#and definitely after the maelstrom

[lillaluna]

morning with genshin men

Pairing: Neuvillette, Kaeya, Tighnari, Childe, Dottore, Zhongli, Wriothesley, Pantalone x f!Reader

NEUVILLETTE

He is not new to getting up early in the morning, and most likely has trouble sleeping at night because of his constant thoughts of court proceedings. He is often plagued by questions about fate and justice, even though he is the personification of justice in Fontaine.

If Neuvillette had a sleepless night, there will be a glass of cool water with lemon waiting for you when you wake up early in the morning, and a light breakfast he just picked up at your favourite restaurant.

And if the Chief Justice managed to fall asleep and sleep through the night, you'll wake up in his strong arms. And this is a definite disadvantage for you, because such a morning is a real test of courage, which begins the moment you make sluggish attempts to leave that warm maelstrom of Neuvillette's loving arms.

Occasionally, you manage to coax Judex into helping you comb his long hair and gather his ponytail. Neuvillette actually likes it when you touch his head and his hair in particular, but he says it makes him too relaxed and sleepy, so he doesn't often allow himself the luxury of your gentle touch before work, leaving it for the evening.

CHILDE

Mornings with Childe are always unpredictable. Firstly, you don't know if you'll wake up with him or if he's already gone. If he's gone, is he already at work or did he just go for a drink of water? But none of that compares to when you both manage to wake up together, because avoiding his hugs and kisses is just as incredibly hard as getting out of them afterwards.

Ajax hates making breakfast. He'd rather be a silent spectator, watching you scurry around the kitchen, than a direct participant, unless, of course, he disturbs you with his kisses on your neck and his unmistakable hints to spend the morning on something more invigorating, in his opinion.

Childe literally makes you walk around the house in his shirt. It started the day you had your first sleepover, and he had to give you his clothes out of necessity, but the moment you came out of the bathroom, embarrassed, in his white shirt, enveloped in his scent, Ajax decided for himself that you should only wear it at home. Forgive him his little oddities, it's only because of his great and fervent feeling for you.

DOTTORE

A morning with Dottore often begins in his laboratory, where you enter with a cup of freshly brewed coffee. This is usually followed by a question from the man asking you what time it is and you smilingly reply that it's morning and he's lost track of time again. And how you adore these moments, when he settles all his affairs, sits down in his black armchair at the desk and you can approach him from behind to stretch his tense shoulders with your gentle fingers. You can't think of a more intimate moment for you, because you alone have the opportunity to see Dottore's moment of fatigue, to stand behind him and see his relaxed silhouette, to see his tired eyes and hear his voice hoarse from long silence.

Another way to start your day might be when Dottore himself returns at dawn to your shared bed. You lie under a warm blanket, hearing the bedroom door close quietly, for the boy thinks you are sound asleep. You hear the sound of his clothes being thrown on the floor somewhere, and then he sneaks under the covers and cuddles your warm, sleepy body. Normally, Dottore is cold, after the lowered temperature in the lab, so you wait patiently while his cold limbs soak up the warmth of your skin as his cold nose burrows into the curve of your neck, noisily sucking in your scent as if it warms him from the inside out.

It's rare, very rare that you get to spend the day together, but when you do, you don't get out of bed for a long time.

PANTALONE

What could be more beautiful than waking up every day on soft, cool silk sheets in the arms of a man you love, who can afford to linger in your arms for as long as he sees fit? You love to wake up before Pantalone, and lie there studying his features until they are relaxed and have that duty smile that you hate with all your heart and often ask him not to smile at you "like that".

But now you blink sleepily as you watch his chest rise and fall slowly, as a few dark curls fall across his face, contrasting mesmerisingly with his snow-white skin. You reach up with your fingers to brush the hair off his face, but Pantalone intercepts your hand, gently squeezing your wrist. He opens one eye, then draws your hand to his lips, and kisses the inside groan of your palm with a light kiss. He lowers your hand to his chest and places it where his heart beats, and usually to this measured pace you fall asleep.

Speaking of breakfast, it's usually something pompous where you get to choose exactly what you want to eat today.

These slow morning rituals, it's your whim, because if Pantalone leaves the house, it's until late afternoon, or deep into the night.

ZHONGLI

Lying in bed isn't exactly Zhongli's thing. No, he lets you do it, but alone, preferring to go to cook for you tomorrow, to brew one of his, and your, favourite teas. Sometimes, you like to come into the kitchen and watch your man fiddling with the household utensils, especially when he's just come out of his morning shower wrapped in just a towel around his hips.

Making Zhongli's breakfast serves as the perfect excuse for you to enjoy the sight of the always so put together Zhongli walking around your kitchen with loose, half-wet hair. The way water droplets drip down his strong, sculpted body while he purrs something under his breath as he brews flavoured tea for the both of you.

On rare days, often weekends, you manage to coax Zhongli to stay in bed longer to bask in each other's arms.

WRIOTHESLEY

Despite Duke Meropid's irregular work schedule, he makes every effort to spend every morning with you, saying it's the best possible start to the day. If Wriothesley does manage to start the morning with you, he'll try his best to keep you from getting dressed for longer, to keep you from cooking tomorrow, to make sure he's the only one paying attention to you. Of course you jokingly resist, saying that you have to take care of him, that cooking breakfast is a very important morning routine, but you quickly give in under the pressure of the duke's charm, who at some point just throws you on his shoulder and carries you out of the kitchen back to the bedroom.

Sometimes when you don't get to be together for very long, due to Wriothesley's busy schedule, you stay at his place of work, even if it's for a few days. He usually works long hours sitting at his desk filling out tonnes of paperwork while you sleep on the sofa next to him, covered in his warm coat. You wouldn't know it of course, but his work would go a lot more smoothly if he wasn't distracted by your sweet sleeping face.

KAEYA

Mornings with the Captain are a lot like mornings with Childe, when you open your eyes in the morning you don't know if you'll find your man around. But there is one situation that is your favourite, secretly from Kaeya of course, and for extra convincing you always swear at him nicely. There are days when the captain comes home early in the morning, while you're still lounging in bed. He's cold, wet, and dirty from the road, but Kaeya unceremoniously piles into your shared bed, hugging you tightly and trying to inhale your scent as deep into your lungs as possible. This awakening of yours usually leads you both into the shared bath, where you happily rub your beloved captain's back, hugging your legs around his waist. You love fiddling with his long hair, insisting that he wear it loose as often as possible when he's at home, and preferably without a shirt on!

If you manage to start the morning together, it's always a long, sweetly torturous effort to leave the bed, even if only for a simple drink of water, let alone a proper breakfast, which will probably carry over to lunch.

TIGHNARI

Needless to say, sleeping with Tighnari is very hot? Despite the fact that he often moves closer to you for a hug in his sleep, you have to move his arms, legs or tail away from you, because sleeping in such heat is unbearable. Even with all your love! But to start your day with morning hugs and kisses, you don't mind at all and you are happy to bury your face in Tighnari's neck or touch his plush ears, while he is peacefully sleeping and in half-sleep puts his head to you for caressing.

The forest guardian takes the first meal seriously, so he has happily taken it upon himself to prepare something tasty and healthy for the both of you.

Sometimes, Tighnari goes on long expeditions, or on forest patrols, and then you have to sleep alone, and as strange as it sounds, you cover yourself with two blankets at those times, just to feel the warmth, just to feel Tighnari's presence a little stronger.

#genshin impact #genshin x reader #wriothesley x reader #wriothesley #dottore x reader #dottore #il dottore #childe x reader #pantalone x reader #zhongli x reader #kaeya x reader #tighnari x reader #zhongli #tartaglia

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.7k

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Let’s begin with a definition.

Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.

Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.

“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”

“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.

“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”

Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”

You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”

“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”

“I told you to get back!”

“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”

Criston has fought his way through the maelstrom and is dragging Aegon away by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”

“But—”

“Go!” Criston roars, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.

Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.

“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”

“What’s the closest hospital?”

“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.

Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.

“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”

“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”

“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.

“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?

An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.

“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”

Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.

The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”

“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.

“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”

“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.

The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”

It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”

“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.

Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.

In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.

If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.

In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.

If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.

1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.

~~~~~~~~~~

A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.

Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.

Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.

“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”

Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”

“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”

“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.

Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”

“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”

“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”

“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”

“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.

“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”

“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”

“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.

Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”

“What?” you answer, stunned.

Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”

“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”

“You didn’t notice the gun?!”

“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.

“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”

“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”

“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.

“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”

“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”

Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.

Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”

“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”

“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”

“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”

From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”

“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”

“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.

Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”

The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.

Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.

“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”

“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.

The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”

“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”

“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.

Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”

The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”

Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”

The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”

“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”

“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”

“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”

“But they are cheering.”

“Not for you.”

Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.

“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.

Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?

“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”

There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”

More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.

“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”

You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.

“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.

And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.

“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.

“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”

“McCarthy?”

“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”

Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.

“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”

Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.

When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.

“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.

Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”

You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.

Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.

Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

#aegon ii targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #aegon targaryen #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader #aegon x y/n #aegon x you #aegon targaryen ii x you #aegon targaryen x you #aegon targaryen fanfic #aegon ii x you #aegon ii x y/n #aegon ii x reader #aegon ii targaryen x reader

[thegnomelord]

OMG CONGRATS ON 500 FOLLOWERS!!!!!! how about prompt 30 with trans!ghost? there'd be such a nice mix of battle scars & surgery scars too <3

Thanks! and Anon you have no idea on what kind of a Hyper-fixation fender you put me on with this prompt, like it's 2 in the morning and I've never written something this fast before lol. Play the game HERE.

Prompt: Kissing scars

CW: NSFW, Trans Ghost, Male reader but can be read as GN, afab language, kinda non sexual nudity, body worship, scar kissing, fluff, fluffy fluffy fluff, I'm a dirty tease.

You never know what you'll get when Ghost returns after a mission— Sometimes he'll return so hoped up on adrenaline he'll push you down on the nearest flat surface and ride you until he's satisfied, using you as a living dildo with a firm hand on your throat to keep you hard and quiet; Other times — even the barest brush of skin on skin will have him flinching away with a glare able to put you 6 feet deep.

So when you find him in your room, still fitted out in combat gear and staring off seemingly into space, you approach him slow and loud, making your footsteps echo as you draw close. You doubt he can even feel you brush your pinkies together through his thick gloves, but he jolts as if you're electric. . .but doesn't jerk away.

Creeping slowly until you're face to face with him you hold his hand loosely in your own, giving a gentle squeeze. It takes a few more squeezes before his eyes focus on you, the raging storm inside him turning them from honey brown to dark like blood soaked soil. You can tell his face is tense even with the mask on, the thin fabric helping to keep him together as his resolve slowly depletes like a fraying rope.

Something makes you move and before your mind properly registers it you're slowly taking off his glove, brushing the back of his hand with your thumb before you bring it closer to your face. His sharp eyes follow every movement of your lips as you kiss an old cigarette burn on the pad of his thumb and trail soft pecks across the silvery lines dotting his finger down to the meat of his palm, then back up to the pad of his pointer finger, kissing each knuckle as you go from finger to finger.

This doesn't stop or lessen the maelstrom in his mind, but each new kiss is like a new board to patch up the leaking holes in his boat. His other hand finds your shoulder by the time you're kissing the stab scar on the back of his hand.

His voice is so rough your name is hardly understandable, but gains your attention all the same. "Going soft on me now?" He growls, amused or irritated, you can't say.

Tempting luck you reach out to grab the zipper of his jacket, "Do you want me to stop?" You murmur against his skin.

His eyes narrow until you're staring into a dark void, a small and gruff sound leaving his throat. It's not a 'yes', but it's definitely not a 'no'. So like a miner without a canary, you slowly undress him, dropping to your knees to take off his boots and unclipping all his gear, stopping only when he's down to boxers and a long sleeve shirt when you feel him tense.

"Forgetting somethin' Sargent?" He asks, voice rough like he's ready to bark orders across the battlefield.

You look at him like a worshiper looks at a god, "Please, can I take these off Ghost?" You beg, sticking out your bottom lip for extra measure.

"Only because you look pathetic when you beg." There's no heat in his words, but you feel and see his muscles tense as you take away the last remaining articles of clothing. Only his mask remains, and you don't dare touch that.

He's dry as a bone and you can't blame him, this situation so far from normal for both of you. He lets you maneuver him until he's sitting on the bed, his knees spread just enough for you to comfortably kneel between them.

"That's bettah," He hums as you take his other hand and start kissing the rough patches of skin there, though you're a little surprised when he catches your tongue in his fingers. "You're like a damn dog." But he only brushes the his thumb against the flat of your tongue before letting go.

"Just for you, right?" You hum and start trailing bulletwounds and stab scars across his forearm.

"If yea know what's good for yea." He growls, though you can see him starting to relax, the cold edges melting slowly like the first thaw after a 1000 year old winter.

"Where do you ache, love?" You ask, reaching over to kiss a prominent scar on his bicep while you look at his abdomen. His front looks like a roadmap; full of long jagged scars from knives, dotted with small crates from old bullets, mottled with burns, and other unknown scars caused by god knows what. The only 'clean' scars he has are the two silvery lines beneath the curve of his pecs — the ones he never lets you touch.

"Will you kiss it better?" He mocks, like he doesn't believe you and looks at you like you're insane, but decides to humor you and briefly taps the fresh pink line on his abdomen. He watches you like a hawk as you lean down to lay soft kisses along the entire length of the jagged scar, a groan leaving his lips as your tongue tickles the frazzled beneath healing scar tissue, something like pleasure-not-pleasure sizzling wonderfully up his spine.

"Where else?" You ask, letting him place a heavy hand on your head and guide you where he wants you. His body aches in some way every waking moment, but for this night he can let you chase away the gnawing pain with your lips. He doesn't notice when he ends up splayed out on the bed and tugging you on top of him— another usually hard no with him —his mind growing strangely quiet as every lick and kiss on his damaged skin leaves behind shreds of warmth that build in his chest until he's boneless. It's almost like he melts into the bed, into your lips, his muscles more relaxed than they've ever been.

Then your lips brush against his top scars and a bucket of water gets splashed on his head. He barks out your name, raising his head as he scruffs you by the back of the neck before you can even react.

You don't resist his hold, "Yes, my handsome man?" You ask with a teasing lilt to your voice, your lips brushing against his top scars when he visibly shivers at your words.

"The fuck are you doin'?" He asks the question that's been plaguing both of your minds, but he doesn't sound angry and doesn't try to throw you off him, so you continue to gently worship his top scars.

"What's it look like?" You ask and feel his hold on your neck loosen as you trail from one scar to it's twin on the other side. His hand remains where it is, but his blunt nails lightly scratch your skin as reward for adoring scars like you're doing right now.

"Like you're doing something stupid." He huffs and you can finally see the dark clouds in his eyes parting, his chest rising and falling as he lets out a breath that's been weighing on his shoulders for a while. "But-" He takes your hand and moves it down between his legs, both of you groaning when you find his folds wet and pliant to your fingers, clit hard and pulsing against your hand. "-I can think of a few more places where I 'ache'." He gives a smug smirk that's obvious through his balaclava, his other hand lightly tugging on your hair, "Kiss it better for me, yeah?"

How can you refuse?

#Gnome's prompt game #cod mw2 #x reader #simon ghost riley x male reader #male reader #top male reader #trinkets from the hoard #gnome correspondence #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley #x male reader #fluff #also i'm a tease 😈

[theabysss]

Ignore, suppress, indifference, rage, break

summary: You gladly welcomed your journey into Teyvat, the opportunity to talk to your favorite characters, it was so exciting. But for some reason, your intuition screamed about something dangerous with their smile.

warnings: yandere, possessive & obsessive thoughts, religious + cult themes, mentions of sacrifices, the reader has an extremely difficult psychological state, the reader makes a suicide attempt, outburst of rage.

word count: 1.6k

note: I gradually increase the number of words in my texts. Maybe someday I will crawl to a maxi with Dottore. It would be nice.

Everyone was so nice to you, attentive to you, fulfilled any of your desires, although you didn’t much like being considered the Creator, you were definitely an ordinary human, but you tried to ignore this and not argue with them about this. Part of you knew that this would not lead to anything good, so you simply remained silent, not agreeing with them, but not refuting their words either. A quiet whisper of intuition at the edge of consciousness warning you to ignore anything that seems abnormal; a thick, heavy smell of blood lingering behind Child, a merchant who showed insufficient courtesy when you walked with Zhongli, you never saw him again, even if you walked around the market many times, a strange gleam in their eyes, each of the genshin characters when you spoke with them. But gradually, you can no longer pretend to yourself that everything is fine, the beautiful fairy tale about your life in Teyvat slowly begins to crack.

And when a person is sacrificed to you for the first time, before your eyes, relief is mixed with horror and your trembling legs - no more pretense on their part. You peer into the faces of them, but they seem so unfamiliar, not like they were in the game, all honor, nobility and morality simply disappeared, their eyes sparkle with joy, and their lips are curved in smiles at the sight of such a cruel spectacle. You silently scream inside yourself, but do not dare to protest, they will tear you apart if you show the wrong reaction they expect, right? Fear curls up at the bottom of your belly and you stretch your lips into a trembling smile. They come up to you and ask if this sacrifice is enough for you or should they offer you more? To which you hastily dismiss, saying that this is quite enough. Zhongli, who calls himself your most faithful follower, shakes his head in disappointment, saying that you do not have to be so modest, because they are ready to give you everything and even more, and the rest joyfully pick up his words. You are the only normal person at this monster festival, but for how long?

One bloody sacrifice after another, in an endless scarlet maelstrom. Until you stop reacting, the sight is so familiar that it does not evoke any emotion. To follow with an indifferent glance the next unfortunate human who is being led to the slaughter. But the fear inside of you only becomes greater, that if they realize that you are not who they think you are, not their Grace. How cruel and sad will be the fate that befalls you? These thoughts torment you, do not let you sleep at night, make you restlessly spinning, crushing silk sheets, exhausted to look at the ceiling of your luxurious room, which should not belong to you. Impostor. Impostor. Impostor. Endless tocsin resounds in your ears, pathetic fake.

You want them to leave you alone, you don't want to see any of them. Worried questions from your so-called followers about your well-being are not at all reassuring, you lie every time through clenched teeth. During the day, play the role of the Creator, smile and praise, no matter how cruel they would be, and at night weep quietly into your pillow, from despair that has settled in your very bones. A cycle that repeats over and over again, smiles followed by tears. You feel your sanity slowly slipping through your fingers like grains of sand in the sea. Life seems disgusting.

Gradually, sharp objects begin to attract your attention, the gaze lingers on them longer each time. Or maybe you could just throw yourself off one of the high peaks in Liyue? If you cut your own throat right now, it's all over, right? No more suffering, fear, pretense. There will no longer be a need to play the role that has been thrust upon you. It is better to end your suffering personally, quickly, than when they realize that you are not who they think you will be subjected to terrible torture, you have seen what cruelty they were capable of.

The blade of the knife glitters enticingly in the moonlight, you fascinatedly run your finger along the edge and a drop of blood appears on the fingertip. Getting the knife was not so difficult, as if fate itself blessed you, confirming that this was the only way to escape from this hell. You take one last look around your chambers, take one last deep breath, and in one sharp movement, cut your own throat. It hurts, it hurts so much blood splashes out of the wound in jolts, staining everything scarlet. You wheeze helplessly, blood bubbles on your lips, vision darkens and blurs. But in spite of all this, in your last seconds, you are smiling.

The awakening is abrupt, as if you were doused with ice water, out of the corner of your eye you notice Baizhu sitting on a chair next to the bed, you reach for your neck, bandages are tied on it, with the understanding of this comes a feeling of suffocation. You almost managed to escape, so why? Why?! You put your head in your hands and shrink, large drops of tears rolling down your face. When you try to scream, there is a lot of pain in your throat and all that comes out is wheezing. You are completely immersed in your pain, in your disappointment, not paying attention to how the room is filled with anxious voices. You ignore all questions, complete apathy reigns in your soul, and you look melancholy into their eyes at all questions.

A couple of days later, you're having lunch with some of your allogenes, mechanically stuffing food into yourself. It had no taste, some of them talked to each other, but no one dared to turn to you. However, even if one of them and plucked up the courage to start a conversation with you, you still would not be able to answer. When you tried to get rid of your unbearable existence, you damaged your vocal cords and all you could do now was wheeze. However, you still did not want to talk to any of them. It's funny, but they thought that someone attacked you, it never occurred to anyone that you did it yourself. For the next several weeks, you lived and behaved like a programmed doll. An empty shell without a soul. Dutifully accepting their gifts, which became even more, because they tried to atone for the sin of the attacker on you, well, they really were to blame. All of them. Everyone.

Private meeting with Geo Archon, your self-styled most loyal follower. More jewelry made of precious stones, his speech buzzing in your head and rage that suddenly visited you. He was a disgusting, impudent creature with a guilty expression inquiring about your well-being after what happened. It was their fault! Their! They broke you, destroyed you, razed you to the ground, brought you to this point. With sudden strength, you take the vase that was on the table and throw it at him. And at the sight of his face, covered with scratches from fragments, your exhausted, almost disappeared soul was filled with warmth. Yes, you wanted to return to them a hundredfold every drop of pain that you experienced. So you casually pick up one of the presents and throw it at him, and then another and another. After a while, you stand in the middle of a wrecked room, furiously puffing out the wings of your nose, looking for a suitable projectile to throw with your eyes. When Zhongli kneels down and raises his head, looking into your eyes, you take your breath away. His disgusting amber eyes which you once liked so much are full of awe. It was as if he saw a natural disaster in front of him, undeniably beautiful in its destructive power.

"Whatever you want to give me, whether it be pain or pleasure, I will accept everything, Your Grace. If you want to vent your negative emotions, I will gladly serve as a canvas, do whatever you like with me."

You want to laugh, loudly desperately hysterical, but you can't, only wheezing comes out of your throat. You forcefully pull your hair back, digging into your scalp with your nails. You want him to leave, to stop looking at you like that. But you couldn't even send it away because you couldn't talk anymore. How could you hurt them, how? There had to be a way, something. Your thoughts raced through the options. You were a butterfly pinned to the wall, whose suffering was fun to watch. Why did it have to hurt only you? Why did this happen to you? You kneel down, covering your eyes and ears with your hands. For the first time in months, tears are flowing from your eyes again, leaving a salty taste in your mouth. Not a single chance to escape from this hell, without the possibility of revenge, just an impostor who took someone else's place. What could you do?

A week later, at a ball in Liyue, you meet with a smile the cries of the unfortunate victim stabbed to death on the altar, your altar. Favorably accept the gifts of your allogenes and carelessly dance with one of them. You were happy. Is not it?

Reblogs, comments, are always greatly appreciated! ヽ(o^ ^o)ﾉ

#genshin impact sagau #genshin sagau #genshin impact sagau x reader #sagau #sagau cult au #sagau x reader #sagau impostor #genshin impact #genshin cult #self aware genshin #theabysss writes

[kneelingshadowsalome]

Man-Sized

8/9 God's Away on Business

Pairing: Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley x F!OC

Tags: Explicit content, +18 audiences only. Smut, romantic angst, fluff. An unapologetic LOVE STORY. Sexual tension, mutual pining, banter, flirting, developing relationship, strangers to lovers. Simon Riley has a dark past (partly inspired by Modern Warfare 2: Ghost comics).

CW/TW: References to PTSD, depression, past torture and abuse in later chapters.

Summary: A uni student who pole dances at a strip club to pay her rent encounters a mysterious giant of a soldier seemingly incapable of falling in love.

I'm 20 minutes away. You home?

Sure! You're always welcome.

Simon never told her if he was a minute away. Something was different here.

The key turned on the lock of her front door sharply 20 minutes after he had sent that text, and she went to greet him.

Their hug lasted longer than usual, and she could feel the relief and sadness just pour from him. He embraced her like a 200-pound shadow, then kissed her gently on the cheek, not mouth — that kiss spoke of companionship rather than lust, and her heart melted against his chest.

He looked like hell. Not only drained but like he had been through hell. Something awful must've happened if a man like Simon couldn't conceal the emotional maelstrom he was evidently in.

"You just got back?"

"Yeah."

"How was it?"

She didn't usually ask How was work. It wasn't really work. It was something else.

Simon didn't answer, he just took off his jacket and shoes like he was sleepwalking. He continued that sleepwalk to her couch. It had become some sort of a safe place he had carved out from the world to curl in, even if he never curled in anywhere, simply sat down with a manspread that usually made her mouth water. But seeing him stare off into space like he had just seen a mushroom cloud in the distant horizons didn't make her want to jump his bones. It made her want to close him in a hug and shelter him from all the pain in the world.

"I lost people yesterday."

"Oh. Oh shit."

Something like this was bound to happen at some point. Her first feeling was relief from knowing that Simon had survived unscathed from whatever horror he and his team had been through.

"That's… I don't know what to say."

Now that he had poured some of that exhaustion on the floor of her hallway, she noticed that he was enclosed in a shroud of latent need for revenge. The air seemed to thicken around him: of course he would deal with heartbreak by silent wrath. His eyes reminded her of the Antarctic stare; they just kept staring off into the void while also appearing sharp and aware, like he might burst into action from the slightest little threat such as a sudden sharp sound. Her tiny little home, soft lights, and messy book piles seemed childish and nonsensical compared to the ominous man who had seen too much.

"23."

"What..?"

"23. The number of people I have lost in total."

Shit… Fuck. She tried to remember something useful from the psychology books she had gobbled up not too long ago. But she couldn't turn into a therapist and offer him treatment. He might only laugh at such tries, anyway. Surely they offered counseling services or trauma therapy in his workplace for these kind of situations… But Simon probably steered clear of those, too.

"Is Soap alive?"

"Yeah. Wounded."

Compassion took over, and she finally walked to him, sat down, and reached to place a hand over his.

"Sometimes I wonder if thousands of people are worth one good man," he said with a deepening, impending fury, a tempest barely held in confinement. "Not to talk about three."

Thousands of people…

That meant… Wow. Okay.

He was definitely working on preventing missiles or some shit. Saving the world.

Sweet Jesus… And she had just joked about it.

"This world could use another flood."

The shroud turned into a whole cage that prevented her from comforting him. The hand underneath her palm seemed to tingle and burn as if it was coated with tiny spikes.

He was always so dramatic, but it didn't make him sound whiny or childish. It was actually scary. He was the weapon of mass destruction, an atom bomb in one man, about to detonate and level a whole city with a blast and nuclear winds.

"Have you ever thought about… quitting, you know? Doing something else?" She offered him a choice like someone would offer a doughnut to a murder victim, hoping it would make the pain go away.

"I was an apprentice to a butcher before I enlisted."

"Well, that's… a bit different from what you're doing now."

"Is it?"

Another sliver of information about his past, and she wasn't necessarily surprised. The worlds they lived in were like night and day. She had a safety net, friends who didn't kill or fear being killed, she had a degree, access to education, a promising career in the culture field ahead of her. Simon had a rough childhood and a dark past; he had chopped corpses of dead animals for money and then pursued a career in killing humans. He had lost 23 and killed God knows how many people.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"You got any food?"

"Sure. Um, no. But I'll order something."

She moved to rise from the couch, but he turned his hand and seized her by the palm. The warm fingers closed around hers and gave her a soft squeeze.

"I like that pasta sauce you make."

"The Bolognese?"

"Yeah."

"Then that's what you shall have."

There wasn't much else she could do. He wouldn't, or couldn't talk about it, so she ran to the nearest market to grab minced meat and some fresh herbs because dried ones simply wouldn't do right now. She made him food and seasoned it with as much love as she could while he put up a floating shelf she had gotten for books that didn't fit in her bookshelf anymore.

The scene was domestic, almost traditionally so. She had never thought of herself as a woman who would happily cook for a man. A man who put up her furniture for her. But then again, she had never thought she would date a man like Simon in the first place.

She suggested they watch a few episodes of a new tv show she was binging while they ate. Then he went to the shower, and she soon stood at the door, asking if he wanted to be alone. There was no answer, which in Simon's case meant it was safe to proceed. He was facing the cascading water as she stepped in to hug him from behind.

Perhaps it was the simple things. Even when the world was burning or war was raging or families were being torn apart, it was the simple things even then: some good, homemade food, some distraction, no matter how brainless and meaningless, some skin-on-skin connection and a good night's sleep.

It wasn't much; it wasn't a therapy session or a resurrection or anything life-changing. It wasn't much… But on the other hand, perhaps it was perfectly enough.

She gathered he might not be in the mood right now, but when he grew hard just from her embracing him, she slithered a hand down and stroked him shyly. He didn't stop her from pumping him to a release filled with weary sighs while he merely leaned on the tiles as she tried her best to alleviate his pain. He grabbed her hand after and laced their fingers together, used her hand to hug himself while a single, almost inaudible sniff pierced the sound of running water. It immediately turned into him clearing his throat — Simon didn't know how to cry.

He usually slept with boxers, perhaps a shirt on too, but this time he wore a whole set of sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt into bed.

"You got that Glock here somewhere?"

He checked the mag and gave the gun a routine inspection, which seemed more like a comforting procedure than having anything to do with actual necessity. He had left it to her fully operational and with a weighted note to remember to rack the slide before firing.

It dawned on her that his gift served a whole other purpose too. It had been planted in her apartment, and not just for her protection.

A bleak thought passed through her mind about whether she would die that night in the hands of a traumatized, paranoid soldier, but she crawled into his arms nevertheless. He fell asleep right away — a sign of deep exhaustion. She wanted to caress him, hold him, but he rarely let her. Even now, when he was at his most vulnerable, he was the one who spooned her as they drifted off into sleep while there was a knife tucked under his pillow and a gun sitting on the headboard of the bed.

But instead of a possible homicide victim, she felt like a sleep toy when he tightened his grip on her through sleep with a sharp, irritated rumble when she tried to change position only slightly. It was then that she cried the tears he could not.

***

The darkness woke her up with a nightmare. Not a cold sweat one, but the kind where you were free falling and woke with a jolt just before the impact.

It was a familiar dream where she tried to hide from her abuser, the one who was supposed to love her but had turned out to be a grooming hunter. The most nightmarish thing wasn't that she was being chased again. No: the most aggravating thing was that she still felt weak. She was a grown-up now, she had more grit, she should've been perfectly capable of fighting back with words and fists. She wanted to voice her will, shout at him to leave her alone, even hurt that man, find some weapon to stab him with, just fight back somehow — but her muscles never worked, and time was running out: he was getting inside the building she was hiding in.

This time, it was different. With ecstatic thrill, she realized she could call for help. This time, she had a weapon called Simon. But the rotten thing was that he didn't answer the phone. He didn't come to her aid even when she sent distressed texts, and she was alone, weak, nothing but trash to the man about to come and bend her under his will again.

It was just a dream, but waking up was always a relief. She was breathing like she had just been saved from drowning. To her surprise, Simon was fast asleep, probably too spent to stay vigil, which was both unsettling and heartbreaking. He was hard against her, and she realized it must've bled into her dream, adding to its menacing nature.

Still, the relief was immeasurably sweet as she noticed Simon was physically here, holding her. Trauma was a bitch, but it didn't get to her this time. Nothing could hurt her. No one could come and take her away from the heavy, safe cage of his arms. The ripples of the nightmare slowly turned into something entirely different. How she could get wet just from feeling him thick and pulsing against her back after such a night terror was… well, it was new.

What had happened in the shower before they retreated to bed was fucking hot. Despite the evening full of grief and loss, that simple, urgent, shiver-ridden handjob in the shower was so beautiful that she could've cried from that alone. He was so done in that she finally got past the wall that seemed to prevent her from touching him. The connection was so pure that she didn’t quite know where she ended and he began.

She had never felt this kind of bond with another human being before. She hadn't even known that there were men like Simon, and perhaps there weren't. He was one of a kind.

Curling up together amidst a burning world, a selfish world, a world sinking like a ship, was so utterly beautiful that it was breaking her heart into pieces.

She shifted, sure of Simon waking from her turning around, but he only stirred a little and fell back asleep. Her hand seemed to have a will of its own as it found its way under his pants and caressed him. The thick flesh pulled against her palm, calling her to give him more of that stress relief, to drown him in love. Surely he would only be pleasantly surprised if she woke him up with her mouth.

She didn't get far before a hand shot out. Fingers scraped against her scalp and grabbed, yanked her by the hair, then raised her from between his legs.

Fuck… Of course.

How could she be so stupid?

"That's not a good idea, sweetheart," he said with a sleepy, slightly alarmed grunt. "Even though I appreciate the gesture."

He gentled his grip on her as if it had only been something naughty that had accidentally, in the spur of the moment, turned into too rough a treatment. Her scalp was burning, but what shocked her more was witnessing how quick his reflexes could be.

She was dealing with someone who had gotten used to being touched only with violence, with pure intention to cause harm. The darkness was the time for phantoms; they appeared in her bedroom as if she had called them forth with her mouth. The nightmare was still fresh on her mind, giving ground to having another talk about things neither of them wanted to discuss… But she had wanted to ask a certain question from the moment she had seen all those scars.

"Have you ever been tortured?"

The hand caressed her hair now, and she cursed that they almost always made love in the darkness. She wanted to see him, needed to see him, to make sure that that hand belonged to Simon instead of a ghost.

"Just ask how many days."

"How many days?"

"98."

She had expected the answer to be something like two or three days. That Simon had survived full-on torture without breaking for a week, at the very maximum.

98 days covered over 3 months.

He took her hand and brought it to his ribs, on a protruding scar she had seen many times. It wasn't the most prominent, but it was, apparently, one with the meanest memory.

Shouldn't have asked… Shouldn't have asked…

"Got slapped up on a meat hook like those pigs back there in the butchery. You believe in karma?"

"Simon.. Jesus Christ."

"Nah, the hook was the nice part. It's the brainwashing that really gets to ya." He rubbed himself with her hand as if to relieve a long-forgotten pain.

"If the mind breaks, you're done."

Simon wasn't living in the same world as her. He lived in the same realm as Roman slaves who were slaughtered for entertainment in the Colosseum, as soldiers freezing to death on the Eastern Front of World War 2, as political prisoners tortured in North Korean internment camps.

"This is horrible."

"What's horrible is you wakin' me up like this and not finishing the job."

Shivers of ice seeped down her spine. He was so unfazed… and it wasn't just denial or a defense mechanism. He was simply in terms with what had happened to him — what had been done to him. He didn’t turn his gaze away from the abyss. She wouldn't call it healthy or normal, but it was mature as hell, something so profoundly self-sufficient and fearless that she knew she would never meet a man like Simon.

Feeling both scared and aroused, she granted his wish and took him back in her mouth. They had just talked about meat hooks and psychological torture, but he was hard as a rock. The moan that left him as she went deep and flattened her tongue against him was an exhausted and deprived sigh, and she felt tears welling up.

He was broken and perfect and beautiful, he simply wouldn't yield. Not in any storm, not before a hurricane, not amidst a fallout, not in the thick of whatever apocalypse would come and rain upon this world. The least she could do to honor such a man was to make him sigh like that.

The moans that left him were different from when he was fucking her. They sounded fragile, arduous, and brought pain to mind. His enemies had tried to break him for nearly 100 days and failed. She couldn't stop thinking about where all those scars had come from — mutilation, beating, cutting, flagellation, not to mention being suspended on a meat hook…

Had it ended in him being buried alive? Or was that a whole other story? And who had been in the coffin with him? An enemy or a friend?

He said the physical torture wasn't even the worst of it…

She thought about how he always looked so incredibly tired, was so paranoid about someone coming to get him. He had most likely been subjected to sleep deprivation and constant interrogation, other slow methods meant to break someone psychologically. Methods that escaped her imagination.

Tears ran down her cheeks, and she sobbed against him, like a pathetic woman who knew nothing of the world’s darkness. A killer's hand found its way in her hair again, this time with the gentlest caress.

"Dove… C'mere."

Whatever test this was, she felt like a total failure when releasing him and letting him pull her into another staunch embrace.

"I'm sorry," he said softly while petting her hair like she was a child who had had a nightmare.

He shouldn't be sorry for anything. He shouldn't be consoling her for his own torture. Her own past seemed like a walk in the park compared to this, her depression was laughable. Even when she knew these kinds of things shouldn't be compared.

"Sometimes forget that you're a civilian."

How on earth he could forget that was beyond her. What Simon had forgotten, though, was what civilian life was like. What ordinary, day to day life looked and felt like. Why would he want to continue his job after everything he had been through?

Unless he didn't care if he got killed.

Unless he wanted to get away. Had been wanting to get away for years now, just like her…

The tears were running in streams now, and her nose was stuffed, broken sighs passed through her mouth as he kept her in one piece with a simple hug.

"Gotta say it gets me fuckin' hard when you shed tears for me,” he said, amused, while she was crumbling under the weight of their darkness.

"You're always so cocky," she sighed, trying to get air through her mouth because her nose was clogged from the tears.

"Isn't that what you like about me?"

When she wouldn’t speak, he turned her around to lie on her stomach and started to caress her back. Slow and steady, purposeful. He cherished her from neck to waist, rubbed the knots between her shoulder blades, soothed tension in places she didn't even know she had any. It was the gentlest touch she had felt since childhood, a caress of her entire being.

How poetic, that a butcher was the only one to have touched her with such mercy.

She should be the one doing the comforting, but here they were again. All those psychology journals, all those books, all that education, and he was the one who knew what to do, how to handle his shit. And her shit too.

"C'mon... Tell me you like it."

The callous hand cupped her ass, slid down her thigh, beckoned it to lift to gain access to her. It was just an inspection due to her not having said a word, and he must've taken it as a sign of her being proud and stubborn... And then the night laughed at her with a gratified haze as his fingers met her wetness.

"Alright, have it your way. But you're always drippin' for me… That's how I know ya like it."

He relished in what he found, spread the moisture all over her folds, causing her hips to rise up to present her pussy to him — like it was normal that she was soaked after such a sad evening and a fright of a night.

But Simon didn't seem to regard it as perverse at all. To him, it was quite natural, mostly an endearment, as he climbed on top of her like a god of war about to get a taste of bliss after a hard day on the battlefield.

The bulged tip found her entrance with a familiarity that was only sublime. He was such a tease when he wanted to be, coating himself with her before going straight in.

"Got your eyes and your cunt wet for me. If that ain't love, don't know what is."

Words escaped her again as he stretched her wide, and she could feel his hunger, both their hunger. He simply had more patience than she did to not act upon it right away. He set a pace that was sweet and slow, so greedy that it made her grab the sheet in a tight fist.

"You're hopeless," she sighed while her back arched to meet him in perfect sync, the rhythm they had established long ago was the most divine for both of them. Perhaps he wanted to feel alive too, especially on a night like this. His hand found hers, the one grabbing the sheet, and she opened for him, interlaced her fingers with his, and squeezed. The sadness turned into a lazy, warm pool of love and arousal, even euphoria.

"That's it sweetheart… what else? Tell me how much you like me."

It was never straight-shooting with him. She couldn't just say that he was driving her insane. It had been embarrassing enough to spill all that love in the air when she had been drunk, with him between her legs like a bloodhound that had caught scent.

So she told her what he disliked about him. Those things happened to be the ones she absolutely loved about him as well.

"You talk too much," she offered, already out of breath.

"Never hear that at work."

"Probably because you don't fuck your co-workers."

He laughed at that, so uncharacteristic and unbridled that it made tiny bubbles brim all over in her, too.

"Know a few dolls who wouldn't mind if I did."

Jealousy bled instantly. No — it clawed at her insides. Simon had women on his team? He had discreetly left them unmentioned up until this point.

It crossed her mind that maybe he was the lovesick one now. But that couldn't be true… He was just being arrogant, as always.

"Don't worry darling. I'm all yours."

That husky purr drove her only more nuts. He even sent his hands down to her waist and held her steady while making it known to whom she belonged.

"Think you can handle me?"

The next thrust was punctuated, his balls pressed against her clit, rewarding him with a tight moan she simply couldn't hold back. The appeased rumble above her told her that he only got a kick out of this childish boasting.

"I don’t know. Your ego is too big for me," she tried to sound dry during yet another delicious fucking.

"Got somethin' else that's big," he bragged, voice covered in molten gold. "Right? Just for you."

On that, she refused to entertain him. He knew perfectly well just how big he was. Simon didn't do relationships but had surely had his fair share of women who had run into his arms more than gladly. Far more eagerly than her, or at least, with far less dignity. It was despicable, but she was jealous of his past too and envied every single one of them, whether the women he'd had amounted to dozens or hundreds.

"You like big men?" He brushed her hair aside from her cheek as if wanting to see her face to read the answer from her expression, even if it was too dark to see anything.

"I like men who know when to shut up," she blurted.

A laugh, rough but hearty, echoed in the bedroom.

"Marry me."

Her eyes went wide, her jaw opened, a quick gasp passed through…

"Or don't. 'S not worth the pension."

A joke… He was joking.

Her eyes fluttered closed, but her mouth was left hanging open; then it slowly but surely curved into a quivering little smile. This goddamn man would be the end of her.

He caressed her again, then brushed a thumb over her lip in a soft, yearning gesture that told her he wanted to kiss her but couldn't from this position. The gentle lovemaking in the dark thick of night was sweeter than any pain, and she did something rebellious: she reached for that thumb, captured it in her mouth, and sucked.

"Fuck…"

It was a surprised huff. Completely taken aback.

She swirled her tongue around it, gripped it tight, mouthed it like it was his cock — and could feel his hips buck unexpectedly.

"Not gonna last long if ya..-"

The hurried explanation ended in a lengthy groan, and the body above her went rigid, then shuddered. He came without warning, the thumb was pushed even further into her mouth, and he was buried in her to the hilt, hissing and moaning like it caused him pain.

He was always a gentleman when it came to her pleasure, never chased his own before she had gotten hers first. It must drive him a bit mad to spill so soon — especially when it wasn't even the first time today.

It was the softest cataclysm she had ever seen, another stealthy peek behind those high brick walls. His body crushed her, the massive arms closed in around her, he rubbed his face somewhere in her neck… and he was trembling. Perhaps it was his way of weeping since he couldn't cry actual tears.

He was finally speechless, gathering himself after an unusually weak moment. He swallowed, panted, then swallowed again. Struggled to regain control, snatched it back like an injured soldier. But he wasn’t angry, nor was he ashamed, he was pretty damn delighted.

"Now look at what you did," he scolded, but the tone was playful. He slipped out of her mouth, the heavy chest was throbbing against her back, and she mourned the fact that her skin only met cotton.

"You had it coming."

Arousal made her voice thicker than usual, and he buried his face further in her hair.

"Really…"

And again, he wouldn't pull out. She was just gathered in his arms and dragged to lie on her side. Her back met a solid chest, and the hand traveled up her throat, making her expose her neck for him to wolf from behind. It was probably her weakest spot – and as soon as he noticed it, he took advantage of the knowledge. He even used teeth on her, made love bites like they were some horny teenagers. She would have to wear high collars for classes next week…

"Does that feel nice?" The attentiveness was nearing unbearable proportions, his voice so close to her ear that her eyes rolled back. He was big, even when soft, and continued to rub against her after slipping out. Another hand dove down to assist her reach her own peak.

"Judging by how wet you are, it does."

He was right, as always. The tears were dry, but her pussy was not; she was so wet that it was a miracle how he was able to be as precise as he was.

How the hell could one man be so good at everything…

"You're too sweet for your own good," he whispered when she shattered against that chest and those fingers, her own flexing against his arm as she came. She let him carry her to the shore, break on it like a wave. The broken cries were such a signature, the music of them such a tell, that it really didn't matter that she didn't, couldn't use words with him.

This was the best therapy either of them could get, no matter what any book or professional said. They were wildly alive, they had found each other through horrors and blood and tears. Somehow, he had found his way to her orbit, collided with her in that dark, grimy, degraded place where she danced for money for a tortured killer like him. Her job was a good workout, and it paid the bills, but it had also brought Simon to her, and she had never been more grateful for deciding to go on those pole dance classes years ago.

"I have to wear high necks to school again," she said afterward in his arms, all snug and prepared to glide back to sleep.

"Serves you right."

He was hard again while she was feeling sore and puffy and content — and slathered, with both of their juices, which he used to lazily guide himself through her folds.

"Ready for another round if you are," he offered.

That would be his third one already… The ungodly amount of stamina on this man was frightening.

"I- I don't think I can."

It was mostly an acknowledgment of his size, and they both knew it. Simon just tightened his hold on her, appearing quite pleased with this outcome. Won another round, the gloating, lovable bastard.

"Alright, dove. Let's get you some sleep."

***

The next morning, when she was making him an omelette he suddenly began to speak.

"I usually fuck everything up when shit hits the fan, no matter the cost."

She turned off the stove and moved the pan away to stop the hissing sound threatening to drown his voice.

"This time, I just wanted to get back."

It was a confession of another kind… A compliment. Might even be the highest compliment she had ever received from this man. Simon wanted to stay alive and return to her rather than avenge his fallen ones.

Still, there was bound to be recoil, some survivor's guilt — or a bitter self-reflection moment of a superior.

"Are you blaming yourself?"

"I don't know. No, that's not what I meant."

"I realized…" His brows drew together in an attempt to search for the right words. "I realized there that… You might be the only person I can trust."

She was moved, ripe for walking to him right then and there and relieve that tension in his shoulders. Freaking finally give him that massage he had yearned for since autumn. There was something profoundly wrong with her that she hadn't done it yet.

He always attended to her. It was supposed to be a display of authority, but she knew that the best leaders didn't lead with fear; they served. It was high time someone served him.

"It's not a good sign," he muttered.

"I would see it as a great sign," she said with a shy smile, but it died on her lips as she saw how he only appeared to fall deeper into misery.

"Right? Simon?"

"I thought I already dealt with this shit 10 years ago."

That sentence sent ice down her back. Her skin broke into goosebumps, they seemed to travel all the way up to her head. Her palms were already sweating by the time he spoke again.

"You see, everyone I trust either dies or…" Simon was staring inwards into some distant memory she knew nothing about. She went to sit on the small piece of furniture that could almost be called a dinner table. Not necessarily because she wanted to get closer to him, but because her stomach was churning and she feared she might faint in her little kitchen.

"Everyone I love, dies."

She forced a hand reach out to grab his as she tried to call him back to the present moment and back to her.

"That can't be true. I mean, that can't be set in stone kinda true."

"Who knows."

The walls were suddenly so high that she couldn't get to him even when they were holding hands like this.

But this was the most precious thing in her life. She would fight for it if she must.

"I'm willing to take that risk," she said without fear.

"I admire your courage."

He didn't say he was willing to take that risk too. She hadn't quite prepared for that, nor for what came after.

"I can't do my job if I'm…"

"If you love someone?" She offered when he wouldn't continue.

She fucking hated his job at this point. She hated his dead father, and she hated the Manchester slums, she hated everyone who had hurt him and betrayed his trust. But it was like peeling an onion when it came to Simon: there was always a new layer underneath the one that was shed away. Who knew what was hidden at the core, or if she would ever even reach it?

"Well, what about… your mom?"

"Dead."

"You have siblings?"

"Dead."

Holy shit. Things were even worse than she had thought.

"What about friends? Like, off work?"

"Not anymore."

Terror began to swell and roll inside her like a tidal wave. A menacing calm before the storm, an eerie silence a split second before the explosion.

"You have nobody?"

He stared off into space, telling her with that look alone that he had no one. He released her hands, or rather, forced her to release him. Then he dropped the atom bomb.

"I didn't mean for things to go this far."

All her fears, long since lulled to sleep, crawled through the earth to suffocate her.

It was true after all: she had been just a bit of fun, a one-night stand that had turned into a plaything. A plaything who had latched itself onto a man who didn't want extra baggage.

"What a nice thing to hear." Her voice was metal, and Simon wouldn't say anything, proving her worst nightmares true.

He had had enough of her and now wanted to end things. The beautiful dusk had rolled into a knifelike dawn, and it was time to finish the show.

"Then why are you still here?" She finally dared to look up at him, and he looked confused, like he didn't know the answer to that question.

Things spun out of control so fast that she felt faint in the head. It was hard to think rationally when all their shared memories were suddenly covered in a wicked haze of shallow fucking, noncommitment, and her being an absolute fool for having believed that Simon would want her for the rest of his life.

"I get it that you're a super secret soldier spy, that you have to sneak around and give me a heart attack every other week. I get that we can't be together as much as I would like. But if you don't even want this, then what the hell are you doing here?"

His eyes were wide, his throat worked an arduous swallow. He looked more hurt than ever, more in pain than he had been last night due to the death of his teammates.

But to her, it was the look of a poker player who had got caught red-handed in cheating.

How dare he joke about marriage and elaborate on how sweet she was during the night, only to set everything on fire the next morning?

She was just a sweet little stray cat he liked to pet and pamper and fuck when he had the time, a nice little vacation from work filled with excitement. Everything needed to be exciting to him, he needed a dose of adrenaline and knife play and showering bullets to make him hard so he could fly back to grey London to get a go with his pole dancing little school girl.

Putting up shelves, seeing pictures of her spending Christmas with the family, tea and omelette in the morning were too mundane, too boring. She had been another kind of adrenaline shot.. But now she was only a dry syringe with the words I love you spoken in the air.

She got up and took a few steps back, tried to cut off a love that she already knew wouldn’t die, would never, ever die.

"This is so fucked up. If I'm just some momentary lapse in your life, then…" she shook her head at a loss for words. He had been silent for the whole outburst, but at her last suggestion, he cut in.

"No. Never. You're–"

She was so riled that she couldn't even hear his words. "You know what? Go do your job then. I'm sick and tired of waiting for you to come home to me, only to hear something like that. God…"

He snapped his mouth shut after she cut him off and simply raged on, all the longing and confusion of whole months streaming out of her mouth with an annoying high-pitched account. If she hated her voice right now, she could only imagine how it must sound to him. Her irritating hysteria only worsened the situation, especially when Simon remained so fucking calm.

"This is just…" She laughed through tears she didn't want him to see. With sheer willpower, she fought those tears back to the abyss. He would probably just get off on seeing her cry.

After all, she was the sweetest girl there was. Too sweet for her own good. The most gullible, naive piece of shit.

"I don't know how this is gonna work."

He stared at her with chest heaving, then his breath settled into a calm, ordered roll, his expression turned to stone. The rage was directed inwards before it could lash out at her. The man called Simon turned into Ghost, a professional killing machine, so quickly amidst a raging storm that she could hear the eye of it reach them, the whole world around her go silent. Or perhaps she was momentarily deafened by that cold-hearted stare that turned away from her with a final, lingering tinge of sadness. Even that was gone by the time he rose from the table and walked to the hallway.

Her heart was struck with a blade; she bled dry before she could even take a step to follow him. She saw him put his shoes on, then reach for his jacket, which he flung on with heavy shoulders and a broad back turned to her like a shield.

Simon was resigning.

He was fucking leaving.

She opened her mouth, but no words came out. He reached for his pocket and drew out a cigarette and a lighter, the flash of cold steel stinging her eyes although there was little sunlight because the day was grey. The Zippo was something she had found for him from a thrift store, and it had the tusked Snaggletooth logo of Motörhead on it. It felt like the perfect gift after noticing Simon had played the band's music from some old, burned cd when he had taken her on that shooting trip. He had ruffled her hair when receiving it, evidently pleased. "Knew you were a keeper," he had said when she told him she loved Motörhead too.

Her eyes were brimming with tears, the cigarette was sent between his lips, and he wouldn't look back, only marched to the door with heavy steps.

The fear wouldn't die even when she tried to tell herself that he was only going for a smoke to calm his nerves from her sudden fit. They would talk things through when he got back.

Which was why she never said anything, didn't follow him.

The door slammed shut, and she swallowed and turned to get a sip of her coffee. Her hands were shaking, the coffee was cold, and she realized she had just basically told him to get out. That cold-blooded stare still haunted her, and she wanted to go check if Simon was truly there, smoking on those steps and being a wall, her wall, against the cold, uncaring world.

She played the conversation over and over in her head, what was spoken, and the frost of horror turned her senses sharp, her ears started to ring from the silence. Simon had told her he trusted her and she had just freaked out — hadn't even let him finish what he had tried to say.

She wanted, needed to tell him right this second that she was sorry for being such a lunatic. She turned for the door, then walked back, forced herself to remain calm.

He needed space, and she didn't want to upset him more than she already had. He was older than her, used to nuclear seasons and warheads and blunt trauma, he was sharp as a whip. He wouldn't get rattled so easily. He would come back, smelling of fresh smoke, he would tell her what to do. That they would make it work no matter what. Flesh out a plan.

Because that’s all she wanted to hear. That he was serious and wanted this to work as much as she did. That it was just some miscommunication.

But her instinct told her that something was terribly, horribly wrong.

Minutes passed, and she finally went to open the door, and there was no one there. The streets were silent, the grey clouds even darker still, hanging over her like doom. She was feeling nauseous, a shudder went through her whole body, then her teeth started to rattle.

She closed the door and turned and tried to take a step, but her knees gave in and she slumped somewhere on the floor of her hallway filled with shoes and dirt and emptiness.

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[seasonsbloom]

swimming into you . bob

PART ONE : he's so pretty (when he goes down on me)

pairing ; bob floyd x female!reader

synopsis ; things between you and Bob are strictly business: he’s your backseater, and that’s all there is. Until he offers to help you let off some steam and you find out just how pretty he looks between your thighs…

wc ; 6k

warnings ; 18+ only; explicit language, angst, panic attack, reader definitely has PTSD, mentions of past character death

note: this has no smut which might be a surprise after the first part, sorry. but this needed off my chest, so... idk. i hope you enjoy it anyway, please don't be disappointed

desertsagecelestial aka sol i STILL owe you my life

Your life is a downward spiral, a maelstrom that pulls you ever deeper towards rock bottom, a rollercoaster on an eternal decline, a plane mid-crash, a…

“I swear to god, Spec, you’re the most dramatic person I’ve ever met,” Phoenix says, squinting at you over the rims of her sunglasses. “And I know Hangman personally.”

You can’t answer because you’re staring at those Ray Bans, and it’s making you think of Bob’s glasses in that bathroom, lenses fogged up, metal pressing against your naked skin, makes you think of sliding them up his nose, and then you’re thinking of his fingers and his tongue and his voice against you, and…

“Bro, are you dissociating?” Phoenix has tilted her head sideways. “Do I need to get you a doctor? What the hell is going on?”

It’s a sunny day, but that’s not surprising in California. You’re in the common room, lounging on nondescript beige couches. Outside the glass front, somewhere in the sky, Rooster and Hangman try and fail to shoot down Maverick. The radio crackles with the static of their comms, spitting out their taunts in endless circles nobody listens to anyway.

The other pilots are on standby in the hangar, and Bob is… god knows where. You hate that you’re so attuned to his every move now you notice even when you don’t know where he is. Part of you wants to write it off as the blind loyalty that comes with flying a two-seater, but you know that’s not true.

For a moment, you just look at Phoenix. Then you say, “Do you think Bob is good in bed?”

She blinks at you. A moment passes, then another, then…

“Specter, what the fuck?!”

You shrug. “I’m just asking.”

“Jesus.” Phoenix rubs the balls of her hands across her eyes like her head is about to split apart. “Why would you ever ask that?”

Because he ate me out in the Hard Deck’s handicapped bathroom, and I think it broke my brain, permanently altered my body chemistry, changed my actual life…

“Just… I don’t know. I was wondering.”

“Well, stop wondering,” she suggests. Then she gives you a suspicious look. “Did something happen between you two?”

You turn your gaze to the window, to the contrails like smoke signals on the canvas of the skies, to the roaring of engines that’s become your lullaby, to the sight of Bob crossing the airfield. Something in your chest hurts. Everywhere you look, he’s already there.

“No,” you say. “Nothing happened.”

+

The first time you met Bob, you looked right past him. There were bigger fish to fry here and bigger things to look out for, and Hangman was grinning at you and saying something stupid, so you walked by him without even realizing he was there. 

He’s got a habit of that - flying under the radar.

“Yo, Specter.” Phoenix draped herself around you, pulled you against her chest. You were both giddy to see each other again, to fly together once more. “This is Bob. He’s your new backseater.”

You don’t remember much. Remember only that he wore glasses and was smiling at you with something eager, something hopeful about his face. Remember looking away immediately, nodding once.

“Don’t try to get in my way up there,” you told him, and then you turned away to beat Hangman at darts.

Ignoring the way his face fell. Ignoring Phoenix nudging you. Ignoring the sinking, tumbling, crashing feeling in your chest.

It was the beginning of the end, and you knew even then.

+

Sometimes you think Rooster knows.

He’s always been kind to you, kind enough to keep you hoping at the same time it tells you not to dream too much. He’s kind to everyone, anyway.

“Why’d you wanna be a pilot?” he asks, waving down a bartender and putting both your drinks on his tab.

For a moment, you think about telling him the truth. All my life, I’ve been dreaming of flying away. All my life, I’ve been dreaming of escape.

It seems too much. You’ve never told anyone.

So you just shrug, take a swig of your beer, and say, “I like the thrill.”

Rooster laughs. “I know what you mean,” he agrees, winks, knocks his bottle against yours.

And just like that, the door is opened again. You dream the dream a little longer.

Part of the Rooster appeal, part of why you suspect your crush is so persistent, is that there’s no way it’ll ever happen. All of the thrill of the fall, with none of the fear of the impact.

+

“We need to talk about it.”

You’re fastening your helmet as you stride across the runway towards your plane. Maybe if you walk fast enough, you’ll be able to shake him.

“No,” you growl, but it’s diminished by the fact that you’ve been struggling with your clasp for a good minute. Your fingers are shaking too hard for you to get a steady grip.

Bob hastens his steps and catches up with you easily. His shoulder rubs against your own, and your breath catches in your throat.

“Specter,” he begins, but you cut him off.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Floyd.” It doesn’t matter how angry you sound. It doesn’t matter how the irritation boils and burns in you. Inevitably, inexplicably, your mouth always begins to form the Big Boy anyway, and then you’re back in that bathroom, back with him, and in your head, you pull him closer instead of pushing him away, and something about it makes you feel like crying. “It doesn’t matter.”

You stop by the plane. Bob’s lips purse, and he looks down at his feet, shoulders pulled almost all the way up to his ears.

“I just think…” he begins, then stops himself.

Payback and Fanboy walk past, getting to their own aircraft, and they’re laughing and chatting—jovial, easy, light-hearted. You envy them. You can’t remember the last time things didn’t feel heavy to you.

Only that’s a lie too. You do remember. It was with Bob Floyd’s face buried in your pussy and your mind somewhere off in the stratosphere.

“Shit,” you curse, frustration coursing through you, fingers still fumbling with the damned clasp, and fuck it all, you just want to fly, you don’t want to think, you don’t want to feel, you just…

Bob knocks your fingers out of the way and closes the clasp for you. Suddenly, he’s so close you can smell him again—your chest burns.

“Specter,” he says, voice soft, “we need to discuss it.”

You swallow around the lump in your throat.

“You promised we wouldn’t talk about it,” you whisper. He seems to want to say something else, but you can’t. You just can’t do it. The fear is there, and it’s making your head spin. “Please, Bob.”

Something about those words is choked. Raw.

He looks at you for a moment, brows furrowed, eyes gentle, and then he nods. Steps away. Doesn’t say anything else.

You climb into the plane and wonder when, oh, when, did it all get so complicated.

+

Phoenix looks at you like she thinks you’re going to fall apart right where you sit. You hate it. 

“You can talk to me, you know?” she says softly, leaning across the table in the mess hall, deep enough her chest almost ends up in the mashed potatoes. “You don’t always have to keep everything inside, Spec.”

It’s not true. That’s your first thought. You can’t talk to her, can’t talk to Bob, can’t talk to anyone. No one, you know this, is going to understand you now.

Your second thought is that you’re a horrible person. Phoenix is kind and genuinely wants to be your friend. She’s been extending hands across canyons for years now. But you just can’t take them. Too afraid you’ll drag her down into the drop with you.

“I hooked up with Bob,” you say, even though you should be telling her something else.

She obviously doesn’t know what to say to that. Opens her mouth just to close it again. Then finally settles on, “Why?”

Part of you wants to say you were the one who told me to let off steam. But this one, you can’t blame it on her. Can’t blame it on anyone but yourself.

“I don’t know,” you say with a shrug.

But you do know. That’s the problem.

You think of him on his knees in that bathroom. You think of him at your back in the air. How he breaks you apart. How he puts you back together.

“You know,” Phoenix says after an incredibly long time. “I always thought you had a crush on Rooster.”

It makes you laugh, even though it isn’t funny. Not even a little. Not even at all.

“Yeah,” you say. “Yeah, so did I.”

+

“So, Bob,” Hangman says, grinning in a way you can’t describe as anything other than villainous. If he, too, had a mustache, he’d be twirling it right about now. “Who do you prefer flying with: Phoenix or Specter?”

This was a horrible idea. Evenings at the Hard Deck should be barred for you from now on.

“Oh, come on,” you groan, going for nonchalance even as something inside you goes taut.

Bob looks decidedly uncomfortable, twisting his beer bottle around in his hands, fiddling with the soggy label, not looking at anyone.

“Uhm.” He shrugs. “They’re both good.”

Hangman’s having none of it.

“Nah, nah, nah, none of that diplomacy shit, Floyd. Gotta pick one.”

Coyote, always the shit-stirrer, claps a hand on Bob’s shoulder. “Yeah, bro. Who’s your best girl?”

Before responding, Bob casts his eyes down towards the floor, clears his throat. His glasses are riding low on his nose again, and you sink your fingernails into your palms to stifle the instinct to reach over and push them up for him.

“I guess… well, Phoenix is more consistent. Specter always… she’s a…. she’s a li…”

“Say it.” The words just burst from you before you can remember deciding to say them. Bob looks up then, eyes wide and face open. Your voice is venomous, and you feel like a rattlesnake about to strike. “A liability. That’s what you wanted to say, isn’t it?”

For a moment, Bob and you just stare at each other.

“I didn’t say that,” he says, voice gone soft. He’s going translucent as you speak, blending back into the chaos of the crowd.

“You didn’t have to.”

Everybody’s staring at you, but you keep your chin held high.

“I’m going home,” you say, and then you leave.

++

“You’re going too steep.”

Bob doesn’t have much hope that you’ll listen to him. You never do, apparently, unless he’s got you pinned to public bathroom doors.

It’s like a fever dream to him now, that night. Impossible that he was ever so close to you when all there is between you these days is distance and feelings tangled like thickets of thorns. When you won’t talk to him and won’t look at him, when it doesn’t matter what he says or asks.

Unsurprisingly, your answer is almost instantaneous. “We’re fine.”

The first time Bob met you, he couldn’t stop looking at you.

You were beautiful, in your uniform, under the bar lights. Beautiful and bright and brilliant and as decidedly out of his reach as the moon. You didn’t even look at him twice, not even after Phoenix introduced you. Drifted into his life and out of it like the specter that gave you your callsign.

And Bob never believed in love at first sight, still doesn’t, but there was something there, something beneath the thin veneer of arrogance you wore, you still wear. Something just under the surface, he thinks nobody but him sees—something he wants to keep as his secret.

You’re brilliant. The best pilot he’s ever met (even if half his friend group would balk at the idea), determined, clever, cut-throat. Stubborn to a fault. Witty and funny and always ready to stand up for yourself. The complete opposite of him.

Most of the time it’s admiration and curiosity, and then sometimes, it’s something else. When you slip from untouchable Ice Queen to something softer, when you lose yourself in the sky, in a book, in his touch in a bathroom at the Hard Deck… when you feel like nobody’s looking, that’s when Bob thinks he might love you.

Bob is a pilot. He gets up into that sky, and sometimes he deludes himself into thinking one day, one day, he’ll fly high enough, stretch far enough, and then finally, he’ll reach that moon. It’ll never happen, of course. The moon stays firm, beautiful and bright and brilliant, and achingly, eternally lonely. Never his to have.

The plane keeps climbing, steady, steady, steady, and Bob can barely breathe.

“Specter,” he chokes out. “Come on, girl.”

And then suddenly, abruptly, tipping like a pendulum, the plane falls. It’s an almost artful arch at the beginning, a ballerina angling her body towards the ground in a jump, and it leaves his stomach hanging somewhere above his head.

Then something changes. You keep falling.

“Specter, time to pull up,” Bob says, twisting to try and find Mav. Where is he?

There’s no answer.

“Specter,” he repeats, thinking you’re ignoring him for another reckless stunt, for another moment of you trying to recapture glory.

Still, you don’t respond, and that’s when he realizes something is horribly, terribly, awfully wrong.

“Specter!” he calls a third time, and now there’s a note of panic creeping into his voice he’s sure the others can pick up on over the coms. “Specter, you with me?”

The ground keeps hurtling closer. You keep silent.

“Bob.” That’s Mav’s voice, over the comms, right in his ear. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Bob gasps, and he’s breathless, he’s chafing, he’s… “She’s not… Specter!”

“Is she in g-Loc?” Rooster asks.

Rooster, Bob thinks. He twists, searching the horizon for his friend, but he can barely see anything. His vision has gone blurry.

And you’re still, still, still spinning towards the ground.

“Specter,” Bob says again, and he’s never known fear like this before. Not the first time he flew on his own. Not when he and Natasha had to punch out. Not when Mav and Rooster went down. Not ever. “Specter!”

And then he’s just saying your name, your real name, your first name, the one he’s said a million times in his head and never out loud, straining against all the buckles as if he can reach you, stretching out his arm over a distance impossible to breach.

“Bob!” That’s Rooster again. “Bob, you gotta punch out, you gotta eject now!”

I can’t leave her. That’s all he thinks. I can’t leave her, I can’t leave her, I can’t…

And Bob isn’t religious, never has been, but he’s saying, “Please, wake her up, please, God, I’ll do anything, please wake her up, please….”

You come to with a gasp like tires screeching on the asphalt, like a choir of angels or something, and then you’re pulling up, you’re getting the plane back on track, you’re…

In his ear, you’re saying, “Sorry. I… sorry.”

Bob sobs.

+

He knows you won’t acknowledge it before you land. He knows you’ll play it off, smile about it, laugh like nothing happened.

But he saw the tremor of your hands. He heard the fear in your voice. You can’t hide because he’s seen too much of you. Because he knows you, even if you don’t want him to.

“Specter,” he says, racing after you across the runway towards the hangar.

Everybody’s there, standing in a crowd near the doors. Pale faces, drawn with a panic that should be familiar by now, that’s part of this job. A panic nobody ever gets used to.

“I’m fine,” you say. You’re smiling, but it’s strained, and it’s a lie. He knows it is.

And Bob is angry. Angrier than he’s ever been with you because it’s not fair, not fair that you’re shutting him out, always shutting him out when all he wants is to hold you, be there for you, love you…

“You almost died!” Bob calls, voice rising, and he’s pretty sure there are still tears on his face. At least his cheeks feel wet.

Everybody’s looking at him. He can feel their eyes on him.

Usually, it would be enough to make him want to draw his head all the way between his shoulder blades, but not right now. Not with that feeling still simmering in his belly. Not with the feeling of that plummet still in his bones and the echoing silence of the cockpit in his ears. 

You stop. For a moment, you gape at him. Then you say, “You would have died, too.”

He’s shaking his head before you’ve finished, frantic, saying, “I could have punched out, you were in g-LOC, you would have died, Specter, this isn’t funny, this isn’t a game, this is real….”

“I can handle myself,” you say, but something about your voice is chafing.

“I think what we just saw,” Rooster says, face solemn, arms crossed in front of his chest, “proves that even you can’t always handle yourself, Specter.”

By your hips, your hands clench and unclench into fists. Your whole body seems to pulsate to a rhythm nobody but you can hear, shoulders heaving, head nodding up and down.

You’ve always stood apart from them, even as you stood right next to them. Never letting anybody in.

I can help you, Bob wants to say. You don’t need to carry it alone.

But you’re shaking your head, pulling the helmet against your chest. Stand on that runway, a step from him, a million miles from him.

“I’m fine,” you insist one last time. Voice like a wind chime. Face like a ghost.

And Bob thinks it might be time to let the moon go.

++

A week later, Hangman goes down.

Birdstrike, both engines on fire, ejectejecteject, static on the radio, fire streaking across the sky, then the parachute opening and the wind howling and him floating, light as a feather, towards the ground.

You’re out of the room before you can hear how it ends. Stumbling through the hallways of the base like a sleepwalker, like a toddler, like someone on the verge of a terrible thing.

It’s growing in you, something you can’t name, something that mounts and mounts and…

In a corner, next to a water fountain, you crumble like a ragdoll. Fold yourself into a neat square of limbs, knees pulled all the way up to your eyes, face pressed into the space between them.

The panic flares into your body like electricity, tingles down your spine and into your legs, tugs at your hands and feet. And your chest is full of it, of that anxiety and that memory, so full the feeling crowds against your ribcage, threatens to snap the bones. There’s no room for oxygen.

I’m going to choke, you think. I’m going to…

“Hey.”

You know it’s Bob without looking up. You couldn’t do it anyway, even if you tried. Your muscles won’t listen to you, not now when your body belongs to the anxiety.

“It’s okay,” Bob whispers. He’s crouched in front of you, you know this because you can see his shoes through the gaps between your knees. Angled like a V, straining towards you. “He’s fine. Hangman’s fine.”

It should bring relief, but it doesn’t. You shake your head, forehead still smashed against your knees, and your skin tugs against the patellas.

No, you think. I can’t do it. Not again, not again, not again. Please, god, make it end, just make it stop, I can’t, I can’t, I…

“I can’t,” you say, and you don’t know what you mean.

All you can think about is the crash. The gravity pulling at your chest. A canopy exploding above you. The pain of that dislocated shoulder. And then the emptiness, the aching, endless emptiness of the after. The guilt, the grief, the fear, the fear, the fear.

“Can I touch you?”

Bob’s voice is so soft, even with the underlying current of firmness. Just like it was in that bathroom. And it should be an oxymoron - for someone to be so tender, for someone to be so unyielding. But it’s not, not with Bob. Bob, who seems to contain true multitudes.

You nod because you can’t find your voice.

He draws you into his arms, right there on the floor. Hands on your back, tugging you against his chest, urging your head into the space below his chin. He’s so warm, and he smells nice, and he’s everywhere.

“Easy,” he whispers. “It’s alright. You’re okay.”

And then it’s just him. The steady beat of his heart instead of the screaming of warning systems. The smell of his aftershave instead of the smoke and the gasoline. His fingers pressing into your spine instead of the straps cutting into your shoulders.

Bob holds you together until you can do it yourself.

You draw back, slowly, almost reluctantly, and the moment his touch is gone, you miss it like something intrinsic to you. Miss it like a limb.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. You don’t want to look at him. You can’t look at him.

Bob exhales.

“Don’t apologize,” he says. “Can you… explain it?”

You suppose you should. Suppose you owe it to him after these weeks. After everything you’ve put him through.

“It… it scared me,” you whisper. It takes a lot to get that out, to admit that there’s anything, anywhere, that could scare you.

You don’t want Bob to know. You want Bob to think of you as someone above things like fear, someone strong and brave and whole. But it’s just all too much. You’re eroding, crumbling, tumbling off the tightrope you’ve been walking for so long.

If someone like Hangman, someone brilliant, someone fantastic, someone who burns brighter than life, can go down… then what about you? What about Bob?

“The rest, too.” At your questioning look, he elaborates, “Explain all of it to me.”

You could keep pretending you don’t understand him, but you’re too tired. Something about the panic has made you fuzzy, has blurred your edges, and you just want it to be over. You just want to be rid of everything clogging up your chest.

You want to feel again what you felt that night in the bathroom with Bob. You want somebody to carry the burden with you, so you won’t feel it dragging you beneath the surface of the ocean all the time.

“I killed her,” you say finally. The words are barely more than a whisper, but they burst from somewhere at the very core of you. Something you’ve kept hidden from view for years.

Bob pauses. Stares.

“... What?”

“I killed her,” you repeat, voice watery, hands shaking. “My last backseater. I killed her.”

He opens his mouth only to close it again—shifts his weight where he’s still sitting on the ground. Your knees are almost touching.

“Spec…” he begins, but you don’t let him finish.

“Everybody always said it, you know? That I was a wildcard, that I just… did whatever I wanted without thinking about others. Everybody but her. She’d always say, oh, you just don’t understand her, she’s brilliant, she knows what she’s doing, she….” You have to stop yourself, have to suck in a breath that sounds like you’re drowning, like your lungs are filling up with water. “And then one day we had a fight. She said that I… that I didn’t listen to her up in the air, that I always trusted myself more than I trusted her, and she… she called me a liability.”

Something in Bob’s eyes shifts, something like understanding flutters across his face, but the dam inside of you has broken. The river rushes without stopping.

“So I decided to prove her wrong. I wanted to go right, but she told me to go left, and I did. We got into a jet stream. I lost control of the plane. We had to eject. I made it, and she didn’t.”

You pause then. Blink against that horrible, unforgiving, brilliant sun outside the window. Your cheeks are wet.

“She was my best friend, Bob.” Your voice breaks, and you fold in on yourself, deflate. “She was the only one who ever believed in me. I knew her since we were eighteen, we did everything together, I only started flying two-seaters so I could fly with her, and you have to understand, I would have… if I could have changed it, if I could have died instead of her, I would have, I wouldn’t even have thought about it, I… And I know I’m not a… not a good person, I know I’m selfish and mean, and I hurt people all the time, and I know I hurt you, but I just… ” You trail off. Your voice is barely more than a whisper. “She was my best friend.”

It’s not nearly enough to explain what she meant to you. It’s all you have.

Bob doesn’t answer for a long time. When you finally find the courage to look up at him, you brace yourself for the inevitable: shock, disgust, disdain.

You find none of it.

Bob looks at you with a tenderness on his face that punches all the air out of your lungs. 

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” he asks, voice soft.

It’s almost helpless, the way you can do nothing but shrug your shoulders.

“It’s not…” You can’t look at him anymore, afraid you’ll do something stupid, afraid you’ll kiss him or tell him something you won’t be able to take back. “I didn’t think you’d care.”

Bob’s brows furrow.

“Of course I care,” he says, as matter-of-factly as if he’s chatting about the San Diego weather. “I care about you, Specter. I always have.”

You don’t know what to say to that. It tugs at you with ice-cold fingers, even as warmth spreads through your stomach. And it scares you, hearing him say that. He shouldn’t care about you. Not if he knows what’s good for him.

“I’m sorry,” you say after a long, long moment. “I’m sorry for… at the Hard Deck, I think I needed somebody, and you were there, and it… I used you. I’m sorry for it. I made a mistake.”

When you look at him next, something on Bob’s face has changed. Some window that was previously thrown wide open is shut. He looks down towards his shoes, glasses sliding slowly, slowly towards the tip of his nose.

“Up in the air,” he says finally. “I get it now, I think. Why you don’t listen to me. But I… Don’t you trust me?”

Hearing him say it hurts somewhere at the very core of you. In the grand scheme of things, in the great failure of your life, Bob is probably the person you trust most.

“I do,” you whisper, shaking your head. Folding your fingers in your lap and biting your lip so hard the sting distracts you from whatever is going on in your chest. “I just… I trust myself more. I have to trust myself more.”

Bob is quiet for a long, long moment. Then he nods.

“I understand,” he says, but it sounds like he wants to say something else entirely. “Can we just… let’s be friends, Spec. Please.”

And he sounds tired. The kind of fatigue that goes bone-deep, that travels over days and nights and weeks, the kind of fatigue you carry with you wherever you go. You know how that feels.

It’s a horrible thought just how much you’ve hurt Bob, and so you’ve never allowed yourself to think it. Have brushed it off and brushed it away, under beds and under carpets and into handicapped bathrooms with broken locks. Have pretended you couldn’t tell in the cockpit, pretended you didn’t see it in the mess hall when his face fell after another scathing remark, another dismissal.

All the way, you told yourself you were doing it for him - it’s not good to get close to you. You’ve never learned how to build things, grow things. All you know is how to ruin them.

So you say, “I don’t want to be your friend, Bob. I want to be alone.”

Behind the sheen of his glasses, Bob’s eyes are wet.

“I don’t think that’s true at all,” he says, finally.

And then he gets up, walks away, and leaves you behind on the floor, a town buried beneath a landslide, a meteor crater, a canyon of sand and rock, and the lone survivor clawing his way over the edge.

+

“Nat says you have a crush on me.”

Rooster gives no greeting, simply slides into the unoccupied seat by your side with those words. He’s broad enough that he dwarfs the rickety chair, the Hawaiian shirt so out of place in the beiges and grays of this military base.

A week ago, maybe you would have been embarrassed. Now, you can barely muster a shrug.

“What’s it matter?”

Rooster raises an eyebrow. The television room is deserted save for the two of you - some movie is playing with the volume all the way down, but you haven’t even been paying enough attention to tell if it’s a romantic comedy or a slasher.

“It matters,” he says. 

You shake your head, staring down at the packet of gum in your hand. The whole room smells like mint.

“I wasn’t ever going to act on it,” you say, “that’s why it doesn’t matter. It’s just… there. It doesn’t change anything for you.”

Rooster is quiet for a moment. And then he says, “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Hm?”

“The way you think it does,” he elaborates as if that clears it up. “You think you can just walk through life and not affect others. You think if you’re just mean and closed-off, if you never let somebody in, you won’t matter to them. That you won’t hurt them. That then they can’t hurt you. That’s not how it works, Spec.”

You exhale. It feels a little like he’s just pried open your chest, pulled all your most private, darkest thoughts into the world.

“I… I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s like this.” Bradley leans forward, sun-tanned hands reaching for you across the gray, gray expanse of the table. He doesn’t touch you, but he leaves his hands palms-up, an offering between you. “There are people here that love you, Spec. Even if maybe sometimes you don’t deserve that love. And you have the power to hurt them, just like they have the power to hurt you. You’re already in it. You’re just pretending you’re not.”

You grind your teeth. It’s too much. You can’t do it.

Eject, eject, eject, your mind is screaming at you, but it’s like you can’t find the cord.

“Bradley…” you begin, without knowing where you want the sentence to end.

“And you don’t have a crush on me.”

He says it like it’s a fact. He says it like he knows you better than you know yourself.

You’re beginning to suspect he might have a point.

“I think I know when I have a crush,” you say quietly.

“No, you don’t. Otherwise, you’d know you’re head-over-heels for Bob. Otherwise, you’d know he’s loved you since the first time he’s seen you.”

You think of Bob - Bob on his knees at the Hard Deck, Bob’s voice pulling you from the deepest, densest darkness of your life, Bob silhouetted by the unforgiving sun as you splintered into shards of glass right in front of him, as the contents of your life spilled across his feet and drenched him in your night.

It feels like being pressed into the seat at take-off - anticipation, fear, relief… You’re on the verge of something.

“Specter.” Rooster leans low across the table, his face in your field of vision. Kind eyes, kind mouth, kind face. The sort of kindness you don’t deserve. The sort of kindness that rips holes into your life and your resolve and your heart. “You don’t really want me. You just want to want someone and not be afraid they’ll hurt you. You just want to want someone without it being real. Because then it won’t hurt.”

I already know this, you want to tell him, but you can’t. Something about hearing it from him, something about realizing you’re not half as complex as you always thought you were, is strangely reassuring at the same time it makes your stomach churn.

“And you’re scared to want Bob. Because that would be real. Because that could hurt.”

Bob Floyd, who is so much kinder than you ever deserved. Bob Floyd, who has your back. Bob Floyd, who loves you, even when you don’t know how to love yourself.

“It already does, though,” you whisper, your voice impossibly small, your eyes burning. “It already does hurt, Rooster.”

And Rooster smiles. The sight of it plants a hope inside you you didn’t think you were capable of anymore - a sapling fighting its way through concrete. 

“That, Specter,” he says, “is how you know it’s real.”

+

Bob is crying when he opens his door.

He stands there in plaid pajama pants and a white shirt, without his glasses, hair no longer slicked back but curly and soft, and you remember sinking your fingers into it, remember wanting to ask what conditioner he uses, remember…

“Do you love me?” you blurt.

Bob blinks and opens his mouth. His cheeks are wet.

“I…”

You don’t let him finish.

“Because I don’t know if I love you. But I know that I like you. And I know that I’m scared, Bob, I’m so fucking scared. Every day of my life, I’m scared. I’m scared that you’ll die because I trust you, and I’m scared that you’ll die because I don’t trust you, and I’m scared that maybe I could love you, and I’m scared that you’ll hurt me or that I’m always going to keep hurting you and I don’t… I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do with all this fear, Bob.”

And then it’s Bob, the WSO. Bob the pragmatic. Bob the fucking best boy you’ve ever met.

He nods, says, “I know.” And then he takes a deep breath. Goes on, “You don’t need to know any of that stuff. You don’t even have to not be scared. Spec, fuck, I’m scared. I’m scared of how much I like you, and I’m scared of how much you’re hurting all the time, how tightly you keep that all locked up. I’m not asking you not to be any of those things. I’m just… I’m just asking you to talk to me. Let’s figure it out together.”

When he says it like that, it seems almost easy. Simple. Logical.

“For the record,” you say, voice a ruin, and you’re pretty sure you might be crying too, “I don’t think it was a mistake. What we did at the Hard Deck, I mean. I think it… I think it may have been the best decision of my life. I don’t make a lot of those.”

And Bob smiles. Steps to the side and opens his door to you.

“You wanna come in?”

You do.

In his bedroom, with his arms around you, it’s almost enough to pretend you’re whole again. It’s enough to know you’ll get there someday. To a point where you’ll know how to grow things instead of ripping them out of the earth. To a point where maybe, finally, you’ll deserve that love Bob hands out so freely.

In his bedroom, with his arms around you, it’s a little like drowning. It’s a little like flying.

#bob x reader #bob floyd #top gun maverick #robert floyd x reader #bob floyd fic #bob top gun #bob fic #top gun fic #top gun imagine #mine #writing #f: hsp

[pandora15]

Angstpril 2024 Day 1 Prompt: Homesick

It’s so silent.

Growing up in Mos Espa, Anakin is used to the sounds of speeders, ships, travelers, merchants, and the occasional sandstorm pulsing through the night. He is used to a maelstrom of sounds surrounding him as he goes to sleep every night, accompanied by the sounds of his mother moving around their hut as quickly and silently as she can.

Even though Anakin heard her every night, there was comfort in hearing her motions. It meant that she was there with him — no matter what he dreamed, she would be there in the morning, smiling.

His mother was his biggest comfort, growing up.

To be away from her, away from Mos Espa and all the sounds the night would bring, feels so unfamiliar and uncomfortable that Anakin wonders if he will ever hear those sounds again.

For the first few nights, he was alright. He was excited — about becoming a Jedi, about being free and learning to be a Jedi from Master Qui-Gon. The emotions kept him up well enough to not realize just how much he missed being home.

But then the Battle of Naboo happened, Master Qui-Gon died, and now…

He’s sitting alone in this empty bedroom in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. 

They’d only just gotten back from Naboo about an hour ago. After a quick meeting with the Jedi Council, Obi-Wan had walked Anakin to the apartment — their apartment — opened the door to this bedroom, and told Anakin to go to sleep.

But it’s just too silent.

There’s no sound outside. No speeders, no ships, no travelers or merchants, and definitely no sandstorms.

Letting out a frustrated breath, Anakin sits up in the bed.

“Mom?” he whispers.  “I hope…I hope you don’t feel as alone as I do right now. I wish you were here right now. Maybe you’d know what to do.”

She doesn’t answer.

Of course she doesn’t — she’s too far away.

She’s home, and Anakin is…

Why is he even here? Obi-Wan barely talks to him, barely even looks at him. He put him in this quiet room as soon as they arrived, and now Anakin is cold and lonely and he can’t stand the silence of it all.

Slowly, Anakin gets up and makes his way to the bedroom door.

Then, he takes a deep breath and uses his hand to slide the door open — just a little bit.

A sliver of light enters the room — just enough for Anakin to be able to see through into the common space of the apartment, where a lone figure sits on the couch turned away from Anakin, curled into the corner, hands pressed to its face.

Anakin’s breath stills at the sight. He’s seen something he shouldn’t’ve. That much is obvious.

Quickly, he retreats back into the bedroom and lets the door slide shut.

He tiptoes back to the bed, sits down.

The only thing he hears now is the sound of his own breaths — shuddering, uneven.

Swallowing, Anakin opens his mouth.

“I miss you,” he breathes, into the night.

#angstpril2024 #pandora writes #day 1 #homesick #fic #anakin skywalker #there's a bit of a subtle parallel between the homesickness that anakin and obi-wan experience after tpm that's just so fascinating to me #anyways i have no idea if i'll be doing more prompts than this #i definitely hope to

[cerastes]

How much of Kal'tsit's resentment of Doctor comes from the fact that everyone she wants to like her (Theresa, Amiya, most of RI's staff) likes Doctor better. Like here she is this super smart immortal with a super cool spine monster, but everyone flocks to this clown in a hood who gave up their morals after just one lifetime of war and atrocities.

Sincerely, I don't think she harbors much resentment from any of these facts.

Kal'tsit used to like Doctor herself. Amiya even points out that a few times, they are bantering like in the old times, with Kal'tsit clearly being at ease and casual before catching herself in the act and remembering her hatred. That's the thing with Kal'tsit, the tragic, sordid reality of Kal'tsit: She's likely the person that knows Doctor the best and the most. She knows exactly how charming and wacky and comforting and caring Doctor can be, how they used to be, but she knows exactly how potentially uncaring, calculating, ruthless and machine-like Doctor can potentially become again... Again, if they are not just pretending. In Kal'tsit's mind, Doctor might just be pretending to be amnesiac. To you and I and most people in R.I. in-universe, this might seem like an excuse to justify her hatred, but that's not the case, what this should be telling you is exactly how ruthless and calculating Doctor used to be, enough that Kal'tsit (and W, for that matter) has good reason to suspect that this might just be another of Doc's long plays.

Doctor, in Innes' words, is like a chess master: They are not looking at you as a person, and they are not looking at you as something to use in the present, the chess master sees pieces and sees the long plays, where the pieces will eventually be, and likely discarded for the sake of victory at some point.

Kal'tsit's resentment towards Doctor is palpable because it has nothing to do with jealousy or envy, it has to do with her being painfully aware of just everything this walking maelstrom is capable of (they successfully talked a Sarkaz Assassin aiming for their life into killing themselves in Vigilio by breaking him with words and his faith in Theresa, for the love of god, this is the kind of person Doctor was) and the best case scenario is that Doctor is truly amnesiac and can still potentially become the ruthless Doctor, but the worst case scenario is that Doctor is still the chess master and that this is all a long play.

Kal'tsit is immensely intelligent.

But so is Doctor.

Kal'tsit truly has the best of intentions. She is undeniably a force of good and righteousness in a sordid, blighted world.

But Doctor, the old one, only saw it all as a game.

That's what Kal'tsit hates, and what W fears. W, the thrill seeker who would stand dangerously close to a Catastrophe just for kicks, is deathly afraid of Doctor.

To you and I and most of the cast, Doctor is a clown in a hood that puts blocks of uncooked instant ramen in their mouth and cooks it by drinking boiling water.

To Kal'tsit, Doctor is, as long as they have the manpower and resources, an actual force of nature. Kal'tsit is not in the wrong here, and in her own words, she is entitled her hatred, for what Doctor has done, even if they can't recall it and they are not that person anymore, Kal'tsit deserves to feel the way she does, and no one can take that away from her, but it's definitely not for superficial reasons like those listed, Kal'tsit is well above that.

#arknights #kal'tsit #doctor

[littjara-compleated-sage]

If Blood Magic exists, Do you think Phyrexians can cast Oil Magic? What would that even look like? I know we have at least a card that references oil divination but is that it?

Ichor magic is a huge part of Phyrexian arcana and culture! That tends to be what Phyrexian mana represents—drawing on your own life force to power spells. This could be related to the deeply magical properties of Phyrexian oil and the fact that it apparently contains millions of tiny powerstones, not to mention millennia of ancestral memory and experience.

It really fits with the Phyrexian idea that everything is a resource up to and including your own blood, which also powers megastructures and industrial machinery. Phyrexian empire literally runs on the blood of its people. From a less oppressive standpoint, ichor magic could also be seen as pouring the essence of yourself into your magical work, literally the stuff of memory and heredity.

We don't have a whole lot of detail about what ichor magic is actually done, however. What we do know that ichor scrying can be done actively while awake, but that Phyrexians also tend to receive dreams about the past or future, probably less voluntarily. Ichor divination is an introspective process, as all the information to be sought is already contained and hidden in one's own body. Notably, Phyrexians tend to send flying bloodsuckers after their enemies, and the extracted oil from targets might be used to scry on them. Divination definitely seems like the primary focus, but other disciplines could include necromancy, combat magic, and even healing of other Phyrexians.

Headcanon: I think that though every compleat Phyrexian has the potential to harness basic ichor magic, it's also a deeply specialized discipline that a small number of mages spend their entire lives unraveling. Ichormages are extremely valuable but unsettle even other Phyrexians with the way they seem to see straight through people into their veins, and also tend to burn out their lives channeling spells after too short a time.

Kraynox, the Deep Thane, is likely the most powerful of these mages on New Phyrexia.

As for what it looks like? Again, very few canonical references, but I imagine a mage crackling with power as their eyes and open wounds seep with ichor, which swirls into a maelstrom around their increasingly broken form as they chant loudly in Phyrexian.

Weirdly enough, Silverquill has been my best reference when I do art of ichormages at work.

That's how I imagine ichor magic at its peak. An utterly breathtaking aerial display of glistening oil, with a trembling, exhausted mage draining their own life force at the center of it all, spending all of themself for a moment of epic power.

#mtg #magic the gathering #new phyrexia #phyrexian #glistening oil #askbox #thementalmonk

[emberglowfox]

okay a few people have asked now abt steelheart redux so i will do my best to give an overview the maelstrom of vague thoughts it consists of at the moment

basically, steelheart is the oc story i've been posting a shitton of on and off for the past while. steelheart redux refers specifically to its latest iteration, which is completely (mostly) sci-fi and mech driven as opposed to the standard dragon rider story it was before.

it focuses primarily on these guys!

arthur is a human, while zarian is a DRACO, specifically a v1, which i will elaborate on below the readmore bc this is a little long haha

the setup for the story is essentially this:

the DRACOs (version 1, aka v1s) are big draconic mechs that are basically the equivalent of a super high-tech fighter jet with some other bells and whistles, the most notable being that they're pretty much human powered. but to be efficiently powered long-term, they have to be (or have part of them, really) permanently fused to a human host (or any living creature, technically, but humans are what they're like. made for).

despite all that, stuff surrounding their creation goes pretty well for a while, until the v1s mysteriously 'wake up'-- as in, suddenly attain self-aware consciousness, and start talking to their hosts (known as pilots) who understandably take this pretty badly. it's like if the fighter jet you've been flying around and are also kind of biologically fused to suddenly grew a brain and started asking about your day. things get even worse when the company producing the v1s attempts to like. undo this by forcing out an update patch, which has the unintended effect of corrupting the (previously entirely benevolent, just curious) v1s and turning them into crazed murder machines. stuff is bad for a while.

the ACTUAL story takes place 15 years after this, when stuff still isn't amazing but has mostly evened out. the company responsible for the v1s collapsed in the initial chaos, but from its ashes came a new company, Defenex, which has been producing DRACO v2s. they're the sleeker, badder cousins to the v1, made for the sole purpose of protecting towns from and hunting down remaining v1s. they're also, very critically, Not Mysteriously Self-Aware like the v1s are (or. were?) which is good.

the plot follows arthur steele, a fifteen year old boy living in one of the surviving cities, who through a series of accidents comes to be permanently fused to a (mysteriously un-murderous but distinctly unhappy) v1 calling himself Zarian. at first, his goal is to get Zarian removed from his back so they can go their separate ways and he can go back to his unremarkable, relatively safe life. unfortunately, this does not go according to plan. at all. but in the process, they start learning more about the mysterious origins of the DRACO incident and asking questions some people REALLY don't want answered. along the way, they make a few friends, come to actually like each other, and accidentally develop a reputation as Public Enemy #1, Definitely Evil, Kill On Sight. oops.

and that's the gist! i know... a lot of what happens, within that window, but most stuff isn't like nailed down clearly or in order yet, because i've discovered that while i am good with coming up with originally story ideas, actually plotting one from start to finish, coherently and satisfactorily, does NOT come naturally to me at all.

but, at the very least, it has become a fun brain playground and happiness generator, because i am veeery attached to these guys. moreso than i ever have gotten about my own ocs in my whole life tbh

:)

#if u have specific questions feel free but i hope this is like. a legible world overview #so much happens here though. they almost die in a rite-aid. they blackmail a grown adult. they meet god(?) and hes annoying. its a blast #sparks speaks #steelheart redux #sparks art #steelheart redux lore

[worlddominationofcourse]

Spider-Punk’s Canon Event

I have a theory regarding Hobie Brown having a close relationship with a police captain who dies during a fight with a supervillain.  I know most of the internet is laughing at this idea, because Spider-Punk hates cops, like all good punks.   He has the blue laces that means he killed a cop.  And that’s valid.  But take a walk with me.  

Hobie Brown is playing a show one night when he sees a cop in the back, at a table.  Hobie tenses, but the cop raises a beer and smiles at him.  Hobie, being a spider-man, has a solid sense of good and evil and goes over to see what he wants. 

The officer introduces himself as George Stacy and says he loves Hobie’s music and agrees that society is broken and that cops are corrupt and something needs to be done.  Society is corrupt from the top down and can only be fixed from the bottom up.  Hobie scoffs and calls him a poser and walks off. 

However, Captain Stacy keeps showing up at Hobie’s shows.  He always has a beer, he never makes trouble and when a fight breaks out at one of the shows, he lets Hobie break up the fight.  And Hobie keeps talking to him.  They have the same taste in music, they argue about what makes a good beer, Stacy tells him about his daughter, Gwen and how he wants a better world for her.  And much to his horror, Hobie Brown is becoming friends with a cop. 

He starts keeping an eye on Captain Stacy as Spider-Punk and the man seems to be as good as his word.  He’s by the book where every other pig cheats, lies and steals, he always seems to find something more important for the cops to do when they’re supposed to be enforcing eviction notices or destroying homeless camps, even when Mayor Osborn starts coming down hard on him about it.  And Hobie realizes he’s as good as his word, that Captain Stacy is actually a Good Cop, a thing he legitimately did not believe existed. 

He wonders how Stacy managed to get up to Captain while actually having morals and a spine, in a system that encourages sheer bastardry and evil.  He soon realizes that Captain Stacy is just that charismatic, that people just can’t help but to like him and follow along with him.

Things finally come undone when Mayor Osborne dons his power suit and comes out to deal with Spider-Punk and his anarchic ways once and for all.  The two clash, Osborne bringing cop back up, Spider-Punk bringing Captain Anarchy to help him even the odds against the tyrannical future president.  And Captain Stacy is there, trying to de-escalate the situation, trying to stop anyone from getting hurt.

And in the middle of the fighting, mere moments after Norman is sent staggering away by a solid hit from Hobie’s guitar, Hobie sees a cop take aim at Captain Stacy and, before he can do anything, the cop shoots his friend in the back.  Good cops always get that in the end.  It’s a miracle it never happened before that. 

Hobie cradled the dying Stacy in his arms, a moment of calm in the maelstrom of battle.  Stacy tells him he’s sorry, that he won’t be around to help him fix this shit-pile of a world, but never to give up and never to sell out to the establishment.  And then he dies.

And that’s when Hobie earns his blue laces.  Because Hobie has definitely thought about killing a cop before.  When he sees a cop dragging an old lady out because she can’t pay her rent.  When he sees a cop threatening a kid for shoplifting.  When he sees a cop beating up a homeless guy for the crime of existing.  But he always just hung them upside down or webbed them to the side of a building, because that’s what his gut tells him is right. 

Not this time.  This time he cracks that cop’s head open with his guitar and he vows that he won’t be fooled again.  Good cops do exist and then they get murdered because trying to fix the system from the inside is stupid.  He’s punk-rock and being punk rock means that you burn everything down from the outside and build things up from the ashes.

And that’s how I think Hobie had his police officer related canon event. 

#spiderpunk #spider-punk #hobie brown #canon event #captain stacy #spiderverse #across the spiderverse

[commander-diomika]

Prompted by @razzberrydazz- Lae'zel getting handsy whilst teaching Shadowheart to shoot. A quick cute one from me, about 1200 words, genfic no trigger warnings.

---

“As I said. You would have been far more effective from a distance when we came over the hill and spotted the gnolls.” Lae'zel shoved the bow in Shadowheart’s hands. It was of goblin make, one of the many looted off the corpses in the village.

“And you, vampire. We’re not skulking in the dark after all our enemies anymore. I understand you to be efficient in close quarters but I am not always going to be there to keep our foes from tearing your limb off.” Another bow abruptly thrust into pale hands. Astarion gave a small scoff and held the bow like it was coated in slime.

“Like it or not,” and from the squeeze of her narrow mouth, she was definitely in the “not” category, “we will be fighting as a team from now on. Effective combat is not just about how hard you can swing a crude hunk of metal.” Lae’zel eyed the mace slung at Shadowheart’s hip, and without thinking she fluttered her hand over it protectively. It had served her well so far, but it didn’t take genius acolyte to guess how Lae’zel felt about anything that couldn’t be sharpened to a lethal edge.

“It is simply wise strategy to have a secondary ranged weapon. Even better strategy would be to have you able to hit things with it.”

“What about the others?” Shadowheart asked, not liking the undercurrent of whine in her voice.

“Chk!” Lae'zel spat on the ground to underscore her scorn. “Mages, wizards and adepts need not the military training you do. And I have nothing to teach Karlach that her years in the hells haven’t already taught her. You two, however, are a different story.”

It had been a poor showing that day with the gnolls. A messy, scrappy fight that they’d been lucky to win, even though they’d spotted the creatures on the road well in advance. If it hadn’t been for Lae’zel, stunningly fast, divinely vicious, it may have been that none of them would need to worry about turning into mindflayers after all.

Horses couldn’t drag it out of her, but Lae’zel had been stunning to watch. An absolute maelstrom.

So when Lae’zel dragged Shadowheart and Astarion to a clearing near the camp, training dummies set and waiting, Shadowheart ignored the churn of shame and went.

“Fire upon the dummies. I am unable to train you if I do not first understand what you are capable of.”

Astarion twanged the string of the goblin bow, dubious.

“You first, istik.” Lae'zel jerked her chin at Shadowheart.

Shadowheart set her feet. There was a surge of pride, desire to prove herself to this arrogant gith, but the emotion immediately crashed upon the shore of knowledge. She’d never been a particularly gifted archer. The bow didn’t feel entirely unnatural to her, so she had to suppose she had been trained in the art to some extent, but it didn’t slot into her hands with the same unerring coherence that she felt with mace and shield.

She drew, and fired off the first arrow. It glanced off the side of the dummy, and her face burned. A second shot. This one hit, but the arrow drooped in the straw, having barely found purchase.

She glanced up at Lae’zel, braced for the scathing criticism, but she was merely watching the performance with an electric intensity, as though they were already in battle.

Shadowheart took a breath to steady herself, looking back to the dummy, feeling Lae’zel eyes boring through the back of her head. The shot went wide by at least a foot.

Lae’zel made another of those clicking sounds in her throat, and before Shadowheart could muster a mote of defence for her performance, there was a sinewy grip squeezing her waist. It was like the gith didn’t know how to approach touch with anything but force.

“Like this.” Lae'zel tugged her with implacable hands. “More side-on to your target. I know you are used to hiding behind your shield but think a little first.” The hands moved to her shoulders, and Shadowheart flinched at the feeling of those hands on her bare skin.

“Again.” The arrow landed more surely this time, penetrating at least an inch into the straw. She felt a silly little surge of pride. Since when do you care what this monster thinks of you, girl? A voice sounded inside her mind, the harsh cadence reminding her of Mother.

This time Lae'zel approached from the front, brusquely moving Shadowheart’s hands on the bow. She closed her fingers firmly over Shadowheart’s in the new position, and when those firm hands withdrew, Shadowheart felt hot all over. From shame? From- from being touched?

When last had she been touched? She couldn’t remember. Lae'zel withdrew and took position at Shadowheart’s back, standing so close that her breathing was loud in Shadowheart’s ears

“Again.” Shadowheart listened to that breathing. She closed her hands firmly on the bow, holding the feeling of Lae’zel hands over her own in the sense-memory of her body, and drew.

The arrow missed the target by at least two feet.

The noise that came out of Lae’zel could have punched a hole through Shadowheart’s gut. She crowded in again, yanking hands, twisting Shadowheart’s hips like a doll, then taking a knee and shoving her thighs slightly wider.

Where had all the wind in her lungs gone?

“This is even more disappointing than I was prepared for. You are supposed to be a warrior of some merit-” she stood as she spoke and glanced at Shadowheart’s face.

“What is wrong?” she asked sharply. “Are you unwell? There is a colour to your skin I have not seen before.”

Shadowheart fired off a quick prayer to Lady Shar to wrench the life out of her there and then.

Lae’zel didn’t wait for a reply, merely yanked the bow from her hands. “Go rest a moment.” Shadowheart obeyed. If Lady Shar wasn’t going to kill her, she could at least be out from under those hawk eyes.

“Elf. Take your turn and maybe this afternoon’s work will not have been a complete waste.”

Astarion made a show of stepping up, moving his hands uncertainly up and down the bow, almost fumbling as he nocked. Then, with a sly tightening of his shoulders, he turned to the target, and fired off three quick shots, thwap thwap thwap, neatly clustered on the dummy’s pockmarked face. He turned back to Lae’zel with a swagger.

Instead of the praise that he so clearly angled for, she sighed. “Why did you come out here if you were not in need of my instruction? Why not simply tell me you already knew how to shoot?”

“Oh, you know. I just wanted to see a little more of,” holding a spare arrow, he gestured, pointing first at Lae’zel and then to Shadowheart, where she had taken refuge on a rock, “whatever this is.” He finished with a smirk, drawing the arrow head in a circle encompassing the space between them.

Lae’zel merely frowned as he flourished. When he turned knowing eyes to Shadowheart, she stood up, too fast, and with a quick, “whatwasthatIthinkIheardTavcallingme,” she turned and fled the clearing.

#bg3 #shadowzel #lae'zel #shadowheart #astarion #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 fanfic #hank writes #hank plays bg3 #hank talks

[brineffxiv]

So... This was a lie.

In the aftermath of Quintus' suicide, many of the people at Tertium - soldier and refugee alike - opt to relocate to Camp Broken Glass where they can partake of our food, warmth, and medical care. We are in the process of settling these refugees in and serving them supper. It is peaceful. Possibly the first moments of peace many of these people have known in a long time.

Jullus arrived with the final group of refugees, and... He's having a bit of a hard time. I think the kindness and camaraderie are getting to him. He's lost so much, and been under such strain, for so long. It's no wonder when he can finally relax he's going to pieces.

While reminiscing with Lucia and Maxima I notice the flower glowing a soft blue. Because of how thankful and content we are? It is a beautiful moment.

Ah, but of course, it cannot last. Shattering the peaceful silence, the radio in the command room crackles to life, and from it issues the voice of Emperor Varis.

From the Tower of Babil comes a mighty roar, and our warding scales flicker to life.

But lo! None of our newly arrived refugees have yet been given warding scales, and their tempering begins.

In the chaos, as we rush to restrain the tempered and distribute warding scales to those yet able to be saved, a soldier of the Maelstrom calls out to me. But he is not a solider. He is Fandaniel. And then I am gone.

I come to slowly, seated across a long table from Zenos, with the voice of Fandaiel in my ear.

...aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

I don't think there are appropriate words for the sheer stomach-churning horror that was this moment.

Well, Zenos, this definitely takes the cake for the most uncomfortable date I've ever been on. Kudos.

Fandaniel's incessant chatter contrasted with Zenos' ominous silence is possibly just as unnerving as waking up in a borrowed body. The tension is building, and I dread when it breaks.

Suddenly, a roar, and there it is. The primal is near. We're in the Tower of Babil, then.

...excuse me, "Daddy?" Is Varis not quite dead after all?

Oh, but it is much worse than that. Varis is quite dead, but his corpse, animated by the desperate "prayers" of the people of Garlemald - for salvation, for safety, for a return to the days of old - is what has become the primal.

AAA! Holy FUCK.

Holy goddamn fuck!

Incidentally, I was right about the towers. They're part of the primal and siphoning aether back to the... main... body... Oh, eew, they've all got pieces of Varis' corpse inside them, don't they?? That's why there was a man's limb inside the core of the Tower of Zot?

Finally, Zenos speaks, and he is...

I could almost read his previous silence, not as a deliberate tactic to unnerve me, but as hesitation while he sorted out how to pitch the idea to me. After all, Fandaniel has already confessed that this entire plan was his own idea: Zenos probably didn't have the opportunity to think up his speech in advance.

Zenos is talking like he's trying to convince me to sleep with him. Like we had a grand one-night-stand and he's trying to persuade me to "re-conquer" him.

Which does highlight the problem with Zenos' assessment of the situation: he's got such a skewed understanding of emotional motivation that he's only capable of parsing it in terms of the negative. He sees himself as a conquest - either in battle or in bed - that he must persuade me to experience again, by tempting me with unrealized potential. When, if we were actually the "friends" he professes us to be, we could engage in... whatever it is he wants to engage in... for the sheer enjoyment of the activity.

And so, he would cause untold pain and suffering, that he would become an irresistible target for my attention and my ire.

He has mistaken me though; I am not angry, I am only sad. Aghast, horrified by what he has done... but I feel I understand him too much to hate him as he desires. My enemy. My friend.

And so, you will now do something "worse." Won't you?

He wants me to experience, as he did, fighting in another's body.

Get out of my body Zenos!

Not what I thought he meant when I surmised he wanted inside me.

Gee, thanks, Fandaniel.

You're a dick, Fandaniel.

Thus commenced the most nerve wracking, emotionally fraught, paradigm shifting....

Goddamn. "In From the Cold" is Art. That's all I can call it. It's a work of art, and it must be experienced - in context - to be truly appreciated. I am positive every one of you who has played the game knows exactly what I'm talking about. It was HARD too. It took me two tries to get through it. Holy shit though, holy shit...

Fuck. I am not okay.

Back at camp, my friends have managed to get a handle on the situation with the tempered and are preparing to send out search parties to look for me. They realize they timing of my disappearance is suspicious and are aware the two are likely connected, but don't have enough information to connect the dots.

When suddenly, who should come walking up the path but me.

I take some small satisfaction that my Black Mage glam forced Zenos to walk across the breadth of Garlemald in 2B heels. That's what happens when you kidnap someone for a date, Zenos. Serves you right.

Ooo! I get a good look at Zenos' avatar. Cool.

I made it just in time. Able to save G'raha and Alisaie by throwing my sword through the avatar just as it was about to slice into them.

I launch myself at Zenos!Me. But I collapse to the ground as whatever spell-thing Fandaniel did to move my soul out of my body hits its limit. I am incapacitated as my soul starts to return to my body.

Fandaniel reveals his master plan!

All that we have encountered since arriving in Garlemald has been by design. Tempered soldiers, refugees, he's even behind the missing ceruleum in Tertium! All planned to delay us just enough for Anima to siphon enough aether to awaken Zodiark! And somehow make the Final Days happen!? I'm not 100% clear how that's going to work, but Fandaniel would know, I suppose.

Ah, Zenos, you horrible, deranged, sexy man. Unf. Be evil at me some more.

But my friends are here! They are here for me! They love me! They are unharmed, and now it is time to storm the Tower of Babil. Which is good. Because I hit the max image limit on this post and had to take out several good jokes, if I do say so myself. Time to start a new post.

#ffxiv liveblog #rhesh'a tag #jullus pyr norbanus #fandaniel #zenos yae galvus #zenos my friend my enemy #in from the cold #baseless speculation

[rosapexa]

WiP Whenever

Thank you for tagging me @chevvy-yates , @wanderingaldecaldo , @gloryride 🖤

I'm working... Ok, working is not the right word for that. I'm experimenting and losing my mind over this for weeks now. And honestly i've been depressed so many times over this, it really hasn't been fun in a while, unlike making the tattoos for V-Lexa. But also i can't let things go, when i start something, so taking a step back and just leave this for a while, was not really an option (and i tried). And i really wanted to make something for her.

And since yesterday, i think i'm finally on the right track. Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see. Sorry, i'm rambling.

Anyway...

I always wanted to give Lexa some tattoos. But there hasn't been anything so far, which i thought would fit her. And also tbh i didn't even really knew myself what i wanted for her. And tbh it was kinda difficult to find something, cause everything i tried, wasn't "good enough" for her and i was (and still am) constantly unsure, if i'm not ruining her.

It was a lot easier to find something for V-Lexa. Not because i care less about her, but because she's in comparison relatively new and i'm still figuring everything about her out.

But Maelstrom Lexa has been around for quite while now and allthough i want changes, i'm so scared (yeah, it doesn't make sense). Also it doesn't help, that her personal lore is about wanting (Maelstrom) perfection and making her body the perfect weapon -.-

Aaaand i'm rambling again. Ok... Changes:

New tattoos of course. Lexa LOVES skulls. On her clothes, as decorations... So that is also mostly the theme for her tattoos. A lot of skulls. But she also got two "let's get some ink while blackout drunk" tattoos (she's not always perfect xD). On her right hip you can get a glimpse of a "yelling" cat, which she got after Salem adopted her and she just wanted to show off, that she now has a fur baby. The other is a Maelstrom logo on her leg which she got shortly before her initiation, when she got extemely drunk with Royce and Dum Dum and decided it's time for a gang tattoo. And of course they thought it was an awesome idea 😂

There's a tattoo for Johnny as well. It's the heart on her right arm. Not a cute heart, since we're still talking about Lexa, so it's the... literal organ 🫀 I still have to add Johnny's name and their wedding date to it. Also i would like to give him the same tattoo, but i'm not sure about that yet. Mostly because i'm hesitant to change his tattoos and don't want to get yelled at for that 🥴.

I got rid of her vanilla body scars and trying right now to give her some custom ones. Because i always thought she doesn't have enough scars, since she's fighting a lot and she sees them as trophies. But that's just an idea for now and i have to see how this goes, cause i'm not really understanding what i'm doing (normal maps wtf!?). I would also like to work on her face scars, but that is even more confusing.

I also thought about making my own skin color for her, cause sometimes her skin looks too red for my taste. I would like to have her paler and with even less color. But i didn't have any succes now, cause nothing looked good enough.

Other stuff:

I'm tidiying up Johnny's NPC+, cause every time i gave him a new outfit i just threw the things into his mod folder without organizing anything. And now i have a ton of stuff and no idea, what is for what. Also there are a lot of appearances, which i will never use (again).

I'm very slowly working on a mod for the Aurore Outfit: Pants, bra, top and jacket. I like this outfit so much but as usual, i need COLORS 😂 Currently only the pants are more or less ready, so this will take a long while until i can share it, since priority are definitely things for the blorbos.

Also in between i make some poses, but these are mostly just for myself for now, cause i'm actually too lazy to make them good enough for the public (at least i know how to position the camera to hide the chaos) or to retarget them for other couples besides M/F.

I think, that was it for now. Which was already too much again 🥴

I'm tagging @togepies , @miss--river , @thelonestrider , @wraithsoutlaws and @dreamskug for a WiP sharing. As usual without any pressure of course 🖤

#Cyberpunk 2077 #Rosa's OCs: Lexa #WiP Whenever

[punchdrunkdoc]

Part 3, Chapter 9

Summary: After the events of S3, Matt Murdock is trying to once again balance life as a lawyer and a vigilante. But he’s been scarred by loss and betrayal - will a mysterious new neighbour help him heal? Or will her secrets drag him back into the darkness?

Notes: This is a slow burn romance with an original female character, told in 3 (maybe 4??) parts. There is mystery, intrigue, action/violence and angst - all the good stuff!

Also available on AO3 and Wattpad

Masterlist

Reference pics

————–

PART 3

Chapter 9

The warehouse was a confusing maelstrom.

The scents and the body heat of dozens of people blended together, and the painful cracks of gunfire bombarded Matt's sensitive hearing. But within moments of crouching by the main door of the squat, rectangular building, he started to sense the order in the mayhem.

The Widows were advancing through the space in teams, covering each others’ backs, their movements precise and economical. Their enemies were spread out and floundering, seemingly taken off guard, and too poorly trained to adapt to the sudden attack.

No. Not quite. Matt cocked his head, assessing the occupants of the warehouse further. They weren’t poorly trained, they just weren’t used to working as a team. As individuals, they definitely had some skills…but they still weren’t a match for the Widows.

He followed the fight from the sidelines, knowing it wasn't his place to intervene, that it wasn't his battle. But he was poised to enter the fray if Calina or one of her sister's were at risk of getting hurt, or if something went wrong.  

And after ten long minutes of fighting...something did. 

The balance of the fight somehow shifted. Something turned in the favour of Volkov’s men, and the Widows formation started to fracture. They started to take more hits, and they had to scramble to try to cover each other.

But not all of them managed. 

Matt caught the moment one of the smaller Widows came up against a hulking thug almost twice her size. He could smell the gunpowder from her weapon where it had been knocked to the ground, and she was reduced to dodging and spinning out of the way of the brute’s powerful fists, her own hits landing with barely any impact against his muscled mass.

Sensing the danger she was in, and knowing it was time to act, Matt sprinted through the doorway and into the warehouse. He leapt over workbenches and the boxes littering the cavernous space and reached the Widow just as her opponent picked her up by the throat and slammed her onto the concrete floor. Matt launched himself into the air, twisted, and used his momentum to kick the Russian in the side with full force. The brute grunted as he flew across the floor, and Matt quickly leaned down to check on the Widow at his feet.

Up close he recognised her as Inessa, one of the Widows from the cabin. She was sprawled on the concrete, eyes closed and not moving. The scent of copper filled his nose, but before he could check for the source of bleeding, his opponent got to his feet and came at him.

That’s right, Matt thought as he ducked under a right hook. Pick on someone your own size.

He parried the hook with a one-two jab of his own, and attacked with a series of kicks and punches…but just like Inessa, his hits barely registered. The hulking Russian just absorbed the impact and kept standing. Even a booted kick to the face - with Matt’s entire forced behind it - did little more than snap the man’s head to the side. He just spat out a globule of blood and smiled, baring red-stained teeth.

Matt took a step back, frowning. His first kick had managed to affect the guy…but was that just due to the element of surprise? Because nothing was working now. 

Who the hell was this?

What was this?

There was no time to figure it out - it was the brute’s turn to go on the offensive, and Matt had to use all his concentration to avoid the attacks.

Given his size, the man wasn’t exactly light on his feet, but his fists packed a huge amount of power. The support beam to Matt’s right splintered into fragments when one of the punches missed Matt by a hair and impacted the wooden structure.

Matt wasn’t so lucky with the next hit. He was a fraction of a second too late to fully dodge an uppercut, and the glancing blow to his chin was enough to send him flying backwards. He landed in a heap next to the still-unmoving Widow. He gave himself a moment to shake off the ringing in his head from the impact before staggering back to his feet.

But it was a moment too long.

It gave his attacker time to swipe Inessa’s fallen gun and start firing. Matt dodged the first round, his honed senses moving him out of the line of sight before his addled brain had a chance to catch up.

The next round glanced off his mask.

But by the third round, Matt was ready. He ducked and spun out of the way, grabbing his billy club from his holster. With a sharp flick, he sent one end of it barrelling towards the gunman. The baton hit the man in the hand with a crack, and the pistol flew out of his grip.

Before Matt could follow up the move, a familiar figure came sprinting towards them from the right. Matt watched as Calina leapt up onto a nearby workbench and used the added height to launch herself onto the shoulders of the Russian brute. She wrapped her long legs around his chest and jammed both hands into his neck, sending bolts of crackling electricity through his system.

As the incapacitated man dropped to the floor, Calina gracefully rolled off his shoulders, somersaulted across the floor, and came up in a crouch at Matt’s feet.

She stared up at him, mouth parted in surprise. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

There was no time to reply. Another man had chased Calina across the room and was coming in hot. Matt grabbed Calina by the arms, pulled her to her feet and shoved her behind him just as the newest aggressor reached them.

This one had a knife. A long, serrated dagger that flashed towards Matt as the man attacked. Matt blocked the blade with the edge of his baton, and countered with an elbow strike. Calina stepped out from behind him, dropped into a spinning crouch and swept the knife-man’s legs from under him. He collapsed to the floor, and Matt followed him down, hammering a vicious punch into his face to knock him out.

Another assailant came running at them, this one a similar build to the electrocuted brute.

And he was just as strong.

It took Matt and Calina working together to take him out, the two of them utilising their strengths in tandem - Matt’s offensive skills, Calina’s agility, the weapons strapped to her wrist, and the baton in his hand.

And they complimented each other perfectly. They both seemed to instinctively knowing where the other one was, and what they were going to do. They were so in sync, it was like a dance. As if they’d been training together all their life.

As the man finally fell unconscious at their feet, Matt turned to Calina and touched his gloved hand to her cheek, his senses checking her over for any injuries. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

She pressed his hand to her face. “No, I’m fine. Are you?”

“I’m good. But who the hell were those guys?”

Calina shook her head. “They’re not supposed to exist. And they’re definitely not supposed to be here.”

———

Their intel had failed them.

All of Anya’s careful research, the days and days of carefully scrutinising the footage from this warehouse, the weeks spent wading through the information from Ranieri’s laptop…and no one had realised that three members of Volkov’s team were supersoldiers.

Well, super-ish soldiers.

The former Soviet Union had never quite managed to faithfully recreate the serum that had transformed Steve Rogers into Captain America. They’d come close with the Red Guardian during the Cold War, but a fire had broken out in the lab hosting the supersoldier program, and decades of research, and the top minds involved in the project had gone up in flames.

Over the years they’d tried to reverse engineer the serum from the Red Guardian’s blood. But the resulting super soldiers were weak facsimiles, and they invariably succumbed to an aggressive form of blood cancer, accelerated by the serum.

It was no secret that Dreykov’s ultimate goal had always been to combine the mind control of the Widows with the power and strength of the Red Guardian - he’d even experimented on his own daughter to try to achieve that aim. Calina had just assumed all that research had been destroyed when the Red Room fell.

But Volkov had obviously managed to find a few vials - and a few volunteers - and had created a cadre of three semi-enhanced soldiers.

Enough to give the Widows a fight tonight.

But not enough to thwart their victory. Calina glanced around as the warehouse suddenly went quiet, the gunfire little more than an echo, and the sounds of hand-to-hand combat silenced. All of Volkov’s men were down - either knocked out or dead - leaving only the Widows and Matt left standing.

Matt.

What was he doing here?

Before she could ask, he suddenly pushed past her and crouched down behind one of the toppled workbenches. Calina followed, her boots crunching through broken vials and beakers as she hurried to catch up.

Rounding the table, she spotted the still figure sprawled on the concrete. “Inessa!” she gasped. She dropped to her knees and patted the Widow’s face gently. “Inessa? Can you hear me?”

There was no response. Stomach lurching with fear, she scrambled at the material of the other woman’s high-collared suit, tugging it down to try to reach her pulse.

“She’s alive,” Matt reassured her. “But one of those ‘things that shouldn’t’ exist slammed her hard.”

Calina let out a shuddering breath. She hadn’t realised Inessa was in trouble. All of the Widow’s training and strategy had fallen apart once they’d encountered the supersoldiers. 18 against 9 had turned out to be shitty odds when super-powered, 6-foot-5 killing machines were part of the 18. They’d lost track of each other in the melee, their careful plans to watch each others’ backs had fallen apart in the struggle to just survive the fight.

The fight that Matt had wanted no part of. The fight that he didn’t agree with, and the one which went against every facet of his moral code.

But the one he’d joined nonetheless. To help her and her sisters.

“Thank you,” she whispered, knowing instinctively that Inessa would be dead if it wasn’t for him.

“You can thank me when she wakes up,” Matt said, probing the back of Inessa’s head. When he lifted his hand, his glove was wet with blood.

“How is she?” Yelena asked, fear evident in her husky voice. She and the rest of the Widows had rushed over to crowd around their fallen teammate.

“She needs a doctor,” Matt answered. “She’s got a nasty laceration. I can’t sense a fracture, but she’ll need to see a doctor to be sure.”

Yelena nodded, then turned to Calina. “You and Katya, take her to St Jude’s across the river. The gear’s in the van - you know the drill.”

Calina nodded, then looked to Matt. “Can you carry her out? I’ll be there in a second.”

“Of course.” Matt lifted the other Widow in his arms and followed Katya as she led him out of the warehouse.

“Will you guys be okay here with all the…clean up?” she asked Yelena.

“We have enough time,” Yelena replied. “Anya’s checked the airwaves, and no one’s reported the gunshots to the police.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

There were several bodies on the ground who were merely incapacitated and not yet dead - including the two supersoldiers that she and Matt had fought. They needed to be taken care of. And Volkov still needed to be interrogated. Once again, she felt like she was being given the easy way out. That her sisters were taking on the dirty work of killing, while she left with her hands somewhat clean.

“We’ll handle it, Calina,” Yelena said, not unkindly. “Inessa needs you. You’re best placed to sell the cover-story to the medics - you’re a lot less beat up than us, thanks to your boyfriend.”

Calina glanced around at her sisters, realising Yelena was right. They were all littered with wounds and bruises, while she was relatively unscathed. “Okay. I’ll check in later.”

Yelena nodded, then turned and started barking orders at the rest of the team.

Calina jogged out of the warehouse towards the van stashed in the adjacent lot. The earlier pain in her knee - forgotten during the heat of battle - flared up as she ran. By the time she reached the vehicle she was limping badly.

“You okay?” Katya asked from the driver’s seat.

Calina nodded and jumped in the back, pulling the sliding door closed behind her.

Inessa was laid out on the floor, still unconscious. Matt sat by her head, his mask in his hands. The sight of his messy, sweaty hair caused a pang somewhere deep in Calina’s heart. She wanted to freeze time and live in this instant forever. She wanted to avoid the inevitable moment when he would say goodbye and she’d lose him for good.

But they needed to move. Now. Inessa needed medical attention as soon as possible…and she wanted Matt as far away as possible from the warehouse before the executions began.

So she sat down, took Inessa’s small hand in hers, and called out to Katya. “Let’s go.”

———

Five minutes later, Calina started to strip, knowing it was time to put the plan in action. She pulled down the zipper of her suit and started to wriggle her arms out of the tight fitting material.

“What are you doing?” Matt asked, sounding confused.

“Getting changed,” she explained. “I can’t take Inessa into the ER looking like this.”

She kicked off her boots and peeled off the rest of her outfit, then rummaged in the duffel bag stashed in the back of the van. She eventually found what she was looking for and pulled it out, the heavy sequinned material rustling in the quiet of the van.

Matt cocked his head to the side and frowned as he tried to place the sound. “Is that your dress?” he asked. “The one you wore the night we fought?”

Calina laughed, the sound holding a bitter edge. “Yeah. Maybe one of these days I’ll actually get to wear it out dancing.”

But maybe not. This particular dress held nothing but bad memories now. In fact she was starting to think it was cursed. First there was the mind control incident, and now one of the worst case scenarios from this battle was playing out - a Widow was injured enough to need hospital care.

Calina finished dressing, quickly fixed her hair and applied some make-up. Then she turned her attention to the unconscious woman on the floor. She quickly removed Inessa’s suit and placed a different dress around her neck. As Calina gently manoeuvred Inessa’s arms through the sleeves, the other woman finally started to stir. “Why’m I naked?” she slurred.

Calina froze at the sound of her sister’s voice, then let out a shaky laugh. “You’re not naked. But you hurt your head, Nessie.” The nickname came out of nowhere. But it felt right. It made Calina realise how much she cared about the younger Widow…and how worried she’d been that she’d never hear her voice again.

She pulled Inessa into a seated position, quickly tugged down the dress, then let the injured woman rest against her. Her head fell heavy onto Calina’s shoulder, and Calina gently smoothed a hand over her braided hair as she explained what was happening. “We’re taking you to the hospital. But we need to get the cover-story in place first. You remember the plan, right?”

Inessa started to nod, but groaned as it aggravated her sore head. “Party time.”

“That’s right. Just one more thing to do.” Calina glanced up at Matt. “Can you-” Her question died on her lips as she saw the strange expression on his face. His head was still tilted to the side,  his eyes were soft, and he was smiling a small, affectionate smile. It was so out of place in this van soaked with fear and sweat and blood, that she didn’t know what to make of it.

“Matt?”

The smile dropped. He shook his head as if clearing it. “Sorry, what?”

“Can you pass me the bag by your feet?”

He reached down and grabbed the paper bag, handing it over. She pulled out the bottle of whisky from inside, unscrewed the cap and downed a heft swig of the dark liquor. Then she deliberately splashed some of the contents over Inessa’s outfit.

“So that’s the cover-story,” Matt commented, putting together the plan. “You were out drinking and got injured.”

“Yep,” Calina replied. “We’re just two innocent, twenty-something party girls living it up on a Friday night.”

Matt shook his head in admiration. “You guys really thought of everything.”

“We had a lot of time to plan for all eventualities. Well, almost all eventualities.” The last part was muttered under her breath.

But, of course, Matt caught it. “You’re referring to those men in the warehouse?” he guessed - correctly. “The ones who aren’t supposed to exist?”

“Frickin’ supersoldiers,” Inessa muttered, still slumped against Calina.

Matt sat forward. “Supersoldiers? Really?”

“Yep, really,” Calina confirmed. “Do you see why someone like Volkov - with his knowledge of how to create monstrous armies - needs to be taken off the board?”

Matt said nothing and Calina winced internally - she didn't mean to drag up their fight again. She didn't want to remind him of why everything between them had fallen apart.

Luckily, she was saved by Katya. “We’re here,” she called from the driver’s seat.

———

Matt felt the van slow as it made a left turn. The sounds of beeping monitors, and the smell of antiseptic and blood grew stronger as they approached the entrance to the hospital.

“You okay here?” Katya asked Calina. 

“Yeah, I got it,” Calina replied. “Can you drop Matt off somewhere dark and shadowy on your way back?”

“No problem,” Katya called pulling to a stop. “Be careful.”

“You too. I’ll call with an update once we’ve seen a doctor.”

“Do I get a call too?” Matt asked. They still hadn’t gotten a chance to really talk. The whole reason he’d been at that warehouse tonight was to see her, to talk to her.

To figure out where they both stood.

Even if that mean re-hashing their fight from the other night, so be it. He just wanted to talk to her.

Instead, she was about to leave, and he felt a sudden, irrational spasm of fear that he would never see her again. That she would disappear forever and he’d be left with nothing but a disconnected phone number and a pile of regrets.

Calina paused, her fingers resting on the door handle. She turned to him slowly. “Do you want me to call you?”

“I think I made that pretty clear when I dialled your cell a million times today.”

She frowned. “You did?”

Matt frowned too. “Yes. I called you all afternoon. Because we need to talk, Calina.”

The confusion radiated off her - and it felt honest and true. She really hadn’t known that he’d called.

Had it all just been a misunderstanding?

He’d spent hours fuming with anger over her ‘cold shoulder’ treatment of him, and he’d recklessly traveled all the way into Jersey to hunt her down…all for nothing?

No. Not for nothing. If he hadn’t been there in that warehouse tonight…and those men had managed to kill Inessa and overpower Calina…

He couldn’t bear to think about it.

He was meant to be there tonight. Call it God’s plan, or fate, or just wild coincidence…for whatever reason, he’d ended up in the right place at the right time tonight.

“I hate to interrupt,” Katya called out, “But you need to go, Calina, before someone takes too much notice of this van.”

“Right,” Calina said. She pulled her hand from his and wrenched open the sliding door. Then she helped Inessa out, one arm wrapped tightly around the other woman’s waist. She looked back at Matt and bit her lip. He could sense her indecision - and her struggle between helping her friend and not leaving things so uncertain between them.

So he let her off the hook. “Go,” he said, grabbing the handle of the door. “Inessa needs you. We can figure this out later.”

“Okay,” she nodded. “I-I’ll see you later.”

“See you later.” He pulled the door shut, and followed her with her senses as she hobbled with Inessa into the building. As Katya started the engine, Matt listened as Calina put on a show for the medical staff inside.

“Please you gotta help us, my friend fell!”

He laughed at the unexpected, note-perfect Brooklyn accent.

“We were just out drinkin’ at that bar, you know the one in Bushwick with the balcony and all those fairy lights, and she fell. Outa nowhere. There was all this blood and she was knocked out cold.”

She’d completely morphed from his sweet, serious Calina into the perfect rendition of a vapid, drunk party girl.

It was impressive, really.

“What’s so funny,” Katya asked.

“Calina. She’s really selling your cover-story.”

“Yeah, when she gets into character, she really commits. She should be on the stage.”

“I can’t really picture that.” Calina was too reserved to chase a life in the limelight. She wanted a simpler future, filled with happiness and meaning.

He just hoped he could be a part of it.

————–

Chapter 10

Tag list: @hollandorks @chezagnes @stilldreaming666 @sio-ina-bottle @tearoseart-blog @acharliecoxedfan @freckledbabyyy

If you’d like to be added - let me know!

#daredevil #daredevil fic #tabula rasa #daredevil fanfic #daredevil fanfiction #matt murdock #daredevil x original female character #marvel's daredevil #matt murdock fanfic #matt murdock x oc

[frogwithhatto]

Vessel and hugs

Listen this might’ve gotten a bit too deep, anyway enjoy lovelies 🫶🏻

- His hugs are like wandering through a moss-covered forest, your surroundings being bathed in green light as the golden rays of sun can’t seem to penetrate the leaf canopy fully. You can almost smell the earth, almost feel all the different life forms around you, living in harmony. His voice sounding like the nature around you, soft like a breeze, his breath tickling at your neck.

- You know those memes about biting the people you love? Yeah he does that and loves when you do that to him as well. I mean listen to his lyrics he’s definitely got a thing for biting…

- His compliments are weird he speaks in riddles 70% of the time and when he isn’t he’s using words you’ve probably never heard before.

- I feel like he’s that kinda person that’s always touching you. Doesn’t matter if it’s your hands brushing against each other while walking or pressing his thigh against yours when he’s sitting next to you. Soft touches. His hand at the small of your back here, gently redirecting your arm under his shirt to rest on his belly there.

- I feel like his touch is always gentle unless you want him to be rough like water droplets running down your skin after a dip in the ocean. His presence enveloping you completely like a wave breaking near shore, his words dragging you under by creating a maelstrom you can’t escape.

- Maybe you struggle at the beginning but soon you realise the inevitable, you’re hopelessly falling for him and his soft words so you stop fighting it and let yourself be dragged down. What you don’t know is that he’s already there, he has been for some time, he had fallen for you a long time ago. He didn’t even fight it, when Vessel falls he falls fast and deep.

- Maybe in the beginning you struggle with it because how could anyone love that much but soon it becomes comforting, knowing no matter what happens he’s at your side. There’s no casual love when it comes to Vessel. You’re his everything, you’re like the moon to him, controlling his ebb and flow.

-There’s an exception though. Whenever he has an especially rough day his grip on you is firm, almost bruising because you are his constant, his safe haven during storms and he can’t let you go, can’t loose you.

#frog headcanons #sleep token #vessel sleep token #sleep token headcanons