a déjà vu of some perfect day

she/her | multifandom | 21

[lovebugism]

YOU WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME ─── jack abbot

summary: you assume jack likes you until the pitt starts betting on how long it'll take him and samira to get together; jack assumes you like him until you get called into work while on a date with your coworker. turns out, all it takes is a bad bet and an even worse date for you and jack to realize how in love the two of you are. (7k)

characters: jack abbot / fem!loser!reader, trinity santos, samira mohan, nick barker, mcvadi crumbs

contents: friends to lovers, idiots in love, implied age gap, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, jealousy, humor, so much flirting, cw for medical procedures, medical inaccuracies, and probably several hr violations

( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )

You make it halfway through your shift with a lighter wallet and a heavier heart than when you started it.

You can hear Princess shuffling through her stack of cash from the other side of the workstation, flaunting her winnings from a well-placed bet. You try and fail not to let it distract you as you scribble at the clipboard before you, with your heavy head propped on your clenched fist. 

Charting was hard enough back when the computers were still running, back when it was easy — let alone when you have to make every single note by hand, and flit physically through a hundred different files just to cross-reference all the information.

“Is this what it was like back when you were a resident?” you’d asked Jack, when he dropped off an order slip by the filing cabinet, beside the bulky fax machine you were standing in front of and trying to tame. 

He slid in beside you with a wide hand on your lower back, smelling like a dizzying mixture of sweat and musky cologne. He adjusted your labs in the tray without another word, turning it around and flipping it right-side up for you. 

“Yeah, actually,” he’d nodded, dialing the proper number on the machine with his pointer finger, including the area code that you had forgotten to add. The corner of his lip flickered upward in a faint half-smirk as he joked with squinted eyes, “Back in the 1900s— when charting was done by candlelight.”

You felt your own mouth curling into a quiet smile despite yourself. “So this must feel really nostalgic for you then, huh?”

“Extremely,” he deadpanned.

“Well…” you sighed. “Got any tips for me then, old man?”

Jack exhaled a heavy breath and turned to face you while the heavy machine beeped and buzzed beside you. He tucked his hands into the front pockets of his camo pants and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Well, look at it this way— Today is gonna suck, but… That means every shift from now can’t possibly get worse than this one, right?”

“Yeah,” you scoffed. “That, or we just… keep descending into another circle of hell every day.”

Jack smiled wider at your cynicism, patting you softly on the shoulder before sauntering off the way he came. “That’s the spirit, kid.”

You still feel his hand on you even now, wide and warm over your thick black scrubs, while you trudge through the rest of your charting. You hate the effect he has on you; you hate how often he plagues your every thought. It takes a great amount of muscle memory, you find, not to accidentally jot his name down as your hand moves the pen on autopilot. 

You don’t think it’d feel quite as pathetic if you thought that there might be an inkling he felt the same way about you. But now, all you are is an R4 with a stupid schoolgirl crush on her boss, and half a mental breakdown away from scribbling little hearts in her notes with his initials scrawled inside.

“You plan on getting in on this?” Santos asks in place of a greeting as she slides her swivel chair next to yours. She wears a faint smirk on her lips and a mischievous glint in her light eyes that gives you great pause.

Ink smudges on the inside of your wrist as you halt your scribbling to flash her a dubious look. “…On what?”

“Ahmad got bored after Princess won the last bet,” she tells you, reaching behind her to tighten the half-ponytail at the crown of her head. “Said the grid was too good to take down so soon, so… He started a new one.” 

You scoff a dry laugh and turn away again. 

“Yeah? What is it this time— Which one of us is gonna be the first to have a breakdown and quit? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure I’d win that one…”

“Close…” Trinity croons, leaning in like she’s about to tell you some sort of secret. Her eyes flit somewhere over your shoulder, in the vague direction of where Mohan stands with Jack across the room, before she confesses. “It’s about Abbot and Samira. I have it on good authority that they were getting pret-ty close in Central 4 together…”

“C-Close?” you echo on bated breath. 

Your head whips over your shoulder to the other side of the workstation, where Jack and Samira exchange information about one of her patients. You hadn’t given their closeness a second thought before now. It’s like you blinked, and now the sight of them together makes you feel sick. 

You hope Santos doesn’t see the hurt weighing down your features when you turn back to her. “What— What do you mean close?”

“I mean, Dr. Abbot was half naked while Samira was tending to his shoulder,” Trinity explains with a scoff and turns back to her own clipboard. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought anything about it until I heard her say, ‘It’s our little secret—’” 

She mocks in a high-pitched voice, which sounds nothing like Samira’s, before laughing to herself.

“—Like, c’mon. You guys could at least try to be subtle about it.”

You know she expects you to start laughing with her, but you struggle to find the energy to do so now.

“Yeah…” you sigh instead, hardly audible as you struggle to speak through the sudden tightening in your chest. “Right…”

“You should go place a bet,” she tells you, half-distracted by the files before her. “You could win back the money you lost and then some.”

“With what?” you joke with a sad scoff. “The three dollars I have left to my name?”

She flashes you a deadpanned look. “If that’s all you have to lose, I think I’d take those odds.”

You figure Trinity’s right. You have nothing more to lose, in truth — not after the shit day you’ve already had, and the money you’ve already lost, and the teenage heart inside of you that’s already broken. 

You finish up your charting, return the clipboard to the patient rack, and retrieve your wallet from the locker room. Because, as you see it, you’ll either leave this shift about a hundred dollars richer or with nothing at all; either totally vindicated or with a bank account just as empty as you feel on the inside.

You find Ahmad in the security room, and he flashes you a toothy grin as you slink through the doorway like a shy little storm cloud. He motions with the notepad he holds in a sun-kissed hand. “I knew you’d wanna get on the books, kid— What’d it take to convince you this time?”

“I don’t know,” you shrug with a mournful sigh. “I just… realized that I have nothing else to lose, I guess…”

Dr. Barker laughs from beside you.

“Well, that’s always the best reason to make a bet, in my experience,” he jokes with a pearly white smile, pushing the sleeves of his navy button-down up to his elbows to reveal the expanse of his tanned, scruffy forearms. 

Nick Barker stands quite a few inches taller than you — which you hadn’t expected before now, since he’d spent most of his time in the E.R. sitting behind the portable radiology machine. He has to look down at you from the bridge of his broad nose from this angle, with eyes so dark they’re almost black. 

He’s almost effortlessly handsome. Like, Disney prince sort of handsome. The kind of handsome that makes it impossible to look into his eyes without blushing like a schoolgirl.

“I’m normally a lot more responsible than this, but… I figured all things considered…” you trail off with a sheepish shrug.

“Yeah, you’re talkin’ to the girl who hasn’t taken a day off since I started here— Two years ago,” Ahmad scoffs. “I think you deserve to let loose every once in a while, Doc, all things considered.”

He taps you gently on the head with his notepad. You roll your eyes and reach into the pocket of your scrubs, cheeks burning under the weight of the sudden attention you’re getting. 

“Just put me down for $10—” you say, but cut yourself off when Ahmad hisses through his teeth. “…What is it?”

“Minimum this time twenty,” he grimaces.

Your shoulders deflate with a sigh. “Seriously?”

“We had to up the ante this time, kid— Rules of the game.”

“Then I guess put me down for twenty…” you huff and pluck your wallet from your scrub pockets. “For… completely platonic.”

“Mohan and Abbot? Platonic?” Ahmad laughs like it’s funny. “What? You’re telling me you don’t believe in love?”

You flash him a solemn look in return. “I’ll start believing in something again when the systems come back up,” you answer in a monotone.

“Touche…” he nods slowly while Dr. Barker exhales a quiet laugh through his nose. 

A familiar voice comes suddenly from the entrance:

“I think that is the single sanest answer I’ve heard all day,” Jack Abbot himself hums in a gritty deadpan. 

You nearly break your neck with how fast your head whips over your shoulder, finding the man leaning against the doorway with his toned arms crossed over his chest and a smug smirk dancing on his lips. 

Your skin prickles with a red-hot heat while your pounding heart drops to your stomach. If he wasn’t into you before, he certainly won’t be now — not with you making bets on his love life like a crazy person with nothing better to do. (Though, in many ways, that is exactly what you are.)

“Dr. Abbot…” Ahmad croons, trying to play casual despite knowing his secretive betting ring’s finally been found out. “That’s funny— We were just talking about you.”

“Robby may or may not have told me,” Jack confesses as he saunters slowly into the security room, boots heavy on the white linoleum. “Wanted me to tell him if there was something going on with Mohan and me, so he could recoup the money he lost in the last bet.”

“…Well, is there?” Nick wonders lowly.

“C’mon, Barker. Where’s the fun in that?” Jack scoffs a dry laugh, then goes strangely solemn again in a flicker. “Even though, as an attending, I think I have to say that I am very against this— I feel like this has H.R. violation written all over it.”

“Well, what Gloria doesn’t know, won’t hurt us, right?” Ahmad quips.

“I’ve been livin’ by those exact words for years, brother.”

Your hands are clammy and trembling for a reason you can’t name as you pull two crumpled bills from your wallet — a dingy, pastel Polly Pocket billfold you’ve had since you were twelve — as if you needed another reason to look any less cool in front of Jack. The pale pink interior is left glaringly empty, save for a few folded receipts and miscellaneous fortune-cookie slips.

“Wow…” you huff as you pass Ahmad the twenty. “That is all the cash I have to my name. I’m officially more broke than I was in med school— I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“I can take you out to dinner with my winnings, if you want,” Nick offers suddenly. 

Your head snaps in his direction, and his eyes widen, as though surprised by his own forwardness. He swallows hard, pronounced adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, scruffy with a five o’clock shadow. 

“You know, if you— if you wanna… let loose or whatever.”

Your lip flickers upward in a shy smile when Dr. Barker sighs and shakes his head to himself. A few rogue strands of dark hair fall from their gelled quaff and hang over his forehead until he pushes them back in place again. 

“Sorry, that, uh…” He chuckles awkwardly at himself. “That came out weird.”

“I might be stuck in charting jail for the rest of the night, actually,” you say with an apologetic grimace, wringing your clammy fingers into knots. “Can I get back to you on that?” 

“Yeah!” he blurts, a little quicker than he means to. He clears his throat and, in an octave lower, repeats himself. “Yeah. Totally. No worries.”

You dismiss yourself with a quiet smile and lack the courage to look Jack in the eye when you pass him on the way to the door. He watches you leave and waits for you to glance back at him with his heart in his throat. You never do. 

Still, though, he can’t help but feel a little proud of himself; after watching you turn down the handsome radiologist every woman on this floor has been fawning over all day. He turns back around and hisses through his teeth, trying not to look as smug as he feels. 

“Damn,” Jack deadpans. “That was cold, man…”

Nick’s dark eyes widen and flit wildly between the two men on either side of him. “Wait— Really?”

“Ice cold…” Ahmad affirms with a slow nod. “Girl said she’s broke, and you think she’s gonna say ‘no thanks’ to some free food? In this economy? Yeah… She’s not into you, man.”

Jack claps the solemn boy hard on the shoulder. “You win some, you lose some, kid… Don’t take it too hard.”

You forget all about the stupid bet and Nick’s offer some hours later, when Robby sticks you with Ogilvie and tells you to walk the MS4 through your canthotomy patient. 

You talk aloud as you slice your scalpel through the young girl’s eye, where the socket is raging red and bulging from the pressure behind it. The boy doesn’t say a word the whole time, just holds the plastic cup where the bright crimson blood drains from the eye, and doesn’t move a muscle until it stops.

“I think that’s the closest I’ve come to puking since I started med school,” the boy confesses when it’s done, standing just over your shoulder while you fill out the patient’s med slip. “I didn’t even get that close during cadaver lab, when all of us started craving meat from the formaldehyde— I’m pretty sure five people dropped out that day alone…”

His voice trails off when Samira catches your eye, rushing by the desk with her wild curls falling from her claw clip. She wears the hard shift all over as she makes a beeline directly for Jack, planting herself ahead of the older man; so close she has to tilt her chin to meet his gaze. 

Your hand freezes around the pen as you keep your eyes on the two of them, staring harder than you probably realize as you struggle to make out their conversation. Their words are drowned out by Ogilvie’s rambling, and the surrounding beep and chatter of the crowded E.R. 

Mohan talks wildly with her hands and says something about “a letter,” while Jack nods along sympathetically and says something along the lines of “give me your number.” 

Your chest flares with a white-hot feeling when you watch the man pass Samira his phone to plug her number into. It’s like the world has fallen out from under you and swallowed you whole, like you’re drowning in the fire of your own envy. 

You’re barely seven hours on the job, and you’ve already lost all your cash — you’ll be doomed to the three-day-old leftovers in the fridge, if the newfound heartache hasn’t already snatched your appetite for the evening. That means you’ll be running on fumes tomorrow morning — still broke, still hungry, still heartbroken.

Then you remember Dr. Barker — Disney prince Dr. Barker — and his offer of dinner from earlier in the security room. 

You make the terribly impulsive decision to take fate into your own hands and forget to properly dismiss yourself before dropping the finished order slip off across the room. Ogilivie is quick to follow close behind, lacking any real sense of personal space. He nearly trips over himself to keep from running into you when you freeze suddenly in place.

“You don’t have to follow me anymore,” you tell him.

“Oh… Well, then… What am I supposed to do?” the blonde boy shrugs.

“I don’t know. Do whatever you want…” you trail off and glance around the bustling work station. You spot Trinity standing at the chart rack and motion over to her. “Go help Dr. Santos with her next patient.”

The dark-haired girl turns at the sound of her name. 

“Oh, please don’t—” She cuts herself off with a sigh when Ogilvie makes his way towards her anyway. “Fuck. Fine…”

You continue your trek to the other side of the crowded work station, where the portable radiology machine takes up the majority of the room. You can smell the man’s expensive, musky cologne before he ever comes into view.

“Hey, Nick…” you greet, then wince at how weird it sounds a second later. “I mean, Dr. Barker— Sorry—”

He glances up from his work at the sound of your voice. “Nick is fine,” he assures with a kind grin and a pair of chocolate-colored eyes.

You try to smile back, but your nervousness makes it look more like a grimace. “It’s not, like, totally too late for me to take you up on that offer for dinner, is it?”

“No!” he blurts with a shake of his head. “Of course not!”

“Great…” you say with a relieved sigh.

“Yeah, I’ll— I’ll text you the details later.”

“Oh. Well, you don’t…” You scrunch the bridge of your nose in a sheepish look. “You don’t have my number…”

His mouth falls softly agape with the realization. “Oh. Right. Duh.”

You smile wider despite yourself, ‘cause he’s almost as awkward as you are, which you didn’t think was possible before now — especially not for someone as pretty as he is. 

You turn away and grab the nearest pen, clicking it on with your thumb before reaching for his arm. You scribble your number over the dark blue veins on his wrist with a newfound confidence — one that you never had before now, one spurred on by the man’s obvious shyness. 

You feel Nick’s eyes on you when you look away, flitting wildly across your profile. 

“This isn’t… This isn’t just because of the bet, is it?” he wonders with a waver in his voice.

Your brows furrow in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“You know, the whole thing you said about… losing all your money or whatever,” Dr. Barker explains with a sheepish laugh. “You’re not just going out with me for a free meal, are you?”

“Well, isn’t that kinda the point of going on dates? The free food?” you joke with a dry laugh, which fades instantly at the confused look Nick gives you in response. Your face floods with horror a second later. “I’m kidding! I’m totally kidding— Of course not.”

“Okay,…” Dr. Barker says with an awkward chuckle. “Good.”

“Good,” you echo with a sigh and rise to full height again.

“I’ll, uh— I’ll text you.”

“I’ll be waiting,” you chirp with a polite nod and a giddy grin, which ebbs the second you turn away from him. You shake your head as you slink back through the bustling emergency department, squeezing your eyes shut and murmuring under your breath in disgust, “I’ll be waiting—?”

You nearly trip over yourself when you ram suddenly into a firm body. Two calloused hands grasp gently at your elbows as you stumble backwards. You almost lose your breath when you find Jack Abbot towering over you.

“Shit… you huff. “Sorry, I— I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Where’ve you been hiding?” Jack squints. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Your shy smile fades into a disbelieving squint almost instantly; at the bitter reminder of Jack and Samira — of the seemingly intimate conversation they’d shared just minutes ago, and of the bet you know you’re bound to lose now.

“No, you weren’t,” you deadpan.

“I was,” he insists. “I feel like I always am, some way or another.”

Your chest warms at his words. You choke on the funny feeling when you force yourself to swallow it down. “I was just— walking one of the interns through a lateral canthotomy,” you stammer as you step back out of his hold.

“Gnarly,” Jack hums with a slow nod.

“Did you, uh… Did you need me for something?”

“Yeah, I have a patient over in Trauma 2— Sliced through his left hand with a circular saw,” Jack explains, staring down at you from the bridge of his nose as he crosses his strong arms over his chest. “But the crazy part is, he used his right hand to take the nail gun and—”

“Oh, my god,” you blurt before you mean to. “He tried to put his hand back on with the nail gun, didn’t he?”

“Close…” he hums with a knowing glint in his eyes. “He used the gun to fire two nails into his temple— Said he thought it would distract him from the pain in his hand. And the weird thing is, he’s walking and talking just fine.”

“Holy shit…” you mumble, wide-eyed. “Why do you always get the cool cases?”

“You can have it,” he assures you, with something soft swimming in his eyes. “That’s why I wanted to find you— so you could do it with me.”

Something about it feels way more intimate than being asked out for dinner.

You finish the rest of your shift as normal — feeling like a shell of your former self after hours of running on fumes; both excruciatingly tired and buzzing with white-hot adrenaline all at once. 

The only real difference between today and every other day before this one is that, for the first time in a long, long time, you actually have plans outside of work — almost like a real human person with a social life would.

You return home after the long day, only for an hour or so, to shower and change out of your scrubs. You wash away the scent of blood, sweat, and antiseptic from your skin, and only cut your knee once when you shave your legs for the first time in weeks. You pull out a nice top, a short skirt, and a real bra from the depths of your closet. You go as far as to break out the expensive perfume that you’ve had for years, ‘cause you only use it on extra special occasions, which tend to be few and far between for you.

You feel like an entirely different person when you meet Dr. Barker at the address he’d sent you a few hours ago — a nice bar, just a few blocks down from your apartment building, that you’d been meaning to visit for years but found every excuse in the book to stay home instead. You find the man sitting alone in a far booth in the dimly lit room, sipping slowly at the beer he nurses in his hand, and feel a little like a fraud when you slide into the vinyl seat across from him. 

Nick has only known you for the better part of a work shift, to be fair, not counting the handful of times you’d smiled politely in passing when you clocked out for the day. You know he’s got some version of you in his head already, like all men do — someone much cooler than you really are, someone much better at separating their work life from their personal life than you are.

You prove him wrong in record time, sharing a plate of loaded nachos between you and forgetting to eat any of it as you get too easily lost in your ramblings. You tell him of the long shift, and of the man you met with two nails in his skull, and fail to remember that not everyone can talk of blood and gore over a meal as easily as you can.

“—Honestly, I’m still surprised it didn’t hemorrhage! The X-Ray showed one of the nails was, like, half an inch away from nicking an artery,” you ramble with a giddy grin. “I pulled them out with some local anesthetic, and he was totally fine— Well, except for the hand, obviously. ‘Cause he did lose a few fingers, but… Dr. Abbot took care of that, so…”

“Did he?” Nick hums, hiding his smile behind the pint he brings to his mouth. 

He thinks this must be the fifth or so time you’ve brought up the man’s name tonight alone — not that you seem to notice. He doesn’t know whether that’s supposed to make him feel better or worse.

“Yeah— I always tell him he would’ve been an amazing surgeon if he didn’t have the hand-eye coordination of, like… A half-blind sloth,” you say, then swallow hard at the playful look Nick gives you in response. “‘Cause, you know, sloths are really clumsy, and they… Sometimes mistake their own limbs for branches, so… They fall a lot…”

You trail off and reach for the glass of water at your side, becoming very suddenly self-aware of your inability to stop rambling.

“You talk about him a lot,” Nick observes with a kind smile, licking the sheen of alcohol from his lips.

 “…Who?” you wonder with furrowed brows.

“Dr. Abbot.”

Your features flood with terror. “Do I?”

His broad nose scrunches with a breathy laugh. “A little bit, yeah.”

“Oh, god…” you groan and hide your face behind your hand. Nick’s laugh gets lost in the rock music playing overhead. “That’s so annoying. I’m sorry—”

Your phone glows to life as it buzzes against the wooden table it sits on. You reach over to flip it face down before you can read the message on the screen.

“I didn’t… I didn’t even notice… I’m so sorry.”

It vibrates again, twice more in quick succession.

Your stomach twists with the anticipation of what it might say.

“It’s whatever,” Dr. Barker shrugs, pushing the sleeves of his button-up to his elbows. “I get it. He’s your boss and everything, so…”

Your phone buzzes on the table once more, for longer this time, now with a phone call. 

You tense, but make no move to answer it, for fear of making this more awkward than you already have — though your pretending not to hear it doesn’t make it any better. 

The corner of Nick’s lip twitches into a sympathetic smile, ‘cause he can tell that you’re trying to be polite, even though you’re fidgeting at the thought of answering it. Because your friends usually only ever text you, so if someone’s calling, it’s bound to be important.

“You can get that if you need to—”

“Thank you,” you sigh before he’s properly gotten the words out, scrambling for your phone with anxious hands. “I’m so sorry. It’ll be quick, I swear. I’m sure it’s just… Fuck.”

The call ends before you can answer it. 

Nick’s eyes widen at your reaction. “Everything okay?”

“It’s Parker…” you answer with your eyes trained on the blue-white screen. Your chest deflates with a heavy sigh beneath your skin-tight top. “And I know it’s serious because she despises double-texting and she just sent me four back to back, so…”

Your eyes are wet and preemptively apologetic when they dart to the man across the table, who meets the disaster of you with a tender grin.

“You gotta go back in, huh?” he squints.

“I do…” you sigh. “I’m so sorry—”

“Just make it up to me next time,” Nick shrugs, watching with kind eyes as you scramble for your phone and purse. “When I win that bet, I mean. I’ll take you out somewhere nice— We can do this for real. If you want.”

You slide out of the cracking vinyl booth with a grimace — equal parts unnerved at the idea of doing this a second time and half-surprised that Nick would even want to, after you did nothing but anxiously ramble before bailing on him out of nowhere.

“Yeah…” you waver anyway as you stand to full height again. “Yeah. Sure. Maybe.”

“Thank you again— I’d kiss you right now if I could,” Dr. Ellis tells you when you pass her in the ambulance bay, where she hurries out of the E.D. on long limbs. She calls over her shoulder, moments before she’s out of earshot. “You look hot, by the way!”

The passing reminder of what you’re showing up to work in hits you like a punch to the stomach. 

The double doors of the PTMC part for you, and the air-conditioned emergency room wraps its cold fingers around every inch of your exposed skin — your shaven legs, arms, and collarbones; all of which are normally concealed by your dark scrubs and undershirts. 

You can’t help but feel a bit like you’re doing the walk of shame as you race past the work station with your head bowed, barely noticing that the systems are up and running again as you go. You’re too busy trying to make yourself as small as possible on your way to the scrub dispenser down the hall.

Jack smells you before he sees you.

He gets a sudden whiff of something sweet and creamy, like whipped vanilla and fresh raspberries, something candied enough to eat. Then he looks over his shoulder, from where he’s stood at the front desk, and finds you rushing past him in a hurry. His neck nearly cracks with the strength of the double take he gives at the back of you — short skirt swishing around your thighs, tight shirt showing a sliver of your lower back. He feels a little like he’s in middle school again, going wild at the mere sight of a girl’s bare shoulder. 

By the time his brain starts working again to greet you, you’ve already turned the corner.

“Whoa, gotta hot date tonight?” he hears Shen ask as you walk by.

“Just left one, more like,” you scoff.

“Damn. Poor guy,” the man quips, then laughs when you flip him off.

“…What the hell?” Jack mutters under his breath, with his eyes still trained on the empty hall you’d just disappeared down.

“What? You didn’t hear?” McKay wonders aloud, from where she’s hunched over the monitor across from him, still closing down for the day now that the ED isn’t in analog hell anymore. She peers up at him with tired blue eyes, half-hidden beneath her wild fringe. “Don’t tell Princess, but apparently, she went out with that Dr. Barker guy from radiology.”

“Oh, really?” Jack hums, nodding slowly to feign interest. He hopes the hurt flaring in his chest doesn’t show all over his face as he turns back to his computer. “Sounds fun…”

Javadi eyes him from behind McKay’s shoulder. Her dark, observant stare traces the edges of his face as she twirls the string of her lavender jacket with her pointer finger. 

“Well, don’t look so upset about it, Dr. Abbot,” she jokes with a quiet laugh, half-dazed from the long day. “I have a lot riding on this bet about you and Mohan, you know—?”

Cassie flashes the younger girl a wordless look.

Victoria’s eyes go wide when they flit back to Jack’s. 

“—Which I wasn’t supposed to mention in front of you…” she blurts and fakes an awkward laugh. “There is no bet, actually. I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

Jack doesn’t ease the tension by telling her that he already knows; that he has known all day. He just flashes her a half-smile and a pair of squinted eyes as he steps back from the monitor. 

“Real smooth, kid…” he jokes before he walks away.

He leaves the work station and turns the corner to find you cradling a pair of black scrubs to your chest and making a beeline for the restroom nearest to the break room. He rushes on long legs to catch up with you, limping slightly from his prosthetic. You freeze at the sound of your name from his lips, echoing from down the long hall. Your skirt swishes around your thighs as you spin in place to face him.

“Hey…” Jack greets, only slightly out of breath when he towers finally over you.

Your brows lower in confusion at the sight of his flustered state, but you smile nonetheless. “Hey…?”

“How was the, uh… The date?”

“Date?” you scoff. “What date?”

“The one you had with Dr. Barker.”

His biceps strain against his scrubs when he crosses his arms over his chest, peering down at you from the bridge of his nose. Your cheeks flare instantly. You can’t help but feel like you’ve been caught, like he’s just found out you’ve been cheating on him or something — even though the two of you aren’t even together, even though it’s abundantly clear that he wants someone else.

“Well, it wasn’t— it wasn’t really a— a date,” you stammer and turn away. “It was just… dinner.”

“Right,” Jack scoffs and follows behind you the short distance to the bathroom. “Because the two of you weren’t flirting in the security room or anything.”

You huff an emotionless laugh and roll your eyes at him, even though you know he cannot see you. “Yeah, because you and Samira weren’t flirting in Central 4 this morning or anything…” you echo in a gritty monotone.

Jack catches the bathroom door before it can shut behind you. You glance over your shoulder when you hear it hit his palm. You find the man looming in the doorway with something mischievous glittering in his narrowed eyes.

“I’m trying to get changed,” you deadpan, despite the distant fluttering in your chest.

Jack passes through the threshold and lets the door shut behind him, leaving the two of you alone in the empty bathroom, where the white-blue fluorescent lights buzz overhead. 

“Am I hearing things, or do you sound a little jealous?” the older man quips, glittering eyes trained on the back of you as you duck into the singular stall across the room.

It clicks shut behind you. 

“Aren’t you the one who came chasing after me, Dr. Abbot?”

“Aren’t you the one who ran off from your date just to come back in?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” you laugh.

“C’mon,” Jack scoffs. “You know what.”

Your short skirt pools around your feet with a quiet thud. You step out of it and toe off your right shoe, sliding on the adjoining pant leg before slipping the sneaker back on again. You do the same for the left side, and Jack has to shake the visual of your half-naked body from his head.

“I thought we had… You know, I thought we had a thing going on…”

“A thing?” you repeat, half-muffled, as you slide your shirt over your head. You hang it over the stall before reaching for your scrub top. “I wouldn’t exactly consider flirty comments and lingering eye contact a thing.”

Jack catches a glimpse of your bare spine through the sliver in the door frame. He swallows hard and forces himself to look down at his feet.

“You say that like I don’t wish I could do more,” he tells you. “I’m an attending— I can’t just go around making moves on my residents. It’s not a good look.”

The stall door squeaks open again. You come into view, now dressed in your scrubs, and wearing a hardened scowl on your dolled-up face. “Well, that didn’t stop you from getting Samira’s number, did it?” you argue. “Or letting her patch you up this morning?”

“I gave her my number because she asked for a recommendation letter, and I told her I’d give her one,” Jack confesses, watching you with a glittering gaze as you storm past him with your clothes cradled to your chest. He makes room for you by the sink and fights back a grin while you scrub angrily at your hands. “And I was patching myself up, actually, until she walked in looking for her patient.”

“Well, how convenient…” you grumble.

Jack smiles wider. “You are jealous,” he croons.

“I am, actually,” you deadpan, with your eyes trained on the soap you suds between your fingers. Even still, you can see the man in your peripheral vision, standing in the mirror just behind you. You can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, and smell the cologne lingering on his clothes.

“So that’s why you went out with the Barker guy, huh?” Jack lilts. “You just wanted to make me jealous…”

“No, actually,” you tell him. “I went out with Nick because I figured I should probably stop chasing after a guy that obviously doesn’t want me.”

You turn off the faucet with your fist and reach for the paper towel dispenser at your side.

Jack follows your every move.

“Yeah?” he hums lowly. “And who said I didn’t want you?”

You turn around to glare at him despite the newfound heat swimming in the pit of your stomach. 

“Well, I think you’ve made it pretty clear, Dr. Abbot,” you deadpan. “I don’t think the entire floor would be betting on you and Samira otherwise.”

Jack takes a daring step closer, until you have to tilt your chin to keep his gaze when he towers suddenly over you. With his hands crossed over his chest, he bows his head and tells you, “Well, I don’t want Mohan. And I don’t care about that stupid bet. Is that clear enough for you?”

Your chest warms with a familiar feeling. Your features crumple under the weight of it as you murmur sheepishly, “Okay. I’m not even trying to be funny right now, but if you’re trying to tell me that you do like me, you’re going to have to say that outright, or else my brain won’t—”

You feel his hands on you, wide and warm around the outsides of your elbows. You feel your feet stumbling on the tile, and your chest colliding with his, and then his mouth pressing against yours. You feel his chapped lips, his coarse scruff, and his exhaled breath from his nose as it fans warm over your skin. 

You freeze against him, too stunned that he’s kissing you at all to remember to kiss him back.

Jack pulls away from you a dizzying second or more later. He peers down at you with a heavy gaze and smiles when he realizes you haven’t yet taken your eyes off him.

“I like you…” he tells you slowly, as though to make sure you’re really hearing him. “Are we clear now?”

You swallow hard and nod your head, licking at your kissed lips in a feeble attempt to taste him again. 

“Crystal,” you quip drily.

You rise to the tips of your toes and wrench your free hand in his scrub top, with every intention of kissing him again — for real this time. You flinch in a fleeting panic when the bathroom door squeaks open a second later. 

Samira slips inside, too distracted by the phone in her hand to see what she’s walking in on. You and Jack freeze against one another accordingly, as if being so still will somehow make you invisible.

The door closes behind her and muffles the never-ending chaos outside. Only when it clicks shut again does Samira look up from her phone, dark eyes wide as they flit wildly between the two of you.

“Holy shit…” she mumbles under her breath, almost as if she hadn’t meant to say it out loud at all.

You push the man away from you on instinct. 

“We weren’t doing anything!” you blurt, hardly convincing in the matter.

Jack’s soft eyes cut over to you. “Real smooth,” he mumbles.

Samira’s look of shock ebbs into a giddy smile. 

“I knew it!” she exclaims, voice ringing through the tiled restroom. “Ahmad looked at me like I was crazy when I put forty dollars on the two of you, but I knew I was right!”

Your brows furrow in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“The bet,” she shrugs with a smile. “I put mine on the two of you. Which means I just got a couple hundred dollars richer, at least.” 

  The realization hits you like a punch to the stomach. 

“Which means I just lost all of my money…”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I can spare some of my winnings. I mean, it’s only right, right?” Samira says with a pretty laugh. “You guys can go out for drinks or something special. My treat.”

It becomes suddenly very difficult to imagine yourself from five minutes ago — back when you were overcome with jealousy just by the sight of her alone — knowing now that she had been rooting for you this whole time. Jack seems to know this, too, based on the smug smile he gives you.

“This real nice of you, Mohan,” he says. “But if I’m taking my girl out for drinks on a first date, I’m gonna be the one payin’ for ‘em— No offense.”

“None taken,” she shakes her head. “Means more money for me.”

You’re still catching your breath in the meanwhile, ‘cause the newfound title has all but punched the breath from your lungs. My girl, he’d said, and god, you wanted nothing more than to be his girl.

“We should, uh—” You clear your throat when the words get stuck there. “We should probably get out of here before the others think something weird is going on…”

“It’s their fault for betting on my love life,” Jack scoffs as he follows you out of the bathroom, where the chaos of the E.R. finds you almost instantly. “Sorry you lost, by the way. The bet, I mean…”

He catches himself nearly reaching out for your hand. He balls his own into a fist instead to fight the urge. You can see the longing to glittering in his eyes, anyway, when you turn to flash him a sheepish look in response.

“Well, I didn’t lose completely,” you lilt with a lazy shrug. 

“No?” Jack hums.

“No…” you grin. “I think I won where it mattered.”

[prettypiscesgal]

Coming up Roses

part 1

Summary: You get hurt and Jack can’t handle it.

Warnings: angst

Listen while reading: Coming up Roses - Harry Styles

“Abbot!” He finally snapped out of his trance, looking to find Robby peeking out the trauma room, “I need you, Brother!”

That’s what finally gets Jack moving. He’s running across the ER, slipping gloves on and bursting through the trauma doors. This was his job, something he had to do, it didn’t matter who was on the table.

But it really did.

Because when he saw you lying in the table, he froze again. This time worse, this time everybody noticed.

“Abbot, we need you on hemorrhage control.”

Jack couldn’t hear them, all he saw was you. Face swollen, body lifeless, blood everywhere. There was so much blood, why could he see all your blood?

“Abbot!”

A hand on his shoulder finally caught his attention. He looked to see Robby, looking at him in pure confusion. That confusion turned to concern when he saw Jack’s face.

He was crying.

The whole room was staring in shock.

“What the fuck?” Garcia murmurs under here breath, her hands currently working to stop the bleeding, which was suppose to be Jack’s job.

“I-I can’t, Rob- I’m.. no, no.” Jack shakes his head, he can’t stop the thoughts coming. You’re about to die and he treated you like you were nothing. He let you run away, he let you go into that room. He could’ve checked on you. Just once. He could’ve stopped him. “She can’t- no, no, Robby, this can’t-”

Robby saw the moment the resolved snapped, Jack was full on panicking. Jack Abbot, the man who never flinches, combat medic, risk taker, stone cold attending who nobody has seen even shed a tear. He was now on the floor, struggling to breathe.

The whole trauma room was now trying to save your life while simultaneously in shock at the fact their attending is having a panic attack on the floor.

He was curled in a ball, holding his head while muttering nonsense over and over, “Please.. please, no. No, no, no. I can’t- she can’t.. please.”

Robby was frozen while watching the scene in front of him. He had never seen his fellow attending crack like this. Sure, he’d done it plenty. But Jack, he always held it together.

Bending down next to him, Robby grabs his shoulder again, speaking lowly in his ear, “Brother. You need to stand up and get out of here.”

“She can’t die- no, this can’t be happening-” Jack keeps staring at one spot on the floor. The spot where your blood was dripping from the table to the cold floor.

“I need her.”

Robby pauses, slowly realizing what was happening.

He loved you.

“Fuck.” Robby sighs, shaking his head. He looks up to everyone else already watching the two of them, confused and worried. He looks back to Jack, grabbing him by the shoulder and forcing him to face him. He speaks lowly and sternly, “I need you to either stand up and help save her life or find somebody else who can.”

Jack pauses for a moment, processing Robby’s words.

Find somebody else?

There was nobody else. Nobody else who knew you like him. Nobody who’s looked at you like he does, thought about you like he does, touch you like he does, hurt you like he does.

Nobody else who loved you like he does.

“Still hemorrhaging, we can’t find the source!” Trinity yells out from beside Garcia, both of them struggling to see through all the blood

Jack stands, immediately pushing Trinity to the side, “Hand me the clamp I’ll do it myself.”

Everyone watches in shock as Jack easily works on you. Nobody misses the fact that although he’s working as skilled and quickly as he usually does, there’s a subtle softness to the way his hands rest on you.

—

“So, Abbot in love with a nurse? Who would’ve thought?” Princess is the first to finally speak of the incident after you’d been in surgery for hours.

“Didn’t think Abbot could love anybody more than himself.” Dana sighs, half joking half serious.

“Has he mentioned any other nurses?” Princess inquires, a bashful smile on her face.

“Oh, I think he’s pretty set on just one.” Robby walks by, joining in on the gossip.

“How is she?” Dana asks, full attention on Robby now.

“Great. Surgery stitched her up fast, she’s resting upstairs now.” He explains before adding, “…with Jack.”

“That man still hasn’t gone home? Jesus, he must really like that girl.” Dana shakes her head at the fact Abbot has to clock in to his night shift in a couple hours on probably zero sleep.

“Did you know about them?” Robby leans over the counter, lowering his tone so Princess wouldn’t overhear.

“Is there a them?” Dana whispers back.

“I don’t know, but.. that look he had, Dana.” Robby shakes his head, “I mean we were all scared, but he… he couldn’t fucking breathe.”

—

He had stayed by your bedside the minute you got out of surgery, waiting patiently until you woke up. He held your wrist tightly the entire time just to make sure you still had a pulse. While he was watching you sleep, the rest of the day caught up to him. He ended up drowsing off on your thigh, mouth open and drooling.

You woke up to the sight of it, extremely confused. Your head pounded as you tried to think as to how you ended up here. Then, you remembered it all.

Your arms tried desperately to block the hits, but he was relentless. Some times he missed, other times he grazed you, and a few times he got you so hard you couldn’t breathe.

You tried to call for help, tried desperately just to get the code word out of your mouth. Dana was just on the other side of the wall, should would save you an instant. But, he was quicker, wrapping his hands around you throat. He lifted your head, slammed it against the ground.

He was so angry. So confused.

You hate how bad you felt for him.

You remembered the meds, he knocked them out of your hand but they weren’t very far. You could reach it. As you struggled to reach your fingertips towards the syringe, you notice how lightheaded you were, your vision turning black.

Your fingers finally find the syringe, stabbing it into the side of his neck and injecting it. He pauses for a moment, realizing what you did before he grabs something from his waistband and you feel a stabbing pain in your stomach.

You try to scream, but it’s more of a broken rasp, feeling warmth around you belly, you look down to the sight of red everywhere. Looking up, you watch the Kraken’s eyes start to droop before he’s falling on top of you.

The adrenaline mask all the pain for only a moment as you push the large man off of you. “Hula hoop.” You try to yell, but your voice is gone, only a low, cracking rasp left behind. Tears begin to form as you pull yourself up against the wall, trying to push towards the door but your body slowly giving up.

Your eyes start to droop, no matter how many times you try to blink them back open.

But you keep trying.

“Hula hoop.” You rasp again.

You are so tired, you just wanted to sleep.

“Hula hoop.”

But you weren’t gonna die like this.

“Hula hoop.”

“Y/N, you’re awake, baby.” You look up at the sound of Jack’s voice, tears in you eyes.

“What are you doing here, Jack?” Your voice is still so hoarse, barely able to speak above a whisper.

“I-..” He pauses, looking down to the bed and you roll your eyes. Of course, he still couldn’t even look at you.

“You don’t have to pretend to care anymore, Jack. Go home.” You spoke harshly, trying to keep the angry tears at bay.

“Pretend to care?” He echoes, like you just spoke a feeling language.

“I get it. You wanted some fun and you got it. Let’s just act like nothing happened.” You don’t look at him as you speak, trying to sit up despite your whole body aching at the movement. You hated looking vulnerable in front of him now.

“You think I pretended to care?” He spoke, standing up from his seat by your bed, causing your eyes to widen when you notice the tears in his, “I’ve spent every second with you trying to pretend I don’t care.”

You look at him, puzzled. “What are you talking about, all you do is push me out.”

“Because I thought you wanted this. You wanted the secret. You didn’t want anyone to know you’re sleeping with some old man.”

“Sleeping with some old man?” You repeat, utterly confused at what he thinks this relationship is, “You’re not just some old man, Jack.”

“You’re right. I’m your boss. That looks even worse for you. I thought you just liked the game. Then you started acting like you loved me and..” Jack pauses, trying to collect himself.

“You didn’t feel the same.” You didn’t need him to say it.

“I’m not letting you throw your life away.” Jack’s voice was soft, and you heard the tremble in his words.

“Wha-” You are so lost, trying to piece together what he’s saying before you realize, letting out a humorless laugh, “So you shut me out because you think you’re too old for me?”

“You know it’s more than that.” He looks you in the eyes when he says it.

“Do you love me?” You ask him, staring him down.

“How could you even doubt that?”

You give him a look, “Yeah, how could I?”

He huffs a laugh at that and you can’t help the small smile that tugs on your lips. He walks over, sitting by your bed again, “I know I’m an asshole, but you can’t tell me you didn’t know I’ve been in love with you since we’ve met.”

“Abbot, this is our newest pitt member. Nurse Y/N.” Dana introduced you to the attending, failing to mention before that he was gorgeous.

“Welcome to hell.” He smiles at you, and even though you know he’s joking, his smile is so genuine.

“Thanks?” You say, turning to follow Dana as she runs off somewhere. He watches you run, smile never leaving.

Later, you’d ended up alone in the break room. You were making coffee and he was trying to hide for a minute. You looked out of the corner of your eye, watching him manspread on one of the chairs. He was already staring at you, which made you jump, spilling hot coffee all over your fingers.

“Fuck!” You grit through your teeth, shaking your hand.

Abbot is behind you in a second, you didn’t even hear him. You feel the warmth of his chest before his hand grabs onto yours, leading you to the sink to run it under the water.

You turn to look up at him, “Uh, thank you, Dr. Abbot.”

He smiles down at you, eyes flickering between yours with something that looks like amusement, “You’re welcome, sweetheart. But you can just call me Jack when we’re alone.”

The memory had you blushing. Jack always took care of you, even when he let you down, he came through in the end. When it mattered the most.

Yeah, you guys were messy, but you loved each other.

And no relationship can truly be normal when it blooms in the pitt.

[mssishipi]

[wonhes]

୭ೃ — ENTANGLED

CHAPTER 23 — GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION

SUMMARY!! confessing to your best friend seemed like a good idea, right!? well, spoiler alert: it wasn't. fast forward to 2 years later and now you two are attending the same college and wait ... his girlfriend is your roommate?

<- PREVIOUS | NEXT ->

ENTANGLED MASTERLIST

𓂃۶ৎ TAGLIST — @aangelll0 @antoncyng @ant-onie @banez @bbyinni @calumsfringe @catdonut657 @cherrytaesan @chishiyapologist @blossominghunnie @dejundesign @ddolbyong @flaminghotyourmom @gacktsa @getoxo @hanninova @hyuckies18 @https-yeonjun @hsified @ilymarkchan @intakstars @janjoonty @jeeluv @jungwonsstrawberry @jvngw0nlvr @kaosuni @ksywoo @kukkurookkoo @lizzieray @lovewonsall @maripositaa @ninetyatepink @nodoubtily @nosungluv @pinklemonade34 @renjuneoo @ridinhyuck @riizenhateez @rllymark @saranghoeforanton @seoksoop @skibidihan @sftsohee @snowyseungs @taehyunluvrs @taroddori @urlovelily @va1entinaa @yoursyuno @xcosmi

[wonhes]

୨ৎ TUESDAY MARCH 24TH, 2025 5:08 PM

— feeling wonbin elbow him hard on his side, SEUNGHAN angrily takes out one of his airpods with furrowed eyebrows before turning to give his friend a piece of his mind.

“for the love of god, look!” wonbin whisper yells, bringing a hand up to move seunghan’s head towards the direction he wanted him to look.

confused on what he was supposed to be looking at, seunghan scans the group of students in front of him until finally he spots someone familiar and immediately softens his features. at the sight of you scribbling down on your notebook, seunghan feels his heart lightly speed up. continuing to watch you, seunghan takes notice of your currently scrunched up facial expression. something’s bothering you, he quickly concludes.

meanwhile you, completely unaware of seunghan’s presence, continue to scribble down on your notebook. with the thought of the group project crossing your mind once again, you find yourself shaking your knees anxiously. too busy in thought, you unknowingly part your lips and slightly poke your tongue out before shaking your head and forcing yourself to pay attention to the lecture.

“she’s nervous,” seunghan mumbles to himself.

“she looks fine to me,” wonbin comments as he stares at you once more before turning back to look at his friend.

after what feels like forever, the professor finally dismisses class. instantly jumping up, seunghan shoves everything in his backpack as quickly as possible. reaching for his backpack strap, he swings it over his shoulder and begins walking towards you.

“slow down lover boy,” wonbin states, grabbing on to seunghan’s backpack handle to stop him from walking. “think it through. what are you even going to say?”

“no time to think. she’s gonna leave,” seunghan desperately pleads as he looks back at you and spots you still putting your things away.

“you can’t just fucking wing it.” wonbin gasps out in disbelief. “just ask her if she wants to be part of our group— it’ll work as a good excuse for you to see her more.”

“w-”

“no time to think. she’s gonna leave,” wonbin quickly repeats seunghan’s previous words to him before pushing seunghan towards you. stumbling forward, seunghan tries to gain his composure but fails miserably as he trips over his own two feet.

“smooth,” wonbin snickers out. annoyed at his words, seunghan brings a hand to his back and secretly flicks off his friend.

hearing all the small commotion happening in front of you, you decide to lift up your head and take a look. almost instantly spotting and making eye contact with seunghan you freeze in your spot. continuing to watch him walk closer to you, you feel your heart almost instantly pick up its pace. watching as he offers you a soft smile, you feel your knees immediately weaken at the sight.

“hi,” seunghan sighs out as he gives you his full attention.

staring down at you, seunghan takes a moment to carefully take in all your features. with a wider smile on his face, he moves forward to help you put away the remaining items on the table into your backpack. carefully taking notice of your cheeks turning a light shade of red, seunghan couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle. in that moment nothing else mattered. all seunghan seemed to care about was you and how you’re in front of him once again. and this time he refuses to let you go.

୭ೃ — ENTANGLED

CHAPTER 10 — NEW MATCHMAKER IN TOWN

SUMMARY!! confessing to your best friend seemed like a good idea, right!? well, spoiler alert: it wasn't. fast forward to 2 years later and now you two are attending the same college and wait ... his girlfriend is your roommate?

<- BACK | NEXT ->

ENTANGLED MASTERLIST

𓂃۶ৎ TAGLIST — @aangelll0 @ant-onie @banez @calumsfringe @catdonut657 @cherrytaesan @chishiyapologist @blossominghunnie @dejundesign @ddolbyong @flaminghotyourmom @gacktsa @getoxo @hanninova @hyuckies18 @https-yeonjun @ilymarkchan @intakstars @janjoonty @jeeluv @ksywoo @kukkurookkoo @lizzieray @lovewonsall @maripositaa @mwrsi @ninetyatepink @nodoubtily @pinklemonade34 @renjuneoo @ridinhyuck @riizenhateez @rllymark @saranghoeforanton @seoksoop @skibidihan @sftsohee @taehyunluvrs @taroddori @urlovelily @va1entinaa @yoursyuno @xcosmi

[hrtbreakanniversary]

plz check this out. literally on the edge of my seat everytime and kicking my feet everytime.

it's also helping my 1 week seunghan drought and i miss rii7e so much ugh

[jengibu]

don't wanna cry one shot

ᝰ synopsis .ᐟ seunghan didn't know how loved he was. he thought leaving was for the better. if only he had realised earlier, would things have changed?

ᝰ pairing .ᐟ hong seunghan x brii7e

ᝰ genre .ᐟ angst

ᝰ word count .ᐟ 1.4k+

ᝰ author's note .ᐟ got on tiktok and got depressed, again. so i guess… here's an angsty, sad, and traumatic one shot that would probably make you cry. song recommendation while reading, seventeen's don't wanna cry.

i think it's better for the team if i leave.

seunghan didn't expect the amount of funeral wreaths left for him in front of his company's doorstep. piles, after piles, after piles of them. each more hurtful than the next.

"riize is 6"

"hong seunghan out"

"freeloader, get lost!"

"i respectfully pray for the peace of mind for the deceased"

respect? where was the respect in question? they were treating him as dead. a perfectly alive and breathing 21-year-old who had just celebrated his birthday just days prior. what had he done so bad to be treated like this?

his head was feeling so complicated. where exactly did he go wrong? he had discussed with the company and the members. they seemed to be in support of him coming back, despite the risks of losing the current fanbase that was built around the six members while he was on hiatus.

seunghan used to hear the members tell him stories in the dorms about their fans holding up banners with his face or slogans with the phrase "riize is seven". they would excitedly text him after performing, telling him that he shouldn't give up. everyone wanted him back. but he didn't believe them. he knew it was just make him feel better. or he thought he did.

walking away from the wreaths, the black-hooded boy headed towards his favourite space. his advertisement board at seoul forest station. a place of comfort. he remembered the very first time he had his face on the board was when he debuted. and then it appeared again in january. since then, it was always his face at that specific location in the station. fans nicknamed the location "seunghan's spot".

the last time he read the notes on the board, the words of support were so sweet. in those messages, fans really missed and cared for him. he was even approached by someone, giving him support and telling him to stay strong. that they would wait for him to come back.

seunghan's birthday board was fuller than ever. he almost couldn't see his face on the board. he just stood far away, staring at the countless amount of notes, feeling apologetic. seeing the backlash for the past two days, the company asked to meet with him, asking him if he was sure he wanted to stay.

seunghan wasn't sure why they asked him that. he was even more confused why they did nothing about the funeral wreaths outside the company. was it not illegal? he had so many thoughts, all left unanswered. where was the "family" that he thought there was, the reason to why he even decided to join this company?

seunghan was not a boy to be left alone. he was one to make rash decisions, and needed someone to hold him back. as an F, he needed his fellow F to empathize with him. he needed his Ts to ground him down that he should stay. but they weren't there.

all his bandmates could do was to post a thinkpiece on weverse, saying they convinced him to come back, in the midst of an overseas schedule. they thought long and hard about the decision and decided to risk it all. they were willing to get scolded for the post, willing to lose fans to be on stage again, but with him. but they got called liars, accused of having the post ghostwritten, words being put in their mouths that they never wanted him back.

seunghan felt guilty. the members never deserved the hate. they've achieved so much without him. he didn't want to ruin it by coming back. he put the members first, like the sweet boy he was.

he got in contact with the company. and that's when he realised he made a big mistake. hashtags were trending. boycotts were happening. protest trucks were driving in. in-person protests were held. international news were covering his story. he realised he was essentially coerced into leaving the team.

"no seunghan no riize"

"riize is seven"

"sm, why did you listen to the minority?"

"sm supports bullying"

"sm, where's the protection you said you would do?"

"sm, reveal the lawsuit processions. if you even did any, for the past 10 months."

there were much, much, more people anticipating his comeback. they were truly, supporting him. he never realised how much of a human rights issue the funeral wreaths were until it was pointed out. he never realised the company was all talk, no action. he was their artist, why didn't they post about filing lawsuits when they announced he came back?

seunghan realised his idea of the company's image being family was just extremely clouded. he finally understood what it meant when people said to never trust companies that market themselves as family.

at some point, at night, he was called to the company again. he was crossing the street, all covered up, when he saw someone with his photocard dangling on their bag. he lowered his cap, apologetically, knowing it was a fan who was probably hurt by him leaving. he didn't want to be recognised and hurt them further. he left quietly, heading into the company building.

he was told they would write up a notice about monitoring any slander written against him. until the notice was posted. did the company never wanted him back? how come his friends had ongoing lawsuits, but there was nothing in his notice? what about the past 10 months where people were saying just about anything? what about the person who lied about his ex-girlfriend being a minor? what about the person who invaded his privacy by leaking photos of his private life?

seunghan was honestly sick and tired of it all. he was always kind to everyone. hell, he was even kind to animals. he even bought a necklace to support a cause related to animals, even though he's afraid of all animals. what did he even do to deserve such treatment?

more projects came out. some were even writing public letters, making an e-book of letters for him. he read all of them. even those he couldn't understand. he just stared at the foreign words and smiled adoringly, knowing it was messages of good wishes for him.

some foreign fans even wrote in korean. some were in perfect korean while some were painfully obvious that it was translated by machine. seunghan tried his best to understand it all, and it was all so sweet.

"seunghan, i miss you"

"i miss you with rii7e"

"hani, i wish you stayed"

"seunghan-ie, i'm not crying so please come back"

"seunghan, come back before i steal sohee"

"seunghan, come back, let me lure you with crayon shin-chan merchandise"

some of the messages were truly hilarious. coping with sadness by being funny. he loved his fans. they were truly positive. their jokes made him smile.

"have you eaten? are you living well?"

"eat some rice, don't just eat bibimmyeon, okay?"

"are you doing well? i'm not doing so well, but i hope that at least you are"

"seunghan, we will always be proud of you. keep your head up"

"hani, don't apologise. you didn't do anything wrong."

"seunghan-ie, you were just a teenager who made some mistakes. we all have mistakes"

"seunghan, cheer up!"

"seunghan, we're always with you"

so many messages were concerned for him and his well-being. even though he knew that they weren't doing well either. they waited ten months and lost him just only after two days, without even getting to see his face.

one of the messages he read stuck to him, "i really want to cry, but if i cry now, i might not be able to see you at all. so i'll fight for you."

reading the messages just made him break down, and cry. guilt, apologetic, comforted, sorry, sad, happy... seunghan felt all kinds of emotions. he didn't want to cry, he wanted to pretend he was fine. but how was he supposed to be fine, when his fans were crying because their words of love weren't enough to make him stay?

he didn't know how to fix the problem. he didn't have much power. the last time seunghan came back, he was previously just on hiatus. this time, he had truly left the team. he wondered if he could even come back. at least to make briize — no, brii7e — happy? he just cried, cried, and cried. he didn't know how to make it a happy ending.

why didn't he hold on just a bit longer?

why couldn't he see the amount of support he had this whole time?

if he knew, would things have turned out differently?

why didn't i realise sooner?

✶⋆.˚꩜ AFTERTHOUGHTS .ᐟ˙⋆✶ i'm crying as i write this. seunghan, i miss you so bad. how are you? are you eating well? you are so strong. i'm sorry i couldn't do more to protect you. just know that i will always be proud of you, always. and so will all brii7e and hongjjanggus. we love and miss you so much.

do not repost works © hongssimi

[lostgirlinthewoods]

just also wanna take this opportunity to say im still including seunghan in my contents. however, i also do realize that it's going to be really challenging to find and use photos of him especially on contents like smau, so i hope you all understand as well.

i won't let seunghan erasure happen on my blog!!!

[leaderwonim]

𝐇𝐈𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐇𝐘 — 𝐋𝐇𝐒 & 𝐏𝐒𝐇

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠. lee heeseung x fem!reader, park sunghoon x fem!reader (ft. hanni & danielle from nwjns, yujin from ive, giselle from aespa, and more)

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲. Y/N always knew that her high school was dominated by wealth and privilege. Upon having a one night stand with popular athlete Lee Heeseung, she uncovers that Heeseung's friend group controls not only social dynamics but also school policies and local affairs, revealing a hidden world of power and manipulation behind their so called perfectly polished exteriors

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞. written + smau, fluff, ANGST

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬. mature content (contains sexual explicit scenes), cursing, lots of manipulation and crazy gaslighting

taglist is CLOSED 🔊

NOW PLAYING . . . SUPER RICH KIDS

𝐎𝐍𝐄. you slept with who??

𝐓𝐖𝐎. since when were australian girls mean

𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄. pulling up like this to the function

𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑. not an ounce of comfort

𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄. stay

𝐒𝐈𝐗. is it casual, now?

𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍. the text messages

𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓. cue sunghoon

𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄. not as bad as i thought

𝐓𝐄𝐍. he likes hanni

𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍. betrayal

[ 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 ]

[hrtbreakanniversary]

be sure to check this out!! its soo good.

[chodzacaparodia]

It's frustrating that you can come up with the plot of an entire fic in just a few seconds, but writing it all down can take anywhere from never to forever.

[fagsromana]

happy womens day to everyones favorite woman

[kitttenteeth]

heart - shaped scallion found In pho . reblog for good luck & yummy soup 500000 forwver

[blog-anglophonic]

[yokelfelonking]

[revasserium]

butterfly lovers opla zoro screaming crying throwing up

butterfly lovers

opla!zoro; 7,106 words; fluff, kind of childhood friends to lovers, slowburn af, nsfw, pron with TOO MUCH plot, opla!canon divergence, ships doctor!reader, fem!reader, riding, "good girl", emotional sex

summary: yours and zoro's story, from two different perspectives.

a/n: @halfvalid this is ur fault. take responsibility pls. also the smut is literally just one part of a larger story, but it does actually get explicit so. do with that info what u will u__u.

false start.

most good stories, scholars and storytellers would both agree, have a beginning, a middle, and an end. though, famously, not necessarily in that order. and this particular story — well, it has several places one might call the beginning. and one of them is here — in shimotsuki village, in a patch of rich green forest that always smelled of cedar and moss and earth.

it would be a lie to say that the story begins here, at a doujou where eight year old boys and nine year old girls swing wooden swords hundreds of thousands of times each day. where you’d seen zoro for the very first time.

the story could have started here, but alas, it did not.

because you see, you’d never been great, or even particularly good at swordsmanship. and zoro — zoro was one of the best. even from the beginning, his raw, unfettered talent was a force to be reckoned with. but the reckoning came in the form of the doujou sensei’s blue-haired daughter, and you were no more part of zoro’s story then than a drop of ink in a midnight ocean — lost to the tumultuous waves of childhood tedium, of sword practice and sparring, of warm up laps and cool down stretches.

but you’d known him then, watched him as he grew, as he got better and better and better. bigger, stronger, quicker, sharper. and beside him was kuina, steady as the shifting tides, relentless in her efficacy, tireless in her craft. he was good, but she was better.

until one day, when very suddenly, she wasn’t.

the story, as it is, does not start here, because you’d made the solemn walk to kuina’s funeral altar with the rest of the students at the doujou in complete silence, had knelt there in equal silence and watched as sensei had bestowed the wadou ichimonji upon zoro, watched as he had gripped the sword with both hands, his knuckles going white as the sword’s moon-washed sheath, and bowed his head in acceptance.

it does not start here because later, instead of following the same, silent procession of kids back to the doujou’s main compound, you’d slipped away, silent as a shadow, and sprinted through the wide, cedar forest to a secret, open patch of grass where the sun bled from a stretch of endless sky blue enough to sting, and tiny little white-petaled flowers had sprung from the still-damp earth, turning their faces towards the coming spring.

you’d run, screaming through the field till you’d run out of breath to scream with, and collapsed among the tiny white flowers, panting and staring up at the endless blue sky, feeling the helplessness pulse through your veins. because even though kuina hadn’t been your friend — you’d exchanged perhaps a handful of words in all the years you’d spent here — she’d been a constant presence in your life. and now, she was gone. and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

you laid there for longer than you can remember, and then, as the sun finally dipped beyond the far horizon and the darkness grew longer than the sea was wide, you got up and trudged towards the clearing’s edge. only to find a small creature huddled against the trunk of a thin sapling tree — it looked like nothing more than a bundle of white-spotted fur, and it took you a long moment to realize that it was a fawn, curled into a pile of gnarled roots, shivering, eye wet and wide and terrified.

you blinked, staring at it for a few seconds before you’d noticed the gash on it’s hind leg, jutting out at an uncomfortable angle. your heart had stuttered inside your chest, and you’d dropped down to your hands and knees, cooing softly as you slowly approached the creature, trying to look as unmenacing as possible.

“hey there… are you hurt?” you’d said, crawling towards it, trying very hard to make your movements as slow and smooth as possible.

the fawn shivered as it stares at you, apparently caught between sheer terror and curiosity. you tried to smile, before digging into your pockets and pulling out a handful of peanuts, offering them to the fawn on an open palm.

“c’mon, i’m not gonna hurt you… i just wanna take a look… at that leg of yours, can i do that?” you’d asked, inching in closer and closer until the fawn’s warm, wet nose dug into your palm, it’s smooth-edged teeth grazing your skin as it crunched through the peanuts. you took the chance to glance down at it’s injured leg — it wasn’t a deep wound, but judging by the angle, it was a bit dislocated and would need to be set back right if the fawn was ever going to walk again.

slowly, you reached out a free hand to gently stroke at the fawns haunches, feeling it’s muscles tense up beneath you, even as it continues to snuffle against your palm, eager for any remnants of the peanut shells. you ran your hand along it’s leg and quick as a flash, you pressed against the odd jutting of bone, even as it snapped back into place with a satisfying crack.

the fawn made a shrill, screeching noise, jerking to its feet, but a moment later, it seemed to realize that it’s leg was no longer hurting. you held up both your hands in what you hoped was a calming gesture before tugging out a few more peanuts holding it out as an offering.

the fawn blinks it’s dark, watery eyes at you a few times before limping forward to dig its nose once more into your palm. you allowed yourself a smile then, and a soft relieved laugh as the fawn limped forward a few more steps, testing the weight of it’s body on its newly repaired leg. it looked more confident now, seemingly realizing that the wound was somewhat fixed, and it gave you one last, lingering look before it bounded off back into the sunset forest, leaving you with nothing more than a handful of peanut shells and a tightness in your chest you can’t quite seem to put your finger on.

you’d snuck back into the doujou that evening, smelling of mud and moss and cedar, and you’d lain in your futon, staring up at the high slatted ceilings, streaked with moonlight, wondering where on earth you truly belonged.

the next morning, everyone woke to neatly a folded futon and a wooden training katana, the hilt carved with your name, laid across your pillow.

so you see, the story could have started here. but it didn’t. and perhaps we should be thankful for that.

the cost of ambition.

the story, as we know it, starts then at the baratie, on the morning after a meal was eaten and not properly paid for, after an ill-fated duel between a boy with a mouthful of ambitions and a man who’d forgotten what it felt like to be truly surprised. well, he was surprised that morning, watching the boy fall back with a gash the size of the world spurting blood across the docks.

“grow strong,” he’d said, “and come find me.”

and it starts, when a pirate in a straw hat comes crashing into the baratie’s kitchen, shouting about a dying friend.

“help! help! zoro… zoro needs a doctor!”

“whoa, whoa, slow down, chore boy — i can’t understand a word you’re saying,” zeff holds up a hand to stem luffy’s panicked rambling.

“my friend is dying…”

“the nearest doctor’s on the conomi islands —”

“wait, no —” sanji frowns, cutting zeff off, “lemme look at the reservations from last night —” he hurries off to the front desk and returns with a thick leather bound volume, flipping it open to scan through the seating chart for the night before.

“i knew it!” he says, pointing at a name written in deep, ocean blue ink, “there — her! i’ve heard of her — she’s the best ship’s doctor in the east blue, and if i’m not much mistaken, her ride’s not due to leave till this afternoon.”

“great! c’mon — we haven’t got time to lose!” luffy says as he rushes out of the kitchens, leaving sanji and zeff to exchange an exasperated look before following after.

they find you on the loading docks, your nose buried in a notebook, your hand flying across the page, ink smudging your unrolling sleeve.

“please! we need a doctor! my friend — zoro — he’s dying!”

you jerk up from your notes, the name ringing in your ears like an alarm bell, rocking through your body like the base boom of a signal flare. zoro? here?

you look around even as luffy makes his way to you, pressing in too close, a hand on top of his head to keep his hat from flying away, the other curling around your upper arm.

“w-wait — what’s going on? did you say someone was dying?”

“yes! my friend! he got into a fight with this warlord guy and now he’s bleeding from everywhere —”

“show me,” you say, lurching to your feet and shouldering your leather knapsack, pursing your lips as your vision threatens to tunnel ahead of you. zoro. it’s been such a long time since you’d heard that name. sure, you’d heard of his exploits in the east blue. how could you not have?

demon, bounty, pirate hunter. hunter, hunter, hunter —

you take a deep breath as luffy leads you onto the deck of the going merry and ducks below, motioning for you to follow.

when you step into the room, you don’t notice the orange-haired girl or the long-nosed boy, instead, your eyes are drawn to the body on the kitchen table as a magnet would a compass rose. his shirt torn into barely more than ribbons, a large red gash oozing blood, bisecting his torso like some unbridgeable canyon in miniature, his skin paler than you’d ever remembered it being, sweat beading his flickering brow —

oh, zoro…

you resist the urge to press your hand to your mouth. so instead, you swallow back your heart and try to assess the damage. massive blood loss, possible head trauma, and who knows what else?

“you said a warlord with a giant sword did this?” you ask, hurrying to the table and frowning down at the gaping wound.

“y-yeah — he — he had a big hat with a white feather on it —” luffy starts.

“mihawk. his name was dracule mihawk,” the orange-haired girl cuts in, her voice sharp and a bit too forced to be steady, “he told zoro to get stronger, and that… it wasn’t his time to die yet.”

you grimace, chewing on your bottom lip as you dump your supplies unceremoniously onto the countertop next to him, digging out the necessities.

“well, he wasn’t lying — the cut’s clean and judging by the size… he could’ve cut much deeper. but he didn’t,” you sigh, absently rolling up your sleeves as you pull out a hooked suture needle and a length of thread.

they watch you work in silence, first cleaning the wound, and then slowly, painstakingly pinching and stitching him back together. by the end of it, you’re nearly dizzy with exhaustion, and the sky outside has already turned a deep, bruising purple.

you sigh, wiping down your hands.

“can someone go and ask the waiter for a fish? any fish’ll do, but the fresher, the better. oh, and a bottle of scotch.”

“got it!” the boy with the long nose bolts up and is gone in a flash.

you slump down into a nearby chair and let your head loll back. a moment later, you feel someone pressing a glass into your hand and open your eyes to find the orange-haired girl holding a glass of water.

“here… you looked like you could use it.”

“thanks,” you say, taking a grateful gulp.

“i’m nami, by the way… thanks for —” she waves at the shape of zoro still on the kitchen table, “and that one over there is luffy. the guy that just left is usopp and —” her breath catches as her eyes fall back onto zoro’s form.

“i know who he is,” you say, your voice quiet as you look down at the glass clutched in your hands.

“you know zoro?” luffy’s voice is loud, but not unpleasantly so.

you glance up and feel the truth pulsing against the back of your throat like a heartbeat. then, you shake your head with a soft smile.

“i mean, he’s got quite the reputation.”

luffy lets out a laugh, “yeah! he sure does — he’s a great fighter! probably one of the best i’ve ever seen!”

you nod, staring at the sloshing liquid in the bottom of your glass.

a few moments later, usopp returns with sanji in tow, holding a bottle of scotch in one hand and a dead fish in the other.

“you’d better have a good reason for this,” he says, his expression grim, “zeff’s not gonna be happy when he finds these gone.”

you force a smile, “well, i can promise that at least one of those things’ll be put to good use — can you just skin the fish for me, please?”

sanji frowns, “and the scotch?”

you glance around before shrugging, “i don’t know about you guys but… i think we could all use a drink.”

the cliche of the morning after.

when zoro wakes up the first time, it’s to a world-muffling quiet. he coughs, uncertain of where he is, his head throbbing, his chest feeling too light and too heavy all at once.

“oh! you’re awake — here… have some water. you’ll need it.”

he hears the voice, both familiar and foreign, and then, he feels the cool press of a glass against his lips.

he gulps down the water greedily before pain rockets through him and he lets out a loud groan.

“i… i had a dream…” he says, his head spinning, the words slurring from him, and for a second, he wonders if he’d just been fed alcohol instead of water, but the pain seizes him again and he can’t stop talking.

“yeah? what did you dream about?” the familiar, foreign voice asks, soothing, as a cold palm presses against his forehead.

“shimotsuki village… i — i made a promise. i told her — i’d be the greatest… swordsman…”

his voice is fading, and the world is fading with it.

“yeah… you did, huh? and i’m sure you’ll fulfill it, one day…”

zoro sighs, sinking gratefully into the warm, welcoming arms of darkness once more.

“but not today,” you say, reaching out to wipe the sweat from zoro’s brow, your voice so soft that you’re sure no one else can hear, “today… you just need to keep on living. and that’s the greatest promise you could ever make to me.”

smooth sailing.

when he wakes up proper, you aren’t there to greet him. but he doesn’t miss the shape of you as they all pile onto the merry to go looking for nami. he doesn’t miss sanji’s too-wide grin or the unpleasant, burning itch that shoots through his healing wound as he watches the cook ask you about your favorite foods.

he keeps quiet for the most part, but you find him still, and you ask him how he’s doing with a ship’s doctor’s professionalism and efficiency.

“how’re you healing?”

“fine.”

“any tenderness?” you ask, your brows knitting as he tugs open his shirt and lets you peel the bandages away.

“not really,” he lies, because the the tenderness is not skin deep. he feels it in the labyrinthine galleys of his soul and he can’t quite figure out why you, of all people, might make him feel this way.

you run a surgical hand along the stretch of puckered skin and he sucks in a long breath, feeling his cheeks flood with inexplicable heat.

you smell of cedar and moss and freshly turned earth and for the life of him, he can’t remember why it makes his entire body go soft with memory. it reminds him of… something.

something, something, something.

“i hear you, y’know,” you say, and he jerks back to the present, with you absently rolling up your shirtsleeves before tugging at a fresh piece of gauze to wrap him back up.

“don’t know what you mean.” he looks away, willing himself to stay still as you daub a pungent cream against his chest before applying the layers of bandage. he lifts his arm to give you more room even as you shoot him a disbelieving look.

“sword practice, in the middle of the night. i told you that you need to rest — you’ll only prolong your own healing if you keep on pushing yourself like this. rest is it’s own brand of practice.”

zoro narrows his eyes. because he’d heard that from someone, somewhere before.

“your bodies need time to repair,” his sensei used to say as they all gathered after dinner at the doujou for evening meditation, “and a disciplined mind leads to a disciplined body. don’t forget that rest is it’s own brand of practice.”

zoro had never been good at it, but over the years, he’d managed to endure.

“there. all done.”

you lean back to admire your handiwork, unaware of zoro’s eyes as they scan over the shape of you, taking in the length of your hair, the bright of your eyes, the limber, spider-quick thinness of your hands and fingers.

“thanks,” he says, slipping off the kitchen table, pausing as he notices how still you’ve gone, your eyes wide as you blink at the planes of his chest, inches from your nose. a second later, you stumble back, clearing your throat, a sweet dawning pink dusts the high of your cheeks as he cocks his head to watch you, fascinated by your reaction.

he almost grins, letting his stomach flex as he takes his time in doing up the buttons of his shirt, before grabbing his swords and slipping from the room, leaving you to clean up your medical supplies, your bottom lip caught between your teeth.

zoro wonders, just briefly, how it might feel to catch your lips between his own teeth instead.

ink, skin, and bullets.

it’s you who bandages nami’s self-inflicted wounds, you who spends four meticulous hours tattooing over the sawfish curl with a pinwheel spiral that curves into a tangerine’s plumpness. you, who soothes eucalyptus balm over nami’s arm before wrapping it up in a fresh roll of gauze, waving away her hiccupped thanks.

and it’s you, who gets a shotgun pressed into your palms by a stony-faced nojiko as you all prepare to march on arlong park.

“if i can’t go with you… then at least, i can give you the tools,” nojiko says as she wraps your fingers around the butt of the gun.

zoro narrows his eyes as he watches the way your fingers shake as you weigh the shotgun in your palms.

“i don’t like it,” he says.

“yeah, you shouldn’t come with us — we’ll need you to patch us up after,” sanji agrees with a wink, much to zoro’s displeasure.

but you shake your head, a steely light in your eyes as you clutch the shotgun to your chest, “no, i — i want to come. i mean — like luffy said… it’s our fight, after all.”

arlong park.

the flurry of battle is as it always has been. you use the shotgun more as a blunt instrument than as a projectile carrier, but it seems to work just as well. you’re small, and quick, and your knowledge of anatomy (yes, even fishman anatomy) allows you to maneuver the head of the shotgun into the softest, most venerable places on a fishman’s body as you all fight your way through arlong park.

but zoro is never far off, keeping close to you as he fends off the worst of the snarling fishmen, his sword flashing like fish scales in the midday sun.

there comes a moment when he slices an oncoming fishman right through the jugular that you let out a long breath, wincing as the fishman’s body hits the ground with a dull thud, and zoro sighs, turning towards you. but a second later, he freezes as you grab the hilt of his sword and shove it backwards.

he feels it resting against thick, bullet-proof flesh and he hears the loud panting of something next to his ear as he sees in the reflection of your eyes — a fishman standing behind him, frozen against the tip of his blade, the hilt clutched in your shaking, shivering hands.

“d-don’t — i’ll kill you —” you say, your voice a forceful, fractured thing.

zoro searches your eyes before clasping his hands over yours and slowly tugging the sword from your gasp.

“hey…” he says, deliberately drawing your gaze away from the fishman before he jerks his sword back and feels, with a satisfying shink, the weight of the blade sinking into unforgiving flesh. he feels your fingers trembling beneath his as he pulls the sword away, and the fishman behind him sinks to his knees before falling sideways with the dull thunk of a no longer animate body.

you try to tug away, but zoro holds you steady, running his thumb in soothing circles along the backs of your hands.

“s-sorry — i — i couldn’t —”

zoro shakes his head, pulling you up by your elbow.

“it’s okay — don’t apologize.” he whips his swords around and catches another fishman in the stomach, dropping him with a flicker of silver and a splash of red.

“you never have to apologize…” he says, as he reaches for your hands and curls them in the warmth of his own, callused palms.

finding neverland.

you kiss for the first time after a brutal battle. after the deck has been washed of blood and the railings have been hung with the remnants of the tattered sails.

repairs are much needed, but zoro had saved you yet again. you pull him to you in the darkness of the midnight deck, the crow’s nest empty because, well, he’s supposed to be up there, keeping watch. but you’d caught him instead, curling your fingers into the soft linen of his shirt, your mouth seeking out his in the relative dark.

“mnph —”

he grunts as his hands find purchase against your shoulders, pressing you back and back and back, till you’re pushed flush against the thick totem of the main mast, and your panting breaths are all he can taste against his desperate lips.

“s-sorry…” you let out a helpless laugh as he pushes forward, his teeth clacking against yours.

“quit that,” he says, his voice nothing more than a panting breath on the open sea air.

“hm?” you blink, lashes fluttering in the moonless night, your lips kiss-swollen and delectable even as zoro forces himself to pull back, studying you with an accusatory eye.

“you’re always saying sorry,” he says as he brushes a strand of hair from your cheek. above you, the main sail whoomps, catching an evening wind.

“i’m not… i don’t…” you look away, embarrassed to be caught. zoro reaches down to grab your chin, forcing your head back towards him.

“yeah, you do,” he says, his voice gentle, even as he cups your cheek.

“you don’t ever, ever, have to apologize for just... being you. got it?” and there’s a burning ember in the spark of his voice as he twists your face up towards him, his lips hot and hungry as he brands you with this promise, and you’re powerless to do else but accept it.

you find your fingers in the short hairs at the nape of his neck, his breath cascading over your lips even as you press in close, close, closer. a helpless whine twists its way up the back of your throat as zoro hoists you up, his fingers digging into the plush of your thighs.

“z-zoro… please,” there’s something broken in the tenor of your voice that breaks him more completely than he has the words to describe, so he settles for holding you tighter over his hips and carrying you to his room. it takes a bit of finagling to get you comfortably situated in his hanging bed, but once he does, he can’t help the soft sigh that escapes him as he looks over the length of your body.

from your pink-flushed cheeks to the loose, crumpled material of your button up shirt, all the way down to the hem of your skirt as it brushes up along the skin of your thighs. he leans own to press an indulgent kiss into the dip of your collarbone.

“'please' though… i like a little bit more,” he says, reaching down to pop the top button of your shirt, to revel in the way you hiccup as he teases a line down your chest, his lips following his fingers as he undoes your buttons one by one.

“i — ah —” your fingers curl into the soft moss of his hair and he groans, long and lush into the creamy expanse of skin above the waist of your miniskirt.

“again…” zoro says, whispering the word against you, tugging on the elastic of your skirt, pulling them down the length of your legs.

“z-zoro, please!”

your head tips back as you feel his tongue flick over the hot button of your clit, his fingers digging into your hips, the pads of his forefingers tracing gentle circles around your hip bones as he holds you to his mouth and moans.

there’s a fumbling of fingers and a clashing of teeth as he wrenches himself up from between your legs to mouth at your lips. you taste yourself on his tongue and shiver at the indecency. still, the coals of desire burn in the pit of your stomach as his fingers press into your spit-slicked folds and you feel your whole body arch up in response.

he has always been quiet, but none more so than when he’s working three digits into your fluttering core, his eyes dark and fixed as they watch his own fingers pull out of you and push back in, slick and shiny with the evidence of your arousal.

“fuck…” he whispers the word like a prayer, slipping passed his lips like some holy thing. you can hear the near reverence in his voice as he slowly removes his hand and presses them to his lips for a taste. the lewdness of it makes the hot coil in the pit of your stomach twist all the tighter. and this time, when he drags himself up the length of your body to kiss you, you whine against his mouth, tasting your own tang on the heat of his tongue.

“ngh — fuck —!” you echo, as he flips onto his back and tugs you over his hips in one, fluid moment, his palms helping you grind your sodden folds over the length of his cock, the friction all-consuming and dizzying. a thin string of arousal connecting the tip of his cock to the seam of your cunt and zoro is helpless to do much else but moan thickly at the sight.

“shit.”

you whimper softly as he teases at your entrance, your palms splayed against his chest for support, your thighs shaking on either side of his hips as he eases you down inch by slow, excruciating inch, ontohis thick, throbbing cock. you toss your head back as he pushes into you, the fit of him fiery-tight and stretching you in ways you’d never thought was possible.

you feel him pulsing against your walls, and you wish briefly that you could’ve tasted him as he’d tasted you, before he sheathed himself inside you. how would he taste, you wondered, and you feel your mouth water at the thought of his heavy, salty weight on your tongue.

“n-ngh!” your voice cracks as he rocks his hips experimentally against yours, the drag of him inside you driving you to near incoherence.

“good girl,” he whispers, the words falling from him like second nature. you keen beneath his praise, bracing yourself as he plants his feet on the bed and jack hammers up into you, his stomach tensing in deep breaths of tight, sinewy muscle, his arms flexing as he helps you rock down above him.

“pretty… fucking… girl…” he intersperses his heavy groans of pleasure with soft exclamations, fucking you now to the light, rhythmic rocking of the ship, even though there’s nothing light about the way his cock bullies it’s way into your cunt again and again, forcing you to clamp down around him on each and every thrust.

there’s nothing gentle about the way he digs his nails into the flushed skin of your hips, how he leans up to latch his greedy mouth onto one of your pert nipples, moaning as he savors in the way you arch against him, pushing your chest more fully into his mouth.

“r-right — right there —”

“yeah?” he asks, half-smirking as he looks up at you, his warm gaze betraying the hard, teasing edge behind his voice, “where do you want me?”

you keen, whining as you drag your hands down your own body to press against your stomach, grabbing his hand to push it against you as well, his palm hot and flat as it lays along your tummy.

“r-right here —”

“fuck — that’s right —” he jerks up into you, burying his face in your chest with a clipped moan as he quickens his pace, his one hand pressing against your stomach as you feel him pushing up farther into you than you’d ever imagined possible.

the pleasure is intense, an other-worldly feeling as he finally pushes you over the edge, his hips stuttering as he feels you clench around him, your arms winding around his torso, to act as both tether and tide as he holds you to him, grounding you to this feeling while simultaneously casting you against the rough edges of this most selfless and selfish pleasure.

“h-holy… fuck me…” you breathe out, clutching at zoro’s back, digging ruddy red grooves into his shoulder blades as he rolls over to fucks down into you, relentless in his chase of his own climax, groaning deep and throaty as he finally spills into you.

you hiss as you feel the heat of him pooling inside. and it’s not till a few minutes later that he picks his head up from where his face had been buried in your neck to shoot you a wide, lopsided grin.

“yeah, pretty sure that’s what i just did,” he says, rolling onto his side and letting out a deep, soul-steadying breath.

you roll your eyes before turning to look at him, only to find him watching you with a gentle, anchoring softness. and like this, it’s hard to see him as the battle-hardened warrior. like this, it’s hard to imagine that he’d ever made such a promise as to become the greatest swordsman in the whole, entire world.

like this, he just looks like a lovestruck boy, forced to grow up much too soon, searching for any remnants of pleasure he might have left to hold on to.

an irony of hands.

it’s never easy, the night after enemy raids, the deck pooling with bodies and blood, the sea the color of a scabbing wound, flotsam and jetsam like bloated body parts floating on the dark, inky waves.

you’re helping usopp push some of the dead bodies overboard, but then you find one man with three deep gashes on his torso and blood bubbling on his lips.

“… gonna… gonna report — never… escape…”

you nearly yell as you see the tiny den den mushi in his hands, his fingers quivering as he tries to dial the emergency line. you smack it from his hand and press your tiny, surgeon’s scalpel to his throat. it’s sweet, polished silver gleams wicked beneath the moonless night.

“don’t you fucking dare,” you say, even though your voice shakes, and there are perhaps a million other ways of taking care of him more easily. but you know that if you throw him overboard now, he’d bob, half-drowning and helpless, for a few hours, or maybe even days before he’d finally succumb to the terrible, patient drag of the ocean (and most likely, dehydration).

“no,” a voice says, steady and firm, as a long, rough-fingered hands enter your vision and carefully tug your hands way from the man’s throat.

you look up to find zoro, his hand still clutched around yours, an unspoken sweetness flickering behind his eyes.

“i — if we toss him over — he'll just —” you swallow thickly, tearing your gaze away from zoro’s face as his expression shifts into something of the unreadable and soft. you hate to let him see you like this, so hesitant, so incompetent.

“let me do it,” zoro says, giving your hands a light shove before, with one swift arc of his blade, he severs the man’s carotid, leaving him slumped and bleeding on the blood-stained deck.

“oh… oh god…” you press your shaking fingers to your lips, the silver scalpel falling with a loud clatter.

“c’mere,” zoro says, tugging you up and leading you down to the hallway below decks. he slows as the pair of you enter the darkest part of the hallway, and he turns to hold you at arms length, his fingers tight on your arms as you feel his eyes scanning you over, and over, and over.

“you’re not hurt?” he asks, voice quiet and clipped.

“no,” you shake your head.

“not even a little?”

you shake your head again, pursing your lips this time to keep the sob from pouring through.

still, he sees it, and he pulls you to him, cradling your head in his large, warm palm, the other arm wrapping around your middle.

“stupid girl,” he murmurs, light, into your cheek even as you let out a bitten off sob against his chest.

you hiccup, curling your fingers into the material of his shirt, "i — i couldn’t do it,” you say, squeezing your eyes as he holds you to him and lets you cry.

“i — i couldn’t kill him.”

zoro sighs, pulling back to smooth a hand over your hair, bringing it down to cup your now tear-stained cheek.

“yeah, i know. but that’s not what your hands are made for,” he says, letting his own hands trail down and down and down, till he’s got both of your palms cupped in his like a wishbone.

“don’t you get it?” he asks, staring down at your palms, upturned against his, “these hands were never made for taking lives…” he looks up, his eyes too bright in this borrowed darkness. and then, he smiles.

“they were made for saving lives instead.”

confessions, part i.

you stare at him for a full ten seconds before letting your body fall laxed into a soft, bubbling fit of champagne-colored laughter.

“i love you,” you say, the words tumbling from you, more truth than any story or poem or legend or myth either of you have ever heard.

“i love you, zoro,” you say again, tasting the words on your tongue like fireworks, like pop-rock candies, like the first, stinging breath of autumn after the hazy veil of summer has finally lifted. and slowly, in the clarity and truth of your declaration, you think you can see his lips as they lift up in an open-heart smile, as he too tastes the words you’ve just so recently mustered the courage to say.

confessions, part ii.

zoro stares back, and or a long moment, he doesn’t say anything. then, for too long. and you think you’d made a mistake, telling him how you feel. but then, he smiles — a true smile, a smile that lights up his face and erases all the grooves and lines that should’ve been worn there by the weathers and weights of hardship.

and still, listening to your words, he smiles — a smile that makes him nothing short of incandescent.

he nods, squeezing your hands in his.

“i love you too.”

false start (redux).

every story as a beginning, a middle, and an end. though not necessarily in that order. and, looking back, roronoa zoro knows that if he had to pick, his story probably begins here — at the ripe age of eight, in a doujou nestled next to a forest that always smelled of cedar and moss and freshly turned earth.

it probably starts with an endless parade of sword practice and sparring, of warm up laps and cool down stretches.

its true — it could be said that his story starts with kuina, the doujou sensei’s blue-haired daughter, who was better at swordcraft than zoro thought he ever might be. and to some, this is a good enough kind of beginning to latch on to.

but no, zoro knows, because he knows himself now, and he knows that stories, just like swordsmanship, is an art that requires a certain amount of tempering. a certain degree of trimming and tailoring. a certain kind of articulation.

so he’s certain that it starts here, when he’d seen you for the very first time. and it’s true, you’d seemed like nothing special then, just another quiet little girl who’d been forced into the doujou by some faceless set of rigid, expectant parents, and you’d worked just as hard as you could have, given your natural inclination for anything but sword play.

he’d known that you’d never be great shakes at swordsmanship, but still, he’d found himself drawn by and to you, as a magnet would a compass rose, as one might find their destiny, or their soulmate. he had found his eyes tracking you whenever you weren’t looking, found himself watching as you’d patter around after sparring practice to ask everyone how they were feeling, to dig your tiny fingers (strong and dexterous as they already were) into a knot here, an aching muscle there, a pinched nerve that might’ve been really bad if not found here, and left to fester in that vast, horrible elsewhere.

but he’d been a shy, quiet, kind of boy, absorbed by his sport. and kuina’s skill was more than enough for one growing, teenage boy to contend with without worrying about the strange attraction he had towards perhaps the least “swordsy” person in the entire class. and so, he’d never plucked up the courage to talk to you, never questioned when you’d kept away from his side of the classroom after sparring practice, when all the other girls would flutter around him like a flock of unwelcome pigeons, asking if he wanted to be their stretching partner.

then, the morning came when shimotsuki-sensei had informed him in not so many words that kuina was gone. and the funeral had slipped by in a hazy blur of bodies and incense, and the next thing he knew, he was holding the wadou ichimonji, and sensei was saying something about keeping kuina’s dream alive.

he’d seen you flit from the funeral march of black-clad children, shadow-dark and raven-quick, right off into the thicket of trees. and he’d followed you, because he couldn’t think of a place he’d like to be less than back in that suffocating practice room with all his fellow classmates, half of them casting him curious looks, the other half avoiding his gaze like the literal plague.

he’d followed you to the clearing, and watched as you’d sprinted, screaming around the field of tiny, white-petaled flowers until you slumped down, panting with your face upturned to a sea-breeze sky. he caught himself before he could burst out laughing (or crying, he wasn’t quite sure which he wanted to do more at that moment), and he’d forced himself to sit still behind the trunk of a large tree and watch as you pushed yourself up. the light of the dying sun washed your figure in a great, dream-like ream of orange and gold.

then, just as it seemed like you were going to head back, he spotted you spot the injured fawn, curled into the gnarled roots of a sapling cypress tree. and he’d watched still as you slowly approached the creature with a handful of peanuts before distracting it and crack — he’d heard it clear across the clearing — the sound of a bone being set back into place.

the fawn had screeched and bolted to it’s feet.

but you were just as fearless as you always were, holding out your palm with more peanuts, and zoro had watched, with a mounting fascination coiling in the base of his stomach, as the fawn dug its nose into the palm of your hand.

he’d seen the brilliance behind your eyes, heard the bell-toll sound of your soft, everlasting laughter.

and he vowed, then and there, to become the greatest swordsman he could be, the greatest swordsman in the world, if only to protect you from those who might hurt you. from those who might threaten to take away the light — the life — that thrummed, ever present, in the palms of your very own hands.

a/n: i know, i know, there was an authors note before. but i feel like i can explain this better now that you've read the fic -- to me, the story of "butterfly lovers" is and always has been as story of someone pretending to be someone they're not, right? so in that sense, you/reader was just trying to fit into a mold that wasn't quite made for her before discovering her true calling as a doctor. and the fluff and romance was that, unbeknownst to her, zoro's known that this entire fucking time. u__u anyways. i hope you enjoyed. bless up and simp zoro, fam.

opla!zoro requests are open!

[hrtbreakanniversary]

feeling everything rn

[hrtbreakanniversary]

Back to Me | Satoru Gojo

I could make you mad, I could make you scream I could make you cry, I could make you leave I could make you hate me for everything But I can't make you come back to me

pairing: prince!satoru gojo x maid!reader

warnings: 18+ (minors dni), modern royal au, mentions of sexual activities, suggestive, they are college aged (gojo is about 23 and y/n is nearing 21), no use of japanese honorifics

word count: 1k

_

Annoyed was an understatement for what Y/N Y/L/N felt at the moment.

At the break of dawn, Prince Satoru Gojo begins his routine of an early morning run before going to the gym.

He's tried to do a public gym once but someone took a picture of him from an odd angle that made it look like the woman that was helping with his weights so that it didn't fall on his chest was sitting on his face. Social media went into a frenzy for the prince's exhibitionism. His publicists having a field day and his parents having a hard time believing him too because of his reputation that constantly bought him a spot on gossip websites.

Because of so, he's been instructed to stay home by his parents until everything dies down and also to just contain him. They have no idea what they did to create what they call an "embarrassment to the throne." and his need to cause destruction to his title.

Workers around the castle struggled to keep up with the male's new schedule. His very unpredictable new schedule.

One of these being Ms. Y/L/N herself who was up much earlier to direct the staff of what to do. Having basically raised the boy since he was born, she knew just about everything about him. How Satoru liked his breakfast. How he liked his clothes smelling. How he liked his bath.

Since it was the summer before her junior year of college, Y/N decided to come back home from the summer and visit to spend time with her Mother. Always forgetting that her mom's second home was the castle and that is just about where she spent all on her time.

Each summer consisted of her working at the castle to help her mother out. Well since it was legal to at the age of 16. All the summers and weekends before that when Y/N wasn’t preoccupied with school or homework, she too find would have considered this place her second home as well because how often she was here but the perception of that was ruined when she turned the grand age of 15 and heard who she once considered her safe person, her best friend, whispering things to Suguru Geto, another prince from the neighboring city that tore her heart into two.

Some would say it’s petty to hold such a grudge for so long. But she didn’t care especially with how bothersome he was being at the moment.

“Ow… Ow…” Satoru swatched at the other maid’s hand, “Are you trying to exfoliate my skin off? Shit hurts.”

In fear, the young maid moved away. Dropping the sponge into the tub, bowing with apologies spilling from her mouth.

Muttering underneath his breath, he looked at Y/N who stood in the corner of the room with her arms crossed.

“Aren’t you suppose to be doing this?”

“I’m teaching her.”

“Well, she’s rubbing me raw.”

“Sad.”

“Shouldn’t you be showing her how? What kind of teacher are you?”

“It’s 2023, Gojo. Don’t you know how to take your own showers?”

“It's Satoru to you. And don’t you know procedure?”

“I don’t know. Seems like I’m hearing this is the first time we've done something like this and that you specifically requested it.”

He should’ve known better. I mean your mother was the head steward. Of course, she’ll go into detail about specific things. Especially about how he suddenly required assistance in the bath. Complaining that he was struggling to scrub his body because he pulled something earlier this morning. Y/N too rose an eyebrow as Satoru didn’t usually take baths, he just took showers because it took less time and he was able to leave the castle quicker when he did so.

“Just hurry up and get over here.”

Y/N resisted the urge to roll her eyes. While picking up the wet sponge from the tub, she also resisted the urge to let her eyes wander down to his sculpted body, features of his abs and biceps prominent because the water that dripped down. Harshly pressing the sponge against his back, she began to roughly rub up and down his back.

Satoru warned, "Y/L/N."

Turning her head to the younger maid, Y/N glanced towards the door. Granting permission for the younger maid to excuse herself from the room before Y/N began to scrub again. Not as rough but definitely not gentle.

"I'm just doing my job, it's all."

Y/N ran the sponge up and down his back once before moving to his arms. Running the soap up and down the muscles xf his biceps that still appeared even though his body was relaxed. The motion reminding her of the last time she had her hands on him like this.

That's when she began to apply more pressure again, resulting in Satoru turning his head to look at her from over his shoulder. Her hands falling into the water behind him.

"What are you doing?"

"Perv."

"How am I a perv? I'm just trying to get washed up after my long workout." A smirk played it's way onto his lips which pissed her off more.

"Oh please! Who does this anymore?"

"Some people do!" Satoru actually got this idea from a tv show he watched on Netflix the other night. Although the show was set in the 1800's and the clothes that they were wearing were much older than what they're wearing.

"Yeah, babies do! You're a grown man."

"I can't move my arms." He pouted. "I need help getting to certain areas."

"Is this the only way you can get a woman to touch you, is that why? Oh my, are the rumors in fact untrue? Is the crown prince being a playboy a facade? Is he actually just a virgin?" Y/N switched positions so she was kneeling on the side of the tub and was now facing him. She placed her hand swiftly onto his chest, resting where his heart is," Tell me, is your heart beating fast just from the opposite sex touching you like this?"

“You, of all people, should know I’m not a virgin.” Satoru's blue eyes falling from hers down to her lips.

Y/N quickly yanked back her hand. The memories from 2 summer ago flowing in. Grabbing a handful of soapy water, she tossed it into Satoru's face before standing up abruptly.

"Whatever, do this yourself."

Y/N splashed him again with the dirty tub water, her back towards him as she walked to the door.

"I'll tell your mom!"

"Oh yeah? What is she going to do? Fire me?!"

_

a/n: might make this into a series hehe

[hrtbreakanniversary]

The hanbin fic was everything, I owe you my firstborn and a mansion

😘 and we shall live it in it together

[hrtbreakanniversary]

photograph | suguru geto

warnings: no use of honorifics, reader is described as a female but it can be read as gender neutral, y/n simping very hard for geto, him simping just as hard

word count: 2k

Y/N resisted the urge to grab the brown-haired bobbed girl by the hair as she playfully rolled her eyes at the suffering she was putting her best friend through.

Shoko asked her if she wanted to go to the cherry blossom festival. Originally she thought it was only going to be just them two. A little bestie date away from tiresome missions and Yaga's constant lecturing. She was especially excited to post on Facebook about their day with cute photos. No one mentioned that that Satoru Gojo was tagging along as well. And wherever Gojo was, Suguru Geto went along too.

"You'll be fine. They're super nice and I've told them a lot about you," Shoko nudged her on the side," Plus we can have Gojo buy us crepes." before interlocking their fingers and joining the two tall males that stood only a few feet away from them.

It wasn't that Y/N hated them. No, it was quite the opposite. She honestly was quite star stuck by them.

Meeting Shoko was by chance because of a bad injury she had from one of her missions. She underestimated the grade of the curse. Almost risking her life and becoming immobilized that Nanami had to take over and finish up the mission on his own. She apologized every day after when he visited her in the infirmary for making him carry the workload that day. The typically stoic blonde haired male only shrugged and told her to get better soon each time.

While in the infirmary because of her severe injures, she spent a lot of time in there especially with Shoko that was practicing her reverse curse technique on her. They bonded over their love for the K-pop group, Girls Generation.

The chorus of Into the New World blasting through the speakers that Shoko bought comforted her as she felt her bones getting rearranged.

Despite them being best friends for a while now, Y/N still never spent time with Gojo and Geto.

Being a first year student, it's not like Y/N would cross paths with them often especially since the two were always sent out on missions together. She would often hear things from other female classmates that would fangirl over "the strongest duo".

Y/N couldn't say she wasn't any different from them especially since she harbored a huge crush on Geto. She was just more quiet about it as she admired him from afar, taking a look at him each time he was doing his daily evening run through her dorm window.

It wasn't just physical either. It was his personality. He was kind and looked out for the underclassman. There was a time that Haibara wasn't being his usual cheerful self as he was being hard on himself after practice and it was hard to get him out of the mood no matter what Nanami or her did. Later that night when she snuck out to get a drink from the vending machine, she saw Geto talking to him outside of the showers. A smile appearing on his face the next second.

The next morning, Haibara came bearing gifts from Kyoto that he said one of the second years got for them but didn't disclose who. It wasn't hard to put two and two together.

So each day, she found herself wanting to get at least a glimpse of his face. Enough just to see his face but not enough for him to notice her or have a conversation like a normal person would.

Which is why she despised Shoko at the moment.

Shoko wasn't at fault at all though. Heck, the girl doesn't even know about this big fat crush of hers.

But Y/N knowing that the boy she has been pining for the past year was going to be closer to her than he's ever been before. How on earth was she suppose to function now? Should she be flirty? No, that's too much especially when you don't even know how to. Should she be quiet? No, what if he thought she was rude. There was no time to conjure up a script or a personality that would fit today righ-

"Hello."

Stuck in her thoughts, she hadn't realized she was now standing right of him.

Her breath getting caught in her throat, watching how his hair that was normally in a bun was now flowing down to his shoulder. Tied halfway up with a bang that dreamily over his eye. His slightly chapped lips moving as he moved on to greet Shoko, moving his hand up so he could ruffle her hair.

Shoko pushed his hands away in a hurried movement. Quickly wrapping an arm around Y/N's shoulder and pulling her into her side in a tight side hug,"This is Y/N Y/L/N. The first year that I've been telling you about."

"You never told us that she was pretty", Gojo smirked, his glasses tipping down so she could see his bright blue eyes.

Geto only smiled at her, greeting her with the crease of his eyes. Oh my god. That smile. She always saw it when he would be laughing at Gojo's antics but seeing it up close was something else.

Simplest way to put it: the man is gorgeous. Her heart thumped so hard she could feel it in her ears.

"You're a little shy, aren't you?" Gojo teased. Shit, was she just staring in the space again? Shoko pushed him by the shoulder.

"Leave her alone. You two are just too much. I told you to tone it down."

"You two? I haven't even done anything." Geto held his hands up in defense.

"Yet. You haven't done anything yet."

Gojo sheepshly shrugged and immediately hugged Y/N into a tight bear hug. His skinny yet firm frame engulfing her as he swung the two of them around. Over his shoulder, she made eye contact with Geto who tilted his head into her view.

" Anybody that is a good friend of Shoko is also a good friend of mine."

"Mine as well." She heard the white hair male mumble into her shoulder before getting pulled away by Shoko.

"Let's get moving. I got hungry waiting for you guys."

Because they decided to come on a weekend, it was super crowded. No space for any elbow room. Every single teenagers, adults, and their child if they had one was on this street tonight. Trying to snag a picture before pushed out by another person that wanted that same view or angle. Shoko voiced her annoyance each someone accidentally bumped into her. Normally she would be agreeing with her but she could hardly focus on that fact when she could feel Geto's muscular arm that was brushing against her. Remembering to breathe was more important.

She was almost bound to faint from how dizzy she was feeling each time he moved her in closer or out of the way from people rushing by.

It didn't help that she opted to wear a short sleeve dress today that kept flying up so she had to keep her arm down instead of moving it away from his bare arm that was exposed from the muscle tee he chose to wear instead of the school's uniform that she typically saw him in.

This totally changed her peripheral on things. She thought he made the school uniform look fantastic but he looks even better in casual clothing.

"Yo, let's take a picture here. The trees here blocks out the buildings." Gojo pointed out a spot that was a quick walk from them if they fast walked. Shoko groaned, asking if they could eat first but Gojo insisted that it was better to get their photos first so they could just sit down to eat and chill after.

Despite grumbling under her breath, Shoko easily got into line for Gojo's selfie. Gojo continously snapped pictures, the four of them striking poses. Considering how close Geto was to her, she surprisingly was still able to naturally snap poses with the group like she was friends with them for years.

"Oh, I have a polaroid!" She dug into her purse, pulling out the device. She snapped pictures of herself then of Gojo who asked for some.

Y/N found herself giggling at the silly poses that Gojo conjured and Shoko's refusal to waste film if he wasn't going to be serious about it. In the midst of it all, she hadn't noticed Geto was still standing behind her until she felt a tug on the strap out her bag.

Ready to defend herself a potential robber, she only saw Geto looking at the Keroppi keychain on her bag. "This looks familiar."

It was one of the keychain that Haibara got from him that night.

"Oh yeah. One of my classmates, Haibara, gave it to us."

Of course she knew he knew that Haibara was one of her classmates but she didn't want to accidentally slip up that she knew that specific detail about him.

"Funny. The last time I asked Haibara about his keychain, he said that he had to take it off because it got too dirty and the string broke. Nice to see yours is still intact."

"Of course I-"

She cut off herself when she remembered the reason why. It was only still intact because it was from him. Heck, Keroppi wasn't even her favorite character. It was Kuromi but Haibara wanted Kuromi and being the one that was personally gifted all the keychains, he got first choice. Before today, it was the only type of interaction she had of his and a gift was indirectly given to her. Of course, she had to take extra good care of it. Keroppi is still good as new, attached to her purse that she uses every time she goes out.

"Quick! Pose, Y/N!"

Y/N quickly snapped her head back to Shoko whose face was covered with the camera. Maybe it was instinct because Shoko did this almost all the time but she quickly posed with Geto and smiled for the picture.

After watching Shoko put the camera down and pull out the film, Y/N realized the position she put herself into. Eyeing her arms that was wrapped around his one arm with his hand still gripping onto the Keroppi.

"Of course what?"

"I'm in need of smoke break." Shoko waved around the photo for it to develop faster," There's too many people, it's stressing me out. Geto, you in?"

"Or you're just hangry." Gojo hummed, earning him another hit on the shoulder of the day.

"I will be if you don't shut up."

In fear that hell would break lose, Y/N unlatched herself from Geto, missing how his arm seemed to follow her like a magnet. "Gojo, do you want to get some crepes with me?"

Shoko winked over Gojo's shoulder at Y/N at what she considered a great suggestion, raising a thumbs up. As the two walked away, Shoko shouted for her to get as many toppings as she could fit into the treat.

"What does she think? That I'm made out of money?"

"Yes."

_

The nicotine filled stick left Shoko's turned up lips. She stared at the male who had his own cigarette in one hand and in the other, the photo that was taken only five minutes ago.

"You totally weren't expecting that, were you?"

Geto smiling down gleefully at the photo, his wallet pulled out to tuck it into the slot that would typically hold an ID card.

In the photo, Y/N was practically cuddling into his side. Because he was shocked at the sudden intimate interaction, he was looking down at her in the photo. If anybody else had seen the photo and didn't know them, they would've thought that they were a couple.

Which is exactly what Geto loved about the picture.

"You sure you don't want me to put in a good word for you?"

"No, I got it. I’d like it to happen naturally. Plus I don’t even know if she likes me back.”

“ Well you better find out because you begged me to let you come. I didn’t know you were going to bring Gojo with you.”

“ I needed my wingman.”

“That wingman is going to expose you if we don’t get back to them right now.”

“Crap, you’re right.”

After the two of them stomped their cigarettes, they walked back towards where all the food stalls. Geto stopped momentarily at one booth to pick up and buy a Kuromi keychain. Maybe one day he’d buy it all for her.

[kenm4vhs]

i wake up, i think about satoru gojo, go to sleep, think about satoru gojo, in my dreams, think about satoru gojo, in the shower, think about satoru gojo, losing my mind, think about satoru gojo, doing nothing, think about satoru gojo, reading a book, think about satoru gojo