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weyrwolfen · 8 months

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Eidola: Chapter 12 - CT-441-9891 Frag

Rating: T

Characters: Gen, Clone Trooper OCs, Captain Rex, Ahsoka Tano, and other canon members of the 501st/332nd

Warnings: canon-typical violence; references to self-harm, injuries, and substance abuse; PTSD; it’s post-Order 66 and nobody is having a good time (but they’re all working on it)

Summary: The mission was never to bring down the Empire. Not really. The mission was to save every single one of their chipped brothers. But if doing do helped break the Empire’s stranglehold on the galaxy? Well, that was just a bonus.

“Mom and dad are fighting,” Lighter said in a mock-conspiratorial tone.

Frag stopped turning the makeshift spit over their cooking fire and craned to look back towards the dormant lava tubes which had become their base of operations. Sure enough, the Captain and Commander were back there, having what looked like a very heated argument. “What’s their problem?” he asked.

He wasn’t really expecting anybody to answer, until a long-suffering sigh drew his attention back to the group of brothers sitting around the firepit.

Lighter seemed to be as confused as Frag, but Echo and Tech were looking pointedly at their squad leader. Hunter was giving them both an annoyed glare.

Right, Hunter had been engineered to have better senses than the rest of them. So, he probably could hear whatever their commanding officers were on about. Frag put on his best tooka eyes and turned them on Hunter.

The unimpressed glower Frag got in return could have melted transparisteel. “You’re going to burn those again, kid,” Hunter said, pointing at the skinned and seasoned, lizard-adjacent things Frag was supposed to be babysitting for Eidan.

With a sigh, Frag started turning the spit again.

Maybe his piteous fishing for gossip had been doomed to failure, but Echo looked and sounded genuinely concerned when he prompted, “Hunter?”

Apparently that did the trick, because Hunter finally relented and said, “He doesn’t like that she’s planning on going into the temple without backup. And she’s pointing out that if it’s the kind of temple that pulls Force stunts, it’s very likely that none of us could follow her in, even if we tried.”

Yeah, that’d do it.

Jedi or not, natborn or not, the entirety of the 332nd had seemingly adopted the Commander as their collective little sister. Most of them would have liked to wrap her up in blankets and store her in a safe house, if they thought there was even a small chance she’d stay put.

Which of course she wouldn’t, because whether she claimed the title or not, she was about as Jedi as they came.

It was kind of funny, when viewed from a certain angle. Frag and his brothers had been raised, conditioned, to see the Jedi as the next best thing to gods. And yet, here they all were, worrying themselves ragged because they didn’t think their Jedi could wander around some dusty old ruins without getting herself killed.

On second thought, no, it wasn’t funny at all.

“He knows that he is going to lose the argument,” Tech said matter-of-factly, zapping the tangle of parts in his hands with a compact soldering iron. He’d been tinkering with the wiring of what looked to be a spare set of goggles for a while now.

The Bad Batch’s technical expert seemed to be completely oblivious to the sharp looks which had turned his way. “And how do you figure that?” Lighter finally asked.

“Because he asked me to make her this,” Tech said, holding up his half-completed project. “It will transmit live data on her location and vitals, as well as a visual feed I can use to generate a photogrammetric map of the temple’s interior, should we need to mount a rescue attempt.”

Frag was more familiar with the kind of electronics that went boom, but that sounded like the kind of stuff the commandoes’ fancier buckets could do. Neat.

“And if it transports her to a different point in space or even time?” Hunter asked dryly. At the blank stares that comment earned, he just tapped his ear. “I’m just relaying the potential complications she’s been laying out to Rex.”

Tech’s expression turned sour. “Spatial displacement is traceable with her existing comm tracker, but temporal displacement remains a highly theoretical area of research. I have no way to account for it at the present time,” he said, looking and sounding annoyed and almost embarrassed by his lack of actionable knowledge. On time travel, like that was anything anyone could seriously expect him to be able to handle.

These 99 brothers were something else.

They did have a point though. Frag really, really hoped the temple didn’t decide to get ‘highly theoretical’ on their Commander. That was just about the last thing they needed. Given the dour faces around the fire pit, he wasn’t the only one having similar thoughts.

Nobody spoke for a few minutes. Hunter seemed distracted and Lighter concerned. Echo was definitely keeping a discreet eye on their two, still-arguing COs, and Tech was once again fully absorbed with the electronics in his hands.

Frag traded hands on the jury-rigged spit when his arm started to get tired and kept going. His gloves were good for keeping him from getting burned, but they didn’t do a thing for preventing repetitive motion cramps. This was absolutely droids’ work. Maybe he could sweet talk Tech into making a little belt driven motor to turn the spit in the future. After he finished up his project for the Commander, of course.

“Hey, Frag!” Eidan called from the makeshift kitchen tent. When Frag glanced over at his brother, he was immediately asked, “Is that batch done?”

Frag stopped turning the lizard-things and gave them a critical once over. They looked… the expected shade of reddish-brown? Kind of crispy around the toes and the tips of the tails? Sort of like the last batch, minus the accidental charring?

“I think so?” he yelled back, not bothering to keep the question out of his tone.

“Then bring it here!” Eidan said before ducking back behind the packing tarps which had been strung up as minimal protection from wind and rain.

Frag stood up, grabbed the spit by the closest end, and lifted it out of the forked supports.

Echo rose with him, clearing an easier path for Frag to escape the fire circle without accidentally whacking anybody with the spit. “I’ll let them know the food’s basically done,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Captain Rex and Commander Tano.

He found Eiden stripped of gauntlets and vambraces, blacks rolled up to his elbows, piling up some chopped fungi into a pile on the stripped-bare inner surface of a repurposed stormtrooper cuirass. A mound of cooked leaves, green and purple and mushy-looking, already filled a similarly gutted skid plate. They’d have to get creative with how they’d been serving their food. The Jekai’s galley wasn’t exactly set up for preparing or doling out real food, it had really only contained a weird assortment of mismatched utensils and trays too small for anything other than single-serving field rations.

Frag pulled the lizards off of the spit and piled them up next to the others on a spare piece of shuttle paneling they’d coopted as a platter. Eidan had prepped enough for everybody to have one for themselves and several extras on top of that, just in case. They’d already figured out that Wrecker would easily eat three times the amount a regular trooper could pack away, and Lighter had shared the strongly worded message Kix had sent, basically ordering the Raiders’ medic to cram as much high-protein food into the Commander as possible.

“What else needs doing?” Frag asked once he’d balanced the last carcass precariously on the pile.

“Nothing really,” Eidan said, glancing down at his bare, food-smeared arms and shrugging. “Just comm everybody to let them know the food’s ready.”

“I think Echo’s already–” Frag started to say when the tarp behind him was pulled open once again.

“What’re you cooking?” the Commander asked brightly. “It smells great!”

She looked so cheerful. Any other day, Frag might have totally bought her act. Between Kix’s message, the argument he’d just witnessed her having with Captain Rex, and the couple of comments Hunter’s team had dropped about the situation back at the Imp base, Frag took a second, harder look.

She was smiling, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes, which were red-rimmed and shadowed. She looked tired. Tired and sad and very, very young.

It was easy to forget that sometimes. In terms of cycles lived, she was older than all of the clones, especially Frag, who at ten was the often-teased baby of his Raider team. She was, or had been, a Jedi, a wartime Commander, but none of that negated the fact that there were several planets in the Empire where she still wasn’t old enough to legally purchase an alcoholic drink.

Ah hells. Who was he kidding? He was just as bad as his 332nd brothers.

“Some kind of fluffy lizard,” Frag said, handing her a tray and two of the piping hot carcasses, fresh off the fire. He might not be able to bundle her away somewhere safe, but he could do this. “Dunno if the leaves and fungi will agree with you, but they’re ready too. Dig in.”

Frag hung around the food tent, helping Eidan serve up the evening meal as their brothers filed through, picking up trays and making semi-joking bets about whether the evening’s food would be a success or only edible in the strictest, most clinical sense of the term.

None of that seemed to be setting the newcomers’ minds at ease. Apparently nobody had read them in on the culinary situation on the island.

All of them, even Wrecker, eyed the food with a little trepidation. In the end, Captain Rex had just joined the food line without saying a word, and Tech had made an offhand comment about all clones sharing an engineered resistance to most foodborne pathogens. That seemed to be enough to convince the rest of Clone Force 99 to dig in, even if they didn’t seem particularly excited about it.

Frag wasn’t sure if he should be offended. He’d snuck a few tastes, and the evening’s dishes were all pretty good. Nothing like those scrawny waders from their first week on Wadj, which had been nasty.

Hunter just wrinkled his nose and stepped into line after the Captain. Echo took substantially smaller servings than anyone else, splitting a lizard with Tech, who himself made up the difference with a sizable serving of the leaf stuff. Wrecker piled enough food on his tray to more than balance out his brothers’ smaller shares and then some.

When the last of their brothers had been served, Eidan and Frag loaded up their own trays and exited the tent to join the others. Frag was more than a little surprised when Trip immediately caught his eye and waved Frag over to join him.

Frag settled down between Wisp and Ripple, feeling unaccountably nervous. Not that he didn’t get along with their team leader. He did. It was just, Trip was... Trip. Getting summoned by an officer always made Frag’s stomach drop, like he was about to get dressed down for something. Didn’t matter that he hadn’t done anything deserving of a reprimand, the immediate attack of nerves came anyway.

But Trip knew that about him – by this point, he knew all of their team’s quirks – so he didn’t leave Frag in suspense for long. “You might be going into the Temple in the morning,” he said, cutting immediately to the point.

Oh.

Wait, what?

“I thought the Commander didn’t want an escort?” Frag asked, glancing around the small circle of clones. The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach worsened.

“She doesn’t,” Lighter replied, sharing a look with Trip. “Captain Rex talked her into some concessions. You’ll only go in if she runs into trouble.”

Well, that was wholly unexpected. “Why me?” he dared to ask.

Trip shrugged. “From what little we’ve seen of the inside of the temple, it’s a mess,” he admitted. “We’re expecting we’ll probably have to clear debris, assuming the interior hasn’t completely collapsed. In which case, it’ll be a short mission.”

So maybe some controlled demo work. It had been a while, but flash training wasn’t exactly something you forgot overnight. And bonus, he’d get to pull out some of his old toys and dust them off.

Assuming he didn’t get possessed by some ancient Jedi’s ghost or some other absurd Force garbage. What were the chances? “Any other recommended gear for reality-bending Force temples?” he asked, trying to bury his very legitimate concerns with dry humor.

Before Trip could say anything, Ripple answered, “Rations.” His tone was flat, and he kept his eyes on his own food, eating mechanically. “You never know.”

Four whole words out of Ripple, all strung together like that. Things were serious.

Frag felt kind of bad about cutting the column apart, but they didn’t really have any other options. Most of the floor-to-ceiling columns, decorated with carved figures and incomprehensible text, had somehow survived the eruption which had engulfed most of the building. They were oddly beautiful, and all the more impressive for their age, but this specific one fallen across the entrance of the only passage that seemed to lead further into the mountain. It had to go if they were going to explore further.

And Commander Tano was pretty insistent that she needed to explore further.

With a sort-of-Jedi on hand, shifting debris wasn’t really the problem, but this column was too big to easily maneuver without running into the other supports. Even Wrecker, with his obvious enthusiasm for blowing things up, had admitted that they shouldn’t worsen any of the alarming cracks which were already in the walls and ceiling. So Frag and his laser cutter had been tasked with carving a wide enough slice out of the column to reveal the door they could just make out behind it.

The row of figures under his hands seemed terribly unimpressed with him, but Frag was making an effort to cut along the empty band between the carvings and the next section of incomprehensible text. Whatever it was, it was too old to be in any current database, but Tech said that it looked similar enough to a few languages that he might be able to translate it eventually. Apparently he had co-opted the Marauder’s main computer to run a few analyses on photographs of the text on the building’s façade.

CT-436-6148 would have freaked out if he’d been here to see this. He would have freaked out over the whole temple really – he’d liked learning about the histories and cultures of other species – but he would have absolutely melted down over Frag destroying something this old.

But CT-436-6148 wasn’t here, and Frag didn’t know where he was or even if he was still alive. They’d been separated some time after their chips had activated, together in one disjointed memory and then not in the next. Frag tried to put his batchmate out of mind.

Instead Frag distracted himself by wondering who these Jedi had been. If they’d even been a Jedi. The Raiders had been calling it a Jedi temple, but was it? Really? It felt weird. Not bad weird, but too-peaceful-to-be-real weird. Like somebody really wanted them to let their guards down and rest, weird. And maybe that was okay. Maybe that was just the light side of the Force, or whatever, but maybe it was a smokescreen, concealing something dangerous.

Nobody had been dumb enough to go poking around without an actual Force-sensitive on hand to make sure it wasn’t a trap, but Commander Tano was here now, and she seemed to think it was okay. Or at least okay enough to explore. He’d overheard her telling the Captain she could hear something singing underground, so that was a little disconcerting.

Frag could see most of the rest of the team milling around the temporary command center. Tech was doing something to his holoprojector, which was projecting a model of the temple’s entrance hall. It flickered and shifted, leaving ghostly, half-formed models of the people moving around the room.

This end of the huge entrance hall was just barely bright enough to limit the utility of their night vision settings. It was kind of creepy, in all honesty. Every time the model updated, or someone walked in front of one of their yellow chemlights, or just turned their head and sent their helmet lights shining off in a new direction, the shadows moved too. It made the carved figures look like they were moving. Frag wasn’t a fan.

“I’m about to make the final cut. Are you ready down there?” he called down to Wrecker, not able to see the big clone around the curvature of the column without standing, but knowing he was there.

“Just finish up,” Wrecker yelled back, sounding more than a little impatient.

Frag scooted himself into position so his helmet light could illuminate the right spot, double checked the laser cutter’s depth setting, lined it up so the sensors reported he was angled just right, and activated the beam. Centimeter by centimeter, the last sliver of rock holding the section of column in place burned away. He was tense, waiting for the rock to crack, to shear away unpredictably, but the gray-white, crystalline rock didn’t seem too prone to doing that. It held up, right until the last second, when Frag’s laser sliced through the last sliver of stone and the entire section settled with a heavy, grinding thud.

Frag pulled his cutter away, keeping his hands well clear of the gap, and then noticed with a lurch that the huge section of column had started to roll.

But then Wrecker yelled, “Got it!” and sure enough, the column’s progress continued in starts and stops, as if he was finding handhold after handhold to roll it along. Tech and Hunter had assured him that Wrecker was plenty strong enough to deal with a section of column twice the planned size of this one, but Frag hadn’t been entirely convinced until that exact moment. He wondered what the Kaminoans had done to their brother to make that possible. Human bone could only handle so much force before it cracked under the strain, and that wasn’t even getting into the material limitations of the body’s other tissues. Maybe they’d slipped some non-human genes into Wrecker’s DNA? Grafted something synthetic into his tissues? Who even knew?

Probably Tech. Maybe Frag would ask later.

Frag stayed where he was, on top of the main section of the column, and watched the doorway slowly appear as Wrecker rolled the huge slice of stone out of the way. It was arched, framed in the same mysterious writing that covered the walls and ceiling of the rest of the temple, and only a little crushed by whatever had sent the huge column crashing into the wall.

“Here,” Commander Tano said, from next to the holoprojector. “Let me,” and the column abruptly rose with her lifted hands, rotated to the side, and drifted towards the distant wall.

Frag sat up, secured the laser cutter in his pack, and then started to pick his way down the side of the column, finding hand- and footholds on the line of carved figures. The relief was low enough that he couldn’t manage that for long – plastoid boots were great for keeping your feet from getting crushed, but kind of garbage for wriggling into shallow, tight spaces – so Frag finally just let go, slithering down the side of the column in a semi-controlled fall. He landed with an awkward little stumble, but still managed to stay on his feet. Not bad, given that he’d needed the Commander to hoist him up there in the first place.

Captain Rex and Echo were already checking out the doorway, helmet lights shining into the dark corridor, when Frag finished dusting himself off and making sure nothing had been dislodged from his utility belt in the fall.

The hallway didn’t look like much. Dark. Creepy, just like everything else in the temple. The feeling of unnatural peace seemed to flow out of the door.

“See anything interesting?” the Commander asked, apparently done securing the section of column.

“Not really,” the Captain replied, turning to look back at her with his visor angled a little down and to the side so he wouldn’t shine his lights directly in her eyes. It wasn’t an issue for the other troopers, their HUDs could adjust, but the Commander’s modified goggles didn’t have that feature. “Can you sense anything?”

She nodded, expression distant and eyes unfocused behind her tinted goggles. “It feels like Ilum,” she said, not that Frag had any idea what Ilum was.

Apparently Captain Rex did, because he just nodded. “Your call,” he said.

“I’m going in,” she said firmly.

And that pretty well settled it.

Frag dropped his pack off next to his blaster, against one of the intact columns, and joined the rest of the team. The map had already updated itself, showing the shifted piece of column and a little bit of the hallway beyond the doorway. There were even little wisps of vaguely person-shaped blurs, where everyone was standing.

Commander Tano exchanged a few words with Echo and Captain Rex, made sure her hood wasn’t obstructing the camera or lights Tech had affixed to her goggles, and started down the hallway.

The darkness seemed to swallow her up.

“The floor is angling down,” she said, sounding calm. “No cracks in the walls or anything, so far everything looks to be in good shape.”

Frag snuck a sideways peek at the direct feed from her camera on Tech’s datapad, but all he saw was an empty hallway with blank, stone walls and a low ceiling.

The Commander kept up a steady stream of chatter, talking about the lack of carvings on the walls, the thick coating of dust on the floor, the song of the Force. That was part of the deal the Captain had cut with her. As long as her vitals were normal and she kept in touch over the comms, their team would stay put in the entrance hall.

The projected map grew, even if it wasn’t terribly interesting so far. The long, straight corridor narrowed down considerably, but it was in surprisingly good condition. Given the damage to the entrance hall, Frag had kind of assumed that things would get dicier the further into the volcano they went. So had everybody else. That was, after all, the entire reason he’d been assigned to the team: to help deal with any debris or ceiling collapses they encountered.

The first grave they encountered was a surprise. Much to Tech’s obvious annoyance, everyone pressed in close to get a better look at his datapad. Each rectangular nook, carved at chest height into the wall, contained the dusty, half-crumbled remnants of what had clearly been humanoid skeletons. A spray of crystals seemed to grow out of each ruined ribcage, some even anchored directly to the brittle bones. They caught Commander Tano’s lights, flashing and casting odd shadows on the back wall of the alcoves.

“Those are kyber crystals,” Commander Tano breathed, bending close to get a better look.

“The things Jedi use to power their lightsabers?” Hunter asked after a moment’s silence.

“Yes,” the Commander said, sounding almost reverent. “But they’re more than that. It’s… hard to explain.” She moved on to the next grave, looking, but not touching the remains or their crystals. “They’re not exactly sentient, but they might as well be.”

That didn’t make any sense. How could something without a brain be almost sentient? Frag just filed that under ‘weird Jedi stuff’ and looked back at the map. There could be miles of tunnels down there, filled with dead Jedi.

Creepier and creepier. He was kind of relieved that it looked like he might not be needed anymore.

“I thought the Jedi cremated their dead,” Captain Rex said carefully, as if he was worried he might offend the Commander with a more direct question.

“We do,” she said, but her voice faltered and she amended, “We did. But traditions change, and I’m not sure these are actually Jedi. I don’t mean that they’re Sith either!” She rushed to clarify, apparently realizing how that statement was being taken by her backup squad. “I just meant, these graves are old. I don’t know how old, but kyber crystals take a long time to grow. They might pre-date the Jedi order, or they might be a separate group, which broke away from the rest of the Jedi. Nothing says they have to be Force-users at all. There have been lots of religious sects who worshipped the Force, even if they couldn’t really wield it. Monastic groups, just all sorts of other possible things.”

Frag caught himself thinking about CT-441-9898 again. He would have loved this.

Frag didn’t love this. Sentient crystals growing on dead, not-exactly-Jedi were not his idea of a good time. Not that he was going to admit to anybody how much his skin was crawling over the whole situation.

“I should keep going,” the Commander said. She sounded distracted, like she was listening to something else. Or someone else, because obviously the situation wasn’t creepy enough.

She found more graves as she went. The single row became two, then four, lining either side of the hallway from floor to ceiling. Some of the skeletons were clearly not human, even though Frag would have been hard pressed to identify every species, especially in the dim lights of the Commander’s video feed. Others had crumbled to dust and fragments which could only be identified as bone with a little creativity. There didn’t seem to be a link between the condition of the remains and the extent of the crystal growth. A few of the smallest clusters of kyber had grown in the most decayed nooks, while one grave had been spilling over with crystals, glittering from the walls, the ceiling, mounding up over a shroud-wrapped body, pieces of the woven fabric perfectly preserved and encased in kyber.

The hallway forked numerous times, but Commander Tano never hesitated, taking turns and ignoring corners with uncanny certainty. She did switch back on her own trail once, making a series of four left turns in rapid succession. Frag thought that was weird, but then Tech made an annoyed sound under his breath.

Echo leaned over, giving the model a critical eye. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

Tech indicated the location of her first turn. “The model is now registering a wall across that entranceway,” he said, and sure enough, there was a faint barrier where one hadn’t been before. “I cannot explain it.”

“Could it just be an error in the program?” Lighter asked.

Tech gave him a nasty look. “No,” he said sharply, despite the clear evidence projected in his model.

“You still with us, Commander?” the Captain asked over the open comms.

The video feed from her headset jerked, like the question had surprised her, but then she finally answered, “Yeah, still here.”

But then her video feed winked out.

Tech barely had time to announce the oddity before the Captain had grabbed the datapad and flipped it around to get a better look. Frag couldn’t see anything from the new angle, but the map started to glitch oddly too. Disconnected fragments of hallway sprung up in isolated patches, spread far enough apart to suggest she was moving incredibly quickly, even for a Jedi.

“Commander, report,” Captain Rex snapped, watching more, disjointed sections of map spring to life.

She didn’t answer.

Tech snatched his datapad back from the Captain and looked at it, scowling. “Something is intermittently blocking her signal,” he said, scowling down at the device. “Her heartrate and cortisol levels seem to be spiking.”

Frag knew where this was going, even before Captain Rex spoke.

“We’re going in. Fire everything up,” he finally said, already striding in the direction of the dark entrance. “Beacons, lights, cameras, everything.”

This seemed like a Force problem, and not exactly a shoot-it-with-blasters problem. But, Frag wasn’t about to argue with the Captain. He also wasn’t about to just abandon the Commander down there alone, so he stuffed down his reservations, punched the correct codes into the keypad on his vambrace, and gathered up his gear.

“Tech, we’re going to need directions,” the Captain said as everyone formed at the tunnel’s entrance.

“I cannot guarantee your armor won’t be affected the same way as the Commander’s,” Tech replied distractedly, wholly absorbed with whatever data were rolling across the screen of his datapad. “I will guide you as far as I am able, but you may need to rely on Hunter’s skillset, if your comms are compromised.”

“Understood,” the Captain said, sounding a whole lot more confident than Frag felt. “We’re not here to collect souvenirs,” he said, turning his attention to the rest of the team. “Don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”

As if Frag had been considering grave robbing a bunch of dead Jedi, even before the Captain’s pre-dawn briefing on the Force complications they might encounter if they ended up following the Commander into the temple. Frag didn’t care what the black-market value for kyber was, it wasn’t worth getting haunted over.

Captain Rex and Hunter took point. Frag and Lighter followed them, with Echo and Wrecker covering their backs. The Commander’s smaller, booted footprints were clearly visible in the thick layer of dust on the floor. The team set off at a controlled jog down the tunnel, following her trail. Wrecker complained that he was going to hit his head if the ceiling got any lower.

He had a point. The hallway was claustrophobic already, barely wide enough to let the clones move in two parallel lines, and Frag didn’t have Wrecker’s extra height and bulk to consider.

The graves were just as creepy as Frag had expected, not that they slowed down to inspect any of them too closely. Empty eye sockets watched them pass. Crystals caught their helmet lights, scattering multicolored flashes against the walls of each carved nook.

The hallway didn’t feel peaceful anymore. It felt watchful, expectant.

Tech kept up a periodic commentary on the Commander’s location, and sometimes the Captain asked him follow up questions. She had apparently slowed down, she was circling back on her own path, her vitals were still within ranges consistent with significant stress and exertion, but not injury.

Most everyone else was quiet. It was silly, but Frag got the impression that if he spoke, if he even breathed too loudly, he might wake something up. For long stretches, the only sound was their footfalls, soft as they could manage in full armor.

They’d just turned another corner when their comms crackled to life. “Everyone stop,” Tech said, tone sharp. “Go back, you should have taken the other fork.”

What fork? Frag and Lighter shared a look, confusion clear even with their buckets sealed, and then glanced behind them at an equally bewildered Echo and Wrecker.

“Tech, there wasn’t a fork,” Echo said, turning to shine his helmet lights behind him. “It was just a turn in the hallway.”

The silence wasn’t exactly heartening. Finally, Tech said, “Show me.”

Frag felt a hand on his shoulder and looked over to see Captain Rex, who jerked his helmet a little to the side in an obvious request to let Hunter and him through. Frag shuffled closer to the wall to get out of their way, trying not to bump the closest skeletal occupant with his pack in the process. A glint in Frag’s peripheral vision caught his eye, and he turned his head to see what it was.

A half-crumbled skull with a spray of crystals growing out of its eye socket stared back at him.

Frag flinched, and then felt like an idiot for it. Sure, the light caught the crystals oddly, making them look almost alive, but that wasn’t any excuse. He really needed to get his helmet on straight.

“There’s no other hallway here, Tech,” the Captain repeated, shining his helmet lights over the graves in the offending section of wall.

“Rex, look at this,” Hunter said, crouching down and pointing at something on the floor.

Echo and Wrecker had shuffled closer to try to see what had caught Hunter’s attention, so Frag and Lighter were left to try to crane around them.

“What’s going on?” Lighter asked, apparently coming to the conclusion that trying to see around Wrecker was a losing proposition.

“Commander Tano’s footprints stop in front of that wall,” Echo replied without looking around. He sounded grim, but the words made no sense. It took a second for them to really register with Frag.

“What?” he asked, because surely he’d heard that wrong, but Echo didn’t repeat himself. He just rested his organic hand on the butt of his blaster, fingers clenching and unclenching around the grip.

“I really don’t like this,” Wrecker said under his breath, speaking for all of them.

“Tech, are you sure she went through here?” the Captain asked steadily, but there was an edge in his voice that sent Frag’s stomach twisting.

“Yes,” came the immediate reply, but it lacked Tech’s usual certainty. “But I will check my program again.”

“I don’t think it’s your program,” Hunter said, straightening from his half crouch. “It’s not just her tracks that end at this wall.”

Well, that couldn’t mean anything good. Hunter had to be referring to his other senses, but that was ridiculous. People didn’t just disappear through walls.

Except apparently, they did.

Right… Haunted Jedi catacombs.

Hunter cautiously pressed a hand against the floor separating two of the stacked graves, as if half-expecting it to dissolve in front of their eyes, but the stone was solid.

The Captain stepped up next to him, running his hands over the wall as well, obviously searching for anything other than rough-cut rock. “Frag, get over here,” he ordered. Frag jerked, surprised by the summons, but then hastened to comply, awkwardly shouldering his way past a very tense, uncharacteristically quiet Wrecker. “Can you cut through this wall?”

“Uh, yes, but…” Frag trailed off, really not wanting to question a superior officer, especially not this one. The wall was just stone; he’d come prepped to blast through even tougher materials. He just needed to bore a hole, insert one of the smaller charges from his pack, and boom. New door. But…

But dead Jedi, disappearing halls, sentient Force crystals… What if we wake something up?

The Captain gripped Frag’s shoulder, apparently understanding his silent reservations. “Start small, just something we can see through first. Then we’ll figure out where to go from there.”

Frag nodded. He could do that.

“I’m guessing this is the interference Tech mentioned,” Captain Rex said, turning to look at each of them in turn. “Keep your eyes and ears open.” Then he motioned for Hunter and his team to follow him further down the hallway, obviously intent on continuing the conversation without the two Raiders. A moment later, their comm symbols winked out in Frag’s HUD as the open feed was shut down.

Frag kind of wondered what they were discussing, but then again, he probably didn’t want to know.

He tapped his gauntleted knuckles against the stone, working his way up and down the walls separating the neighboring columns of graves from the corner. It really did just feel like regular stone. He pulled out his laser cutter and started fiddling with its settings, increasing the diameter of the beam and dialing the depth of penetration way back. He figured he should try this in five centimeter increments, in case he cut through the wall and into the back of another grave or something.

Lighter was hovering at Frag’s shoulder, angled so he could watch the bend in the corridor not currently filled with their higher-ranking brothers. He wasn’t sure what the medic could actually do about shifting hallways and dead Jedi watching them with creepy, kyber eyes, but Frag felt better having someone watch his back all the same.

Frag eyeballed the center of the stretch of wall separating the graves and set the cutter parallel with the waist-height floors separating the alcoves, figuring that’d be the most structurally sound spot to cut. When the sensors read the correct angle, he activated the beam, burning a small hole into the rock.

Nothing happened.

Frag pulled out his backup flashlight and shone it into the fresh bore.

Yup, that was a small, round hole in a rock wall. And the Force hadn’t struck him dead for the transgression. So far, so good.

He dialed up the length of the beam and continued.

After a couple additional passes, his flashlight beam wasn’t strong enough to shine all the way to the bottom of the hole, but the cutter was still reading resistance every time he upped the depth. As best as he could tell, there wasn’t a hallway on the other side of this wall. As best as he could tell, there wasn’t another side to this wall, just a solid mass of Force-possessed volcano which had eaten their Commander.

Maybe it was going to eat them too.

Frag dropped his forehead forward to rest against the wall. When that didn’t do anything to alleviate the sick, twisting feeling that had set up shop in his gut, he pushed himself back with a frustrated snarl and set his cutter against the wall again.

“Force osik,” Lighter announced in between cuts, obviously trying to sound flippant, but failing miserably.

He was scared, too.

That made Frag feel both better and so, so much worse.

Lighter was a generation one, decanted around the same time as the Captain, so Frag wasn’t just being a total tubie about this situation.

On the other hand, Lighter was a generation one, a veteran of who even knew how many campaigns. He’d seen it all, done it all, and had the scars to prove it. Nobody could call him a coward with a straight face, so if he was scared, then maybe Frag should be terrified.

“That’s Mandalorian, right?” Frag asked, trying to distract himself.

Lighter nodded. “Mando’a, but yeah.”

Mando’a. Right.

Frag had been deployed early, when he was only eight cycles old. The Republic had been getting desperate near the end of the war, demanding soldiers at a rate the Kaminoan backlog of growing clones couldn’t support. He’d had maybe two weeks’ worth of advanced combat training with a human bounty-hunter named Gard before being sent off to Felucia, and then maybe two months before Order Sixty-Six had gone into effect. He’d barely earned himself a couple yellow stripes on his armor and picked out a name for himself before all of it had been taken away from him.

He’d heard that some of the higher-ranking, first gen brothers had learned directly from Jango Fett, and they’d picked up some Mando’a from him. After that, they’d been deployed of course, adding words and phrases, mostly insults and profanities, from the species and cultures they’d encountered. Then the next wave of clone troopers had been deployed, and the next. They’d all picked up new words and dropped old ones, adopting a seemingly random selection of slang from at least a half-dozen languages into their day-to-day conversations.

Frag could follow along, sort of, using context clues and repetition, but he’d barely been with the Raiders longer than he’d served in the entire war. It made him feel like a shiny still, despite the solid year he’d been on the front lines after his chip had activated, putting down local uprisings for the Empire. He’d been stuck with a mostly-natborn regiment, and none of them had cussed in anything other than Galactic Basic.

“That means excrement, right?” he asked Lighter, dialing up his cutter’s depth settings again.

Frag risked a glance when Lighter didn’t immediately answer. He couldn’t read the expression on the medic’s face, but he could guess what it was from the way his brother’s helmet was canted. “You’re seriously asking me to teach you to cuss, at the bottom of a Force-cursed Jedi crypt?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Frag replied, setting the cutter against the wall and adjusting the angle. “Kind of feeling like I don’t have the right words to describe our current situation.”

Lighter snorted at that. “I can’t argue with that. Yeah kid, osik means ‘excrement,’ but it doesn’t have to be literal.”

That made sense.

He was about to ask about ‘kark,’ which seemed to be one of the most grammatically confusing swears he had yet to hear, when the rest of the team’s open comm symbols flickered back to life in his HUD and the Captain asked, “Making any headway?”

“Not really, sir,” Frag said, letting his cutter fall to his side and turning around to face the rest of the approaching team. “Two point five meters in, and no end in sight.”

Captain Rex just nodded, like he’d been expecting that answer. Like that wasn’t completely insane. “We need to find out if any of the side passages loop back around to her trail. You two, stay here in case anything changes,” he said, obviously directing that last bit to Frag and Lighter. “The rest of us will scout up ahead.” He nodded towards the tunnel they’d started down, before Tech had stopped them.

Lighter cocked his head a little to the side. “Why not back the way he came?” he asked. “There were some side tunnels back there.”

Echo and Hunter shared an unreadable look behind the Captain’s back.

“The way’s blocked,” Wrecker said when nobody else seemed like they were going to answer. He sounded grim.

Wrecker never sounded grim.

“Like, a rock fall, or like…” Frag jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the out-of-place wall, not bothering to finish his question.

He really wanted it to be a rock fall. A rock fall he could handle, easy.

It wasn’t a rock fall. Quiet as the catacombs were, they would have heard something.

“Our tracks end in front of another wall,” Hunter said, confirming Frag’s suspicion.

Lighter said something under his breath that had the definite cadence of Mandalorian. Mando’a. Whatever. Frag couldn’t follow it, but it sounded rude, and angry, and resigned.

Frag just swallowed, not appreciating the way his stomach was twisting itself into knots at the news. “Okay,” he finally managed to say, sounding more than a little choked. “We’ll stay here.”

“Keep your comms open, we won’t be long,” the Captain said, but even though he sounded perfectly collected, something in his tone sent the skin down the back of Frag’s neck prickling.

Their brothers set off with the Captain in the lead and Wrecker last, trudging along like he was marching to his own execution. Frag couldn’t think of anything to say, everything that came to mind felt a little too close to a goodbye, and he refused to put that kind of thought out there for the cursed tombs and their doubly-cursed occupants to hear.

“First right,” Hunter reported a few seconds later, and then after a longer pause he continued, “Bypassing a left fork. Tech, are you getting this?”

Frag jerked when a loud burst of static assaulted his ears. Lighter did too, so it wasn’t just a glitch in Frag’s helmet. It must have gone out over all their comms. Tech’s designation had rolled up to the top of their group with the unexpected sound, but they couldn’t hear anything intelligible in the noise.

“Tech, say again?” Hunter demanded, as soon as the static stopped. “Te–”

Everyone except Lighter abruptly disappeared from Frag’s HUD.

The silence made the dark just that much more oppressive.

“Lighter, did your comms cut out too?” Frag asked, clinging to the hope that his bucket was just acting up.

Lighter glanced at him, visor unreadable, and then turned to look down the hallway where the others had disappeared. “Yeah, kid. They did,” he admitted.

If their comms had cut out, then the Captain and the others would notice too, right? They’d turn around and come back, regroup and decide what to do next.

Frag didn’t say anything. He didn’t trust his voice not to crack if he’d tried. He just checked his chronometer – it read 10:14 – and watched the hallway for their returning team.

They didn’t appear.

He checked his chrono again, but it still read 10:14, which didn’t make sense. Sure, he was being a little impatient. Given the situation, he thought he’d earned the right to be, but it had really felt like longer than one minute.

His chrono flickered, rolling over to 10:15, but then immediately skipping ahead to 10:49.

Maybe there was something wrong with his helmet after all? Could there be something down here that was messing with their electronics? Some kind of radiation or radio signal? That would explain at least a little of the weirdness, not the walls appearing and disappearing, but the comms…

Except no. Hunter definitely would have sensed something like that.

“Lighter, is your chrono acting up?” he asked, and sure enough his voice cracked like a mid-puberty cadet. Humiliating.

“What do you mean?” Lighter asked, just as Frag’s chrono skipped again, this time falling back to 10:46. They were both silent for a moment, and then Lighter said, “Yours just did that too, right? Went backwards a few minutes?”

“It’s gotta be something electronic, right?” Frag asked, but all he could think about was Hunter’s dry recitation of the argument between the Captain and the Commander yesterday. Time. Sometimes Jedi temples could mess with time. Had they just jumped back in time a few minutes, or forward a full cycle? Or more?

Lighter didn’t answer. He just took a hesitant step in the direction the other four had disappeared.

Frag forced himself to stop thinking too hard about it, because the other option was going to end with him hyperventilating right there in the hallway. He leaned against the wall, instinctively seeking out a little extra support, but stumbled backwards when his pack didn’t meet the expected solid stone.

His involuntary shout of surprise sent Lighter whirling around, blaster ripped from its holster and ready to fire.

They both froze. Frag’s arms were still flung out to his side, seeking balance or at least a handhold to catch himself.

He was standing in the missing hallway. The wall, complete with his drill hole, had disappeared again.

“Okay,” he said, mouth running with nerves. “Okay,” he repeated, forcing himself to lower his arms and look around himself.

Lighter stepped forward, blaster still out and ready. His helmet light skimmed up and around the doorway.

Frag looked down and sucked in another surprised gasp. “Lighter, look here!”

The Commander’s small tread was there, but now there were others too. One unusually large set, even if the tread was familiar, just the standard pattern on the bottom of all their boots to give them better grip on unsteady footing. One other was oddly angular, with a different pattern, and there were a few more that were a perfect match for the prints Frag himself had just left, stumbling through the dust.

Frag wasn’t a great tracker, but he knew a few of the basics. He’d lay every credit he’d ever seen on these tracks belonging to Wrecker, Echo, Hunter, and the Captain.

Or something wanted him to think that?

Lighter stepped forward cautiously into the hallway, lights joining Frag’s on the floor and the tracks left there in the thick blanket of dust.

“Do we follow them?” Frag asked, falling back on training and experience and trust that an older brother would know what to do.

But Lighter seemed just as shaken as Frag. “I don’t know,” he admitted, voice strangled. “What if it’s a trap?”

This whole place was a trap. What kind of question was that?

“Look,” Frag said, half trying to psyche himself up and half trying to legitimately work through the problem at hand. “Look, even if those don’t belong to the Captain and the others, the Commander’s were definitely real. Hunter smelled her, or… or whatever it is he does. They were real.”

Were they? Was any of this?

“Yeah, okay,” Lighter said, taking another step forward and scanning the hallway like he was still expecting an ambush. “You might have a point.” He still looked back over his shoulder, hesitating.

“We could leave something, in case…” Frag trailed off, not wanting to give voice to the numerous reservations and fears which were vying for attention in the back of his head. “Just in case. A note or something.”

“Did you bring some karking stationary with you?” Lighter asked sarcastically, but Frag would take it, if it meant the medic kept sounding more like his usual self.

“We’ve got to have something we can use, between our two packs,” Frag insisted.

In fact, they had several things. Lighter wasn’t about to give up any of his bandages as a banner, but they managed to tear a strip out of Frag’s thin, thermal blanket and the medic burned a message into the fire-resistant material with his field cauterizer.

‘Hallway to Commander opened. Following her. L&F’

The letters were a little wobbly, and the arrow Lighter added as a crude set of directions was worse, but it was legible, which was all that really mattered. They left it at the junction where the two hallways came together. Frag weighted it down with one of his containers of two-part explosive putty, much good it had done him so far on this mission. If he ended up needing some later, he had more.

“Eat something,” Lighter repeated with just enough of a threat behind his words that Frag gritted his teeth, but did not argue. His stomach wasn’t interested in food in the slightest, but arguing about it wasn’t going to do any good.

“Fine,” he grumbled, reaching behind him and finding his way into the correct compartment of his pack by feel alone.

Their chronometers were still acting up, skipping around or slowing to a crawl for no obvious reason. Nevertheless, when the broken thing had rolled over noon, Lighter had started pestering Frag about eating and drinking something.

Medics.

Frag slung his blaster rifle over one shoulder, opened the ration bar, then popped his seals and pulled off his helmet to start eating. They didn’t stop walking though; he could see well enough in the light from Lighter’s bucket.

The skeletons in the graves were less visible without his HUD’s light adjustment settings. He wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse. It definitely didn’t make him forget the oppressive feeling of being watched from those dark alcoves.

Frag didn’t have a good word to describe how the hallway smelled. Dry, like old flimsi, and stale, like a shuttle whose CO2 scrubbers were in desperate need of changing.

The ration bars tasted like dust and something worse. Decay. When he’d finally gagged half of it down with a few swigs of water from one of the canteens he’d packed, Frag was more than relieved to seal his helmet back up. He had a sneaking suspicion that the pervasive dust wasn’t just coming from the stone walls.

“Your turn,” Frag said, extending the other half of his ration bar in his brother’s direction.

Lighter was silent for a few seconds, and when he answered, it was only to say, “Later.”

Frag still didn’t argue, even if the refusal made him grit his teeth. He understood the need to stretch their supplies as far as they could. Neither one of them had any idea how long they were going to be down here. But it still felt like Lighter was treating him like a cadet. Between the two of them, having a healthy and functioning medic seemed like a much higher priority than whatever Frag was on this mission. Dead weight. The most useful thing he’d done so far was follow Ripple’s recommendations to pack extra rations, but so had everyone else. He was less than worthless down here, just one more mouth in need of their limited food and hydration, with nothing tangible to provide in return.

Frag shoved the half-eaten bar back into his pack and promised himself to refuse another bite until Lighter ate something too.

The footprints in front of them kept changing. Sometimes there were multiple sets, from way more than four pairs of boots. Other times, they only saw the commander’s smaller tracks. Her stride was really long, a sure sign that she had been running at this point, but towards what or away from whom, they couldn’t tell.

Frag was trying to ignore the graves on either side of him, but when he spotted a half-familiar crystal formation spilling out of one nook like a frozen waterfall, he couldn’t help glancing into it as they passed. There was a skull there, near-human, but sporting a crown of small horns. They looked similar to a Zabrak’s, but the count and spacing weren’t quite right. The first time Frag had seen it, he’d distracted himself by wondering if maybe the horns’ owner had been a hybrid of some sort.

The second time he’d seen it, he’d stumbled in surprise and sudden fear. The hallway they’d been following since leaving their message for the others was long and straight, and they hadn’t turned off of the path once. He’d bumped into Lighter – the two of them had started walking so closely they were constantly bumping shoulders anyway, as if both of them were worried the tunnels might throw a wall up between them if given the slightest chance – and had cracked a joke about his own clumsiness. It had fallen thoroughly flat, but Lighter hadn’t questioned him further.

This was the fourth time he’d seen that same, distinctive skull, toppled over in the same, staring position. Frag clenched his hands around his blaster rifle and walked past it.

He still hadn’t told Lighter about it. The medic was being overbearing enough as it was. No reason to stress him out even more.

Frag tried to even out his breathing, catching himself slipping closer to shallow, panicked panting if he didn’t make an effort to calm down.

Same thing with thinking about the impossibly repeating skull, or the impossibly disappearing and reappearing footprints, or the impossibly moving walls, or, or, or…

He couldn’t think about any of those things, not without cracking up completely, so he just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the next and hoped.

The press of the darkness and the pervasive feeling that the dead Jedi were watching him were really starting to get to Frag. He kept thinking he heard footsteps or voices, echoing oddly up and down the silent corridors, but he didn’t want to ask if Lighter was hearing them too. He wasn’t sure if a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer would be worse.

Apparently his brother could follow his thoughts just fine though, because only a few minutes later Lighter said, “Whatever you’re seeing or hearing, just ignore it.” He sounded tense and harsh and almost angry. “This place is trying to kark with us.”

Yeah, Frag definitely needed to work out the exact definition of that word. He could use some descriptive profanities just then. He choked down a laugh he was pretty certain would have come out sounding more than a little hysterical. “It’s doing a good job of it,” he admitted, hating how unsteady he sounded.

“Don’t let it.”

Easier said than done.

When Frag didn’t immediately answer, Lighter caught him by the spaulder and yanked him around. “We’re getting out of here,” he said, his voice a harsh grate. “We’re finding the others, and then we’re leaving. We’re going to be fine.” He almost sounded like he believed his own osik.

“You don’t know that,” Frag muttered under his breath, dropping his blaster to one side, and then repeated, louder, when Lighter just stared at him. “You don’t know that.” He was sick of Lighter treating him like a tubie, sick of feeling utterly powerless, sick of the temple or the dead Jedi or whatever was playing games with him. Sick of all of it, really.

Lighter shoved him back against the wall of the hallway. Frag’s pack hit the uneven graves with a clatter of jostled equipment and plastoid. It sounded like something dry and brittle had snapped under his weight, but Frag didn’t have much time to really think about that before Lighter was in his face, hand locked under the bell of his spaulder, arm pressed against his chest where a little pressure could send it up and against his less armored neck.

Frag instinctively grabbed Lighter’s wrist with one hand, halfway towards executing a twisting maneuver to break the medic’s grip, when he paused. This was his brother. His older brother, who outranked him in every way that mattered. Everything in his training was screaming at him to not fight, to listen, to obey.

“So what’s your plan then, kid?” Lighter said, and there was none of the usual affection in the way he drawled over that last word. “Gonna tuck tail and run? Leave your brothers and your Jedi down here to die?”

Frag saw red.

He had no idea how he managed it, and probably couldn’t repeat the maneuver in a moment of sober lucidity. But even though Frag was pressed flat against the wall, he somehow managed to kick a booted foot between Lighter’s legs, hook an ankle behind his brother’s foot, and send Lighter and himself both crashing to the floor. After that, the situation devolved into a tangle of knees and fists and elbows.

The words streaming out of his mouth were mingled denials and the most scathing, insulting combinations of half-understood terms he could imagine. He was pretty certain he wasn’t making sense, especially around the point he’d managed to tear off Lighter’s helmet while suggesting the medic do something anatomically inadvisable with an acklay.

He didn’t care.

He knew he was going to lose. He knew Lighter had more training, and more experience, and just more of everything than Frag had been given a chance to learn. He knew he was the weak link on this mission, but that didn’t mean he needed to be coddled or guilted or lied to in order to convince him to do what needed doing. He wasn’t planning on leaving anyone down here in this cursed tomb, not if he could help it at all, but he was going to leave a boot print across his brother’s face if it was the last thing he managed to do.

“Force, kid, calm the kark down,” Lighter said through gritted teeth. He had already ripped Frag’s helmet off and was holding one of his arms twisted up behind his back. With his other hand, he was struggling to pin Frag’s face down against the floor in an attempt to subdue him further. “I didn’t mean–”

Frag bit Lighter’s gloved fingers. Hard.

Lighter yelped, and Frag used his momentary distraction to twist out of his brother’s grip, getting just enough leverage to half stand and throw himself backwards in a move that should have slammed Lighter against the far wall, dislodging him further.

It didn’t work out quite like that.

They both went sprawling into a side passage that had not been there when the fight had started.

Lighter let go of Frag completely and staggered to his feet, looking around wildly at their new surroundings.

Frag picked up a smashed helmet light, neither knowing nor caring which one of them had lost it in the fight, and hurled it down the new hallway with a snarl of unfocused frustration and rage at whatever was toying with them.

The broken light hurtled out of sight before it hit the ground with a sharp crack, bounced, cracked against the floor again, and then collided with something softer.

Frag froze, fear dousing his irrational fury in an instant.

Whatever it was, whoever it was he had hit with that stupid, thoughtless stunt, moved.

Frag staggered back, instinctively putting himself between his brother and whatever he’d managed to wake up.

Something scraped against the stone floor, sounding like booted feet, and a pair of eyes reflected back the lights from their helmets, red-orange pinpricks.

Frag raised his blaster and was instantly answered with a rush of static followed by a low hum of energy.

Two unfamiliar, yellow-green lightsabers blazed in the darkness.

“Oh, Kark.”

AN: Other chapters are available here.

Dividers by freesia-writes using helmets by lornaka. More designs available here.

0 notes

hops-hunny · 3 years

Text

Angels on Earth

Pairing: Ron Weasley x Chubby!Reader

Pronouns: She/Her

Word Count: 1.8k

Request: “CONGRATS ON 300 FOLLOWERS!!!! I love your writing sm <3

this is my first time ever making a request and recently I found out that the person I was dating is still in love with their ex so I'm looking for comfort rn hehe

could you do a 23, 33, 35 with Ron, a mix of fluff and smut? chubby/plus size fem reader please”

Summary: Ron thought he was obvious, but it was clear (Y/n) was more obvious.

Warnings: Sexual themes

A/N: This took a while but I’ve also been busy but, enjoy!

23. “Cause I never believed there was a heaven till I found you.”

33. “Would you fuck me if I was skinny?” “I’d fuck you right now.”

35. “If you wanted a kiss you should’ve just said so.”

For as long as Ron could remember, he had always found his potions partner to be beautiful. Who could blame him? (Y/n) was a beautiful girl. Round cheeks, soft all around, beautiful (h/c) hair, and the prettiest set of (e/c) eyes he had ever seen. But that wasn’t originally what drew him in, it was everything else. (Y/n) had an aura that surrounded her that was so bright, so full of life. Everyone who befriended her was always in a positive mood, smiles seen left and right from the jokes she’d tell. Even right now, with her hair pulled back from her face and the cute little goggles she insisted on wearing, he couldn’t help but admire her.

“Right. I think that should be it.” She said, pushing the goggles up her face as she turned her head to look at him. His face flushed and if she had noticed, she didn’t say much. “That is unless you fucked something up. Merlin knows how bad you are with Potions Weasley.” she giggled, his heart pulling and racing in his chest.

“Oi! ‘M not that bad. Plus you didn’t let me touch anything, should be fine unless you managed to make a mistake.” He leaned towards her a bit with a devious smirk. “But it’s impossible for you to do that isn’t it? I forgot you were just a perfect princess.” He pulled away, eyes trained on the potion in the cauldron in front of them. Amortentia, was it? He found it a bit strange because he couldn’t smell anything but the girl’s perfume no matter how far he leaned in. In his own state of confusion, he completely missed the girl’s own shocked look on her face.

“What do you smell?” she questioned, gathering her things due to the period drawing to a close. His eyes widened at his realization before calming down. Now was a better time than ever. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before sighing.

“You.” his eyes shot open at the sound of a snort. (Y/n) had made her way towards the exit of the potions room, (e/c) eyes rolling at him as she shot him a smile. She went to leave the room before giving him an up and down.

“If you wanted a kiss you should’ve just said so.” she teased, shooting him a wink before exiting the room. He groaned, rubbing his hands up and down his face as he adjusted the awkward bulge in his pants. He stood, gathering his things as he huffed to himself.

“I’m in deep aren’t I?” he said out loud, ignoring the look his slimy potion’s teacher gave him. Without another word, he left continuing on his path to his next dreadful class of the day.

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

“She probably thought you were joking.” Harry said, causing Ron to give him a glare. Even though there was a big possibility that Harry was right, he didn’t want to believe him. He thought his attempt was a good one! He was direct about what he meant, right?

“He’s got a point. You guys usually joke around and mess with each other a lot. She probably thought you were cracking a joke. Have you tried just telling her how you feel?” Luna asked as if the answer was obvious. Ron felt his brow twitch as he sighed, sinking down in his seat more as he threw his head back.

“What can be more obvious than saying you smell someone in your Amortentia? Do you guys even think?” He questioned.

“Do you? Cause if you did then you’d know that was a poor attempt.” Hermione chimed. Although at first he was sure his attempt was good, that it was obvious, suddenly he was beginning to have second thoughts. Was he clear enough? Sure, you could say one thing but he’d be the first to admit his actions didn’t match. He huffed, looking at his friends, desperation hidden in his eyes.

“Well, what should I say then?”

“Say something truthful! Let your heart speak for what your actions couldn’t.” Ginny chimed, causing them all to give her a strange look. She crossed her arms, looking away with red cheeks. “What? I think I’d know what chicks like, I do shag em afterall.”

“So tell us, what does your heart say Ron?” Luna asked, he sighed as he racked his brain. He liked her a lot. How could he not? (Y/n) was beautiful, a gift from the heavens above. The softness of her skin, the roundness of her tummy, and those beautiful luscious thighs. He was surprised no one else had made a move on her yet. She was kind too, always willing to help her fellow (y/h/h) in need.

A lovesick dopey look took over his face. “I...I’d say…” he let out a dreamy noise as hearts took over his eyes, “I never believed there was a heaven till I found you. Never believed angels walked among us at Hogwarts, that I think she’s amazing and I-”

“Okay ew that’s enough. I’m gonna be sick. Save it for her.” his sister said, grimacing as she stood up. “And with that note, I’m gone. Why not tell her at the Gryfindor party tonight? I’m sure she’ll be there!” Ron gulped nervously. That soon? Surely a few hours wasn’t enough time to prepare! Maybe he’d try in a few months…

However as he looked across the hall, seeing some twit practically eye fucking her, it was settled. Tonight he would tell her and if not, he’d at least make some progress.

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

Ron let out a shaky deep breath, wiping his sweaty hands along the front of his jeans. Whether it was the sweltering heat of all the warm bodies, the shots he had taken, or the thought of what he had set out to do tonight he didn’t know, but either way he was burning like a phoenix. His eyes trailed the room nervously, looking for (Y/n). How was he sure she’d be here anyways? She wasn’t a frequent attender to parties, only showing up to them sporadically. However at the sound of a familiar laugh-snort combo, he had all he needed.

In his buzzed(and slightly drunken) haze, he followed the sound blindly, face heating up at the girl's appearance. She wore a blush colored bodycon dress that clung to the folds and curves of her body nicely.. Her hair was styled differently than usual, but suited her perfectly nonetheless. Most things did. And when she saw him? Her face broke out in a bright smile as she hiccuped, handing her half empty cup to one of her friends. She stumbled her way over to him. He steadied her by placing his hand on her waist, looking down at her.

“Ronnn! Omg Ronnie, what’re you doing here?” she hiccuped again, giggling as she stared up at him. He smiled back at her softly, stroking along the softness of her waist.

“ I could ask you the same thing, love, you’re not much of a drinker usually.” he placed a hand on her cheek, thankful for the liquid courage flowing through his system. “You alright? Come on, let’s sit you down. You don’t seem to be too steady.” he said, guidning her towards the couch. When they got there, he expected her to sit next to him but was in shock as she parked herself in his lap. She wrapped an arm around his neck, smiling down at him drunkenly. He handed her a glass of water, the same one he had been handed earlier when he was getting a bit out of hand. She thanked him, sipping on it at a slow pace.

After a few minutes, the hiccuping and giggles had died down from her, leaving her to form goosebumps at their current position. She was fully seated on the boy’s lap and he had his arms wrapped around her, rubbing his fingers along her soft pudgy sides. She bit her lip as she looked off to the side, before bringing her eyes back to his.

“Uh, Ron,” she started, looking down as she picked at the skin around her nail beds. Letting out a deep sigh, she continued, “Can I ask you something?” her heart began to race rapidly as she looked at him, watching as he nodded before offering her a soft smile.

“Course. What’s up?” How should she phrase it? Should she be simple? Should she-

“Would you fuck me if I was skinny?” she blurted out, eyes widening. Although she had wanted to ask him something about if he was attracted to her, she hadn’t intended on being so...bold. She was known for speaking her mind but not in situations like this! In a state of panic, she went to stand up but was pulled down by a strong pair of arms, pulling her close to an even stronger, toned chest. He chuckled in her ears, hair tickling the edge of her neck.

“Shit princess, I mean...I’d fuck you right now.” his grip on her sides tightened, trailing one hand on her thigh. Out of all the things she could’ve said, this was the last one Ron expected. (Y/n), his snarky potions partner, in his lap in that god forsaken dress asking if he’d fuck her. He felt his own heart begin to race. Did she mean to say it? Well, did she mean to say it to him? Or did she just want his opinion for someone else?

“O-oh.” she stuttered out. (Y/n) pulled back some, turning her head to look at him, finding that his eyes instantly were drawn to hers.

“Do you mean that?” they both asked. Ron’s cheeks turned red as (Y/n) felt her own face grow warm. Both of them let out breaths they didn’t even know they were holding, laughing with one another.

“I meant it but, did you?” she asked, breath hitching of the closeness of their faces to one another. She could smell the fire whiskey mixed with hints of cannabis and weed mixing with it making her absolutely intoxicated. He nodded, pressing his forehead against hers.

“‘Course I did, love. You don’t have to be skinny for me to do anything with you, let alone fuck you. Because trust me,” he trailed a hand along her upper thigh, sliding it between the soft expanse of them. “It’d be my pleasure to fuck a woman with a body like yours. A woman so soft, so tender, bet that cunt of yours is tight and dripping. Isn’t it?” the girl squeaked, clenching her thighs around his hand. He leaned down, pecking her lips softly before pulling away, (Y/n) whimpering in a desperate attempt to let him know she wanted more..

“And if I were to grant you that pleasure right now?” she purred, placing a soft hand on his cheek which he gladly leaned into, a dark chuckle leaving his lips.

“I’d be the luckiest man alive.”

#ron weasley x you #ron weasley x reader #ron weasley x y/n #ronald weasley x reader #ron weasly imagine #ron x reader #ron x you #harry potter imagines #harry potter imagine #Harry Potter #chubby reader #x chubby reader #chubby!reader #plus size reader #x plus size reader

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tumbledfreckles · 3 years

Note

Absolutely!

She should not be doing this. She knows she should not be doing this. She'd been warned against doing this.

But really, Quidditch practice ended half an hour ago. Surely he would have cleaned up by now. Right?

Hope this works! <33

This has not been edited, and it should have been edited, but screw it, I loved this prompt, I've stayed up way past bed time to write it, I wrote 1800 words instead of the 500 I planned, so have it in it's unedited glory and don't judge me too harshly. It's late, but its shirtless James Potter May or Jumpers off for June or really, just a thirst trap drabble to get your week going well.

Lily knocked softly on the door to the locker rooms, her breath caught in her throat, a thrum of anxiety running in her veins. When there was no sound, no answering call, no bid to enter, she paused for only moments, before biting her lip and pushing on the door handle.

She should not be doing this.

Her footsteps were quiet as she made her way down the long corridor that led to the locker rooms. Doors of the unoccupied rooms were shut, her finger tips dragged against the names of each team as she went. Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and then finally, at the very end, Gryffindor. Unlike the others, this door was set slightly jar, light seen through the gaps, but no sounds emerged. The team had clearly departed.

She knows she should not be doing this.

Lily gritted her teeth, taking a deep breath as she pushed open the door, wide enough for her to slip through. It closed gently after her, allowing her to lean back against it, hands still caught on the handle behind her. She clutched the handle for dear life, knowing she should turn it and go back through. Knowing that to go further into the room was a boundary she shouldn’t cross.

She’d be warned against doing this.

As expected, the locker room was at least empty. She’d never been in here before, not being on the team, and never before having anyone she’d wanted to follow into the abyss. The reality was as bad as Lily had imagined. Likely due to the graces and actions of the house elves, it was cleaner than expected. There were no used towels piling around, no dirty, soiled uniforms discarded. The walls were filled with posters and pictures of Gryffindor Quidditch teams throughout the years. Banners and scarves lined the players' open lockers, caught on the name plates fastened above each one.

Almost as soon as she noted the name plates, her eyes caught on one in particular. A name that had fallen from her lips more often than her own had this year. A name that used to come out with derision, but was now pronounced with warmth, with feeling, with an unexplainable but inexplicable feeling of joy. The locker below it was the least orderly of them all, clothing still hung on the hooks, shoes and boots underneath the bench seat in front of it. Shin guards and pads and flying goggles still littered the bench and shelf.

The captain himself was nowhere to be found however. The sound of running water drew her attention to another doorway, at the far end of the locker room. Steam poured out of that room, leaving Lily in doubt that it was the way to the showers. Somewhere she definitely shouldn’t be going. She could wait out here for him. She only wanted to check on him, close the loop on their earlier conversation. She felt guilty for leaving him hanging, but that was no reason to follow him into the showers, surely.

But, really, Quidditch practise ended half an hour ago. Surely, he would have cleaned up by now. Right?

With that solid, solid reasoning ringing in her brain, spurring her on despite a wealth of misgivings, Lily moved forward. Her heart was racing but her movements somehow remained slow, cautious.

“Potter?” she called at the doorway.

No answer came.

Lily shook her head, cheeks already turning red as she contemplated her next action seconds before completing it.

She was only two steps in when she pulled up short.

James stood under the shower, mere metres from where Lily herself stood. A low wall hid most of his lower anatomy, but his back was on full display. Water ran in rivulets over strong, broad, tanned shoulders. It drained off his elbows as James reached to scrub at his hair, a movement Lily had seen him do a million times across their seven years of schooling, but never when he was wet. Certainly not when he was otherwise naked. His back arched, showing the muscles down his spine, lifting the beginnings of the curve of his arse into view.

“Fuck,” Lily whispered, her mouth having gone completely dry.

Of course, while he hadn’t heard her earlier call, he heard her quiet swear. Or maybe he’d felt the weight of her entranced, intoxicated stare. Before Lily could remove herself from a situation she definitely shouldn’t be in, even if it was the most beautiful site she’d seen all day, all week, all year, James turned.

“Lil- Evans,” he said in surprise, jumping slightly, before shutting off the water and reaching for the towel resting on the edge of the wall. “What’s wrong?”

“Noth- shit, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have -”Lily started, taking a step back, only she missed the doorway and landed against the wall next to instead.

It really wasn’t her fault she couldn’t focus.

If James’ back with a gift of meticulously carved marble, smooth skin and muscle that Lily just wanted to sink her teeth into, then his front was a bloody work of art. Well defined pectorals sat prominently, on his chest, surrounded by curved shoulders, impressive biceps that helped his brilliant throws on the field. Pools of water had collected in the curve of his collarbones, enough that Lily could have lapped happily to ease her suddenly restricted throat.

She’d seen glimpses of his abdominals before. He was always reaching for his hair, running a hand through the beautiful, silky locks, she couldn’t help but get flashes as his shirt, or t-shirt, or jumper lifted up. Especially when he was already stretching back across the couch, complaining about the Prefect’s schedule, the points schedule, or the meeting schedule. Any schedule really, just because he knew it would rile her up. So she’d seen his stomach from time to time. Knew his prowess on the Pitch couldn’t come from someone who wasn’t totally fit. But seeing it glistening, rippling as he moved, shadows from the dimmed bathroom lighting emphasising each curve, well…

It was really more than one girl could be expected to take.

“Evans,” James tried again, frowning as he finished wrapping a towel around his waist and stepped out of the shower area toward her. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

Lily tried not to focus on how the twisted knot of the towel sat dead centre below his navel. How it drew the eyeline down. How the muscles in his sides pointed down like an arrow toward that knot, making her wonder what was underneath the knot.

“Uh,” Lily forced her eyes up. “I, uh, wanted to talk to you.”

She pretended not to notice how droplets collected on his eyelashes, so much easier to see without his glasses. How his face was devoid of its usual smirk, concern etched across his face instead, furrowing his brow, straightening his smile.

“Sure,” James glanced around, “I was coming back to the castle, you could have waited.”

“I couldn’t,” Lily blurted, before she could stop herself. “I couldn’t wait.”

James quirked an eyebrow, but paused in his steps, now less than three steps from her. At this distance, she could smell him. He was perfumed by that familiar scent of pine and spice, but in the heat and the humidity of the room it surrounded her, consumed her. She tried to take a deep breath in, to focus and prepare herself, but all it did was allow the scent to overwhelm her.

“Well, have at it, Evans,” he encouraged. “I’m listening.”

“Well, before, earlier.. You, uh… you asked, well and I, you, I didn’t,” Lily sighed impatiently at her stuttering, rolling her eyes before realising that meant she couldn’t look at him. Tried to remind herself not to look at him, it was clearly too much to look at such a sight and string a sentence together. Much more of her blithering and he wouldn’t care for what she had to say, mad woman that she was.

“Still waiting, Evans,” James teased now, a small curve of his lips appearing now. He seemed to be realising what had her in such a fluster, and took another step forward. Within reaching distance. Touching distance.

“Oh, fuck it,” Lily breathed, and gave in.

There was no resistance as she reached out and snagged James by the hand, then his waist, then his neck. She tugged his head down, and it came easily until, with a final push on her toes, she crashed her lips against his. His mouth moved without hesitation, giving as good as he got, pushing her back into the wall with a satisfying oof, his teeth finding her bottom lip, pulling it until her mouth opened and the punishing kiss turned into something deeper, sweeter, more satisfying.

Lily’s hands threaded into his hair, before dancing down to shoulders, stroking along his chest. She couldn’t pick a place she wanted them to rest, so she just didn’t, and touched and admired and petted to her heart’s content. James didn’t appear to mind her cheek was cupped, her waist wrapped up with one of those delicious arms she’d admired. He was still warm from the shower, still damp from neglecting to dry off, and she could feel that heat pushing through her clothes, flattening them against her, allowing his touch to burn through to her needy skin.

Without meaning too, having not consciously thought the action through, Lily’s hand landed on the knot in the towel she’d been so focused on moments earlier. The action gave them both reason to pause, and James pulled back just enough as they panted for breath and stared at each other.

She’d never seen his eyes so black, the hazel almost completely hidden dilated pupils and a blazing fire that would have taken her breath, if only his lips hadn’t done the job already. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, and Lily’s eyes followed the movement closely, her newly acquired knowledge of the feel, the taste of his tongue, making her imagine in a way that was all too real, how it would feel if he did the same to her.

“You had an answer for me, Evans?” his voice was hoarse, husky, like he’d run a marathon in the seconds, minutes, that they’d been kissing.

“I hardly think it matters now,” Lily’s laugh was almost bitter as it escaped from her, as she pushed back wet hair from his forehead, brushing her thumb softly across the scar above his eyebrow.

“Tell me anyway,” his fingers brushed down her arm, tipped her chin up, catching her lips again for a brief but perfect kiss.

Lily sighed, kissed him again to stall, cupped his face with both her hands to make sure he was paying attention. She was only going to say this once.

“Yes, I’d love to go to Hogsmeade with you next weekend.”

#jily #jily fic #jily fanfic #hogwarts jily #canon jily #freckles writes #probably can't call this a drabble #its really a oneshot #oops #shirtless james potter may #jumpers off for june #or whatever it was for june #forgive the lack of editing #i beg you

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kiranatrix · 2 years

Note

I confess that one of the things I like the most about Lawlight is how weirdly believable it is. Considering their dynamic, it’s far from being a crack ship. Ofc it isn’t canon and it wasn’t the intent of the authors, but the basis is there. I don’t think it’s quite the same as saying that, ex, Misa was actually a lesbian and crushing on Rem/Kiyomi/etc, which is a very cool & valid headcanon (especially considering how female characters were portrayed), but obvs ignoring canon!Misa’s obsession with Light. Lawlight is fascinating, imo, because I genuinely could see it happening with both Light and L staying faithful to their canon asshole selves, no shipping goggles. “Imagay” jokes aside, there’s a lot of (unintentional) evidence for gay!Light on the manga itself. I think even casual DN fans who watched the anime felt a bit of sexual tension in their rivalry. I was a kid when I first watched it, and when I discovered that old fan edit of them kissing I almost fell for the bait thinking it was a deleted scene, because it kinda... made sense?? I don’t know if I’m articulating myself well, but tldr; L and Light are canonically obsessed with each other and living rent free in each other’s head. And then the anime and the musical and TV drama made it worse 😂 Ohba & Obata didn’t even see what they were doing, huh. That’s the cherry on top.

Hi anon! Ohhh so many good thoughts here (damn I love asks where I get to agree with everything and ramble). It’s an interesting parallel you bring up about Lawlight vs. Remisa and got me thinking about how people interact with canon differently. Sometimes it’s fun to overtly subvert canon like with Remisa— besides Misa’s love/obsession with Light, she makes homophobic comments and Rem explicitly says ‘no homo’ about her feelings for Misa (which she also has for Light). But if you like Misa or Rem, that canon kind of sucks and the character substitute we replace them with in our heads is invariably better. Layering a romance on top of those new characters is what gives you Remisa. Both author intent and the canon material goes in the trash 👋🏻

But, you don’t have to go that far with Lawlight. You can give the Death Note manga or anime a straightforward spin assuming Lawlight is happening in their heads and there’s nothing to prove you wrong. There’s obsession, incredible chemistry, Light being bored without L, L being thrilled about Kira and breaking all his own rules/going to crazy lengths to be around Light. Like you said, their canon personalities lend perfectly to enemies to lovers, right person wrong time, tragic romance, or even unrequited love. Sure somebody dies but *points to Shakespeare.*

It never fails to make me laugh imagining Obha sitting back at the end of Death Note and it suddenly strikes him ‘oh god I made it gay on accident!!. Some fanfiction crosses his desk and now he’s backpedaling, trying to torpedo any relationship in How to Read (‘first friend was a lie’? Bah!) and make L as unappealing as possible in one-shots (human washing machine etc). Doesn’t work of course, the damage is done mwahaha. We only have to throw author intent away like hot garbage, easy enough to do. As for Obata, I don’t get the impression he gives a shit given how gorgeously slutty he draws everyone in official art. I of course don’t know him but I’d be surprised if it bothered him like it seems to bother Obha. Neither have commented officially on ships that I’ve seen but one of them drew Light with pants wide open and the other added a rule so nobody even thinks about shinigami getting it on (another fail). Obata doesn’t strike me as a huge prude or as close-minded as Ohba I guess. That said, they had to sign off on anime (which had a lot more Lawlight subtext) and the even gayer musical and drama. So who knows?

#Obata probably sleeps soundly on his bed of ill-gotten Lawlight money #Obha tosses and turns and wonders if it was worth it haha #anon #asks #lawlight #remisa #shipping #ohba vs obata #death note #meta

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shelby-love · 3 years

Text

GEORGE WEASLEY

I'm Holy. Get it?

Requested: no

Prompts: none (all lines are from the movie save for the reader’s + some other)

Warning(s): I'd say if you haven't watched HP movie 7 don't read this but I mean...

[Y/FN or Y/MN] is your father’s name or your mother’s name, whichever you prefer :)

Word count: 2.6K

Author's note: This is set directly in the first part of the ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt. 1′ movie (Polyjuice scenes and arriving at the Burrow after the Sky battle). Reader reacts to George's injury kinda thing. I highly recommend rewatching those specific scenes so you get the feels:

Arrival at Privet Drive (watch first 50 seconds)

Full Polyjuice scenes

The Sky Battle (watch all if you want)

The Order at the Burrow after the Sky Battle

This is by far my favourite one-shot out of all of my work and it took me a while to write it so please like, reblog and let me know what you think! P.S. if you’re up for me to write a part 2, that one shot will be set before, during and after the wedding <3

MASTERLIST

Darkness set around Privet Drive seemed to be rippling, the air wafting all around. The Dursley's house, home of the famous chosen boy Harry came into view only as the brooms lowered to the ground. Not only brooms, in three cases skeletal, black winged horses too. Hagrid dominated the scene, sitting in an enormous motorbike you had begged him to give you a ride on, with goggles and a helmet set on his bearded face.

Despite not arriving in the motorbike, you had flown on the next best thing - a broom, with arms wrapped around your boyfriend, face nested against his shoulder and a million sweet nothings whispered into your ears on the way over.

You were pleased to say the least.

One by one, you lifted the Disillusionment Charms, coming into view for Harry Potter to see through the window of his room.

George Weasley dismounted the broom with ease, helping you off by letting you put your hand on his strong shoulders.

Harry pulled the front door open, eyes wide upon hearing Hermione screech and fling her arms around him. Ron: the next best thing how George and Fred always say, clapped his best friend's back and waltzed into the house after Hermione.

You stood outside, holding George's hand, body molded against his and watched the scenes unfold with the rest of the Order - Bill, Fleur, Tonks, Lupin, Arthur, Mad-Eye Moody, Kingsley, Fred and George. You were accompanied by Mundungus Fletcher: a small, dirty man with droopy eyes and hair that was non-existent. Behind Mad-Eye stood a slender man in a dark suit, having just dismounted the third winged horse. He was handsome, so to speak, with black hair brushed behind and dark glasses shielding his eyes.

"Who wears sunglasses at midnight?" Fred had mumbled when he saw the man for the first time at the headquarters. You laughed immediately, agreeing by throwing a joke of your own.

George was protective; he made sure you weren't close to either of them as you followed the rest of the Order inside. As was Bill, his older brother, who had a hand on his fiancée's back, ushering her inside while placing himself as a human shield against Mundungus and the stranger. You were thankful for George, just like Fleur for Bill - you saw it in her eyes when you made it inside the small, family home that was once filled with furniture.

"Hello, Harry. Bill Weasley," said the oldest brother, hand extended for Harry to take.

"Ah, pleasure to meet you," this was the first time Harry had met the oldest Weasley and he shook his hand immediately and gave Fleur a hug right after.

"Wasn't always this handsome." Fred teased, pushing through the small crowd of people.

"Dead ugly," Your boyfriend added, holding your hand, and pushing you in front of him as the auror walked in right after you three did.

You released George's hand and came in to give Harry a hug, who you considered to be your close friend. "Are you going back to Hogwarts?" The boy asked you, knowing you were as old as him and his closest friends.

You shook your head, "My parents are in the Order as much as I am. I'll go when we defeat him. At least that's what I have planned."

"Of course, she'll go," Hermione interjected, not wanting to take the N.E.W.T. alone.

"No, she'll work with me," George butted in the conversation, grinning. "She'll be our salesman."

"Or saleswoman!" Fred voiced somewhere around the house.

Your lips spread into a grin instinctively as you placed a hand into George's already extended one and joined him somewhere else, letting Harry get to know a little bit more about Bill and his scar.

"-the joker," the last of Tonks' words made their way into your ears. The bubbly woman came to stand next to you. "By the way, wait until you hear the news! Remus and I are -"

"All right, all right!" Mad-Eye interrupted Tonks mid-sentence. You gave her a smile and a glance at her belly. She smiled in return. "You’ll all have time for a cozy catch-up later! We’ve got to get the hell out of here and soon!"

"What news?" George leaned in and whispered into your ear, Fred leaning in too.

"Doesn't matter," You told him. It was Tonks' announcement, not yours.

"Babe, pleasee," he whined, but you stood your ground and elbowed him in his abs.

George yelped behind you, drawing in attention. The adults turned around to look but he composed himself immediately, placing on a carefree smile and wrapping an arm around your shoulders, brushing them all off with the actions.

You missed half the conversation about the Trace the Ministry had on every underage witch and wizard. You thankfully didn't have the Trace for several months now but you did pity Harry in that aspect. The Trace was not an easy pill to swallow for an underage wizard like himself.

"The real one...?"

Moody drew a flask from one of his pockets.

"I believe you're familiar with this particular brew."

"No! Absolutely not!"

Hermione sighed, "I told you he'd take it well."

Harry, the always humble boy shook his head. You didn't see his face because you stood in the back, but you could imagine it very well. "If you think I'm going to let people risk their lives for me-"

"Never done that before, have we?" Ron mumbled, rather audibly so that everyone heard him.

"This is different. Taking that. Becoming me - no."

"Well, none of us really fancy it, mate." Fred said earnestly.

"Yeah imagine if something went wrong and we were stuck as scrawny, specky gits forever." Your boyfriend added after him.

Harry didn't smile at that.

But you did - and that was enough for the Weasley twins.

You focused on the conversation that went on, cringing with George when Mundungus started to speak.

Suddenly, Hermione mercilessly grabbed a tuft of Harry's jet-black hair, yanking several pieces out and placing the strands into the flask.

"Blimey Hermione!"

Moody held out the flask in which the potion was connecting itself to the strands of hair. The mud like liquid gave an awfully displeasing imitation of brewing, but it turned to gold liquid soon and you let out a breath of relief.

But relief was soon replaced with dread as you realized what awaited you. Instinctively, you stepped back only to crash into George who had stepped behind you, knowing what you would do. Your boyfriend placed his hands on your shoulders and walked you to stand in line with the rest of soon-to-be-fake-Harry-Potters. "You aren't going anywhere luv."

George slapped your shoulders for effect.

"For those of you who haven't taken Polyjuice Potion before, fair warning. It tastes like goblin piss."

You visibly shuddered as you stood between the twins, Moody's fake eye catching you in a locked gaze.

"Have a lot of experience with that, do you, Mad-Eye?"

Moody's eye switches from you onto Fred. "Just trying to defuse the tension."

Fred gingerly took a sip, cringing in distaste immediately after.

He tried to hand the flask over to you, but you shook your head and dashed over to stand after George, not before him.

Why didn't he start from the other end of the line?

You were fine with standing next to Mungundus - the petty criminal, just not with taking a sip of that potion.

"My girlfriend's just scared," George smiled apologetically, still trying to defuse the tension just like his brother.

Both twins shrinked immediately after drinking it, and you swallowed the remains of your saliva and took the flask from your now very short boyfriend. "Cheers." You muttered, taking a small sip from the flask.

"That's not nearly enough! Blimey drink some more!" Mad-Eye barked at you and you did as he said, taking a much bigger sip this time round.

He finally nodded and stepped aside.

You felt your features bubble up uncomfortably, until the transformation ended, and 8 Harry Potters stood in the kitchen that had once belonged to Harry's evil muggle caretakers.

"Wow - we're identical!" Fred and George said at the same.

"Not yet you aren't," Moody mumbled, pulling out the sacks with eight identical sets of clothes.

You, Fleur and Hermione grabbed for the clothes immediately, your bras suddenly feeling everything but comfortable against your now flat chest.

"Don't have something a bit more sporty, do you?'" George asked, looking at the red shirt puzzled.

"Yes, don't fancy this color at all." Fred agreed.

"Fancy this: You're not you, so shut it and strip." Mad-eye exclaimed, turning to Harry. "You'll need to change too, Potter."

Harry looks around and self-consciously begins to strip. The other in takers of the potion had no concern when they stripped off their clothes. As for you, when you glanced underneath the shirt and indeed saw that your breasts were no longer there, you had no problem when taking off your shirt and bra. Any ounce of self-consciousness that was there disappeared once coming to terms that the body wasn't yours.

"Harry," you started, your voice the only thing left that was your own save for the clothes you were currently taking off. "Sorry for exposing you like this. But if it makes you feel any better...you have a nice body?"

You didn't really know to which Harry you were talking to, but one look at the Harry who didn't smile, the one that looked rather angry was enough to know he wasn't the real Harry. It was George. "I mean...that's kind of a compliment to you too... Right Fred?"

"It's a compliment," A different Harry but with Fred's voice said. "Take it or leave it George."

"Help me with this?" You decided to say instead, your cheeks flushing red as you turned around to give George space to unclip your bra.

"Never thought, I'd see the day Harry helps himself take off a bra," Ron mumbled with a laugh, having just finished commenting about his best friend's non existing tattoo.

"Shut it, Ron." Harry's voice came from somewhere amongst the crowd. Real Harry's voice.

George then helped you put on your red shirt in a haste, just now starting to smile. "I'm helping Harry Potter with his clothes the same way I would help my girlfriend."

"But it is me you dimwit!"

"Right then," Moody started to talk again, just after George helped you with your jacket. "We'll be pairing off. Each Potter will have a protector. As for you, Harry..."

"Yes?" Every Potter, real and fake, said in unison.

"The real Harry! Where the devil are you, anyway?"

"Here." The real Harry raised his hand and Moody's eyes rotated onto him.

"You'll ride with Hagrid." He said, "As for [Y/FN or Y/MN]'s kid... Where in the bloody hell are you even?"

Hearing those words, you raised a shaky hand. "I'm here sir."

"Good," Mad-Eye took note. "You'll be going with Ren on one of the thestrals."

"R-ren?"

The dark figure you and George so desperately tried to avoid stepped into the room right at that moment. "Yes, Ren. He's one of our best Aurors. Good and loyal - exactly the ones that are the hardest to find."

"O-kay," You said uneasily and turned around to face George. As weird as it sounded, fake Harrys holding comforting hands weren't a weird sight if you imagined hard enough to see George and Y/N.

That's what you did at that moment at least.

Held Harry's hand and tried to imagine George.

"Let's go."

***

"I'll see you at the Burrow, okay?" You told George, voice laced with worry.

"I would kiss you right now if you didn't look like Harry," He said.

You nodded in understanding, "Me too George. Me too."

The two of you went to your respective protectors - George with Remus and you with Ren.

You ignored the man when you came up to him and only gave him a look when he was supposed to help you up on the calm horse like creature.

"Hang on tight," was the last thing he said before the thestral flew the moment Moody finished counting.

You did hold him, only not as closely like on the broom with George.

***

"Confringo!" You yelled, holding out your wand in the direction of the Death Eaters. A bright blast flew out of your wand, hitting one of Voldemort's followers and sending him off his broom to be eaten away by the wind.

They were catching up to you, not bothered by the aggressive sways of the wind. Whether the thestral was acting out in fear or in rage - you wouldn't know.

"We're almost there!"

True to his words, the two of you broke through the protective spells of the headquarters, landing somewhere on the land, away from the Burrow.

You heaped off the thestral immediately. "Do you really plan on walking all the way back?"

You didn't know what to tell Ren as you continued to walk on unsteady legs. Your brain was mushed, fried even due to the number of curses you evaded and had been struck with.

"I-I..." You started, but words weren't coming out. "We're the last ones to arrive. I'm sure of it!"

"What difference does that make?"

"What difference..." You repeated, not believing what he was saying. "They maybe think we're dead! George might-"

George might think I'm dead.

It crushed your whole being. The lingering thought that they might not be okay...

"Come back," Ren interjected, slashing through your mind with his words. "We'll be faster on the thestral."

As much as you didn't want him to be right...he was. And so you turned back around and grabbed his hand, sitting back on the thestral - cold and scared for everyone's lives.

Especially George's.

***

"Oi! Let her go! Let her go!"

Remus Lupin ignored everyone as he pointed the tip of his wand to you, sending your still very Harry looking body hurling to the ground.

In the end it was Fred, George's older twin, who had marched out of the house and pushed Remus away. Fred looked like himself again, making it all ten times scarier. You had tears in your eyes as he pointed his wand at you and never felt so threatened in your life. "What was the place where you first met George and me?!"

His screaming had you struggling for words. "Answer me!"

"Filch's office you bloody dung brain!" You screamed back, feeling your face return back to normal.

Fred's face softened instantly as he came down to help you up. He hugged you the moment you were back standing. "Fred, what's going on?"

"It's George."

***

"Where is he?" You barged into the cramped house, looking around the whole place frantically. You followed Fred into the sitting room, where Molly had tended to her injured son when he was first brought in.

George lied on the couch, his bleeding had stopped thanks to his mother, but under the light you saw a clean hole where George's ear had been.

You dropped to your knees by his side immediately.

You could practically see the struggle he had with opening his eyes which he never had trouble with before, especially not when he was trying to look at you.

"How is he?"

Fred answered glancing at the bandages, "It could have been much worse. We can't make the ear grow back since it was removed by dark magic."

You shook your head, wiping your tears with the sides of your index fingers before brushing George's hair out of the way. "He wouldn't want you to."

"Yeah," Fred agreed. "He's a tough nut."

You voiced your agreement with your laugh, "Yeah, he is."

The two of you admired George in silence for a few moments. The room has been cleared, leaving only the three of you there. "I'm sorry for jumping on you like that."

It wasn't common for Fred to be so serious, and because you didn't even want to think about your arrival, you gave him a small smile, "It's okay Fred. I would have done the same."

"I know."

"What did he say?" You asked quietly, "Before he passed out."

"That he was holy."

"Holy?"

"Yep," Fred said, the teasing tone to his voice returning as he pointed to his ear for demonstration. "Holy. You get it?"

"Thank God! He's alright!"

MASTERLIST

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#george weasley #george weasley imagine #george weasley fluff #george weasley fanfiction #george weasley x reader #george weasley one shot #george weasley fanfic #harry potter and the deathly hallows imagine #harry potter imagine #harry potter one shot #harry potter x reader #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter reader insert #harry potter fanfic #harry potter

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rotshop · 3 years

Text

(leans in very close to the mic)

so. gonna be honest i dont like how this is written. lol. but!! idk its a fun idea i think soooo <3

mostly 2b x reader but there's some Deimos hints maybe a little

tw ; death, brief talk / mentions of corpses, disassociation and heavily implied betrayal / murder of one's friend

2b had become accustomed to seeing bodies in his line of work. Even in his lifestyle he'd become used to seeing them. His younger self would've been shocked and sickened at the sight of them, now they just blended into the background for him. That's part of why he insisted you were fine for so long.

You'd gone missing after going on a mission with Sanford, Deimos, and Hank. It wasn't anything super special, another base to clear out and look for any data that you didn't already have. 2b had stayed behind, full expecting someone to get injured and him having to deal with it. Despite him seemingly knowing someone would get injured, he never expected anything more than that.

That's why he'd begun to grow uncomfortable when they'd stayed out much later than he originally expected. He'd tried to call in to any of them to no avail. He was left completely in the dark in terms of what was going on. So, he simply sat in his quarters and waited in silence. It didn't take too long for him to slip into unconsciousness.

He'd been woken up by the sound of tires crunching down dry sand and dirt. He'd had to wait a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of his room, glancing around a bit to make sure everything was in order still. Distantly, deimos' voice could be heard, tone off in a way 2b noticed but..couldn't place. A few moments passed as he waited, typically after a mission you'd talk with the others for a bit before going and checking on him. It seems like you were taking your time tonight, it was fine of course, he liked knowing you were on good terms with the others. Though, he was a little desperate to see you at the moment, he'd never get to tell you that though.

He'd stumbled a bit, sleep still clouding his mind as he did his best to put one foot in front of the other. The conversation became both clearer and more muddled as he drew closer and closer. Finally, the other three came into view- three. You were absent. That'd managed to wake him up, confusion replacing his previous grogginess as he watched quietly for a moment.

"Hank- We have to go back, what if they're passed out somewhere in that fucking building and they wake up and don't know where they are and-" Deimos stumbled over his words, hands gesturing animatedly in some sort of desperation.

'It's too dark out, it's not safe for us to be there this late,' came Hank's reply, signed finely. 2b noted how calm he seemed about this.

Deimos went to go say something further before 2b had cut him off, "What's all this about?"

Deimos turned quickly to look at the other man, shaking his head, "I- Fucking. [Name] is missing. We all got split up and when we found each other again they were gone so we tried to look for them and we just- we didn't find anything. Not a single fucking trace."

The clear desperation made 2b's heart drop. You were missing in the dead of night at a base. He knew full well you could handle yourself well, you were strong enough on your own and you'd proved that time and time again. Even then, he couldn't shake off the concern and the cold laying in the back of his mind. As Sanford apologized and patted him on the back he recognized it.

It was fear. He was afraid.

He didn't sleep after that. He'd spent the night up staring at the ceiling as he thought it over again and again. He'd argued with himself over it, one side insisting you would show up eventually and another insisting you were simply gone. He felt sick.

The next morning he'd gone out with the other three to look for you again. Then the day after that and then the one after that, then the one after that one, until eventually it was just himself looking for you. Deimos had joined him one more time, despite him already giving up hope he still tried. He still wanted to be there for 2b, it was obvious that he was taking this even worse than he was.

"I don't know I just..I mean, I thought I saw Hank follow after 'em but he said he hadn't seen where they went," Deimos spoke up, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably.

2b paused and looked back at him, "Hank went after them and didn't just keep following them? We've always kept in pairs on missions like these."

Deimos returned the look, "I guess? He..didn't say much about it, he just said he'd lost sight of them because of some soldats."

He tensed and went quiet for a few long moments. It clicked and his paranoid suspicions had been confirmed. Deimos tilted his head at thee other's actions, mind already swarming with questions and concerns. "Are..are you ok?"

2b didn't respond.

They went home.

By some miracle (arguing.), 2b had managed to bring Hank back to that base. The way there had been silent, deafeningly so. Hank had turned to ask something when he'd heard a click.

"I want you to take me to where you did it."

2b had a pistol held up at him. He knew it wouldn't affect him very much, maybe stun him for a few moments but nothing too harmful. He couldn't tell if it was better or worse that way.

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

"No, Hank, you do. I'm tired. I don't want to argue with you over this," he steeled himself, "Just take me there already."

There was a long pause. 2b couldn't see Hank's eyes behind the goggles but he knew he was staring down at him. For all he knew, he could've been glaring daggers at him, he didn't care. He was too far gone to worry about that right now. Wordlessly, Hank began to walk off.

Eventually, he'd stopped outside of a room, jerking his head a bit to motion for 2b to look for himself. He didn't want to, he didn't want to see it but he knew he'd never have closure if he didn't. Reluctantly, he'd peered in, pistol still trained on Hank.

There was nothing. A few scattered burn marks across the room but aside from that, it was nothing out of the ordinary. 2b was quick to turn back to Hank, confusion and dry irritation evident as his grip on his weapon tightened.

"I'm not fucking joking. This isn't it-"

'It is,' Hank cut in, going to continue before he'd stopped.

"Then where are they."

He peered down at him for another moment or two, deathly silent before he spoke up, "They didn't leave a body behind."

2b felt sick.

"They didn't bleed. They just fell and dissipated."

He wanted to scream.

"They put up a fight."

He didn't come back home after that. Deimos had shown up somewhere in the night. The hours were lost on 2b, too numb to even try and keep track of them. He just vaguely registered the other man sitting down next to him in silence, tears still running down his face as he'd shook.

It'd taken 2b a while to notice it. It had been laying under a desk behind a tipped over box, hidden in the dark. It was a halo. Specifically, your halo. He'd been hesitant to touch it, you'd let him in the past, insisting you trusted him and that it would be ok. Now though, he just felt some guilt over it.

It'd taken him a while to sort any real thought over what he would do. He was alone now, for the most part. Deimos had yet to really decide what he was going to do, too upset to have a clear mind about it. He didn't blame him for it, he wouldn't be upset even if he went back to the others.

He stared up at the ceiling for a moment longer or two before something dragged him up. Distantly, he felt himself walk forward, looking for something. It didn't take him too long, the barbs digging into his hands as he picked it up off the ground. He had some things to clear up, he would need your help with that.

With that final thought, he placed the halo atop his head and allowed it to take the reigns.

#pov the widowed malewife and his ghost halo s/o are going to Fuck You Up #2bdamned x reader #2b x reader #madcom x reader #madcom imagines #madness combat x reader #madness combat imagines #auditor reader #rot writes

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shewhowillnotbenamed1 · 3 years

Text

I wanted to get this ‘Valentine’s Day’ piece out, even though it’s massively, supremely late. 😭It’s part of a longer piece (because I couldn’t stop writing it😶) and I’m still not sure whether or not it’s not terrible.😖

prompt list

-------

This couldn't be right.

Damian almost did a double take, his cool smirk withering when he glanced up, transfixed by the sleek storefront at the cross streets where he stood. Why on earth would Raven be in a place like this?

The building towered above the tottering sea of gray, black and blue below. And the mannequins in the display lorded over their dominion, propped loftily on their perches, arms and legs of impractical proportions, stilted at absurd angles.

And why would she summon him here?

His trousers began to buzz audibly and the shifting crowd of passersby jostled him closer to the glass. Damian delivered the faceless caricatures of the female form a final foreboding glare, before he reached down to free the device vibrating in his pocket. New Message. Raven. Apparently, it was urgent. He tapped the speech bubble icon with a fingertip and his jaw went slack.

I Need You.

The three words seemed etched into the surface of the screen. And they were more than enough to get him to take a deep breath and grasp the curved door handle, his jaw set, and wingtips marching determinedly onward.

The atmosphere inside the store was even more unexpected than the outside. When translated, the pounding music and low lighting read as more nightclub than boutique. It was completely impractical in Damian's view—how could anyone locate a price tag, let alone see the item they were intending to purchase? Although, after a few minutes of skulking around in the dark, he could see how the implementation of such a design was advantageous. With stealthiness like his, he wasn't in danger of being accosted by overly helpful employees hungry for commissions, before he located the heading of a dramatic script that read Dressing Rooms, and turned underneath it.

Down the row each stall had a flood light stationed above it, but only one appeared to be presently occupied: the corner room at the farthest end of the hall. And as he got closer he noticed it also appeared to be the largest. Damian glanced behind him and rapped on the door with a knuckle. And just as he began to wonder if he'd needed some sort of special knock or password prepared, the lock glowed black and unlatched itself.

"I'm here." The door creaked open and the floor groaned under his solid weight. Damian turned swiftly to shut it, growing steadily concerned.

"So what is it? What's the—big emergency..." He started, but his tongue began to feel heavy and leaden inside his rapidly drying mouth. And his eardrums began to beat violently until they matched the thumping of his maddened heart.

Red.

Blood red.

Burning. Blinding. Blazing.

In the carpet, the walls, the curtains, the chandelier.

It was everywhere—even in the deafening pounding hammering away at his head.

Thundering images suspended before him, going in and out of focus. They were searing his eyes, blearing his vision. In sinful shapes marred over pale flesh, it was red repeating over and over. Criss-crossing crimson. Damian had to dig his fingernails into his palms to ground himself with the tangibility of a familiar sensation.

And suddenly he realized that all the times before were incomparable, this was what it meant to be blindsided by a breath-taking blow. This was what it meant to receive a rush of blood to the head…

…or a rush of blood to the—

"I'm glad you came so quickly."

And the silhouette of Raven turned where she sat on a velvet ottoman, leaning forward in a way that was guaranteed to diffuse away the rest of his brain's processing ability. It was all he could do not to goggle at her like some cartoon character. Tawdry and tactless. Damian inwardly cursed the merciless Goddess above as he took in the cleavage created by cups, a series of straps and bows and elastic and he didn't know what. Only that he shouldn't have been so disarmed by it—by Raven's breasts pushed up to high-heaven. Like they weren't perky enough or distracting enough in their usual sheath of simple black cotton.

His wide emerald eyes strayed downward in spite of themselves and onto shapely, stocking clad legs folded one over the other, with a lace-up heel tapping out the bass of the synth pop bleeding into the background. Raven slid to her feet seamlessly, swaying slightly to the song. She took a single step, allowing the shadows to part for her as she did so.

There was a muted click, clack, click of her heels on the carpet as she drew near. He'd never seen her in stilettos, and he stared at them through slits.

Gods, they had to be four inches at least. Their impressive height only seemed to serve to make her look even more powerful. Just about as powerful as the force rooting him to the spot.

The deep panging in Damian's chest carried on, a racehorse charging from the starting gate, galloping faster and faster, as she grew closer and closer.

Suddenly he'd become aware of the fact that it was far too warm in here for the dead of winter. Or was it simply that Raven radiated such an intense heat?

Most definitely the latter.

The garnet colored lace gracing Raven's skin was a perfect match to her chakra stone. The semi-sheer fabric of her bra offered up a playful glimpse of the darker skin of her nipples beneath. When his gaze wound down her tapering waist, it appeared that the lack of opaqueness carried over to the front of her panties. He could just make out a little shadow—a promise laying underneath a tempting, well-kept diamond shape in plum wine. And last, but certainly not least were the thigh highs trimmed by garnet lacings and affixed to a red and black garter.

Damian's throat had somehow gone even drier. He tried to swallow with great difficulty, then tugged at his turtleneck for a reprieve.

However, there would be no such alleviation for his trousers.

"There's no emergency, Damian..." Raven assured him with a tilt of her head, lilac tendrils skating across a valley between pale peaks. "You'll have to forgive me, but I had to get you here. I had to know..." She paused, folding her arms as she prepared to pose a question to him. "Tell me... what do you think...of my outfit?"

Damian froze, fingers mid-tug and blinked several times as if he'd been struck dumb.

What?

That wasn't...

There was no way...

Was that a serious request?

She was being facetious—she had to be. It was the only explanation, unless Raven was somehow messing with his mind and Damian sincerely doubted that. But how could she ask him this with such bold-faced sincerity? Even if the wooden arch behind her housed a funhouse mirror and had been reflecting distorted proportions back at her. Or was there actually some warped reality in which they weren't looking at the same picture?

Although...

If he could muster up a voice to speak he would have asked, what outfit?

Lackadaisically, she trailed a hand down her body, tugging at the cups spilled over with supple skin. "The bra—do you like the pattern?" Raven traced the gorge between the swell of her breasts. "It's tulle and...French lace," she confirmed, squeezing the scant, semi-sheer embroidery molded to her chest. And Damian grimaced as though in physical pain.

"No?" she assessed, seemingly marking off boxes on a mental checklist. Raven smoothed her hands over her hips for a moment, appearing to be lost in thought. She paced slowly, revolving a full three-hundred and sixty degrees to pause with her back to him.

"And what about..." She swept a purple curtain over the nape of her neck to glance over her shoulder and he saw—of all things—a bow below the dimples on her back, nestled into the heart-shaped curve of her ass. "My panties...?"

Damian gritted his teeth, though not before letting a sound escape, like a hiss coupled with a wince.

"Are these okay?" The soft profile of her lips pressed.

Gods, it was almost as if she were seeking to offer all of this up to him. And who needed to clarify anything when she was all wrapped up and presented? Covered in the finest cardstock wrappings in gold-flecked marble, then laced up with champagne silk ribbon to await her unravelling.

Though his own would be more likely.

Right now, he'd forsake all his names, both Wayne and Al Ghul to get her to stop. Stop slinking closer, stop speaking in that sweet, scratchy undertone, and stop directing his focus to her various attributes, more than it already was.

It would only make his growing pain more pronounced.

A pale hand dangled down and spread across a smooth, silken thigh. "My stockings, then?" Raven hummed.

Though, Damian didn't speak. He wasn't entirely certain he was still breathing. Somehow, he'd managed to remain motionless and drag his unwilling eyes toward the floor. All his carefully constructed control was necessary to keep himself calm and centered in this moment. He could do this—he had to do this. Otherwise, what was the point of all those long years of training he'd endured?

Shiny purple strands bobbed; she'd started to shake her head slowly at the stony silence from the stoic cashmere wall standing before her, as if she expected as much.

"I bet you're still wondering why I called you here." Damian heard her voice go up in the middle, which it did whenever she was apprehensive or unsure. "I wanted you here to find out what you like—exactly what you like." When he arrived, Raven was blushing a delicious pink, so by now it had to be a violent red. "I wanted to get it right because...you're the first person, or only person I've ever been intimate with in any world, dimension, or universe..." She lingered.

And once again, Damian said nothing, and she resumed speaking.

"I do know that this is something that one does traditionally." Raven paused to worry her already cherry-red bottom lip. "That couples do... Buying underwear for your significant other is supposed to be something special, particularly for this holiday."

He was a mountain, immobile, unwavering...

"Oh, I see..." Her mouth set into a line. "Perhaps, it's the fit—or is it the color...?" Raven's large amethyst eyes swept over the room and landed on her reflection. "I thought dark red was classic. I knew I shouldn't have listened to Donna. I should have gotten something in black." She dragged a distraught hand through dark purple. "It's too much...or maybe it's not enough..."

"Don't," Damian growled low. His inflection was level and gave nothing away. If Raven was surprised by the outburst, she didn't let on, instead she continued.

"I bet the old string of socialites shuffling in and out of the manor were never caught dead in skivvies that weren't Kiki de Montparnasse or at least Agent Provocateur. But this..." Raven lifted her chin toward the mirror. "It's not your taste though, is it?"

That was far more than enough.

Far more than he could stand to hear and far more than he could stand to bear.

When his eyes flew back to hers at last, they weren't steely anymore, they burned—whittling her retinas down like they were wicks on candlesticks. As if he were all but telling her he dared her to do that again, to say that again.

"It's okay. I'm glad I found out before I bought—"

"I said...don't." Damian placed his hands on her wrists and whisked her right up to his chest. And he closed his eyes. He skimmed his lips along the length of hers like it was something sacred, his mouth trembling as Raven muffled out a note denoting her surprise.

He murmured to her, "you're brilliant, deadly beautiful—an empath...and for some reason unbeknownst to me, I'm your blindspot." Damian sighed resolutely. "But Raven, can't you take pity on me? I'm still a man." One that had been barely keeping it together since he arrived, but... "And you're you, so..."

There was no way in any world, dimension, or universe that he could ever resist.

Purple eyes grew wider as he told her and lifted a finger to her chin. Then it was Damian turning the tables and tipping her mouth towards his own. And though he hungered for her, he took slow and sweet and gentle grazes. It was tortuous, but he should only have a little at a time. This was an excess of an impossibly decadent dessert, an indulgence he was undeserving of. It was like the power in his sub zero freezer had short-circuited and he had no choice but to guzzle down that buried pint of vanilla caramel gelato.

Though who could blame him for being greedy when he had all of this spread out before him? And when her ass in those panties even resembled two round, creamy spoonfuls.

To hell with it then.

Damian lunged, face forward, longing for more of her. In an instant, he was inhaling her pulse, intaking the scent of leather-bound books with aged pages and the nectar from plums she'd probably narrowly avoided dripping on them. He dipped his tongue along the hollow of her collarbone as if he sought to test this.

"Mmm, that's nice."

"Nice?" Damian scoffed, his eyes on hers. "That's not what I was going for. Surely you didn't wear this because you wanted me to be nice." At the present, he wanted nothing more than to rip the tiny pieces of lace into twos, but Raven had selected them specifically for him. So he would continue to be patient and continue to savor this.

Let the pieces of fabric hold up for as long as he could hold out.

"Wait a moment," Raven gasped, quickly clutching his arm. "So your present...?"

"Present? Tch..." Damian's lip curled under his front teeth and he let out a piercing click. "If you're seriously considering getting me a present..." His palms glided down her chest and he gathered a scoop of softness in either hand. "Then these are perfect," he whispered in her ear.

And then Damian's mouth pushed back into hers and he was kissing her in ways that would make it impossible to return this lingerie after trying it on. He nipped urgently to gain entrance to her castle, then trapped her lip between his teeth like it was a drawbridge, at last releasing her tongue to collide with his own. All the while, his thumbs were sliding over her nipples, which puckered and pointed at his touch. He pushed up the cups of her bra for better access, head inclined towards his goal, soon to be met by a full mouth.

Each brush of his lips on Raven's chest made her fingers clench further and further into his shirt like it was a life preserver, and she was in danger of losing herself to the depths.

And after all, wasn't this the answer that she'd wanted from this—that she needed from him?

A chance to lose herself.

To stand in a dressing room in his arms, moaning his name like a breathy spell, her body bending until her back was arched under the avid swipes of tongue. He tugged her nipples between his teeth and they reddened, their response a glowing rave.

Yes.

Raven's eyelids squeezed, her pink face contorting in pleasure while Damian enjoyed the full weight of her breasts in his hands. He continued polishing the plush, pink rings. Left then right—until they were glistening.

"Gods, Damian..." Raven groaned. "Just—"

Just as sudden, there was a wet noise, a slip of suction. Damian had released a rosy nipple, taking note of Raven's expression. Hungry and dazed, and all his doing. Whether unconsciously or not, she pressed her legs together, clenching them as she watched Damian slip off the left sleeve of his coat and let it crumple to the ground in a heap.

The glaze of her gaze, her diaphragm's continuous rise and fall, her fingers digging into his arm, she needed this.

So why deny her?

"Yes, these are beautiful..." He whispered as he admired his handiwork under the chandelier light. The way the red nips and bites were like Damian Wayne watermarks upon the pale flesh. "But perhaps..." Damian's hands glided freely down the small of her back, just over the hill of her ass and stroked the burgundy bow, like an X marking the spot. "This."

When Damian glanced down at Raven, she was barely biting back another mewl, and moving restlessly in his arms. "I wonder what would happen if I were to pull this bow... Raven what do you think?"

"Damian... We shouldn't..." Raven murmured, sounding somewhat apprehensive and holding the fabric at his back tightly.

"Yes, we should Raven," he rasped darkly. "Right now, I can't seem to think of a reason why not..."

"Well, there's the fact that we're in public—"

"Public," Damian repeated flatly. "What of it? The outside world ceased to exist the second I entered the door of my own little version of Narnia."

Raven's jaw had unhinged in unmasked shock and Damian supposed this was an instance to take her remaining breath away by kissing her. Yes, he'd walked through a door and suddenly he was laying eyes on his half-naked demoness dangerous in dark red. So clearly nothing else in creation mattered.

When he pulled away her lips opened and closed, while her eyes remained shut, like a thirsty traveler prematurely cut off from a longer drink. And even though it seemed her body knew the truth, a darker part of him wanted her to beg for it.

"But, that's not what I asked," he said with a hard smile that wasn't. Damian drummed a divot on her lower back. "I fear I've gotten ahead of myself again. Tell me about the bow, Raven. What happens if I pull it?" His hand jutted out, he made a motion with his fingers, in mimicry of it.

"Why ask when you know the answer?" Raven asked him, her brow rising shakily.

"I could have asked you the same earlier. But..."

"But?"

Raven bit her lip but made no motion to stop his hands from climbing onto the curve of her ass. He taunted her twice, by tugging lightly on the tulle, until at last... The bow in the back came loose, and her panties slid down her legs with ease. She secured one pale thigh tightly over the other to hide herself.

No bottoms and bra half-undone, she was nothing short of delicious.

Though that scrap of fabric had barely covered much of anything, so why bother to tease? Or hadn't that been the sole purpose of this outfit?

A devious smirk sidled onto Damian's face as he realized something: these were the exact kind of underwear that one put on simply to take off.

"I pulled the bow, Raven," he murmured almost mockingly. "Don't I at least get to see the rest of my present?"

She stared up at him through her soot colored lashes and slowly opened her thighs.

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gh0styyt0astyy · 3 years

Note

"You can hide from me forever~?" .. emm.. maybe you can do this we hank?(lee hank if it is ok?) No presure

✨ [Run and hide] ✨

( anon. anon *holds ur shoulders* i loved this prompt thank you )

———————————

⭐️ [Summary] — If you asked Hank how he got into this situation, he’d much rather die than say anything. (Lee!Hank and Ler!Deimos + Ler!Sanford)

fellas is it gay to platonically cuddle your homies after they absolutely wreck your shit

key: deimos hank sanford

⭐️ [Warnings] — TICKLE FIC; MILD LANGUAGE; AND CUDDLING AT THE END; if you don’t like then please just scroll on T_T

⭐️ [Prompt(s)]: “You can’t hide from me forever!”

✨ Enjoy ! ✨

— — — —

“Haaaaaank!” Deimos’ gruff voice echoed down a hall; a quiet snicker in his tone as he looked for the merc. Hank, who was currently staked out in a dark room (had the rooms always been this dark? How’d he never notice this?), held his breath.

Putting a hand on the doorframe, Hank leaned out slightly and stared into Deimos’ back.

The shorter guy seemed to be too busy with looking in the complete wrong direction that Hank started calculating his options. Hank had been stalking around this shitty “apartment” that he, Dei and Sanford all called home (Temporary home at least. It’s hard to keep a stable base of operation in this shitty, genocidal state okay?) for at least an hour now. Deimos wanted something from Hank; and whatever game Deimos was playing the taller man didn’t want any partake in it.

“Cmon, Haaank. You can’t hide from me forever now!” Deimos called out again, but beginning to turn around now. Shit. Hank quickly darted into a different room, one with a little more light. At least he could see now.

…However he failed to realize that Deimos could see the faint outline of a shadow, which is ironic really; seeing as how Hank; a 6’6 man can fit inside a tiny crate with no one noticing, yet he forgets to cover his tracks of a shadow.

Deimos’ footsteps came closer to the room Hank sheltered in, and Hank started to crawl backwards to the closet. ‘Shit- shit- shit.’ Hank opened the closet door and quickly stepped inside. Deimos suddenly leapt into the room, a sound of vague disappointment rumbling in his throat. “Damn.”

Hank felt a very light breath leave his chest as he slowly slid down the wall. Maybe Deimos had finally given up his chase. As Hank waited for Deimos to leave the room, he listened to the quieting footsteps. The goggled man silently opened the closet door and looked out, spotting no sign of Deimos. He began to slowly step out of it.

His legs were quickly and suddenly swiped out from under him, causing him to land roughly on his chest with a solid “oof” and a wheeze when something plopped heavily onto his back. “There you are!” Hank could hear the grin in Deimos’ voice.

“Uagh- get off of me you lug.” Hank grunted, reaching back and swatting at one of Deimos’ knees. “Hank, you’re good at hiding, know that? Had me in circles for an hour! You ever play hide and seek when you were a kid?”

Hank was having none of it as he continued to swat and push at Deimos. (Sure the man was significantly shorter than him, but damn; bitch could put some weight when he wanted.) Deimos hummed as he put his head in a hand. “Okay well obviously you wanna move on. So let’s do that! While we’re at it…” A different hand went down to between Hank’s shoulder blades, causing the merc to tense. “Let’s chat! You remember how you crushed my cigs a bit ago?”

Hank did remember that.

“Aaand how you spilled water on me for no reason?”

Hank remembered that too. (And, also Deimos, for your information; it was not for no reason you will NOT burn down another temp home.)

“Oooh or- or how about the time you threw that huge ass centipede at me? Remember that one?”

…Hank remembered that one, as well. Very vividly, might he add.

Hank nodded and Deimos did too. “Yeah. I remember all those too. Especially that last one you asshole.” Hank shrugged. “I mean, it was a little amusing.” Deimos feigned hurt as he put a hand to his chest. “You wound me, Wimbleton.”

Hank started to get antsy now, as he shifted underneath Deimos’ weight. “Will you get off me? Or are you just going to keep me here.” Deimos grinned again. “Antsy, Hanky? Daw okay. I guess I can get on with it.”

“It?” What the hell was “it?” Hank narrowed his eyes under his goggles and when he tried to look back at Deimos three fingers suddenly dug into the soft area between Hank’s shoulders. Oh. Oh that was it. Hank felt his eyes suddenly shoot open as he fell completely limp to the floor, electricity running up his back. His body shuddered with repressed… laughter? Noises. “Deimos—“ Hank spoke through gritted teeth, feeling lucky for the mask covering his betraying face. “Hank.” Deimos answered back. Hank felt himself trying to writhe away from Deimos to no avail. “Shihit.” He hissed, mentally cursing himself.

“Ahha! That’s the response I’m looking for!” Deimos said, taking his other hand and tapping against Hank’s ribs. Making the downed man make a strangled noise into the crook of his elbow. “Pihihihiss ohohoff-!” Hank growled, tried to growl. It was hard to be intimidating with fingers wiggling on your ribs and your back. Deimos was slow, methodical for a moment… before the hand on Hank’s back went from slowly moving to clawing at his shoulder blades. “SHIHIHIT! Deihihihimos you sohohon of a—!” Hank suddenly erupted; Deimos letting out a victorious and satisfied laugh. “Right here is bad? Damn, and I’ve only just started!” Hank tried thrashing his shoulders to get away from Deimos’ hands.

Deimos snickered mischievously, repositioning himself on top of Hank and sitting on his waist instead. “Y’know what Hank? This is super interesting,” Deimos said, one hand continuing to torture Hank’s shoulder blades as the other hand trailed back and forth from his ribs and his sides. “You’re, like, Nevada’s most dangerous Mercenary. And yet I haven’t even been thrown into a wall!” Deimos added, grinning at Hank’s misfortune as the man went limp again. “I hahahahate yohohou—“ Hank hissed through gritted laughter. “Have you even tried getting me off?” Deimos ignored Hank’s previous statement. As Hank began to lift himself with his elbows, Deimos’ hand suddenly shot underneath him and started prodding at his stomach. “YOHOHOHOU BIHIHIHIHITCH!” Hank fell back down.

That’s when a quiet *ahem* and knock on the doorframe made both the men look up. Sanford stood there, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed and an amused look. “Dei, what are you doing to Hank?” He asked, and Hank felt Deimos’ hands slow down until they came to stop. Deimos snickered evily and put a knee on Hank’s back to keep him down. Hank didn’t like that, didn’t trust that evil giggle from Deimos— so he began trying to escape. “San, y’know what I found out?”

Oh shit. He wouldn’t. “What’d you find out, bud?” Deimos you’d better not. “Did you know that Nevada’s most wanted, dangerous Mercenary is ticklish?” That son of a bitch. “Oh, really now?” Goddamnit.

Sanford was waved over by Deimos, and the two started whispering to each other. Hank tried to listen in but to no avail. Suddenly the weight on his back was lifted and Hank tried to shoot away quickly.

But he was grabbed around the waist and pulled back into a heavy chest. Sanford’s arms held onto him tightly as they went back to the floor, except now Hank was sitting up. (Which was better, actually, because being sprawled on the floor like that really isn’t comfortable.) Sanford’s arms were hooked under his, crossed tightly against his chest and keeping him in place.

Deimos was sat at Hank’s legs, grinning at him with a look that could only mean chaos.

“I swear to God.” Hank rumbled, pushing against his captors. Deimos gave an evil chuckle as his hands curled into claws. “Deimos I’m warning you.” Hank pushed at Deimos with his foot, neither of them really acknowledging the now dirty shoe print on Deimos’ jacket. “One.” Deimos said.

…Excuse him?

“Two.” Sanford’s low voice followed.

Hank started wriggling in Sanford’s arms with a little more strength.

…

“THREE!” Suddenly both the men yelled— and Hank lost his shit. Deimos’ clawed hands tasering into Hank’s ribs and Sanford’s kneading into his hips. “OHOHOHOH MY GOHOHOD! YOU AHAHAHASSHOHOHOHOLES!” Hank suddenly shrieked in laughter. (It was so much louder than his voice, louder than his usual tone. It surprised all of them and Hank wasn’t sure if he liked the volume coming from himself.) Hank writhed in Sanford’s arms as he fought against himself. “Holy shit! Dei, you weren’t joking!”

“I know! Hank, you’re incredibly lucky that it’s just us who know about this!”

Hank thought about the idea of someone else finding out about…this. Whatever “this” was. Hank wanted to say something but all he could get out was that loud, wheezy laughter. And eventually he stopped trying to fight it, he went limp in Sanford’s hold and gave in. “SHIHIHIHIT! I’m gOHOHNNA KIHIHILL YOU TWHOHOHO!” You know, it’s really hard to be threatening when you’re being undone. His nerves felt like they were being electrocuted and were on fire, Hank’s legs kicked slightly. “GOHOHOD DAHAHAHMN IT! MOHOHOHOVE YOUR HAHAHAHANDS!”

Suddenly it stopped— Deimos’ hands stopped at least. Sanford’s were at his ribs now, poking and prodding between each bone. Hank screwed his eyes shut; Sanford’s hands were so slow and methodical it was driving Hank up the wall. Hank’s face was warm, completely undone to giggling. It was embarrassing.

“San, you wanna know something else?” “Deimohohos.” “Hit me, Dei.” “You behehtter nohohot!” “Hank’s scars are way more ticklish than the rest of him.” “You bihihihitch!”

That bastard. “Reaaaally now?” Sanford’s voice was low again, close to Hank’s neck. Deimos nodded. “Yuh uh.” Hank tried to squirm out again. “I hahahate you!” He listened as Deimos drew in a big, deep breath and felt as his shirt was lifted. (He knew today was a bad day to go without his jacket.) “Deheheheimos I swear to Gohohohod!”

Hank had literally no time to process anything before—

PBBBFFFTRRTTTT!

“OH SHIHIHIHIT! SHIHIHIHIT SHIHIHIT SHIHIT!” Hank squealed, he squealed. (Hank never wanted to die on the spot more than in that moment. Do you think that he could find Jeb or Tricky or someone to strike him down after this?)

Deimos had raspberried Hank’s stomach— against a huge ass scar that went from his left hip, over top and across his navel and to the right side of his ribs.

And Sanford had started blowing smaller raspberries against Hank’s neck, again, on the scars that went across it.

Hank literally felt like he was about to die in that moment. “OKAHAHAHAY! OKAHAHAHY I YEHEHEHEHILD! I YEHEHILD! I’M GONNAHAHAHA DIHEHEHEHE! STOAHAHAHAHAP!” Hank gasped, writhing and kicking his legs. And it was like that, the sensations just stopped. Phantom feelings buzzing through his body and against his skin. “Ohohoh my gohohd.” Hank breathed, his body somehow going limper against Sanford’s. Deimos grinned and Sanford laughed lightly. Hank felt Deimos press against his chest and a light squeeze of a hug from Sanford.

Hank panted lightly, cursing the two mentally. Deimos just grinned up at Hank. “Sooo. I think San and I win!” Sanford hummed in agreement as he nodded grinning too as he bonked his head against the back of Hank’s. “Somehow that went way better than I had expected it to go.”

“You two better sleep with one eye open tonight.” Hank threatened, feeling his body physically relax against Sanford and Deimos. “Yeah yeah, whatever you say.”

#ghosty.replies #ghosty.keysmash #writing #tickle fic #sfw tickle fic #mc tickling #lee!hank #ler!deimos #ler!sanford

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mandy23bwrites · 3 years

Text

The Price You Pay

Character/Pairing: Damon Baird x Female Reader

Tags/Warnings: Established relationship, female reader, female pronouns, kissing, lingo consistent with the games, appearances from Dom and Cole, Marcus is mentioned, perspective gets passed from Baird to reader, no plot

Disclaimer: Takes place between Gears 2 and 3

Word Count: 1427

Summary: Goodbyes are hard. They’re especially hard when your lover is one of the COG’s golden boys, always being sent out into danger.

(Alternative summary: Baird loves being right (what’s new?))

Read on AO3

“Yo Baird!” Damon Baird glanced up from where he was strapping his ammo pack around his thigh to where Cole was standing in the doorway of his cabin. “You know where your lady love’s at?” Baird couldn’t help rolling his eyes at Cole’s ridiculous nickname for you but he also couldn’t deny that it was fairly accurate... even if he wasn’t ready to say the “L” word yet.

“What do I look like, her nanny?” He shifted his focus back to his armor, grabbing his chest plates.

“Dom’s looking for her,” Cole said, unfazed, “He’s worried we won't be back in time for crop duty.” Baird scoffed at that. “You know how much he cares about those things.”

“They’re not going to die if they’re watered a day late. Did he even check if her squad’s here?”

“He saw the twins in the mess and they said she’s around somewhere. She ain’t in her cabin or the workshop so we figured you might know.”

Baird grunted as he secured his plates and looked around for his gloves. “I don’t know. She’s probably on the deck somewhere.”

“Alright. I’ll go find her so you can confess your undying love before we ship out.” Cole gave a cheeky laugh but was gone by the time Baird turned back to make a smartass retort. Instead, he scowled to himself and pulled on his gloves. You couldn’t have gone far, he thought to himself. Sovereign was a big ship but not that big.

As he attached his gnasher and lancer to his holster pack, the ship speakers crackled to life, announcing their raven was prepped and ready. But he couldn’t go to the landing pad just yet; no, the seed of curiosity had been planted. His deep-seated need to know everything extended to figuring out where you were and whether you were safe. So with one last cursory glance around his cabin, ensuring he had everything, he sealed the door and set out to find you, not noticing Dom and Cole trailing him from a distance.

The deck was crowded: some people were tending to the large crop beds while others were running through training exercises. There were also a couple of lookouts along the railings, scouting for stalks or other ships. Littered all around them were small groups of gears, out socializing and enjoying the sun.

Baird scanned the faces of the off-duty gears in the gardens with no success. He knew it wasn’t your week to work but you were known for picking up shifts. He doubted you were in one of the rec areas below deck, given the time of day - you had some projects to work on; he had been there the other day when some gears had come into the workshop and asked if you could paint their plates and weapons. And considering how quickly and enthusiastically you had jumped on the opportunity, he figured that’s what you’d be doing. But if you weren’t in the workshop…

His eyes landed on two areas of storage crates: one by the gardens, one by the training area. He set off towards the gardens; you were like him, preferring a quieter, secluded place to work. Peering around boxes and crates, he quickly found you amongst them, sealant spray can in hand, kneeling in front of a set of propped up weapons. He smirked: he loved being right.

You must have heard his approach because you looked over your shoulder and smiled at him, setting down the can and rising to your feet. As you did, his face softened into the half smirk, half smile you were used to seeing from him. Coming to a stop next to you, he eyed your handiwork, weapons still recognizable despite your tape and coverings to protect the essential components: a hammerburst with a stylized omen, a gnasher with sleek, colorful lines, and a snub with someone’s initials in a bold font. They were impressive and he once again considered asking you to paint his own weapons. Maybe blue... with some yellow accents.

You shifted so you could playfully bump your hip into his, as was your usual greeting for him, and like clockwork, he wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you flush against his side. You leaned into him while your eyes flicked down his body, taking note of the full armor, before meeting his waiting gaze.

“Where to?” You asked.

His nose scrunched. “Sounds like command’s sending us to check on one of the camps they’ve been getting radio silence from. The lambent probably wiped them out and the parasites will have pillaged the place by the time we get there. I don’t see the point in sending a whole squad when a pass over would suffice.” There was certainly no love lost between him and the civilians nor the stranded. But before you could reply, you’re interrupted by an all too familiar voice.

“See, baby? I told you he’d find her!” You both turned around to see Cole and Dom making their way towards you, and Baird scowled at Dom.

“Wait a minute, you told me you couldn’t find her just so you could follow me when I went looking?! Let me guess: you couldn’t be bothered to get off your ass and actually look for her yourself.”

“I looked, dickhead, but when the usual spots came up empty, we figured your pompous ass would know,” Dom snapped back.

You reached out and gave Baird’s wrist a squeeze before he could argue any further. “So whatcha need me for?”

“I was hoping you could water my crops if we’re not back tomorrow. We have no idea what we’re gonna find today so it might be a long call.”

“Of course,” you smiled, “I’ll make sure they’re taken care of.”

“Thanks,” Dom said, returning your smile before pressing a finger to his earpiece. You were close enough to Baird to hear some chatter in his own piece, far too quiet to make out but you imagined it was an impatient Marcus telling them to get their asses to the raven. “We’re on our way,” Dom replied to the call.

“Alright ladies, can’t keep the boss waiting,” Cole declared and you chuckled, suspicions confirmed.

“Good luck Delta. And keep an eye on this one for me,” you tipped your head towards Baird, “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.” The man in question snorted.

“Hey, Cole’s the reckless one, not me.”

“Yeah but I’m still around, baby!” Cole grinned and he and Dom turned to head out, leaving you and Baird alone.

Turning back towards each other, you stood there for a moment, staring. You had learned long ago that goodbyes were hard, not knowing which might be the last. Then, you took his face in your hands and drew him in for a kiss. He in turn wound his arms around you, pulling you against him, or at least as close as his armor would allow.

“Alright Damon, you know the speech.”

“‘Don’t get your ass shot and use your vast intellect to save the day’ - that one?” You chuckled and shook your head.

“Close enough,” you murmured, reaching up to hook a finger into the elastic band of his goggles and pulling it back just enough to give him a gentle snap. He rolled his eyes before leaning in for another kiss, which quickly escalated into several more.

You couldn’t help but indulge in the moment, wrapping your arms around his neck. The flick of his tongue made you grip him tighter and you could feel him smirk against your lips.

This time when his earpiece goes off, you could make out the faint “Baird, now” from Marcus and had to try and bite back a laugh.

“Alright, I’m coming, don’t get your panties twisted,” Baird replied with a huff.

“I’ll see you later,” You said, before giving him one last kiss.

His lips curled into a small smirk before he turned and jogged off. You watched him disappear before returning to your project, your stomach beginning to tighten. You had no way of knowing if what you said was entirely true, but you liked to hope it was. The nerves you felt every time he headed out on a new mission was the price you paid for dating a fellow gear. But you took comfort in knowing he was in a good squad - you both were. Delta was a small army in and of itself. If anyone had a chance of making it home safe, it was them.

#damon baird #damon baird x reader #damon baird x female reader

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hangekitty · 3 years

Text

Hange x f!Reader Oneshot

Summary: Squad leader Hange is a very busy scientist, so having Moblit and Y/N on their team is a great benefit to their work; so much so that Y/N finishes Hange’s work so that they get time off! Little do they know that the socially awkward Y/N has a passion for astrology, so one night she works up the courage to take Hange star gazing!

Genre: Fluff, Smut 18+

Warnings: spanking, cunnilingus, fingering, swearing, 69-ing, this oneshot is GOOFY af

Universe: canonverse

Word count: 3.9k

A/N: This oneshot is based on the song Space Girl by Frances Forever, I love this wlw song so much I just had to. In this one shot Hange’s pronouns are she/they but I mostly use they/them pronouns! Although in the song the singer refers to her space girl as a ‘cancer’ (astrological sign) I have left the reader’s sign ambiguous so you can insert yourself in! Also I don’t know how advanced the canonverse is with astrology, especially with astrological stories behind the constellations but we won’t focus on that its just a cute (probably inaccurate) oneshot. AFAB!Hange. I am so sorry it’s so long for a oneshot!! I just love them so much 🥺

When squad leader Hange Zoe is in the zone, they will work throughout the day and throughout night with no breaks and no signs of stopping; unless they quite literally pass out. If ever they got in that position of dropping at any moment, you and Moblit would be there to either complete the work or to catch Hange before they fall. You had always admired Hange’s determination and stamina, that alongside their eccentric personality, had you weak at the knees.

If you were honest with yourself, you had quite fallen head over heels for Hange the moment you saw them, their smile felt like a kick in the heart and a thousand butterflies in your stomach. It wasn’t until you helped Levi bathe Hange did you realise your feelings towards them, desperately looking away from their body with great embarrassment. Levi always rolled his eyes at your actions, but he’d usually have a faint smirk on his face as you try and wash them whilst attempting to keep your eyes closed. You and Levi were quite close, despite his quiet (and rather passive aggressive demeanour), a friendship with him was meaningful and he definitely cared more than he’d let on. He, alongside Moblit were the only ones that knew of your passions with astrology and space; he’d always say something like “it’s quite fitting, you’re head is either in the clouds or up Hange’s ass”. The funny little bastard.

Your captain would tease you regularly, especially when he noticed your longing stares; whether it be out on expeditions or back at HQ. He’d reach for your head and shake it, waking you up from your day dream. “Your obsessive pining will get you killed, scout” and “Keep it together space girl” were a regular thing Levi would say. You couldn’t help it, Hange was your moon and all the stars in the sky, all things you’d happily gaze at forever.

As mentioned, the bathing sessions were a great opportunity to get advice (and teased) from Levi. One bathing session he told you that he’s pissed off that you hadn’t revealed your feelings yet. How could you? Hange probably didn’t feel the same way, and neither did they have time for it! Changing the subject slightly, you would say “Poor Hange, always working so hard!”

Its true, Levi would usually have to knock them out to bathe them because they worked so much; you suppose the only ick that bothered you about Hange was their lack of hygiene - they just can’t help it. All of that energy dedicated to work, they rarely had any spare time to do anything else; but you were determined to make today different.

You heard of a meteor shower that was expected around 11pm that night, a spectacle you were adamant not to miss. You decided that if any time was the perfect moment to reveal yourself to Hange, tonight is the night. You day dreamed the whole day, picturing the two of you under the stars. Between paperwork, you would check regularly and calculate the time and position of the moon whilst the meteor shower happened; it had to be perfect.

“A waxing crescent” You whispered to yourself

“A what what?” Hange fluttered over to your table making you jump, you attempted to hide the paperwork of calculations; absolutely nothing must be revealed otherwise the surprise will be ruined.

“Squad leader H-H-Hange! I uhhh nothing!!” You stuttered, looking to their perfect, smiling face. You wanted to both die and dance at the same time, to grab them by their collar and kiss them passionately. Hange leans on your desk, looking at you with a cheeky grin.

“I do hope you’re doing your work scout! You don’t want to be working for 2 days straight like last time!”

“That won’t be the case tonight Hange!”

“Oh?”

“I recon if I work solidly for the next 2 hours I will be completely finished!”

“Really? Ugh I technically have like 4 hours left of paperwork too do, I don’t really even have time to scold you on how obviously distracted you are Y/N” Hange sighed, lifting their goggles up to pinch the bridge of their nose. Your eyes light up, seeing their face without goggles was just...

“Well if you give me part of your work, we will be both finished in 3 hours. Anything else that needs doing I will do!” You offered, Hange darts their eyes at you, an excited expression on their face. Without any warning they grab your hands into theirs and puts their face mere inches away from yours. Your face heats up, staring at their lips, you hold everything back from just leaning in to kiss them.

“You’d do that?? For me?? Well aren’t I lucky to have such a kind assistant!!!” Hange exclaimed

“If you both give me some of your work, I am happy to complete whatever’s left” you hear Moblit say across the table. Your eyes turn to him as he gives you a knowing wink. Gods bless Moblit. “That way you two get to leave early tonight, I hear there is some kind of astrological event on tonight”

Your face dropped, as much as Moblit was helping you, he must have looked at your notes as he walked past; nosy dickhead. Hange placed a hand under their chin and thought for a moment, before they had the chance to say anything about it (worrying they’d say its stupid or something) You stood up in your seat.

“Squad leader Hange! We can watch it tonight together if you’d like!!!” You blurted out, sounding more authoritative than you’d wanted. Hange’s eyes widen and observe your shaking body.

“But what about work?? I am sure after this paperwork needs doing they’ll be-”

“I’ll do it! Even if it means I work into the morning. It’s something that Y/N is passionate about so please!! I can always get Nifa or Abel or both to help me out!” You could hear the panic in Moblit’s voice. You take what you thought about him being a dickhead back, he’s doing you such a favour. The both of you look at each other and then back to Hange, trying to gage what their response will be.

A roar of laughter fills the room, followed by a long sigh. “As long as you are sure Moblit, that is real sweet” Hange turns to you and grabs your hand again. “Tonight’s a date then, what time and where?”

‘A DATE???’ You panic to yourself, did they really call this a date. You scream in your mind, wanting to just faint there and then. You collect your emotions and take your hand away from theirs, coughing into a fist. “10:15, walk south from the back entrance of HQ and head towards some bushes and the oak tree. I will meet you there” You said, you wanted to be far enough from HQ so you wouldn’t be disturbed.

“Sounds perfect! Now, lets get some work done!” Hange exclaims, sitting back at their desk and scribbling even faster than before.

The three of you continued to work, you were the first to finish and left the office to get changed into your casual gear. You pull out some perfume that you saved months up for from the market, it was a beautiful scent that you only used on special occasions. You looked in the mirror and hyped yourself up, “come on Y/N you are a lover and a fighter. Titan killer in the streets, pussy killer in the sheets” You slap yourself for saying something so embarrassing out loud.

Once dressed, you head out to the spot with blankets, pillows and a couple of lanterns; if you were to be there a while, you wanted to be comfortable. Once everything is laid out, all you had to do was wait. You felt the nerves building up, as time passed and drew near to Hange’s arrival, you had looked at all of your notes over and over. You lined star charts up and spotted all sorts of constellations to point out to Hange when they were there, you looked at the notes with all the stories behind the constellations and tried to identity any planets that were visible. You kicked yourself, wishing you’d be able to afford a telescope; apparently Saturn is aligned with Mars and that would have been an incredible sight to see.

You hear a noise behind you, oh lord here they come! You scramble at your notes, looking at the more complicated details and stuffing them into your bag.

“Y/N I could do with a little bit of help!!!” You hear Hange yell out, clear struggle in their voice. You stand up to see them behind the bush holding a very large telescope. You rush to their side and help carry it in front of the blankets.

“Hange! Where did you get this telescope from??” You exclaim with delight, Hange’s face blushes at your excitement and rubs their neck.

“Well after Moblit told me that you’re passionate about astrology, I took a deep dive into what is so special about tonight. A meteor shower right? And the planets Mars and Saturn?? Well so I uh....spent my savings on this baby to see it” Hange said awkwardly, your mouth agape and eyes wide, they spent all of their money on a telescope just for this?

You lunge forward and give Hange a massive hug with excited giggles. “Hange thank you so much!! It’s going to be so amazing I promise you!!!!”

Hange blushes wildly, resisting the urge to kiss you. “Well, it’s nice to see someone so excited over science just as I am, makes me feel a little less weird”

“Oh trust me, in school when we were taught about astrology I seemed to be the only person interested! I would spend hours just researching the constellations and zodiac signs! No one really wanted to be my friend, so uhhhh well I suppose I shifted my focus on Titan fighting and work with you and your science squad. It’s not space, sure, but I too felt lonely in my hobbies!” You explained, Hange’s heartstrings felt a tug, picturing you as a kid is just too cute.

The two of you carried on with conversation, you pointed to the sky and explained the stories behind the constellations. No matter how complicated the story or science, Hange seemed to want to know more and more; you even had to pull out your notes to answer their questions. In Hange’s mind, they had spoke about the science of titans for years and never bothered to ask you where your true passions lie. They questioned why they never asked, perhaps they were too nervous? Hange always put on a mask of being this optimistic, eccentric scientist and even acted cocky in front of you, but secretly they were just as insecure and shy towards you. They wanted to get to know you, but of course the element of dying at any point worried them; if they got too attached, especially romantically, it would hurt more. However, since the two of you are out there, looking at the telescope and talking so much, Hange’s fears lifted, even if it was for an evening.

Using the telescope, you pointed it in the direction of Mars and Saturn, both planets basically next to each other, a wonderful view to see. They weren’t super clear of course, the telescope wasn’t that powerful, but you could clearly see Saturns rings; something Hange got super excited over, asking you millions of questions. It wasn’t until the both of you sat down, waiting for the showers to come did you gulp and turn to Hange.

“Hange, I hope you don’t mind but I really would like to talk to you” You began, nervously fumbling with your fingers

“We’ve been talking all night??”

“AHH no I mean I have to say something okay. Please don’t say anything until I uhh finish because I just kinda wanna blurt it all out okay??” You really are stuttering and slipping up on your words, Hange gives a reassuring smile and nods. “Okay, I uhh...” You were interrupted by the meteors shooting across the sky. Mesmerised, you didn’t move your face away from Hange, just your eyes, they took this opportunity to lean in and kiss you. Your eyes widen in shock, what are they doing?? They’re going to miss the meteor shower! Despite this, you relax and close your eyes, leaning into them and deepening the kiss.

“Hange...”

“As you were sooo distracted, your turn has been cancelled. I’ll go first. Y/N I really like you, I have done for a while, and I know you and Levi bathe me together, and sometimes...sometimes I hear you”

“Ahhhh!!!!” You yell out in embarrassment, Hange lifts a finger to your mouth

“Ah ah ah, I am not finished yet! I find you breath taking, I even get so overwhelmed by the way you just stand there! It makes me want to work harder, so much so I would purposefully knock myself out so you could bathe me...oh gods that sounds bad. Not in that way I JUST REALLY ENJOY HEARING YOUR CONVERSATIONS WITH THE CAPTAIN!!!” Hange is now the one getting all flustered, waving their hands erratically. They didn’t want it to sound weird, but they aren’t exactly experienced in expressing their feelings.

“Hey no I get it, sort of...but yeah I really like you too and I guess I’ve never...I UGH words” You pathetically confess, earning a laugh from Hange.

“We’re not very good at this are we, space girl?” Hange moves their arm around you and pulls you in to a hug. Your eyes light up at your little nickname, they definitely do listen to yours and Levi’s conversations. You take this opportunity to kiss Hange, feeling their soft lips on yours.

“You’ve showered haven’t you?” You smirk into the kiss, Hange looks at you, confused and a little insulted.

“How ... whaaaa?”

“You smell delicious” you say boldly, in fact Hange did shower before meeting you tonight, for the first time in ages. They of course laugh at you, and confess. You both sit there for a moment, watching the rest of the meteor showers, colours of gold and silver shooting across the sky.

“How beautiful” You whispered to yourself, Hange looks at you and smiles

“Not as be-”

“Nope. That’s so cringey” you joke, Hange slaps your legs earning a weird moan/yelp from your lips. You cover your mouth in embarrassment. Hange looks at you with curiosity, what a response to just a playful slap. Hange’s face confidently smirks, taking your chin in their hands.

“What was that?” Hange asked seductively, walking two fingers up your thigh. You shiver at how foreword your squad leader is being.

“Nothing...”

“Do you think I’ll be able to get another noise like that out of you?” Hange moves their face forward, practically whispering next to your ear

“I uh...oh look the meteors! They are still going!” You panic, the air is thick, your heart fluttering at how close they are getting. Not that you wouldn’t want to...it’s just moving so fast that you couldn’t barely keep up.

“The meteors can wait”

“I mean technically...” you’re words at cut off by Hange kissing your neck, testing the waters a little before going right ahead. You softly moan out Hange’s name, heaving a little bit at the intensity. So long have you envisioned yourself in this position, being kissed by your squad leader; you’ve thought about it and you’ve touched yourself to it. You may be feeling a little awkward now, but you shiver with anticipation to see how far this could go.

“Are you okay?” Hange asks, looking at you with a little concern, they can feel you tensing under their touch, even shaking a little. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable”

“No! No definitely I’m okay I’m just inexperienced. I mean I’m not but it’s different when it’s you because I...I like you and I want to do this but, can we start off slow?” You ask nervously, Hange gives you a tender kiss on your forehead and holds you close.

“If you ever want to stop, please tell me okay?” Hange asks, you nod at them eagerly before pulling them close in for a confident kiss. You lean back onto a pillow, allowing Hange to hover above you, lips still connected. What a feeling this is, never would you imagine getting this close to them; you savour every moment. Hange sits up and takes off their shirt, revealing a binder underneath before taking that off too, your eyes fall to the exposed skin; a lump in your throat. There Hange is, straddling you and pinning you down, half naked and stunning.

“Gods...” You whisper under your breath, Hange snickers at your cute expression before attacking your neck. They plant several erratic kisses all of you, earning a mixture of moaning and giggling.

“What happened to going slow?” You chuckle out, Hange stops immediately and changes their expression.

“I can slo-”

Hange’s words are cut short as you flip them over underneath you, their eyes wide and breaths manic, that is until you sloppily kiss their lips. Hungry noises leave either of your throats as you fight for dominance; you suppose the issue here is that the both of you are so eager, so keen to please that you clash - but in the best possible way. One final flip and you find yourself locked onto the floor under a very horny squad leader. And by locked, it means having Hange gripping your jaw with one hand and the other being intertwined with yours.

“Be my good little space girl, let me see you” Hange unbuttons your shirt, one button at a time, almost painfully slowly. 1...2..3...4...and suddenly your chest is on full view. You attempt to cover yourself, but too late, Hange is already kissing every bit of skin they can see, uncapping your breast from your bra like a hungry animal and latching their mouth onto a free nipple. They graze their teeth and tongue over your sensitive bud, sucking slightly. You reach a hand up to their head and grip their hair slightly, enjoying the sensation. Whilst you are so distracted, Hange reaches a hand down to your trousers, you don’t even notice them unbuttoning them; it was only until their hand was ghosting over your underwear did you look down. They then press a finger against your clothed pussy, feeling your growing excitement.

“Wet already?” Hange scoffs against your breast, you can’t even answer; either from embarrassment or your panting. Hange thinks back to your little yelp, they would love to hear you make such a noise again. “Over my knee sweet pea” Hange ordered, without hesitation you stood up and allowed Hange to sit down, here you bend over their knee, raising your ass into the air to give them all the access they need. After pulling down your trousers to your ankles, they take extra time to look at you; you’re hot and bothered, shaking a little in anticipation. Hange looks to your perfect ass, stroking and groping it slightly, thinking about all the little red hand prints they will leave on you.

“Such a good girl” Hange mewed before landing a harsh slap across your cheek, you yelp out in a mixture of pain and pleasure. Enjoying the noise so much, Hange slaps your ass over and over, allowing little to no breaks between each hit - you knew this isn’t quite how spanking works but it feels good and Hange definitely was enjoying watching your ass jiggle with each slap.

“Ow!” You yell out, that last hit was a little too hard; Hange, feeling sorry kisses your now extremely red behind.

“I’m sorry, I got a bit carried away; here...” Hange moves their hand over to your underwear again and slips under the fabric to stroke your aching clit. Whatever pain you felt had all disappeared to the sudden wave of pleasure that is Hange. They spread your pussy a little, allowing their middle finger to trace your folds and stop at your clit; here, Hange uses their middle and index finger to rub the sensitive nub, interchanging their technique from circling to a forward to back motion. You could feel the knot build up in your lower abdomen, imaging yourself cumming onto Hange’s fingers. That was until they pulled their fingers away, you let out a disappointed moan and looked to your squad leader with pleading eyes.

Without word or warning, Hange lowers themself down and repositions you over their face. You were now suddenly close to Hange’s pussy, unfortunately still clothed, as you fumble at their belt you could feel Hange lift your ass up a little and look down to see what you’re doing. They smirk, hands leaving you and helping you pull down their trousers and underwear; much better.

You wasted no time but to dip your head at their entrance and lapped up their juices, hands either side of their propped up legs and making sure to be especially rough on their clit. Hange moans out painfully, how long had it been since they were in this position? Your ass is forcefully lowered onto Hange’s face, you feel them lick and suck at your clit, feeling your knot tighten one more. Your legs begin to shake, you won’t be lasting long and Hange can just sense it.

“Y/N look! The meteors are going again!” Hange yells out, you stop licking and look immediately up to the sky; but this was a trick because Hange pulls you down further, inserting 2 fingers into you and eats you out rougher than before, earning an eruption inside you, bursting and almost painful as you cum hard onto their mouth and fingers.

“Venus~!” You strangled out, shaking heavily above Hange who cocks their head to the side.

“Venus?”

“Uh..yeah sorry I don’t know why I do that...” you breathlessly panted out

“Don’t apologise, its cute” Hange strokes your ass, giggling at their little space weirdo. You position yourself above Hange, taking them by surprise as you cup their pussy with your hand.

“Got you” Was all you could say before inserting two of your fingers inside your squad leader. You arch your fingers inside of them, using your thumb to draw circles over their clit as they pant and whine under you. Using your free hand you grab both their wrists and hold them above their head, giving you full view of their body. As you finger fuck them, you reach down and kiss them, moving your lips from theirs to over their neck, sucking hard; making sure to leave a dark mark. That was it for Hange, their whole body trembles and cums undone; what you didn’t expect was the flood that left their body, squirting all over you.

“Globular Cluster!!!” Hange screams out, they were a hot mess, melting into the blanket. You crawl next to them and snuggle into their chest. They begin to stroke your hair, leaving forehead kisses.

“Globular cluster?” You ask cheekily, Hange laughs and pats your back.

“Listen, if you are going to scream out space words during sex instead of my name, I might as well do it too!”

“That is too adorable”

“As are you Y/N, do you think my space girl could love an earth...ehhh girl?”

“There is a gender neutral word for that you know, earthling” You giggle, Hange huffs a little, cheeks dusted with a pink blush.

“But yes, this space girl loves her earthling” you say, kissing their head. The both of you spent the rest of the evening just staring at the stars, Hange continuously asking questions including “What’s my zodiac sign?” and “Is yours compatible with a Virgo?” - not that it particularly matters whether you are astrologically compatible with Hange, you already knew you were.

#hange zoe x reader #hange x reader #aot hange #attack on titan hange #commander hange #AOT #attack on titan smut

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alrighty-anubis · 3 years

Text

I miss him (tech&hunter&crosshair)

No warnings apply

Tech's emotions over flow after going unsaid for too long. Hunter realises his brother needs some support and that forgetting about Crosshair isn't good for any of them. Omega is the perfect younger sister.

Find it on my AO3

As the Havoc-Marauder settled into hyperspace, the tension in the ship dispersed and was replaced by the friendly familiarity between the members. Hunter had a hand on Omega’s shoulder as she excitedly rattled off her and Wrecker’s accomplishments on their side, Wrecker interrupting with his own equally excited comments whilst echo (who had spun round in the co-pilot’s seat) nodded along trying and failing to cover up the fact he was scanning them all for injuries. Tech didn’t face them, eyes set on the blur of stars before them, fiddling absentmindedly with a clump of wires he had picked up and had no plan for.

“And then I shot the droid with my bow” “Right in the head, kid’s got perfect aim” “And that’s when Crosshair arri-”

Omega was interrupted by a sharp clang from the pilot’ seat. They all turned to face Tech whose cheeks flushed as he picked up the wires before turning away from them without so much as a glance in their direction.

“Hey, Tech, you alright?” Hunter’s concerned voice broke the silence.

“Affirmative, I have sustained no injuries. Neither has the ship. I apologize for the interruption”

Hunter kept his eyes trained on Tech’s back but didn’t probe him any further, a squeeze to Omega’s shoulder signalling her to carry on.

“Crosshair arrived and started shooting at us and his aim was so good but luckily Wrecker threw a crate at him so we had time to run around the corner.” “You know how delicate Cross can be - took him minutes to get up again” “And then we made it to you and had that whole stand off”

That’s when Echo interrupted, providing his ARC interpretation and analysis on their efforts. Hunter tended to forget how much experience the man had, working so closely with Rex and found himself nodding along with him. The conversation soon got thrown off into a tangent about the new TK soldiers and other developments the Empire were making from the GAR.

Hunter found himself pausing and waiting for Tech’s interjections; he was so animated when they first discovered the changes with the Commandos. But Tech sat silently at the Cockpit’s control desk. As he drowned out the surrounding conversation to take note of the Pilot’s tense shoulders and un-Tech-like lack of precision while handling the wires he felt his concern grow.

He pulled himself back to Echo and Wrecker’s conversation, intending to send them away so he could talk with Tech and figure out what was wrong.

“Yeah, we could’a used a sniper,” Wrecker vigorously announced. “I will admit, Crosshair being a traitor’s kind'a inconvenient. Don’t see him coming and suddenly you're being shot at.” “What’s not inconvenient is not having an attitude!” Wrecker laughed.

“Shut up!” Tech suddenly stood up, his wires thrown to the ground and the chair spinning from the force he left it with. “Shut up shut up!”

He flung his helmet across the cockpit and smashed into the wall with a loud crash. Omega startled and hurried out of the room.

Hunter took a step back and resisted the urge to cover his ears. He felt his stomach lurch at the sight of tears streaking from behind Tech’s goggles. Wrecker and Echo were frozen, mouths still open.

“He’s not a traitor!

“Tech, he’s literally hunting us down for the Empire,” Echo stated whilst Wrecker shouted: “If he wasn’t a traitor he would be with us now.”

“Hunting us down? What like you did to Omega, Wrecker?”

Wrecker physically flinched back, tears welling in his eyes whilst they started to freely stream down Tech’s face.

“It’s not him. It’s not. It wasn’t you trying to shoot Omega in the face. Cross wouldn’t betray us. And you’ve abandoned him. None of you care - none of you did. He got left behind. We left him behind and none of you care or feel bad,” tremors began to wrack through his body violently, “We left him behind. We are the traitors. He’s all alone - the Empire doing maker knows what to him - and we aren’t saving him because none of you care!”

“Tech-” Hunter slowly stepped forward, hands raised in a placating manner.

“What? You're the one who made us leave him. You’re our sergeant, you’re meant to keep us together and you didn’t”.

“Tech-” He signalled for the others to leave, “We did what we could, but we couldn’t get out of their alive and save him.”

“Bullshit - that’s just what you tell yourself.”

“Maybe you’re right-” Hunter considered his options.

It was rare for Tech to feel emotions strongly, let alone let them out. When Tech had breakdowns like this it would be after something had been building for weeks. Hunter cursed himself for not having noticed the signs: taking the night shift so he didn't have to sleep in front of them because of nightmares; not eating’ overworking so he didn't have to think about it. Crosshair was usually the one who helped Tech in these situations, he was the only one Tech felt comfortable speaking to about these matters actually, the both of them not feeling as strongly as Hunter, Wrecker or Echo. He should have seen this coming with Tech’s closest brother being unavailable.

“Tech, tell me, was there a way for us to get out alive with Crosshair? Think.” He commanded, hoping that giving Tech the puzzle would help his analytical mind ease the onslaught of emotions so Hunter could begin to help him with them.

“No.” Tech's voice was strained and croaky from shouting. He slumped forward with resignation at the admission.

Hunter stepped forward and laid a hand on his back. Tech flinched away for a second before falling into his brother’s chest. Hunter wrapped his arms around the slender man and realised this was the first time he had hugged Tech. A pang of guilt made its way through his body as he wondered whether it was more than their similarity that had Tech heading to Crosshair for comfort. Hunter found Tech’s constant babble exhausting and incomprehensible, sometimes leading him to be a bit short with the others.

“What brought this on?” He asked.

“They talk about him as if he’s no different than Rampart or Bane or Tarkin. But he is. He’s our brother. And then they don’t talk about him at all. No one’s mentioned that he’s gone.”

They had all been so concerned with Omega’s safety they hadn’t had time to mourn Crosshair’s separation and Tech, finding emotions as confusing and illogical as he does, had never felt confident to bring him up - not with Wrecker often ignoring what he said assuming he won't understand and other more urgent situations ongoing.

“Do you want to talk about it - him now?”

“I miss him.”

“So do we.”

“Really.” Tech deadpanned, “”It surely gives that impression when you all spend hours insulting him”.

“Perhaps convincing ourselves we weren't as close to him saves us the pain from his absence.”

Tech stayed silent.

“I will talk to the others. And Tech,” he waited until his eyes met his younger brother’s. “We will get him back. I promise.”

Tech sobbed into Hunter’s chest in response. They stood like that for a while, until they heard the door open behind them. Omega poked her head in the cockpit, concern worrying about her face.

“Tech, are you okay?”

“I will be.” He pulled away from Hunter, his cold exterior returning quicker than Hunter would have liked, “I apologise for scarring you.”

Omega reached down and picked up his wires, handing them back to him, “It’s okay,” she smiled, “We’ll get him back.”

The rest of the group filtered back in, they cast Tech concerned glances which he pretended to not notice. The atmosphere was awkward, the conversation choppy as they tried to stick to light subjects. But Omega’s game with her Bad Batcher doll drew them all in.

Tech tapped Omega on the shoulder and passed her a small toy bow he had made with the wires.

“This is so cool, she matches me now!” Omega lurched forward and hugged her older brother.

_____

1351 words

Also I’d love to be sent some requests :)

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karlnapity · 3 years

Text

i didn’t know we were fighting.

sapnap is always angry, and george is always calm.

when they were little and a group of four and they weren’t fighting for their lives and instead for fun, dream used to joke that sapnap carried george’s emotions for him. at the time, sapnap had loudly proclaimed he always would, and george pushed him into a river, and he laughed.

it doesn’t seem so funny now.

sapnap meets george when they’re eleven. they team together soon after they figure out they’re both alone, sapnap as fierce as george is clever. soon after, they meet bad, who takes them in with great patience and even greater kindness, and they form a great team.

dream shakes things up. within days he and george have become attached at the hip, complimenting each other in ways sapnap never has. he’s always too overwhelming, too loud, too much for anyone. everyone except for george.

at first it hurts. sapnap sees dream stealing his friend, and sapnap has never been more incensed. he snaps at dream and at everyone, and even when bad tries to get them to make up he refuses.

it isn’t until they’re stuck in a cave with zombies threatening to break down dirt walls that they talk about it, that sapnap cries about it, and dream does too, and george doesn’t.

after that sapnap thinks they’ll be inseparable, is sure they’ll be a team forever.

when the war first starts, he’s just there to have fun. it seems trivial, the idea of fighting over fucking music discs against a bunch of kids, defending a fucking drug van, and he doesn’t much care. fighting is fun and fire even more so and he gets to team alongside his best friends.

maybe eret defecting to their side should be a sign it’s important, but even that doesn’t rattle his confidence that this is just a game, and it’s not his fault everyone else is taking this so seriously.

the pet war isn’t as fun. much as everyone jokes about it he doesn’t like killing animals, but bad has always said he’s too hotheaded and too stubborn and he has to prove a point.

so he fights, and he wins, and he’s not even sure why.

“no one is forcing you,” george says, leaning back against him as they fish, and sapnap laughs.

“i am.”

and george shrugs, and that’s the end of it.

sapnap doesn’t care about elections. they’re not wars, they’re not interesting, and he thinks he’ll die if he has to hear one more slick-tongued politician monologue about governments.

george runs alongside quackity. they get along better than he expects, the three of them becoming friends quickly.

all the same, he can’t understand why george gets involved, because now sapnap has to as well.

“you don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” george says, failing to tie a tie for the fifth time. sapnap leans against the wall and laughs.

“i do.”

and george shrugs, and that’s the end of it.

sapnap hasn’t talked to dream in a while. he’s always been busy with running the server, but now there’s something more there. sapnap has never had a hard time reading him even behind his mask, but now for the first time he’s not sure what his friend is doing behind the scenes.

he feels unbalanced without him. george seems so much quieter than before, the easy banter that used to flow between them missing without their third part. they don’t talk much anymore. for the first time ever, he feels they’re disjointed, not able to move together the same way they did before.

bad, too, is different. he’s formed his own faction, with sam and skeppy and ant, and sapnap doesn’t get to see him much anymore. when he does, there’s a gleam in his eyes that wasn’t there before and screams run run run.

he confides in quackity and karl. he never expected to grow as close to them as he has, but it’s a welcome reprieve from old grievances. they meet on the roof of the white house, and he talks of george, and quackity talks of schlatt, and karl talks of l’manburg.

“you don’t need to stay by dream’s side, not if you don’t want to,” quackity tells him one night, dangling his feet over the edge of the roof. karl nods. sapnap laughs.

“i do.”

and quackity shrugs, and that’s the end of it.

and in the end, he does. he fights for manburg, even though he doesn’t care that much. it’s not fun anymore.

dream doesn’t ask him if he wants to fight by his side, he just tells him what to do, and for the first time since they met it pisses him off.

and for the first time since they were kids, they argue. sapnap laughs in his face.

“don’t give me orders,” he snarls, “when you didn’t even ask me if i was going to follow you.”

dream stares at him for a long, long moment. “don’t you?”

his voice is very, very quiet. sapnap has never been scared of dream before. his heart stutters.

sapnap first drew the face when they were little. dream didn’t even take off his mask when they were sleeping, and sapnap wasn’t so cruel he’d remove it, but he was still so angry at dream for stealing his friend and he wanted to get back at him. so he took a piece of charcoal and carved a smiley face on the empty white mask. when dream woke bad laughed at him, and dream was so angry, but he kept it in the end.

it has never, ever been creepy before. sapnap hates him.

sapnap looks to george for help. george doesn’t care.

“don’t you?” dream asks again, and sapnap sighs.

“i do.”

and dream shrugs, and that’s the end of it.

“i don’t care about anything but the discs,” dream says, and sapnap’s heart stops.

he should’ve known.

dream isn’t his friend anymore, hasn’t been his friend for so long.

he doesn’t know when it changed, when dream became someone who wasn’t his anymore, when he became someone sapnap doesn’t like, when he became some sort of monster sapnap hates, but it hurts.

he runs to george. he’s building a house with quackity, enjoying the freedom of el rapids, and sapnap doesn’t want to ruin his fun but he has to.

he bursts in, can’t help but yell. george seems surprised enough, asking for clarification, but after a few moments he quietly goes back to building. even quackity is incensed, talking a mile a minute and immediately taking sapnap’s side, but in the meantime george has snuck away and is rifling through a chest.

“it’s us three against the world,” sapnapp says, and he doesn’t even mean dream, and it feels wrong.

“aren’t you angry?” quackity exclaims when he notices george, grabbing his arm. george pulls away and continues his search.

sapnap laughs, bitter, and none of this is funny. “he never is.”

“that’s not true,” george says petulantly, but there’s nothing in his voice. sapnap huffs.

“you don’t care, do you?”

“i do.”

and sapnap shrugs, and that’s the end of it.

george loses his first life to technoblade, and sapnap can’t protect him. he isn’t there, off with quackity and karl when it happens.

georgenotfound was slain by technoblade using [orphan obliterator]

he freezes, mind shuttering closed. after a few seconds, he clues back in. karl is on one side, hand on his arm, and quackity is on the other, holding his hand. he’s breathing hard.

“i need to go,” he says, standing. “i need to make sure he’s ok.” they nod, and he runs.

he runs to the castle, first, and george isn’t there. dream is, tells him george is fine, tells him not to bother. sapnap snaps at him, tells him to fuck off. respawns are painful, and sapnap isn’t going to let him go through that alone.

george is in bed in el rapids, curled up under a pile of blankets. sapnap almost doesn’t see him, almost runs past his room, but he always finds him.

sapnap pulls his friend into his arms easily, the way he always has, and george clings onto him.

all of george’s emotion has always hidden in his gestures.

they stay like that for a while, george with his arms around his neck and his head buried in his shoulder. sapnap holds tight on his t-shirt, curls a hand in his hair. he chokes back a few tears.

he should’ve been there.

eventually, george pulls back. he sighs, fixes his hair, pulls the blankets closer around him.

sapnap rubs a hand over his face. he wishes he could read him like he used to. he can’t read any of them now.

“i’ll always be there, you know that, right?” he asks. it’s a lie. he can’t promise anything. and george knows that, but he still says,

“i do.”

and george shrugs, and that’s the end of it.

sapnap isn’t sure why, but he’s yelling in george’s face. george’s king cape lays on the floor of the throne room next to them, and he steps on it as he grabs george’s shirt.

dream and eret stand beside them, dream blank and eret worried and sapnap doesn’t care.

he should be angry at dream. he should. it’s not george’s fault he’s been dethroned, but he can’t help but be angry at the both of them.

is he really the only one who cares about their friendship? dream doesn’t care, and maybe he’s never cared, and he isn’t sure whether george is even able, and it feels like shit.

dream asks george if he wants to stay king, and he doesn’t get angry. he simply asks dream.

sapnap can hear the slimy manipulation in his friend’s voice, and he wants to punch the man in his face. but george just looks him in the face and shrugs and doesn’t care and sapnap hates it.

quackity fights for them and sapnap wants to cry. finally, finally, someone is on his side. quackity squeezes his hand, minutely, before pulling away.

dream doesn’t back down, and george doesn’t fight him. the crown is pulled unceremoniously from his hair and placed in eret’s and sapnap can tell eret doesn’t see it as a victory. he’s not sure any of them do.

the cape is left on the ground and they go home. it’s not worth a physical fight, not when george doesn’t care, much as sapnap wants to spear his friend through the stomach.

george settles next to sapnap on the couch, takes off his goggles, and sighs. he leans into sapnap’s side. they sit quietly for a few long moments before sapnap can’t help but ask:

“do you actually even want to be king?” sapnap can’t read him anymore. he never would’ve had to ask this at the beginning. it hurts. george pulls away.

“i do.”

and sapnap shrugs, and that’s the end of it.

dream is going to destroy l’manburg.

sapnap has been shaking all day. he’s not sure where george is and he misses him, because george can always calm him down and he can barely hold his sword steady. karl squeezes his shoulder and he jumps.

he’s going to talk to tommy before the destruction today.

there’s been a change in the kid. something happened while he was in exile, and part of sapnap hopes he never, ever finds out what it was. he doesn’t want to know what his friend has done.

tommy has found mars, asks him to fight alongside them.

and sapnap thinks of his country. thinks of his friends. thinks of his fiancés. thinks of george.

“are you going to fight with us?” tommy asks.

“i will.”

and tommy nods, and that’s the end of it.

“it’s just us,” george says one night. he’s on the sofa, and sapnap had thought he was asleep, had come in to make sure george hadn’t fallen asleep with his goggles on.

he nods, sits down next to him. “it is.”

george sighs, breathy. his voice sounds choked. sapnap wonders whether he feels anything, wonders what it’s like. he wraps an arm around him, buries his face in his hair.

sapnap is always angry. george is always calm.

and sapnap will carry his emotions.

“do you think somewhere, we’re happy? the three of us?”

“i do.”

#personal #dream smp #dsmp #lmanburg #lmanberg #dreamwastaken #sapnap #georgenotfound #quackity #karl jacobs #mcyt

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senorarelojes · 3 years

Text

Ficlet: The One Where Fletch Has Sex Powers

A crackfic based on @pinksyndication's running joke about how Fletch always teleports to wherever Dave and Alan are having sex.

Tags: Crackfic, Nonsense, Getting Caught, OOC-ness Rating: Mature

All in all, Andy Fletcher was a Very Good Boy. He didn't take drugs (he didn't care what anyone said, pot wasn't a drug) and he liked drinking, but he treated the fans well and he never slept with any groupies. And it appeared that the other guys were starting to be swayed by his good example; all right, Martin was Martin, but Dave and Alan seemed to have stopped bringing girls back to their rooms. In fact, now the two of them would often head back to the hotel together after their gigs and afterparties, grinning and whispering about something or other.

“What do you think those two are up to?” Martin said, when he and Fletch were waiting for their drinks at the bar one night in New Orleans. They were watching Dave and Alan leave the club together, and Dave must have been drunk because he was holding onto Alan’s hips for balance. He did that a lot these days. Fletch thought Alan was a very good friend for tolerating that much touching.

“Dunno,” Fletch said, knocking back the whiskey a grateful fan had bought him. It burned all the way down, warm but funny in his stomach. “Dave said sometimes they read the Bible together.”

Martin laughed until he almost choked on his drink, Fletch patting him on the back until his airways were clear again. “He really said that?” Martin gasped.

“Yeah, must’ve heard him wrong,” Fletch said with a grin. “He said something about getting to know Alan biblically? Must have been stoned out of his mind.”

Martin’s brow was now wrinkled in confusion, his mouth open to ask something before they were waylaid by a group of very excited fans in very little clothing, and Fletch got distracted (okay he was faithful to Grainne, but he wasn’t a priest) and he forgot all about their topic of discussion.

Besides, the whiskey earlier was making him feel a bit odd.

***

A few days later, Fletch was still feeling the effects of the whiskey that fan had given him in New Orleans. He wasn’t sick or anything like that; he just felt like a toy soldier whose key had been wound too tightly, like all his senses had been heightened. If Martin was flirting with someone, Fletch could almost hear Martin’s heartbeat racing as though it were his very own. When one of their female roadies bent over their synths and treated Daryl to a view of her cleavage, Fletch could smell something warm and vanilla-ish, like the spiced fruit cake his mother used to bake.

The worst one was that he also seemed to have gained the knack of accidentally walking in on people making out or about to have sex. On tour, this was a most awkward scenario as Fletch had to work with these people day in and day out for months, so he most definitely did not want to get a glimpse of anyone’s arse or naughty bits. He got into the habit of knocking on any doors to announce his presence beforehand, which was most annoying as Fletch liked the freedom of going where he pleased on tour.

He almost wanted to tell Martin about the very odd things happening to him recently, but he knew Martin would just laugh it off so he decided not to. Strange things happened on tour all the time, and Martin would just tell him to be careful and watch where he was going. Besides, Fletch felt fine beyond the odd thing about his senses being magnified.

Then it all came to a head one night.

After their gig in Los Angeles, Fletch had decided to skip the afterparty because he was a bit too flushed and sweaty. Afraid that he might be coming down with the flu, Fletch went back to the hotel shortly after Dave and Alan themselves did. Ringing room service and ordering himself a nice hot tea and a bacon sandwich, Fletch decided a bath might be the best thing after a long gig; he didn’t care what Alan had to say, all that clapping would tire anyone out.

Fletch had his late dinner, then drew his bath and sat in the steaming hot water for a good thirty minutes, ignoring the moans he was hearing next door. (This was now a nightly occurrence that he attributed to the hotel’s thin walls, trying not to think about how that had never been a problem before). But after it got a bit too obscene for him to ignore, he got up and reached for his towel, drying himself and draining the water.

Fletch was almost done when his eye fell on the bathroom counter, then he frowned down at the items scattered around the bathroom sink. Those were not his toiletries. For one thing, there were too many bottles of cologne and aftershave, and there was also make up - make up! - on the counter. Where the fuck had they come from? Fletch’s heart was starting to thump loudly in his chest in panic. This didn’t look like his bathroom.

Then he heard voices from outside.

Now his heart jumped up into his throat, leaving him stricken in fear. Had robbers come in during his bath, or did fans manage to track him down? He pressed his ear against the door, startled when he heard Alan’s voice. It was both disconcerting and soothing to hear him talking, because at least it was someone he knew and trusted. Then again, what the fuck was Alan doing in his room? Maybe he’d broken in to play a prank on Fletch.

Fletch found himself grinning. Well, two could play at that game.

Flinging open the door, Fletch shouted, “Surprise, Wilder--” but his voice died because a sweaty Alan was naked on his bed, balls deep in someone who was face down in the pillows.

For a long moment, it was hard to tell who was more horrified: Fletch, or Alan, who was staring back at him in shock.

“What the fuck are you doing in my room?” they both asked at the same time, before the person Alan was fucking raised their head.

“Charlie, what--” A red-faced Dave was blinking at Fletch, who just stared at him, then Alan, then him again.

That was the point where Fletch passed out.

***

When he came to, he was resting on the two-seater sofa near the window. Dave and Alan, who were both wearing the hotel’s fluffy bathrobes, were peering down at him anxiously. “Is he alive?” Dave asked, palming Fletch’s forehead.

Fletch batted his hand away with a squawk. “Don’t touch me with-- that! Who knows where it’s been!” he shouted, scrambling away from the two of them.

Dave actually had the good graces to look hurt. Hurt! As though he was the one who had walked in on his two bandmates plowing each other like a cornfield. “My hand’s clean, it’s not like I had my fingers up Alan’s arse or something,” he said huffily. “We did that yesterday.”

“Dave,” Alan said in warning. “Not the time, mate.”

“He insinuated I was dirty,” Dave protested at the same time as Fletch yelled, “Stop telling me things!”

Alan held out his hands for calm. “Okay, look. Andy, why were you in my bathroom?”

Fletch rolled his eyes. “Excuse me, this is my room.”

Shaking his head, Alan looked even more confused. “No, it’s not. It’s mine.” And sure enough, it was only now that Fletch had a good look around. He could see Alan’s various leather jackets hanging in the wardrobe, his suitcases and boots lined up against the wall.

Now Fletch really, really felt ill. “I need to lie down.”

“You are lying down,” Dave said. When Alan shot him another glare, Dave got all huffy. “What? I can’t point out facts now?”

“This still doesn’t explain how Andy ended up in the bathroom,” Alan said, running his hands through his hair. Then Dave flattened down a cowlick that was sticking up at the back, and Alan shot him a very fond smile. Fletch could hear his heartbeat kicking up too, just like Martin’s had when he’d been flirting with that cute girl.

Oh. Oh no.

“I think I have sex powers,” Fletch said faintly.

Dave and Alan just stared at him. “How hard did he hit his head when he fell down?” Dave whispered to Alan.

“No, you don’t understand.” Fletch told them about the whiskey from that fan, then about his tendency to sense people’s heightened lust, as well as the odd thing about walking in on people in various states of intimacy. Dave just looked confused, while Alan seemed thoughtful.

“I think I’ve heard of this before,” Alan said, pacing about his room while Dave not-so-subtly tried to look up his robe. “It must have been a charm a fan had given to you.”

“But why?” For the life of him, Fletch couldn’t figure out why anyone would do this to him.

Alan shrugged. “Happened to a mate of mine. It usually wears off after a week or so.”

“A week’s a very long time to stop teleporting to where people are having sex,” Fletch said in a huff, before he gestured between the two of them. “Also, when did this bloody happen?”

Dave blushed a deep beetroot red, while Alan cocked an eyebrow at Fletch. “Really? You just gained sex powers, but you’re more concerned about Dave and I making love?”

Fletch had to hold his breath before he gagged, while Dave’s blush deepened, hearts practically glowing in his eyes. “Oh, Al--”

“Okay, I’m going to use my sex powers and, um, teleport out of here,” Fletch muttered, but Alan and Dave were starting to get all handsy again so Fletch didn’t wait and bolted out of the room, running straight to Mart’s.

***

As Alan predicted, Fletch’s sex powers went away a few days after the incident with the two of them. But although he didn’t have those powers anymore, it was hard not to notice whenever Alan and Dave snuck off together. So when Martin commented on it, Fletch told him.

“How did you find out?” Martin was half-sober, so Fletch was counting on him to remember this conversation in the morning.

“My sex powers,” Fletch said.

“Your sex what?” Martin goggled at him, so Fletch told him everything that had happened. At the end of it, Martin didn’t quite look like he believed Fletch, but he wasn’t quite laughing him off either.

“So do you still have them?” Martin asked after a long silence, staring down at his own tumbler of whiskey with suspicion now.

“I hope not,” Fletch said miserably. “I probably already need years of therapy after catching Alan and Dave like that together.”

Martin was starting to smile again. “At least Dave wasn’t lying when he said he was getting to know Alan biblically.”

“You’re a silver lining kind of bloke, aren’t you?” Fletch rolled his eyes at him, because he really wasn’t kidding about the therapy.

Martin patted him on the back sympathetically. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink then. What do you want?”

“Anything but whiskey,” Fletch said, because really, he never wanted to get sex powers again.

#dalan #fanfic #crack #pinksyndication #I had the worst writing block #so I wrote this to try and get over it #clockies' crap

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walker-journal · 3 years

Text

Clocks and Cyrophoenix (Adam +Alfie- POTW)

Characters: Alfonzo Ramirez (Phoenix- Annie), Adam Walker (Hunter-Tapir)

Summary: The search for Nell continues in a frost dimension where Adam meets a grouchy charmander.

Content Warnings: head trauma

One minute Alfie was walking back to his apartment from a quick stop at the mailboxes, and the next he found himself at the edge of a cliff. His heart lurched into his throat as he reeled back in the nick of time, barely evading what was most certainly a fall to his death. Loose rocks beneath his feet tumbled over the precipice.

Wild eyes frantically took in his new surroundings; colossal pillars stretched beyond the void overhead. The air hummed menacingly along with the echoes of animalistic grunts — the source of which were out of sight. Frost covering the ground turned to sludge underneath his feet as condensation formed from his breath.

This wasn’t the elevator.

“Son of a bitch,” Alfie breathed, stumbling backwards as he shook the slush from his shoes. His day was going so well up until now. He turned slowly, trying to get his bearings on the unfamiliar environment. If there had been an outlet, it was long gone, leaving only a winding ravine behind him. He was left with no choice but to follow it in hopes of getting out of whatever hellscape he’d been thrust into.

He knew he should have taken the stairs today.

A figure dropped down from the edge of the ravine in a rush of white, beige, and glistening metal spikes. The assailant was dressed in the pale camo of arctic warfare gear, the darker colors of bandoliers and a goggled helmet were the only parts of their silhouette distinct from the surrounding snow. Black blood already drenched the tips of the two surgically sharp ice picks the attacker wielded in each hand. A shadow fell over Alfie as those brutal points descended towards his skull.

Yet the figure’s deadly blitz was broken by a sudden hesitation. The arctic soldier veered away from Alfie, sliding down onto the ravine bottom in an awkward stumbling gait as they tried to work off the momentum of the aborted assassination.

Two gloved hands reached up to lift opaque black goggles up from squinting brown eyes.

“Alfie?”

If Alfie thought his situation couldn’t get any worse, he was wrong. He hadn’t been travelling through the ravine for more than five — ten? fifteen? — minutes before being ambushed. He was completely unaware of anything lurking above until it was too late.

As the figure dropped into his field of vision, Alfie staggered backwards. With a piercing yelp, his back hit the ground and he scrambled to regain his footing. Not that it would have helped him any, but he was prepared to bolt away until the hulking silhouette gave pause and spoke his name.

He sat there, dumbfounded, as his eyes focused on the form of… a man? No — not just any man, but an irritatingly familiar one at that.

“Adam?!” Alfie questioned, incredulously.

What kind of fever dream was this? First, the elevator-turned-hell-dimension, and now Nell’s boyfriend was here? In all fairness, it could have been far worse. Still, he was floored.

“Uh, not to sound rude or anything,” Alfie said, pushing himself to his feet as the melting ice ferociously nipped at his skin. “But what the fuck?”

“The fuck today is that your ass is in Ice Hell,” Adam said, pointing one bloody ice pick up towards the sky.

At first the sky appeared to be filled with moons, hundreds upon hundreds of pale lunar shapes, some of which loomed so large over the horizon that collision seemed possible. However more scrutiny revealed them to planet-sized icebergs floating in a frigid voice. Titanic ice bridges stretched across the emptiness between some of the colossus ice shapes in the sky, forming a glittering lattice which refracted light in dizzying refractions, casting everything in an eternal glittering twilight.

“Thought you might be another demon or one of the heat-drinker corpses when I picked up your vibes,” the Hunter explained. “But hey man! You're alive and not a chest burster alien! Sweet!”

“Ice Hell,” scoffed Alfie. That was just his luck, wasn’t it?

As he wiped his damp hands against his jeans, Alfie’s gaze followed Adam’s gesture to the sky above. He had been so preoccupied earlier by how he was going to get back home that he didn’t even notice the moons gleaming above. It was beautiful — or as beautiful as a hell dimension could be; not that Alfie had any experience with them.

His eyes fell back on Adam as he let out a disgruntled sigh. The palms of his hands ached as a result of the ice melting beneath his touch, but at least he still had his life. All things considered, it could have been much worse. Like being impaled with one of the Hunter’s menacing ice picks.

“Yeah, for now,” Alfie huffed. “Appreciate the whole… not killing me thing.” The same could have been said even in White Crest. Why Nell thought dating a Hunter was a good idea was beyond him, but at least she’d managed to keep the Ramirez family secret under wraps for this long. Still, Alfie didn’t trust Adam as far as he could throw him — which meant he didn’t trust him at all.

“You don’t happen to know how to get the hell out of here, do you?”

“Neat trick,” Adam observed with feigned casualness as he watched the snow melt at Alfie’s touch. “How’re you doin that? It’d definitely save on hand warmers.”

“No problem man,” the arctic soldier replied with a grin, meeting Alfie’s barbed sarcasm with the blunt force of supposed earnestness. Adam had learned that passive aggressiveness was best met by taking everything they said literally. It was one of those private little games the footballer liked to play under the guise of thuggish dull-wittedness.

“Sure thing dude.” Adam took a few steps back and pointed up...and up….and up behind Alfie.

Both men stood in the shadow of a mountainous glacier. From the center of the behemoth mass of ice rose Voorhees Clocktower, towering above the demon wastes as if it were the last visible landmark of White Crest remaining after the Earth succumbed to polar night. Whether the frozen clocktower were some kind of copy or somehow an extension of their world into this dimension Adam couldn’t really say.

“The exit of this nut-freezer locker is at the top of the clocktower,” Adam supplied.

Leave it to Adam to notice the ice turn to slush at Alfie’s touch. He knew he needed to be careful about what he said to the other man, but finding the balance between an acceptable excuse and being suspicious was a difficult thing to manage. For a moment, Alfie considered lying that he was a spellcaster. He knew enough about them to potentially fake it, but he also had a feeling that Adam knew just as much — if not more — about spellcasters than he did.

“Trust me, it’s not that great,” Alfie answered dismissively. Regulating his body temperature was a helluva lot more difficult when his skin screamed out in pain from the damage the snow inflicted. On the other hand, if he didn’t regain some kind of control over it, he’d have much bigger problems than rousing Adam’s suspicions.

Alfie’s jaw dropped when Adam drew his attention to the clock tower. No way in hell — no pun intended — was he going to make it up there on his own. Especially not if he had more than being mistaken for a demon to be worried about. He remembered the mention of “heat-drinker corpses” and swallowed hard. So much for being alive.

“I’m gonna take a wild guess and say there’s not a bridge or anything up there, huh?” Alfie quipped. Wishful thinking. “Say, Adam… You’re not busy by any chance, are ya? I could use a tour guide if—” His words were abruptly cut by a blood-curdling screech. Eyes wide, Alfie froze.

“What the hell was that?” sputtered Alfie; the words jumbling together and coming out almost incomprehensible.

“One those No-face-yetis,” surmised Adam, without much sign of surprise.

The ravine walls merely came up to the hips of the figure that stepped down into the gulch, tall enough to easily discern at a distance. It seemed both skeleton and insectoid, a vague humanoid shape whose exposed bones seemed as much chitinous exoskeleton as they were ossein. As the Hunter had said, the ‘Yeti’ had no facial features of any kind, only a long toothless slit down the entire center length of its body that parted and closed in long rasping breaths. Its arms hung down nearly to its feet, all its cadaverously slender limbs tipped with long claws that seemed merely an extension of its chitinous bones. Dark hair clung to the patches not covered in exoskeleton, forming a black mane that rippled in the arctic wind.

“I named that one Jasper-Rasper,” Adam informed Alfie, as if this were the most important point as he frantically motioned for Leah’s nerd brother to run like hell.

“No-face-yetis,” Alfie repeated; testing out the words to see if that would help them make more sense. It didn’t. Seeing the beast in the flesh was just as surreal. But he had to admit, Adam’s description was upsettingly accurate.

Alfie was already worse for wear. There were blisters forming on his hands where he pushed himself off of the ice; his elbows, too, were inflamed from the contact during his fall. But he had no intentions of dying — especially not here.

“You gave it a pet name?” he asked incredulously, shooting the other man a look of disbelief. “I’m not sure if that helps,” Alfie quipped. Either way, he wasn’t about to stand around long enough to find out. The moment Adam gestured in the opposite direction of ‘Jasper-Rasper’, Alfie pivoted sharply. The soles of his shoes disagreed with the texture of the ground as he ran back down the ravine.

Just when he thought he was safely out of reach, the earth trembled beneath him. Bleary eyes did their level best to concentrate on the path ahead. The way was blocked. Not by one, but two menacing creatures, far smaller in stature than the burly yeti. Alfie’s heart leaped into his throat and he skidded to a halt. Curious heads rose from the center of precariously slumped shoulders. For a moment, they didn’t seem to notice him standing frozen in his tracks. A cloud of smoke formed as Alfie’s breath mixed with the frigid air. Suddenly, the figures bolted towards him.

Without thinking, Alfie allowed adrenaline to take control of him. His arms raised, palms facing the pair of demons charging down the ravine. Flames sprouted from his fingertips and spread to his wrists. Alfie braced himself, daring them to come any closer. He couldn’t rely on Adam to save him. He wouldn’t. He was going to get the hell out of here and pull his own weight doing so.

Apparently Alfie was a grouchy charmander, but death was approaching too quickly for Adam to question it.

“Uh oh, Mantis Dogs, watch out for the grabby claws, they’ll pull you under and rip you apart with the other legs.”

The ‘Mantis Dogs’ in question were demonic hexapods with a pair of raised forelimbs. Their bodies were covered in shaggy fur whose extremely pale shade of blue blended in well with the glacial ice of the ravine. Although their six legs were vaguely canine, the bone spurs on the back of their limbs were long and hooked for snagging prey in a deadly grapple. Drool dripped from eager panting mouths surrounded by a ring of faceted sapphire eyes. Spined raptorial legs like those of a mantid extended from the lesser demon’s hairy shoulders, lunging out at Adam as the closest of the insectile canines came within grabbing range.

Conscious of the giant faceless approaching them from the rear, Adam dropped to his knees as the demon’s mantid claw thrashed at the thin air where his shoulders had been moments before. The Hunter swung one of his ice picks and lodged it in the demon’s side, carved a long furrow that seeped noxious white blood as the creature’s momentum sent it careening past him.

Alfie hated it here. He hated the cold. He hated the snow. He hated the various hell-beasts there were wandering around that wanted to kill him. Not to mention that there were evidently monsters running around that fed off heat and would surely suck him dry.

As Adam effortlessly tussled with one of the Mantis Dogs, Alfie concentrated on the other. Clearly, the flames weren’t keeping either of the creatures away. He flinched as the second Mantis Dog lurched forward with bared teeth. Reflexively, Alfie flicked his wrists and two orbs of fire hurdled towards the beast just as it launched itself into the air for its attack.

Alfie stumbled backwards with labored breaths, narrowly dodging the marred body whirring past. The world around him was a blur and his heart pounded in his chest. Putting out that much energy was draining enough in a normal environment. But here? With his hands and elbows already blistered by the ice water, he was already weaker than usual.

The screams of the hexapod intermingled with the ringing of his ears. Slowly, Alfie’s eyes focused on the scene unfurling before him; a thrashing heap of flame and fur as the creature screeched in agony. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he admitted. His eyes fell back on Adam before he glanced over his shoulder to the faceless yeti behind them.

“What now?” he asked shrilly.

“Into the caves Charmander,” Adam shouted as he buried an ice-pick hilt deep in one of the Mantis Dog’s forelimbs and twisted the weapon. There was a sickening crack as the mantid claw snapped, dangling from a few tendons as the insectile canine howled in agony.

But pain shuddered up through Adam’s leg as he drove the other pick deep into one of the Mantis-Dog’s pupil-less blue eyes and kicked the creature off him. He looked down to see one of the demon’s hooted leg spurs had gotten him on the thigh. It was just a graze, but with how sharp demonic claws were that’d been more than enough to slice a laceration down his leg and rip open his arctic gear to the cold.

Shit shit shit, not good.

But a huge shadow fell over the ravine and Adam didn’t have time to think about that. A rush of displaced air let the Hunter know what was coming without having to look up.

“Alfie heads up!” Adam ignored the agony in shooting up his leg as he sprinted towards Leah’s dumbass brother. With no time to explain, the footballer slammed into Alfie with a full bodied tackle, slamming him against the ravine’s ice wall.

Jasper the Rasper’s taloned hand slammed down where both men had been seconds before. The impact of the giant’s blow carved a deep fissure into the ravine’s floor. More jagged ruptures spiderwebbed outward from the broken crater and shuddering cracks wracked the ice walls. For a moment all Adam could see was Jasper’s silhouette looming against the sky of drifting icebergs. Even while kneeling down in the aftermath of pile-driving a hole in the ice, this No-Face Yeti was easily the size of a Harris Island mansion, a rolling hill of insectile chitin and black fur. Jasper’s body-length mouth yawned open sideways, each gasping breath turning the ravine into a wind tunnel.

“C’mon,” shouted Adam over the thunderous rasping. “We gotta head into the caves,” he claimed, pointing to gaps in the ice at the clocktower glacier’s base.

Before Alfie could even wrap his head around being called “Charmander”, a searing pain wracked his entire body. Adam was on top of him faster than he could force his legs to run. The ice burned cold against his skin as Alfie, wheezing, struggled to his feet. If he had to guess, one or more of his ribs were broken and he’d need several weeks to properly heal from the water damage. But it was better than the alternative. Dying wasn’t on his itinerary — granted, neither was being sucked into another dimension made to kill him.

This was the second near-death experience he’d had in the past few weeks; third in the last couple of months. But at least his life still made a little bit of sense then. At least back then he still had his friends. It was bullshit. All of it. "This is bullshit," Alfie thought aloud. Eddie. Nell. Dying in general. Dying in Ice Hell with no one but Adam there to know about it.

Rage boiled inside of him as Alfie staggered forward. For a moment, no amount of broken bones seemed to matter. Flames licked at his skin — patches missing where the ice bit into him. Fuck this dimension. Fuck this yeti-looking son of a bitch. He was losing control.

In one final blow, Alfie hurled a massive ball of fire towards the giant’s feet, immediately regretting it when he nearly collapsed onto Adam. Panting, he braced the Hunter’s shoulder, never minding his scorched clothes or Adam’s own mangled clothing. “C’mon,” he tried to encourage as his feet feebly carried him forward. His head was swimming. He was weaker now than moments before. “I’m not dying here. Clocktower, right?” He could make it. He had to.

Jasper the Rasper’s thunderous gasps echoed after Adam as he led the way towards the caves. The Mantis Dogs had regrouped and gave chase across the shattered obstacle course of the ravine. Pain shot up Adam’s leg as he vaulted over toppled ice shelves and fissures. He tried to make sure Alfie followed after him, though it was hard to concentrate on anything as the No-Face Yeti wrenched itself free of the ice and began moving with a strange rolling after the tiny thing that'd burned it.

Adam ducked into a vertical crevice in the ice, beckoning Alfie in as he slashed at the pursuing Mantis Dogs with his picks.

“I’m going to die in here, aren’t I?” Alfie asked once he was (somewhat) safely tucked away in the ice behind Adam. He was trembling from head to toe; his battered side screamed its pain while his ice-kissed skin told its own blistering tale. If the monsters of this dimension didn’t kill him, it wouldn’t take much for the Hunter to piece together what he was and finish the job himself. By now, the other man had seen enough of Alfie’s powers to have some inclination, and his skin burning from the slush of ice wasn’t doing him any favors. He briefly wondered if it would be better this way. At least then he wouldn’t have to worry about the curse awaiting him in the real world. “Don’t… don’t answer that,” he feebly amended.

When his eyes fell on Adam’s leg, Alfie’s stomach sank. He could fix that. At the very least, saving Adam might bring Nell back. “You’re looking for her, aren’t you?” Alfie asked, not bothering to elaborate. “I’m… I don’t think I can be of much use in here anymore, but I can try. Just… tell me what I need to do. What can I do?”

“Nah your sister would kill me if I let you die here, like...its super rare that fire chickens get to live with their kind or something like that,” Adam assured as he backed further into the cave system, keeping an eye on the wounded Mantis Dogs prowling around just outside the cavern’s entrance.

Alfie’s correct surmise drew a sidelong look from Adam followed by a nod. “Yeah, I’m trying to track the thing that took her,” the Hunter confirmed. “It’s a longshot but ….” He took off his googled helmet and ran a hand through sweaty brown hair. “Fuck its all I’ve got.”

Adam took a moment to consider Alfie’s offer, looked up towards where the cavern systems led up to the frozen clocktower and out to where demonic canines and a titanic yeti were raising hell. “First we need to get you out up to the Portal in the clocktower.”

Adam reached beneath his environment suit and undershirt, to pulled out a key on a length of cord. Comprised of scarlet coral, the key filled the cavern with a red bioluminescence that gleamed off the slick ice walls. “Our clues to whats going on a giant velvet worm that can go through dimensions, these keys, and the portals. I’m gonna keep looking for Nell but it won’t mean much if we don’t figure out how to seal the rifts.”

Adam placed the coral key back around his neck and tucked it underneath his clothing. “Honestly? Thats where folks back home could use the most help.”

Fire chickens. Oh, so Adam already knew. Alfie wasn’t sure whether he was more relieved or concerned, but ultimately decided that he was grateful. At least he didn’t have to keep worrying about slipping up in front of the Hunter. Leave it to Leah to inadvertently save the day.

As Alfie trailed close behind Adam, a frown formed on his face. After the uncomfortable conversation with Luce about Nell’s disappearance, Alfie thought it was best to back off entirely, but it didn’t stop him from worrying. Nell had been his best friend for years, after all. They may have had their own separate lives now, but he would never stop caring for her. “What exactly happened, anyway?” he ventured to ask. “I mean… What took her? Why?”

His eyes followed Adam’s gaze, falling on the clocktower that seemed all too far away at this point. If the other man had kept him alive this long, then Alfie just had to trust he knew what he was doing. Even still, he couldn’t stop thinking about Nell. What horrors was she facing where she was? Was she even still alive? It wasn’t fair that Adam would save him first.

Alfie scoffed at the idea of him being able to help close any godforsaken rifts. Until now, everyone had made it clear enough that things were under control. But weeks had passed since then and Nell still wasn’t home. It seemed hopeless. At least, that’s how Alfie saw it. “Yeah, I’ll— I’ll talk to Leah about it, then.” It was becoming a recurring theme these days.

“But what about those things?” Alfie practically shrieked, gesturing to the hellscape presently waiting for them. “How the fuck am I— are we supposed to get through that?”

“We were on our goodbye-it's-armageddon date when this portal opened up and evil alien gribblies everywhere,” Adam explained before lunging forward to swing an ice pick down at the clawed forelimb of a Mantis Dog that’d gotten to close inside the cave entrance. “We fought them and got the civilians to safety but a giant Hell Worm grabbed Nell when she was trying to close the portal.”

Adam nodded to one of the safety lines stacked to the wall that he’d set up earlier to spelunk his way up through the tunnel system. “I’ve set up lines that we can us to pull ourselves up to the clocktower. We’ll have to make it past Grabby Gabby, but it’s probably the fastest way home.”

Alfie’s brow raised at the mention of an armageddon date — a goodbye one at that. It was almost as if they were expecting to get themselves killed. But what did he know? If given the chance, Alfie would probably take the opportunity to spend time with someone he loved in the midst of the world crumbling, too. “A giant Hell Worm,” he tittered, running his palm down the length of his face. Knowing the nitty-gritty details of Nell’s disappearance didn’t make him feel any better. If anything, he felt worse.

“That sounds… dangerous,” Alfie remarked once Adam took the opportunity to explain his emergency route to safety. He felt drained enough as it was and heaving himself up the side of a cliff made out of frozen water didn’t sound ideal. What other choice did he have at this point? “After you, I guess.”

Adam produced a flashlight and affixed it to his helmet. He offered a carabiner to Alfie so that he might latch himself onto the safety line before beginning to climb hand over hand up the slick incline. He led the way up ice shelves and hacked his way through the perpetual forests of icicles that formed strange silent forests in the tunnels. The expeditioners’ reflections were cast in dim distortions through the caves, and Adam occasionally raised a hand for a halt and flicked off the light as much larger shapes momentarily drifted across the ice, or even directly through it in some cases.

“So, have you and Leah always been together? Did you like, rule Rome or something back in the day,” Adam asked as he washed a massive many-limbed shape swim through the ice below them as if where a whale drifting in the ocean.

Hooking himself onto the line behind Adam, Alfie cautiously trailed behind him. As much as he tried to mirror Adam’s every move, he couldn’t help but envision a tragic death for the both of them when his eyes wandered for too long. His knees buckled underneath him, threatening to make his fears become a reality before Adam spoke up.

“Not always, no,” Alfie mindlessly replied. His eyes shot back up to Adam on the line ahead of him once he realized he’d said too much. As far as Alfie was aware, Leah wasn’t privy to this sort of information herself. “I mean… we’ve been around each other for as long as I can remember, but unless one of our parents has something to hide, I think it’s safe to say we’re not fully related.” Alfie wasn’t sure if this was making things better or worse for his case.

“Like you said before, it’s pretty rare for… people like us to stick together.” Despite the fact that Adam knew, Alfie still couldn’t bring himself to say the word ‘phoenix’ in front of him. “Definitely didn’t rule ancient Rome together, though. I don’t think either of us have been around that long.” As grateful as Alfie was for the distracting conversation, he wasn’t particularly keen on discussing the nitty-gritty details of his heritage. Partially because most of what he did know was from stolen property, but also because it only begged more questions about why he was fated to die sooner than the rest of his family.

“I am much disappoint,” pronounced Adam with false solemnity, “I was all ready to here the secret history of Emperor Phoeligula….Chickligula?...Spartunix?”

The spelunkers no longer how to crouch as they passed into a cave that abruptly expanded into a vaulted ceiling of stalactites that glittered like crystal chandeliers in the lamplight. The cavern’s sweeping floor was riven by jagged fissures tens of feet in width with the spider-webbing cracks of impact that expanded outward from the far side. It was as if something massive had exploded into this part of the glacier but time and relentless arctic conditions had frozen it over. At the far end of the cavern was an ornate door set in worked stone, a mirrored entrance to Voorhees Clocktower

“Well here we are….gotta see if Grabby Gaby is up.”

For a moment, Alfie stared at Adam incredulously before murmuring a soft, “Uhhh…” But as he heaved himself onto more solid ground, he chose to drop the subject altogether. “Trust me, if I remember anything like that, I’ll hit you up,” he stated instead.

With a quick look around, Alfie shirked away. He’d been so eager to get out of this hellscape the moment he arrived, yet even with the exit in sight, something felt off. The first time Adam mentioned ‘Grabby Gabby’, Alfie falsely assumed that it was yet another affectionate nickname for one of the beasts he’d already been introduced to. Now he was much less certain. “Let me guess,” he said, taking a few uncertain steps forward. “Gabby isn’t as social as Jasper? But still has a tendency to not let any houseguests leave?”

“Pretty much” Adam looked at the fissures for a time before turning back to Alfie. “Do you have any fireballs left in you?”

Great, Alfie thought. That was reassuring. “Maybe one or two,” he reluctantly replied. His palms turned upwards as he gave Adam a shrug. Better to save his energy for when it counted most. “Just tell me when.”

Adam motioned for Alfie to follow after re-bandaging his leg with some cloth from his bag, trying to staunch the wound enough to make the run.

Adam wove a precarious path among the ice fissures as black tentacles exploded upward. Each of the sinuous limbs were covered by electric blue fern-like structures instead that splayed out into delicate coils. The tentacles snaking after Adam, their bioluminescent fern hairs incandescently beautiful in the darkness. Soon they seemed to be running through a rubbery forest of black trees with glowing frond branches.

“If you have any fire left that’d be great,” shouted Adam as he sliced open tentacles with scything swings of his picks.

As soon as Adam kicked it into gear, hulking into the face of danger, Alfie followed suit. But nothing had prepared him for the mass of tendrils awaiting them. Had it not been for Adam’s exhortation, he would have frozen amongst the beast’s tentacles and met his fate. “Yeah, yep… workin’ on it!” he called back. Mustering whatever energy he had left in him, Alfie willed his hands to spark.

Alfie narrowly dodged a glittering pillar of black that whirred past him, just before releasing a fiery orb, striking further down the monster’s tentacle. There wasn’t much time for him to recoup. With the clock-tower well within his sights, he had to push himself. He might not be able to save Nell, but he could at least live another day to see her, and help get Adam to safety in the process.

Another ball of fire shot from the palm of his hand as he weaved through it, jumping over the beast’s appendages as needed. “What’s the situation over there?” Alfie croaked, trying his level best to keep his voice free of desperation.

“Go go go! She’s a c’moning oh shit!

Adam carved a path of blue blood through the forest of tentacles, ducking away from the impacts of Alfie’s fireballs before charging though the withered stumps to those closer to the door. But the cavern kept filled with more and more undulating coils and glowing cilia ferns as Grabby Gabby’s true horrific body began to emerge from the depths of the fissures.

“Don't look back, just go!”

Adam desperately beckoned Alfie through the door as tendrils slithered greedily after. He slammed it shut just as the cavern filled with a sound like the wind screaming as it was cut into pieces.

#adam #alfie #chatyz #Portal Combat #head trauma tw #yikesimonfire

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