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lightblueterracota · 3 years

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Tenderness, Undescribed

hermitcraft grian x mumbo jumbo. i don’t have a fully established and intricate universe for this storyline, but basically it’s their hermitcraft characters and grian also has wings :^)

another note is this is in no way shipping the irl people, this is absolutely only for their fictional characters! please don’t ship real people and/or harass the actual people behind these characters :)

There’s a certain tenderness to Mumbo that Grian finds fascinating.

For his long legs, clumsy mobility, and dark eyes above a bold mustache, Mumbo is not often associated with the word tender. More often than not, other Hermits know him for being the friendly neighborhood Redstoner that often finds himself in disasterous, life-threatening situations, often needing to call for other Hermits to dive in and save him last second. His general obtuse nature and lack of direction make him seem like a friendly yet out of control aircraft helicoper with styrofoam blades.

But there’s no denying that Mumbo is a genius as well. Almost on par with Doc, Grian would say that Mumbo is one of the brightest people he knows, despite his daftness. Even if he gets his Redstone wiring mixed up terribly sometimes, there’s a brilliance beneath that mustache that shines through everytime Mumbo eagerly invites Grian to his base to show him another massive and impressive machine.

And when he talks about his Redstone -- he’s all over the place. Big gestures and waving arms, loud exclamations of excitement as he eaglerly jumps around and points out each piece of Redstone and its wiring, it’s hard for Grian to keep up sometimes. But there’s something oddly fond whenever Mumbo gets insanely proud of a build, and even if Grian doesn’t understand it 100%, he listens attentively anyway as Mumbo explains it to him.

It’s hilarious, sometimes. Mumbo’s fingers are big and clumsy sometimes, and he struggles with piecing together intricate Redstone wiring that require small pieces. When he’s impatient, sometimes he has to ask Grian’s sharp eagle-eyes to help him piece together a particularly tricky part of a machine, and Grian is more than happy to help.

All in all, while Grian is very fond of Mumbo, he’s not someone Grian would consider gentle and tender.

There was a moment though, when that changed.

It happened on one of Grian’s worst nights. Upon visiting a nearby village, he hadn’t realized that he had accidentally triggered a raid, and at that time he had no combat gear on him. As the mobs swarmed from the hillsides and Grian desperately tried to protect the villagers and herd them indoors, arrows and slashes of melee weapons cut across Grian’s body. Even when he decided to draw back, trying to make his escape by flying away, several arrows were shot into his wings, and he almost didn’t make it.

He was on low health and bleeding when he crash-landed into Mumbo’s base -- the only other person that was also active at that time of night. He had scared the crap out of the man, Mumbo jumping out of his focus on his Redstone as the winged individual crashed through his window, heavily injured and weak.

He was too faint to respond to Mumbo’s frightened, “Jesus, Grian, what happened?!” as he collapsed onto the floor, wings spread across the floorboards of Mumbo’s base. He blearily watched as the man jumped up, immediately rummaging through some storage for healing supplies.

“Your wings,” Mumbo had said, and there was some saddening awe in his voice. “Oh Grian, your wings. They must hurt so bad. Hold on a second.”

Grian didn’t want to think about it. He could feel blood dripping from his wings and could see a few scattered feathers that had fallen off in his crash-landing. His beautiful wings, ruined.

“Can you stand?” Mumbo asked, and Grian was about to protest, when Mumbo continued, saying, “Wait no, you probably can’t. Hold still. I’m going to pick you up, okay?”

Grian cringed, expecting to be hauled like a sack of potatoes and bracing for impact, but was shocked when he felt Mumbo’s gentle hold as the taller hoisted the winged man up, moving him to a nearby bed. Mumbo seemed to be very careful of not brushing his damaged and bleeding wings, gently shouldering Grian so that his limbs were comfortable and his wings had room.

The closeness of Mumbo’s body caught Grian off guard and he silently let Mumbo gently place him down onto the bed. Then Mumbo got to work, grabbing some healing supplies and bandages.

“I’m sorry,” Mumbo warned in advance as he disinfected his own hands, “but there’s a couple of arrowheads still in your wings. I need to take them out before I bandage you. This is going to hurt.”

Before Grian could react, a sharp, excruitating pain blossomed from his left wing as Mumbo carefully removed the sharp object, the scalding pain shooting up his spine. A pained yelp came escaped from Grian, only to be sizzled away by Mumbo’s gentle shushing as he immediately started applying pressure to the wound.

“Shh,” Mumbo said softly, disposing of the arrowhead and cleaning the area. “Shh, I know it hurts a lot. It’s okay. You’re alright, I got you.”

It wasn’t often Grian heard Mumbo speak in such a soft manner. Oddly enough, his words were comforting, settling over Grian’s tired bones like a blanket, and Grian forced himself to relax as Mumbo continued to softly speak some encouragements.

Whimpers of pain continued to come from Grian as Mumbo continued to clean him up, his normally clumsy and large hands now extremely gentle and intricate as he delicately plucked the damage out of Grian’s wings and applied healing salves to his wounds. As Mumbo gently worked through patching up Grian’s wings, he made sure to inspect the rest of Grian’s body carefully, checking for other signs of bleeding and wounds.

Once he was doing bandaging him, Mumbo told him, “Lean back, please.”

Grian obeyed, settling back carefully into the bed and watched as picked up a bottle of healing potion. Grian groaned in protest, not in any mood to digest anything, but Mumbo simply leaned forward to place two fingers underneath Grian’s chin and lifted, making Grian’s mouth aim upwards.

“I know you probably don’t want to drink anything right now, but this will make you feel much better, I promise,” Mumbo said gently as he held Grian’s face up firmly and lifted the cool glass edge of the bottle to his lips. “Please drink.”

A feeling of tenderness, undescribed, washed over Grian as he became acutely aware of Mumbo’s fingers underneath his chin, and the way his thumb barely brushed against his bottom lip.

Too weak to fight against the gentle push of Mumbo’s hands, Grian let Mumbo slowly feed the potion into his mouth, obediently swallowing the restorative liquid. Mumbo let out a pleased hum as he watched Grian consume the potion.

Once Mumbo made sure Grian drank every last drop, he softly released Grian’s chin, letting his face fell back softly.

There was a belated, blurry moment where Grian realized he enjoyed Mumbo’s warm touch on his face.

Falling back into the bed pillows, exhausted, Grian felt his eyes go heavy. It seemed that the healing potion Mumbo fed him had a drowsy side-effect, likely to encourage overnight healing. As sleepiness slowly ebbed over his brain, Grian watched as Mumbo cleaned up, the warm light from the nearby lantern seeming to frame Mumbo in an entirely new perspective.

Who knew Mumbo would have such good bedside manners as a doctor, Grian thought lazily.

“You can sleep here for tonight,” Mumbo said. “I wouldn’t want you flying around in the dark now anyway. Your wings will be okay, they just need some time to heal a bit.”

Oh. Yeah.

“My wings,” Grian whined softly. “They look so damaged...”

“No,” Mumbo cut in gently. “Your wings will be back to beautiful once you rest up for a bit. I promise. You’ll be back to flying in no time, don’t worry.”

“They’re so ugly now,” Grian lamented miserably.

“They don’t,” Mumbo insisted. “You look beautiful right now, Grian, I promise. Now go to sleep.”

Grian knew damn well he was in no good-looking shape. He could still feel the dirt on his face and the way his hair was still curled and messy from crashing. But he was too tired to open his mouth and argue against Mumbo, so Grian let his eyes shut, the last thought drfiting in his mind being:

He thinks I’m beautiful.

After that, Grian could only ever see the tender side to Mumbo.

After nursing him back to health, Grian had thanked him countless times, with Mumbo simply giving him a kind smile and insisting it was no problem. From then on, Grian could only ever see that gentleness in Mumbo, and remember the way he tended to his wounds and cleaned his wings and held his face that night. The kindness and way he had jumped up immediately to take care of Grian. The gentleness and how he soothed his pain.

So maybe to other Hermits, they know Mumbo as a clumsy, bumbling human being.

But to Grian, he knows him as someone tender, undescribed.

#hermitcraft shipping #hermitshipping #grian #mumbo jumbo #grian x mumbo jumbo #grumbo #fanfic

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amiedala · 3 years

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Something More (the mandalorian x reader)

CHAPTER 4: Protectors

Rated: Explicit (we’re FINALLY getting to the actual explicit stuff y’all!)

Warnings: descriptions of violence, mentions of stalking/hunting, descriptions of sexual activity

Summary: “Too bad,” you manage, finally, hoping that your voice doesn’t break, “you protect me, I protect you, give and take, Mando, that’s how this works—”

And then you stop because his hands are on you. So fast. Lightning quick. One grabs at your side, thumb pressing lightly against where your scar bottoms out on the left of your abdomen, the other on the right side of your face, fingers tangled in the mess of your hair. You gasp, shudder, and breathe out as he grabs you. As easily as he squeezes, though, his grip detracts to barely there at all, and he slowly pushes you back against the wall. Every nerve on your body is on fire. You breathe, uneven and desperate, as his grip on your hip trails up your side until he has both big hands cupped against your face.

He’s eclipsing you. All you can see in your line of vision is him, and, peripherally, the distorted reflection of your heaving chest pressed up against the cool beskar, everything swallowed up by him. It’s devastating. It’s everything. You can barely breathe.

You dream about him that night.

Well, you’ve dreamed of him every night. It started when you fell asleep face to face, and now he lives in your head. You think some crucial part of it has been wiped clean simply for the sheer space of memory that’s just him. You don’t even know his name. You don’t know how old he is. You don’t know anything about him except that he’s a Mandalorian, he seems to have had adopted the child, and that he has thrown himself directly in harm’s way for you twice now.

Thoughts like that live on while you sleep. Vibrantly so. Sometimes, the dream changes and you’re on top of him, or those huge hands are inside you, or you hear him gritting out your name through the modulator as he—

Somehow, you always seem to wake up before anything in the dream can finish. It’s maddening, to say the very least. Everything with him seems to overlap until it doesn’t.

It’s been a handful of days since your narrow escape on Coruscant, and both of you have healed from your injuries on the planet’s surface. You haven’t been as close to Mando since you slept face to face that night, his head slipped down on your shoulder. When you had woken in the morning, he was gone, and you frantically searched the entirety of the bottom half of the ship for any trace of him leaving before you heard him playing with the baby up the ladder, and when you ascended into the cockpit, you were back in hyperspace.

You’d been in the air for the most part, only stopping briefly down on planets to refuel and replenish whatever stock of food the three of you needed on the ship. You weren’t sure where you were going next. You don’t even remember asking him where the next planet was, just that you knew you were going somewhere. The two tracking fobs he had left to complete before returning the bounties to the Guild blinked from the dashboard, stuttering out of rhythm ever so slightly. You watched them in the dark, sometimes, when you slept upstairs in the cockpit and tried your best to not let your mind wander to the man sleeping a level below you.

Sometimes, more often than not now, your hands would slip absentmindedly into your pants and you’d find yourself conjuring up the gruffness of the Mandalorian’s voice when you touched yourself. Twice now, you’ve finished to the memory of him saying, “where did he hurt you”, and it’s an instinct so natural you don’t even realize that you’re getting yourself off to the rhythm of his words until you’re done. Once, he climbed the ladder almost immediately after you finished, and you had to wipe the warm slick off your fingers on your pants when he asked you to hold the baby. They’re still stained, and the thought of him noticing it—or walking in on you while you’re in the act—has occupied almost all of your waking hours.

It’s better on ruminating on how narrowly you escaped getting hurt by the thug a few weeks back, or on your mind reliving every single memory of how badly you handled being alone on Coruscant the last time you were there—two thoughts that you tried very hard to push away—until the Mandalorian brings it up, almost a full week later.

“You did good,” he says, and you have no idea what he means. For a split second, you think he’s talking about you touching yourself last night, and you have to stifle a yelp when you ask him what he means. “Back on Coruscant. The ship doesn’t handle easy.”

“Oh,” you say, “thank you. I think the Crest has something against me.”

He doesn’t laugh, but you almost think you’re hearing a lighter voice coming through the modulator. “It’s old.”

“As old as me?”

He looks back at you, and you swear you can feel his gaze locked on you again. “How old are you?”

You swallow. “Twenty-five.”

The Mandalorian keeps his visor on you for a second, and then turns back to the front, focusing on the space you’re hurtling through.

“The ship is older than you,” he confirms.

“Explains why it’s so cranky.”

He looks back at you, and you giggle. A few moments pass, and he says, “so am I.”

You don’t know what you’re supposed to do with that information, quite honestly. Are you supposed to ask him how old he is? Maybe he’s seventy under the armor. Until you saw his stomach back on Coruscant, you often wondered if he looked exactly like the baby under there, or if he was a Quarren or a Gungan or something else entirely alien.

It takes you a minute, but you finally ask, “Are you younger than the ship?”

“No.”

“Are you twice the ship’s age?”

The Mandalorian looks back at you again, and if you weren’t hurtling through hyperspace and the Razor Crest wasn’t mostly running on autopilot, you would have cracked a joke about distracted driving.

“No.”

“But you’re older than the baby,” you joke.

He pauses again. “The kid is fifty.”

“What?” you shriek, and turn, betrayed, to the little green child hovering innocently in his egg next to you. He coos. You look back and forth between them, incredulous, and then a laugh filters out of the modulator.

“I don’t know how he ages. But he’s definitely still a baby.”

“Maker,” you say, still flummoxed. “Baby, you don’t look a day over thirty.” He coos at you, and you grin, folding your knees up to your chest in the chair.

“The kid is older than me,” Mando says, and then all attention is on him again.

“Well,” you manage, “then we’re working with a gap of twenty-five years.”

It seems the conversation is over, and you’ve been preoccupied with the kid, when Mando finally speaks again.

“I don’t know,” he says, and you look at him, curious, confused, “how old I am exactly.”

You’re about to ask what he means when the ship lurches again, and both of you are thrown sideways. You had strapped yourself in this time. You didn’t want a repeat of Coruscant, in any capacity. The way the Crest handled was atrocious. It was an old, cantankerous piece of junk, and it seemed to defy every other order either of you gave it. It also decided to blindside you out of nowhere, which was… well, it was like both your dirty subconscious and your conversations with Mando that teetered on something more, right before you hit the impact. Mando hauled the navigation drive up, and suddenly you were all right side up again.

“What was that?” You manage, blowing rogue hair out of your face.

He pointed. “Asteroid field.”

You squinted out the window. “Where are we?”

The Mandalorian was silent for a minute, and you didn’t push him. You weren’t in any rush for him to leave again, if you were being quite honest with yourself, and were soaking in all the tiny moments of the two of you cohabitating the ship for as long as you possibly could.

“Jakku.”

You hadn’t ever been on Jakku. You knew that it was a dry, hot wasteland like Tatooine, but that all the Rebel connections here had dried up over the years, and it had lots of small outposts where scavengers could bring practically anything dug up from the sand to make a little money. It was also worlds away from Coruscant, which was probably why it had taken so long to get here. Truthfully, it sounded dangerous in ways that you’d always feared the heat for, and your stomach flipped over a little in the recognition that he was probably going to leave again. You had been so spoiled with the last few missions—they had taken hours, and not one had swallowed up a full day, let alone weeks. He had warned you when you first joined that he could be gone for a week if he were tracking someone particularly difficult to locate, and the small sadness that pained in your gut when you barely knew Mando was a blip compared to the wrench you felt whenever he left your line of sight now. Seeing him get hurt, having to pull him back from that—you hated it. You hated knowing that he wasn’t infallible, regardless of that big shiny armor and the combination of his stealth and quickness. You wanted to tell him it, sometimes, that you hated seeing him leave, but there was still that anxious twang that came attached to how deeply you felt every single interaction, how you make things out of nothing, and you don’t think you could take it if he ever rejected you.

“Is the bounty…difficult?”

Mando seems to deliberately not hear your question, and something flares deep inside you, allowing you to pretend his resistance is because he doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t want to leave you, either, but you swallow and try to be patient.

“Not as difficult as the last one.”

“How dangerous is he?”

Mando takes a second with that one, too, and you aren’t prepared for him to turn towards you. His visor pauses on you, just for a moment, and you offer up a half smile. You have no idea if he’s reciprocating under the mask, when he finally answers.

“She’s nothing I can’t handle.”

She? That tiny, betrayed part of your mind screams, and you have to fight the urge to physically kick away your jealousy. He’s hunting her. Hunting her down, whoever she is, and bringing her back to the ship in shackles. Stop it, you chastise yourself, what, do you want him to hunt you down? Get it together.

Yes, your traitorous, primal possessiveness taunts. Yes, you want him to hunt you.

Maker. You were going to have to square up with this needy, animalistic part of yourself the second Mando left. You were going to kick its ass, because this was absolutely ridiculous—you still hadn’t responded to his last comment.

“You’re objectively…better than her, right?”

He looks back at you. “Expand.”

“You aren’t going to get shot again?”

Mando’s gaze fixates on you yet again. You swallow dry air.

“A blaster’s not really her speed.”

What did that mean?

The baby babbles. He’s reaching out his tiny green fingers for the ball that rests, perennially unscrewed, on top of one of the levers. Absentmindedly, Mando pops it off and hands it to him. The baby coos as he plays with it, trying to teethe on its smooth metal surface. You watch him as he finds so much joy from one small object, not paying attention to how quickly the Crest is dropping onto Jakku’s wasteland surface.

You don’t say much. Mando doesn’t say anything. If you try hard, really hard, you can imagine that he’s regretting leaving you and the kid as much as you’re dreading it. You don’t know why you can’t voice any of this out loud. It should be easy, by now, you’ve pretty much become a permanent fixture here. He fell asleep with his head on your shoulder, your fingers intertwined, a few nights ago. He’s offering voluntary information about himself to you now, which is a complete 180 from how stoic in his silence he was when he first brought you on board. He offered up safe delivery out of Nevarro and then refused to let you leave the ship anywhere dangerous. He let you fix a wound on his bare skin—something you know goes against the rumored Mandalorian creed. There’s all these signs, blinking and humming in the back of your mind, that the way you feel around him—something earned, something real, something more—is mutual. You know you attach big stakes to everything, that you think the galaxy has been leaving you signs, when there’s no higher power orienting you to some elevated purpose. But the way the air burns around him, how right you feel with Mando and the baby…you’d bet your life that he felt it too.

Even just a fraction. Even just in the back of his mind.

When you make your landing, the ship stubbornly creaks into the uneven sand, and you’re glad you’re still strapped in. The Crest had it out for you. You loved it in the way you’d love an old house—broken and creaky around the edges, but warm enough to still call home. The Mandalorian didn’t ask you to follow him down the ladder this time, but you did anyway, out of some habit you’re trying to force. The baby toddles around the lower deck as he flings himself to his father’s shoes, and you scrunch up your lips to the side, a sore attempt at mimicking his expression. You can’t ask Mando not to leave. This is his job. You’re lucky he didn’t let you get taken out by either of the men that tried to hurt you, or leave you for dead on Nevarro, or kick you out on Coruscant.

But stars, you want to.

Somehow, he breaks the silence first. “I’ll be back within a few days.”

Your heart sinks. “Days?”

He looks at you, the visor suddenly impenetrable. “She’s dodgy. I’m not expecting to be gone more than three.”

“What if you are?”

Silence swells up in the air around you both. Your amateur handling of the Razor Crest on the last planet was only possible because you barely had to get anywhere. Jakku was huge, and incredibly desolate, and you didn’t trust yourself enough to figure out exactly where Mando was if there was a dire emergency. And he’d never told you what kind of quarry he was tracking before, which gave you a sinking suspicion that he wasn’t confident that he’d come back completely unscathed.

“Here,” he says, finally. His voice is softer through the modulator. He hands you the commlink again, and you wrap it around your wrist, intentional. “Remember—”

“Only for emergencies?” you interrupt, and give him a soft smile. You can be lenient. You can pretend that you won’t be staring at it for days on end, waiting for his deep voice to crackle across the stars to you.

“Good girl.”

He turns, quickly, like ripping off a bandage, which is probably for the best, because you don’t want him to see your knees going weak at his two words, or how that heat he gives you rushed deep down in between your thighs, warm and wet enough to line your underwear. You stand there, mouth open, just gaping at his retreating figure as he walks out into the sand.

The baby pulls at your leg, and it takes you an embarrassingly long time to yank your jaw off the floor and pay attention to him. He’s started begging for lullabies now, with his big bug eyes, and so you oblige, singing past the devastation and tingling that the Mandalorian has left behind in his wake until the kid is finally asleep. You think he does it so much to self-soothe when his daddy leaves, because he’s usually always awake in his presence. You usually don’t like when the little guy fades off when it’s just the two of you, because at least while he’s awake you can talk out loud to him and not feel like you’re going crazy being cooped up inside the ship, but right now…right now, you have other priorities.

You make sure that the kid is sleeping soundly, and you walk up the ladder as quietly as you can, trying to get snug under your blankets in the makeshift bed you’ve made in the corner, and when you finally get yourself comfortable, you play the words good girl over and over again in your mind while you slip your fingers down your pants and into the slick between your legs. You try to picture him in your mind, the way he looks under that mask, his eyes trained on you—what color were they?—and rub tight little circles to the sound of his voice, etched in your memory.

Nothing comes. You can feel it building inside you, that gold rush that sends sparks down your body when you usually orgasm, but right now, it’s like you’re teetering right on the edge. You throw your head back in desperation, in frustration, and you remove your shaking hand for just a second to refocus on him, and when your fingers return to your clit you think this is it, this has to be it—Nothing.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” you exclaim, pressing both hands to your eyes as if the stars to explode there instead. You can feel it building, still, even while there’s absolutely nothing in the way, and no matter what happens, you can’t cum.

You’re frustrated. You’re very frustrated. In every version of the word. You huff, yanking up your pants too roughly and pacing around the ship’s dark hull. This is all you’ve wanted for days, this small moment of release, and he just gave you the words to get yourself off by just thinking about it, and…nothing? Really?

You pace and then slide back down the ladder. Maybe you can get outside, just for a few seconds, feel the heat on your face, and maybe that’ll force it to come somewhere else, and you’re tiptoeing past the baby and getting your blaster from the armory, and then you pass the alcove where Mando’s cot is hidden away in, and you’re about to open the airlock—

Wait. Mando’s bed.

Your heart catches in your chest, skips a couple beats. This is not good. This is wrong. This is a horrible, dirty, depraved, very bad idea.

But before you can stop yourself, you’ve pressed your trembling fingers to the button that reveals his bed, and the doors fly open. You throw yourself in quickly, as if that’ll lessen the impact, and you throw yourself down on your back, looking at the ceiling.

It’s so dark in here. It smells like him. It’s like his soap has scrubbed down the bed, the way it’s wafting through the air. In here, it’s like a holding chamber. If you close your eyes hard enough, you can imagine he’s right there with you, his body large and uncloaked of armor, his skin exposed everywhere but the helmet, his hands on your hips while you’re straddling him like you did the other day to patch up his wound, him saying good girl as he moves inside you—

Well. Your fingers didn’t even have to slip back into your pants for you to cum this time.

You bite down on the back of your hand as it ripples through you, your ears absolutely deafened by the way your body vibrates like static. You clap your other hand over the one you’ve sunk your teeth into to simply drown out the sound in hopes that it’ll recede.

It takes probably five minutes. You sit there, in complete darkness, shell-shocked. The embarrassment and the shame you feel of getting off in someone else’s bed doesn’t even compare to the feeling of doing it. Maker, you’re going to bad places when you die. Bad, dark, awful places. The internal chastising you’re trying valiantly to give yourself fades off into the background as you relive it over and over, imagining him telling you you’re a good girl again, back in this bed, wearing considerably less, when he comes back to you. Visions of him telling he’ll never leave you again dance through your head when, suddenly, you fade off into nothing.

You didn’t mean to fall asleep. You don’t remember doing it.

But you wake up, and you’re still in Mando’s bed. You’ve pulled his blanket up around your shoulders, and it’s rough and tattered compared to yours, but you don’t even care. Your skin easily irritates when it’s against fabric that hurts, but you’ll take on the rash for this. You are so snug, so warm, and then it hits you that you’re sleeping in his bed, the same bed that you came all over last night, and you sit up in a panic.

You check the sheets, and there’s no mess. You haven’t really disturbed the bed at all, really, come to think of it. You lay back down, still groggy with sleep. He said he was going to take a few days. There’s no reason why you couldn’t sleep here tonight, too, maybe you’d even take the baby in here with you—

The baby. You shoot back up in a panic, suddenly completely awake. When you throw open the door, and launch yourself out of the bed, you find him toddling around on the floor, with that little silver ball he loves so much in his adorable stubby fingers.

“Baby.”

He turns to look at you, making noises of recognition when you fall out of his father’s bed, and you pick him up, swinging his tiny green body through the air.

He coos at you, pulling on the blanket that is somehow still around your shoulders. Dank ferrik. That wasn’t supposed to come with you. You gingerly pry it from his grip. He looks at you, back at the blanket that’s been put back into the alcove, and then his big eyes well up and he starts to cry.

“No,” you whisper, and then, louder, “no, it’s okay, baby! You don’t need to cry! I’ll—here, I’ll sing you some nice little tunes, and we can dance—”

At this, he wails even harder, and you wipe away the array of tears with your free hand. He claws towards something, and you pull him into your chest before you realize he wants the blanket. You pull it back out and drape it around his tiny body. “Hey, bug, it’s okay.” You swaddle him the best you can, and then he wipes his tiny nose against the tattered thing, and you try to pull it away before you realize he’s not wiping his nose. He’s sniffing the blanket. The blanket that smells like his dad. And, more recently, you.

“It’s okay,” you say, soothingly, swinging him from side to side, bringing those big eyes in towards the crook of your shoulder. He clings to it, just a little, but it’s enough to know he wants to stay nestled up there. “You miss your daddy, huh, sweetness?”

He coos, muffled, against your neck.

“Me too,” you admit, with no one but the kid and the dark hull of the Crest to hear you.

Another day passes. Then another. You’re starting to go a little stir crazy. If Jakku didn’t scare you, you would have gone outside and taken the baby for a little walk, but you’re still nervous, jumpy leftovers from the last man who had boarded the ship, not to mention that it’s a desert, foreboding wasteland everywhere you could possibly go. You bring him outside at least once a day, though, not even fully on the ground, just down the gangplank, so that you can both have some fresh air and touch something that isn’t shiny metal or whatever scraps of food you’ve been feeding to you both.

You like the baby. Love him. He rocks. He’s the cutest thing in the entire world. You had sworn off starting a family back when your parents died, because missing them hurt too much and you didn’t want another possibility to make that hurt permanent, but you would sign adoption papers tomorrow if you meant you got to care for the little one forever. His dad was just the bonus, you’d almost convinced yourself, to satiate that hungry, aching, nervous pit in your stomach that grows bigger and bigger every hour Mando’s still not back.

You’ve cleaned the interior of the ship. Three times. Yesterday, you used the fresher twice, simply for the acoustics of that room, so you could sing and pretend you were giving a show at a cantina, and okay, maybe a little bit for the smell of Mando’s soap on your skin.

His bed is much more uncomfortable than the nest you’d been sleeping in on the floor, but it smells like him, and it’s warm, and if you close your eyes and push up against the wall, you can imagine it’s him in the beskar enough to get you to sleep. Worry aside, you’ve slept better the past two nights than you have in what feels like years. It’s partly because you’re imagining he’s there, partly because you know you’re safe in here, and partly because this place feels more like home than any other one you’ve ever belonged to.

You’re starting to get worried, though. You know he insisted that the commlink was only for emergencies, and you didn’t want to distract him on his mission. Or bother him, more likely, the Mandalorian wasn’t a man who got distracted easily, but still, you thought about it. Distracting him. The baby wakes up sometimes, and you pretend to be completely engrossed in attending to his every need, because when he falls asleep or shows more interest in his ball than you, the silence and fear creeps back in.

Another day passes before you’ve gone on long enough without hearing word.

“Hey,” you whisper into the commlink. You’re in his bed. Again. You’re not proud of it, but you can’t pry yourself from it. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but—it’s been four days, and she’s dangerous, and I—the baby misses you.”

You press the button. You hope that’s sufficient. You just sit there, staring at the artificial light in the darkness, tummy flipping over every second that passes where you don’t hear from him.

It’s been full minutes, and you lay back down. You pull his itchy blanket up to your shoulder, huddle on your side. You’ll keep your wrist next to you in sleep, so he can talk in your ear and wake you up if he needs to—

“Are you there?”

His voice is quiet. Through the modulator and the link, you have to strain your ears in the vibrating nothingness to make out the shape of his words.

“I’m here,” you answer. It spills out of you, too fast.

“No emergencies,” he says, and you can feel your cheeks flush with the reprimand before you realize it sounds more like reassurance.

“No emergencies here either,” you manage. “The baby is still as cute as ever. You parked near a good radio station. I’ve been singing to him—”

“Careful,” he warns, and your heartbeat quickens before you can ask what. “The first word that comes out of his mouth is going to be sung, not spoken.”

You giggle, the air cutting through the darkness. “Would that be so bad?”

He’s silent for a minute, and you relax back into his pillow, the commlink pressed up against your face.

“I don’t think I could handle having both of you singing,” he says, and his voice rumbles through you in a way you can’t place until you remember the baby is fifty and hasn’t even spoken his first word yet. The Mandalorian is signing on for years with you, then, maybe full-on decades, maybe for life, with how slowly the kid progresses—you have to bite down on your lip.

“Maybe I’ll shut up when he starts.”

You can hear him shifting. He’s still so quiet. You wonder where he is. You wonder if he’s gotten close to his bounty yet, if she’s anywhere near him—that unfairly jealous part of you roils in your belly, and you push your fist into it as if to shove back the unreasonable thought.

“That’d be a shame,” he finally says.

“Do you like my singing?”

He’s quiet again. You listen through the silence. He speaks so sporadically, it shouldn’t surprise you, but being in anticipation of what comes next is almost as good as the words themselves. “I like your voice.”

Your voice. That could mean anything. That could mean your singing in the shower or the questions you ask him or the way he makes you giggle or the way you’d moan out his name, if you were ever lucky enough to learn it—you realize you haven’t spoken. “I like yours, too.”

He’s quiet. He doesn’t speak again. You know how late it is. “Have you slept?” you ask, quietly, just in case he’s fallen asleep.

“A bit.” You can hear him adjusting. “I’m close to town. I tracked her here.”

You nod, forgetting he can’t see you. “When do you think you’ll be ba—will have completed the mission?” you ask. You bite your lip in the surrounding silence.

“By sunrise,” he says. “You better fall asleep. I want you both awake when I return to the ship.”

Your stomach flips over in excitement, then in dread. “Do I have to hide from her?”

He’s silent. You slide your thumbnail between your teeth, breath bated in anticipation of his answer.

“Just be ready,” he finally says. “Don’t hide unless I tell you to.”

“I’ll anticipate it,” you counter. “I’ll be awake at sunrise.”

“Set an alarm.” His voice is quick, but you can feel the lightness to it. “Or three.”

“I’ll have you know,” you say sleepily, “that I can be wide awake at the first alarm when I need to be—”

“And,” he adds, interrupting you, “stay near my bed in case you do need to hide.”

Before you can say anything in response to that, the link clicks off. You’re in the darkness, again, that swell in your legs, the buzzing in your ears, the excitement in your heart. The last thing you remember before you fall back asleep is, he’s coming home.

Your name comes from seemingly nowhere, and you jolt up from where you’ve been sleeping. Very comfortably. You wipe sleep from your eyes as you fumble around from the source of it.

It’s the commlink. Of course.

“I’m here,” you manage, through your very groggy morning voice.

“I’m almost back.”

You dig a heel of your hand into your eye before all the moving parts click together in your mind. That’s Mando’s voice, and it must be close to sunrise, because if he’s heading back, he’s definitely got the bounty.

“I—where should I go?”

You don’t hear anything for a long moment, and you hurriedly slide out of his bed, trying to arrange the blanket and pillow in the same formation that it was before you defiled it, and can’t remember enough what it looked like almost five days before but you hope that Mando’s memory has been distracted enough by his hunt that he won’t notice. You find the baby, place him back in his egg, and shake your head firmly when he gives you his big eyes pleading to get down.

“Where are you?”

You sleepily survey your surroundings. “I am against the wall.”

He sighs. “Which wall?”

“The one across from the fresher. Near your bed.” You feel your cheeks flush with that admission, even though he can’t possibly know that you’ve holed up in there since he’s been gone.

“And the baby?”

“He’s beside me.” You pull your gun out, too, and loosely holster it in the belt around your leg. “And I have my blaster.”

“Good,” he says, and no girl follows it, and despite the circumstances, you feel a twang of sadness.

“How close are you?”

The link goes silent. Again. It’s become his modus operandi to just leave you in the lurch, right when you’re on the edge of the conversation, and while it’s hard to get frustrated with him when that pull of sureness inside you is always tuned to the highest frequency, you want to whine about it.

You cut yourself off. Nope. He’s bringing back a bounty. You cannot get distracted, not now, no matter how bad you want him. Not the time. On a whim, you run into the fresher and you splash water on your face, enough to wake you up and keep you alert.

There’s a noise outside the ship, and you immediately push the baby’s floating cradle behind you, fingers on your blaster. You could handle whatever was happening. You actually had your fingers on something tangible, and you were a good shot when it came down to it.

It turns out, the reason why the Mandalorian didn’t tell you how soon he’d be coming back because he was already pretty much there. You tense, then relax upon the first glimpse of the beskar on his helmet you got, and then tens again when the gangplank is lowered down to the hot sand of Jakku.

She…looks dangerous. She’s a Twi’lek. Long, and slim, a very dangerous shade of purple. The first thing you notice isn’t how alien she looks in comparison to the sand around the gangplank, or how she moves with a confident, seductive swagger, but the way her tongue dances in circles around her teeth. Her canines are sharp, pointed, hungry.

You didn’t scare easily. You had worked hundreds of jobs with people who had every intention to double-cross and discard you. You faced off against the intruder on the ship with your only instinct to protect the baby in mind, not your own safety. That’s why Mando had brought you aboard.

But you look at her, and you’re scared. It’s her teeth and the way her eyes lock onto you, immediately, dangerously, like she knows she could intimidate you. And then probably flog you within an inch of your life and leave you for dead. You’d been there before. You knew how it looked.

“What do we have here?” she purrs, turning around to face Mando. He shoves her, once, roughly, and she steps forward so that his blow won’t hit as hard, tongue tracing the outline of her teeth. “You got yourself a little pet.”

Your eyes glance in fear to the baby, but the way he looks back at you makes you realize that she was talking about you, not the kid. You thumb your blaster, stepping forward, trying to remain impervious.

“Hello, there,” she whispers, and you could feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You didn’t want to look away from her—you can just tell, instinctually, that she could strike instantaneously, just lying in wait for a moment of weakness—but you can’t help it. You look at Mando, hoping your raised eyebrow signals your fear and your level of discomfort, and the way his visor locks on you is enough to know he had calculated the risk and knew he could beat her. His hand is still outstretched, slightly, as she meanders over to you.

“Look, Mando,” she hisses, pointing back and forth between the two of you. Instinctually, you push the baby’s cradle back even further, putting your full hand on your blaster. You glance up at him again, and then catch a flash in the low light of the ship, and realize she’s handcuffed. Even shackled, though, you can see how her sharp teeth glint, how her eyes hold venom you’d never even seen. “Have you taken your helmet off for her yet?”

He stands there. You have absolutely no idea what you were in the middle of, but suddenly, it felt like you were the outsider here, not her. Your stomach flipped over with the possibilities. Had he taken his helmet off for the bounty? Had he betrayed his creed for her? You swallow, grit your teeth, loading your tongue behind them just in case whatever she gave you next could be responded to.

“She’s pretty,” she appraises, tongue finding her canine, and before you can react, she lunges close to your face, close enough that you can feel the hot wash of air, clicking her teeth menacingly right in front of your nose. You don’t jump, but the flinch of closing your eyes felt bad enough. You knew it was the wrong move the second your eyes squeezed shut. “Aw, look at that.” She sniffs. You don’t move. “She scares like a little Ewok, Mando, is that why you keep her locked away on the ship—"

Suddenly, a flash of beskar moves through the air between you two, and the Twi’lek is snapped back, recoiling and hissing at how hard he hit her.

“I don’t need to remind you that I have no issue bringing you in cold.”

You recoil at that, how detached and distorted his voice seems. You know that the modulator evens it out, for the most part, and that you tend to imagine his voice comes out softer and warmer to you than anyone else. But right now? Right now, his voice is stone cold. He sounds murderous. Dangerous. Scary. The kind of threat that scared off the man on Nevarro. The kind of threat that you know he gives to his bounties. The kind of threat he’s never once showed to you.

You swallow.

“I dare you,” the Twi’lek says, and she turns from you, just for a second, to slide up to him. So much of her skin is reflected in the beskar that it’s turning the entirety of the interior of the Crest purple. “Try to kill me. We both know you need me, whether you like it or not, that I’m still the best you’ve ever had—”

Before you can react, before you can do anything, the Mandalorian has a knife against her throat. You have no idea where it comes from. You want to react, to say something, to not sit there bumbling like a faulty droid, but you’ve got nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

“Slice me with my knife,” she whispers, taunting him. “Do it. Put on a show for your little weakling girlfriend behind me and kill me. We both know you can’t—”

You unfreeze, suddenly, so quickly that you don’t realize what you’re doing, until you yank her slender shoulder back away from the knife Mando has in his grip and shove her headfirst into the carbonite chamber. She howls, but you press the button—that’s your one move, slamming your hands against things and miraculously making them work in the moment of truth—and her terrifying, hungry face gets swallowed up in the gas. You shove her backwards—well, the block of her—so that it slams into the other bounties that have been frozen in time in between your last trip to Nevarro, and it’s only when you’re sure she’s completely immobilized that you finally exhale, hands on your knees, chest heaving. The world around you is spinning. You check your arms and throat frantically, just to make sure she didn’t nick you with something sharp while you were frozen.

When your breathing regulates, and all your bumps and bruises only tally up evenly to the ones you had before today, you look up at Mando. He’s seemingly stuck, too, the sharp knife still in his gloved hand, completely immobile. You tap his outstretched hand to be sure you didn’t accidentally catch him with your fairly heroic carbonite rescue, and he only becomes responsive to your touch on his gloved one.

“Hey,” you say, softly, to not startle him anymore, “I’m okay—are you? Are you okay?”

“Thank you,” he says, gruffly, his fingers still clenched tight around the knife that came out of nowhere, and you just know that underneath his glove, his knuckles are white. You can hear it in his voice.

“What—oh. You’re welcome. I’m sorry I didn’t react sooner, that I let her go on like that—”

“I was going to kill her.” Even through the modulator, you can hear there’s something complicating his voice. You move forward, gently, trying to pry his fingers off the knife. Your body is so close to his, your neck straining as you look up from his hand to his helmet. You don’t know why this is so difficult for him to reconcile, when you’ve seen him take out at least twenty people, easily, since you came aboard. You don’t like the killing, but you understand his necessity, sometimes, and his disconnect from it. It’s what he does, it’s his job, his survival. You don’t know why this one was so different. “If you didn’t—I was going to slit her throat.”

You’re the one who’s silent, now. You have absolutely no idea what to say, especially considering that him needing solace over the thought of killing someone—not even actually killing them—is completely foreign to you. You inhale, exhale, and then take a half-step closer, moving his last finger off the knife. “You didn’t,” you whisper, earnest, slipping the knife out of his grip and reaching in closely behind him to put it safely in the armory. “You didn’t.”

He looks at you. Up and down. It’s dark in here, but you can track his visor. You have absolutely no idea what’s going on behind it. Despite all of this, despite the way you had both been moving in sync lately, despite how you felt the magnetic pull of the universe with him, he just went radio silent. None of this seemed in character. For the first time since you met him, you felt like you were in over your head.

“I was going to,” he repeats, and you nod, slowly. “She’s not worth anything to the Guild dead, but I would have done it in a second—”

“—You didn’t,” you interrupt, enunciating each syllable, “it’s okay, you can turn her in frozen like that, and we can get far away from her, you don’t have to be—”

“—to protect you.”

You come to a full stop, breath catching in your throat.

“I would have spilled her guts all over the floor in front of you—in front of my kid—to protect you. And then you protected me instead.”

You can feel your mouth falling open in shock. The baby, funnily enough, has decided to move his floating egg upstairs, and you’re glad he’s getting out of the line of fire. You swallow, looking back at Mando. “I did.”

“That’s not your job.”

You have whiplash. His voice has gone from detached to emotional to brash. You have no idea what you’re supposed to say to that, to say to any of this. You feel a familiar, dizzying rush, the beginnings of tears pinpricking at the corners of your eyes.

“Too bad,” you manage, finally, hoping that your voice doesn’t break, “you protect me, I protect you, give and take, Mando, that’s how this works—”

“That’s not your job,” he repeats, but now his voice is almost as ragged as yours is, and so you nod.

His helmet comes forward, slightly, and he presses it into your forehead. “What is my job?” you squeak out, trying to not go cross-eyed as you try to catch any glimpse of his eyes under the visor. You can’t, so you close yours, in desperate anticipation.

He removes his helmet from against your forehead, and you sway forward, already missing his grip against you, until, suddenly, his head is in the hollow of your neck. Your breathing hitches again. You try your very best to not imagine what his voice would sound like without the modulator, what his lips would feel like pressed up against your skin, when his hand drops from your chin and trails back down your body, past your scar, past the bruises on your belly, and then it pauses.

“To take mine,” he grits out, his voice swelling up against the skin of your ear, and then your body slumps against the wall, and before you can beg for it, for anything, his hand rises, meeting you in the middle, fingers fitting perfectly between your thighs.

***

IF YOU WANT TO BE ON A TAGLIST FOR EVERY CHAPTER, PLEASE REPLY TO THIS POST OR SEND ME AN ASK WITH YOUR URL! i’m not sure exactly how to do this, so i will try my very best to get it up and running from here on out (and if anyone has any advice send me an ask or DM me!) <3

(and if you don’t want to be on the taglist and i’ve tagged you here, please just message me!)

CHAPTER 5 COMING SATURDAY JANUARY 23RD EST!!!! i hope y’all enjoy!!!

#early update <3 #something more #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian fanfic #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #fanfiction #mando x you #mando x reader #smut #reader insert

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year2000electronics · 3 years

Text

Malcom Challender and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Day

(just a little goofy ficlet set after episode 2 bc i wrote day 11 when i wasnt feeling very good about myself so i think my cool and awesome sona should be able to hang out with vils cool friends :^) )

The sun shone through the crack in Malcom’s windows, and he waved off the pigons that had somehow slipped into his apartment- as they often did, with his bird-whisperer of a roommate around. He swore it was like Player let them in on purpose sometimes. He squinted, avoiding the light as he transferred himself from his bed to his wheelchair, kicking the brake back in.

...Yes, he slept in his clothes. Don’t lie! You do it too, sometimes!

Malcom made his way into the kitchen, pouring himself a bowl of cereal. He pondered to himself where his housemates had gone off to, but he decided against questioning where they went. They were more active than he was, certainly- Player, when he wasn’t feeding the birds in some park, was off using his gym membership or playing bingo with some old ladies. Darnold was probably attaching rocket boosters to things that weren’t supposed to have rocket boosters.

And they were both video game characters that had become real.

God, Malcom’s life was fucking weird.

He could at least take the day to relax- after all, he didn’t have a stream until the weekend. Summer was right around the corner, which meant he could start using all his outdoor gimmicks for streams. Neo had even suggested doing a carnival stream! How would that even WORK?!

He shrugged it off. Malcom was sure Neo had some crazy ideas in his head, anyways. That was just how the dude worked.

Malcom’s thoughts were interrupted by a loud banging on his dining room window. His head jerked up in surprise when he heard some especially loud banging. Someone was… knocking on his window? From THIS high up?!

And it was…

No.

No fucking way.

That beautifully-styled curly brown hair. That signature sleazy moustache. That suave all-black ensemble. That surprisingly sleek ship they rode.

CAPITAL M?!

They said… well, they said something. Malcom couldn’t hear them through the window.

Both of them paused for an incredibly awkward while, until eventually, Malcom quietly rolled the window down.

“As I was SAYING. HELLO, GAMER BOY! AS YOU CAN SEE, I HAVE CAPTURED YOUR PRECIOUS FRIENDS!” Mothra shouted, cackling.

Malcom was… unimpressed. All there was were a bunch of birds flying around the ship, with some of them landing near Malcom in a panic.

“Why the hell are you BACK? And second of all, is this some kinda fucked up psychological warfare to say I don’t have friends?! I do have friends, asshole! I have good traits! I know cos my therapist told me!” Malcom shouted in a huff.

“Oh- No, these are- Okay-” Capital M fumbled, hauling a giant, futuristic-looking gun out of vil’s storage compartment. “So first of all, I was just at a resort. And some… people there got me back into the groove.”

“AND SECOND OF ALL!” He posed with the gun. “BEHOLD! MY GUN THAT TURNS PEOPLE INTO BIRDS!”

“AHAHAHAHA!”

“...Birds,” Malcom said in disbelief. He looked down at the birds currently waddling around on his table. They were… unremarkable. Of course they were, they were birds!

“Yes. Birds. It’s perfect cos Player will never allow it to be changed back. Ever.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

Malcom snorted.

“Yeah, well, what. Are you gonna turn every world leader into a bird so you can demand ransom or something?” He said flatly.

“That’s exactly it! PREPARE FOR A GLOBAL DEBT, MALCOM CHALLENDER!” Capital M proclaimed, pointing at him.

“That is…” Her face twisted into one of mischievous glee. “Unless someone were to… stop me…? Hmmm?”

Malcom sighed. “Dude.”

“We need to get you some superhero friends or something.”

“I am a TWITCH STREAMER. I have JOBS I do for MONEY. And I have NO POWERS.”

“PAH! You have your silly stupid power of friendship, don’t you?!”

“..Besides. I know for a fact you don’t stream today,” Mothra muttered.

“...Are you following me on Twitch…?”

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, gamer-boy.”

“AND NOW I DEPART!” Capital M shouted, flying off and leaving Malcom with a lot of birds.

“Great. So, uh, who’s who?” He asked the group. “...Nevermind that, actually. No way to tell.”

It was just then his phone rang.

‘DO NOT ANSWER is requesting FaceTime…’

Malcom sighed, picking it up as a squished-together group of scientists took over his entire screen.

“Hey, Doc. Half of us got turned into birds by Capital M,” Malcom said. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with this, would you?”

The mad scientist’s face lit up. “Birds?! Oh, splendid, splendid! They really are coming back with a bang!”

“I’d GREATLY prefer it if they came back with a bang elsewhere? Maybe to the universe where people actually have powers? Like the admins, maybe??” Malcom shouted, as one of the birds let out an angry tweet.

The taller, purple scientist behind Doc guffawed. “Sorry, man. You’re the biggest dork here, so you’re easy pickings. Maybe vil just likes you.”

“It’s a great honour to have a nemesis, you know!” Harold piped up.

“AND HOW!” Doc and Sleepless both chirped.

God, they were all such a happy family. It was contagious. BLECH.

“Either way, I’m not smart enough to make an anti-bird gun. So can you guys PLEASE come over and fix this mess?” Malcom said with a sigh.

“I WOULD like to see how Capital M is doing… When we parted ways, it seemed like things were off to a good start…” Bubby mused.

“Yeah, they’re real excited about this. Just like usual, I guess,” Malcom said with a chuckle.

“Hey, is B’s service cooperating? Can we get him over too?”

The old man shook his head. “I’m afraid his feed was more like… a mosaic.”

“Damn that 2002 phone he has,” Malcom grumbled. “Oh, well. I’m sure you guys can help just fine. C’mon over.”

“Will do! We’ll bring the arsenal of weapons, too!” Tommy said excitedly.

“Like my new invention, BETTER TOASTER!” Doc yelled, holding up a toaster with mechanical spider legs and what looked like a flamethrower.

“Or the evil saxophone!” Sleepless said, and Malcom knew that was his sign to log off, as he cut them off mid-note.

“Okay, Malcom. Your friends are birds and your other friends are Saturday morning cartoon villains. Wonderful.” He sighed, sitting back in his wheelchair.

“And your OTHER other friend sure has a weird way of showing their appreciation.”

He laughed.

“Damn, I love being me.”

#hlvrv

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hobiiwan · 4 years

Text

snow • dincember: day 1

pairing: the mandalorian x reader

summary: din's planet-hopping leads you, a desert local, to a planet with a perpetual winter.

warnings: frosty din djarin

word count: 800

notes: happy commencement of dincember!

For as long as you can remember, all you have ever known is sand. Coarse, scratchy sand. It followed you everywhere back home— in your hair, your shoes, stars, even your bed. Beige for as far as the eyes could see, and then more. The heat was never far behind, hugging tight to your skin and leaving you more often than not covered in a sheen of sweat.

It seemed inescapable, you were doomed to a life of eternal heat and desert dunes. That is, until the Mandalorian came along. One day the bounty hunter is hiring you to care for a child—a human child, you had quite wrongly assumed, and the next he’s the reason you’ve travelled to damn near all the corners of the galaxy. You’ve touched the skies and all for the fare of raising the galaxy’s cutest and possibly most curious child. Quite the bargain, if you say so yourself.

You wake to the alarm of the navcomp. It’s a sound you’ve grown accustomed to, within the near full year since Mando had picked you up. What jars you is how cold it is.

Stumbling into the cockpit with the Child balanced on your hip, your eyes adjust to the brightness greeting you. “Maker, Mando,” you whine, free hand rubbing along your arm in a poor attempt to find any semblance of warmth, “turn the damned heating on!”

He huffs, a sound akin to laughter, one you’ve only heard a handful of times. “It’s on full blast,” he says this time, “Put on some more clothes, we’re heading out.”

You find yourself a short while later bundled in almost your entire wardrobe as the Mandalorian clips one of his worn capes around your neck. “Stay close,” he says, visor lingering before he lowers the ramp.

You have to blink, not knowing what to make of the sight before you. It takes a second before you realise this is what made the cockpit so damn bright—this plain of pure white. Sure, you’ve spent your whole life on a desert planet but you know cold exists—dreamed of it, too.

You barrell down the ramp with purpose, diving head-first into the plush at your feet. Your knees sink and cold seeps straight through your trousers, but it hardly registers as you scoop up a handful of the snow and turn back to the ship.

“Mando!” You call, voice giddier than he’s ever heard it before. It registers that all this is probably anything but new to him. Regardless, you’re thrilled at finally seeing the complete opposite of the only thing you’ve known. “It’s snow.”

The flakes fall freely around you as you stick a hand out to catch some. The intricate patterns melt in your palms, collecting in pools of cold water. Mando joins you as he lowers the Child into the snow, who shrieks with rivalling enthusiasm.

The Mandalorian watches as you caper through the snow-covered field, the Child chasing after you with all its might, though tiny legs don’t get it far. He sees you pause briefly, bending down to scoop the kid into your arms before you plop down in the snow.

You’ve got crystals caught on your lashes, thawing with every blink as you stare up at the man. The sight of you radiating pure joy with the child hugged to your chest makes him thank all the entities out there for leading him to Tatooine— to you.

“I could stay here forever, Mando. You may as well just leave me here,” you say, practically swooning, laughing when the Child seems to agree, tilting a green head back and opening its mouth wide as it’ll go for snowflakes to land on its outstretched tongue.

“You won’t be saying the same when your clothes are soaked through,” he says, reaching out a gloved hand, “—up.”

You oblige, fitting your sopping, freezing palm in his and let him haul you to your feet. You shake the snow out of your hair with a dazed grin—one practically contagious.

He’s shimmering, beskar frosting over and reflecting the white surrounding you for miles.

“Where are we, anyway?” You ask, following as he leads a path away from the Crest.

“Ando Prime,” Mando answers with a nod to the distance, “there’s a market not far ahead. We can pick up some things for you and the kid.”

“Are we staying?” You ask with a hopeful lilt. The kid perks up in its cot floating beside you, eager for the answer. Mando regards the two pairs of expectant eyes.

“Haven’t got a bounty for the next couple of days,” he breathes and you’re almost buzzing at the implication.

“Yes,” Mando says finally. He makes a point to memorise the way the bright smile on your face rivals the snow. Mando realises he’s right, it is contagious. He also concludes he’d bring you to all the frozen planets in this galaxy and the next if it means he’ll see it again.

#she do be rusty tho #dincember #i too have never seen snow #the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian imagine #the mandalorian oneshot #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin oneshot #din djarin imagine #star wars #star wars x reader #star wars imagine #star wars oneshot

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beauregardlionett · 3 years

Text

no choir (6/7)

AO3 Link

The apartment was empty when Beau got home.

Her bag landed on the floor near the doorjamb with a hollow thud, the closest her laptop got to voicing a protest of the rough treatment. The kitchenette was clean despite the lingering smell of mixed herbs and cooked meat. They subscribed to one of those meal kit services for about two months a while back, and though they hadn’t kept on with it, they saved the recipes. Clearly one of them had been put to use before Beau got back.

Yasha had left the hall light on for her and a covered plate of food in the fridge.

Beau almost didn’t eat it. Not because Yasha did anything to upset her, but more because Beau felt mechanical. She wasn’t sure she could muster the energy to reheat and consume dinner—or stomach it, for that matter.

But Beau forced herself through the motions, chewing slowly as she stared into the middle distance of their quiet apartment. Somehow the dishes ended up in the dishwasher when she finished.

Still in silence, Beau pulled off her joggers and tossed them toward the laundry bin before she gave up. Flopping onto her back on the bed, Beau lay star-fished across the mattress and stared up at the grey ceiling.

She had quit her job at the bar to resume school a few weeks before. As a result, she and Yasha had barely seen each other as of late. More days than not, they were like ships passing in the night. At worst, Beau left before Yasha awoke and came home after she left for the night. Yasha still worked at the strip club a few blocks from here, the one Beau used to bar tend at. All the dancers adored Yasha—both for how friendly she was with the staff and for how well she kept the creeps at bay.

The reckless part of Beau considered hauling her exhausted limbs up from the bed and heading to the bar. Maybe just to say hello to everyone and see Yasha for what might be the first time this week. Or perhaps to order one drink too many and get a little too hands on with a stranger.

It was a stupid thought, one that Beau would have followed through on without hesitation before Yasha.

She was just fucking touch starved.

School was kicking her ass with the repetitive deadlines one right after another. Her one professor kept asking for way too much content in a two-page essay. And apparently in the two years Beau had been out of school, some genius (read, dumbass) decided that the APA format needed updating. Beau didn’t know what the fuck a running head consisted of, but she knew a couple of crude jokes that could use it as the punch line.

Beau groaned as her temples pulsed with a fierce headache, letting her know in the most unpleasant way possible that she was clenching her jaw too tight. Again.

She did not know what time it was, just that she had dragged herself through the door at some stupid hour after midnight. Her cram session with two of her classmates lasted far longer than expected. And ever a creature of habit, Beau couldn’t pass up her usual night trip to the gym. The punching bags in the second floor corner had helped her stress levels significantly, even if it left her knuckles red, bruised, and smarting.

Resigned to her fate of staring at the ceiling without pants on, Beau sighed—long and heavy—as traffic trundled past every now and again outside her window.

The sound of keys fumbling for the front door’s lock was Beau’s only indicator that time had passed. Yasha often made it home just before three in the morning. Last call was at two and she often stuck around to make sure the dancers got to their cars and bus stops without issue. Another reason the entire staff fawned over Yasha on the daily.

Feet shuffled through the living area for a few moments, the quiet click of a light switch being flicked distinct in the otherwise silence. Beau realized she must have left it on after getting home. More shuffling that slowed and paused in the doorway of their bedroom.

Half a heartbeat’s pause and then, “Beau? Are you awake?”

Beau hummed noncommittally.

She could hear Yasha move around before the mattress sunk to one side with her weight, rolling Beau’s splayed limbs toward her. She felt like a flower to sunlight for a stupid moment.

“Is everything okay?”

“I’m tired.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Great question.” Beau paused. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Yasha murmured, placing her hand on Beau’s exposed belly. “Do you want to cuddle?”

“Please. I think I’m touch starved.”

Yasha made a noise of understanding—or maybe it was agreement—before she started tugging Beau’s limbs further up the bed with her. Beau let her, going willingly even if she wasn’t helping the process. She was more stuck on the fact of how three years ago, even the thought of admitting to feeling weak made her entire constitution revolt. But Yasha and a few other friends had made vulnerability easy—at least around them. Everyone else could go fuck themselves.

She was a work in progress. Which was fine.

Once Yasha had them settled comfortably under the covers, she reached up with one hand to cup Beau’s cheek. Beau sighed and melted under the weight of Yasha’s fingers, the familiar warmth of her palm. Such a simple touch, an easily acquired thing, yet it held so much of Beau’s sanity together.

On instinct, Beau reached out to Yasha and traced her fingertip in a looping, spiraling pattern along the floral intricacies of Yasha’s arm tattoo. The green vines tangled over one another in an endless dance. Beau swore that every time she did this, she traced a fresh track.

Yasha didn’t ask her how her day was, or how school went, or anything at all. She left her palm against Beau’s face, occasionally rubbing her thumb back and forth in idle strokes over Beau’s cheekbone. She watched Beau, gaze flicking over her nose, her eyes, her lips, memorizing the minute shifts in Beau’s attention. Beau kept tracing vines; comfortable under the weight of Yasha’s stare in a way she hadn’t been years before.

“You should get another tattoo,” Beau said after what felt like days. Her words slurred with sleep, infinitely closer to slumber than when she was alone. “You look good with ink.”

“We should both get one,” Yasha said, not questioning or scoffing at the sudden topic. “Jester would probably give us a discount again.”

“It’s a good thing she owns the shop or she would have been fired by now for that.”

Yasha chuckled, warm and quiet, a low and far off rumble of thunder. Beau’s eyelids fluttered with the sound.

“Go to sleep, Beau,” Yasha murmured. “I’m right here.”

She wasn’t sure when she had stopped tracing the vines of Yasha’s tattoo, but Beau left her fingers there against the painted leaves. Yasha’s hand was a pleasant, heated weight against the curve of her jaw as she slipped away to sleep at last.

#cr #critical role #beauyasha #beauyashaweek2021 #writing #my writing #beauregard lionett #yasha #this is absolutely a vent piece thank you for asking

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lesdemonium · 4 years

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romtober day 23: sexy warpath

Rating: E Ship: Geraskier Word Count: 1211 Summary: Sexy Warpath: destroying the environment around you en route to sex.

read on ao3

Jaskier wasn't drunk, but the adrenaline pounding through him made him feel as if he were. Geralt under his hands felt strong and steady and like nothing he had never felt before, and yet he knew he could have this whenever he wanted.

“Geralt, fuck--”

The words were swallowed into Geralt’s mouth as Jaskier was pressed against the door, closing it behind them. Jaskier could only silently thank any and all deities out there that, at least, they had made it inside, away from prying eyes. Geralt’s leg slipped between Jaskier’s and Jaskier panted into Geralt’s mouth as his thigh pressed higher, higher, higher. Jaskier thrust helplessly against Geralt’s thigh, only to whine as Geralt pulled away, took away the pressure.

“So needy,” Geralt teased as he pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses against Jaskier’s neck.

Jaskier wrapped a leg around Geralt, using both his hands on Geralt’s sides and his leg wound around his hips to bring Geralt closer. Their hard lengths, tempered by the layers of fabric between them, pressed together for a delicious second and they both let out a groan. Geralt’s hands took hold of Jaskier’s thighs and hauled him up, wedging Jaskier tightly between Geralt’s body and the door.

“So bossy,” Jaskier answered.

Geralt pressed a breathy laugh into Jaskier’s shoulder and turned them around, attempting to walk them, Jaskier presumed, to the bedroom. Unfortunately, he only made it about as far as the accent table behind the couch. Jaskier crashed into it with an Oof, and to regain some balance, Geralt put him heavily on the table. The table was not prepared for an entire body to be there, however, as it had become a bit of a dumping ground. Jaskier was far too concerned with pulling Geralt’s lips back against his to notice what, exactly, fell off the table, but he heard several thumps that likely were books, mail, and other odds and ends. Luckily, the lamp fell back onto the couch. At least Jaskier wouldn't have to replace that.

As if they hadn’t just made a mess of Jaskier’s living room, Geralt pulled away to near-frantically pull Jaskier’s shirt up and over his head. Where it disappeared to, Jaskier didn’t know, but Geralt’s shirt soon followed. Jaskier slid off the table and kicked off his shoes--flinching a bit as he kicked one off a little too enthusiastically and it landed with a loud thunk against the wall. Nothing to do for it now, though, and he gracelessly pulled off one sock, and then the other, reaching to Geralt both for balance, and to press kisses and bites along his collarbone.

“Jask--” Geralt started as he took a handful of Jaskier’s ass.

He used this leverage--and, gods, it shouldn’t have even been leverage, but Jaskier was quite sure he would go anywhere Geralt led him right now--to pull Jaskier away from the table and toward the door. They stumbled their way through Jaskier’s dark apartment, and Jaskier wished he had taken the chance to clean up a little, even as the rest of their clothes joined it all. It would have made their journey back to Jaskier’s bed so much easier. But, there was nothing he could do about it now, and even if he flinched at the sound of his guitar overturning and landing on the ground with a loud twang of the strings, he wasn’t about to stop.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he insisted, though it was mostly for his own benefit. It probably wasn’t fine, but he could see to his baby later. Maybe when Geralt wasn’t sucking marks into his skin and dragging his nails down Jaskier’s thighs.

It was fine, and easy enough to distract himself, once he had Geralt in his bed. Really, it was hard to think about anything other than Geralt when Jaskier had Geralt’s cock in his hand, then in his mouth, with Geralt’s pupils blown so wide that Jaskier could only see black. His hands smoothed over Geralt’s tights as he swallowed him further, further, further until he could feel Geralt at the back of his throat and Jaskier watched as Geralt’s head fell back against the pillow. He only managed the trick two more times before Geralt was pulling him off, up to his mouth, for a bruising kiss.

“Wanna fuck you,” Geralt panted into his mouth, and though he said it as a statement, the way he pulled back to watch Jaskier’s face told Jaskier it was really a question.

Jaskier nodded, then very quickly found himself whining into Geralt’s shoulder as Geralt fingered him open. His kisses against Geralt’s skin were useless aside from every so often when he focused enough to suck and bite just enough to slowly leave a mark, and his fingers scrabbled at Geralt’s back, looking for something to hold onto. He found nothing, but dug his nails into the skin anyway.

Finally, Jaskier could take no more, and he leaned back, batting Geralt’s hands away from him and taking the lube and a condom from where Geralt had left them on the bed. He slid the condom on, and liberally applied the lube, before lining Geralt up.

“Fuck, you monster,” Jaskier moaned with a warm smile as he sunk himself onto Geralt’s cock. Geralt huffed a laugh that very, very quickly broke off into a breathy moan.

They had relaxed enough that the ferver from earlier had simmered into a quiet, easy desire. Jaskier took his time sinking onto Geralt’s cock, and when he moved it was slow, steady, and deep. They kissed lazily and ineffectually, and more than once their teeth clacked together and they both winced, then laughed.

Jaskier’s orgasm didn’t build to a flame, didn’t explore out of him, but it crept up with warning and had him warm from his toes to the tips of his ears. Geralt’s hand wrought Jaskier’s pleasure from his body as if he wanted to make the moment last forever, and when Jaskier finally came, he was almost disappointed that he couldn’t stay like that just a little longer. He moaned Geralt’s name against his lips. Geralt stroked the hair at the nape of Jaskier’s neck and laughed when Jaskier batted Geralt’s hand away from his cock, oversensitive and just barely managing to continue the languid rock of his hips.

“Do you want me to--” Geralt asked, but Jaskier cut him off with three fingers over Geralt’s lips.

“No, I’m good, but you might have to take over, love,” Jaskier answered.

Geralt needed no further invitation. Jaskier quickly found himself on his back, Geralt thrusting into him so thoroughly that Jaskier’s spent cock twitched in interest. Luckily, it didn’t take too much longer before Geralt came, his fingers tugging at Jaskier’s hair and his teeth sinking into Jaskier’s collarbone.

They collapsed into the bed--or, rather, Geralt collapsed, and though Jaskier did not move, he felt as if he deflated. In a moment, they would have to go clean up and see what destruction they had committed against Jaskier’s living room. But for now, all he wanted to do was catch his breath and grin at Geralt. Geralt, whose hand reached out to take Jaskier’s and thread their fingers together, seemed to feel the same way.

#geraskier #geraskier fic #geraskier fanfic #the witcher #geralt x jaskier #jaskier x geralt #geraskier smut #my writing #romtober

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getreadytosmash · 3 years

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][And now to be super self-indulgent. Rhys and Jen for the ship meme][

@blind-mutant

Ship meme

General:

How long will they last? - YEARS baby. Rhys is in it for the long-haul and so is Jen.

How quickly did/will they fall in love? - Rhys was immediate we all know this. Jen took,,,maybe a month or two due to previous experiences making her more weary.

How was their first kiss? - Horny. Started out sweet but we both know they got hot and heavy near the end.

Wedding:

Who proposed? - Rhys did since he would want to smitten Jen with it all.

Who is the best man/men? - Samuel and Rick.

Who is the braid’s maid(s)? - Hulk and Betty.

Who did the most planning? - Jen did since she enjoys planning this stuff out but Rhys was really involved.

Who stressed the most? - Jen for sure since she gets stressed more easily thanks to green genes.

How fancy was the ceremony? - Back of a pickup truck | 2 | 3 | 4 | Normal Church Wedding | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Kate and William wish they were this big. - Oh u KNOW they had a big set up and an entire town wanted to celebrate with them!

Who was specifically not invited to the wedding? - Any of Jen's villains of the week or Rhys's family.

Sex:

Who is on top? - Jen mostly but they switch a fair amount. Physically it's Rhys a lot since she needs to worry about crushing him.

Who is the one to instigate things? - Both of them are because they're both giant horndogs.

How healthy is their sex life? - Barely touch themselves let alone each other | 2 | 3 | 4 | Once a couple weeks, nothing overboard | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They are humping each other on the couch right now

How kinky are they? - Straight missionary with the lights off | 2 | 3 | 4 | Might try some butt stuff and toys | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Don’t go into the sex dungeon without a horse’s head - Not WILD-wild, but yeah, Jen and Rhys love to try anything at least once to give it a go.

How long do they normally last? - Rhys lasts about a normal, if not more amount of time but oh man Jen can GO baby. Lasts forever.

Do they make sure each person gets an equal amount of orgasms? - Rhys gets more by default of gamma libido, but yeah they both get an equal amount and much more than that.

How rough are they in bed? - Softer than a butterfly on the back of a bunny | 2 | 3 | 4 | The bed’s shaking and squeaking every time | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Their dirty talk is so vulgar it’d make Dwayne Johnson blush. Also, the wall’s so weak it could collapse the next time they do it. - Physically, Jen's gentle with Rhys, but other than that? the filthiest and sweetest words tbh.

How much cuddling/snuggling do they do? - No touching after sex | 2 | 3 | 4 | A little spooning at night, or on the couch, but not in public | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | They snuggle and kiss more often than a teen couple on their fifth date to a pillow factory. - What's the best way to calm down from a ton of filthy and dirty flirty sex other than super sweet and warm cuddling? Though I imagine not as much during the summer since Jen builds up a lot of heat.

Children:

How many children will they have naturally? - Probably one? Jen isn't really cut out for pregnancy realistically but that won't stop me from wanting it so bad and making it happen.

How many children will they adopt? - One or two, a little bit older like 8-12? Kids that Jen and Rhys wanna help.

Who gets stuck with the most diapers? - Jen does since Rhys can't see the,,,,finer work.

Who is the stricter parent? - Jen is as she has more normal limits for what is and isn't a punishment and limits.

Who stops the kid(s) from doing dangerous stunts after school? - They both do but Jen more since she can get to the kids and stop them better.

Who remembers to pack the lunch(es)? - Rhys does since Jen kinda forgets to eat at times or has less time to.

Who is the more loved parent? - Rhys since he IS there more and more relatable to certain issues honestly, especially if the kid they have is adopted or has a rougher past.

Who is more likely to attend the PTA meetings? - Jen, but ONLY by a smidgen since she can keep her cool and we both know what Rhys is like.

Who cried the most at graduation? - They both do because they're both such GIANT saps of parents!

Who is more likely to bail the child(ren) out of trouble with the law? -,,,Jen. Legit her job.

Cooking:

Who does the most cooking? - Jen does, though if they're at the base then she works with Red or Rick.

Who is the most picky in their food choice? - Neither? Rhys has had years of shit food to worry now and Jen can basically eat anything.

Who does the grocery shopping? - They both do, you need all the help you can get for hulk groceries.

How often do they bake desserts? - Not THAT often since Jen isn't that good at baking so they just bother Red for them.

Are they more of a meat lover or a salad eater? - Rhys is more of a salad and Jen is very mixed but does tend to need meat more now.

Who is more likely to surprise the other(s) with an anniversary dinner? - Both are but Rhys especially since he's a giant sap.

Who is more likely to suggest going out? - Jen is. She likes dressing up for Rhys and she likes being able to show off her partner.

Who is more likely to burn the house down accidently while cooking? - Rhys.

Chores:

Who cleans the room? - Rhys more since he needs to remember where certain things are.

Who is really against chores? - Jen more because somedays you just don't wannnaaaa.

Who cleans up after the pets? - Jen does.

Who is more likely to sweep everything under the rug? - Jen tbh as I said with her just wanting to do it later.

Who stresses the most when guests are coming over? - Rhys since a lot of these guests tend to be big hero friends of Jen's.

Who found a dollar between the couch cushions while cleaning? - Rhys, free sugarmama cash surpise.

Misc:

Who takes the longer showers/baths? - Rhys takes longer showers and Jen takes longer baths for luxury.

Who takes the dog out for a walk? - Rhys does at night and Jen does in the morning.

How often do they decorate the room/house for the holidays? - Every year and it's always a big and fun group thing or just for them at Jen's apartment.

What are their goals for the relationship? - Rhys wants to be able to make Jen happy and to be there for her when no one else can and Jen wants to be able to show some vulnerability and give Rhys the relationship he deserves.

Who is most likely to sleep till noon? - Rhys, but Jen does love sleeping in on weekends.

Who plays the most pranks? - They BOTH do oh my god do not be shocked for a prank war. Jen and Rhys are both younger siblings, they have the annoying energy.

#ask #blind-mutant #green goddess (jen)#ship meme #headcanon

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ironharvests · 3 years

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♡ + kawogi, kimigaa, utagura, this was the hardest decision in my entire life

SEND ME ♡ + A SHIP AND I’LL TELL YOU…

kawogi.

Who is the most affectionate?

kawaki, for sure. ryogi is affectionate in his own way, but it's lots of teasing touches, linked pinkies while walking, and resting his head on your shoulder in private. kawaki, on the other hand, will straight up pick ryogi up and haul him to the couch so he can have some human contact.

Who initiates the handholding?

hmmmmm. the first time they hold hands i think ryogi brushes fingers with kawaki a bunch until he finally just takes kawaki's hand, because kawaki is too uncertain to cross that barrier without explicit permission. but after that, kawaki will seek out ryogi's hand when wanted.

Who worries more for the other?

ryogi. he isn't a goddamn alien-karma-infused super soldier or whatever. he's just a guy being a dude, damn it. he worries a lot when kawaki's off doing who knows what.

Who is more likely to ask for help?

[laughs in bitch] ryogi asking for help he actually needs instead of something superficial? please. kawaki asks, but he can be grumpy (read: embarassed) about it until ryogi says it's fine.

Who is the one always losing the keys?

kawaki. ryogi's neat in the "i keep everything on my person so i can escape at any time" way. kawaki puts things down in one place and then walks away. it's a little maddening for ryogi.

Who leaves little love notes for the other?

ryogi! he enjoys leaving physical reminders of his feelings to be remembered when they're apart, which is a lot.

Who can’t sleep unless the other is there?

kawaki. ryogi's used to sleeping on his own, and is very comfortable doing so. kawaki gets attached to sleeping in the same bed with ryog, so when he's gone he struggles.

Who is more likely to propose to the other?

probably kawaki? ryogi isn't a traditional relationship guy, and i think kawaki might have some anxiety about that -- or he just likes the idea of tying the knot and making their relationship feel concrete. kawaki also feels like he "owes" something to people he dates, and for ryogi that means some form of stability.

Who introduced the other to their family first?

i think you mean the uzumakis introduced themselves to ryogi lol.

Who is more likely to play with the other’s hair?

ryogi plays with kawaki's. it's so weird and fun to touch.

Who makes sure the other has meals/stays hydrated?

ryogi. food is his ultimate love language.

Who is more likely to stand up to anyone for the other?

if you look at ryogi wrong kawaki will bury you alive.

Who is the most likely to prepare a surprise for the other?

ryogi. he's into surprises and there's always something special going on when he visits.

Who makes the other pinky promise not to do certain things?

kawaki. he takes them seriously. ryogi humors him initially (then went off and did dangerous stuff anyways), but eventually he stops and abides by the sacred pinkie promise treaty.

Who puts a blanket over the other when they fall asleep on the couch?

ryogi. kawaki conks out on the couch and ryogi covers him up and sits beside him on the couch for awhile while he reads.

kimigaa.

Who is the most affectionate?

oh boy. kimimaro? but only in freak ways, like staring at gaara for 30 minutes while only blinking with his second pair of clear vertical eyelids, or washing gaara's hair for him despite his insistence on doing it himself. things like that. kimimaro's affection looks a lot like service and care-taking. they're working on it.

Who initiates the handholding?

gaara. kimimaro would never touch gaara unless given explicit permission, and even then it's something he does the way a miko would cleanse a shrine.

Who worries more for the other?

in battle? neither of them worries about the other. they're bad as hell and they know it. otherwise, gaara worries about kimimaro's health. it can abruptly decline and there's nothing they can do but wait it out. at least kimimaro is good about stating when he isn't feeling well, although it's often in the form of "i am experiencing cardiac palpitations" before collapsing.

Who is more likely to ask for help?

kimimaro. he knows his limitations and isn't ashamed.

Who is the one always losing the keys?

neither of them.

Who leaves little love notes for the other?

neither. kimimaro doesn't write super well, understandably, so writing isn't his thing. gaara is more likely to find strange gifts on his desk, like a piece of antler, or a glowing frog in a jar.

Who can’t sleep unless the other is there?

gaara. he can't sleep most of the time, but kimimaro has learned to, uh, put his ass to sleep.

Who is more likely to propose to the other?

neither. marriage who? the council probably wouldn't be down with gaara marrying the guy who helped kill rasa and worked with orochimaru. kimimaro doesn't care about marriage anyways; he belongs to gaara in his heart(s), and that's what counts.

Who introduced the other to their family first?

kimimaro was caught in the kazekage's home and arrested by temari on sight until gaara explained. does that count?

Who is more likely to play with the other’s hair?

hm. both. gaara touches kimimaro's hair when he's sleepy, and kimimaro likes to smell gaara's hair when gaara's asleep.

Who makes sure the other has meals/stays hydrated?

neither. you think they eat like normal people?

Who is more likely to stand up to anyone for the other?

kimimaro has literally stabbed people for raising their voice to the kazekage. so. there's that.

Who is the most likely to prepare a surprise for the other?

hm. hmm. hmmm. i don't think kimimaro would prepare a suprise, he's more of a "i brought you something insane and set it at your feet like a giant kitty cat." so it's either gaara, or, more realistically, gaara's assistant, who schedules all of gaara's everything.

Who makes the other pinky promise not to do certain things?

neither. they don't say things they don't mean. their word is their bond.

Who puts a blanket over the other when they fall asleep on the couch?

kimimaro picks gaara up and tucks him into bed, then sits in front of the door for six hours.

utagura.

Who is the most affectionate?

physically it's utakata, although it's more teasing than straight up affectionate. yagura is the one who drops L-bombs and what not because utakata's too much of a pussy to use his words for the first year or two they're together.

Who initiates the handholding?

utakata. he watches yagura rile himself up about something totally unimportant, then tangles their fingers together and watches the knot in yagura's neck unfurl.

Who worries more for the other?

yagura. utakata is a walking, talking Very Special Episode on substance abuse, and every time he walks out the door yagura's 85% sure he's going to wind up dead in a ditch.

Who is more likely to ask for help?

neither. they don't Do That unless it's dire, at which point yagura will ask before utakata. utakata gets help for things that don't matter, like getting housewives to cover his dinner tab.

Who is the one always losing the keys?

utakata. he's a poet, scholar, and blunt smoker, man. his brain is not in the building most days.

Who lives little love notes for the other?

utakata. he leaves little poems tucked in places for yagura to find when he's going to be gone for long trips, or, honestly, just because. saying how he feels aloud has been beaten out of utakata, so it's easier to write a poem at 3 am and tuck it in yagura's underwear drawer than to shake him awake and tell him he's the only reason utakata's still alive, sooooooooo.

Who can’t sleep unless the other is there?

both. utakata has bad insomnia and hallucinations sometimes, and yagura has genjutsu trauma. sleeping together is an anchor tethering them to the one reality that is finally good to them.

Who is more likely to propose to the other?

utakata, surprisingly, because he knows how much it would mean to yagura.

Who introduced the other to their family first?

[strained laughter for 45 minutes] they work very hard to forget each other's families, thank you.

Who is more likely to play with the other’s hair?

yagura. when utakata is feeling overstimulated and can't handle touch but yagura needs some creature comfort, hair is a good alternative.

Who makes sure the other has meals/stays hydrated?

yagura. utakata would filter feed on pond water if he could just perfect the jutsu. he's one of those freaks who think eating is a waste of time/inconvenience.

Who is more likely to stand up to anyone for the other?

both. they will both stand up for each other, because they won't stand up for themselves when it matters.

Who is the most likely to prepare a surprise for the other?

hmmmm. on a daily basis, yagura. small surprises and whatnot. on a macroscale, utakata. he knows these things matter to yagura, and he applies every ounce of his brilliance to crafting signature, special moments just for yagura, including private fireworks displays, a picnic under the ocean, and creating and naming jutsus for and after his beloved awabi.

Who makes the other pinky promise not to do certain things?

as children, it was yagura. they might have some holdover as adults.

Who puts a blanket over the other when they fall asleep on the couch?

utakata. yagura works himself into a frenzy then poops out on the couch, and it's up to utakata to cover him up or carry him to bed; usually the latter.

#this nearly killed me but i made it damn it #cw substance abuse #cw abuse mention #long post #answered: ooc.#answered.#i could hold your love in my mouth and make pearls of it. ( utayagu | kyousei )#kyousei #tbt.#so many ships so many tags i need to write...

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 5 years

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Humans are Weird, “M-Flu.”

Here is a little fluff for you all bc today I am also posting another chapter.

Sorry about the wait but I decided to take a bit of a hiatus over Thanksgiving, but now I am back :)

It was early December, or so the humans said. Krill had never really understood the human’s need to split up time like that. The Vrul did, of course, keep track of their planet’s revolution around their star but that was simply numerically based rather than starting the count over every month like the humans did.

It had been a bit busier than usual which was rather odd. You would think, on a spaceship, that illnesses would be relatively common due to the closed in area with a bunch of people side by side, and that it would not be affected by the time of year like it was on earth. However, he supposed that allowing the humans leave planetside so close to their sickest season was probably the reason.

Still blew his mind to consider that humans had a time of year where epidemics and pandemics were more common. So common, in fact, that the humans just accepted getting sick as a fact of life, and often continued to go to work and be around other people during that time. Of course, this behavior used to be worse, but even with the widespread use of surgical masks during sickness, things still continued to spread.

He found himself, pleased, once again that he was incapable of catching human illnesses, though he did his best to stay away from plant life on other planets seeing as you never knew what he could catch from other species of plant, to which he was more similar than he was to animals like the humans or the Drev.

He reached upwards and plucked a clipboard from one of the nurses before turning towards the door and scuttling out.. He needed to go speak with the commander about the increased rate of infectivity aboard the ship. He was under the impression it would be best to begin a quarantine on some of the more sick patients. Yes it was true that the average human would not be taken out by the flu, but by his calculations it greatly decreased productivity.

Better to keep humans healthy and lose a few people than it was to allow everyone to only work at half capacity.

He greeted members of the crew as he floated the stairs and onto the bridge stepping through the door and approaching the captain’s chair… a chair which was empty…. That was strange? This was around the time the commander went over ship diagnostics. He did this every morning and despite being a very impulsive man who wasn’t prone to keeping schedule, this was a part of his day he didn’t tend to change.

Krill spun in a wide circle looking around trying to find the man as if he expected to see him hanging from the ceiling, though, now that he thought about it. He totally expected to see something like that.

There was a clatter on the stairs behind him, and he turned to find Sunny stepping into the room.

She looked around in equal confusion to him.

“Good morning.” She said in the traditional human greeting, “Have you seen Adam?”

Krill shook his head, another human gesture, “I was just about to ask you the same thing.” He held up the clipboard he was holding , “I came to speak to him about medical protocol aboard the ship.

Sunny hummed, “Well, I came to him about, this.” SHe turned and pointed downwards just in time for Krill to see three of the spiderlings clambering their way up the steps mewling and growling angrily on their way after Sunny. Krill inflated his helium sack and hovered out of reach of the spiderlings, who honestly scared the hell out of him, especially Glados.

Sunny stuck out a foot trying to hold the aforementioned monster at bay, but all three of them continued to squeal and chirp.

“That’s strange.” Krill began, they never left Adam’s side if they could help it, and Glados didn’t particularly like sunny all that much, so none of this made particular sense. Hal, the smallest of the spiderlings chirped the little vocal folds at the back of it’s throat oscillating and vibrating. It was an ALMOST human sound but as if heard from a distorted speaker.

It was actually kind of freaky.

“Where is Conn, maybe he’d know what’s going on.”

“Speak of the devil, and the devil shall appear.” The electronic voice responded from behind them. From the other end of the room, Conn floated forward, his solar ribbons billowing out behind him in long undulating tendrils. Lights on the signing gloves lit up as he made the human language gestures which were then converted into words by way of a speaker, “They are very unhappy…. Worried even.”

Sunny shifted nervously, “What do you mean.”

“I’m not entirely sure. Their language is very rudimentary you see. Their language centers are not completely developed enough for me to read their minds. I can only sense feelings only to a certain degree.” He paused, “It is a smell, a bad smell a dangerous smell.” He tilted his head to the side.

Sunny glanced towards Krill, “Gas leak?”

Conn shook his head, “No….. it seems….. Biological if that makes any sense to you, not that I entirely understand what that means.”

“Latrine backup.” Sunny commented wryly unable to help herself.

Krill glared at her, “very helpful of you, Sunny. Glad to see you humor has evolved to be so refined.”

“Glad to see you even knew that was intended as a joke.”

The Spiderlings squealed again just as the sound of shuffling footsteps, and something dragging across the ground reached their ears.

Thud, thud, thud onto the metal catwalk.

Together, the two of them turned just in time to see the commander haul himself onto the bridge. Or at least, it looked like something that should have been the commander. His face was flushed bright red especially around the cheeks and neck. His eyes were red and puffy with dark circles under them. His hair was matted with sweat. He was wrapped in a large blanket like a cape which dragged on the ground behind him.

He hadn’t changed from his sweatpants.

And he was shivering violently despite both a long sleeve shirt, a hoodie, and the blanket.

He looked like a zombie.

Krill and Sunny watched as he oozed past like some sort of zombie hybrid slug and slumped into the captain’s chair. His sniffled a bit before erupting into a violent coughing fit. The sound was wet and rattling, a clear sign of chest congestion.

Waffles, the dog, followed at his feet with clear concern in her large brown eyes.

The human snuffled again.

He turned to look at them from the depths of his hoodie and blanket cloak, “I think I’m dying.” he said sounding rather resigned to that fact.

Sunny looked nervous and went to step forward, but Kril held her off, “Wait there, and keep the spiderlings away.” he moved forward floating to the human’s head height. Even without his thermal vision he could feel the heat radiating from the human’s body, but still he switched receptors for a proper look.

One hundred and four degrees by the human’s reckoning.

“Sick for sure commander. Sunny head down to the medical bay and order that quarantine protocol. I was going to ask the commander about it, but he hardly seems capable of giving orders at the moment. Have his second take over and then get someone to babysit the spiderlings. Take them to Ramirez and Maverick, they get along well enough.

“Quarantine.” The commander muttered.

“Yes commander, we have alien lifeforms aboard the ship, and no way to know how the illness will affect them. Furthermore we want to make sure no one else catches it.”

“I think I am dying.” The man repeated absently groaning quietly as his shivering grew worse.

“Don’t say that commander, you’re making me nervous. Save the announcements of death till after our tests.”

“Such a Diva.” Sunny commented trying to be funny though she sounded more concerned.

“Go on.” Krill ordered, and she did as told, scooping up the mewling spiderlings and walking from the room. Krill got the commander back to his feet and heard the sniffling coughing humans down the hallway. He was hunched over like some sort of invalid and moved more slowly than Krill, who was arguably the slowest being on the ship.

“Come on, Commander.”

“I don’t think I can make it.” The human sniffled piteously.

“Well you better because no one is going to carry you, now come on.” contrary to the human’s earlier statement, they made it to the medical bay in one peace. By Krill’s orders the rest of the medical team was ready with the protocol all wearing masks, gloves and surgical glasses. Perhaps they saw the entire thing as overkill, but he didn’t want anyone else getting sick.

They sat the human down on one of the medical beds, and Krill proceeded to learn that their Commander was quite pathetic when he was sick. This coming from a human who would run into dangerous situations skipping and singing show tunes now whimpered complaints and begged for medicine.

Halfway through their examination, another human came walking onto the bridge.

Narobi from down in engineering. She stood straight and tall but Krill immediately noticed her elevated body temperature. Her dark skin made the ravaging heat less obvious, but her reddened eyes and the beads of sweat collecting on her forehead was enough. Though comparatively he wouldn't have been able to tell something was wrong otherwise. She was dressed in her engineering jumpsuit, and was rather well put together.

Krill glanced between her and the commander who lay mewling on the bed like an overly vocal puddle.

She smiled wryly, “I see I am not the only one then?” her voice was scratchy and somewhat congested. She was forced to clear her throat at least once the deep rattling in her chest also present.

“Krill walked over to her.”

“Symptoms.”

She took a polite seat on the edge of one of the beds, “Fever, chills, aches, cough, nausea, dizziness..”

Krill glanced over at the commander again, who had his single eye trained on them and had suddenly stopped complaining.

He smiled inwardly,. Narobi was looking at him too with a raised eyebrow, “Good morning commander.”

He sat up slowly stifling a cough, “Good morning, Narobi.” he tried to stifle a shiver.

A wry smile, “Don’t let me interrupt commander. It was a stirring performance, I am close to tears.” Krill wasn’t exactly the best with detecting sarcasm made worse by the fact that her face did not change once while she said that sentence, so he couldn't be entirely sure if she was being facetious or not.

He began to cough again, “I Wasn't acting.” he grumbled defensively looking at her with a serious expression. That didn’t last long however as he was overcome with a violent bout of shivering and a cough eventually leaning back eyes watering form violent outburst one hand on his chest, “Never mind, this is bullshit. Go on just sit there and be a badass, I'll just be over here dying and looking pathetic.”

“Man flu?” She wondered wryly

“You know what,-” Cough, “I will have you know that that is totally a real thing, and I will not be shamed for it.”

Krill turned from his work, “Actually, according to our tests. Both of you have the flu. The same strain probably got it at the same time. We will have to monitor the rest of the crew to make sure it does not spread further than the two of you before determining how dangerous it will be to other species especially the Drev. IN the interest of keeping the rest of the crew healthy for the time being, both of you will be isolated and monitored here.”

“Don’t you think that is going a bit overboard?” Narobi wondered

The commander moaned.

“Actually, I think you humans don’t take illness seriously enough. Just because something is normal, doesn’t mean it's acceptable, and letting people suffer by themselves or allowing them to contaminate other people isn’t acceptable in my hospital.”

There was no arguing with the little doctor as he ordered the humans moved into the clear plastic contamination chamber and ordered to change. Both now wearing light blue scrubs they were ordered into bed, which of course the commander whined that he was still cold and had to be brought a stack of blankets with the great inner eye rolling of Krill, who, had learned from dr Katie, that they were not likely to die from such an illness, so he didn’t have to be THAT worried. Though he was still a little worried, and quickly moved to disguise his concern with a businesslike manner.

When Sunny came to visit that night she was distrubed by what she saw. She had never actually seen a sick human before, which was a wonder considering how long she had been on the ship. The powerful creatures she had come to know as indomitable were curled up in the darkness in isolation. Both of them were shivering between painful coughing fits. Their skin was pale and both were drenched in sweat.

The commander had, over the course of the last few hours slid down from the bed with all the pillows and blankets he had acquired and made some sort of delirious makeshift nest for himself on the floor the pillows being the base and the blankets wrapped around him like a human filled burrito only his mouth and nose being entirely visible. The other human was curled up on her side head resting on one arm.

She sighed quietly.

At her feet the dog whimpered as she looked through the clear plastic drape.

Sunny looked towards Krill with worry, “Are ... are they ok?”

Krill walked to stand next to Sunny, “It looks ugly, but Dr. Katie tells me that thousands of humans get it every year and survive without medical intervention, so they should be ok.”

Sunny glanced towards the containment opening.

“IS it contagious.”

He glanced over at her and then sighed realizing what she planned on doing, “With this strain, only for humans.” With their unspoken agreement made, she stepped forward and unzipped the outer layer whistling for the dog who jumped in after her. She close it off and then opened the door into the other room closing it behind her.

The interior was hot and muggy, and there was a strange smell on the air.

IF sunny knew one thing about humans, it was how social they were. If that was the case, it just seemed wrong to her to leave them suffering alone in the dark. She was about to head towards the commander when the other human curled up and shivering caught her eye. With a call she motioned the dog over patting the bed next to the human. The dog, seeming happy enough to help jumped up next to the human and lay down immediately.

Sunny was pleased at the smile smile she received from, closed-eyes human who reached out a hand and began stroking the dog’s velvety ears. The dog scooted closer curled up against the human’s stomach. The human wrapped an arm around the dog, and maybe it was just Sunny’s imagination, but thought the human’s shivering died somewhat.

Pleased that one of the humans was taken care of, she walked over to where Adam was curled up on the floor shivering and coughing. He sighed in an agonistic sort of way. She grabbed a cup from the side table and filled it with water returning to the human.

She knelt next to him and prodded him through the blankets, “Adam.”

The human shifted sitting up from inside his cocoon.

She had noticed that habit some humans had, especially him. Upset, in pain, sick, they liked to make nests for themselves out of anything comfortable and fluffy in the immediate area. He looked at her with bleary eyes shivering, “Sunny..?” His skin was cold and clammy, and she could see the wet patches from sweat on his chest and stomach. He would be losing water quickly like that.

She handed him the water, “Drink, or Krill is going to get an IV on you instead.” The human grumbled but complied.

He finished the water but was hit with another racking cough that had him doubled over. Sunny sat back in worried confusion. The human sat up snuffling and groaned, “my back.” He muttered, “hurts so bad, but it’s so cold.”

Sunny held out a hand to feel the heat radiating from the human’s skin.

She wasn’t entirely convinced about the cold thing, but took him at his word piling his blankets back on top of him.

She stood and returned to the other human urging a cup of water into her hand before returning to Adam, who had burrowed himself away like some kind of slimy lizard. She took a seat next to him learning against the wall and nodded to Krill who watched her from the outside. He would have been able to come in too, but he was dealing with other patients at the moment.

She leaned back against the wall dozing a bit woken at some point in the darkness as something moved close to her crawling up to rest itself on her legs. She looked down to find the pile of blankets and pillows shifted next to her human pressed up against her. She pulled the blankets back curiously only to find the human looking worse than ever.

His eye had a strange glassy quality, he had stopped shivering but for a subdued tremor. The eye closed and he slumped against the ground half asleep or nearly dead she wouldn't have been able to tell accept for the back and forth movement of his head as he began to dream.

He moaned in pain or fear she still wasn’t sure..

She grabbed the human with her lower arms and adjusted his blankets with the others letting him rest in her lap hoping whatever he was dreaming about would subside before it woke him up. It scared her to watch as the virus ravaged through the human’s body. He thrashed in his sleep disquieted waking up only to fall asleep again in the same cycle. His breathing was raspy and labored. HIs body quaked with the cold one moment, and then he was pushing the blankets away for the extreme heat in the next moment. The coughing was the worst, beginning with full body spasms and ending with the human hunched over in agony at the end the shivering causing the already aching muscles even greater pain worsened by coughing. Sunny tried to help tried to get the two humans as much water as she could.

On the other side of the room, the dog licked the human’s arm in sympathy as she shivered. She had to leave in the morning to get her duties finished decontaminated before leaving, and came back later that evening when the dog was getting up from Adam to move back to the other human.

Sunny looked at Krill for an update.

He shook his head, “They woke up, but they didn’t eat. Been resting pretty uneasily, Commander says he keeps having nightmares. Narobi reports her dreams aren't exactly pleasant either. Dog seems to help, she's been keeping them good company.”

Sunny nodded, “It looks so…. Painful.”

“You have anything like it on your planet?” He wondered.

“Rot lung I guess, but its slower, sort of a lifelong thing…. I suppose you can also get infections caused by wounds, and there are a few others, but nothing like this.”

He nodded, “We can get skin rot pretty easily, but we have dealt with it. The blight is pretty bad and can leave you deformed…. I just can’t believe they find something like this normal.”

“I’m gonna head back in, seems kind of wrong to keep the humans isolated.”

Krill didn’t argue letting her return to check on the far human first. Setting up some more water, stroking the dog’s ears and then returning to Adam. He was asleep as of just then half in and half out of his blankets like he couldn’t decide whether he was warm or cold. She wrapped him back up, and he absently curled up against her in his sleep. His hand rested against the floor leaving a humid mark behind it once she tucked it back in his blankets.

The worst of the symptoms lasted for three days with the humans only getting up to drink some water and go to the bathroom.

By the fourth morning Sunny was sitting in her usual spot as the human shifted and sat up.

He touched a hand to his forehead, and turning to look at him she found the redness gone from his face from the fever that had been raging past two days.

He glanced over at her looking a bit surprised, “Shit…. I thought I dreamed you being here the whole time.”

“No, I determined it was improper to leave humans isolated.”

He coughed lightly and winced, “Sure you did….” He either winked at her or just blinked, with only one eye she had trouble telling, “keeping acting like this and people are going to start thinking you like me.”

She snorted and pushed him over with one hand, “Go back to sleep you big idiot.”

He didn’t sit back up,”Mmmm probably a good idea. I feel like I got hit by a truck.”

“You look like you got hit by a truck.”

He rolled over trying to make himself comfortable, “Rude.”

She leaned her head back against the wall, “What…. Did that feel like? I have never seen anything like it before…. It scared me.”

The human snorted then coughed again, “Depends on what you’re asking about. Your throat hurts like your esophagus is lined in sandpaper, your face hurts because of the pressure in your nose from the swelling and all the gunk in your sinuses. Your entire body just aches made worse by the shivering which makes those muscles hurt more. Then the coughing comes in, and that just adds to the issue and it hurts your throat. Your chest is congested so it's hard to breathe, and it hurts. Generally your head hurts too, and your fever is so high it's just hard to think. When you sleep it isnt well and the dreams are weird as shit. At the worst of it, you're not even sure if you are awake or not….. Short answer is it sucks.”

“I’m sorry….. You humans really got dealt a shit hand…. I never thought it would be so….”

“Easy to take out a human?”

“Yeah…”

“Id say a lot of the stuff we evolved to survive also made our lives shit….. The fever comes to kill off the virus or bacteria or whatever, but it can also cause brain damage if it goes to high, which is kind of a bummer, plus it feels terrible.”

She patted his shoulder in sympathy.

He curled up and sighed, no longer shivering and promptly fell back asleep.

By the fifth day, the humans were sitting up and eating and even walking around a little. Day six they were declared no longer contagious but ordered to wear surgical masks. Still they were left weak achy and commander vir spent much of the time sleeping curled up in another makeshift nest, this time in his own rooms.

The other human approached sunny upon leaving grabbing her by the arm to stop her before, “Thank you, Sunny…. I know you were really there for the commander, but I appreciate you thinking of me.”

Sunny tilted her head in surprise confused that the human would thank her for something so minor, by the time sunny had thought of anything to say, the other human was already gone.

She thought she now understood why ril was always so worried about his humans.

Humans getting sick was actually kind of scary.

She didn’t like it

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blahblahwritings · 4 years

Text

Contracts and Captains. - IV

A/N: Remember how I posted something before one of my other fics saying that I had been consistently updating for weeks? Neither do I lmao who was she? Don’t know her anyway heres the fourth chapter of this black sails fic.

Words: 1823. Honestly I’ve been writing this since about 12pm I don’t know how its so short and its probably shit bc I haven’t written anything in months.

Warnings: Mentions of vomit as per the last chapter. Think thats it lmao. See you in three months.

As your eyes opened, there were a blissful couple of seconds where the previous night’s encounter didn’t exist in your memory. But, just like the sun flooding the room, unwanted flashes of vomit and slurred words rose like a tidal wave in your minds eye. You rolled over, burying your face and groaning into the pillow out of sheer embarrassment as a dull throbbing started in the depths of your skull.

Why did you keep drinking? You could’ve simply had one or two before retiring for the night and you wouldn’t have met that boatswain or thrown up on your own boots. What was his name again? Ben? Boyd? No, they weren’t quite right. Either way you made a mental note to apologise again whenever you next saw him.

Slowly, you tugged your still clothed limbs from the thin sheets, trying not to jostle your stomach too much for fear of whatever was left in there making an unwelcome appearance. Your pants were scuffed from where you took a tumble outside the tavern, your shirt was half undone, probably from a failed attempt to undress before not-so-gracefully falling into bed. A single boot was thrown on the floor alongside your coat, the other still stuck on your foot. What a mess.

A hot bath, that's what you needed, and a hearty breakfast if your insides don’t bring it back up. Pulling on the other boot, you made your way to one of the girls working downstairs, trading her coin to fill the tub in your room. You must’ve looked rough as you passed her to get to the man at the bar because when he turned to look at you, his brows shot up, disappearing behind his hair.

“You look like you could use a little hair of the dog, love.” He chuckled, eyes scanning your disheveled form. A grimace was your immediate response. “Some food then.” He offered, filling a bowl with something that you didn’t stop to look at as you practically inhaled it. The man watched you with a knowing smirk and had you not felt so terrible you’d have spat out a snarky comment. You chose to gulp down your water instead.

“Thank you.” You huffed with a small nod, tossing some money on the counter before you headed back upstairs. The state you were in just added to this morning's growing list of regrets but you weren’t quite sure if you cared how you looked to anyone else right now. All that was on your mind was a piercing headache and a good soak.

Stripping off, you stepped into the water, sinking down slowly as your body got used to the heat. Finally, with a heavy sigh, you rested your head on the back of the tub, your aching muscles beginning to relax. Scented oils and soaps were left on a stand by the bath. Working a generous amount between your palms, you massaged your limbs and torso getting rid of any tension and purging the memories of last night’s… festivities. In the quiet of your room, you took a moment to trace the small scars that littered your form, fingers landing at last on the freshly healed knife wound from only a few weeks ago. The soft pink flesh was still tender, and if you moved the wrong way it would ache. It was dangerous to be alone on this island, in this line of work. You needed friends, not just contacts. A crew, perhaps.

Letting your mind wander, you thought about your new found place among Flint’s men. You had to keep bringing in leads to be of any value to him, lest you risk being tossed aside and left in the dirt. He and his crew were among the most revered on the island, therefore cementing your part in that would bring security. It would ensure that other crews would leave you alone, as you were important to someone they feared and the consequences of harming you could be severe.

Then again, there was a little more than security on your list of perks as you thought more about the taller man from last night. He was kind to you, not that the others weren’t having bought your drinks and all, but, he made sure you were safe and fed. Billy Bones. You recalled. Replaying the meeting in your head, you winced at the slurred introduction and the puking soon after. Why did you care about how he saw you? Was it because he was the crew’s boatswain or because he was handsome and softer than most pirates you’d met.

Catching that last thought, you shook it from your head, refusing to let it take root in your brain. Attachments like that are a weakness here and you cannot afford to have those. You’d only met the guy once and he probably didn’t want anything to do with you anyway, especially after that drunken show you gave him. Cupping a handful of water, you splashed your face, scrubbing any further thoughts of the man from your head, instead, choosing to focus on finding a new lead for Flint.

They would be leaving to chase down the details you gave him yesterday in a couple of days, if not sooner, which meant you probably had around two weeks to find something of substance upon their return. You’d struggled last time but after sending out letters to old friends in neighbouring ports, you were hopeful something would turn up.

Padding your way to the dresser, you pulled out some fresh clothes and got ready, feeling much better than you did even an hour before. The food had settled your stomach and the water you guzzled seemed to bring some life back into your face as when you left to go hunt down some work, the barman from earlier spouted something along the lines of ‘A whole other woman’ when you walked by.

---

An uneventful morning led to an uneventful afternoon. There were no new letters or leads and the streets were pleasantly calm compared to usual. You certainly weren’t complaining, you had been feeling better since this morning but your body was still recovering. The easy day was probably just what you needed. You were sat on the beach, sipping some water and watching passersby as you sketched in the journal you kept.

It was something you’d taken to keeping since arriving in Nassau just over two years ago. A small leather book to help keep track of potential jobs and record anything interesting that happened. Really, though, you just loved to draw. You’d already filled a couple just like it with sketches of people, ships and landscapes that caught your eye, often accompanied by your messy scrawl. You were just about satisfied with your latest addition when Mr Gates clapped you on the shoulder making you jump and slam the journal closed. You’d never shown anyone the contents before.

“Sorry, Miss Devereux, didn’t mean to startle you.” He began, chuckling lightly at your reaction. “I heard you and the lads had quite the night..” He moved to stand by you as you got to your feet, dusting the sand from your pants. Tucking away the book, an amused smirk finds its way to your face as you look at him.

“Depends on who you ask.” You replied. “How were they this morning? Feeling sorry for themselves?” Your brows raised in question as you both started aimlessly wandering along the shore. A snort met your ears as his head fell forwards, looking at the ground then back at you. “I didn’t see the majority of them until at least noon and they were still in a sorry state, although I wonder how you must’ve been. I heard that you hurled your guts up right after meeting our boatswain.” Gates mused, eyes crinkling as he watched your entire face turn a lovely shade of red. You tried to keep your cool but your expression faltered into one of sheer embarrassment. Apparently, this was hilarious as Mr Gates exploded into a fit of hearty laughter, and as much as you told him to stop you couldn’t help but have a good chuckle yourself as you covered your face with a half-sandy palm at the thought.

When you both regain your composure, he gives you a reassuring pat on the back.

“Don’t worry, the only people who know are Billy and myself, the men still think you can hold your drink.” He winked. You made a move to argue that you could in fact hold your drink but he began talking about the plan to set sail the day after tomorrow. You listened intently and explained that you were awaiting correspondence from friends in other ports to supply more promising leads upon their return.

---

It had been four days since the crew left in search of another haul using your most recent information. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, you’d made some money here and there through smaller jobs and pickpocketing but overall, there was nothing of real interest. You spent the days reading anything you could get your hands on or drawing and you’d even had your eye on some paints in one of the markets, but all you could do was wait. Checking for mail at the front desk of the inn you were staying at every morning had become a routine, desperate for any work or ships that you could relay to Flint. It was on the fifth day that you had gotten a response from someone in Port Royal.

As you read over the letter for the third time, you could feel your eyes widen in disbelief, your heart hammered in your chest and you released a breath you didn’t know you were holding. This was far too good to be true. Surely this was a myth. A prize of this magnitude was simply unheard of. Your eyes scanned over the paper again, barely able to focus on the words because your hands were trembling so violently. Calm down. You told yourself. It can’t be the truth. You thought as you stared at the other envelope that had arrived alongside it. At the bottom of the letter it read:

“P.S

Should you doubt my information, I sent you the correspondence shared between the dead man and the merchant with evidence pertaining to this gold. Best not ask how it came into my possession.

Your dear friend,

Josiah.”

You ran to shut the windows to your room and close the drapes. If anyone found out you had this information and the evidence to go with it, you would surely be killed for it. Tearing open the paper, you unfolded its contents. It was all here. The initials of the merchant, R.P., details alluding to the existence of this gold and the name of the dead man involved in plotting the course it would be on.

Vasquez.

#Black Sails #black sails imagine #Billy Bones #billy bones x reader #multi chapter #Captain Flint #mr gates

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smarchit · 4 years

Text

Do No Harm pt 4

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Read the whole thing on my Ao3 Here!

"Checking in," came Mando's warbled voice over the comm. He'd been checking in every so often throughout the morning, letting Wynn know where he was or who he saw. Sometimes, it was about what he'd bought or to advise her on how many Imps were hanging around.

It was now early afternoon and hotter than the sun inside the Razor Crest. The ship, unfortunately, had to stay shut off so it wouldn't show up on any maps for those who might be looking. So no cool air was being pumped in, and no hot air was being pumped out. It was torture.

Wynn was laying in the cargo hold of the ship in a thin top, the metal cold against her skin. Her skirt was bunched around her thighs and she prayed to the Maker for a draft of any temperature to make its way through the vents. She had the comm held loosely in her hand as she brought it to her mouth.

"Roger," she replied sleepily.

She raised herself up on her elbows to try and see if the Child was still asleep in his pod. She'd stripped him down to a cloth diaper to try and make him more comfortable, and thankfully, he was still sound asleep. It was too hot for the little guy today.

As she lay back down, she closed her eyes and sighed softly. Her mind started to drift away to thoughts of the Mandalorian, of how quiet he was, how strong he could be. She'd seen him haul crates of supplies onto the ramp single-handedly, so she was well aware of his strength. He was a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, sealed with a complicated lock. Secretive and frustrating all at once.

Wynn found herself wondering once again what he might look like. At first, she wasn't sure what to imagine beneath the helmet, if he was even human at all. To be honest, she still wasn't entirely sure. Her mental image of him changed almost daily, though a few days ago, she saw a sliver of the skin at his wrist when he reached overhead for something. Warm, golden skin now occupied her every waking thought.

The fact that she even saw a mere glimpse of it felt dirty. Like it was a sin to see something that no one else had in so long.

Her view of it didn't last long, sadly. Mando had handed her the box and shuffled off past her down the narrow hall to the fresher. She still felt the pressure of the beskar on her hip as he brushed against her.

Brown eyes, Wynn thought to herself as she rested her hand against her stomach. And dark hair. Yes, that fits. Eyes that look right through your soul.

She shivered slightly despite the heat and pulled her lip between her teeth.

Again, her mind drifted. She thought of the way he looked in the cockpit the night before, those strong thighs spread wide like an invitation, arms relaxed and carefree. She wondered what his gaze looked like beneath the visor. Intense, probably. Everything about him was intense...

Wynn must've drifted off at some point, because the next thing she realized the comm was crackling against her stomach.

"---alright in there? Wynnlow, open the kriffing door!"

Wynn sprang to her feet and fumbled around in the dark for the button.

"Kriff, s-sorry!" She mentally kicked herself for the way her voice cracked from sleep. "G-gimme a second!"

She felt around for a moment until she touched the wall of the hold and wormed her way around until her fingers hit the "Open Hold" button.

The ship roared and groaned as the hatch opened slowly. The ramp protested loudly as it was lowered to the ground and landed against the sand.

Mando was standing there before her, shoulders squared defiantly. He passed her and, though she couldn't see his expression, she knew he was glaring at her.

A Guild worker was also with him, a little data pad in hand. He followed Mando and quickly glanced at Wynn, disregarding her with a scoff. He quickly began to get to work on the filled carbonite chambers, counting them off and scanning in band numbers.

Mando set down a sack with a loud thud and picked up the Child. He approached Wynn carefully, his body language less hostile than before.

Wynn hung her head and placed the comm back in her pocket. She was suddenly acutely aware of just how she was dressed, her thin skirt and top felt vulgar and bare beside his constantly covered form. She always felt exposed with Mando. Like she wasn't wearing enough to mirror his constant state of coverage.

"Are you okay?" he asked, guiding her chin up with one hand. He looked at her face and held her there for a moment to get a good look at her. "You're flushed. Did you get enough water?"

Wynn's throat felt dry, and not due to dehydration. She nodded weakly and reached out to hold onto a stack of crates.

"I'm alright," she murmured.

Mando lightly gripped her shoulder and guided her to sit on a lower crate. "It was too hot on here today, wasn't it? I'm sorry, I should have known. Next time... I can take you with me."

Wynn blinked at him in the darkness. "Are you sure?"

He nodded once. "Yes. Go wash up in the fresher. I'll unpack the supplies. We need to leave soon."

Mando watched her as she walked towards the ladder, hoping she wouldn't fall over. Once she was out of sight, he looked down at the Child, who cooed and gurgled in his arms.

"Don't you say a word," Mando muttered to the bundle in his arms as he began to unload the crates of supplies.

After a cool shower and a quick snack, Wynn was feeling much less tired and irritable. She pulled on a pair of compression pants and an old shirt of Mando's he'd given her and made her way to the cockpit.

"May I come in?" she asked softly when she stopped outside the door.

"Yes," Mando replied.

When Wynn shouldered open the door, she saw the blue-white streak of hyperspace outside the window. The Child cooed and gurgled happily from the seat beside his father as he chewed on a toy.

"Where are we going?" Wynn asked as she picked up the Child and sat him in her lap.

"Small system a few cycles from here," he said, his helmet unmoving in her direction. "Somewhere out of the way."

"Why? Is there a bounty there?"

Mando shook his head. "No. I'm trying to find the little one's people. They're somewhere out there and it's my duty to try and find them. This is the Way."

Wynn looked down at the Child and stroked one of his ears.

"What if you can't find them?"

"Then I keep looking."

"What if you can't find them ever?"

Mando was quiet for a moment before he slowly turned his head to look at the two of them. "Then I take him in as a foundling. Formally. Protect him, train him... for as long as I am able."

It was Wynn's turn to be quiet then. The gentle rush of hyperspace filled the silence between them. The Child had quieted and had settled himself into Wynn's arms to sleep.

Finally, the silence grew too loud, too oppressive. Wynn had to speak. She'd been considering it for a few days now and was finally ready to make her piece.

"I want you to train me."

Mando's helmet tipped towards her quizzically. "Why?"

"In case something happens," she said, avoiding his gaze. "I want to be able to protect myself and the Child. I want you to train me."

She felt Mando's gaze on her before he looked away, back out into the vast blackness of space. "No."

"Why not?" she demanded.

"I don't have the proper tools to train you," he replied.

"That's the biggest load of bantha shit I've ever heard and you know it," Wynn said angrily.

Mando sat as still as a statue, brooding and avoiding her withering gaze.

After a moment, Wynn scoffed and unfolded herself from the copilot seat. She thrust the Child back into Mando's arms and stormed out of the cockpit. She slid down the ladder and walked down the hall to her bunk.

He won't train me. Why won't he train me?!

Mando sighed when he heard the door to her bunk slam shut. He let his head fall back against the seat while he pondered what she'd asked him. Why would she ask him to train her? Did she feel unsafe? Or did she want to help?

He sighed and switched the ship over to autopilot. He placed the sleeping Child in his pod and stood up.

As he made his way down to the living quarters, he stopped by the weapons cabinet and picked up a vibrospear. He tested the weight in his hands for a moment and, satisfied, turned towards Wynn's bunk.

He sighed and knocked on the closed door.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

"Yeah," Wynn muttered from the other side.

Mando slid open the door and stepped inside. He'd only been in her room for a few moments at a time when she first came on board, when it was barren and cold. Now, medical books were stacked up all over, her bed was neatly turned down. The few clothes she had were hung up neatly on a rack above her cot. She had definitely made herself comfortable. The sight of it caused warmth to bloom across Mando's chest.

Wynn was standing beside the cot, her arms crossed over her chest. Her hands were hidden by the too-long sleeves of her borrowed shirt.

Something else fluttered to life deep in the pit of Mando's stomach. He liked how she looked in his clothes. He felt his mouth go dry and he swallowed thickly.

"If you want to train," Mando said, "I'll teach you. We'll start when we land, okay?"

He tossed the spear to her and smiled in spite of himself at the way it clattered to the floor at her bare feet.

"O-okay," she said softly. The expression on her face was one of shock. She bent low to pick up the spear in her hands. "Thank you."

Mando cleared his throat and nodded once. "Yeah. Uh. Good. Have a good night."

She smiled and gave him a little wave. "Have a good, Mando."

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian fic #the mandalorian x ofc #mando x oc #my writing #do no harm fic

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flatstarcarcosa · 4 years

Text

our love grows flowers in the winter

Summary: Three months ago, Slade died. Four days ago, be barged back into the house like a whirlwind, and for a moment all was right with the world. Reese has discovered strangers can wear familiar faces, and to top it off: There is another Slade greeting them over morning coffee and acting as if nothing is wrong.

How can there be two Slades, and what do either of them want?

(part one) (part two) (part three) (fin)

Ship: wilson&wilson Warnings: violence, swearing, slight depictions of gore? there’s a big fight is all im sayin. slade kicks his own ass, finally, his life long dream. sidenote: i decided to structure this piece similar to the comic. there’s titles between switches scenes, and the timeline isn’t entirely linear. i think it’s still simple enough to follow, but it was a neat exercise.

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

'Penitence' Bellevue Hospital, NYC Several Days Later

Slade’s arms are out at his sides in a show of defenselessness, shoulders slumped and head down. The gun sits on the side of the bed between them as Adeline regards him with hard eyes.

“If you still want to kill me, now’s the time,” he says. He’s said it before, of course. Over and over amidst their many fights. She knows he’s meant it every time, but this time it’s different. It’s not the adamant way he normally says it, it doesn’t carry the meaning of ‘I still love you, I’m sorry’, it doesn’t have the same undertones that show he’s only saying it to keep her attention for a bit longer. This time, he is all but begging her to go through with it. This is not the man she married. This is not even the man she divorced.

The man in front of her is a broken shell, a cracking husk at risk of getting blown away by the next winter breeze. The man in front of her is hardly a man at all. She takes the gun, holding onto the feeling of the weight in her hand, and considers it for a long moment.

“No,” she finally says, dropping the weapon. “There’s no point. You’re no more Slade Wilson than the man that murdered my husband. You’re not the Slade Wilson I’ve loved, and hated for so long. You’re nothing now.” He doesn’t respond. He lowers his arms and still doesn’t look at her, and it fills her with equal parts anger and pity. Anger, that he dares to ask one final favor from her, to give him one more thing after all she’s given.

Pity that he’s been reduced to this. He used to be strong, he used to be kind, he used to be a good man. Flawed, yes, but good nonetheless. What stands before her is none of those things but it is taking the form of something vaguely familiar, yet alien all the same. “You want me to get closure?” she asks. “There is no closure, not with you, Slade. Not with any of us, and not for any of us. If I have to live with it, if Joey does, then so do you. So that’s what you can do for me. You can fucking live with it and let it eat you alive. It’s time for you feel the consequences of your own actions for once. Get out.” Slade turns, padding across the room and pausing with his hand on the door. “I really did love you,” he says softly. “I know,” she whispers. “That’s the problem, you poison everything you love. Then it withers, and it dies.” The door is silent when it swings shut behind him. If Rose thought she was angry when this whole mess began, it is nothing compared to the feeling she is currently experiencing. Her footsteps echo throughout the stairwell as she takes them two at a time. The door to the parking garage bounces against the wall as she barrels through it. She finds Slade loading a duffel bag into the trunk of a sedan. When he turns, looking at her in surprise, she hauls off and punches him in the throat. “You're not even trying,” she yells. Slade hacks out a cough and massages his neck. “You let me do that.” “Why are you here?” he asks, hoarsely. “To ask you what the fuck you think you're doing,” she snaps. “What does it look like?” “It looks like you're being a limp dicked coward and running away, again,” she snarls. Slade makes eye contact with her, and the blank look in his eye is almost enough to put out the fire in her chest. “Why would I stay after this?” he asks. His voice is low, soft, and heavy with grief. “There's nothing here now, I made sure of that, didn't I?” “So you're just going to wallow in your own fucking bullshit?” she asks, clenching her fists by her side. “I thought the whole point of you going back to Vermont was to stop running! To...to plant roots, or whatever bullshit you kept telling us!” Slade slams the trunk shut and slams his fists again the metal. “Those roots just got ripped up and burnt to the ground,” he yells. “I may not have started the fire but I still caused it! Hosun is dead, Barry is dead, Adeline is going to have a crippled arm the rest of her life, and Reese--!” He stops mid sentence and makes no show to stem the tears. “I'm not doing this for me,” he says softly. “...dad,” says Rose. Her anger has finally died, and although she is still trying to process everything that has happened, she sets aside the urge to blame him. She gives into the other, stronger and perhaps more basic urge of being a teenage girl that wants her father, and clings to his chest. Slade won't hug you, repeats Bill in her head, but you can hug him. For a moment, he does nothing but stand there as she cries into his shirt. Finally, he returns the gesture, squeezing her like she is a buoy in a storm. “I'm so sorry,” he whispers into her hair. Before she can respond, the moment is interrupted by the sound of a voice over the intercom. “Wilson family, please report to the ICU,” says the disembodied voice. “Repeat, Wilson family to the ICU.”

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

'Your Return' At the Same Time Reese wakes up to the feeling of being choked. There is something blocking their airway, and they gag as they attempt to push whatever is in front of them away. Someone grabs their hands and pushes them back down as they make shushing noises in their ear. …Slade? They want to open their eyes, but their body seems content to fight against the signals they send. “Easy now, love,” says a soft, accented voice. “You weren't supposed to wake up until they got this tube out, it's almost over.” “B...Bill?” they finally rattle once their mouth and throat are blessedly empty. “The one and only, my dear,” he says. He brushes fingers through their hair. “Glad to see you back with the living.” “Slade?” they ask. The word sears their raw throat, and it does not take much for Reese to figure out they have clearly been intubated. Their eyes begin to obey them once more, and they are pleased to find that Bill has already dimmed the lights above the bed. A team of nurses crowd the room, all of them talking among themselves as they poke and prod at Reese and the machines they're hooked up to. “He's...” Bill trails off and closes his eyes. They do not need more of an answer. They know him too well. Slade's probably already on a plane bound for Africa, where he'll hole up in his old ranch and proceed to annoy wildlife until an animal finally kills him and leaves him to bake in the desert sun. Reese's eyes fill with tears that back up into their sinuses and begin dripping down their irritated throat. A nurse fetches a cup of water and a straw as they begin coughing. “Can you breathe all right?” asks the nurse. Reese takes a small sip of water and manages to swallow half of it before their stomach protests violently against the intake of fluid. Slade and Rose bust into the room just in time to watch them vomit into a basin. Long, silent seconds stretch out into minutes. The nurses continue to do their jobs and one of them bothers to take Slade aside and fill him in on their condition. Reese notice the way Bill shifts, moving to sit more on the bed next to them and act as a barrier between them and Slade. They understand why is he angry and distrusting of his old friend, and they do not blame him for it. Regardless, they want more than anything for him to move. “But are they going to be okay?” asks Rose. She is standing a step behind Slade, close enough to be part of the conversation and distanced enough to know she is not the intended target of it. The nurse takes a deep breath. “The doctor will be here in the morning to do another evaluation,” she says. She speaks with a practiced, but no less believable ease that tells Slade this is not the first time she's had this discussion. “There was a lot of damage and a lot of blood loss. I don't know how the shrapnel from the bullet missed anything important, but it did. They're going to have an even more sensitive digestive system than they did before, and we had to take out a few things in their abdomen they shouldn't even miss, and recovery is not going to be quick or easy, but yes. I think physically they'll be all right, eventually. It's going to take time, and a lot of rest.” “And therapy,” Rose adds. The words are barely out of her mouth when she realizes how inappropriate the comment it. Slade says nothing in response. His arms are flat by his sides, and he is clenching and clenching his fingers repeatedly. “Yes,” says the nurse slowly. “Physical therapy will be important to their recovery. The fact that the shrapnel from being shot didn't hit anything vital is already lucky, but that the blade only nearly snipped their spinal cord is a kind of luck we don't often see.” Still, Slade says nothing. Whether he doesn't know what to say, or simply can't say anything at all, Rose is unsure. She looks across the room, raising an eyebrow at Wintergreen. He blinks a couple of times before holding his hands up in a shrug. He has never seen Slade look as despondent and defeated as he does in this moment. He's just been told Reese will make a full recovery, and yet you'd think it was the opposite from his demeanor. It's only Reese grunting behind him that causes Bill to turn in time to see them trying to sit from their prone position. “Hey,” he says, standing off the bed and placing a hand on their shoulder. “Easy. You're being held together with very expensive, medical grade duct tape right now.” “Back hurts,” they say softly. “I imagine it does,” says the nurse. She motions for the rest of her coworkers to file out of the room as she moves to raise the bed. “But don't try and sit up on your own right now. I'm going to put in an order for some meds for you. The rest of you need to figure out who's staying and who's going: we only allow one person at a time.” “I'm gonna check on Joey,” Rose says immediately. She gives Slade a soft pat on the arm. “Okay?” “...yeah,” he says distractedly. “Perhaps you should both check on Joey,” says Bill. He crosses his arms over his chest and settles a stern gaze directly on Slade. “I'm sure he'd love to see his father.” Reese's nurse quirks an eyebrow as she realizes she is clearly interrupting something, and wisely extricates herself from the room. Slade remains silent, standing in the shadows in the corner of the room, and Bill remains planted as the only barrier between him and Reese. Behind him, they let out an annoyed sigh and roll their eyes. It takes a bit of reaching, probably more than they should be doing, to get to the water cup on the table. They empty the contents into the basin they'd thrown up into and use their knee to slide the table away from the bed before chucking the empty plastic cup at the back of Bill's head. “What the devil--!” he turns, blinking in surprise as he looks down at the cup clattering to the floor and back up to Reese. “Thank you,” they say. It takes work not only to speak, but to keep their tone level. If there was a ever a time where they wanted nothing more than to be non-verbal, it is now. “Please go.” “Reese, I don't think-” starts Bill. They cut him off by sharply yelling his name. He sighs and leans down to leave a quick kiss on the top of their head. As he passes Slade on the way out, he says, “I'll be down the hall.” It is a promise, and a threat. Although Adeline has always been clear with how much she wants Slade dead, Bill has always seen it differently: Slade is free to live his life and make his mistakes, but he does so knowing that should he ever become too far gone, or cross one too many lines, his oldest friend will not hesitate to remove him from the equation. Slade stays silent, and is admittedly having trouble parsing how an eviler version of himself getting zapped over from a different time-line and wreaking havoc is somehow his fault. He is no closer to making it make sense when the door clicks shut behind Bill and leaves him alone with Reese. His gaze is transfixed not on them, but on the area just towards the left of them, and they tilt their head a little as they take in the sight of him. The last they'd seen him, he was bleeding out a few feet away from them and they know that even his healing factor can't reverse blood loss from nothing. The bandages peeking out from beneath his shirt tell them he's not bounced back entirely. They also know that many people have speculated over the years that Slade has some sort of subconscious control over his healing, that he can alter it's efficacy depending on how deeply he feels about something. Bill thinks it's why his eye never healed after Adeline shot him. Reese thinks it's why there's still red spotting the bandages now. “Hey,” they say. With what looks like a great effort, he turns his head to face them. They wonder if he's slept at all since he came home, even as they know he hasn't. They wonder if he's eaten, even as they know he hasn't. They wonder what kind of mental gymnastics he's doing to concoct a narrative that blames himself for what happened, even as they know he doesn't have to work all that hard for it. In his mind, it is his fault for not being there to stop it. It is his fault for dying in the first place. It is his fault, and it will always be his fault and no amount of penance will ever absolve him of it. The whole situation has shades of their kidnapping back in Florida. He'd been so upset and angry with himself about the situation, that for a while he refused to see reason and took it as a sign he needed to leave everything the two of them had built. Back then, it honestly wasn't much. It was a small, fragile thing with no roots to keep it in place and no new growth to push it forward and it was only Reese's indignant insistence that he didn't get to walk away from it that kept it from collapsing. That was six years ago. What the two of them have built is much more resilient these days, and Reese has already done the work of keeping it rooted while he was dead. It's time for him to do some of the work for once, and if that means he has to feel all of the sharp edges between them, then so be it. Wordlessly, they hold out their arms. Slade hesitates. The urge to turn and run is coursing through him as much as anything and getting stronger with every beat of his heart. He forces himself to take the first step towards Reese. By the time he collapses onto the edge of the bed and into their waiting embrace it is as effortless as breathing. They smell like iodine and rubbing alcohol and the most basic of hospital issued soap, but they smell like home. “Hey, little one,” he says, voice thick with emotion and soft in their ear. “Please don't leave,” says Reese. He squeezes them as tight as he dares without hurting them and rests his forehead in the crook of their neck. “I'm not going anywhere,” he says, and for once in his life it is not only a promise, but a full one. The day will come when it won't be, of course. The day will come when he will unlock that familiar green army crate and he will be Deathstroke once more, but for now... For now he is alive and he is home, and he is not running away from any of it, no matter how many broken and jagged pieces are inside.

#self shipping #selfshipping #ship: wilson & wilson at large #the trouble with doubles #reese.fic #FINALLY AFTER LIKE A YEAR. I FINISHED IT.#this is the part where i mention this is actually an AU for the actual W&W timeline lmaooooooooooooo #i got hooked on the amnesia plot before they were like SIKE #also rip to slade's ex wife but i know full well he's never going to retire and stay at home all the time and im different

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main-to-card-games-and-pain · 5 years

Text

phosphorescence

I originally started to write this in July, and was going to gift it to @blondsak for her 250, but then I was awful and never finished it. BUT my queen has just (ish) celebrated her 500. So, this is for @blondsak as a gift, and for @frostysunflowers because we torment her with so much angst and she’s also a queen.

...

“I like Canada,” Peter declared, watching the trees roll by through the windshield. “Imagine how this drive would look in the fall.”

“I’ll take you in October,” Tony grinned. “You’re right, it’s... something else.”

“Canada’s like, really cool.”

“It’s like the United States bud.”

“But it’s not, it just feels different Mr.Stark. Oh! What’s that?”

Tony smiled to himself as Peter stuck his nose against the window to get a look at the passing group of mountain goats. “Mountain goats, Pete.”

“So cool...”

Peter was a kid who’d only ever seen New York, Washington, and the drive in between, so Tony was understanding of his excitement.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and see a bear,” he said, feigning casualness, “they’re out of hibernation now.”

Tony pretended not to see Peter’s eyes light up at the mere suggestion of more wildlife. “Really?! They get that close to the highway?”

“Sometimes,” the inventor replied.

“That’s awesome.” The boy shifted himself in his seat, fidgeting with the air conditioning. “Thanks for bringing me, Mr.Stark. I really appreciate it.”

Tony glanced at the kid from the corner of his eye and found a rather inconvenient lump had lodged in his throat. “Yeah well,” he choked out, “I missed my kid - catching up on lost time and all.”

The teen’s mouth quirked in a mixture of sadness and warmth as he wordlessly nodded. There’d been a time of dust and debris and death and devastation, but Tony got him back, and they were okay now.

“How long before we actually have to do the work we’re here for?”

Tony laughed, Peter almost sounded like Pepper when he said things like that. “Three days kiddo, and then I have to make a stop at BCIT and UBC for their engineering programs’ clean energy sector kick off.”

“You funded two universities?” Peter held nothing less than awe in his voice, not for the billionaire’s wealth but for his generosity.

“Not just me,” Tony replied, “there’s a few other donors too.”

“Yeah but not like Tony Stark.”

“Not like Tony Stark,” the mechanic agreed. “As for you, my young padawan, you aren’t working this weekend, you’re just here for the ride.”

“Would you care if I jumped ship and decided to study at one of these universities?”

“Already that attached to Canada, Pete?” Tony laughed. “No, I wouldn’t care. Wherever you want to go is lucky to have you, and your university fees are on me, so it makes no difference.”

“Cause I like Vancouver.”

“We’re on Vancouver Island right now, not the city Vancouver.”

The teenager groaned, “what’s the point of that? Making them two different things.”

“Ask the white dudes who named it, I don’t know.” Peter snorted, resuming his position of pressing against the window. “You can go to sleep if you want, we’re about an hour from the cabin.”

He said this mostly for show, recognizing how Peter was already relaxing into the sweet embrace of Morpheus.

...

Peter’s eyes sluggishly blinked open just as the car rumbled to a stop. “We’re h’re?” He mumbled sleepily, pulling himself up from his place against the seatbelt.

“We’re here,” Tony confirmed, opening his door and stepping into the afternoon sun.

Peter followed, sighing and pushing the car door open. He had just pulled himself out of the car when he stopped dead in his tracks and closed his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Tony asked, worry tinging his voice.

“Nothing,” Peter whispered, a smile beginning to pull his mouth up, “it’s quiet.”

Tony smiled back at him and started unloading their duffel bags. “It’s nice?”

Peter had yet to open his eyes. “So nice,” he murmured. The teen opened his eyes, taking in the surroundings properly. “This place is... it’s stunning, Mr.Stark.”

Tony smiled. “I thought you’d like it.”

Peter could see the lake from where they stood, but it was through the sprinkling of trees that grew high enough that Peter thought he could see them brush the blue of the sky. The water sparkled like crystal, stark and clear against the browning forest floor that shifted and crinkled as he shifted. Everything smelt of cedar and moss. The cabin was up the drive, wooden and big enough to be comfortable and small enough to be cozy.

It was perfect.

Sun filtered through the branches and lit the space in patches, and a breeze took the heat with it, leaving only cool contentedness; it such a surreal and idyllic scene that Peter almost wanted to blink to clear the dream away.

“I...” But there were no words for what Peter was feeling at that moment; peace, maybe, peace and quiet. “I really like it, Mr.Stark,” the boy finally whispered, tears prickling at his eyes.

“Oh- oh no, Peter... don’t cry. Why are you crying?” Tony dropped the bag and gathered the boy into his arms. “Hey, you’re okay… what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Peter sobbed, “I’m fine.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle at the response. “You don’t sound fine, Underoos."

“I’m just really happy,” Peter continued to cry.

“Alright,” Tony grinned, pulling the teenager’s head closer to his heart. “As long as you’re happy.”

…

“Mr.Stark, why couldn’t we swim until literally midnight?”

“You’ll see kid; don’t doubt me!”

“I have to doubt you, or else Ms.Potts would be mad at us - you - way more often than she is.”

Peter stuck his tongue out cheekily at the billionaire’s own snarky expression, mimicking him as he slipped the beach towel into the bag.

“I’m just saying,” the teenager continued, “we can’t even see anything without the light and it’s going to be cold as fuck out there.”

“First off, I’d say language but I don’t want to sound too much like Cap. Secondly, it was sunny and hot all day, it won’t be that bad, and trust me it will be worth it.”

“Fine,” Peter huffed, letting out an exaggerated sigh as he hauled the beach bag over his shoulder. “You should at least have to hold a bag,” he grumbled, “this is your idea.”

Tony pointed at himself. “Heart condition.” And then at Peter. “Enhanced. You do the math, genius.”

“‘You do the math genius’” the boy mocked, ducking a swat to the head.

“God,” Tony huffed without any real malice, “teenagers…”

With an exaggerated flourish he was out of the cabin and into the crisp night air, Peter rolling his eyes and following behind obediently. The pair walked the short trail to the lake, Peter’s flashlight lighting the way when Mr.Stark’s “dinosaur” torch flickered away and died halfway through.

They stopped a few metres away from the shore of the lake, where the water was gently dipping onto the sand and away again. Peter wasn’t exactly certain but he was fairly sure that finding a sandy lake was a rarity this far west in Canada.

“Okay,” he said expectantly, “now’s the time where you give me the explanation for why we’re here this late.”

“Do you know what a phosphorescent organism is?” Tony casually asked him instead. Peter blinked once at the sudden diversion and/or subject change.

“Yeah? The things that make light on their own? Right?”

“Yuppers, Underoos.” Peter watched, still confused, as Tony shed his shirt and began to make his way to the probably freezing lake water.

“And that has to do with this how?”

“Come here.” Tony held out his hand, already submerged up to his calf in the water. “It’s not cold, I promise; we’ll roast marshmallows in the cabin afterwards.”

Reluctantly, Peter did as he was told, wading into the not-unpleasantly cold lake till he was as far out as Tony was.

“Well, in this lake, there’s phosphorescent organisms,” Tony finally explained, a grin creeping up his face as Peter suddenly had a renewed excitement for their little voyage. “You can’t see them except in the dark, and you don’t feel them, but they only light up with movement.”

To demonstrate he shook his foot in the water, delighting in the way Peter’s face lit up as the little lights appeared.

“That’s… that’s so cool,” Peter breathed, glancing away from the water and back at his mentor, “and it’s safe?”

“I wouldn’t bring you if it wasn’t. Want to swim?” Peter nodded his head almost immediately, breaking out of his amazed stupor to smile mischievously and suddenly launch himself into the water, with an arm around Mr.Stark. “Brat!” Tony spat, laughing, when they resurfaced. “That’s one way to get used to the water I guess.”

But Peter was already paddling out into deeper waters, avidly watching his limbs as he did so.

With every twitch or kick the sparks would jump into existence, that’s what they looked like, the sparks that fly off of sparklers at New Years’ and birthday parties. They’d last just a second, and then they’d be gone. As Peter tread the water they flashed into existence moving with the motion of his kick.

The unbridled awe in his eyes made the entire trip worth it.

“It’s like galaxies crawling up my leg,” he exclaimed, looking at Tony with all this childlike wonder that was stored in everyone’s soul for exactly times like this. “This is- I mean- wow.”

“I know what you mean, kiddo.” Tony flipped onto his back and began to float, looking at the real stars instead of the ones flickering below them. “When I was a little younger than you my caretaker, Jarvis, took me on a road trip out here; the cabin is in his name. It kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Pete whispered, floating beside him suddenly. “It really does. Small things, ya know? There’s still small little pockets of beauty out here.”

Tony glanced at him out of his peripherals, ruffling his hair as best he could while still floating. “I don’t need the lake to remind me of that, Pete, but yeah - you’re right.”

…

They stayed in the water for about an hour, Tony content to float as Peter dove and spun and flipped in the water, experimenting with the little lights.

By one Tony called the both of them in, concerned about Peter’s body temperature.

The teenager, of course, insisted he was fine, but his violent shivering when he wrapped himself in his towel said otherwise.

Tony fussed over him like a dad until he was bundled in about three blankets and sat next to the fire. Out of his little cocoon of fleece a marshmallow poker was roasting a marshmallow in the fire.

“Move over, Underoos,” Tony grunted, sitting next to the kid with a plop. His hair was still wet and the chill had clung to his skin, but Peter couldn’t thermoregulate the way he could; he’d gladly get sick before taking a blanket from him.

“You’re cold too though, Mr.Stark,” Peter grumbled, like he could read his mind.

“I’ll manage; keep your blankets on bud. The fire’s warm.” But Peter continued to grumble, sleepier now, Tony realized. The boy shifted closer and closer to his mentor, till he was leaning his head against his shoulder. “Hi, Pete,” Tony whispered, wiping away a stray curl.

“Hi,” he mumbled, grinning languidly.

“Comfy?” Peter shook his head. “No? What do we have to do to change that?”

Peter shrugged off one shoulder of his many blankets and slipped it around Tony, pushing his head into the crook of his neck. Tony’s instinctively wrapped an arm around his shoulder.

“Tha’s better,” the sleepy teen mumbled, burrowing further into the embrace.

“That’s good,” Tony hummed, pulling him in closer and resting his chin against his curls. “Take your marshmallow out now, that’s it. Look, perfectly golden.”

...

quality? we don’t know her. I recently started uni though so like, this is a mixture of procrastination and random bouts of inspiration. I don’t think this warrants a tag list, it’s not all that impressive. XD

#what is quality? not this lol #can you tell I'm canadian #this is a once in a moon type thing #irondad #me writing fluff #fluff #Peter Parker and Tony Stark #not st*rker #camping #cuddling

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