand and squeezing once, then kissing your knuckles.

The gesture leaves you swooning, but he has to let go quickly and walk away. Well, more like jogging away. Everyone was waiting for him. You can see Maverick watching Hangman leave you. And you turn away, back to your dad.

“Well,” you say aloud, walking closer to the marker. Even though your dad isn’t technically buried here, he’s still here. “That was Hangman. His name’s actually Jake, though I know you would only use his call sign.”

You sit down on the grass, realizing too late that it’s wet and this is Penny’s dress. Oh well. You’re sure she won’t care, as long as you wash it.

“It’s been a while,” you say. “Too long, I know, but hey, I’ve got a big girl job.”

Your dad never wanted you to work unless it was a job you adored with all your heart. But when he died and your mom got sick, you had no choice. It didn’t matter if you loved your job, you just needed money.

“Uncle Solomon gave me your helmet,” you murmur, picking at the grass. “I don’t know what to do with it. He said you wanted me to have it, but�� I don’t know, maybe I’ll get a glass case for it. I bet you’d fuckin’ hate that.” You start laughing, remembering what he used to say.

“This is our home, not a goddamned museum.” He never wanted any of his medals and things to be on display in any grand way. If they were sat out on a bookshelf or hung on the wall, sure, but mixed in with other things, not on their own. Not like a shrine. Or a museum.

“I won’t do that, I’m teasing,” you chuckle, sniffling right after and wiping your tears off your cheeks. “What do you think I should do with it?”

You know he won’t answer, but you still felt like asking. He’d probably say, “Wear it.”

“Dad, I…I need to ask you something else.”

You’ve thought about coming to visit him ever since you got to Fightertown. Well, ever since you met Hangman.

“The man who walked over here with me,” you start, resting your chin in your palm, your elbow on your knee. “Jake, he-- I don’t know what it is, Dad. About him. But he makes me want to stay. Here, back in Fightertown. Mom and I moved away, and I know you wanted to live here your whole life, and I did, too. When you died, I thought I wanted to live somewhere else, but I don’t. I wanna be here.”

It begins raining again. It’s cold, but it almost feels like a hug.

“I don’t even know if he’ll be here. He’ll probably get deployed, or go on missions like you did. He’s going on one soon. But I want to stay, I just don’t know how. There’s so much to think about between a place to stay, and a new job. I mean, I could commute, it’s only 20 minutes, but with traffic and-- I don’t even like the job that much. Being back here with Penny and Amelia, I want to always be here. I want to watch Amelia get older and graduate and--

“I told Mom I wouldn’t fall for a guy like you, like Hangman, but I might be. I might be, Dad, and it scares me, and I wish you were here to meet him. To scare him away, I guess,” you chuckle. “He even flies the jet you used to. Same exact one-- I touched the wing, finally,” you add eagerly, grinning. “He helped, but still. I did it.”

The rain slows to a stop again.

“I should go, I guess,” you murmur. “Don’t want to get sick. It was good to see you, Dad. I should come visit more often, I know. Hey, if I move back here, then I will,” you chuckle, standing to your feet. “See you next time. Love you.”

+++

The Hard Deck opens that night, but it’s quiet.

The aviators are here, including Maverick. It’s so much of a quiet night that even Amelia is here, drinking a virgin cocktail at the bar, on a stool next to Mav. They’re playing a card game with Penny. They look like a real family, and that tugs on your heart.

Hangman is sitting at the other end of the bar, watching you with sad eyes. You’re cleaning glasses, even though there isn’t a rush. You’re keeping yourself busy and distracted, and Hangman knows.

“Hey, Hangman!” Fanboy calls out. “Football on the beach! You coming?”

Hangman looks at you and you nod. “Yeah,” he yells back. “Coming.”

You flash him a smile. “Have fun.”

He doesn’t respond with any of his usual wit. Just a grin and a nod. He takes his beer with him.

You watch him go and then turn toward Penny. “Deal me in,” you say, hanging up your towel and grabbing a glass for your own beer. “What are we playing?”

+++

“It’s dark as fuck outside, and you wanna play football?” Hangman says, taking a long swig of his beer.

“Makes it more fun,” Coyote replies, grinning.

“If you say so,” Hangman shrugs, setting his beer on the deck.

“What crawled up your ass?” Rooster comments, tossing the football to Hangman and nearly nailing him in the nose.

“Nothing,” Hangman replies, tossing the ball back, spinning it and nearly nailing Rooster in the chest.

“Damn,” Rooster laughs loudly, tossing it to Fanboy.

“Did she reject you or something?” Phoenix asks.

“Again,” Payback comments.

“Very funny,” Hangman snaps, catching the ball from Fanboy and throwing it to Bob.

Bob catches it and tosses it right back. “She’s into you.”

“Glad my love life is everyone’s business,” Hangman says with a scoff, pelting the ball back to Rooster. “Seriously?”

“We’re just looking out for you, man,” Rooster replies.

“Right,” Hangman laughs. “You all hate me.”

“Woah, no we don’t,” Phoenix interjects. “Where’d you get that idea in your head?”

“You’re an asshole, but I don’t hate you,” Rooster says. “Come on, dude.”

“Alright, fine,” Hangman says. “Forget I said that.”

“So what’s up with Y/N?” Coyote asks, swiftly changing subjects.

“Nothing,” Hangman repeats, tossing the ball a little too hard once again.

“You haven’t told her yet, have you?” Fanboy says.

“Told her what?” Bob says.

“Come on, Jake, you’ve gotta tell her,” Phoenix says.

“Maybe,” Hangman shrugs. “Now are we gonna play or keep jawing? Think fast!”

Bob nearly gets hit in the face with the football if it weren’t for Phoenix grabbing it first, and shooting off through the cluster of guys for a touchdown.

+++

“How are you winning? You’ve never played this before,” Maverick groans.

“Amelia is helping me,” you shrug. “And I’m helping her. Use that one,” you point to one card in her hand.

Amelia goes out as you expected her to, and Maverick looks like he’s getting a migraine.

“Alright, bedtime for you,” Penny laughs.

“What?” Amelia protests. “Come on!”

“Not because you won,” Penny says. “But because it’s almost midnight.”

“Oh shit,” Maverick cusses. “I should get going.”

“It’s past your bedtime, huh, old man?” you laugh, nudging his arm.

“Very much so,” Maverick replies with a smile. “Want a ride, ‘Melia?”

“Mav…” Penny warns.

“She’ll wear a helmet,” Maverick says. “And hold on tight. Right?”

“Right,” Amelia nods. “Please, Mom?”

“Fine,” Penny caves. “But I’m right behind you in the car. Don’t go too fast.”

“Yes ma’am,” Maverick grins wide. “Come on, kiddo.”

“Wait for me!” Penny yells, watching them go. “I swear, those two.”

“They’re a fun pair,” you laugh. “You have your hands full.”

“Don’t I know it,” Penny scoffs. “Will you lock up for me?”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” you smile. “I got it. I’ll see you in a little bit.”

“See you,” she squeezes your arm before heading out, walking briskly. Maverick wouldn’t leave without her, though. You haven’t even heard his bike engine start yet.

You begin closing up, cleaning up the last few glasses and wiping off the bar top. You switch the lights off, stacking the last few chairs. The good thing about having a well-loved owner of this bar means the patrons usually help close, too. The chairs are normally stacked by midnight.

You head out the back door, locking the doors behind you. The aviators have left the beach, but Hangman is still down there.

“This is yours,” he says, holding up his glass. “Sorry.”

You chuckle. “Come on.” You unlock the door and wait for him to bound the stairs with his empty glass.

You place it in the dishwasher, turning it on. Hangman waits for you as you finish up.

“Will you sit on the beach with me?” he asks. “Just for a few minutes. I know it’s late.”

“Sure,” you say. “Let’s go.”

Hangman turns and holds out his arm. “For you.”

You take his arm with a smile, letting him lead the way down the deck and to the sand.

The moon provides some light, but not much, especially not with the clouds. They haven’t fully left the sky since this afternoon.

“I’ve really enjoyed this week with you,” Hangman says.

“Me too,” you murmur. “You’ve made coming back here…not as hard as I expected. You made it easier, so thank you.”

“That’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten, Y/N, thank you,” Hangman replies. He rests his hand over yours on his arm.

“I know I shouldn’t ask,” you begin, and he furrows his eyebrows, “but when are you leaving?”

Hangman sighs. “Honey, you know I can’t tell you.”

“I know, just--” you pause. “I have to go back to my job soon. I’m almost out of vacation time.”

“How soon?”

“Day after tomorrow,” you reply quietly. “If I don’t see you before you go, I just wanted to tell you that-- Be careful.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Hangman says.

“I will anyway,” you admit. “I just wanted to say it.”

“Well, thank you,” he says. He opens his mouth to say something else, but he stops himself. “Want me to walk you home?”

“I have my car,” you say. “How about I give you a ride back to Top Gun?”

He gets a mischievous glint in his eyes. “You’re playing a dangerous game, sweetheart.”

“I’m not staying,” you warn. “Just dropping you off. Don’t get too excited.”

“Alright,” he laughs.

“Mhm,” you smile, digging your feet into the sand to get some traction. “Relax. Don’t make me ditch you on the side of the road.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh yes I would,” you quip, patting his arm.

Gentlemanly as always, Hangman opens your car door for you (after you promise not to drive off without him). You roll your eyes at him.

“Just get in the car,” you laugh.

He does, grinning wide while he buckles himself in. “What tunes are we listening to?”

“Tunes?” you echo, starting the engine. “Are you geriatric or something?”

“Jesus,” Hangman grimaces, feigning hurt, but then he smiles. “I’ve got one. Can I play it?”

You hand him your phone, which is hooked up to the car’s radio. “It better be good or I will ditch you.”

“Awh, come on, sweetheart,” he says. “You’ll love it.”

You give him a look, putting the car in reverse. It takes a minute for him to find the song, but once you’re on the main road, it kicks in.

You recognize it immediately. “Oh my fucking god. You did not.”

“Turn it up!” he cackles. “This is music, baby!”

“You’re insane!” you yell over the music, but you’re laughing with him, and he looks so carefree that it hurts.

He knows every single word, and you don’t know why you’re surprised. It’s a struggle to keep your eyes on the road instead of watching him.

The chorus gets close and he grabs your free hand. “Sing it with me,” he grins. “Save a horse, ride a cowboy.”

He sings his heart out while holding your hand, running his thumb over your knuckles, occasionally using your hand as a microphone.

All too soon, you reach the entrance to the base, and Hangman reaches over to turn the music down.

“Back again?” the guard at the entrance says.

Hangman leans over and waves, showing his ID. “Just dropping me off.”

“I don’t need to go through,” you explain. “I’m turning around.”

“Yes ma’am,” the guard nods. “I’m sure you know how.”

“I do,” you smile. “Thanks.”

“Yes ma’am, have a good night.”

You roll the window back up and pull up so you can back out. Hangman is quiet, until you look over at him and he’s frowning.

“Hangman…” You shake your head. “You and I both know that if I go through that gate, I won’t come back out.”

His face softens.

“You should go,” you whisper. “Please.”

He nods. “Okay.” He’s still holding your hand, and he squeezes it again. He lifts your hand, almost kissing it, but he stops himself, letting go. “Goodnight.”

You hate it. You want to go through that gate, up to his room, and not come out until tomorrow. But you can’t. You know better.

I’m sorry, you want to say. But instead you say, “Goodnight.”

+++

The next morning, you tell Penny you have to head back to San Diego after dropping Amelia off at school. Penny drives slowly back to her house, where your car is parked.

“You know, there’s that one room that is just storage in my house,” Penny says. “We could clear it out, put a bed in there.”

“Penny--”

“It’s just an option,” she argues. “I’ve been wanting some help at the bar. I can afford to take on an employee, if someone was willing and experienced enough to--”

“Penny. I’d love to.”

She nearly swerves off the road. “What?”

“Calm down,” you laugh. “Keep us on the road, first of all.”

“I’m fine-- What are you talking about? Are you serious?”

“Yes. Dead serious,” you smile. “I didn’t want to impose, or invite myself, so I didn’t know how to ask, but--”

“You are always welcome,” Penny says seriously. “What about your job?”

“I’m going back today to quit,” you explain. “I didn’t want to say in case I chickened out, but no,” you shake your head. “I don’t want to go back.”

“Alright,” Penny nods. “It’s settled then. Let’s go quit your job.”

“Let’s?”

“Oh yeah, I’m driving you. Do you have everything you need? We can go now, I can help you grab some more clothes. What about your apartment?”

“My lease is up next month,” you confess. “I never renewed it. It never felt…right.”

“That means it’s time,” Penny smiles sympathetically. She switches lanes to head for San Diego, turning up the radio.

Your boss is surprised, but knows he can’t stop you, so he lets you go, and says your last check should be deposited next week. You grab your things and go back out to Penny’s car.

When you open the car door, you grin, “I’m free!”

“Yeah you are!” she cheers. “Get in here!”

The next stop is lunch, and then the two of you eat at your apartment.

“I should call the office, I guess,” you say in between a mouthful of fries. “Let them know I’ll be moving soon. I have until the end of next month I think, but if I can go early, I don’t think they’d mind.”

“Amelia and I can help you move this weekend,” Penny says. “We can surprise her.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

You pack a few changes of clothes to take back to Penny’s, and then the two of you are headed back to Fightertown.

+++

The next two days are a blur of laughter and dancing and some of what feel like the best moments of your entire life.

You’ve been trying not to let the imminent mission drain all the joy from your days with Hangman and the other aviators, but it’s harder than you’d like to admit. You don’t know which night might be the last, for now, but because of how you were raised, you can spot the signs. You hate that you can do that, but you can’t ignore it.

Especially when all the aviators call it an early night. With one beer each at seven, and leaving by ten. Ten.

“I’ll see you,” Hangman says. His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. And he leaves out the tomorrow in his sentence.

“Hey, wait,” you practically fling yourself over the bar, but hitting your hip on the counter isn’t what hurts. It’s that Hangman barely slows down. And he doesn’t even look back. But you know he heard you. He had to.

You finally catch up to him once you’re outside.

“Hey!” He stops this time, hanging his head. “Did you hear me? I said wait. I wanted to--”

“I can’t,” he says.

“You can’t?” you echo. “What are you talking about? Hangman, look at me.” You place a hand on his shoulder, trying to turn him, but he doesn’t budge. So you walk around him and face him. “What is going on with you?” You don’t know why you ask. You know the answer. But it’s not fair.

“I have to go,” he says, his jaw clenched.

“I know,” you breathe. You knew the day was coming soon. This means it’s tomorrow. Why does it have to be tomorrow already? “Can I at least give you a hug?”

“Don’t,” he says quickly, halting you in your tracks. He shakes his head, holding up one hand to stop you.

Now it feels like something else is wrong. “Jake. What is going on?”

“Nothing,” he replies. “Sweetheart, you know I can’t say anything.”

“I know that, but you’re acting like you don’t even want to speak to me. Just an hour ago we were playing darts and you couldn’t stand close enough and now-- Are you seriously walking away from me?”

“I can’t,” he says again, but he’s still walking away. “I have to go.”

“Are you kidding me?” You have half a mind to run after him, but you let him keep stepping away from you. “Oh my god,” you whisper, mostly to yourself. Everything was fine. Everything was fine. What the hell happened?

You expect him to come to his senses and turn around, run right back to you and tackle you in a hug. You know this must be hard on him, but to walk away like that? Without even a hug? Without a real goodbye?

This has to be a joke.

You walk around The Hard Deck to the beach, planning to sit in the sand and clear your head before going back inside.

Instead, you walk right into the water, right up to your knees. You don’t want your clothes to get wet, but you need to feel the waves. Desperately.

The wind is blowing a storm in; the lightning illuminates the clouds just along the horizon. It’ll be here in a few hours.

You wrap your arms around yourself, hating that it gets so cold out here. You just want to enjoy the water, not freeze to death.

Penny comes to find you just a few minutes later, after you’ve gotten out of the water and walked back up the beach.

“I’m closing early,” she says. You hear her footsteps in the sand slow to stop next to you.

“Did Mav tell you?” you ask. You’ll be damned if he left without saying anything to her.

“Well, not exactly. You know how it is.” She sighs, crossing her arms over her chest. “And you? Did Hangman say anything?”

“Not exactly,” you chuckle, but it gets caught in your throat.

“Hey, hey, what is it?”

“He didn’t say anything,” you cry. “He just-- He just walked away from me. He wouldn’t even let me hug him. I’m so mad at him right now I could just--”

Penny cuts you off by pulling you into her arms. “I know,” she says. “I know.”

Out of everyone in the world, you know she gets it.

+++

You toss and turn for most of the night, and the storm isn’t helping. You can usually fall asleep during them, but not when the wind sounds like it can make trees collapse.

At least, that’s what you’re telling yourself. Storms never keep you up, but tonight is the exception. Not worrying about Hangman.

You have no idea how you heard the knocking on the side door, but you did. That doesn’t stop you from grabbing your dad’s helmet, though, to use as a potential weapon. Because who the fuck is knocking at four in the morning?

“Hangman?” you nearly scream when you see him standing outside the door, soaking wet from the rain. “What the hell are you doing? Get in here!”

You give him zero time to argue with you, or protest about dripping all over Penny’s floor. You’ll mop in the morning.

“You’re fucking crazy!” you hiss, wanting to hit him with the helmet anyway. “What were you thinking? It’s like a hurricane out there! What is wrong with y--”

“I know!” he says back, keeping his voice low. “Lecture me later, sweetheart, I wanted to see you.”

You grit your teeth. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Early,” he says. “We’re leaving as soon as--”

“Shh!” you shove his chest. “Keep your voice down. They’re sleeping, like I should be.”

“You weren’t asleep,” he says, in his same tone, like he knows everything. “I can see the bags under your eyes.”

“What do you really want, Hangman?” You sit your dad’s helmet down on the counter so you can cross your arms over your chest. “You didn’t want to speak to me earlier. So why are you here now?”

His face twists painfully. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was-- I don’t know why I did what-- Listen, there’s no good way to say this,” he chuckles awkwardly, smiling shyly. “But I have to say it, honey, you know I do.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Y/N,” he whispers.

“Hangman.”

“I love you.”

“Shut up.”

“I know it’s too soon, alright? I know I shouldn’t, and I know what you said. But I can’t help myself, and I wouldn’t be able to leave if I didn’t tell you.”

“Why would you tell me that? Hours before you’re about to leave!”

“Because you drive me crazy, so I thought I’d do it to you for a change!”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Yes, obviously, how much of an asshole do you think I am? Don’t answer that.”

Both of you go quiet, realizing how loud your voices have gotten. You wait a few beats to be sure there’s no movement in the house, that you didn’t wake anyone up with your bickering. But mostly you’re letting Hangman’s words sink in. All of them.

He takes a few steps closer while you’re staring out the window at the pouring rain, chewing the inside of your cheek. You barely register the feeling of his hands engulfing yours. The first thing you notice is his cologne.

“Jake…” You shake your head, looking up at him. “I don’t…”

“I know,” he nods. “I know you don’t feel the same, I just had to say it because--”

“Hey, hey,” you tug on his hands. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

He stares, then quirks an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I don’t know about it being love just yet, but-- I know what I said, and I shouldn’t have said it. I think I said it because I knew I was already too far gone.”

He smirks. “I’m that good, huh?”

“Don’t ruin the moment,” you warn.

“Alright, sweetheart, I’m sorry.” He pulls you in closer, wrapping his arms around you. “You know what my next question is gonna be.”

You nod.

“So?” He looks hopeful, a little too excited.

You shake your head. “No.”

He deflates. His arms loosen a little. “Okay.”

You know he’s confused (why wouldn’t he be?), so you place both hands on his face, holding him. “Kiss me when you come back to me.”

“Y/N…”

“Solomon told me this is dangerous,” you say. “So you better be careful.”

“Alright,” he sighs, lacing his fingers together on the small of your back.

“Good,” you nod. “Speaking of, shouldn’t you be on the base right now?”

“Not for another hour,” he says. “I was hoping the rain would pass so I don’t have to walk through it again.”

“You-- Never mind. I’ll drive you. Don’t worry about the rain,” you laugh quietly. “What do you want to do for an hour? And don’t say what I know you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest that,” he grins. “But I like the way you think.”

You give him a look.

“Alright, alright,” he says. “Let’s just do this.”

“This?” you question. “We’re just standing.”

“No, I’m holding you in my arms, and we’re talking and listening to the rain. I want to stay like this.”

“Okay,” you smile. “Let’s stay like this.”

You make one small adjustment, and that’s to lay your head on his chest, even though he’s soaking wet. You truly are exhausted, but you don’t want to fall asleep if he’s only here for another hour. You can sleep once he’s gone. It’ll keep you from worrying, anyway.

He rests his chin on the top of your head, closing his eyes. And he says it again, mostly just for himself to hear. “I love you.”

The hour passes far too quickly, and so does the drive back to Top Gun. You actually go on the base this time, not wanting to cut your time with him any shorter than you have to.

Thankfully, the rain has stopped, so you’re able to get out of the car and hug him properly, tightly, before letting him go.

You barely let him get a few steps away before you’re calling out his name. “Jake!”

He turns so quickly he nearly gives himself whiplash. “What is it?” he jogs back to you.

“You forgot something,” you say.

His eyebrows furrow and he begins patting his pockets, checking for his phone, ID, keys. “What did I--?”

You stand on your toes and press a kiss to his cheek, halting his words immediately.

“Well,” he laughs, grinning wildly. “I guess I did.”

“Mhm,” you smile. “Good luck. And be careful.”

“I will,” he says firmly, meaning it this time. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” you let it slip out this time, finally getting over yourself. “Go kick some ass.”

“I always do,” he winks. “I’ll be back soon.”

“You better.”

#hoo boy what a ride #this has to be my favorite love confession i've ever written #hangman top gun #gravedigger’s daughter #jake hangman seresin #hangman x fem!reader #hangman x reader #hangman x you #hangman top gun fanfiction #top gun maverick #top gun maverick fanfiction #jake hangman seresin x reader #jake hangman seresin x fem!reader #jake hangman seresin x you #glen powell

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