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#I don’t think the half life community wants to be involved in whatever the hell this is so im tagging it hlvrai
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has anyone ever heard the song “gordon freeman saved my life” by miracle of sound? yeah go listen to it then come back and finish reading. okay, now what if i took that song and wrote it as a really dramatic fanfic about gordon freeman doing exactly that.
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remythologise · 1 year
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please rank your gay ships based on how bad thekr first time havifn sex would be thank you
a short selection of SOME gay ships from western live action on a RELATIVE score ranking because we don’t have time or space for all the rest: charles/erik: charles is literally a telepath. their first time having sex is 15/10 even if both of them cry and erik gives himself an injury it doesn’t take away from how out of this world the sex is
hannibal/will: 13/10 for the 13 people that died right before it happened. I am so sorry to tell you this but they are BOTH so into it and there is so much blood.
alexander/hephaistion: over two millennia of people saying alexander was cuntstruck by hephaistion’s thighs so I guess that first messy 12/10 handjob was astronomically good for alexander.
tos kirk/spock: kirk is very kind and gentle with spock here even though spock’s losing his goddamn mind about it. kirk, in fairness, ALSO loses his goddamn mind about it a bit. not for nothing are they based on the above two historical figures. 11/10 lewd handholding
xena/gabrielle: including women on this list as a comparison point. it’s so 10/10 good and they are so normal and communicative about their needs, wants and feelings
post-15.18 destiel: might be sort of normal actually. a bit awkward at first, but given cas is an angel and blows out some lights along with dean’s back I’ll give it a solid 9/10 that can only get better from here.
flint/silver: 8/10 sadly they’re both so in love with each other and work so well together it overrides all of the gaslight gatekeep girlboss manipulations and mindgames that have or will go on, even if they’ll never admit that!
steve/tony: picking one universe and saying ultimates, ults steve is homophobically trembling the whole time and ults tony is bitter and jaded and laughs derisively at the situation after steve comes. 3/10 objectively but a 9/10 experience for steve (previously had not had gay sex) and a 7/10 experience for tony (he’s a masochist)
holmes/watson: holmes is too in his head about it and watson doesn’t know if he likes gay sex yet. 6/10 love that dare not speak its name is still very sexy for all involved
house/wilson: they know way too much about anatomy for this to be bad, BUT never underestimate the power of them derailing the experience by arguing with each other and bringing up death before anyone even gets off. 5/10
kim/harry: oh this is ABSOLUTELY what you’d expect (harry full on losing it not even halfway in and sobbing violently) but it is saved by the fact harry can near-read kim’s mind even if he doesn’t know what kim’s mind means half the time. 4/10, +0.5 modifier (kim really trusts you)
nandor/guillermo: also 4/10, neither of them communicates about their kinks. guil makes a secret action plan of how the next time can be better, except nandor then immediately goes off and hooks up with some other love of his life
merlin/arthur: 5/10 sloppy blowjob by merlin that gets a downgrade to 3/10 because somehow in sucking arthur off he also managed to doom magic, all other gay people and the entire working class
geralt/jaskier: 2/10 geralt is thinking about yennefer’s breasts the whole time. sorry he can’t help it blame the djinn probably
aos kirk/spock (or any pre-movies version of tos): somehow kirk spends the whole time convincing himself it’s just a casual thing for a literal vulcan. spock spends the whole time trying not to kill kirk and then thinks he’s gravely injured him AND disgusted him with the scale of his aggressive desire. 1/10 they both get off but it’s physically painful and both are miserable about it
endverse destiel: dean is SOOOO angry and revolted with both himself and castiel. absolute 0/10 that never happens again.
dishonourable mentions for the hell of it:
aziraphale/crowley: whatever neil gaiman said about them never having sex because they’re beyond that or whatever. -10/10 they don’t qualify
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x-ceirios-x · 3 months
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falling even more in love with you
aric has spent most of his life alone and can't fathom the idea that mollie cares about him like he does her. fortunately, mollie is a lot bolder than he is.
cw: some mild cursing. very fluffy
Aric stared at the textbooks in front of him, staring at the letters but not actually reading. These diagrams didn't make sense in the least—he wasn’t a good student before he got to the academy and he surely wouldn’t be now. In his frustration, he fell forward, laying his head on the book. Then he proceeded to hit his head against it several times. 
He heard Jeremy snicker from his bed across the room. “I don’t think information-via-osmosis violence is going to help you remember any of this for this quiz tomorrow.”
He paused and turned his head to glare at his best friend. “Don’t use your fancy biology words at me.”
Jeremy laughed from next to him and stood up—the next thing he knew, he was hitting the mattress with his forehead instead of the textbook. He closed it and placed it next to him, then sat on the bed. “You wanna talk about it? This is obviously not about a quiz.” Aric looked at him funny, so he laughed and continued, “look, I know you don’t do touchy-feely, let’s-talk-about-our-feelings, but I have four younger siblings. Which means I’m a certified therapist.”
He rolled his eyes at him and sighed. “I dunno, man. It’s all stupid.”
“I forget, sometimes, that you don’t know how to communicate your feelings.” He stood and grabbed his sketchbook off of the nightstand next to him. “You work better in pictures anyway. I’m going to get a shower, and when I come back I want to see whatever is bothering you.” 
He glared at him for a second, but he didn’t leave much room for argument. Once he left the room, he finally did as he asked—he opened the sketchbook and started doodling. It started with flowers and little jewels, coming up with little things he’d love to paint on the wall outside Mayhew’s room to piss him off. Then the jewels turned into circles, swirls, strange shapes he wasn’t quite thinking about, when he realized he’d drawn half of the Moral Cup. 
The Ascension was in a few weeks. He was nervous as hell—tensions kept rising between their classmates and he was concerned Valentine and the lightwoods were going to do something stupid. Then again, Valentine Morgenstern was always stupid and deserved the broken nose. 
Moreso, he was worried for himself. If he wasn’t ready—if whatever angels didn’t accept him—he wouldn’t survive. And he was terrified. It was like looking death in the face at seventeen and leaving it up to fate if he’d take him. He didn’t want to leave the shadow world—since he started at the academy, his entire life changed around. He expected to barely graduate high school, maybe drop out, and end up involved with some less-than-respectable things to make money. That was just the area he grew up in, despite his mom doing her best. He’d made great friends, started actually working at school, found things that were fun and not just surviving through life. He didn’t want to leave Jeremy or Céline, and certainly not Mollie. 
Mollie.
She was driving him crazy. They’d all go to lunch outside and he’d spend the entire time watching her, looking at her smile and making sure she laughed first when he told a joke. Recently, she’d been complaining about her hair getting too long and she liked to put up her curls with a few pencils. She took notes for their history class in blue pen and Downworld relations in black. All classes required at least one purple highlighter and a red pen to doodle in the corner. He watched as she desperately practiced for an extra hour after training, simply wanting the best at everything she did. And every day they ate dinner and studied, and his notebook was full of little red doodles as she explained things. She liked to dance in her free time, though she self-admittedly had the grace of an elephant outside of training. She was always trying something new and interesting, setting trends or getting weird looks among classmates without a care in the world. Everything she did, to him, was nothing short of beautiful. 
He didn’t have the time to think about her with everything going on, but that didn’t stop him most days. He was seventeen now and he just needed to survive the Ascension so he could start collecting a salary from the Clave and send money to his mother back home. That was his promise—he’d go off to this “boarding school” over in Europe and spend a few years there, and he was guaranteed a good job afterward, and would be able to send her money to save to get out of the city. He didn’t have the time to worry about anything else, or so he kept telling himself. 
Jeremy walked back in after a while, hair damp and in pajamas. He sat down on the bed next to him and glanced over his shoulder. “How’d I guess,” he said, amusement clear in his voice and on his face in the way he smirked. “You have to talk to her.”
Aric looked at the paper where he’d started a (very rough) sketch of Mollie on the paper. Realism and portraits were never really his thing, but hey, you could tell who it was. Maybe he was getting better at it. He turned his head to glare at Jeremy for a second and tossed the sketchbook to the bottom of the bed. “I’m not talking to anyone.”
He rolled his eyes and elbowed him in the arm. “I watch how you look at her. It’s…it’s ridiculous at this point. You look like a lovesick puppy.”
“I do not—“
He looked at him in a way that indicated there was no argument to be had here. Eyebrows raised, daring him to try to refute. Aric muttered a string of curse words in Spanish that would have gotten a shoe or a wooden spoon thrown at him at home and sighed. “You’re annoying,” he said, giving the only argument he could come up with.
He scoffed and got up, returning to his own bed. “And you’re incredibly stubborn for no reason. For being someone that I’ve known to never be afraid of anything, you’re pretty afraid of rejection, Aric.”
He stared for a second, watching Jeremy get comfortable and open his book for the evening. That was his signal that he was ready to be done people-ing for the day, as he said, and he should shut up. So he did, tossing his books on the floor and deciding he’d clean them up in the morning. He laid down, deciding he could fall asleep and deal with his problems tomorrow. 
***
“You’re fidgeting,” 
Aric looked up and stopped spinning his pencil. He was getting anxious the more he sat reading the stupid book in front of him, understanding nothing about these different kinds of demons. He didn’t care—everything died with a seraph blade eventually. And the names weren’t in languages he recognized, most of them are old, he had no idea how to pronounce half of the words on the page, and he couldn’t think clearly. 
Mollie placed her hand over his, sliding the book away with her other one. “Talk to me,” she said, turning towards him. “I don’t care about coursework. You’re anxious.”
“I’m fine,” he muttered, looking over her hand and trying to continue reading the book. “This stuff just doesn’t make sense. I’ll read it again, it’ll click eventually—“
The glare she gave him cut him off. With a much gentler tone, she said, “what have I told you about pushing yourself? If you can’t do more than twenty minutes of this at once, don’t do it. Let’s take a break.”
He laid his head in his hand, leaving hers still (he wouldn’t admit how much he liked her holding his hand), and sighed. “It’s worthless. I’m never going to understand all this.”
“Hey,” she said, pulling his chair and spinning him towards her. “It’s not worthless. You are not worthless, you’re just not doing what you’re good at. Your brain doesn’t work for…what are you even doing—“ she looked at the book, then his notebook, then back to him— “demonology or whatever. And that’s completely fine. We learned a while ago that you just don’t work like other people, and it’s fine.  You work in pictures, you work in art, Aric, and it’s beautiful.”
He stared at her for a moment, mouth slightly open in shock, too many thoughts for him to process racing through his mind to process everything she just said. She’d always told him it was fine that he didn’t think like everyone else—that he couldn’t think like everyone else. It didn’t bother her and she had the patience to work with him. It turned into an unlikely friendship—the school rebel and the straight-A, perfect princess. He knew she was never shallow like some of the kids he dealt with before the academy, but she was perfect. 
Mollie was smart—not just smart, but clever. He remembered her and Jeremy working on some law class and sitting in the courtyard next to Céline, listening to the two of them debate about whatever their assignment was for practice during class. The two went back and forth for an hour, only stopping when she finally found a loophole in his argument and he conceded. 
She was kind—kinder than anyone he’d seen. He watched as she helped new recruits during training and showed them new techniques she had a handle on. She stopped to help wounded animals in the woods and caught spiders with a cup instead of squishing them. The only true aggression he’d ever seen from her was during training, and even that she did with a smile. 
Mollie was strong in so many ways. At seventeen, she continued to prove to her siblings she could carry one of them under each arm (Patrick hated it, Gunny loved it), and even proved she could pick him up a few weeks prior. When he got there he was a scrawny kid, but he was pretty solid after 3-4 years of training, so it was impressive. She showed her strength in her resilience as well—no matter what came at her, she found a way through it. Fights with Céline, the loss of her mother when she was young—she was a fighter and he admired her for it. 
She insisted he was the beautiful one, but he knew it was just the opposite. 
It was a quick moment—one second he was staring at her, awe-struck, and the next he was kissing her. That was quick, too. He pulled away almost immediately, cursing himself for making such a rash decision without thinking. He didn’t have time to process the mistake he made, though, because she grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in again. In an instant, he felt her lips on his and everything felt right. Her chapstick tasted like lemon candy. His heart was beating out of his chest, but her grip slowly loosened on his shirt and he found himself holding her face—gentle, like she was porcelain. 
After what felt like too much but not enough time, she pulled away, a grin wide on her face. Her eyes lit up when she smiled—maybe it was just the fact that he looked at her so much, but her green eyes shined in a way he couldn’t describe. It was his favorite color. 
“I was wondering when you were going to do that,” she said, inching her chair a little closer to his. The sun was beginning to set through the library windows behind her, creating a halo of orangey-red around her. He watched as she fiddled with the ring she kept on her hands—a small, delicate thing decorated with a light blue gem and butterflies. Céline had gifted it to her a long time ago. 
He stared blankly, looking at her with a kind of anxious excitement he hadn’t felt before. “You…you what?”
She chuckled. “I’ve only been flirting with you for…four months? At least that’s been the serious flirting.”
He stared again. Jeremy was right and he was never going to hear the end of it. “I—I guess I didn’t-“
“It’s alright,” she said, brushing her hair through his hair. He felt her nails scratch across his skin and shuddered, though he hoped it wasn’t obvious. Being so close to her was nothing short of intoxicating and breathtaking all in the same way. “I was beginning to wonder if you were giving me the cold shoulder because you weren’t interested.”
He swallowed, trying to find the words to respond. “No, I—no. Definitely not that.”
She rested her hand on the side of his face, thumb brushing over his cheek. “I meant what I said, Aric. I think you’re amazing.”
He could feel his face heating up in embarrassment. “I need you to stop talking,”
They both laughed. It was good to laugh—he’d been so stressed lately that he hadn’t felt really happy about something in a little while. But sitting with Mollie was so easy—she relaxed his nerves, even if he was on edge for other reasons (like trying not to embarrass himself in front of her). 
She dropped her hand and happened to glance at the clock—he watched as she did a double take and rushed to stand up. “I am so sorry—I promised Céline that I’d help her tonight because she’s going to some gala in Idris this weekend. And I’m, like, fifteen minutes late.”
Aric chuckled at her comment and waved it off. “I’ll hang here for a while and try to review. Thanks for the help tonight.”
She gathered her things and shoved them into the messenger bag that was slung over her shoulder. “Anytime,” she said rather breathlessly before running off. Less than a second later she was back; she pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, then ran off again. 
He muttered a couple curse words under his breath—an array of Spanish that would have put a sailor to shame. If it didn’t kill him first, he thought things with her—wherever their relationship was going—would be a great thing.
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icybreaths · 5 months
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How does the character handle stress or pressure?
What moral dilemmas might the character face in the story?
Does the character have specific biases or prejudices?
Does the character have specific rituals or habits?
|| 50 Q's for muses || @sunniestshark ||
8. How does the character handle stress or pressure?
For the most part, Jewel takes it is stride. Having to meet deadlines or completing a mission are like a motivational kick for her. She’s able to really zero in and focus on it. At times it can be unhealthy because she’ll put all nighters for it, which can affect her mood and energy, but the goal is to be over and done with it. Her ideal schedule is a freed one where she can do whatever she wants, but that comes with its own stressors. In her free time, she’s focused on her zanpakuto or attempting to tend to her mental health. With her blade, it’s primarily reiatsu training and finessing it. Combat training? Fun as hell. The reiatsu? A struggle – especially when she’s put pressure upon herself to take care of that in a certain amount of time. It’s an uphill battle and that particular stress wears on her mentally. Jewel’s half and half about tending to her mental health. She’ll take long walks out in nature but tends to stay out there and isolate herself from others and sleep outside. She isn’t the best at communicating her deeper feelings to others unless she really trusts them and the moment feels right. Negative feelings can fester and the best way to get out that pent up energy is through heavy combat. She’s seeking to be knocked out in that case. If no one’s around to feed her like that she’ll drink herself to sleep. The healthiest things for her are long baths or night diving, combined with meditation if she’s feeling it.
12. What moral dilemmas might the character face in the story?
A couple I think fit the bill? Lol -Saving Chase from Kakos during their scuffle during TBTP. Kakos was her ally and romantic interest and Chase was an arrancar that showed her that some hollows could retain humanity and that not all of them were violent. He flipped the script for her initial view of hollows. Kakos views all hollows as targets to be slain so when he ran in to execute Chase on sight, she chose to protect Chase and raise her blade to her own ally. -Losing soldiers due to her own apathy. Jewel knows she’s supposed to aid her comrades at a moment’s notice. It’s her job to uphold the balance of souls as a Shinigami. Because of her discontent in her path in life leading to where she is, she’s emotionally distant if not detached from most of those around her. She’s willing to abandon or hand off allies to the enemy if she’s involved in another quarrel. If she has a problem with an ally and she’s friends with an enemy she may lead her friend to them and let them slay the problem. It’s not unheard of for Jewel to have lost soldiers on the return trip from a mission; she can be awfully callous with them. I don’t know if this one counts as a dilemma because Jewel doesn’t struggle with it. She does struggle with the job part though.
24. Does the character have specific biases or prejudices?
No prejudices. She isn’t really judgmental. Everyone’s a blank slate at the beginning and she treats everyone on a neutral ground. People are defined by their actions in her eyes. I’m genuinely struggling to come up with any biases for her. If anything sticks out let me know!
39. Does the character have specific rituals or habits?
Morning walks and night swims! She likes to hike before sunrise and go to a favorable spot to enjoy the sunrise. Like her morning walks, her night dives change location because she likes to change things up. She aims to do these at least a few times a week if able. She has a subtle habit of poking or clicking things against her teeth as a means of feeling its texture. Smooth river rocks or bones are the most common. Softer things get brushed against her lips, like fur, feathers, or hair. Either habit’s usually coupled with thoughts about said object.
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OAKBOUGH: A CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE STORY.
CHAPTER 8.
Read the rest of the story:
LOCATION: SANDS OF THE MOJAVE BASE NUMBER X
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>Say you want to stop DARPA’s Domino Particle experiments, by force if necessary.
You take a deep breath.
“We… we can’t let them keep doing these experiments,” you say. “There’s no telling how many people will be displaced and killed if they continue.”
Paul looks at you squarely.
“Are you prepared for what ‘stopping them’ might mean? We’re talking about fighting against the government. You’re a civilian, right? You’ve never seen combat?”
You shake your head. “Yeah… Civilian all my life. Never been involved in anything like that. My response to street fights and shit has always been ‘run the fuck away.’”
“I want you to really think about what it might mean to kill someone. Or provide information that might lead to someone being killed. Or to stand next to a comrade as they die.”
“Paul… Have you… have you been in combat before?” you ask.
He nods. “Mostly in the early days. Before the Death Valley Treaty. Before we got established. We had no base, no ‘visitors center,’ none of that. We were bands of guerrillas just scraping by, stealing to survive. Ambushing police patrols, hit-and-run tactics. We studied history. Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Che, Castro. To try and cobble together a strategy. We were just figuring shit out as we went along. I was in the Battle of Badwater. I saw the aftermath of the Sequoia Massacre. …I guess you might not know what those are.”
You shake your head.
“Well… anyway, I saw a lot of shit. And eventually I decided I’d had enough of it. I was always the one who led us in campfire songs, the one who tried to make dehydrated food more edible. So when I was trying to find a non-combat role, someone suggested that I be the one to talk to visitors. Nowadays we actually have visitations from friends, family, partners… Sympathizers… And journalists. It’s a huge accomplishment for us to have gotten to this point. It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. I shot a lot of cops and I lost a lot of friends.”
“Paul…” you say. You aren’t sure how to continue the sentence.
“Uh… Sorry for rambling like this,” he says. “I just want you to think about it.”
Judging from his appearance, you’d never guess he had ever been in combat, had killed people before. He was shorter than average, with a slight frame, and a graceful, effeminate way of moving. You look at his face, and beyond his long eyelashes and soft features, you see the expression of someone who has been permanently changed by what they have seen and done.
A long moment passes.
Maybe if someone like Paul Paulson, with his gentle nature, can get through guerrilla warfare, you can get through… whatever the hell you’re about to do.
And you don’t want to let more people die when you’re one of the only people in the world who knows why or how it’s happening.
“Paul, I’m willing to do whatever it takes,” you say.
Paul lets out a long breath.
“I was afraid you’d say that. And I was hoping you’d say it too,” he says. “Well… Even so, how about you sleep on it? Before we start making tangible plans. Just to be extra sure.”
You suppose that sounds reasonable.
“Yeah, sure,” you say.
“Why don’t we take a walk around?”
You put your lanyard back on, and Paul takes you on a walk around the base.
Sure enough, he confirms what you suspected earlier: It’s a repurposed gated community, with high walls and one entrance, guarded by a security checkpoint.
All of the buildings are repurposed suburban homes. Some of them have banners pinned up, emblazoned with symbols for racial equality, anti-fascism, and other liberation movements. You also spot the national flag of Palestine.
You see people walking around in streetwear, work clothes, and military garb. At least half of the people you see have a pistol holstered on their hip.
Paul explains that he can’t show you the armory or the strategy center or other strategically important buildings. Not yet, at least.
Paul shows you the medical center, a nascent community garden, and the common house. The common house is a free-area, designated just for recreation, he explains.
There are only three people inside at the time: An older woman in camo putting together a large puzzle, and a man and woman playing ping-pong.
It has the same slapdash decorative sense as the visitors center, with armchairs next to folding chairs squeezed up next to a ping-pong table.
There’s a bookshelf that is similarly disorganized in terms of genre: well-worn romance novels sandwiched between copies of the Little Red Book. There’s volumes 3, 8, and 10 of a slice-of-life manga, and a copy of the Kama Sutra.
The gray-haired, dark-skinned woman looks up from her puzzle and smiles at Paul, her eyes crinkling.
“Heyyy Paul! How’s it going!” she calls out.
Paul walks over to her. “Hello Cass! It’s going well! This is Mulligan Redux, a visitor!”
“Oh, wonderful!” she says.
“This is Colonel Cassidy Clearwater, the commanding officer of this base,” says Paul.
“Oh, i’m not such a big deal,” she says. “Just call me Cass, please!”
"Well, it's... nice to meet you, Cass," you say.
She shakes your hand without getting up.
"Likewise!" she says.
"But Paul, it's almost dinner time!" says Col. Clearwater. "Make sure you don't miss it. We need to get some meat on those bones!"
They both laugh.
Paul bids her good-bye.
"See you at the next game of bridge!" she says.
You and Paul hurry back to the visitors center. "I gotta slice this bread!" says Paul.
In the kitchen, Paul neatly slices the warm loaf of sourdough into thick slices and wraps it in a cloth napkin.
The two of you head to the canteen.
A small crowd of people stand on the dead front lawn, some standing and chatting, others sitting and eating on the front steps.
Everyone is unarmed.
You squeeze past the people sitting on the front steps.
"GOSH, don't obstruct the STAIRS," whines Paul.
Once you make your way up the stairs, you find yourself in a crowded house. Clearly it has had all the furniture emptied out of the ground floor and filled again with tables and chairs. The seating spills out onto the spacious patio. The hardwood floor is very worn down from the high amount of foot traffic going in and out, the varnish worn away in places.
You stand in line to wash your hands, and then you stand in line for the food. "It's channa masala tonight," says Paul. You ladle yourself a bowl of chickpea curry. Paul hands you two slices of his sourdough bread. "Not an 'authentic' pairing, but I swear it's tasty!" he says.
Paul grabs a bowl and fills it, and puts a plate on top of the bowl to cover it.
"I promised to take some food to Snoust!" he says. "You know, our PR lady? She's gonna be up late watching the news tonight! So I have to leave! I'll be back, OK? Don't worry, everyone's nice here!" he says.
You squeeze through the crowd and find a place to sit on the patio. The sun is setting, and the temperature is going down, so it is no longer sweltering and now simply balmy.
"Oho, a visitor!" says the tall woman next to you in a deep voice. She has olive skin and curly black hair, and is wearing a camouflage ensemble. "Where you from?"
"New York," you say, in between bites. You spread the curry on the bread and it tastes great together.
"That's a long way!" she says. "Almost a record. I think the person who came here from furthest away was that one journalist? She came here all the way from Al-Jazeera."
"Al-Jazeera is the name of the news network she worked for, not the place where she came from, dummy," says the person on your other side, flatly. "Al-Jazeera is a Qatari news network."
They said it in a very flat tone of voice. You turn to look at them. They're a pale androgynous person with a brown buzzcut, wearing olive drab coveralls. On the breast pocket a patch is sewn on that reads "THEY/THEM."
"That's Private Splash Swampton. Don't listen to her about anything fact-based," they say.
"And that's Private Disc Gruntle, a total buzzkill!" says Splash.
"Uh, nice to meet you, I think?" you say.
"Mulligan Redux, civilian visitor. They/them pronouns," you say.
"Nice to meet you," say Disc and Splash, and then they glare at each other.
They snipe incessantly at each other through the meal, and you find they often talk past you as if you aren't there. But then Splash will pat you on the back or Disc will say to you "Can you believe she said that?" and you find yourself chuckling at their antics.
You find you ate rather quickly, and you still have once slice of bread left.
"If I give you guys each half a slice of bread, will you get along?" you ask.
"Where'd it came from?" asks Splash.
"Yeah, I don't eat mystery bread," says Disc.
"Paul Paulson baked it today," you say. "Know him?"
"Aw man! Everyone talks about his bread and how it's so good but I've never had any! That's a deal," says Splash.
"Please give me some of that sweet sweet twink bread," says Disc.
You raise an eyebrow at Disc.
"Hey, I mean, not to be offensive or nothing, but it's a real shame that he has a boyfriend. And they're practically married, too. Super loyal. Both of them are, like, husband material."
You laugh and tear the slice of bread in half, handing a half to each of them.
As people finish their food, many are leaving. It quiets down a bit, and you can hear a television playing from another room. It sounds like the news.
"Hey, since you did me a solid and gave me some of that awesome bread, that totally lives up to its reputation, allow me to give you an alcohol ration card," says Splash.
"Well, also, I'm generous too," says Disc. "I bequeath unto thee a marijuana ration card. Good for one joint."
"You guys have ration cards for this stuff?" you ask.
"Yeah. It cuts down on over-indulging. And we're only allowed to smoke weed or drink alcohol at the canteen. 'Never drink alone,' as the Corporal says," responds Disc.
You accept the ration cards.
It's not that late, so you have some time to kill.
STATS:
AGGRESSION: 5
CAUTION: 5
HOMOSEXUALITY: 5
ENDURANCE: 5
SKILL: 5
INVENTORY:
CASH: $50
MULTI-TOOL
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todomochi-uwu · 3 years
Text
Of Unspoken Troubles & Loving You (3/3)
Pairing: Ushijima Wakatoshi x reader
Warnings: Angst
Author’s Notes: Done.
"Don't worry, Toshi. We'll be okay."
Previous parts: First Second Second&Half
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Tension filled the entire gymnasium, you could feel it, the players could feel it, the rest of teams could feel it, everyone was gathering around the court, watching as each of the teams gave out their best to try and beat the other.
Anxiety ran through your veins, your shoulders were tense and the need to vomit was becoming more prominent each second it passed, you knew damn well you might have caused all this stupid rivalry, and while an outsider might see it as an over-exaggeration, the thought of someone getting hurt was throwing you over the edge. You could see the face of each and every single one of the boys, you could see the desperation, the nerves, the tiredness; and you couldn't help but pity them, there was nothing left to say, there was no way to convince them, it just simply would be stupid to do it.
The ball flew by leaving each court, points were given and groans let out, sweat covered their entire faces and their breathing so heavy it could be heard across the room; it was already the third set and none of the teams had asked for a time out, no one was giving up. It wasn´t until the mandatory rest at the half of the set that you could finally approach the boys.
"Hey boys, please take it easy. I don't want anyone getting hurt, okay? Please remember this is only a practice match, nothing to lose here." You try and calm them up, passing out water bottles, just as you were making sure everyone was okay, the rigidness of a chest crossed your way.
You looked up and couldn´t help but get flustered at the sight, Ushijima's breathing was heavy and sweat drops ran down his face, he sported the same stoic face as always but the look in his eyes was trying to tell you something, he longed for something and you knew what it was, wondering if you should give in and just comfort him, but once again the words 'Manager, not captain' filled your thoughts, and suddenly the urge washed away. "You are giving your best Ushijima san, but remember not to overwork it, Washijou wouldn´t like for you to pull a muscle." Patting his shoulder, you made your way to the rest of the team.
You were helping Tendou bandage his fingers, which were now red and bloated from all the blocking he had done, every time you would pass the bandages around them he would let out a small hiss, "You know, he didn't mean to be an asshole, he´s sorry for what he did." Tendou mumbled, making you frown "I see, so that´s why you are here apologizing for him." Tendou tried again, "Y/N…" "No, Tendou. I'm more than tired." You got up, finishing the last touches and going next to make sure Goshiki was okay.
-
The rest of the match was even worse, Kenma could barely breath and the look that covered Kuroo's face was one of pure frustration, the board wasn´t looking good for his team, 24-19, and while they had managed to win a set, he didn't think they could get away with the victory.
And while they tried their very best, in the end, it wasn't enough.
Everything was over, and while everyone seemed satisfied enough that the match was over, Kuroo couldn't help as if he had to prove himself to you. Feeling ashamed that even at this moments, Ushijima had managed to surpass him.
"Good job, guys!" You came running with towels and a box full of energy drinks, making sure everyone had one, even Nekoma. After reassuring all of them were okay, you spotted a very tired man sitting by the benches, head low, covered by a white towel and gasping for air still. Kuroo.
You approached him slowly, not wanting to startle him, "Hi." Your voice was small, not knowing how he would react.
He raised his head, the look in his eyes said everything, "Hey."
Few minutes passed by, no one knew what to say next.
"I knew that maybe we didn't stand a chance, but this is a new kind of humiliation." He giggled humourlessly.
"Kuroo…" You tried, before he continued, "I'm not mad at you, it would be stupid to be. I just can't believe that asshole has absolutely everything right in front of his fucking nose and yet he doesn't seem to care." He shook his head, desperation filling his veins, clouding his vision. "Fuck this." He got up and the process he kicked the bench next to him, making his way down the gym.
"Kuroo?" You followed him, worried for what he might do.
His pace didn't stop or faltered, his eyes screamed in fury and his body language indicated only one thing if Ushijima wasn't going to realize by himself how lucky he was, maybe he would have to give him a clue.
Meanwhile, you kept trying to stop him, reason with his logic and the thoughts that fogged his mind, but nothing worked, he was determined to do something.
"Ushijima!" The raw voice filled the hallway, making the miracle boy turn around. His features hardened at the sight of you behind Kuroo; he didn't say anything but didn't back down. "You are a fucking jerk, are you aware of that?"
Nothing you could say or do would change the current situation.
"You. You fucking idiot." His finger pointed directly, coming closer every second. "You have absolutely everything I have been killing myself for, you are monster in volleyball, we get it, but you also got her?" This time the attention was directed at you, making you uncomfortable, "And yet you dare ignore her and treat her like a piece of shit. Who the fuck do you think you are?" He couldn't hold back anymore, pushing his hands against Ushijima's chest, he kept going, not worrying about the consequences, "You don't deserve it, you don't deserve the love she's giving you." The final straw, "And for that, I'll make sure you don't get any more of it."
Snap.
Everything seemed so blurry, one moment to another Ushijima was on top of the middle blocker, punches flying everywhere, curses and threats were thrown and terror swallowed your heart.
Tendou and Reon trying to hold back Ushijima while Bokuto and Lev tried to do the same for Kuroo, it had finally blown up and you couldn't help but feel responsible.
Coaches surrounded the boys, dragging them apart and lecturing them in what just had happened; feeling completely useless you made your way outside, trying to clear your thoughts.
Was all of this necessary? Ushijima might be oblivious and blunt, but you loved him; he was also having a hard time and you knew it, yet decided to go on.
And what about Kuroo? Why did you have to get him involved in your mess? He was doing more than okay, yet you were selfish enough and dragged him.
If it was love, whatever you seemed to be in, why was it so difficult to feel happy? It surely shouldn't be like this, you should be able to communicate all your worries to Wakatoshi, it should not be this difficult, and to this, you worried. Was Ushijima the real problem here, or was there something more to it?
-
Making your way down to the nursery's office, know full well Ushijima and Kuroo would be there, not being quite ready to face them, not knowing what to say or how to act, you just knew you had to see them.
Sitting down on a bench next to the door was Kuroo, he was holding an ice pack to his right cheek and small bandages covered his lips along with some cream covering the small bruises in his nose. The sight of his face alone made your heart feel even heavier. "Hey, cry baby." He mumbled.
"Hey." You sat down, trying to find the right words. "You look like shit." God, why are you like this?
"Yeah? You should see what I did to him." He said lazily, "He doesn't punch as hard as I think he would, do you think he was holding back?" He smirked, before wincing out in pain.
"I am sorry."
He gave you frown, "Why?"
"I dragged you into all this mess, and now you are hurt. It was my mess to deal with and I involved you in it, for that I am sorry."
"You didn't do anything, I decided to be here and while I didn't expect it to turn out this way, I'm glad." He gave you a reassuring smile, cracking a little bit when the pain kicked in once again.
"You are a moron."
He giggled, "Yeah I might be, but I also know about who feels like an even bigger idiot." He sighed, "We had a little bit of a talk, and turns out he is aware of the problem; he owns it completely and is willing to try to make things better, but…"
He hesitated.
"I'm not sure about what you want."
You sighed, shaking your head "To be quite honest I don't know. I mean, I still love him, he's not a bad person and I'm sure he still loves me, but…"
"But…"
"But I'm not sure if it's the best thing to jump into it right away, maybe we should go back a few steps, you know?"
"I completely understand, and I know he will too. Just talk to him, he loves you enough to give you time and space, or to let you go if that's what you want."
Nodding, "I don't want him out of my life."
"And that won't happen but for now tell him how you feel, it'll be okay."
"Hey, Kuroo?"
"Yeah?"
"When we first met, you talked about going through the same situation, care enough to explain?"
"Fuck, I did talk about that huh? Well, let's just say I was taken for granted, treated like shit and I went through this spiral of lies and obsessive thoughts that emotionally destroyed me, that made me doubt myself, my friends and every single thing I believed in." He rubbed his hands, looking out the ground, "When I got out of it I felt so empty and dead on the inside I genuinely considered never dating again; it might sound like an overreaction, but I was so numb to the entire world I didn't think love was worth anything. And then, someone came in and made me realise that maybe, just maybe it wasn't my fault, it was my abuser's fault, that I wasn't at fault for giving my all to someone who just drained me, they helped me and now here we are." He looked into your eyes, "Sometimes I wonder if the trauma would have healed faster if they had appeared while I was still in that hell, instead of after. That´s why I felt the urge to help you, and while Ushijima is nowhere an asshole as my ex was, you were hurting and I hated seeing it."
"Kuroo…" Tears filled your eyes, threatening to fall.
"Oh common, please don't cry, I'm on the other side now and everything's okay."
"Do I know them?"
"Huh let's see, they are just as weird as you, but a little bit less annoying I guess." You groaned in annoyance, "I'm kidding, but yes you do know them."
"Aren't you going to tell me?" Before you could continue complaining the nursery's office door opened, and here he was, the giant, buffed, airheaded man you called your boyfriend.
Standing up you met his gaze, there was no coldness in it, no hate, no malice, just pure longing and regret, and your hurt couldn't help but clench. Taking his hand in between yours, you caressed it, making him shiver.
"Don't worry, Toshi. We'll be okay."
"So you want to break up?" He furrowed his eyebrows, his hands felt clammy and his breathier became a bit quicker.
"Not quite like that, I think we jump into a relationship way too quickly, we barely even knew each other and even if we have been in this for some months now, we are not working out as we should."
"I will try harder, I swear," He mumbled.
"And I know you will, I trust you to do it, but how about we make our priorities the things we love right now? Like you win those nationals and I focus on getting into university?"
"I didn't know having me impeded your education."
"It's not, but I want to know what's like to look out only for me, to know I'm not chasing anyone, just for a little while."
He nodded, didn't say a word for a few minutes, "I am sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel as if you were chasing me. I missed my chance and I understand it. Know that I still love you and will keep on doing it, and I respect your decision of letting things between us end." He vowed and turned around, not sure how to processed what just happened.
"Ushijima." "Yes?" Locking your arms around his waist, looking straight into his eyes and caressing the side of his face, "I am not letting you go, I can't. This is just for me to be able to heal, but I still love you Wakatoshi, please don't forget that."
His arms surrounded your waist, leaning his head against the crook of your neck and nodding, his body shaking slightly "Okay."
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nowandajenn · 3 years
Text
Blue Christmas- Eight
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Pairing: Chris Evans/OC Kelly
Summary: After almost three years of marriage, everyone would tell you that Chris and his wife Kelly are the most stable, solid couple they know. But behind closed doors, things are tense as they keep trying for a baby, to no avail. When a secret threatens to shake their solid marriage to it’s core, will they be able to pick up the pieces?
I do not consent to have my content, whether it be this story or anything else of my creation, posted by a third party on any other platform other than right here without my permission. This blog is 18+ and is not intended for minors. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Heed the warnings.
Warnings: mentions of cheating, smut, language, angst, mentions of miscarriage. If any of this is triggering to you, do not read. 
A/N: This is going to be very dialogue heavy, and will have flashbacks of the night that Chris cheated and everything that happened. Flashbacks will be in italics. Just a warning, this chapter is a BEAST. There’s a lot to unpack, and it’s going to be super emotional. 
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December 29
Chris watches from his seat in the comfortable leather recliner in our living room as I twist my wedding and engagement rings around on my finger. It’s a nervous little habit that I do without even really realizing it or thinking about it. A million thoughts cross his mind as he sits silently, waiting for me to say something. 
After taking a few deep breaths to try and steel myself for the conversation that I KNOW that Chris and I need to have, I finally look up from the floor and at him. 
“Do you want a divorce?” Okay, the thousand different times I pictured this conversation happening in my head, that was definitely NOT one of the ways. Apparently my mouth and brain aren’t communicating very well today. 
Chris looks up at me, his expression aghast. 
“Wha-.......” he tries to speak, but is too stunned to even form the words. 
“Is that why you cheated? You don’t want to be with me anymore, so you went somewhere else for whatever is it that you weren’t getting from me?”
“No! Jesus Christ, no! I love you. I love you so much that it hurts. I can’t imagine my life without you. No, I don’t want a divorce.” he tells me. 
“Okay, if that’s not it, then you have to help me out here. Because I don’t understand what possible reason you could have for cheating. It had to be something that I did. Or something I didn’t do. I need you to tell me what happened. Because until I have all the facts and I understand what the hell happened, we can’t move forward.” 
He sits forward in the chair and sighs. 
“What do you want me to tell you?” 
“I want you to tell me what happened that night after we FaceTimed. I want to know what happened between then and the next morning.” I tell him. 
“You KNOW what happened.” he says miserably. 
I shake my head. “No, I know the end result. I want you to walk me through every single thing that happened that night. Everything you were thinking, everything you did.”
“Why? What good is that going to do? What’s the goddamn point? How is me telling you everything that happened going to help ANYTHING? All it’s going to do is hurt you more, and I can’t do that. I won’t.”
“The point is, if we have even the smallest hope of getting through this intact, with our MARRIAGE intact, I need to understand this. I need to know. I need to know, because when I go to sleep at night, all I can see in my head is all the things that I imagine happened that night. And I need to know if what actually happened is better or worse than what I can imagine happened. I have a right, as your wife, to know what you did.” 
Chris looks up, silently pleading with you to not make him do this, but he knows that you’re right. You do deserve to know, even if it’s going to devastate you. 
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“After we got off the phone, I had to go right back into interviews and there was two more photo calls we had to do, so by the time we got done it was about 7:30 that night. I was distracted the whole time. I hated that we fought, and I felt like an asshole, and I just wanted to call you back and apologize, but I didn’t have time. Plus, I figured that we both probably needed a little bit of time to cool down. I told myself that I was going to call you that night before I went to bed so we could talk more and I could apologize to you. We all got out of there, and Cate and Robert and the rest of them wanted to go to dinner, so we came back to the hotel, changed, and then went out to eat.” Chris tells me. 
“What time did you get back from dinner?” 
“Around 10, I think. It couldn’t have been much later than that. Everyone else was talking about going out and finding a bar or a club to go to, but I just wanted to come back to the hotel and relax. I wasn’t in the mood to be around a lot of people.” 
I pull my feet up on the couch and tuck them under me. 
“Okay, so you got back to the hotel, and then what did you do?” 
For as tired as he was, Chris couldn’t relax. He tried taking a hot shower, laying in bed watching TV, browsing social media, and flipping through pictures on his phone. Finally, after about 45 minutes and getting more and more keyed up and anxious, he decides to go down to the hotel bar. 
When he walks in, the place is empty except for an older couple seated down at the end and the bartender. Chris slides himself onto one of the stools and the bartender makes her way over to him. 
“Thank God. A friendly face.” she says with a smile. 
Chris glances down the bar at the couple. “They seem pretty friendly.” he remarks. 
“Yeah, but they’ve been here for an hour and they’re literally babying their drinks, and aren’t much for conversation that doesn’t involve each other. I’m bored out of my mind.” 
She stick her hand out. “I’m Jo.”
Chris reaches across the bar and shakes her hand with his own. “Chris. Nice to meet you.”
“So, Chris, what’s your poison?”
“What was her name?” I ask him. He just referred to her as “the bartender” and “she”. 
He runs his hand down his face and over his beard. 
“I don’t......I honestly can’t remember. It was one of those boys names for a girl. You know.....Alex or Max or James.......I don’t......I can’t remember.” 
I cover my face with my hands and take a deep breath. I want to scream already, and he’s not even deep into the story. I shake my head slightly. 
“You slept with this girl, and you don’t even remember her NAME.” I say softly. 
Chris hangs his head. 
“Keep going.” 
She pours him another measure of whiskey, along with a shot for herself. They clink glasses and swallow the amber liquid, letting it burn it’s way down. 
“So what did you and your wife fight about?” she asks him. 
Chris sighs. 
“It’s......it’s complicated.”
“Hey, I’m a bartender, which means that I’m a really great listener. It’s practically a job requirement. You might feel better if you talk about it.” 
“We’re trying to have a baby.”
“Soo....what’s the problem. Trying is the fun part!” 
“We’ve been trying for a year and a half almost, and nothing’s happening. She’s perfect; there’s absolutely nothing wrong with her that would keep her from getting pregnant, but it’s just not happening. And we both want a baby so bad, and the look on her face when......it fucking kills me.” 
He knows that he shouldn’t be telling a complete stranger all of this, especially considering who he is, but the alcohol has loosened his tongue, and if he doesn’t spill his guts to someone, he’s going to explode. 
Jo puts a soft, warm hand over his. 
“I’m sorry, That has to be tough. For both of you.” she says softly. 
“I mean, I guess I never thought that it would take actual work, you know? I assumed that ‘hey, if we just keep having sex, eventually she’s going to get pregnant’ and it would be easy. She’s getting scared and fed up and talking about adoption and fertility doctors, and I hate seeing her so stressed out and upset, and I kind of just.....I said some things and made it worse and I feel like a complete fucking jackass.” 
“What if you guys can’t have kids?” 
“As much as I want to have kids with her, I don’t need them to be happy. As long as I have Kelly in my life, I’ll be perfectly happy. Do I want to be a dad? Yeah, absolutely. But there are so many kids out there that need good homes, so there are other options, but I don’t think that we’re there yet, you know?”
I get up and storm out of the room with Chris right on my heels. 
“Kelly, wait, please.....”
He touches my arm and I spin around to face him, and the look in my eyes makes him fall back a step. 
I’m so pissed off and hurt right now I could spit nails. 
“You......you told her.....EVERYTHING. You told her.....EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING, Chris! Do you even......do you even fucking understand what you did? Like.....” 
I squat down close to the floor and put my head between my knees. My heart is pounding and I’m so worked up that I’m afraid I’m going to pass out if I don’t calm down. And I’m not going anywhere or doing anything until I get the whole damn story. 
“Look, I know-” 
I look up at him incredulously. 
“No! No, you don’t know! You don’t know shit! You fucking betrayed me, in every single sense of the word. You didn’t just fuck her, you told her, a complete stranger, about me. About us trying to have a baby. You told her about things that you never even fucking bothered to tell me! Do you realize that she could go to the press? She could go and spill all of these juicy little secrets that you spilled to her over shots of Jack and have herself a nice little pay day.”
“Kelly, you wanted to know what happened that night, so I’m telling you what happened, despite everything inside of me screaming at me not to. I’m not going to lie to you or keep things from you. You wanted to know everything.” Chris says. 
I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth so hard that my jaw hurts. 
“I can’t look at you right now. I need a break.” I tell him, grabbing my jacket. I grab Dodger’s leash off the peg in the hallway and call for him. 
Dodger trots over, tongue lolling out of his mouth, happy to be going on a walk. 
“I’ll be back in a while.” 
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Forty five minutes later, I’m in the utility room stripping off my wet clothes after getting Dodger dry and wiping off his paws. 
Chris stops pacing the kitchen when he sees me walking through the house in my bra and underwear. 
“What happened to your clothes?” he asks. 
“Dodger saw a squirrel and got excited and kind of dragged me through a snow bank.” I sigh. I throw my clothes in the dryer and make my way into our room to get changed. 
“Dodge, come on.....” Chris admonishes. Dodger just jumps up on the bed and curls up. 
I throw on a pair of gray sweatpants and a blue Patriots hoodie that’s hung over the back of the chair in our room and sit down on the side of the bed. 
“I want to know the rest.” I tell Chris. 
He sits down heavily on the end of the bed. 
“No, you don’t.” 
I swallow thickly. “You’re right. I don’t. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re going to tell me anyway.” 
Hours pass with Jo and Chris laughing and talking and flirting back and forth, until it’s 1am and the bar closes for the night. 
“Thanks for sticking around and hanging out tonight. I think I would have died of sheer boredom if you hadn’t.” Jo laughs softly. She offered to walk him back to his room as he was pretty well drunk and a little unsteady on his feet. 
“It was no problem. I didn’t really want to be alone tonight to be honest. I used to do really well on my own. I was used to it, and then......I wasn’t alone.” Chris tells her. 
Once they reach his room, they linger outside for a few minutes, both of them not really wanting the night to end. Jo steps closer to him, knowing exactly what she wants and completely unashamed about it. 
“You should kiss me.” she says softly, looking up at him with big doe eyes. She places her hands on his chest and instead of immediately backing away like he should have, he leans into her touch. 
Chris closes his eyes as he feels his mouth go dry and a strange fluttery feeling in his stomach. He hasn’t really felt this way since....
He opens his eyes and breathes out deeply. “I can’t. I’m married. I’m married and I’m insanely in love with my wife.” 
“So? You should kiss me anyway. I can tell you want to. You’ve been flirting with me all night.” she says, taking a step closer. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise. You need a way to release all this tension you’ve got, and I’m more than willing to help you out anyway I can.” 
Before his brain can scream at him to stop, he’s wrapping his arms around her and covering her mouth with his, kissing her soundly. It’s a battle of teeth and tongues, both of them trying to take control from the other. Without breaking apart, Chris manages to get his key card out of his pocket and gets the door open, pushing both of them through it and slamming it behind them. 
“This never goes beyond this room. We never talk about this ever again.” Chris gasps, pulling away from her just long enough to get the words out. 
“Absolutely.” she agrees. 
Clothes are torn off and tossed to the floor in a frenzy, and as soon as Chris drops his pants and boxers, Jo sinks to her knees and takes him in her mouth, swallowing him almost all the way down. 
“Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Christ, yes, just like that.” he moans out. 
He brings his right hand to her hair, holding it in a makeshift ponytail while his left hand goes to her shoulder. 
She almost makes him lose his mind with the things she can do with her tongue, and within minutes, he’s fucking her face roughly as spit runs down her chin and tears are springing to her eyes from the assault on her throat, but she loves it. She has the man she’s fantasized about for years shoving his cock down her throat, and she’s never been more turned on in her life. She smirks to herself as she wonders if his wife ever sucks him off like THIS. 
When he can’t stand it anymore, Chris pulls her off his dick and takes a few deep breaths. 
“I need a condom.” 
“Right. I have one in my purse.” she tells him as she reaches for her bag and finds it and hands it to him. 
“Get on the bed. On your hands and knees.” he says roughly. While her mouth was wrapped around him, he was mesmerized and couldn’t look away, but now he finds that he doesn’t even want to look at her face. He rolls the condom over his cock, giving it a few strokes before sinking into her from behind.
Tears stream down my face as I process all of what Chris just told me, and I can’t even BREATHE with how devastated I feel. It’s like a hole just got punched through my chest. I try and take a breath in, but it turns into a strangled sob and I drop my head into my hands and just let it out. 
Chris swallows thickly, wiping away his own tears as he watches me fall apart  across from him, wishing that he could do something.....ANYTHING to take all the pain away. To go back and undo everything that he did so you wouldn’t hurt. All he feels is deep, unrelenting shame and he knows in his gut that if you asked for a divorce after hearing all of his sins laid bare, he wouldn’t be surprised or even have the right to be devastated. He made his bed. 
I feel bile rising in my throat, and I stumble to my feet and race to the downstairs bathroom, falling to my knees and vomiting painfully as the image of my husband kissing this woman and fucking her run through my head. I barely notice Chris come into the bathroom until I feel him pulling my hair back and securing it with a hair tie, and rubbing my back softly. I can’t even find the breath or the energy to tell him to get away from me and drop dead. 
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I’m so damn tired. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this level of physical and mental exhaustion before. I sink back into the pillows a little more, and look over at Chris. Neither one of us have said a word since he picked me up off the bathroom floor and stood there with his arm around my waist as I brushed my teeth. That was 45 minutes ago. 
“It was just sex?” I ask. 
He exhales. “It was just sex. It was just once.”
I look back up at the ceiling and try and make sense of everything. 
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of it. I don’t understand why you would sleep with another woman.”
“I-I don’t know. I was lonely because we were fighting, and I missed you so goddamn much, and I was afraid of what was happening to us with all of the stress and I just......I got drunk, and I did a horrible thing. I did a horrible thing, and I wish that I could take it back. I wish I could take it back so bad it hurts. But I can’t. And I have to live with that for the rest of my life.” Chris says. 
I lift my eyes to meet his. “You were lonely? That’s your excuse? You were lonely, and you were upset. So you stuck your dick in another woman.” 
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I stand at the kitchen sink and drain a glass of water in record time, and refill it. Turns out crying all day and then puking can kind of dehydrate you. I can sense Chris behind me, even though he doesn’t say anything. 
“Two years ago, a couple of weeks after you left for Africa to start shooting the movie, I found out I was pregnant. We hadn’t even officially started trying yet, so it came as a pretty big surprise. But I was so happy, and I couldn’t wait to tell you. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone, especially when you were so far away, so I was going to surprise you when you came home. I had it all planned out. I practiced telling you standing in front of the bathroom mirror, just so I could see the stupid happy look on my face.”
I feel tears prick my eyes, and I swallow down the sob that I feel threatening to come out. I turn towards Chris, and the look on his face is heartbreaking. 
“What?” he breathes out. 
“I was at a job.....I was shooting a birthday party for a little girl who was turning one. All I could think about was that that was going to be us eventually, and it made me so happy. Everything was fine, but then I started having horrible pain in my stomach. It got so bad that I collapsed, and the parents called 911 when they realized that I was bleeding. They did an ultrasound at the hospital, but they couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat. I had already miscarried. You don’t know anything about feeling lonely until you’re by yourself laying on a table with your feet in stirrups while a doctor cleans out your uterus.”
Chris is sunk down in one of the kitchen chairs with his hand over his mouth and tears running down his face. This is the first time he’s hearing any of this. 
“Why didn’t-” his voice cracks, and he takes a minute and clears his throat before he tries again. “Why the hell didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come home!”
“Chris, you were 8,000 miles away from home. There wasn’t anything you could do. It was too late. They had to do the procedure as soon as possible. I didn’t.....I hadn’t told anyone else that I was pregnant. And I didn’t want to call your mom or sisters because I didn’t want them to find out. I knew if they found out they would call you, and you would be devastated. And I couldn’t do that to you when you were so far away. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. I was trying to protect you.”
The sound of his fist slamming against the heavy oak table makes me jump. 
“And what about over the last two years? Huh? Don’t you think that I had a right to know? Don’t you think I had the right as your husband, to be there with you? To comfort you? To mourn with you? To even have a fucking clue about what happened?” 
I take a deep breath. 
“You did.  You should have been there. You should have been there with me to hold my hand and cry with me and tell me that it was going to be okay, even though it was a lie. But you weren’t. You were doing your job. I don’t know if you realize it, but when you leave for work or press or whatever it is that you have to leave me for, you’re not the only one who’s lonely. You’re not the only one who has to deal with the silence. But you don’t see me going out and fucking someone else.”
Tears start to swim in my eyes again, and I suddenly feel like if I don’t get out of the house right now, I’m going to suffocate. I’ve been in here with Chris literally all day while we picked apart his affair, and I’m exhausted. I’m hurt and emotional and talking about the baby that we lost just made everything worse.
“I’m gonna go. I just.....I can’t handle anything else today. I know you’re probably really pissed off at me right now, and honestly, the feeling is mutual. Things are already about as bad as they can be, so I’m gonna leave before we have a chance to make it worse.”
The last thing I see before I walk out the door is Chris sitting at the table with his head in his hands, sobbing while Dodger sits on the floor next to him, whining in distress.  
 The Usual Suspects: @averyrogers83 @wordywarriorwrites @imanuglywombat @joannaliceevans-fanficblog @hlkwrites @reminiscingrogers @mom—nicole @jtargaryen18 @alexakeyloveloki @kelbabyblue @sarahp879 @moonlessnight14 @mojean13 @mrskokitztelford @artisticrogers1972 @southerngracela @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan @mybesttobobcratchit @gracethegeek9902 @mdemontespan1667 @marvelfansworld @capslut2014 @dispatchvampire @jamielea81 @jamesbarnesappreciationsociety​ @nerdy-bookworm-1998​ @southerngracela​ @what-is-your-plan-today @letsdisneythings​ @theladybiers @lexeeehhh @sweater-daddiesdumbdork​ @autumnrose40 @donutloverxo​ @harrysthiccthighss​ @jessaywahh-blog​@smediumsmeatbae @before-we-get-started​ @lizette50 @littlegasps @rageshots @what-is-your-backupplan-today @clairebubbles @patzammit @sweet--catrastophe @pandaxnienke @redhairedfeistynerd @hails270105 @syms-things-5 @chezdricks @denisemarieangelina @christ0pher-evans @supersquirrel1996 @thumbeliina​
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biisexualemma · 3 years
Text
home. pt 4. bucky barnes
word count: 4.1k
warnings: implications of sex (blink and you'll miss it), nudity (again nothing descriptive) but generally lots of fluff and tiny bit of angst
requested: yes and no but it's here anyway lol
plot: you're recovering from your mission with sam and his family, patiently awaiting for bucky to come home
a/n: thank you for the support on this series loool i hope you like this! i think this will likely be the last part! it rounds off quite nicely i think so hope this is a satisfying ending! i loved writing this, especially the bathroom scene! enjoy! comment! lmk what you think! (also sorry this is so long i got carried away when editing oop--)
pt.1 / pt.2 / pt.3 / marvel masterlist / multi-fandom masterlist
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you huffed, swatting away the tiny hand prodding your forehead. when it persisted, you let out a throaty groan, forcing open your groggy eyes, to see cass, sam's nephew, nose to nose with you. you scrunched up your nose, squinting at him with tired eyes, before letting out a breathy laugh and shoving his face away with the palm of your hand.
"can't a girl get a lie in around here?" you grumbled, rubbing the sleep out of your eyes as aj came running into the sitting room following his brother. you shot him a small smile, cautiously pushing yourself upright on the couch. you bit down on the inside of your cheek, the familiar sharpness shooting through your ribs as you repositioned yourself, trying to mask any pain you felt.
"nope," cass hopped on the end of the couch, sitting himself on top of you, shaking his head with a toothy grin. you let out a strained yawn, stretching your arms up over your head, having to force yourself awake. you winced, the stabbing pain returning as you dropped your arms back to your side. you tried to disguise it with a small laugh, ruffling up cass' hair, who was sat watching you from his end of the couch.
"mom had to go down to the harbour with uncle sam," aj informed you, positioning himself on the arm of the couch beside you. you nodded, sighing lightly, you slumped your shoulders, you were still tired. you had gotten pretty close to sam's family in the past week or so you'd spent on their couch, but it was so easy to love these kids. they were the sweetest, cheekiest kids you'd ever met. they reminded you so much of sam. "'told us to look after you."
"no," you shook your head, quickly protesting. "i'm the adult here."
"maybe," aj wore a wide, cheeky smile, dragging out the word. "but uncle sam says you're a hot mess, and that we gotta' help you out," you could hear sam saying this to his nephew. your eyebrows knitted, glancing between the two boys who were giggling as you feigned a look of hurt. you couldn't help but crack a small smile after a while, they were too easy and they were too cute to even pretend to be mad at.
"your uncle sam doesn't know what he's talking about," you waved away his comment. "i'm fine," you insisted quickly before a small, insubordinate smirk began forming on your lips. their faces lit up with small smiles, watching your every move, taking in everything you were saying. that was one thing you loved about kids, you could tell them absolutely anything and they would believe you, no questions asked. you turned your attention back to cass who was still sat, legs crossed, his weight crushing your feet a little (though you didn't mind so much). he had the cheekiest smile of the both of them. "so," you quirked an eyebrow. "are you gonna' sit on me all day or do you wanna eat some pancakes?" you had to suppress your laughter when his eyes widened, knowing just how much he loved breakfast food. kids were too easily persuaded.
his lips tightened, trying to hold back an excited smile. he glanced over at his older brother, trying to figure out if he was allowed to accept your offer, before his eyes moved back at you. you tilted your head, giving him a look. "well?" you teased, knowing you had him.
"pancakes!" he caved, just like you knew he would. you couldn't blame him, who could resist pancakes. his voice raised an octave higher in his excitement. you giggled as cass hopped off of you, running towards the kitchen with his older brother following behind him, just as enthusiastically.
you let out a soft humph, your smile falling a little as you dragged your feet over the side of the couch, letting them hang there for a moment. you were healing well, you just constantly felt wiped out now you had finally taken a breather. you hadn't realised how much you'd been pushing yourself during this mission, until you stopped. sam had noticed too, so he wasn't letting you contribute much around the house.
you had been hesitant to accept his offer at first, the last thing you wanted to do, after everything, was impose. you knew sam had his own stuff to work out too. but it was sarah, in the end, who reassured you that you were more than welcome to stick around as long as you needed. something about your presence around the house being much needed as she was currently outnumbered three to one. so, to try and make yourself somewhat useful, you offered to watch the boys anytime she needed.
you were grateful to them both for letting you crash, and, truthfully, you were happy you did take the offer in the end, it was much needed. it also helped that literally every single person you had met was kind and welcoming, something you hadn't felt in a while. that, along with sam's lovely family, was enough to keep your mind off things for a while.
things being bucky, who you hadn't heard from since the fight with walker. he hadn't checked in with you once. you knew he had his own stuff to handle but it still didn't make you feel great knowing he was out there god knows where, doing god knows what. it stung a little when he up and left you like that without a second thought. if he wasn't willing for you to tag along, you expected for him to communicate his plans to you, at the least. but you should've known, bucky had never been very good at communicating.
"y/n, c'mon! it's pancake time!" you were pulled out of your thoughts by aj, whose hand latched onto yours, urging you onto your feet. you forced a small smile, pushing any thoughts out of your head that didn't involve making pancakes, and ignoring the dull ache in your chest that came whenever you thought about him. if you just kept busy, you wouldn't have to think about any of it.
-
you lifted your hand to your face, wiping away the beads of sweat dripping from your forehead. the sun was high and it was sweltering, you hadn't adjusted to the louisiana heat yet and you weren't sure you ever would.
you peeled off the jacket that was starting to stick to your clammy skin, tossing it aside, deciding that now was a good time to take a break. collapsing onto an upturned crate, you let out a weighted sigh, squinting, using the back of your hand to shield your eyes as the sun shone down into your line of sight.
"here," sarah appeared behind you, handing over a cold bottle of water. you mumbled a quiet thank you, before quickly gulping down the refreshing water. you let out a content sigh after quenching your thirst, your shoulders slumping. she rested her hand on your shoulder, squeezing it gently before taking a seat beside you. "how y'getting on?"
you shrugged, your eyes watching your feet, feeling the subtle sway of the boat floating on the water. "sam won't let me help with the heavy duty stuff, so he's got me painting," you motioned to the bucket of paint and the brush sitting on the ground where you had left them.
she nodded. "and how you feelin'?"
you straightened your back, lifting your gaze to meet her stare for a second. "i'm getting there. but this heat doesn't quit," she let out a soft laugh, nodding again.
"yeah, that's something you never really get used to," she patted your shoulder again, another soft, reassuring squeeze. "i gotta' run to the store, i'll be back in a half hour. need anything?" you shook your head, mumbling a quiet no thank you. "alright, well, don't strain yourself."
you rolled your eyes, halfheartedly. she wore a teasing smile, one that reminded you of sam. they were so alike, it was weird sometimes when you thought about how this was the life behind the man you had known for so many years. "i won't," she nudged your shoulder when you shook your head again. "not with sam around anyway," you joked, scrunching up your nose.
"hey," she called, edging away from you as she made to leave. you looked over at her, blocking the sun from your eyes with your hand. she quirked an eyebrow at you. "he's looking out for you! we all are," you tightened your lips, trying to disguise the smile growing on your lips. you nodded, waving goodbye as she left the boat.
it felt nice to have the small circle of people who cared for you, starting to grow.
a loud noise emitting from the other end of the boat caught your attention, your eyes widening when you spotted a cloud of steam gushing from one of the pipes. you darted over, your hands frantically hovering around the pipe as you tried to figure out how best to fix whatever it was that was broken. you rummaged through the tool box sitting next to you, and grabbed a wrench, purely because it felt the like the right tool to grab. in truth, you had no idea what the hell you were doing. you clapped the tool around the pipe, trying with all your might to stop the steam from spitting out.
"sam!" you hollered over your shoulder, trying to catch the mans attention so he could help you. "i have no idea what the hell i'm doing!" you called blindly in a panic, hoping someone would swing in and take over before you made this any worse.
"here," you felt a hand tap your shoulder, so you let go of the tool and stepped back. only it wasn't sam like you had expected. you stumbled backwards into sam, his hands touching your forearm as you regained your balance. it was bucky who had his hands clamped round the wrench, fixing the pipe with relative ease.
you gulped. you couldn't figure out how you were feeling now he was in front of you. your feelings were mixed. mainly you felt relieved that he was in front of you in one piece. "thanks," was all you managed to croak out once he turned to face you. his eyes focused on you, squinting from the sun in his eyes. he opened his mouth to say something to you when sam cut him off.
"why didn't you use your metal arm?" you raised an eyebrow, watching as bucky shrugged, his eyes dragging away from you and towards sam.
"i don't always think of it immediately," he admitted honestly. "i'm right handed."
you sighed. you sometimes wondered how this was the same man who traipsed around for ninety years as the winter soldier. you rolled your eyes, moving away from the two of them, returning to the painting you'd been hard at work with before all this commotion.
you'd just have to speak to bucky later, when you could be alone. right now, you were helping sam.
--
bucky had reluctantly agreed to stay the night after a long day working on the boat. you had been carefully avoiding him all day. you didn't feel much like hashing things out in front of sam and his entire family, so you stuck your head down and got on with your work.
but now it was pretty late, a lot of time had passed, and you had yet to catch your boyfriend alone. you figured a shower would do you good, to clean you up and hopefully clear your head.
your eyes were deeply focused on your own, watching yourself in the foggy mirror after finally leaving the comfort of the hot shower. your eyes were sunken, hollow almost as you looked back at yourself. you didn't look like yourself. you looked tired all the time, mainly because you were tired all the time.
you hadn't been sleeping as well without bucky next to you. along with sam's nephews waking you up at the crack of dawn every morning, you weren't getting as much sleep as you should be. though you couldn't blame the boys, they were excited to have someone in the house that let them do whatever they wanted to do (though it got you in trouble a fair bit). bucky, however, you could blame. if he had just told you straight where he was going, what his plan was. if he'd just contacted you so you knew he was ok all that time he was away. but he didn't. he left you behind to finish his own mission, not thinking twice about how it would make you feel.
your fingertips grazed over the skin of your neck, the bruising was finally starting to turn an ugly yellow colour, meaning it would start to fade away soon. most of your wounds had healed, you were mainly left with bruises and scabs and a subtle ache. nothing too serious. but it certainly made you look like hell.
you pursed your lips, your fingertips trailing down your chest, until gently brushing against the large purple-green bruise running across your ribs. you twisted your abdomen to get a better a look at the bruise that circled round to your back, wincing and gritting your teeth as you did. sam mentioned something about your ribs taking longer to heal than any of the other injuries, you just didn't think he meant it'd take this long.
you startled, flinching from the knock on the door, drifting you out of your thoughts and back to your current state. you grabbed a towel from the rack beside you and wrapped it around yourself. "yeah?" you called out in response to the knock. you wiped away the droplets of water covering your face with your hand, sniffling as you secured the towel around your chest.
"it's me," the soft, familiar voice muffled through the door dividing the two of you. you gulped, glancing at your reflection one last time, before turning away.
you hesitated, but ultimately unlocked the door and pulled it open. you turned back to the mirror, leaving the door to hang open as you stood with your back to him. he let himself in, locking the door again behind himself. he hovered by the door, falling back against it, his eyes watching carefully as you ran your hands over your face.
you glanced at him in the reflection of the mirror, out the corner of your eye. his eyes lingered over your body, only his eyes were just as hollow as yours. after a moment of silence, he let out a sigh, and edged across the small space to be closer to you. "hey," he mumbled softly, his hands gripping your waist over the towel. you took in a sharp breath, your hands quickly moving to his to pull them away from your tender bruises. you turned yourself to face him, still holding his hands that hovered over your waist now. his eyes widened slightly, moving back and forth between yours, looking for you to tell him what he'd done wrong.
"sore still," you scrunched up your nose, the ache slowly fading away again after he'd let go. it wasn't his fault, he wasn't to know.
his eyebrows creased together, his eyes trickling down to the visible bruises marked around your throat. he gulped, he gave your hands a soft squeeze before moving them to your shoulders. he couldn't pull his stare away from you, he was taking you all in. his fingertips pressing into your shoulders gently, his lips pursing.
"m'sorry," he mumbled in a whisper. his eyes lifting back up to yours again, soaked with guilt.
you shook your head faintly. "y'didn't know--"
"no--" he shook his head. "i'm sorry i left like that," his hands slipping from your shoulders, his soft touch trailing down your bare arms before gripping your forearms. he hadn't noticed the bandage on your wrist until his fingers grazed against the material. he scrunched up his face, his touch leaving you as he turned away. he moved a hand to his face, his forefinger and thumb trying to unknit the crease between his eyebrows.
"it's alright, buck," you spoke softly. it wasn't really ok, at least, not how he left. but you didn't want him beating himself up about you being hurt, that was part of the job, that had nothing to do with him. "i'm fine, really."
"you're still a terrible liar," his voice was cold, and your chest tightened. "i should've held back longer before i left," he shook his head again, his gaze dropping to the floor. "i should've said something," you let out a sigh, reaching out, your fingertips grazing his arm. he turned around under your touch, his jaw clenched when he met your eyes again. he never imagined being this much under someones control ever again. but here you were, and he would do anything you asked.
you pursed your lips. "maybe," you shrugged. you had given it some thought throughout the day. you couldn't hold a grudge against him forever, he made a split second decision, and he knew he was leaving you in capable hands. "but what's happened has happened. there was a lot going on. i'm sure you're still processing a lot of it."
he was pouring so much emotion into you with just a stare, your eyes fluttering as you held his gaze. "i was angry-- i didn't think everything through-- i just-- i knew i needed to deal with zemo."
you sniffled, gulping down the lump in your throat. "i get it. you didn't want me there to see any of it," you thought back to when bucky told you he never wanted you to have to see him as the winter soldier again. you thought back to watching bucky fight under zemo's control. you understood why he needed to do what he did, you'd said time and time again, you would kill zemo yourself when the mission was over.
"i didn't kill him," he admitted hesitantly. "the Dora Milaje took care of him."
you raised an eyebrow. "oh, that's so much worse for him," bucky nodded in agreement, his lips pursing. "good."
"yeah," he trailed off, his eyes glossing over for a moment as if lost in thought. you wished sometimes that you could see inside that head of his. you nudged his side after a while, mumbling a quiet hey, his eyes focusing back on you. he frowned. "what was the damage?"
you shrugged. "i think walker had a hearing--"
"no-- no--" he cut you off quickly, your mouth hanging open as he stopped you mid-sentence. "you. what's the extent of your injuries? how you feelin'?"
"oh," your eyebrows unknitted, shrugging again. "i--uh-- had a mild concussion. a few broken ribs and just a lot of bruising, some open wounds but it wasn't too bad considering i went up against a super soldier," you forced a smile, trying to ease some of the tension that bucky was creating with that frown on his face.
you moved your hand up to his face, cupping his cheek. your thumb grazed his cheek, and you remembered the gash across his face had healed since the last time you saw him. you gave him a genuine, soft smile in hopes of reassuring him. "i really am fine. sam says i just need to take it easy for a couple weeks."
he nodded faintly. he hovered his hand over yours, turning his cheek and pressing his lips to the palm of your hand. your eyelids fluttered feeling his lips touch your skin tenderly. made you realise just how much you had missed bucky since he'd been away. he squeezed your hand affectionately, his lips lingering on your skin.
your free hand quickly moved to your towel when it loosened around your chest, just catching it in time. bucky's eyes moved to your towel for a split second, like he was suddenly reminded that you were standing in front of him in practically nothing. his eyes remained soft as he looked at you though, he cleared his throat before moving his hand to your cheek, slipping his fingers into your wet hair gently.
"how're you healing?" he mumbled in a whisper.
you gulped, his eyes locked on yours as he spoke. your eyes darted back and forth between his. "bruises are still there but they're fading," you spoke softly now that he was close enough to you. you could feel his breath fanning against your skin. he nodded, biting the inside of his cheek as he tried to keep his eyes from drifting downwards. "wanna' see?"
his eyebrows twitched into a frown for only a second, unsure that he heard you correctly. "uh-- yeah," he breathed out, his breath grazing your skin. you untied the towel from round your chest, letting it fall to the floor beneath you with a soft thud.
bucky's jaw tightened. usually, quite happy to see you standing in front of him wearing absolutely nothing, he couldn't shift his eyes for a while from the enormous bruise covering your abdomen. his eyebrows unknitted, unsettled by the nasty bruise spread over your soft skin, his eyes shooting up to yours quickly.
"fuck walker," he muttered under his breath. "this is all from him?" you nodded faintly, eyes fluttering and your breath hitching in your throat when his fingers carefully brushed against the discoloured stretch of skin.
"it was a lot worse," you spoke in a hushed voice. "it's healed a lot."
bucky didn't speak for a while and neither did you, his eyes trailing over your body, unclothed facing him. after a moment, he got down onto his knees. you gulped, his head tilting back for a second, eyes meeting yours from beneath you. your breaths grew rapid the closer he got, his forehead gently falling against your bare stomach before pressing a soft kiss to the purple--green lesion covering your skin. you let out a shaky breath, shifting your arms so you could run your fingers through his hair. you still weren't used to the length.
"i love you," he mumbled against your skin. your hands stilled where they rested in his hair, moving to tilt his head back, forcing his eyes to meet yours again. he pressed another sweet kiss to your stomach before moving himself back up to your height. your eyes were wide slightly, your fingers slipping out from between his locks. both his hands moving to either side of your face now. "don't freak out on me, you don't have to say it back. 'just needed you to know what i was thinking."
"and you're thinking-- that you love me?" you reiterated. he nodded, the corner of his lips turning into a soft smile. you couldn't help but mimic his expression, your heart beating a bit harder now, the sound rushing through your ears. it had been a long time since someone had told you they loved you, and meant it. a warm feeling spread through your chest, you were on such a high, soaking in the way he was looking at you with tender eyes. "pretty sure i love you too, buck."
you were a hundred percent sure, you just didn't want to seem too keen. you were already standing in front of him naked.
his lips stretched into a wider smile, ducking his head for a second, remembering suddenly that you were in fact completely naked in front of him, and he hadn't done anything about it. you swallowed a small laugh escaping your lips, watching a realisation hit bucky before he ducked down to your height and pressed his lips against yours. you relished in the feeling. "i love you, i love you, i love you," he muttered repeatedly, his lips pushed against yours, your smile growing wider every time he said it. you choked out a laugh, pushing at bucky's chest so you could catch a breath.
"i get it," you scrunched up your nose. "you love me," you teased, laughing wholeheartedly. you felt warm and comforted and somewhat normal for the first time in a really long time. you nudged his chest once more, his hands gripping your hips to pull you back to him. "so show me."
bucky's smile grew with your words, his mouth hanging open for a second. he didn't know how things managed to work out this good for him, but he wasn't going to question it. he was going to enjoy every moment with you for as long as he could.
"oh, god," he let out a throaty wine. "gladly."
taglist: @lo-manburg @bluemoon-icecream @farfromjustordinary @stolenxkissess
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lovely-necromancy · 3 years
Text
A Cure for Insomnia CH 1.
This is a reader insert I originally started posting on AO3. I’m cross posting here because I know some of the fandom still lives here.
Quick Disclaimer:
This is a fic I'm writing for my own comfort.
I was inspired by RaeBees (you can check out their works over on Quotev and AO3), and how they characterize the "proxies". Having always seen the characters different than most of the fandom I've interacted with I never really shared my thoughts until now. This work is only placed in the Creepypasta tag so it reaches its demographic. However, I am fully aware of the fact that no main character is considered a Pasta.
It may also appear to lean more Toby X Protag in the beginning but end goal is protag with all three, and Brian and Tim already in a relationship. How I picture it now is a slowburn but Toby and Protag will be in a friends with benefits relationship before either has any feelings, so I think that counts. Some may be confused by the asexual protag tag but it'll be explained in story, as an Ace myself I get frustrated with media that only show one version and say it goes for us all. That being said I don't represent the whole Ace community but I hope to provide a bit more representation for some others out there.
Protag will be depicted as agender, and will have a few tics that stem from their Autism. Again I don't speak for any others with Autism but I hope to provide some representation for those in similar positions.
Tags will be updated as the story progresses. Canon-Typical violence and mental health issues are to be expected if you feel uncomfortable with those aspects I advise you to not engage. This story will also have a lot of NSFW themes and scenes so I highly discourage anyone under the age of 18 from viewing this work. You will get warnings on chapters with NSFW and I will make it skippable as well.
I'm also very nitpicky and gave the main characters birthdays just because it irritates me when it gets mentioned once and you have to do the math or imagine your own conversation when a birthday was too close to a character's.
Tim January 1st, home state Alabama
Toby April 28th, home state Virginia (saw this years ago no clue if it's accurate)
Protag May 13th, home state Virginia
Brian May 23rd, home state Alabama
Connor the service dog July 18th, home state Kentucky
I've referred to Protag as Protag here but in story they're referred to as YN.
Everything felt impossibly dull; your senses, the dark room you're currently in, the noise coming from the fan just to the left of the bed on which you laid. Turning to the window beside your head you stare out into that weird midnight summer sky. More of a gray than a true dark blue night, cast in an orange glow that made the night seem closer to day than it truly was. While the time was just half past twelve, you felt it may have been more accurate to say it was closer to four in the morning.
You're exhausted but that true sort of exhaustion where whatever energy you have left buzzes all around. It consumes your entire being, dances between being deafeningly loud in your ears to giving you twitches in your legs. You'd laid down hours ago thinking you'd be tired enough to sleep once your tics started to spasm in closer intervals, but to no avail were you able to rest. That buzzing preventing you from dreamland. Maybe the hum of your body was right, you didn't really need to sleep, you just wanted it to feel normal.
Knowing the battle had already been lost you push yourself off the bed and grab a pair of shorts off the floor. Slipping them on you contemplate your options for the night. Going into town was out since it was Sunday...well Monday now, but there would be nothing but bars open and you were never one for drinking. And as fun as a drive sounds right now, you feel the buzzing in your bones grow stronger, you need to move. A late night hike should keep you occupied, with it being so quiet and the middle of the night you wouldn't even have to take your headphones to cancel out the sounds of other people, you aren't likely to run into many people tonight.
Deciding on a hike you grab a mask and car keys and make your way to your yellow Kia Soul. A going away present from your parents that they gave you the moment you got your driver's license after your 24th birthday. Having anxiety throughout your life you'd never been in the head space to start driving till later on, and while you still don't enjoy driving you are pretty good at it even with your “late” start. Surfing through radio stations as you let the car warm up you find your latest obsession, it's a conspiracy theory podcast that someone in Kepler managed to blast through the limited air ways of the town. Impressive considering Kepler was in a radio quiet zone and even cell phones couldn't work in the small town, luckily you lived just outside of the zone so you could send texts and call your parents every weekend.
It seemed today's episode was a rerun, Mothman: Murderer, Man, or Myth. It was actually one of your favorites, the paranormal stories tended to be more entertaining than hearing about how a man could murder sixteen people while working as a cop ruining evidence to lead the others off his trail. Humans could be more vial and cruel than any little gray alien from the future or tall Fresno Nightcrawler could ever be. And they weren't as entertaining to hear about, nor were their exploits as impressive. You could always see patterns, either connecting clues first or finding connections no one else saw, it was never hard to tell where a certain case would lead so you'd always end up disappointed in humanity when they overlooked such obvious clues. Though that often led you down a path of deep diving for information to see just how obvious it was, more often than not you'd find that the most logical conclusion was shady public officers. After investigating so many cold cases you're sure if you're ever in trouble you'll never involve the police, in the end they'd probably just ignore you and rule your case closed if anything ever did happen to you.
'I'd haunt them if they did.' You decide and you shift gears and begin driving to the Monongahela National Forest, as the timeline of Mothman sightings and events play out before for your ears.
Instead of going through town and possibly loosing the signal of the show, you drive on the old dirt road that runs along the very edge of the town, partially covered in trees. This over grown road is the main reason Kepler doesn't see many visitors, the second someone makes their way onto it coming off the interstate they floor it until they see civilization. Over the few months you've been here you've nearly been run right off the road by spooked tourists, trying to escape whatever ghouls their wild imaginations created. The only real thing on this road was a mini mart gas station, and even though it was shady as hell the cashier didn't bug you too much when you came in in the dead of night. Plus they had a cat, how could you not stop in and say hi to little ole Magnolia?
Speaking of which you should probably get a drink for your hike, you could already feel your throat drying out. Turning into the parking lot you're happy to see no other cars around, putting your face mask on you make your way inside. As usual the store is dead at this time, and Ronnie is manning the desk. What's unusual is the man also behind the counter, he has dark brown hair that he's tied into a small and low ponytail, thick sideburns frame his face. You immediately take note of the slight imperfections of his face, most would see the slit in his eyebrow as following the current trend or even just a genetic thing, but you can see the slightly off color of a healed scar that starts just above his eyebrow and ends mid eyelid, he has a few smaller discolorations on his crooked nose, you'd guess he's had it broken at least twice.
Briefly taking a glance to his brown eyes before looking away, today is not an eye contact day. Nodding in their directions, the best acknowledgment you can give right now, you make your way to the freezers. From the freezer section you can hear Ronnie “explain” you.
“That's YN, a regular mainly at night though. A bit skittish and rarely ever says more than 'thanks have a nice day'” Even though she's whispering you can hear everything. Including the high octave her voice takes to mimic you, it feels more like mocking.
If being mocked hadn't already put you on edge the eyes boring into you have. The eyes may not be roaming over your body but the icky crawling of your skin sure makes it feel that way. The feeling of being put under a microscope has always made you sick, the stares, the leers and sneers, and the judgment just makes you want to implode on the spot. Cease existence, be swallowed into the abyss. You're about to set yourself into an anxiety attack with all these thoughts.
'Mask, mask, mask' you repeat over and over in your head, it's the only thing you can focus on. You are wearing a mask, there is one thing they can't perceive, the face is the most important for humans to perceive, your mask protects you.
Without looking you pull a water bottle from the cooler. You don't think you like this brand but the sports mouth makes up for it, and you can't focus enough to grab another. As the imaginary spiders crawl their way under your skin and your breath hitches you make your way over to the counter head down, never looking up at the employees beyond the counter. Your vision is blurring in time with the beating of your heart, you can't tell if it's due to nerves or from being up for five days in a row.
“Hey YN, how're you?” Ronnie asks, her tone is different from the past times you've been in. It's higher and has a lilt in it that you'd expect from a teasing friend. But Ronnie isn't a friend and has never spoken to you like this, you hate it. You nod to politely move on with the process, between the crawling of your skin and the buzzing underneath it you feel sick. And you're now very aware of the existence of your eyelids, you try to focus on ignoring that awareness. You need to move.
“Hmm, that's good. Anyway this is Tim! He's just started so go easy on him.” you hear the sound of a hand hitting fabric and assume she's patted Tim's shoulder as she introduced Tim to you. Why was she doing this, what purpose could introducing you two have? You nod again, was anyone going to ring you out?
“Hi, this all?” a deep voice asked, it isn't extremely deep more of a standard baritone that has a slight raspy quality, probably a reformed smoker. You don't smell cigarettes currently so he could've quit after years. Unfortunately despite your efforts to stave them off your blinking tics emerge. Making it difficult to keep your eyes open for longer than a nano second.
Startled and ticcing you look up and catch his eyes, you see pity in them, before casting your glance back to the counter. You can never tell what's worse people seeing you as weird or seeing you as something needing to be fixed. Nodding again, Tim tells you the total; a dollar fifty eight, and you hand him two dollars from your wallet.
Tim doesn't ask if you want the receipt or a bag, he prints out the receipt and hands you your change. The change goes immediately into the cat food fund for Magnolia. She got diagnosed with diabetes about a month ago and having worked in shelters and pet stores you know just how expensive her prescription food is. After folding the receipt into your wallet, Tim gently slides the water bottle over to you.
“Have a good night.” he says it so low and gentle, as if he thinks you'll shatter in front of him. As kind as the gesture seems, you aren't that fragile...or maybe you are if you have to keep repeating 'mask' over and over in your head to ground yourself. With a final nod you turn and make your way to the door, and just as you open it you hear Ronnie call out.
“Awwww, c'mon YN at least say 'Hi' to Tim.” You really don't like how she squeaked out 'hi'.
Taking a deep breath you prepare yourself, you'll show them both you can do this simple task. Even if you can't stop blinking long enough to see straight. Once you've steadied yourself you turn and look at Tim. He's sending you a look that says 'You don't have to' all that's missing is a slow head shake to complete his unease with this “peer pressure”.
But you can do this you can say 'Hi, Tim.' Two words super simple, nothing complex like 'Hi, Tim, nice to meet you.' and so much better than the option of your next meeting saying 'Hi, Tim. Sorry for spazzing out the other night.'. Yup you can do this just breathe, you open your mouth and...and you've forgotten what to say. Looking like a deer in headlights, well at least the tics stopped, you say the first thing that pops in.
“Mask.” You've said it loud and clear both cashiers heard you.
Tim stares with wide eyes and you see Ronnie failing to hide her laughter. Out of all the ways this could've gone this was probably the best outcome for her. The blinking has started up again, this time growing more frequent. You can't even hold your eyes open, to the two cashiers it must look like you're in pain or crying. And while you want to die of embarrassment, crying is a bit of an extreme for you.
So with red face and the inability to see you leave through the door, and try to make your way back to your car. Once in you lock the doors, switch the car on, and rest your head on the steering wheel. Out of every way this stop could've gone, being perceived by a new comer and Ronnie was not what you expected. While this hadn't been the worst five minutes or so of your life, it definitely would be another thing keeping you up at night for the next twenty years.
Calming down in the cool quiet dark of your car your slowly brought back to the world by the beginning of a new episode. This one talking about the Tailypo legend. A favorite story of yours from when you were a kid living on the coast of Virginia. So with yet another deep breath and the wave of nostalgia, you pull out of the parking lot and slowly coast down the old dirt road. Heading yet again for the Monongahela forest.
It's nearly two in the morning when you roll up to see an RV parked by the forgotten entrance of the park. It isn't surprising at all to find an RV out here since the Monongahela Forest is one of the most beautiful parks you've ever been to. You also don't think anything of them being parked by this unused entrance because you use it all the time since finding it accidentally. Figuring they just wanted to camp and be left to their own devices rather than use the RV sites and be bothered with other campers here for the summer.
Climbing out of your car you notice the RV isn't new by any means but it isn't a total rust bucket either, looks like it's been passed around throughout the years. There isn't anything to suggest it's been here a while, nothing left set up outside, must have just gotten into town then. You do happen to notice dog tracks around the sandy dirt you've parked in, good to know they have a dog before you slammed your car door. Closing the door gently behind you so you don't startle a pup and wake up it's owner or owners, you make your way through the woods. No real direction in mind, with no real thought in your head. Just the thought of moving and to keep on moving.
You could walk the same path every time you came through and always find something different. In fact that's exactly what happens, you're almost positive that you've deepened the imprint of the path just from walking through several times a week. Following the same winding path you usually do, climbing over the fallen tree, and through a scattering of blueberry thicket's you find yourself on the edge of one of the forest's many streams. It's your favorite spot in the forest so far, and about as far as you've gotten considering these hikes of yours take place during the dead of night.
The wind picks up and sends a chill through you, taking that as a sign you slide down to sit by the stream. Vans placed to your side as you sink your feet into the cool water. It's peaceful out here, so cool, and quiet, save for the slight noises the stream makes, various bubbling and drips. You try to think on things like your recent move, your job, the embarrassing 'mask' incident, just life in general. But you can't seem to form a single thought, this happens a lot, you've recently been conscious of the fact that you've been running on auto pilot for the past two months, hell a lot longer than that. You think everyone must get like this from time to time, but you think you've always been this way. Keen to dissociating and slipping in and out of existence.
It's quite nice really, except for the times like right now where you'd love to figure out why the silence in your head is so painfully loud. The more you think on it the louder it gets and the stronger the buzzing under your skin feels. And right now the static in your mind has been getting louder and louder for the past few minutes. You feel your head jerk to the right of it's own accord, moving back in place it happens for a second time, and then a third, then jerks up, before jerking a forth time to the right effectively cracking you neck.
“There we go.” you mumble, you can relax a bit as the verbal tic indicates the end of this round of tics.
Sighing you look at the sky...that can't be right. The sky has been painted it's fresh baby blues for the day, but again that can't be right. You just got to the stream, that path is a thirty minute walk meaning it should be just about two thirty in the morning, but the sky suggests it's five or six at the latest. Reaching for your water bottle you find it empty next to you. You didn't fall asleep you know that much, perhaps you did dissociate tonight. Well this hike was disappointing if you knew you were going to dissociate you'd have saved yourself that embarrassment and stayed home. Maybe done some painting or tidied up.
Sighing you push yourself off the ground, collecting you vans you're about to put them on when you notice a figure off in the distance. You freeze out of shock and stare at the figure, it stares back. The figure is about ten yards away, god your near sighted ass should really remember to not leave your glasses in the car when hiking. The figure starts to make it's way to you and after a few steps you realize it hasn't moved from it's spot. Rolling your eyes you ignore the hallucination.
You'd really needed to get sleep last night, today is day six of no sleep and though you haven't had many episodes these past few days, you have a feeling they'll start to get more prominent today. Hopefully tonight you can manage to get some rest, the longer you go without sleep the more realistic the hallucinations become. But for today you're content with the knowledge that it's just shadow like beings that you'll be seeing.
After putting on your shoes you start the thirty minute hike back to your car. You're thankful for the weather in Kepler, nothing like back on the coast. Here you can go for a morning hike through the forest while a gentle breeze passes by and the sun starts to give the area a pleasant warmth. Back on the coast you couldn't run and grab the mail without getting drenched in moisture from either sweat, humidity, or a mixture of both.  The coast sucks, hell Virginia sucks altogether, you're glad to be in Kepler.
“I want to go home, home.” you say out of nowhere.
Before you reach the entrance you hear barking, oh the RV campers must be up. Should you be careful not to scare them, or just walk normally and say 'Good morning' in passing, maybe just nod your head in greeting. Oh and you've stopped just beside the entrance as you got lost in your rambling. You didn't mean to come to a stop here, and as you try to move you notice how silent it's gotten. Did the dog go inside, maybe they've already passed...no it's too quiet for that. No the silence is oppressive like the one you deal with nightly, there's a reason for the silence. The situation's making you feel uneasy, but that could be the sleep deprivation talking.
You're about to brush it off and move when you hear a whispered, “Seriously man, I don't think anyone's out there. Let's get inside.”
There's a noise of agreement before you hear shuffling. Oh no, you zoned out and now you look like a weirdo stalker. Just perfect, maybe if you wait around a little more you'll seem more normal or at least feel normal. Not knowing how long to wait you walk along the tree line for a bit, looking at the ground as you do making sure you won't step on any snakes. In you quest to not step on any snakes you spot something suspiciously off white. It seems purposefully buried under a dead blueberry bush and some fallen branches.
Having listened to too many true crime shows, you know better than to implicate yourself in a murder. Grabbing a stick off the ground you gently brush the foliage away from the supposed corpse. No way, you can't believe your luck, it's an actual fucking skull. An intact skull of a deer! That is so cool, you've only seen taxidermists on TikTok getting so lucky and finding these dudes. Since the jaw bone is connected by tissue it of course isn't with the skull but maybe it's close by? Clearly this got planted or hidden by someone, maybe they were planning on pranking a friend by 'uncovering' a skull later. Oh well, finders keepers and all that, you have way better plans for this guy, hopefully you can find that jaw bone.
You set off searching through the foliage and near by bushes with the branch while holding the skull in your other arm. After searching about three feet around and finding no more bones you decide that this is the only part of the deer's skeleton in this area. A little disappointed but still thrilled with your find, you decide it must be a good time to go back to your car.
Surely you won't look weird now. You a little forager with their treasure in hand. Looks like you'll be busy cleaning, then bleaching, and cleaning these bones today. Is that the order to treat found bones? You aren't sure but you can look into that later. Placing the skull in the trunk so it doesn't roll about and get damaged you make sure it's secure before closing the trunk and getting into your car and locking the doors.
Not once did you notice the pairs of eyes that had been watching you. One watching as you found the deer skull, and the other set seeing you place bones into your car. They kept watching as you fiddled with the radio while the car was starting up. They watched as you pulled out of the sandy dirt lot and drove back down the old road a little faster than before now that you could clearly see.
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ckneal · 3 years
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So, there’s this one angel story in the back of my head that I know I wont write. I wont write it, because it’s utter nonsense, with very little regard for the canonical timeline of Supernatural, and a willfully blurry view on what is and is not “in character.” It’s fluff. It’s all fluff, in the form of a bunch of smaller stories that gradually weave together, following the Love, Actually style of storytelling, but instead of problematic love stories, it’s all about angels playing hooky from Heaven after the Fall.
(Seriously, there is no substance here, I swear.)
Stories include Abner, living out the first half of the movie Family Man, struggling to figure out how to be a good father and house husband after he steps into the life of the raging alcoholic who agreed to be his vessel. There’s also a very minor story about Esther (not to be confused with Hester, who is not in this story because she never deserted her post in Heaven) learning to play the part of a little girl and navigating schoolyard politics, but kids can be mean and Esther learns the hard way that Michael’s approach to asserting dominance in Heaven does not translate well. There’s also Daniel and Adina, who both settle into vessels in the same movie theater where a romantic comedy is playing, and fall into a very innocent, play-acting sort of love after they leave the theatre—like little kids pretending to be in love, recreating the scenes from the movie, but at the same time not really understanding it. Balthazar, Gabriel, and Anael each trying to roll with the luxurious high roller life style, and awkwardly running into each other at VIP poker games, exclusive spas and clubs, and the occasional orgy that they promptly leave IMMEDATELY after running into a sibling (don’t give me weird looks, Balthazar and Gabriel canonically include that sort of thing in their definition of luxury, and the whole thing of their story is their siblings keep cramping their style). Tyrus is in there bowling, somewhere. Benjamin’s playing arcade games with his wife. And then there’s Thaddeus, my pet favorite minor angel character, realizing what’s happening as he’s falling with all the other faithful angels during the Fall and seizing the opportunity to abandon his life as a guard and torturer, settling into a pop star for his vessel—initially for the sake of the cushy lifestyle, but then gradually looking back, before the garden and Lucifer, before everyone was assigned a job in Heaven, like it or not, and the options were to adapt or to be smote, and remembering that back then, he could sing.
And of course, Michael and Adam get a story too—in which Michael lowkey gets into a pissing contest with death, as he and Adam travel the world, hitting up hospital after hospital to heal people. Because the first thing Adam wanted to do after getting out of the cage (okay, second thing—burgers came first) was go to the nearest medical center and start healing people left and right. And at first, they’re having a great time. Adam steals a white jacket he finds in the breakroom somewhere, and anytime someone says he looks a little young to be a doctor (Adam still looking nineteen years old, because I say so), Michael wipes the poor sap’s mind. But eventually—sometime after they’ve cleared out the children’s ward, the cancer ward, the cardiac ward—Billie shows up, sniping at them that they can’t just go around healing people who are destined to die, because there is an order to life and death that cannot be shoved aside. And Billie tries to make a show of it, as Terra did with Dean, by having several people who Adam had healed over the course of the day inadvertently cause several massive accidents. The news suddenly comes pouring out of the television, channels flipping as newscasters talk about tragedies occurring in several different parts of the city they’re currently in. The sound of approaching ambulance sirens fills the air, as in the hospital hallway, doctors and nurses begin hurrying to receive a rush of ER patients.
Adam’s horrified.
Michael does not take kindly to this. He snaps his fingers and makes it so that the carnage has never happened. Because he is the archangel Michael, only two steps away from being a god, and if he says that all of these people are going to live, then they are going to live, and he WILL NOT be intimidated, especially by an amateur reaper whose only qualification for her position was dying at the right time.
Billie in turn lands Michael with a cold stare, and points out that the order to life and death is beyond even God’s authority, let alone daddy’s blunt, sniveling instrument.
As Michael’s eyes start to glow, Adam steps in and says, “So, to be clear, you want us to stop healing people on the verge of death? We can do that.”
After Billie leaves, Michael is outraged, but Adam says, “No, Michael, THINK about it.”
We then cut to other stories, where newscasts in the background reveal that ailments that are not IMMIEDATELY fatal (AIDs, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, etc.) are mysteriously disappearing overnight, worldwide.
Billie is not amused, and tells her reapers to be on the lookout for an archangel at every major hospital in the world.
Cut to Michael throwing open the door of the bunker, muttering aloud to Adam that he’s going to do it, he’s going to bind Death, just like Lucifer did—how hard can it be? Sam and Dean see him as he goes stomping off toward the cabinet where they keep all of their magical dry goods, but Michael snaps his fingers and the two of them are abruptly half drunk in Dean’s man cave, sitting in front of Dean’s flat screen TV, watching some campy monster movie, because that’s lowkey what Michael and Adam assume they do all day.
As they’re raiding Sam and Dean’s supplies though, Adam says, “Wait, I have an idea.”
Cut to Abner looking up while pushing his vessel’s daughter in a park swing, and literally seeing Michael and Adam chasing an ambulance, so they can technically heal the person inside before reaching the hospital.
Yes, I’m aware that Abner was dead by the time Michael and Adam got out of the cage. But see, this story? This story is like when someone gifts you a goldfish unexpectedly, and you put it in a bowl, checking in to feed it a couple times a day, lowkey expecting it to die. But it doesn’t die, it gets bigger. And you’re not a cruel person, so you put it in a bigger tank, but it just gets bigger again, and you don’t really know what’s going on, but you know, you just kind of keep checking in, meeting the minimum requirements but not really getting in there as a guiding force because it’s a goldfish and it’s surely going to die any minute now—but then you look over and there’s giant tank taking up your living room, and you’re thawing out bloodworms twice a day, and looking into tankmates to keep Charles company, and realize that “Oh wow, I guess this is a thing now.”
In short, the story says we’re ignoring the timeline, and it’s calling the shots. I’m just keeping the tank clean.
The angels all eventually wind up running into each other. Abner and Esther happen upon one another in a park, where Esther is morosely realizing that she is terrible at being a human child but she does not want to go home to Heaven, and it just happens to be the same park where Abner goes with his “little nibblet” once a day to let her toddle around the playground while he chats with nannies and other house parents. Anael, Adina, and Daniel meet up when the latter two’s game has reached the point where they’ve decided to get married, and they apparently need to buy something new—preferably blue—as per this very important rhyme someone told them about. Esther and Gabriel run into each other in an ice cream parlor. Thaddeus gets recognized while doing an interview on TV that everyone sees. And, while out joyriding in a Lamborghini, on their way to meet up with the growing community of angels who decided to opt out of their responsibility to Heaven and their father’s legacy, Balthazar, Gabriel, and Anael are all startled to see Michael land on an ambulance stopped next to them at a red light.
Balthazar and Anael are both terrified, as if they’ve just been busted by a parent, because Michael, of course, is the guy who enforces the rules, and isn’t he supposed to be in Hell? They both shoot Gabriel looks as if to say ‘what the hell are you doing’ when Gabriel, watching as Michael climbs down and matter-of-factly wrenches the ambulance doors open, calls out, “Hey, Mike! Is that you?”
Michael looks over, freezes for a second—not prepared to be suddenly thrust into a social situation in the middle of his self-imposed mission to spite death—then his eyes flash and Adam takes over. “Oh hey, you’re Michael’s family? What a small world! I’m Adam, I’ve heard so much about you. Wait, hang on—”
The light starts to turn green, but Adam snaps his fingers and it promptly reverts to red.
Three jaws drop in the luxury car, and they don’t even hear Adam politely explain that he and Michael are in the middle of something, as he ducks into the ambulance, because Michael’s evidently letting a tiny human use his powers like it’s nothing, and what does that mean?
“Sweet dad in the unknown, Michael’s shagging a human. . .”
“Nooo!”
“HOW?”
“Hey, kid, you like weddings?”
At some point in the story, all the MIA angels are together, and Benjamin or someone comes running in saying, “Quick, they’re coming! Everyone hide!”
And everyone scatters, except for Michael, who stands in place, saying, “Gabriel, we’re archangels, two of the most powerful beings in existence. Why would we—”
And then Gabriel picks Adam up like a sack of potatoes and sprints off, calling back, “Trust me, you do NOT want to get involved with them!”
Being a projection, Michael is obligated to follow.
Team Free Will then walks by, looking constipated from whatever Big Awful Thing is currently threatening to destroy the world.
The story, of course, culminates in the wedding of Adina and Daniel, who still don’t quite understand what marriage is beyond promising to love each forever, which of course they will, after all, they are the very best of friends—which is about the same concept that most of the other angels present have. Adam is the first one to actually approach the big awkward question, upon finding out who the bride and groom are.
“Wait, aren’t they brother and sister?”
To which Serafina’s Adam, (who is of course there since Serafina was the original angel to play hooky) whose sons married his daughters, and all the angels, who do not understand what that has to do with anything, all cock their heads in unison and respond with, “So?”
Adam struggles to find words, looking into so many innocent faces. Then Benjamin’s wife puts a hand on his shoulder, whispering, “Shhh, let them have their fun.”
Benjamin’s wife and the two Adams wind up sitting at the venue’s bar, where they order nachos from a very confused bar tender, and watch as the angels go about setting up a wedding. But given that most angels haven’t been on earth regularly in roughly two thousand years, none of them have a clear grasp of what a human wedding entails.
“I heard it’s traditional for the father to give away the bride.”
“I think they’re supposed to kiss over bread.”
“Do humans still slaughter cows at these things?”
“I’m pretty sure someone is supposed to break a glass—”
Several angels promptly throw glassware on the floor.
At no point do the angels ask the humans for advice.
Occasionally, Gabriel knowingly throws out obscure details to keep the confusion going.
“You know, the groom needs to stand with the right arm to the aisle in case a sword fight breaks out.”
“Right! . . .How do we know which one’s the groom?”
At the bar, Adam open’s his mouth to say something, but the original Adam shushes him.
“No no, son, let them get there.”
The angels agree that being the better fighter, Adina should be the groom.
They’re nearly ready to start when Michael suddenly doubles over with his hand over his mouth. It coincides with the sound of Adam pounding the bar top, having just eaten a Carolina Reaper pepper on dare. Michael’s eyes quickly flash silver-blue as he straightens, and both he and Adam are abruptly fine—even if their eyes are still watering somewhat. But a different sort of damage has already been done, as Anael, Balthazar, and Gabriel all abruptly turn toward the triad of humans, having been reminded that the Michael walking around with them is actually a projection. In actuality, Michael is anchored to the human ex-college student sitting at the bar.
All three of them rush toward Adam, but Serafina gets there first, asking Adam if he’s ever tried mushroom tea.
Balthazar gets there next. 
“Adam, was it? We didn’t get to talk in the car, let’s fix that. Are you over twenty-one? You know what, this is a family affair, don’t worry—CAN I GET TWO SHOTS OF DON JULIO OVER HERE?”
From that point on, any time Adam turns around, there’s one of Michael’s siblings, wanting to get to know him—by consuming some sort of beverage. Because Adam and Michael are sharing body—and that means they share a liver too. A bet ensues as to how much it will take to get God’s alleged favorite wasted.
Gabriel’s actually one of the first out, having been convinced that Michael would be a lightweight. Little does he suspect that Benjamin and his wife caught onto what was happening soon after Adam was fed his third long island iced tea and second jager bomb, and began quietly cleansing the alcohol from his system through casual shoulder pats and high fives.
Adam does not know what to make of any of this, but it’s Michael’s family and he wants to make a good impression, so he just goes with it.
Thaddeus, of course, is in charge of music, Gabriel and Esther consume the majority of the cake, and Michael catches the bouquet (he may have cheated after finding out what the bouquet toss is for).
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skellebonez · 3 years
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How #67 with Mei and her parents? don't see much content with them. - Pixel Anon
Considering we haven't seen Mei's parents since episode 3 and we have no idea what their relationship is actually like now, I decided to do some canon-divergence and have them take initiative to be more involved in Mei's life. And since it’s fathers day... eh, why not do a little something with her dad in particular since I never really write her parents? (I got another anon for a fill involving Mei and her dad, but unfortunately Tumblr seems to have ghosted it into the ether, and i fused it into this one.)
My father may look like the scary one, but it’s my mother you need to be afraid of.
"Uh... hi mom?" Mei said in surprise, looking around when she heard the sound of someone clearing their throat from behind her and finding that it was indeed the two of them alone in the garage. "Where's dad?"
"He's a little tied up in business, but he’s home," Mrs. Long said with a sigh, moving to stand behind her daughter and look down at her project with a look of confusion and mild dismay. "What... are you working on, dear?"
Mei looked down at her current state, coated in engine oil and grease with scattered parts of one of the many many cars laying around her. Like a gutted fish but much shiner and louder.
“Oh, uh...” Mei started with an awkward chuckle. “After, you know, the whole break in and everything I’ve been fixing up some of the cars that were still mostly in one piece and, uh...” she gestured to the one in front of her, jazz hands waving slightly enthusiastically. “Ta da?”
“... Oh!” Mrs. Long said when she registered what Mei meant, a small smile finally forming on her face. “You didn’t need to do that on your own, Mei, but...” She moved forward, inspecting the car with a careful gaze. “This is quite impressive! You’d never know it was damaged at all. I thought...” She frowned again, looking back to her daughter. “Well, I thought you were only interested in motorcycles so I wasn’t expecting this.”
“Oh no!” Mei laughed, wiping her hands on her work overalls. “Motorcycles are my specialty, but I know enough about most vehicles to give them some good care!” There was an odd expression on her mother’s face that fell over her at these words, something far off and somewhat sad. “Mom? You ok?”
“Yes,” her mom replied, just a bit too fast before she smiled again. “Actually, I think your father was almost finished when I came in to check in on you. He wanted to talk to you himself, why don’t you see if he’s done? He should be in the tea room.”
“... sure...” Mei said slowly, bending down to start picking up parts before her mom placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t worry, dear, just leave those there in case you want to come back later. Just... change into clean clothes and wash your hands for now.”
Now... that was odd. Mei’s parents had always been clear on keeping the house as tidy as possible once you needed to leave a room (barring her own bedroom). But ever since that one Bull Clone (General Ironclad she thought she heard Red Son call him once) broke into her house for the Dragon Blade her parents had been acting different. Not extremely different, but noticeably so.
But instead of bringing this up Mei nodded to her mother and headed to wash up.
~
“Dad?” Mei called out, cleaned up from her car repairs and in clean clothes once again. “Mom said you wanted to talk to me?”
He was right where her mother had said he would be, in the tea room. Strewn about in front of him were papers upon papers, some seeming to be insurance forms for the multitude of broken objects strewn about the house and others repair bills. She was certain some of them, all on one side of the table, were research papers of some kind. And sitting at a seat in the middle of the long table was her father, small space cleared before him as he drank a fresh hot cup of tea. There was another, equally fresh cup across from him.
“Ah, Mei!” Her father said brightly, but there was an odd tenseness to his tone. “Yes, come in, sit down! There are a few things that we need your input on.”
Well that was vague as hell. But Mei did as requested, taking the seat across from him and picking up the tea before her. “I wouldn’t think this is something you’d be doing here in the... tea room.”
“Yes, well,” her father shrugged, glowering down at the paperwork with a sigh. “Sometimes you put aside convention to be comfortable. And with my office out of commission this is a much more relaxing place to work on papers than the dining room. If I don’t replace those chairs as soon as possible remind me how uncomfortable they are!” He shuddered dramatically, the action making Mei relax just a tad bit. The chairs had always been uncomfortable, she and her mother had told him as much before, but the three of them had never sat in them long enough for them to become bothersome. “But that’s something to worry about later! First, the main reason I wanted to talk to you...”
He put down his cup, reaching over to grab some paperwork on the right side of the table and slide it to her.
“As you know most of our cars in our collection were not salvageable after the break in.” Mei tensed a bit at that, frowning down at the paperwork in front of her. And her eyes widened. “And, well, we never really had reason to drive them anyway. Refilling the garage with new cars just seems silly at this point, so your mother and I were talking about possibly restructuring it and making the empty 3/4 of the garage into a sort of...” He paused for a moment, humming before snapping his fingers. “A workshop, I suppose is the correct term! For someone who liked to collect a lot of cars at one point I don’t know much about them, that was always more your mother’s interest even if she always insisted we only needed two. But you’re always working on your motorcycle and I thought giving you that space would be a much more reasonable use for it!”
Mei set her teacup down, picking up the papers as he talked and looking over them with wide eyes.
They were blueprints. For a garage workshop. For her motorcycle. For her.
“I-I!” She sputtered, gesturing to the papers with a shake of her head. “You... but this is-! I don’t-!”
“Mei,” her father said firmly, but gently, holding up one of his hands. “I know that we paid for you to live on your own in your own pent house and that you have a workshop outside as well, but this house is still your home as well! You have a room here, after all. But you don’t have to agree to having a workshop here if you don’t want one, they’re just blueprints at this point, and we can always find other uses for the empty space in the future.”
“... ok, what happened?” Mei asked, deadpan and looking at her father with suspicion. “I mean, I love the idea! I’d love to have a place for my vehicle work here! But ever since the break in you and mom have been acting really weird, dad!”
Mr. Long tensed, looking away from his daughter for a moment before bowing his head to look down into his tea.
“We... had a conversation with Mr. Tang,” Mr. Long said after a moment of silence, making Mei look at him with surprise. “... actually, no, it was more like we were given a lecture by Mr. Tang.” He chuckled, ruffling his hair and looking back up to Mei. “We may have many years on him, but he made us feel like teenagers being yelled at by the principal again. Your mother and I... we realized after your reaction of surprise that we haven’t been the most open and communicative parents. We’ve treated our house like more of a museum than as a home ever since you were a child, and when you moved out and we helped you get everything you had no access to while growing up here... we didn’t realize that it would feel even more so like we were trying to uphold that image.”
“Mr. Tang talked to you about that?” Mei winced, remembering the multiple times she would rant at her family friend who had been there for her since she was just a little girl. Multiple... multiple times. He’d been sworn to secrecy, naturally, but it seemed that this was the last straw for him.
“Yes,” her father confirmed with a nod, twisting his fingers. “We never meant for you to feel unwelcome in your own home, but with how busy we always were and how proud we were of our family history we lost sight of the fact we were. Even if you only stay here when we’re gone to watch the house we want you to feel comfortable, Mei. I can understand if you’re still apprehensive of this, however.”
Whatever Tang has said to the Long family heads must have been something to behold. And Mei couldn’t help but grab the paperwork and move to the side of the table her father sat at, sitting beside him instead of across from him.
“Well for starters, lets make this less ‘business meeting’ and more ‘dad talking to kid’, ok?” She said lightly, laying the papers in front of both of them. “And... car upkeep is more mom’s thing? Since when?” Mei raised a brow with a smirk,
Her father looked at her with surprise before chuckling, moving to half face her and the table with a far more comfortable smile. “She hasn’t really had the time to work on them since well before you were born, but...” he leaned in closer, whispering conspiratorially. “She used to be a street racer too!”
“WHAT!?” Mei exclaimed, covering her mouth when her father raised a finger to his lips in a shushing motion. “Mom was a street racer?”
“One of the best, right around when she was your age too!” Mr. Long laughed, a far off look in his eyes. “You and her have a lot more in common than one would think at first glance. You’re smart, good with vehicles, not to mention our dragon powers are from her side of the family- I only earned my own through being close to her over a long period. Why, sometimes I think the only things you got from me were your skills in video games and amazing sense of hair style!”
“Dad!” Mei laughed, gently shoving her dad’s shoulder tentatively. When he only laughed more at that she softened, relaxing against the table. “Guess I have a lot to learn about you both, huh?
“As long as you want to,” her father offered, spreading the blueprints between the two of them.
"I do,” she agreed, looking over the papers again. They could definitely use some... fine tuning. But they were a good start. “But I guess I was right about one thing!”
“What’s that?”
“Every time someone saw you guys they thought you were the one to be worried about,” she admitted with another chuckle, shaking her head. “I’d always correct them saying ‘my father may look like the scary one, but it’s my mother you need to be afraid of’ and now... well, if mom used to race the way I do on my bike I was way more right than I thought I was.”
“Oh, Mei, your mother was far more reckless than you ever were. You should have seen some of the catastrophes she used to cause.”
“... are they on the internet?”
Her father frowned for a moment before watching the door... and a conspiratorial smirk overtook his face.
“Want to find out together?”
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drmmyrs · 3 years
Text
The Way I Loved You (Poppy x MC)
Soo bear with me since I think this might be a long series. This part is mostly just establishing the story so there is little to no fluff yet.
But stiiill, let me know what you guys think and I’d really appreciate feedback/constructive criticism. Hope you enjoy and if not, thanks for reading anyways :)) 
tag list: @whackawriting @samanthadalton @crazzyplays @uselesslesbianfr (ithis is my taglist I thiiink, but if you wanna be added or removed just let me know)  
Pairing: Poppy x MC (Bea)
Word Count: 1650
Warning: Little swearing (at least for this part)
A/N: This is from the part before Poppy and MC were paired for a project
Bea had been at Belvoire for two months now, but she still wasn't used to waking up on a queen-sized canopy bed fitted with luxe sateen sheets in a bedroom which probably cost more than her family's house back at Farmsville. She glanced at the clock–11:30 am. She still had some time to spare before her first class. How people managed to wake up early on this luxurious bed made of clouds, she didn't know.
After a few more minutes of daydreaming, Bea begrudgingly pulled herself out of bed. She was preparing her outfit when the smell of heaven wafted through the bedroom door–bacon and pancakes. Like some kind of puppet on strings, Bea let herself be led by the delicious aroma to the kitchen where Zoey was expertly pouring pancake batter on a pan.
"I didn't know I was roommates with a master chef," Bea jested.
Zoey turned around at Bea's voice, and as she saw her, a smirk crawled up her lips.
"Well, don't you look sexy." Zoey eyed Bea up and down with an amused look on her face.
Bea glanced down at her outfit and saw that she was still in her pajamas. "Whatever Zo, not everyone can rock designer outfits even in bed."
"Hey, I'm not complaining. Besides, Spongebob PJs do have a certain charm."
Bea rolled her eyes while smiling. "So, what are we having for breakfast?"
"I'm pretty sure it's lunch. And aren't you supposed to be in class, like, right about now?"
"Nah, my Tuesday classes aren't until one o'clock."
Zoey stared at Bea. "Babe, it's Wednesday."
Bea's eyes widened at Zoey's words. "No, no, no, Professor Roberta is gonna kill me."
Bea rushed to her room and hastily changed her clothes faster than she thought was possible. She contemplated going to class au naturel, but ultimately decided against it. Bea was not ugly by any means without makeup, but in a sea of extremely contoured cheeks and false eyelashes, having no makeup was basically social suicide, especially since Poppy was in that class. Ugh, great. Of course, I'm late to the only class I have with Poppy.
When Bea thought she was presentable enough, she sprinted out the door but not before grabbing a handful of pancakes and shoving it to her mouth, looking like a chipmunk in the process. The T is gonna have a field day if someone saw me like this. Bea slowed her sprint to a stride as she swallowed the last of the pancakes.
Bea arrived in class forty-five minutes late.
"Look who finally decided to join us," Professor Roberta said in disdain.
"Sorry Professor, won't happen again."
"I'm sure it won't. And since you decided to join us so late, you're gonna have to work with Ms. Min-Sinclair over here for your community service project."
Oh hell no.
Sure enough, Poppy was sitting alone, glaring at her, and Bea could almost swear she could see smoke coming out of her nose.
Bea hesitantly sat down beside Poppy.
"Look Poppy, let's be civil about this and finish this project fast so we–"
"We're not going to do anything, Farmsville. I will ace this project and you will stay out of my damn way."
"Like hell I'm gonna let you take all the credit."
"Is there a problem here?" The professor glowered at Poppy and Bea.
"None professor, we were just calmly discussing the details of the project," Poppy responded with a fake smile.
Bea rolled her eyes. Kiss ass.
Once the professor was out of earshot, Poppy sharply turned to Bea. "Be ready on Friday, we're going to a foster home in Middletown."
"Middletown? But that's like an hour away!"
"I don't see you coming up with better ideas," Poppy hissed.
"I–I–"
"I thought so. Do not be late, Farmsville. I don't want you taking more of my time than you already do," Poppy said with a glare before she grabbed her Chanel purse and strode away.
***
Back at her dorm, Bea was resting her head on her hands on the dining table when Zoey arrived.
Upon seeing Bea, Zoey immediately took a seat beside her and placed her hand comfortingly on her shoulder. "Aww, babe. Was Professor Roberta that mad?"
Bea turned to face Zoey. "No, but it was much, much worse."
Zoey raised her eyebrow.
"I was paired with Satan for our project."
"Poppy?"
Bea nodded. "She even wanted to do the project in Middletown. Middletown. That's like an hour away! I mean surely there has to be another community that needs servicing that doesn't require an hour drive with Poppy."
Zoey pretended to think thoughtfully. "Hmm, maybe she finally found a way to get rid of you permanently?"
"I'm serious, Zo." Bea glared at Zoey.
Zoey laughed. "Okay, okay, sorry. But do bring holy water just in case."
Bea groaned and stood up from the chair before ambling to her bedroom. "I'm going to bed."
Before Bea was able to shut the door, Zoey called out after her. "You'll survive, babe! Give her hell for me."
***
Just a few minutes after Bea got back from her classes, she heard the sound of consecutive horns outside which she immediately knew were from Poppy. No one else is obnoxious enough to disturb an entire dormitory. With a sigh, Bea grabbed her things and trudged outside.
When Bea got outside, Poppy's Range Rover was parked at the curb. Bea walked to the passenger's side and opened the door.
"Be a dear will you and don't touch anything, I don't want your filthy hands staining my car."
Bea rolled her eyes. Hello to you, too.
The first few minutes of the drive were silent except for the light rain that started drizzling on the windshield, that is, until Bea asked Poppy, "why are we going all the way to Middletown anyway? There's probably some–"
"Remember that time when I asked for your opinion?"
Bea just glared at Poppy.
"Me neither. So, shut up, Hughes."
"How about you take a day off from being a bitch, Poppy. Seeing that you've had your whole life being just that," Bea rebuked.
The entire car ride was spent with both girls hurling insults at each other that it was honestly surprising that Poppy didn't kick Bea out of the car in the middle of the road.
After one looong hour, they finally arrived.
"Don't get in my way, Farmsville," Poppy warned as she approached the house and rang the doorbell. After a few moments, a middle-aged woman opened the door.
"Poppy! What a pleasant surprise. Come on in." The woman gestured them inside.
Hang on, how does she know Poppy?
The woman led Bea and Poppy to a couch and asked them if they wanted something to drink, to which both of them politely declined.
"So, Brenda. How is the family?" Poppy was wearing a smile that might actually be... genuine?
Bea stared at Poppy in shock. Not only were they on a first-name basis, but Poppy was actually nice to someone that doesn't involve sucking up.
"They're doing great! Thomas actually just got promoted recently so we're gonna take the kids somewhere nice sometime next week."
"That's amazing, send Thomas my regards."
Okay, what the hell is happening?
After a few more polite conversations, Brenda turned to Bea. "You haven't introduced me to your friend yet." Brenda extended her hand to Bea. "I'm Brenda."
Bea wore her biggest smile as she shook Brenda's hand. "Bea. It's a pleasure to meet you."
Poppy cleared her throat. "Actually, we came here for a community service project, and we were hoping that we could throw the kids a small party and maybe at the same time we can do a photography shoot that can be shared to prospective families. Do you think we can do that?"
"Oh, certainly! I'm sure the kids would love that."
"That's great to hear. Where are they anyway?"
"They're actually out there playing with the toys you sent them. Come on, I'll lead you to them." Brenda stood up and walked towards the back door.
Poppy started to follow her but turned around when she noticed Bea was still sitting down.
"If you're just gonna sit there like a half-wit, do us a favor Farmsville, and do it far away from here."
Still in disbelief, Bea stood up and followed Poppy and Brenda to the yard where Poppy was greeted enthusiastically by five kids. She watched as Poppy played with them with such kindness and compassion that she couldn't help but smile as most of her anger towards the blonde was replaced with warmth and some other indescribable feelings. After a few more games where Bea was basically manhandled by Poppy to join, all of them went back inside exhausted. As it was already getting late, Bea and Poppy said their farewells to Brenda and the kids with a promise of returning on Sunday for the party and went back on the road.
Bea had so many questions she wanted to ask Poppy but the look on Poppy's face implied that she probably won't be answering any of those. A few minutes later, there was suddenly a huge downpour of rain that Poppy had to park the car. Bea then received a text from Zoey, and as she read it, a look of dread flashed across her face.
Poppy frowned upon seeing the look on Bea's face. "What is it now?"
"There's a typhoon. We're stuck here."
***
Bea and Poppy managed to find a decent hotel nearby where they decided to stay until the typhoon passed.
"Two rooms, please. And make them as far away as possible," Poppy said to the receptionist while handing him her credit card, giving Bea a glare at the last sentence.
And here I thought we're finally making progress.
"I'm sorry Ms. Min-Sinclair, we only have one more room available for tonight."
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sisterspooky1013 · 3 years
Text
Only One Choice, Part 2, Chapter 9
Read it here on AO3 / Tagging @today-in-fic
When she wakes, she momentarily can’t place where she is. The room is dim and there’s a soft whirring sound, a warm body tucked close against her back. Mulder’s apartment, she remembers. They’d decided to make it a double feature, collecting their clothes and switching out Mars Attacks for Twister. She must have drifted off at some point, with Mulder spooning her on the narrow couch, and the automatic rewind on the VCR kicked on when the movie ended. She pulls in a deep breath and his arm around her waist tightens momentarily.
“Stay,” he croaks from behind her, sounding as though he had also fallen asleep.
“I can’t, Mulder,” she replies, twisting her body around to face him, her nose pressed into his chest.
“Why?” he asks, brushing his palm up and down over her back.
“Because, I shouldn’t.” She knows her tone isn’t all that convincing.
“Says who?” he asks, though not indignantly.
“Says…I don’t know. Me, I guess,” she replies in a defeated tone.
He sighs, then pauses to consider his words.
“I don’t want to pressure you. But the idea of not seeing you again for a week kind of makes me want to die.” His words are soft and measured, communicating honesty, not frustration.
“That’s very dramatic,” she answers with a teasing lilt.
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m pathetic.”
She worms up until she’s close enough to kiss him, pressing her lips to his cheek and then his mouth.
“You’re not pathetic,” she says tenderly, “you’re actually very sweet. I’ll make you a deal; I’m not going to stay the night,” she quirks a smile at his dramatic frown, “but we can get dinner tomorrow, and if you want to have coffee one day this week, you can come down.” She gives him a hopeful smile.
“That seems like a fair deal,” he says, kissing her forehead. “But if you get home, or wake up in the middle of the night, and realize you’ve made a horrible mistake, just call me. I’ll come right over.”
“I promise I will,” she says, then disentangles herself from his arms and collects her purse and shoes. She says goodbye to Priscilla, then bids a very long and very kiss-filled goodbye to Mulder before he finally releases his grip on her. As she waits for the elevator she hears the patter of his bare feet on the hallway floor and turns to see him skittering towards her, pulling her into one last kiss before he runs back to his apartment door, waving at her with a coy little smile.
Once she’s buckled into her car, she lets out a deep breath. She’d barely made it out of there; if Mulder had asked one more time, kissed her once more on the couch, she might have caved. Might have stayed the night, and might have done who knows what else. She can easily see the strong potential for this budding relationship to fast track to being more serious than she feels ready for, and it scares her. She’s never felt this strongly about anyone so soon after becoming involved with them. Clearly he has a strong pull on her, given that she cheated on Ethan with him, it’s just a lot, and she’s a person who likes to think clearly and make rational decisions. When she’s with Mulder, she loses the ability to think rationally.
When she’s home and tucked into bed, she does wish he were there, curled up behind her. Knowing she could call him and he’d be here in fifteen minutes is tempting, but she talks herself out of it. Not yet, not until she’s sure that this is more than just animal attraction. More than wanting to prove she didn’t destroy her relationship with Ethan over nothing.
It has to be more. And she suspects that it will be.
———
“Okay, spill it,” Missy says, and Dana looks at her with a mildly shocked expression, not even having fully taken her seat at the cafe with a mocha in hand before Missy gets down to business.
“Hello to you, too, Missy. How was your evening?” she asks her sister with a facetious tone.
“I hung around by myself and wondered what kind of action my little sister was getting that I wasn’t, so please, indulge me.”
Dana laughs and shakes her head, debating how much detail to give.
“It was nice, we just watched a couple movies, ate pizza, drank beer.”
“...and?” Missy asks expectantly.
“...and, we watched Mars Attacks and Twister,” Dana answers, knowing that this is not the information Missy is asking for.
Missy drops her head to the side with a frustrated glare. “Dana, quit being a prude, or I’ll just make up my own story and tell it to you right here in the coffee shop, I know you’d love that.”
Dana makes a face. “Okay, fine. Yes, we...fooled around. But we didn’t have sex.”
“Really, why not?” Missy questions incredulously.
“Missy, it’s not that abnormal not to sleep with someone on the second date,” Dana retorts with an annoyed tone.
“It is if they’ve already gone down on you and you’ve been obsessing over them for almost a year,” Missy shoots back.
“Well, regardless of your unsolicited opinion,” Dana replies, “emphasis on unsolicited, I’m choosing to wait a bit, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Fine, whatever floats your boat, Sis. Please elaborate on ‘fooled around’.”
Dana scoffs. “We...kissed, and some other things. Why are you asking for all this detail, Missy? I don’t recall you ever asking me to be this explicit regarding my sex life with Ethan.”
Missy rolls her eyes. “I’m willing to bet Ethan was into missionary with the lights off. This Mulder guy has serious sexual energy, he seems like the kind of man who knows what he’s doing. When’s his birthday?”
Scully frowns at the memory. “October 13th,” she answers flatly.
Missy shoots her a surprised expression, but suppresses it quickly. “Oh, wow, okay. Um, so he’s a libra. That’s a good thing, libras are very generous lovers.”
“I have seen evidence of that, however my pants stayed on last night so nothing to report in that respect,” Dana answers, taking a sip of her coffee to avoid looking at her sister.
“But his didn’t?” Missy asks with a smirk, and Dana purses her lips but doesn’t respond. It’s as good as saying yes.
“Dana Katherine Scully,” Missy teases with a knowing smile. “Some things never change.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dana asks defensively.
“Oh please, Dana, we went to the same school, you don’t think I heard the story about you and Marcus behind the gymnasium?”
Dana’s mouth hangs open in shock.
“Well, I hope he enjoyed his favor being reciprocated nine months later,” Missy continues, then adds “did you swallow?”
Her mouth drops open wider and she slaps Missy gently on the upper arm. “Melissa, don’t be gross!”
Missy is giggling and swatting her away. “You know what Dad always said, Dana, ‘a Scully sees it through to the end!’” She crosses her arms over her face in self-defense as Dana peppers her with little slaps, though they’re both laughing.
Finally, the tittering subsides and they are both back in their respective seats, catching their breath.
“So when are you seeing him again?” Missy asks, tucking her feet underneath her legs.
“Tonight, actually.” Dana answers self-consciously.
“Oh really? So soon?”
“Well he practically begged me to stay the night and said he didn’t want to wait until next weekend, so it was somewhat of a compromise,” Dana answers, the arrangement sounding like a red flag to her own ears.
“Dang, he’s got it bad,” Missy remarks with a little frown. “Is it too much? Are you doing that thing?”
“What thing?” Dana asks defensively.
“That thing where you get overwhelmed when someone is really interested in you and you sabotage it?” Missy ventures.
Dana furrows her eyebrows. “I don’t do that,” she says, but her tone suggests that she may not believe herself. “I just don’t want to get all caught up in the excitement of a new relationship and not look at things objectively,” she finishes.
“You know,” Missy says helpfully, “that exciting new relationship, not thinking clearly, crazy in love feeling is something most people like, Sis.”
Dana shrugs. “You know me,” she says plainly, “I’m not really one for excitement.”
“I have a sneaking suspicion that Mulder is going to put that to the test,” Missy retorts with a smile, and Dana cringes.
“I think you may be right.”
———
Her demeanor when he picks her up for dinner seems just a bit guarded and is markedly different than it had been when they parted ways last night. He brushes it off, figuring that things between them are still new and awkward, and recognizing that he’s probably coming on just a little too strong.
The day has been grey and cool, and she’s wearing jeans and an oversized blue sweater, her hair pulled half up into a little bun. He smiles warmly at her, but stops short of telling her how amazing she looks, sensing that she might not want to hear it. They make their way to a little Mexican place near her house and she is polite but quiet as they order, munching on chips and salsa with a pensive expression.
“Are you okay?” he asks cautiously, and she nods. “I’m freaking you out, aren’t I?” he adds, and she shakes her head gently, but looks at him with wide eyes from beneath her lashes, and he knows it’s true.
He sits back, running his hands through his hair. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Is it the sex part or the feelings part?” he questions, and when her eyebrows lift in surprise he suggests “Both?”
She laughs softly and shakes her head. “It’s really not you, Mulder, it’s me. I’m just not very comfortable with the whole,” she swirls her wrist around in the air, “whirlwind feeling, when things are new.”
He leans forward on his elbows and looks at her seriously. “Tell me what you need me to do differently, Scully, and I promise I’ll do it.”
“Maybe just...don’t act as though I hung the moon?” she offers with a pained expression. “I’m just a human person like anyone else, faults and all. It makes me worry that when you really get to know me you won’t like what you find.”
He gives her an amused smirk. “At the risk of further idolizing you, what’s not to like?”
“You want me to write a list?” She asks, returning his smirk, and he gives her a half shrug, half nod. “Well, if I’m basing this on what my family, friends, and past partners might say; I’m very rigid in my thinking on most matters, take myself far too seriously, am emotionally distant much of the time, don’t really know how to have fun and...I cannot carry a tune in a bucket. Basically I’m a total stick in the mud.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says, smiling at her. Her self-consciousness is wildly endearing.
“Okay now you have to go,” she says, picking at her paper napkin.
“Oh, what are my worst qualities?” he clarifies, “Jeez, this could take a while. Um, I’m very singularly focused, as in whatever I’m chasing down at the moment I become completely obsessed with to the detriment of all other things in my life,” he casts her a little glance to confirm that she understands that this is what he’s doing with her, which she does.
“I’m a workaholic, though that’s a lot easier to manage when I’m not all that invested in what I’m working on. I’m terrible with things like birthdays, anniversaries, or generally sentimental things, I just forget them completely. I’m also persistent to a fault, and have a hard time letting things, and people, go, even when I should,” he looks at her again, and she gives him a tight-lipped smile. His worst qualities are the ones that are at risk of scaring her off right now.
“Well then, perhaps,” Scully offers, “I’ll work on not trying to shut you out, and you can work on not trying quite so hard to get in.”
“We’re still talking about feelings here, right?” he jokes, and she rolls her eyes.
“There’s another flaw I forgot, making jokes at completely inappropriate times.”
She smiles at him, with teeth, and he knows they’ll be okay. He needs to be mindful, but he hasn’t totally fucked it up yet.
The rest of their meal goes without incident. He talks about spontaneous human combustion while she calmly explains why it’s medically and scientifically impossible. The way she can disagree with him without talking to him like he’s a lunatic endears to him even further, but he works hard not to let it show. When the waiter comes by and asks about dessert, she shakes her head.
“I have ice cream at home,” she says after the waiter leaves, “saves us five bucks.”
He masks the surprise and delight he feels knowing she’s essentially just invited him back to her apartment, and absolutely does not allow himself to hope that she’ll let him stay the night. It’s a work night after all, and she’s just made clear that she has a tendency towards rules and guidelines; sleepovers on a school night seem like something she’d be against.
Back at her apartment, she gives him a quick tour, having neglected to do so when he was here last week, and he’s impressed though not surprised by how grown up and clean her place is. It matches her personality perfectly, and that makes him like the place immediately.
She opens the freezer and pulls out a pint of ice cream, then retrieves two spoons and hops up on to the counter, which brings them just about face to face height-wise. The cold blast from the open freezer has hardened her nipples and he avoids looking as they pass the pint back and forth, taking alternate bites and talking about their favorite and least favorite flavors. Soon enough, the tub is empty, and she sets it and the two spoons to the side, leaning back against the cupboard behind her. He steps closer into the space between her thighs and places his hands gently on her hips.
“Do you want me to go?” he asks in a neutral tone, not wanting to sound like he’s trying to persuade her.
She quirks her mouth to the side in consideration. “Maybe not just yet,” she says, then hooks her legs around the backs of his thighs and pulls him closer.
He suppresses a victorious smile and instead leans forward to kiss her, simultaneously slipping his hands under the hem of her sweater. She jumps a little at the contact, and he realizes how cold his fingers must be from the ice cream. He pulls his hands free, rubbing them together briskly in the space between their bodies as he continues to kiss her smiling mouth. When he’s satisfied that they are warm, he returns them to her bare sides and she hums in approval. Her hands find the back of his neck, scratching through his hair as his fingers trail their way up the ladder of her rib cage until they meet with the soft underside of her bare breasts. He wants to make mention of the lack of bra, but isn’t sure if calling attention to it would make her self conscious, so he says nothing and just enjoys it. Brushing his thumbs along the seam where chest becomes breast, he moves to kiss down her neck, teasing at the skin behind her ear with the firm tip of his tongue. Finding the spot she seems to like the best, he then runs his thumbs up until they meet with her hardened nipples and she emits a little moan that goes straight to his dick. He stays on this particular combination of rolling her nipples between his thumb and forefinger while licking and kissing her neck until she’s tightening the grip of her legs around his hips, seeking friction. He pushes the fabric of her sweater up slowly enough that she has plenty of time to tell him if she wants to stop, but once her breasts are exposed and his mouth is wrapped around one of her nipples, he is absolutely sure that she doesn’t. She lets her head fall back against the cupboard, breathing hard through her open mouth. He brings the fingers of one hand to the button on her jeans, then pauses.
“Okay?” he asks around the nipple between his lips, and she hums out an “mmmhmmm.”
Flicking the button open and easing the fly down, he slips his hand palm-up under her panties, drifting down through her neatly trimmed hair and into the slick heat of her. She’s deliciously wet, and knowing he caused it makes him feel weak in the knees as he rubs his groin against the edge of the counter, even more turned on than he had been before. He slides his fingers up and down over her swollen lips, his tongue still lapping and sucking at her nipples alternately, and she is panting and quaking beneath him, hips writhing and fingers digging into his neck telling him that she wants more. He circles his dampened thumb around her clit and she whimpers, clutching his head to her chest. His middle finger finds her entrance and swirls around it, not quite entering, and she stills, waiting, anticipating. When he continues with his same teasing movements, she lets out a frustrated breath and speaks.
“Please,” she whispers, her voice pained.
He smiles against her breast, slipping his finger inside, and she moans low and long, throbbing once around him. He experiments with different ways of touching her, inside and out, and soon she’s gasping and breathing raggedly, flexing her hips into his hand, nearly suffocating him with her breast in his mouth and he feels like he’s in heaven.
“Oh god,” she moans, then goes still for a long moment as he feels her walls clench tight around his finger. Then she’s coming, throbbing rhythmically and pulling his face up to kiss her, pouring her blissful moans right into his open mouth and clutching him as close as he can get with one hand in her pants. Finally, she touches his wrist gently and he pulls his hand free, enveloping her fully in his arms as they kiss with just as much passion as they started with.
“That really wasn’t what I had in mind when I suggested ice cream,” she says against his mouth, and he smiles, breaking the kiss.
“So that wasn’t some kind of ‘dessert’ double entendre?” he asks, pulling back slightly and looking at her flushed cheeks and still-dilated pupils.
“No, but I’m not exactly devastated that you interpreted it that way,” she replies with a playful lilt.
“So...what now?” he asks cautiously, neither wanting to overstay his welcome nor do what Frohike delicately calls ‘hit it and quit it.’
She bites her lip and considers the question. “You wanna hang out for a bit and watch TV? I’ll have to kick you out at 9:00, it being a school night and all.”
He feels his mouth stretch into a broad smile at the confirmation of his suspicion that she calls it early on work nights.
“Sounds perfect,” he replies, then steps back so she can jump down from the counter, re-fastening her jeans while casting him a mirthful glance.
They snuggle up on the couch and half-watch whatever is on, but mostly they talk, and kiss, and laugh. He finally asks her about the little gold cross necklace she’s always wearing, and he finds himself further enamored with how complex she is; a woman of science and religion, beautiful and strong, smart and fun. He’s working hard to temper his expression of it, but if he was only ninety-five percent sure he was in love with her when he said it back in August, he is one-hundred-twenty percent sure now.
True to her word, she kicks him out at 9:00 and promises that they will get together for coffee this week once she takes a look at her autopsy schedule and knows which days she’s free.
Once in his car, he drops his head against the back of the seat with a satisfied sigh. All week at work, his colleagues will ask him what he’s smiling about, and he’ll tell them truthfully that he’s just really, really happy.
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that-peach-anon · 3 years
Text
Did no one say Sam and Max coraline au? Ahaha i wrote for it anyways (:
Almost 3000 words of Geek angst because i adore her character kahshdkshs
This was written based on @lesbialien 's coraline au and i hope y'all enjoy it!
---
Geek had never been one to depend on others. She had grown up in the basement after all, and being a kid genius, she knew how to take care of anything necessary for survival.
Not that she had been taken care of before. Not many people are interested in adopting the kid that was busier studying bugs' corpses rather than playing dolls with her peers. But that was okay too. She'd much rather be left in the orphanage where there were no parents to smother her and distract her from her studies, she was a person of science after all.
And then came Sam and Max. A duo that called themselves “freelance police" but had much too twisted morals and messed up ethics to be considered any sort of responsible and trustworthy employees. And that was okay. Geek didn’t have that many worries about ethics and morals, after all, to learn things, sometimes morals and ethics get in the way. If she had been adopted by normal people, they would have insisted for her to stop with the dissections and chemically hazardous experiments because that's “not for kids", and that would have been awful. But no, Sam and Max didn't care about that, in fact, most of the times they were the ones in danger, where Max would eat dead animals or consume poisonous chemicals, and Sam would just laugh it off and never get angry at Geek for them allowing Max to do so.
And that made sense. They weren't her parents, so why should they berate her for doing whatever she wanted. She more or less worked for them, only seeing them every few times that they needed some wacky gadget for another case. And that was totally fine with geek. Yeah. They didn’t care if Sam and Max were always busy, they were just her employers, more or less. So it was fine that they didn't spend that much time with the duo, she was only there to make stuff for them, and that was okay. Or at least she liked to pretend so.
But then something changed. One day, the rabbit and dog approached her looking rather embarrassed, which wasn't common for them, and asked to talk to her. That had triggered some alarms. They never were serious or mature enough to have talks instead of just being ignorant to everything, so this meant they were about to do something drastic that involved her. And that wasn't bad, per say. They were glad to finally be able to spend some time with the two, but she wasn't sure if this was going to be time spent doing something enjoyable.
Maybe they had decided that her services were no longer necessary? Or they had found another child genius that was happier and more energetic than Geek will ever be, and they were about to trade her for them? The possibilities were endless. But nothing had prepared them for what truly happened.
Across from them sat a beaming Sam and Max, signed adoption papers on top of the table that stood between them. Adoption papers for them. They had adopted Geek. They were her parents. This wasn't really what she expected out of all the unpredictable things they could do.
“You two… adopted me?” Her voice had been quieter than she wanted it to be, barely able to fight back the nausea slowly crawling up their throat. “Officially? As in, legally?”
“Well, yes.” Sam looked rather calm for what was supposed to be a tremendous occasion for her. “Me and Max were talking during a case and we thought it would be a good idea to adopt you, so we did.”
“Plus, the orphanage was being annoying as hell and kept bothering us about if we were gonna adopt you or else you had to go back!” Max added, apparently picking something off the sharp blades he had as teeth. “And we don't wanna look for a replacement, so this was the least troublesome thing we could do.”
If she didn't know Max better, they would think he didn't care at all, but she could see how his left foot was bouncing in place, a nervous stim he had whenever he was anxious. Max always had a soft spot for kids, so she knew he was just trying to look calm while he panicked on the inside.
“Am… am I supposed to call you two dad and father from now on?” She asked, bunching the end of her skirt in one hand.
“Do whatever you want, kid.” Max answered dismissively, Geek ignoring the way he had one of his hands holding Sam's, another telltale sign of nervousness from him. “We don't care.”
“Okay.” Their usually strong voice was now soft, barely leaving their tongue as it weighed down like lead. “I'm going back to the basement if you don't mind.”
“We'll be here if you need to talk, alright, kiddo?” Sam had asked, already stretching as he got up from the chair. Geek had done nothing more than give a dismissive hum, already having their mind in a turmoil, thoughts thrashing around like a hurricane, making her head spin and stomach tighten.
  That conversation had happened a few days ago, already just a sour memory she kept repeating in their head as her thoughts bothered and invaded her mind. Not much had changed noticeably. Now they would sometimes check up on her before grabbing a gadget and leaving, or tell her about a case before already going to another, leaving her alone for hours on end. Now Sam used more nicknames like kiddo and champ, and Max had taken to calling them kid instead of Geek. And that wasn't bad, Geek just couldn't bring herself to act with them as if everything was fine and nothing changed.
Were they going to stop her from doing her experiments because it was too dangerous and they had to make sure she stayed alive? Would they not let her do anything dangerous in case she could get hurt? Or maybe they would try putting her in school, even if she had already attended college at this point. Or they'd simply stop her from being herself and make them act like a normal child.
That would be way out of character for Sam and Max, but maybe this wasn't something she was scared of, but rather something she hoped for? Perhaps she longed for the two of them to worry about her and care about her instead of only herself being the only one that actually cares about what happens to them. Maybe she wanted a break from having to take care of herself while still a child and have someone else be the one caring for her.
But she couldn't ask that from Sam and Max, they had reckless personalities. They only really showed direct worry when something truly bad happened, like when one of the duo went missing and the other went mad trying to find them. To be honest, she didn't think they truly had showed any direct worry. Whenever they asked about how she felt they always dismissed her answer because they were more entertained by something else. They truly did try to care for them, but the two of them just weren't used to not being in tune with someone's feelings like they were with each other’s. She doesn't remember the last time one of them had to ask the other how they felt, they just usually knew.
She knew they didn't do it out of malice, they just didn't really know how to communicate. The two had never been the most in tune with feelings, barely acknowledging their own in favor of living a blissfully ignorant life. Their attempts at “parenting" Geek never quite worked out. She supposes it’s because they don't really know how to take care of something that has the capability of human thought. The most difficult thing the two had truly raised up until now was a crocodile, and he had had to be left in someone else's care in the end, so maybe it didn't count. But they tried, or at least tried to try.
The blame couldn't be placed only on the two, though. Geek's internal conflict also served as an incredibly unhelpful existence. While she did long for this whole family thing to be normal, it never did feel quite right. She felt like an intruder in the dynamic of the duo, like her only reason to interact with them was to provide a place where their gadgets came from. They felt… like a side-character, like someone who didn't belong. Maybe Sam and Max forgot about her whenever they weren't talking to her directly. I mean, the two barely knew she existed half of the time, so it was a possibility.
Anyway. So, listening wasn't their strong suit. But that's okay, at least they cared to ask, even if it did upset Geek when they found out none of them had truly listened. But that was alright, she could deal with being ignored, she already lived with that for 13 years. It was fine. She could just care for herself.
Which, wasn't something she was currently doing while dissecting a bass. In fact, she was so lost in thought, reminiscing over the words that kept playing in her head, that they had no time to notice as the scalpel slid and cut open a gash in their palm.
“Ow! Goddamn it!” They shouted in pain, the cutting tool falling on the tray next to her, letting out a loud bang as metal met metal.
Using a nearby tissue, she pressed it against the palm, grumbling at how much blood was seeping out and how annoying it would be when trying to move their hand. It was a bit deep; she probably would have needed to bandage it up but that was fine. They had created a gadget meant to cauterize wounds, so it would be healed pretty quickly.
Rummaging through the gadgets in their desk, she ignored the blood dripping and staining the tiles beneath her feet, sighing loudly when they remembered where the gadget was.
Max had taken it a few days ago to test his theory. The gadget looked like a simple butter knife, but it heated up dangerously, so the lagomorph had wanted to see if by stabbing someone with it, the wound would cauterize and it would be a good torture method. She hadn't been able to get in a word before Max had run away with it, a manic smile already on his face.
And just like with all the other gadgets they got from her that they didn’t end up destroying, it was most probably thrown half-hazardly into their closet, added to the junk pile they had, ranging from memoirs from their cases to just random crap they found and decided to keep.
Arriving to the office, she opened the door with her elbow, already prepared to apologize for all the blood falling from her hand, but just like every time Sam and Max left for a case, the office was empty, the only noise coming from the still on ceiling fan. Closing the door with their back, Geek looked around to examine the room, cringing at how everything was either littered with bullet holes or just plain destroyed.
Opening the closet with her foot, she pulled on the string that hung from the ceiling, closing her eyes as the artificial yellow light invaded their vision, fluorescent shine illuminating the room. Blinking to adjust, she stepped further in, eyes jumping around to try and spot the object she was searching for. Where would a gadget hide in such a messy-
The object she was looking for fell in front of her, startling them as it rolled away a bit. Sighing, she knelt down to grab it, eyes snapping up as she realized that before her stood a small purple door with a gold doorknob. It was one of the memoirs from a case that Sam and Max had gone on, a fight against a gigantic banana slug in a mostly inhabited building. In the end, the owner of the building, a nice woman named Coraline, had decided to destroy the place, claiming it had too many child disappearances and was no longer safe. Since the slug had left nothing, they both stole a door that was in the wreckage, just chucking it into the closet and forgetting about it.
But now, instead of being fallen as it had been before, it was vertical, attached to the wall, with a dim blue light coming from beneath it. Geek had seen stranger things in her life, so they simply shrugged it off and turned to leave.
“Geek.”
Freezing in place, she turned around as a lulling voice came from the door. How did it know their name? Putting the gadget down, seeing as the wound had already stopped bleeding, she stepped closer, already grabbing the knob to slowly pry the door open, tilting their head as inside there was only a long blue tunnel, similar to those fabric tubes cats and young babies played in.
This was new. It definitely wasn't her making, and Sam and Max aren't smart enough to make a whole dimensional portal, so this wasn't part of their knowledge. Crouching down, she started crawling through the tunnel, only looking back when the door clicked in place as it closed by itself. At the other end was a door almost identical to the one she had gone through, except this one held what looked to be like claw marks.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed it open, sighing in disappointment as it led back to the office. Stepping out, she gasped as they realized that Sam and Max were there now, both looking to their respective tasks as they worked away, Sam typing while Max carved something onto his desk. Above them hung a “welcome home, Geek!” poster, slightly crooked to the left as it held on by two thin nails, one in each of the top corner.
Hearing the door close behind her with a slam, both Sam and Max turn to her, Geek immediately turning around to look at the small, purple, closed, door.
“Geek! Where were you? We were worried sick! We were waiting for you to tell us about your gadget you're making but we couldn't find you anywhere!” Sam spoke, stopping his typing as he pushed the chair away from his table, already standing up to greet her.
“Yeah, I wanna know if I can kill someone with it!” Max shouted, jumping up from his chair as he tried scrambling after Sam, in a spider like way, crawling onto his shoulder.
“Sorry about disappearing, I was just going through that door in the closet.” She explained, turning back around and looking down at their feet. “I'm sorry.”
“That's okay, kiddo! Just tell us next time so we don't worry so much.” Sam ruffled her hair as he spoke, Max jumping down from where he had perched himself to hug Geek, making her tense up.
“Yeah, we missed you lots!” Max spoke, seeming not caring about how tense Geek was in his arms, or the way she was barely breathing.
Looking up at Sam, she let out a shout of surprise as they spotted the black buttons that substituted his eyes. Pushing away from Max, she stepped back, looking at him in horror to find Max, too, had button eyes.
“What's wrong, kid?” Max asked, tilting his head at them. “Got something in my teeth?”
“You're not Sam and Max.” She affirmed, backing away and already grabbing the doorknob once again.
“Well, of course not! We're Other Sam and Other Max!” The tall dog replied in a duh tone, as if it was obvious. “We're just like them, except better in every way! Now come on, tell us about the gadget.”
“Okay.” Even when talking only to what seemed to be imitations of Sam and Max, she couldn't bring herself too not be polite. Kids were supposed to obey their parents, according to all the movies and series she watched as a way to know how children normally behave. “It's a neutron destabilizer-"
“Ooooh, neutron destabilizer, huh? Sounds fun!” Max exclaimed, hanging off of one of Sam's shoulders, smiling.
“Do you even know what neutrons are?” She asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“It's a part of the atom just like electrons and protons and all that sciency stuff.” He waved her off, and if he had actual eyes, she was sure he'd be rolling them.
“Yeah… anyway, I think the name is pretty self-explanatory so you must know what it does and-"
“But how does it work?” Sam interrupted, leaning back against his desk.
“You… actually want to know?”
“Of course, we like hearing about your day!”
“Oh.” She absent mindedly let go of the door, giving her full attention to them. “Well, it works by-"
And this was how she spent the rest of the evening. And sure, this Sam and Max weren't the real ones, but it actually felt nice to be heard once. Besides, they didn't seem to be hostile, so it didn't look as if they would be dangerous. So yeah, they did end up convincing them of sitting down to talk about other projects, but it was okay. It's not like she was going back. Visiting them was a one-time thing, right?
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consumeconstantly · 4 years
Text
Speak My Name In Tongues
1| 2(you are here) | 3 | 4  
Summary: Bruce Wayne is determined to get his daughter to safety and aid (read: take over for) the Parisian heroes in capturing their supervillains of over six years. Unfortunately, these two goals are in direct conflict. (all of biodad bruce things can be read as stand alones but I do post in chronological order)
________________________________________________
Let it be said that Bruce Wayne is a persistent man. 
When he wants something, he does not stop on the first or second failed attempt. It doesn’t matter if the world believes something to be impossible. It doesn’t matter if he fails spectacularly to achieve his goal multiple times, in fashions that would likely result in any man of lesser wealth becoming the laughing stock of the global community for months. In order for him to cease his pursuit, he must come to the realization that whatever he’s pursuing is not worth the effort. This is a very rare occasion. Most times when Bruce comes to this conclusion, his decision can be traced back to the trauma of his parents death and the subsequent consequences of his vigilante life style (read: not pursuing Jason’s death, letting Barbara get shot.)
Thus, when Marinette turns down his offer of a safer life, he will not take her rejection at face value. A lesser man might. But Bruce is not any such thing.
Anything that Marinette is involved in-- and he finds that she does a lot-- all oh-so-coincidentally happen to be things that Wayne Enterprises invests in as well. He marks down each and every charity event and gala that she is scheduled to attend and makes an appearance there as well. When he finds that she supports all of her collége friends in their pursuits, he attends too.
Somehow, she manages to skillfully evade being drawn into any long conversation with him and always ensures that there’s a third person involved when he even says hello. If Bruce weren’t trying so hard to have a talk with her, he’d say that her ability to do so was really quite impressive and spoke to the reach of her network. But again, Bruce is trying to convince his daughter that he’s not safe in Paris by herself when the League most likely has a bounty on her head. If Talia finds out that he had a daughter not borne by her-- she’s certainly changed in recent years, becoming more volatile and much less like the woman he fell in love with all those years ago.
He half believes that with Marinette’s wit, intellect, and escape abilities, she may even be able to hold her own against the League. Unfortunate that the League has weapons training and she does not.
“Marinette,” Bruce approaches her at a Bourgeois evening party. She has friends in high places, that’s for certain. Chloe Bourgeois works at her company in the public relations department as does Adrien Agreste, which definitely turned a lot of heads in the fashion industry as nobody expected the boy to work for anybody but his father, nor did they expect him to stop his modelling career in the prime of his life. For modelling works, she turns to Juleka Couffaine and occasionally Olympic hopefuls Kagami Tsurugi, Alix Kubdel, Ondine and Kim Le Chien.  Thanks to her connections to Rose Lavillant, she’s produced an entire line of scents that go with MDC’s evening wear. MDC is extensively covered by Aurore Boreale, one of the youngest talk show hosts in the industry, Alya Cesaire, a young journalist who’s won international acclaim with her writing, and Nadja Chamack, a Senior Executive producer of TVi. Though Bruce is rather impartial to the music industry, she’s well known for working with international singers Jagged Stone, Clara Nightingale, and Luka Couffaine as well as an up and coming EDM artist named Nino Lahiffe. In the film sector, she works closely with Tom Astruc and Graham Industries, with Adrien’s cousin, Felix. 
As the saying goes, Who you know is everything.
Marinette smiles, teeth bared. Even the way she stands is sharp. 
It’s difficult reconciling the girl in front of him with the pictures he saw while doing background checks on her, or even the girl he saw at the bar just three nights ago. At least, it’s difficult for Bruce to reconcile her when she’s around him; Marinette seems to be very much the same girl around her friends, which is almost just as frightening. When she’s with Adrien or Alya of Kagami, it’s as if her parent’s death didn’t even happen. All smiles and sunshine and good will. She still attends all of the charity events she signed up for, has increased the amount of hours she spends volunteering at homeless shelters and akuma shelters-- and Bruce has no clue in hell how Paris’ supervillain situation has gone unchecked for so long, but he already has several agents tracking down Hawkmoth and the Miraculous team to no avail-- and goes to work on a normal schedule. Since Tom and Sabine’s death, she’s taken no time off. 
In the presence of Bruce Wayne, however, there’s a great shift in her demeanor. There is nothing warm about her, and despite the fact that Marinette is his daughter and that she’s more than a full foot shorter than him, he finds himself wary of her. That says something, considering the types of people he faces down as Batman near daily.
For the first time, she allows him to approach without dodging him. 
“M. Wayne.” Marinette begins to meander to a less public place, all while maintaining a pretty media smile and waving to acquaintances as she passes them. The moment the door closes behind him, a flip is switched. 
“Leave me alone,” she growls. “I don’t want or need your protection.”
“Your parents were murdered.”
“You don’t think I know that? I was the one who found their corpses.”
“They’ll come after you, next.” The League of Assassins never leaves their jobs half done. Marinette is more of an achilles heel than Tom and Sabine were-- despite not being in her life, he cares for her. He can’t deny that if she were murdered, he’d probably get caught up in a fit of rage. The Lazarus Pits have not been good for his mental state over the years.
Marinette crosses her arms, sleeves fluttering around her. “You think you know who did it.”
“I don’t think I know; I’m sure who did it.”
“No,” Marinette says in a strangely detached tone. “You think you know who did it. You don’t actually know, do you, Dark Knight?”
Bruce’s stomach fills with dread. Something about her statement makes him feel nauseous. Queasy, even. “I do. The League of Assassins--”
“You think everything revolves around you, don’t you? Bruce Wayne and Batman are not the only ones with enemies.”
“You’re suggesting that you have enemies who would be willing to kill your parents?” Bruce isn’t sure how to take this. Marinette does have a fairly large following, runs in the most powerful and influential Parisian circles, and has money to spare. But as far as his research told him, she didn’t do anything to egregiously offend anybody, besides maybe one Lila Rossi and Chloe Bourgeois, though the latter of the two rectified their relationship eventually. 
“I don’t,” Marinette denies. “But Ladybug does.”
“The superhero.” Is his age finally catching up to him?
“The superhero,” Marinette agrees, looking at Bruce contemplatively. 
“Ladybug and I-- we’re close,” Marinette settles on. “Close enough for our bakery to become a safe house of sorts for the Miraculous team. Hawkmoth--no, Pavona. She either acted out of anger for her past with me or just wanted to strike a blow at the Miraculous team.”
Bruce feels a migraine coming on. It’s on days like this when he wishes he were a drinking sort of man. “Why would Pavona be upset with you?”
Marinette laughs, humorlessly. “World’s greatest detective, huh? Maybe you’ll figure it out eventually.”
He gets the feeling that their conversation is quickly coming to a close, and figures that whatever issue Marinette and Pavona have is something he can decipher later, “It doesn’t seem like Pavona has done much with this information. The Miraculous Team seems to be in high spirits, and there haven’t been any akumatizations in the past two weeks.”
Another dry laugh. “Wrong move at the wrong time. And besides Ladybug and you, nobody else knows.”
Marinette pushes past him, back to the door, back to the party. She pauses at the door. “I’ll put the two of you in contact. Until then, keep a lid on you and your operative’s emotions. I’m sure trained agents like yourselves can restrain yourself from feeling anger or sorrow for a while.”
Bruce is left with two horrifying realizations: Marinette is in a situation where she’s in over her head, and Sabine and Tom’s deaths have not been publicized.
#
Batman and Bruce have never liked magic or metas, and Ladybug seems to be both. It doesn’t help that she’s so high strung and seems to be inexplicably angry at him from the moment that he steps foot at their prearranged meetup.
“I sent you the ground rules if you want to operate in Paris. Forward it to your operatives. Follow the rules or leave.”
“I’m here to take down Hawkmoth,” Batman says with a bone-weary tiredness. 
Ladybug crosses her arms in a fashion that’s achingly familiar. “I know that. That’s why I’m giving you and your people the ground rules and a chance. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be allowed here.”
“Ladybug, you and your team have failed to catch Hawkmoth for six years now.”
“You and your team have been fighting the same set of villains for over thirty years. I wonder which one of us is really worse off.”
Batman grimaces. 
The heroine looks out at the night sky and sighs. “Look, this is a very stressful situation. Pavona acted out in one of the worst ways possible, and even though she and Hawkmoth seem to be MIA, it’s still not ideal.”
He remembers that Marinette said Ladybug and her parents were close. Batman stumbles over his words. He’s never been the best at comforting people, and healthy coping mechanisms simply don’t run in the family. There’s definitely a reason why he and all of his children take to vigilantism so well. “Tom and Sabine-- they were great people.”
Ladybug stills. 
Batman doesn’t know how old she is, or how old any of the Miraculous team is, besides from Chloe Bourgeois, who used to be Queen Bee. Something in the way her shoulders hunch, how her jaw trembles, and eyes water makes Batman feel like she’s just a child. But she can’t be. Not if she’s been protecting a city for six years. If he had to guess her age, he’d put her in her mid to late twenties, maybe even early thirties. 
“They were the most loving people I’ve ever known,” Ladybug says. “It was a privilege to know them.”
He’s not sure who made the decision to not release Tom and Sabine’s death to the public, but Batman recognizes it as a tactical decision. It only took a short amount of time to hack into security cameras near Marinette’s residence and filter through the sighting of the Miraculous Team at Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie, stopping to chat with Marinette or one of her parents, sometimes eating there, sometimes staying the night, using their living room as a gathering point. From there, it’s not difficult to realize that Marinette or Ladybug is keeping this information from the rest of their team in order to ensure that their civilian or superhero identities don’t get compromised by an akuma or a sentimonster.
In comparison to the Scarecrow, who makes his victims fight their worst fears, Batman can’t help but think that turning people into their insecurities and angers is worse. At least with Scarecrow, there’s a chance that people can win against whatever they’re fighting. Once a Parisian is turned into an akuma or sentimonster, they just have to hope that somebody else will come in and save the day. Victimhood with the cruelest twist, similar to when the Joker tried to make Dick into the Joker Jr.
“Pavona. What’s her deal with Marinette?” 
Ladybug’s laugh is hollow and familiar. “Didn’t Marinette tell you to figure it out on your own?”
“I need to know,” Batman insists. “I want to protect her. I don’t want her to get hurt like that again.”
“You have noble intentions, Batman,” Ladybug says quietly. “A kind heart. But you are mistaken in thinking that Pavona can hurt Marinette anymore. Even if Pavona tries to, she won’t be able to. Tom and Sabine-- they were the weak link. Everyone else she loves is safe.”
Ladybug pauses, looks sideways at Batman, then stares out at the Parisian skyline again. “Everyone except for you. You’re not safe, here in Paris. You know that, don’t you?”
“She--” his mouth dries. There’s a lot of information to process, but he focuses on one thing. “She loves me?”
He doesn’t think he’s heard those words come out of any of his kid’s mouths. He knows that all of them do love each other in their own messed up ways and knows that his sons and daughters are more likely to show their affection in actions instead of words, but Marinette is a biological child that he’s never interacted with before this month. How can she love him when all he’s done is push her away?
“She loves you.” Ladybug closes her eyes. “But that makes her a fool. She’s clung to the hope that she’d get to know you for years. Look where that’s gotten her. She gets to meet you at the price of her parents' lives. So please, don’t mess this up. The best way to protect her is by making sure that you’re safe. Really, I’d want you to leave Paris and forget about her. She’ll be okay. We’ll keep her safe.”
Batman says nothing for a time. Ladybug is right in thinking that Marinette shouldn’t love him, but she’s not right in her belief that she can protect her. After all, Tom and Sabine are still dead. “But I can make sure no one hurts her. I may not be someone she interacts with normally, but I can’t see her die.”
Ladybug makes a keening sound in the back of her throat. “I know, Batman. We’re not as trained as you and your team. I know you want to keep her safe. That’s why I’m letting you and your team help us. Because we’re just not enough.”
“You’ve done a lot to keep this city safe.” He wants to be mad at her for involving a civilian family, but he can’t find it in him. She seems so young. Does she have parents? Do her parents know that she’s Ladybug?
“But not enough.” She wanders to the edge of the building, yoyo in hand. “When this is all over-- maybe the two of you can spend some time getting to know each other.”
Batman stares at the spotted heroine. “Maybe someday.”
“That’s not very convincing.” Ladybug turns so that he can’t see her face. “Be kind to her. She’s alone.”
“She has you. She has your team.” Neither Bruce nor Batman has been very good at comfort during a time of loss. 
Ladybug fiddles with the chain around her neck. Two rings as a pendant. She clenches her fist around them and goes still for a moment. “We’re too similar to comfort each other. And we both agreed that telling the team… it would be disastrous. Tom and Sabine were parents to all of us. Pavona is scheduled to come back soon. If we tell them now, it might end in another mass akumatization. That’s something we have to avoid.”
Pavona is coming back? How did Ladybug even know that she left? How— 
Batman stills. The muggy Parisian warmth is only alleviated by a brief breeze that makes Ladybug’s hair ties fly in the wind. Anger wells up in the back of his throat, and he feels the Lazarus in him spike, knows that behind the white film of his cowl, his eyes are turning green. “You know who Pavona is. Why hasn’t she been brought in yet? Why—”
Ladybug could have prevented Tom and Sabine’s death. She could have saved Marinette the loss of her parents. 
Marinette could have retained her innocence. Been kept out of the world of superheroes and supervillains, been kept safely on the sidelines if only Ladybug weren’t so selfish, wasn’t so foolish to bring in a civilian family with no training and no background.
“Marinette and I have known for a long time,” Ladybug cuts him off, and he’s ready to put his hands to her throat, but no. Justice, not vengeance. He will make sure that Ladybug’s wrongdoings are brought to light. He will right her wrongs.  “For four years, it was Hawkmoth and Mayura. Once Pavona showed up, we thought-- we thought that between her and Hawkmoth that she’d be the lesser of the two evils. We had no clue who Hawkmoth was, but we knew that they were working together. Pavona was left free to roam in hope that she’d lead us to Hawkmoth. That we could finally end the fight.”
 Ladybug’s back straightens. She turns, and her eyes are all blue steel and pain. It’s then that Batman realizes that Ladybug truly did love Tom and Sabine with her whole heart.
“I see that I was wrong. Hawkmoth kills indiscriminately. But Pavona-- her grudges run deep. Mayura was the kindest of the three. The reason Pavona killed Tom and Sabine was petty.” Ladybug’s voice crumples, as do her legs. She hunches in on herself, hugging her knees. Batman watches on from a distance. 
What was it she said? That she and Marinette were too similar to comfort each other? One day, Batman may find himself furious at Ladybug for making the decisions she did. But right now, all he sees is a child. 
“I’m sure you’ve looked into Marinette’s past,” Ladybug starts. 
Batman makes a noise of affirmation, but she clearly wasn’t looking for permission to go on. She was trying to collect herself in order to tell a story.
“There was a transfer all the way back in collège. She was very popular amongst her classmates. Beautiful, well connected, charismatic. There was no way people wouldn’t love her.” 
Ladybug glances back at him. “Come, sit, Monsieur. I do not know you well, but I don’t bite.”
Bruce— Bruce does not want to sit with her. But Batman says that he has to hear her out. To give her a chance, at least. Batman has made mistakes over the course of his career as well, his actions and inactions affecting too many for him to keep track of. He would be a hypocrite if he didn’t let Ladybug speak, even if Sabine and Marinette are two people he never would have dreamed of involving. Still, he keeps one hand firmly on a batarang. The videos shows that not much damage can be done to the superheroes when they’re suited up, save for attacks with magic, but nothing is absolute. There’s always a way to bring an opponent down. “Is it that shocking of a story?”
“No. Not at all. If anything, it’s a typical story of teenage drama, except perhaps a bit more than that. But I need the reassurance that you won’t run off once I finish.” She lets the two rings go, gentle thud of the two rings pressing against each other and her collar bone. The rings seem familiar. 
Batman sits, albeit warily and at least five feet away from his companion. Ladybug hasn’t proven untrustworthy so far, but she is still part meta and a magic user, from what he’s gathered. He wouldn’t put it past her or one of her team, particularly the one who creates illusions, to do something. He just doesn’t know what.
“This beautiful, charming classmate easily swayed Marinette’s class to her side.” Ladybug peeks at Batman through her bangs. “Understand that the classmates are children. Children in a class where power means that trouble and responsibility never stick. They learned that taking action meant you would be blamed.”
Batman wonders how Marinette and Ladybug met. Maybe it was through this very class she’s talking about now. If that’s true, it does not bode well for his perception of her.
“Marinette recognized this classmate for what she was. A liar. She promised all sorts of beautiful things-- things that played to their classmate’s biggest dreams. Working with their favorite artist. Meeting olympic athletes and musicians. Trips to impossible places. Perhaps if Marinette wans’t who she was, she would have believed her, too. But this classmate lied about two things Marinette knew were false. She lied about being a hero. She lied about me.”
“How do you and Marinette know each other?” It was incredibly difficult to find the video evidence of the Miraculous team going to Tom & Sabine’s Boulangerie. Batman had to call in a favor from Zatara and avoiding her questions as to why— he’d much preferred it if he were able to go through any normal channel instead. 
“We’ve known each other since the beginning.” Ladybug fiddles with her yoyo, refusing to look him in the eyes. “Marinette tried to get her friends to realize the truth. But everybody wanted what she was saying to be real. It’s hard to say otherwise when everything they ever wanted could be found in a single person. And Marinette didn’t pick the smartest ways to try to reveal her lies. 
“That beautiful, charming classmate didn’t like Marinette trying to debunk her entire persona. She grew to be very cunning. She hurt Marinette in so many ways. I lost track over how many times Marinette got suspended or temporarily expelled, only for her to be brought back at the behest of the one other person in her class who knew the truth. Her designs were stolen. The boy she loved grew into a shell in order to protect himself. Her friends drifted away-- not that they were cruel or anything,  they were taught inaction above all else, to not say a word about whatever happened in class ever since ecole-- but Marinette was really lonely. 
“It was sort of a blessing in disguise. During this time, a lot of the Miraculous Team went on a break of sorts, and it was only Chat Noir and I. We had to get stronger and smarter and Marinette and her family provided relief and moral support. If her friends were close to her during that time, things may have ended really badly. Hawkmoth may have caught on to more secret identities than he already knew.”
“Does Marinette know who you and Chat Noir are underneath the mask?” To put the weight of their alter egos on a civilian is cruel. It’s why his own was so closely guarded. He’s not a fan of Marinette knowing his existence as Bruce, let alone Ladybug. 
“The more people who know our identities, the greater a chance Hawkmoth has at taking our Miraculous.”
A non answer. Clever wording on Ladybug’s part. Although he can imagine Sabine agreeing to put up a bunch of teenage superheroes in her bakery, he knows that it’s impossible for anything to escape from her eyes for very long. He’d bet anything that she figured out the majority of the team’s identities. And by extension, anything that Sabien finds out, Marinette is bound to find out as well; her past indicates that she has an equal, if not higher level of intelligence and creativity that Sabine had.
Had. They went for so long without patching anything up. Why was he so foolish? So Hard headed? She offered him so many chances to reconnect, to connect with Marinette, to be a second father to her. She didn’t have any romantic feelings for him left, that much he knew, what with how utterly in love she was with Tom, and he was happy for her. Happy that she found somebody more stable than him. 
If he and Sabine were closer, could he have prevented their deaths? Would he have been clued into the situation of a magic supervillain in Paris sooner? 
He can’t be mad at Ladybug. Not when Batman, a hero with decades of experience on her, failed to step in. Refused to look old problems in the eye. Let loved ones die for his own inability to communicate. 
“For a while, Marinette didn’t fight back. She didn’t want the boy she loved, her best friend, to get in any more trouble than he already was, trying to protect her. She laid low. But the classmate was very interested in this boy as well. The classmate tried to break him to get him to love her.”
Ladybug smiles wryly. “You can imagine that was the end of her rope. Marinette thought that the only person the liar was targeting was herself. After three years of bearing the weight, she finally snapped. She started using the resources she had. And the wasn’t any grandiose thing, though in retrospect, perhaps it should have been. She wouldn’t have ended up in prison, no she’s too young, and one of the two main victims was under lock and key, and Marinette was never hurt to the point where the liar would face real consequences for her actions. All that happened was a restraining order and her removal from Marinette’s school.”
“The girl’s name is Lila Rossi. She was already a suspect for working with Hawkmoth at the time by helping him turn people into akumas. Then Mayura stopped showing up and Pavona took her place. Pavona was clearly targeting everything and anything near Marinette. I should have seen the signs, but I had years of experience on her, and the Miraculous Cure--” Ladybug breaks off. “From one point of view, even Hawkmoth is better than her, because at least he didn’t cause any irreversible deaths.”
The Miraculous Cure is cruel. It only reverses the damage done with a Miraculous or while Ladybug is transformed. When Tom and Sabine were murdered, Pavona and the Peacock Miraculous were nowhere in sight.
Batman can’t say whether Pavona is better or worse than Hawkmoth. But Lila Rossi-- he recognizes the name. He knows what she looks like, since her image came up when he was doing a background check on Marinette. It’s quite possible that she has some type of mental disorder. Now is not the time to think about that. Hawkmoth’s identity needs to be revealed, and quickly. “How did you connect the two with the magic protecting your identities?”
“I used a little magic of my own.”
Beneath them, more and more lights begin to flicker out. Even though Paris is nicknamed the City of Lights, due to the extensive drain on energy, shops are required to turn off their exterior lighting after 1AM. 
“Please,” Ladybug says. “Please help me find Hawkmoth. Please help me put them in prison. I-- I’ve been fighting for so long, and it was a duty I didn’t even want for the longest time. I just want all of this to be over. I want to be able to scream and cry and mourn without Hawkmoth and Pavona trying to manipulate me. Please.”
Batman has never been one for physical affection, but he pats Ladybug awkwardly on her back. She launches herself into his arms, curling into him and sobs as he awkwardly rubs her back. He keeps his eyes trained at a distance, watching for any akumas or amoks.  
“Please,” she warbles, eyes watery. “Be good to Marinette. Be a good father. Be someone for her to lean on.”
His muscles tighten. He’s never claimed to be a good father, let alone a good man. He tries to do right, but Marinette is different from all of the other kids he’s taken in over the years. She’s not from Gotham. She had parents who were kind and stable and normal. He doesn’t think he can be a good father to her.
Somehow, Ladybug guesses exactly what he’s thinking. “You just have to be yourself. It may be stupid and foolish, but she loves you. She really does.”
For a long time, the two of them stay on that roof, Ladybug buried in the crook of Batman’s arm.
_____________________________________________________
@biodad-bruce-month
Maribat tag list(to be added onto this pls send me an ask/dm): @our-precipreciousss @my-dear-friend-anxiety 
Who Are You (and what will you become) tag list (to be added here just comment): @anjuschiffer @theunquiet-dead @certainmuffinbagelcalzone @cresentmo0n @allulily @myazael @zalladane @rebecarojas07 @keepingupwiththemalfoys @frieddonutsweets @all-mights-asscheeks @thornalchemist23 @trippingovermyfeet @jiso-lee @redscarlet95 @ira-sairain @screechingflapbiscuitpeach @ramos123 @cutechip
also if i missed you please just lmk in the appropriate place again! and is it a me thing or a tumblr thing that some of these tags just wont WORK AUGH. thank you all for the support on the fics i’ve posted so far! i’m quite bad at posting regularly because all sense of time has been stripped away
hahahaha consistent chapter length? what’s that? (jokes on you these aren’t chapters just loosely related chronologically told one shots. what even makes a cohesive story a story)
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cheeriecherry · 4 years
Note
Reactions to our boi finding out that not only were you a fan before meeting but you were fan who wrote smut about them? A secret you've kept hidden but now... Aizawa, Mic, Nighteye
I’m still sick but i need to do something before i go nuts lol, but I’m sorry if it’s a little questionable, I’m like, half awake oof
Warnings: some mentions of smut but nothing super explicit
AIZAWA SHOUTA
-So he’s not necessarily a well known hero, or at least he isn’t usually in the running with the media. So he probably doesn’t have that much merch, or it’s really hard to find.
-So he notices the first time you let him into your room that you have an adorable tsumtsum of him. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even let on that he saw it, but he knows that it was probably hard for you to get. He figures out right then that you’re some kind of fan.
-But he thinks it’s pretty casual, and he’s actually (secretly) a little bit pleased that you admire him so much, especially if you don’t have any other hero merch.
-He doesn’t catch on until much later that you write smut about him.
-Like, he knows that such things exist. It’s just how people are, we all love our fanfic. 
-He doesn’t think much of your writing habits at first, always assumes you’re working on papers or other things for your job. He only starts to get suspicious when he walks in on you one night and you get flustered and slap your laptop closed.
-He’s not gonna pry into your business, but he’s definitely curious. 
-After that incident, you start writing less around him, and he starts to to worry. Like, all he did was walk into the room, but he didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. He’s also a little perturbed that you feel like you have to hide things from him.
-He’ll probably ask you about it within a couple weeks, or rather he’ll tell you that you don’t have to be ashamed of the things you’re working on, no matter what it is.
-And you appreciate the sentiment, but you seriously don’t know what you’d do if your boyfriend realized you write porn about him. Most of it’s fantasies you’ve had about him, but written to cater to all his fans.
-You’re not super possessive of him, so like, you don’t mind that people thirst over him. You know that at the end of the day, you’re the only one who’s got his attention.
-But then you fall asleep on the couch one night. You had intended to just shut your eyes for a moment to give them a break, so you’d left your laptop open and leaned back on the sofa. Shouta wasn’t supposed to be home for another couple hours, so you figured you’d be safe.
-But you end up falling asleep, and he ends up coming home early.
-He thinks you’re cute when he sees you cozied up on the cushions, but he sees that your laptop is about to die. He has no idea where you usually keep the cord, so he...well, his intention is to save whatever documents you were so hard on, so you didn’t lose your progress. But his eyes scan a few lines without thinking, and before long he’s reading through the whole thing.
-Ngl he’s flustered as hell. He’ll never admit it, but the things you’ve written are absolutely filthy. It’s nothing like anything you’ve ever done in the bedroom, which he’s actually grateful for (he doesn’t want his sex life being broadcasted on the internet, even if you do work under an alias), but reading your work is giving him ideas.
-Do you actually want to do things like this with him? Or is it really just a fantasy, a story written to appease other people.
-Of course, he’s also a teacher so he finds himself critiquing your writing style and use of language. It’s actually pretty good writing, however sinful the subject matter.
-He quickly goes to save the document, but right as he does, you stir awake.
-He looks at you, you look at him. You’re sleepy as hell, and he’s pink in the cheeks, and you just know right off the bat that he’s figured you out.
-You immediately hide your face in your hands and mumble out an ‘oh god im sorry you were never supposed to find out’ and he’s like ‘how the hell do i approach this’ because it’s such an embarrassing situation when it’s happening.
-He tells you that it’s okay, he really doesn’t mind that you write stuff like that. And truthfully he doesn’t. Lots of people write works directed at adults, and there’s nothing wrong with it. He’s just....it’s the fact that you’re writing about him. Of all the heroes you could have chosen from, you chose him. To write about, to appreciate, to pursue romantically.
-It’s turns into a mushy moment, because of course you chose him?? He’s kind and smart and loving and he cares a lot about you and other people. Plus he’s handsome as heck.
-You’re both still a little shy about it when you head to bed a few minutes later, but you still cuddle up to him in the dark and rest your head on his chest.
-But right when you think all is said and done, he asks ‘Is any of that stuff something you’d ever want to try?’ and a whole new wave of embarrassment washes over you. Like jesus christ have some tact Shouta.
-Whether or not you guys end up experimenting a little more is up to you, but it definitely feels nice to not have to hide it so much. You’re still a little iffy about actually showing him what you write, but that’s mostly because you’re worried your skills won’t be up to his standards.
YAMADA HIZASHI
-Definitely didn’t know you were a fan of his the first few times you met. You acted so normal around him, like he was just another guy, so he figured he wasn’t on your radar. Which is fine by him, he tries not to pursue fans simply because that attraction might not be genuine, y’know?
-Like, ‘is this person with me because they like the idea of me, or because they actually like me’ sort of thing.
-And you’re not an overzealous fan by any means, but the first time he visits your house he realizes he was mistaken. You have a couple of his collectibles; the nice ones that are tasteful, not the corny ones that are a quick cash grab for companies.
-He’s like ??? you didn’t tell me???
-And you’re like ???no???
-Honest to god you didn’t recognize him at first. You’d been in a dimly lit, high-end club, he’d had his hair down, you’d both had a couple of drinks. He just happened to be a guy that you had some things in common with, who was nice to talk to and who made you laugh.
-It relaxes him a little, knowing that you would have been into him even if he wasn’t a hero and a super popular DJ with a radio show. And by the time he’s coming over to your house, you guys probably know each other pretty well anyways. He’s let you into his life, but you’ve also let him into yours.
-He teasingly asks you if you’ve got any more little secrets (even though this was hardly a secret), and he doesn’t expect when you get flustered af and squeak out a ‘nope, not a single one, no secrets’. But he doesn’t think more of it until much later.
-Like, several months later. After you guys move in together.
-He knows that smut about heroes exists, he knows that there is smut about him, and if I’m being honest he probably reads it for shits and giggles. Never to make fun of anyone, but he’s honestly just curious about what people are writing.
-He notices that you write a lot, too. You never show him anything, and whenever he asks about it you tell him it’s ‘just work’. He wonders what kinds of projects you’re taking on that involve so much typing and concentration, and ngl he’s a little sad that you don’t tell him about it.
-Like, sure maybe it’s just work and you’re not particularly invested in it, but he always talks about his students, and his shows, and the ongoings at his job, he just wants to know more about what you do.
-He is a smart man, but sometimes he has stupid ideas.
-He concocts the wise plan to sneak onto your laptop while you’re in the shower and read your most recent document. Not being wholly nosey, just enough so he can do a little research on the subject and learn more about it. He just wants to know.
-Throws him for one bigass loop when he sees what you are actually working on. He’s no stranger to kinky shit, but his entire face goes beet red, redder than any fanfiction has ever made him.
-Something about that fact that it’s you who wrote this, and you who’re thinking those things about him, entertaining ideas like that. Like yeah, y’all have slept together but he had absolutely no clue you’d even be into stuff like that.
-And sure, you could just be writing things for your fans, but you also seem pretty knowledgeable on the subject so like. You had to have some interest in it, right?
-And now he’s thinking about trying those things out with you, and his pants are just a tad bit tighter than could be considered comfortable.
-He’s so distracted he doesn’t notice the shower turn off, nor does he hear you walk into the room. He does, however, catch your hideously embarrassed squawk.
-Which then makes him flustered, because he got caught, and you’d better pat yourself on the back for that one because you’re one of the only people that can make him embarrassed like that.
-But then he’s trying to explain himself, and you’re trying to explain yourself, and it’s a whole mess of words and burning cheeks and somehow you end up both admitting that the things you write about would be real fun to try.
-Lol you guys probably just end up in bed together after that,
-But despite the initial awkwardness, he’s pretty cool with it. He likes your writing, and how involved you are with the community. It’s also handy for him because it lets him keep an ear to his fans without digging too deep, you always let him know what kind of stuff everyone is up to.
-best use it to your advantage, tell him all kinds of filthy things that you’ve come across, especially if it something you know he’ll like. It’s a sure way to get him in the mood >u>
SASAKI MIRAI|SIR NIGHTEYE
-He’s nonplussed about whether or not you’re a fan at first. He doesn’t pay you much mind until he scopes out your sense of humour, or until you say something offhandedly and it makes him laugh.
-Fan or not, if you’re funny and you vibe with each other, then he’ll show some kind of interest in you. It’ll take a little while to progress to something romantic, but in the meantime you’ve got a nice friend.
-He’s kinda busy, so you probably don’t invite him over to your place until a couple months in. Your schedules are conflicting, and you’ve both got important jobs to do, so it’s probably been pushed back a couple times. But he finally makes it over one evening for a night of relaxing socialization.
-You know him well enough to know that it wouldn’t bug him that you were a fan of him before you met him. He’s not the kind of person to make a big deal about it, not really. He sees a couple pieces of merch around your apartment, just small things -some of which he’s surprised to managed to get a hold of- and he’s like ‘okay’
-Like, he really doesn’t care. As long as you treat him like a person and you’re not using him for anything, then hes just.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-It’s only afteryou start dating and getting close that he teases you a little bit for it. Not in a rude way, just in an ‘aw you sleep with a plushie of me’ way. He does it so he can fluster you and ruffle your feathers in a loving manner.
-After you move in with him, he notes that you’re on your computer a lot. He figures it’s just an overbearing workload that requires a lot of time, so he reminds you whenever he can to take a break and stretch and give your eyes a rest.
-He’d leave it alone mostly, so in order for him to find out that you’re actually writing smut, he’d have to catch you in the act. He comes home early one evening to get a little extra time with you, and he follows the tapping of the keyboard into your office. You haven’t noticed that he’s even there, that’s how focused you are.
-So he sneaks up behind you with the intent to startle you and wrap you up in a hug, but looking over your shoulder he gets a good view of your screen...and the words on the screen...and his name on the screen...
-It takes you a couple seconds to figure out he’s there, which is dumb because he’s literally just frozen over your shoulder going over the sentences you’ve written as his face gets redder and redder.
-Anyways, he still manages to scare you, and you leap out of your seat and fall onto the floor, but instead of hugging you and saying hello like he originally intended, he’s just kind of frozen on the spot with the pinkest cheeks you’ve seen him have.
-He’s a pretty stoic guy most of the time, at least on the outside. It’s really hard to fluster him, because most of your attempts either make him laugh because you’re cute, or result in some really nice romantic time. He’s just. Not really shy about stuff?
-But this is a whole different thing.
-You’re on the floor dying of embarrassment and telling him not to read, but he is Looking and Not Listening. You just seem so innocent and chill about things, he never would have expect something like this from you. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just really surprising.
-Secretly he’s a little bit pleased that you’re writing this kind of stuff about him, and not some other heroes, but he probably won’t say it out loud. Not to mention your writing is actually really good? Like, it flows perfectly and the descriptions are easy to imagine but not super complicated or convoluted.
-He’s a smart guy, and he knows that fans of heroes are into all kind of things, fanfiction included. He’s not offended by it, by any means. He just never supposed that he’d be popular enough to warrant fanfic about him, let alone written by his own partner.
-He tries to be chill about it, asking you if you’re into that kind of stuff and if you should switch it up in the bedroom a bit. It’s pretty obvious he’s flustered tho. 
-It would probably lead to a good long talk about what sort of stuff you’re both into, after the initial embarrassment dies down. And honestly, he’s home early to spend time with you, so why not just try some stuff out right now?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-He would definitely read your fics if you want him to, hell, even if you don’t outright ask him he might seek them out out of curiosity. He’s usually busy in the day, but he’ll find time to read through things and give you honest feedback.
-Lol tho if you’re still shy about it, he might make an account with an alias just so he can give you nice comments. It doesn’t take very long for you to figure him out though. He’s got a very specific typing style and his personality shines through, but only people who know him would recognize it.
-I headcanon this guy as a kinky mf ngl, but also as someone who can go without hardcore stuff, y’know? So whether or not you actually want to try out some of your fantasies is up to you, but he’s 100% down for it.
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