Smsn.writes - Tumblr Posts
We're strangers these days (but that has to be enough)
damn your love, damn your lies - series masterlist here
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pairing: roy harper x reader (gender neutral)
length: 1.3k
genre: angst (happy ending to come <3)
warnings: ex bf roy harper but I promise they're gonna get back together (eventual happy ending), reader is kinda stressed and unwell, reader also wears glasses, hopeful ending here
a/n: is this any good bc you know sometimes I can't tell
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You ignore the first knock on your apartment door. You know who it is. You know because it's always him, and because the sound of his fist against the wood of your door is something you've heard so many times. You don't bother turning the volume on your TV down - he knows you're here and he knows you're ignoring him. Whatever.
But he knocks again, a heavier, more insistent sound. This time you pull yourself up, walking listlessly towards your door to pull it open.
"You ignoring me now, sunshine?" Roy drawls, leaning against your doorframe.
"What do you want this time, Roy?" You sigh. Usually, by this point, he'd flash that stupidly smug grin of his and let himself into your home. This time, however, is different. This time, he looks you up and down briefly, frowning a bit as he takes in your state - messy hair, undereye bags, and oversized clothes. He shrugs.
"I think I left something of mine here. Lemme come in and take a look?" He walks in while he says it, not waiting for an answer.
"We've been broken up for months, Roy. Eventually, you're going to run out of fake belongings to come over here and sniff around for," you say as you cross your arms. Roy just grins in that annoying way of his.
"You mind if I check the bedroom?" he throws over his shoulder as he heads down the hall. You hear your bedroom door open and you rub a hand against your forehead, trying to ward off your oncoming headache as you slouch down onto your couch. You know he'll be back out as soon as he's had enough of pretending to search for something that doesn't exist.
Your nails tap against the arm of the couch as you wait, time stretching on as you strain to hear any sort of sound from him. He's in your bedroom, shuffling things around and opening and closing drawers. The door of your closet slides open and your heart clenches - what you're hearing now is no different than what you heard when he lived here with you, when this was home for the two of you. You dig the heels of your palms into your closed eyes and try to rid the word from your mind. Home.
"What the hell happened in there?" is what Roy finally says when he leaves your room, sitting down next to you, close enough that his thigh brushes against yours. You straighten and stand at the contact, huffing and moving to stand in front of him.
"What are you talking about?"
"It's… a mess in your bedroom. I've never seen it any way other than spotless." Roy points out. You scowl at him.
"You've lost your right to comment on my living situation," you say icily. "And you've overstayed your welcome - again." Roy settles further into the cushions, arms crossing to mimic yours as he looks you up and down. You glare back - you'd never been the one to break during fights with him, and that isn't something you're planning on changing now.
"I didn't know you wore glasses," he says finally, his voice dropping to a gentle murmur. You reel back and touch the frames on your face.
"I wear contacts," you point out.
"Not right now."
"Why does it matter?" You pull the glasses off and move to toss them onto the coffee table. He catches them, though, and you curse his vigilante reflexes as he turns them over in his hands.
"I've never seen you like this," he muses. You shift on your feet.
"Like what?"
"Not… put together. Not all dolled up." Your glare turns lethal at Roy's words and he blinks up at you.
"Thank you," you reply sarcastically. Roy rolls his eyes, your bite something he's intimately familiar with. He stares at you, then, sizing you up in a way that makes you straighter subconsciously, a hand running through your hair.
"We lived together, you know," he says lowly.
"Yes, I'm aware."
"I never saw you like this," he points out. You step away from him, moving to sit in the armchair tucked in the opposite corner of your living room.
"No one sees me like this," you remind him. Roy huffs and stares down at the glasses still in his hand.
"I know," he says bitterly. "That was the problem, wasn't it? You never let me really see you."
"You saw more than anyone else," you defend, but even now, your posture straightens and you smooth down your shirt. Roy glares at the movement.
"It was never enough," he says eventually.
"I was never enough," you correct him.
"No," he shoots back. "You were - you were everything to me. But you didn't… you couldn't let me be anything to you." His hand tightens around your glasses and he puts them on the coffee table quickly, rubbing his palm up and down the denim covering his thigh as he thinks of all the other things he almost broke between the two of you.
"You were… more to me than I ever could've told you," you say slowly, your voice quiet as you keep your eyes trained on the floor. Roy sighs, rubbing a hand against his forehead.
"I'm sorry," he offers, an olive branch extended. "I shouldn't have dragged this back up. I just… what's going on with you, sunshine?"
"Nothing," is your quick response. He arches a brow.
"You don't look well," Roy points out, wincing internally as your glare snaps back to him.
"That's none of your business anymore, Roy. You lost the right to care about me when you left me."
"Come on, don't be like that…" he pleads as you stand, heading to your front door. He trails after you, just like he always has - just like he always will. "Just because we're not together anymore doesn't mean you're not important to me still."
"Goodbye, Roy," you say pointedly, standing next to your door with your arms crossed. He plants himself opposite you, matching your glare.
"What is wrong with you?" He huffs. "Why won't you let me in? Why won't you let me help you?"
"I don't need -"
"But I can -"
"Please don't, Roy," you soften in a way that throws him off balance, your shoulders slumping as your hands bunch the fabric of your shirt. "I don't want to fight with you… I don't like it."
"Neither do I, sunshine," he says softly, uncrossing his arms and relaxing his posture. "But I'm worried about you." You smile at him, but it's a small, sad thing that makes his heart break a little bit more.
"I'm ok, Roy," you say quietly. He sighs and steps towards you. You let him, to his surprise.
"I know you are. I know you can handle this all on your own, but… you don't have to. I'm here, still - always." You don't respond to him, your eyes big and glassy as you look up at him. When he leans forward to press a kiss to your forehead you let him, your hands reaching to brush against his shirt, almost like you want to hold onto him.
"Time to go now, Roy," is what you say instead, but your voice is missing its usual bite. Roy steps away, opening your door and looking back at you one last time before he leaves.
"Oh…" he says. "I didn't get what I was here for. That, uh… thing that I'm missing. Oh well, I'm sure I'll find it next time I come around." The grin he flashes you makes you huff as he closes the door behind him.
Rubbing a hand over the back of your neck, you walk back to your living room to slump into the couch where he had just been, your glasses sitting abandoned on the coffee table. As you pick them up, you eye the messy fingerprints he's left on the lenses. Somehow, you find they don't bother you, and you toss the glasses back onto the table without cleaning them. Oh well - you can harp on him about it next time he comes around.
Like a lamb led to slaughter (my heart held in your hands)
carry me slowly, my sunlight (these colours, they fade for you only) - series masterlist here
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pairing: damian wayne x reader (gender neutral)
length: 1.7k
genre: fluff? angst? kinda hurt/comfort?
warnings: this is the enemies part of the enemies to lovers so they're kinda mean and hateful, reader pulls a knife on damian at the beginning but it's pretty chill, also angsty ending in this but future parts where they're together and in love are already up and in my masterlist <3
a/n: enjoy xoxo
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Damian pauses, holding his breath as the knife that's been suddenly pressed against his throat gets pressed a little harder. The wind blows the sand around his feet gently and he listens, straining for a hint as to who his attacker is.
"Damian Al Ghul, caught by surprise… you're getting slow," your voice makes him relax - much to his annoyance, his jaw clenching as he exhales slowly. You pull the knife away from him, ignoring the small trickle of blood that runs down his neck as you stand in front of him.
"You shouldn't be here," he snaps harshly.
"Neither should you," you quip back.
"This is my -"
"For now," you interrupt, your grin wicked. "This war of ours isn't over yet, Al Ghul. I wouldn't claim the winning prize for yourself just yet - not when you're the one who's been caught off guard." Damian's fists clench, his eyes hard as he stares at you through the darkness of night, the stars dripping pinpricks of light onto the two of you.
"This is League territory. You are outcast. You're not welcome here, and neither are any of the others who follow you," he says viciously. You smile.
"So sure I won't beat you still," you say, a mocking edge in your voice that makes him huff. "So sure it'll be you leading the League one day, and not me."
Damian doesn't bite back, though. He opens his mouth to, but then seems to think better of it, opting instead to step away from you and plant himself on the sandy ground while the clouds part, the moon shining through. You think you hear him muttering, "why don't you just kill me and get it over with, then?"
You blink at his behaviour, following him cautiously and standing in front of him, blocking the light of the moon and shrouding him in darkness where he's sitting, knees pulled up to his chest.
"What's wrong with you?" You ask, toeing at his side with your shoe, jostling him slightly. He just clenches his fists tighter.
"You're blocking out the sky," he says bitterly. "And you stabbed me." You arch a brow.
"You're stargazing now? How novel. And I didn't stab you - don't be dramatic. It was just a little cut… you've given me worse," you point out.
"You deserve worse," he snaps. You straighten back and away from him, moving to let the light of the moon shine down on him as you sit next to him.
"You know I'd never kill you on a night like this," you say, a softness in your voice that makes you both queasy. You feel the weight of the knife in its sheath against your leg and press your hand to it. You could try to kill him - you probably should. God knows there are enough people waiting for you to.
"Not enough of an audience?" Damian says dryly. You kick a pile of sand near your foot.
"Why didn't you fight back? You could just as easily try to kill me tonight. But you wouldn't because we've been at this far too long to let it end in private… just the two of us." The end of your sentence is murmured, your eyes trained on his face while he stares up at the night sky. It takes him longer than you'd like for him to tear his gaze away from the full moon and look back at you, the light shining on one half of his face while the other now sits in shadow. You imagine you look much the same, half bathed in light, half shrouded.
"What do you think will happen?" His question finally cuts through the silence. "When one of us finally kills the other." You pull your hand away from your knife like it's burned you.
"When I kill you?" You say haughtily. "The League will be mine."
"And when I kill you?" Damian snaps back. You seem to mull over your answer for a moment too long, Damian huffing and turning back up to the sky.
"Then you win," you say quietly. "And you're rid of me." Something in your heart twinges at that and you grit your teeth.
"What would I do?" He says it so softly you're sure you wouldn't hear him if you hadn't spent so many years learning him. You fix him with a hard look, but he keeps his eyes pointedly on the stars and not at you. "What would I do without you?"
"What would I do without you?" Your response is so wavering and hushed that you think he must have missed it. It must have simply been caught in the wind and carried away to somewhere where the two of you could be anything other than what you are now. The way Damian turns to look at you, eyes wide and vulnerable and hurting, tells you he heard you just fine.
"I don't want to kill you," he says it like kindness is a crime.
"You have to," you respond, like a lamb led to slaughter. "It's what we're made for, you and me. To be each other's end - each other's undoing. Only one of us is making it out of this alive." There's a weight in your words that goes unsaid. A part of me will die with you. Neither one of us will make it out of this and stay whole. A part of me belongs to you.
Damian stands suddenly, sand flying at where you sit as he shoots to his feet. You brush it off of you with a sigh and crane your neck to look up at him where he's standing tall, fists clenched and shoulders back, his feet planted firmly and holding him steady. You assume there's a determination in his eyes that you're intimately familiar with to go with his stance. He's blocked out the moon with his figure, leaving the two of you in shadow with a blinding halo around his silhouette, but you don't need to see his face to know what look he's wearing - you haven't needed to for a long time.
"There's a way around this, I'm sure," he says. You sigh and a breeze floats by, ruffling through him and into you. Your nose burns when you pick up the faintest whiff of his scent and you wonder, just for a moment, if he can detect the same from you… if he knows you the way you know him.
"You don't want that," you say flatly.
"Don't tell me what I want," he snaps back, voice hard. "You don't get to decide how this ends." You shoot up at his words, standing chest to chest with him, so close that you bump into each other.
"I decide just as much as you do." Your voice mimics the steel in his own. "This is about us, not you, and… and," whatever you were saying dies out as you look at Damian, his eyes staring back at you intensely. You hadn't really realized, in your anger and haste, how close to him you'd shoved yourself, but you can feel his breath on your skin and see the flecks of colour in his deep brown eyes.
"And… what?" He prompts, scowl still on his face. He seems to take no notice of the way his nose brushes against yours. That is, until your eyes flick down to his lips for a split second too long.
He lurches away from you, stepping back to create distance and holding a hand out in surrender, as if the close proximity to you just then had been more threatening than all the times you'd pointed a sword to his chest. The way your heart thumps behind your ribs and your breath catches, you're inclined to agree.
"I'm going to fix this," he says breathlessly.
"Fix what? There's nothing to fix, Damian." His name burns your tongue, like it's an intimacy you shouldn't indulge in. "There's nothing to fix. This is the way it's supposed to go."
"I won't kill you," he's all but yelling at you now. "And I won't let you kill me." You make the mistake of closing your eyes, hanging your head slightly and sighing as you prepare yourself for another fight. It's a moment of weakness that you would never allow in front of any enemy other than him - a moment of vulnerability that could cost you your life. But you hear it, ever so slightly, the whisper of him moving with a stealth that only the two of you know. By the time you open your eyes, he's gone.
You realize, in the days following the incident, that you'd never gone so long without seeing Damian before. At first, you were shoved against each other by your respective sides in never-ending fights to see who would triumph. Then, as time passed and the two of you grew, your skills matched and fights ending in draws over and over, you started seeking each other out on your own. To know your enemy, you'd always told yourself. You're sure he'd always tried to convince himself of the same.
But now? Now days have gone by without a whisper, without a flickering shadow or a hushed breath. Eventually, you go looking, silent and hidden and so desperately hopeful. But that's when you hear it - the rumours.
Damian Al Ghul is gone - gone to live with his father and train with him. He'll be back, you promise yourself. He'll come back to me.
But he doesn't. Time passes and he remains gone, the rumours spreading.
Damian Al Ghul has found a home beyond this war, beyond you. You're sure that only makes you so nauseous because now you'll never get the chance to kill him.
Damian Al Ghul has no interest in fighting a war that isn't his anymore, you hear. Damian Al Ghul has no need for a vicious prophecy or a never-ending rivalry. Damian Al Ghul has found a home, apparently, and it's somewhere far… far away from you.