#but i love my manager and coworker and me reducing my hours/quitting suddenly would be very strenuous on them

[lady-literature]

what a lion cannot manage chp 4

there are legitimately three separate subplots i try to resolve/give attention to in this chapter and it took so long to write because i had to make it not insanely ridiculous. happy holidays!

chp 1 | chp 2 | chp 3 | chp 4

Yagi’s surprise ends up being that he’s finally coming back to visit.

Izumi is as excited about it as she is terrified.

***

Mom, by virtue of being the best person in the whole world, knows exactly when Izumi is spiraling too far into her own head and needs a little help getting herself out. It doesn’t matter how much Izumi tries to hide or downplay it, Mom just knows.

So when Mom invites her to spend all of Saturday morning baking brownies and spending quality time together, Izumi knows the game she’s playing. Mom doesn’t pressure her into speaking—she never does—but about twenty minutes into the endeavor Izumi puts down the mixing bowl and sighs.

Like ripping off a bandage, she tries to tell herself.

“How do you tell someone you know about a secret they probably didn’t want you knowing?” she says in a quick rush, leaving her mom blinking trying to decipher the words. 

She waits a beat, and when Mom doesn’t say anything, she steamrolls onwards, falling back on her default setting: rambling.

“Like, if you found out about it by accident and didn’t mean to know but now you do. There’s no taking it back and you don’t want to lie about knowing so you should tell them, right? But the secret is… personal and sensitive, probably, so you should tell them gently. But how do you do that? Is there a way to ease someone into that kind of thing? Does this-”

Her mom settles a gentle hand on her arm, lips pulled up at the corners but her eyes filled with understanding. “In my experience,” she starts, “all it takes is sitting the person down and telling them that you know.”

“But what if they get mad?” Izumi worries. “Or upset? Then what?”

Mom hums. “They might. It depends on the person.”

Izumi’s ears are already starting to flatten against her skull, dread pooling in her stomach when her mom taps her arm again to regain her attention.

“But,” Mom continues knowingly, “If you explain what happened and how it was an accident, they’ll understand. If they’re a reasonable sort of person, I have no doubt they’ll forgive you.”

Izumi worries at her lip, staring down at the brownie batter like it holds all the answers.

Yagi is someone she’d call reasonable. He always makes time to listen to her, and he’s All Might. Being kind and nice and reassuring is his whole thing.

So, is it… could it really be that easy?

***

It’s a good thing Kacchan’s in the know now.

There are plenty of reasons this is true—not in the least because she doesn't have to lie to him anymore—but currently? She thinks it’s pretty good because it’d be really hard to explain the whole snarling monster with sharp teeth trying to kill them if he didn’t.

“Move!” she shouts, hands slamming into his back to get him going.

The thing with too many teeth and claws takes a swipe at them and Izumi doesn’t even think about it before she’s moving to take the hit meant for Kacchan. He’s going to be pissed about her protecting him but the thing catches her in the ribs, tearing her skin to ribbons and Izumi knows that’s the kind of wound that would kill a human so if Kacchan wants to take issue with it, that’s too damn bad.

She screams, and she thinks Kacchan might be screaming too.

She doesn’t fall—because this isn’t the first hit she’s taken from a creature, even if it might be the worst—so she’s able to claw at the things face enough to get it to back off.

It only gets as far as a backwards step before Kacchan is there, snarling and hands pressed up against the thing’s throat. And then the world erupts into light and heat and the creature is no more.

“Izu!” he’s at her side in the next moment, face doing strange things as he stares at the claw marks in her side. “What the hell was that? What were you thinking?”

She presses a hand to her wound and hisses. Kacchan’s eyebrows do something complicated and distinctly unhappy.

“I was thinking I didn’t want you to die,” she says breathlessly. “I’d heal. You wouldn’t.”

He scowls at her and his hands curl into half fists. If he hadn’t just used everything in him to reduce the creature to tiny bits, she’s sure the air would be filled with the familiar crackle-pop of his explosions.

“I don’t want you protecting me,” he snaps.

“Too fucking bad,” she snaps right back, startling him. “You’re skulk, and more than that, you’re my best friend. If you think I’m going to stand back and watch you get hurt you obviously haven’t been paying enough attention.”

He snarls soundlessly at her, so fox-like without even realizing.

Kacchan doesn’t say anything else to her, but she’s not naive enough to think that’s the end of it. He’s prideful and arrogant and one conversation won’t suddenly change that. They’ll fight about this again, but Izumi won’t bend for this either.

Kacchan will just have to learn to live with it.

***

It’s not until later, when the pain has subsided and the anger cooled, does Izumi realize that she called Kacchan skulk. She's known of course, but it's the first time she's said it aloud.

She wonders if Kacchan caught it.

She wonders if he understands what it means.

***

Kacchan gives her the silent treatment for a whole three days after she gets nearly disemboweled to save him.

Well; his version of the silent treatment, which isn’t very silent and mostly involves a lot of yelling and threatening to blow her up.

But, when he does actually aim an explosion at her face and she refuses to move, the only thing that hits her is smoke and noise. So, you know.

She figures he’s mad but not actually out to murder her which is nice. He did half-drag, half-carry her home while her side stitched itself back together after all so maybe that’s not as much of a surprise as she thinks it is.

***

The moment she sees Yagi, he’s already reaching down and sweeping her up into his arms, twirling them around with that great strength of his. Her arms are wound around his neck and she’s laughing and crying at the same time, so happy she can’t keep it all in her chest.

Yagi doesn't put her down for a whole five minutes, even when her mom and aunts keep making pointedly amused comments. Not that Izumi is complaining.

She’s missed him so much that her chest had ached with it. But now Yagi is here, right next to her, and Izumi has all of the people she loves right where she can get to them.

It feels like someone’s finally put the world back on right.

***

She runs away to Yagi’s for three whole days with her mother’s permission.

She and Yagi make a mess of his kitchen and talk for hours about the time they were apart as if they hadn’t spoken nearly every day about it all.

Izumi regales him with the schoolyard drama she’s stopped recently, before excitedly asking after the support heroes at Might Tower. Yagi always describes his coworkers vaguely, but if Izumi thinks about it, she can figure out which hero he’s talking about. The personal anecdotes Yagi tells her are always her favorite Hero stories. He makes titans seem like normal people, the same way knowing Yagi has made Izumi see All Might.

At night, Yagi forces her to watch old, American movies with him. He says they’re all ‘classics’ but she can’t help but find them all ridiculous.

She watches them though. Because Yagi likes them and it’s a full, uninterrupted two hours she gets to burrow into his side for. Sometimes even longer if he falls asleep before the movie ends.

In the mornings, Yagi makes her American breakfasts while she sits on the counter and analyzes the Hero fights on the morning news. She breaks down quirks as he pours the pancake batter and is coming up with viable support items or techniques by the time he takes them off the griddle.

He smiles indulgently at her the whole time, even when she can tell he didn’t understand a word she just said.

“Remind me someday to introduce you to Melissa,” he says during a break where she paused for breath. “You two would get along like a house on fire.”

On the fourth morning, Izumi is still sitting on the counter while Yagi makes breakfast, but she’s barely said a word. She’s making Yagi nervous, she knows. And, truthfully, she’s right there with him.

The words have been pressing against the back of her teeth for days. 

“I know you’re All Might,” she blurts without warning or preamble.

Yagi startles, turning to blink at her, once, twice, three times.

She bites her lip, ears pressed flat as she waits for his reaction. It’s… a bit anticlimactic actually.

“Well,” he says, lips curling up into a bright smile as his hand reaches out to ruffle her hair. “Can’t say I didn’t expect that. Knew you’d figure it out eventually.”

Izumi stares at him.

“You knew?”

Yagi shrugs, just a bit amused as he returns to the pancakes. “No. Not really. But you’re too clever for me to think I could keep it from you for long. Though I had hoped it’d be a while yet.”

Absently, Izumi wonders if it’s wise to tell him she figured it out months ago.

***

With that not-quite-secret out in the open between them now, something about them seems to settle more solidly into place. There are only five other people in the world who know that Yagi Toshinori and All Might are one in the same, and something about that makes Izumi both warm at her center and unbearably sad.

(Sometimes, she thinks, it seems like Yagi has no one else in the world but her. The thought makes her furious.)

Izumi spends the rest of the week and a half playing a delicate balancing act between Yagi, Kacchan, her family, school, and all her extracurriculars. She only manages it at all because the important things overlap nicely enough that she can multitask.

Like the fact that Kacchan spends most days at her house now, and that Yagi likes to walk with her around town as she runs errands, and that her Aunties Emi and Isami seem to have a bet about which of them can make Yagi blush harder (without making him choke on blood of course; that’s an automatic fail).

She doesn’t think she stops smiling once the whole time.

***

She spends almost the entire morning before Yagi’s supposed to leave clinging to him like a stubborn burr, lecturing him on taking care of himself like he’s supposed to and being safe—or as safe as he can be in his line of work.

Yagi bears her fussing with the grace of someone who’s gone too long without it, but promises to do his best at following her new rules.

When the car meant to take him away arrives, he hugs her just shy of too tight for a human child but Izumi doesn’t complain. He presses a reverent kiss to her forehead and buries his face in her wild riot of curls.

“I’m going to miss you,” she tells him through the tears she tried so hard to keep back.

“And I you, my dear girl.”

“Stay safe,” she asks-demands-pleads. “Just- take care of yourself and stay safe, alright?”

He squeezes her tighter for a fraction of a second.

“I’ll do my best,” he says and it’s not a Promise. It can’t be, because what she’s asking isn’t something he can give. Not really anyway. 

He kisses her forehead again before setting her down.

Watching him leave is just as hard the second time, as it was the first.

***

She curls in her bed that night, Kacchan sprawled out close enough to touch while she drowns in a shirt she’d stolen from Yagi.

Her room smells like all the people she loves even if they aren’t all there.

It’s comforting.

It also makes her chest ache.

***

She does a lot of thinking over the next week, in between her bouts of sadness and calls with Yagi.

At the end, she’s come to a decision. 

The next day, she spends two hours having to convince Nona to go along with it.

***

Izumi’s gotten pretty good at scaling the wall up to Kacchan’s window, if she says so herself.

She knocks lightly and waits patiently for Kacchan’s grumpy frown to appear in front of the window. 

“What are you doing here?” he snaps groggily. “You weirdos don’t make kadomatsu at midnight right? Because if you do, I don't want to be invited anymore.”

Izumi snorts and grins. “Nope! Kadomatsu making is tomorrow-”

“It is tomorrow,” he grumbles crankily which Izumi charitably ignores.

“-but get dressed anyway! Something you’d wear into the woods. I promise it’s worth losing your precious beauty sleep over.”

“Fuckin’ better be.” He swats at her, slow but with force, and she almost loses her grip on the window ledge. But Kacchan already turned around to rifle through his drawers and, thankfully, doesn’t see her undignified scramble for purchase.

***

When Izumi was young, her mother explained that there is more to being Shaalim Nephashot than just mischief and magic. 

Nothing is without price, her mother had warned. To be something so powerful, there are responsibilities one must bear.

(Some of which, Izumi thinks with not a small amount of excitement as she drags Kacchan further into the woods, are better than others.)

***

By the time she and Kacchan break through the trees into the clearing all her family has gathered in, it’s already started.

The clearing is wide, about the size of a tennis court, and there is very little room not being used. Her family takes up most of it, dancing and singing and laughing beneath the shadow of the willow trees. On the far side, there is a long table, set with offerings and plates laden heavy with food and drink. Closer to her, are chairs filled with the skulk elders who aren’t quite spry enough for dancing, but happy to play music and lead the singing for songs.

And then, most noticeable, are the restless spirits her family has summoned, little more than formless lights floating happily about their heads. They are kaleidoscopes on the wind, mesmerizing and enchanting and the reason Izumi holds the night of the new moon so close to her chest.

She turns to Kacchan, looking for his reaction, and finds him stunned.

There’s something in the way his eyes can seem to settle on any one place, the way they focus and unfocus, that lets her know what he sees is not necessarily what she does. She’s curious what his Sight reveals, but that’s a question for later, she thinks.

“What… what is this?” Kacchan asks her, sounding distinctly breathless.

“Rikud mavet,” she says, and watches as his whole body seems to jolt, gaze swinging towards her abruptly.

So he does know the meaning then.

Good. Izumi was worried she’d have to explain it. Which she could do, but it’s easier if he already knows.

Probably learned about it in his reliquary books—or as much as he could learn, she supposes. Those books were written by humans, and it's hard to get anything concrete from them when no human had ever been present for a rikud mavet.

Before now, that is.

She watches, unable to hide her delighted smile, as Kacchan uselessly opens and closes his mouth, eyes darting from hers to whatever it is he can see in the clearing that she can’t. Eventually he shuts it, jaw clenched so hard she worries for his teeth.

The nervousness is there again; that same uncertainty he had when, two months ago, he told her that he knew.

“You’re skulk,” she says and turns it into a declaration with the force behind it. She’s told him once, and she meant it, but now she needs him to understand. “Rikud mavet is always open to you.”

He’s silent for a long moment, his hands flexing at his sides as he struggles to take all of this in.

She waits.

Then he nods, clears his throat, and goes to nod again before stopping and scowling at himself. She keeps standing there, smiling at him with as much affection she can manage—which is a lot. So she isn’t all that surprised when Kacchan shoves her face away and yells something about her being “so fucking embarrassing.”

She laughs instead of any normal reaction she could have had, and grabs his wrist before he can stuff his hand back in his pocket.

“Come on,” she urges, already pulling him along, “It’s not rikud mavet if you don’t dance.”

“I don’t dance,” he snaps. It’s not all that believable when he says it and it’s less so when five minutes later, he’s leading her through the ‘ridiculous, show pony dances’ he says he hates but knows all the steps to.

They don’t stop dancing until the sun rises over the willow.

***

Kacchan comes to every rikud mavet after that and it makes something warm settle happily in the center of Izumi’s chest every time.

He doesn’t always want to dance—because he really doesn’t like dancing all that much even though he can—and on those nights he plays the drums instead, a vibrant spotlight in the middle of the skulk elders who coo and tut at him in equal measure.

Izumi is glad that Kacchan is there—more than glad, actually. But every time she sees him sitting at the drums, all she can imagine is Yagi sitting there too, clapping his hands to the rhythm because he’s a terrible singer and dancer and can’t play an instrument.

Yagi would be happy, she knows, nestled in the middle of people who cared about him. He’d laugh, because rikud mavet is about joy and moving forward. He’d smile because it’s about sending restless spirits on their way, even the ones in your chest (and Izumi knows he has more than a few of his own).

She brings Kacchan to rikud mavet because she wants him there—because he belongs there—but also because she knows that Yagi can’t be.

Izumi knows Yagi’s secret, but he doesn't know hers.

And that makes her ache nearly as much as him leaving did.

***

Time skips ahead.

As the months pass, she and Kacchan keep stumbling upon things lurking in the woods.

It’s nothing as bad as that first time and is closer to what Izumi refers to as ‘normal’. She’s been running into random monsters in their woods since she was nine, and she’s been getting rid of them for just about as long.

The only difference is she has back up now. Not that Kacchan would appreciate being called that.

Aoi and Mom always fuss over them when they come back scuffed or winded, which she bears with far more grace than Kacchan does. It’s not abnormal to see him and Aoi get into screaming matches while she patches him up.

She continues taking gymnastics and aikido, and Kacchan has been allowed back on the wrestling team. They’re both top of their class, Izumi placing first for subjects like foreign language, literature, and history, while Kachhan dominates the sciences and math.

Kacchan turns thirteen and Izumi throws him two parties. The usual one, with the shiny new addition of Yagi who came specifically for the party, and then another one that was skulk members only.

Izumi spends weekends running around town, picking up odd jobs and volunteering wherever she’s needed, only stopping when Kacchan, Aoi, or Mom forces her to.

The kids at school keep expecting her to mediate fights, and she keeps doing so. Hero Analysis for the Future #13 is finally filled fit to bursting, and she nestles it on her shelf along with the others as she starts a new one.

And then Izumi turns thirteen and her family begins acting… weird.

The day of is happy enough, with all the people she loves gathered close and celebrating. But the moment ends and suddenly everyone’s acting like she’s made of glass, tiptoeing around her and whispering low enough that she can’t hear.

They’re acting like something bad is going to happen but no one will tell her what.

And then, just around the time where she begins getting truly upset about everyone keeping things from her, Nona calls for her and says it’s time they talked.

 ***

“Matriarch.” She bows to her great-great-great-great grandmother and stands before her large desk. Her mom and Aoi are there, standing just to either side of Nona, but the looks on their faces are anything but comforting.  “You wanted to speak to me?”

Nona’s lips are pressed into a thin line, and her eyes lack all the warmth and affection Izumi normally sees in them. Its absence makes the hairs on the back of her neck rise and her stomach churn.

“I think,” Nona says, calm and without much inflection, “It’s time you knew our history. Our full history.”

Her eyebrows furrow, and she looks at Aoi and Mom, but neither will meet her eyes. “You mean about… the curse?” she asks, hesitant and scared. No one’s ever spoken to her about it. Izumi always suspected Nona ordered them not to.

“Yes,” her Nona says and then she talks and talks and talks-

***

Most hunters, Izumi knows, are perfectly fine people who only ever go after things that come after them first. Many never would’ve looked twice at the Midoriya Skulk—at any skulk, really. They are beings that were too powerful and too much trouble for no reason.

Shaalim Nephashot didn’t kill humans. In fact, most of the time they were doing the Hunters’ jobs for them by getting rid of the things that wandered onto their land.

Most Hunters, of course, didn’t mean all Hunters.

There was always something a bit off about the Takanashis, something even other Hunters picked up on. A proud lineage, an arrogant one, that thought themselves so mighty that they could do no wrong.

(It led to their downfall. But not before they dragged Izumi’s skulk halfway down with them.)

No one knows why the Takanashis snapped, no concrete reason anyway. There are rumours, of course. But they’re ridiculous fairy tales no one had ever put stock into.

(Izumi watches though, the way her mother shifts and Aoi scowls, and knows there are things being left unsaid.)

But, whatever the reason, the Takanashis attacked them. Not with silver or steel or brute force, as they were known, but with the one thing the Midoriyas never expected because it had seemed so laughable.

The Takanashis attacked them with magic.

And the horrible thing is that they almost won.

“That first wave took the most powerful of us,” her Nona explains. “Among them was my great aunt, the previous Matriarch. There were only a few Takanashis that survived our retaliation, but by then the damage was done.”

So the Midoriyas hid. They pretended they were killed off, that they took the Takanashis down with them in their final throes of death because the curse was strong then. Was a boulder above all their heads, waiting to crash down on them all.

(And most Hunters aren’t all Hunters. The Takanashis weren’t the only rogues, only the loudest and most unapologetic.

If word got out that the Midoriyas were weak rather than dead— that there was a prize to be gained from seeking them out- well. It doesn’t do to dwell on such things.)

“What the curse couldn’t kill quickly, it kills slowly. Few foxes are being born, fewer children in general. Our magic became harder to call as time went on. Human magic comes easier, but not by much.”

Izumi furrows her eyebrows. She knows this. It’s nice to have it confirmed, cause no one had ever told her this was how it all worked, but she’s smart and clever and pays attention. She already knew all of this.

She waits, sure that her Nona will continue.

Izumi will wish she hadn’t though.

“The curse is meant to kill us,” she starts again, slowly. “But it can’t do that if we run away.”

Izumi has only a second to be confused, a broken thought of ‘then why had we stayed for so long?’, before it all clicks in horrific clarity.

“No,” she says, begs, pleads. “No.”

But Nona keeps speaking and Izumi wants nothing more than to cover her ears and pretend she can’t hear. To pretend that none of this is happening and her dreams aren’t being viciously ripped from her own hands as she watches.

“We can’t leave the forest. You can’t leave the forest.”

And Izumi crumbles.

***

She doesn’t wait to be dismissed. Mom and Aoi are both stepping out from the desk, arms outstretched, but Izumi’s already running.

She bolts passed the living room and straight into the forest—the forest that was meant to be their prison, their graves-

Some of her family try to stop her, try to run after her, but Izumi has always been faster, always been different.

Maybe in this, she is different too.

She’s the first fox born in decades, is the first to call magic with the ease of breathing in just as long. Maybe the curse doesn’t- Maybe it isn’t-

Izumi runs and runs and runs and-

And she slams painfully into solid air. 

Her nose breaks and blood streams down her chin along with her tears. She gets back up and does it again. And again. And again. And again. Until her nose has healed itself. Until her arms are sore and bruised enough that even her healing is struggling to repair the damage.

She collapses against the barrier, sobbing and screaming and clawing at it because this isn’t right. She’s meant for more than this! The Universe told her—promised her. She’s meant to rule the world and protect everyone and she’s trapped here!

She was made to be mighty.

Let her go!

***

Aoi finds her hours later with Nana Naoki behind her. Aoi probably asked them to help sniff her out.

Izumi’s quiet, curled up and small as she leans against the barrier. Her voice has long since gone hoarse from all her screaming and tear tracks have dried on her cheeks and there are smears of her own blood still on her chin.

Aoi takes one look at her before scooping Izumi into her arms and holding on as tight as she can.

None of them say a word.

***

Later, when Izumi finds that her voice is working again, she will ask question after question. Most of them boil down to the same two things.

Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why am I so different?

They will not have answers for her and she’ll be reminded of when she was small and asked too many questions about the wrong things and found herself with too many non-answers.

Izumi will eventually stop asking them.

***

At school on Monday, Izumi hardly speaks to anyone.

She’s spacey on the best of days, but this is just stupid. Every time he looks at her she’s staring off into space, her eyes sad and mouth pulled down at the corners.

Everyone asks her if she’s okay, because she has the whole school eating out of her hand, but all she says is that she’s fine, no need to worry! Just a little tired, that’s all! and smiles wide enough to trick those extras into leaving her alone.

Only Katsuki is determined enough to see through her bullshit, but all she does is stay infuriatingly closed-lipped about it. So he drops it for the time being.

But then she does the same thing on Tuesday.

And Wednesday.

And Thursday.

When she comes in on Friday acting no different, Katsuki can feel the whole school starting to glare at him like it’s his damn fault.

And sure, last time she was maudlin and sad, he may have been going through that whole ‘learning about the supernatural’ thing and accidentally on purpose started avoiding her, but this time he hasn’t even done anything.

So he’s pissed off. He is done, okay? Katsuki gave her time to mope and shit about whatever it is that’s bothering her in the hopes that she’ll get it out of her system, but obviously that's not working. So now they’re going to do this his way.

The lunch bell rings and Katsuki is at her desk, glowering down at her and giving her one last chance to say something because he’s a pretty understanding guy. He’s never been much good at patience but Izumi does this shit for him so he at least tries for her.

But she just shrugs, and gives him one of those fake ass smiles she’s been given all the extras—the one that he hates and-

That’s the last straw.

In the next moment, Izumi is thrown over his shoulder.

She shrieks. “What are you-! Kacchan! Put me down right now!”

“No,” he says flatly, throwing both their bags out the open window and following after them a second later.

***

Izumi yells and squirms and slams her hands into his back the whole time, demanding he take her back to school and let her go. He does none of those things.

He’s pretty sure she could get out of his hold. Not easily, perhaps, but she could and she is not actually trying to.

So Katsuki figures she’s full of shit and doesn’t put her down until they get to the beach, the shitty corner of it where no one goes because it’s more trash heap than anything else.

He dumps her on the sand.

“Kacchan!” she starts, “What are you-”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he demands before she can start scolding him.

“Wha- me?” she reels back, “You’re the one who kidnapped me off campus! We’re going to miss-”

She tries to move past him and he throws out his arm to stop her. “Shut up about class. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s ‘going on’, Kacchan.”

“Bullshit.”

The look she gives him is something he knows she picked up from him. The aggression playing on her face is too close to his own to be anything else.

If she were using it on anyone else, it might’ve even worked. But, sucks for her, he invented that look.

“I don’t need your dorky ass, super-ears to know when you’re lying to me,” he says firmly, crossing his arms and trying to glare him into submission. “So stop doing it and just spit it out.”

Her mouth opens only to close a second later. Her hands are in fists at her sides and if she were anyone else, Katsuki would think she was about to punch him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Tough shit. You’ve been not talking about it all week and now it’s time to spill your guts.”

They stare at each other, the moment stretching out like infinity between them, two stubborn fools digging in their heels and refusing to give an inch. And then, out of nowhere, Izumi bursts into tears.

“Shit!” Katsuki reels back, stupidly not having expected that reaction. He steps forward almost immediately after, arms outstretched before he realizes how stupid he probably looks and instead shoves his hands deep in his pockets. “Fuck. Shit. Stop it, you goddamn crybaby.”

Izumi does not, in fact, stop crying—not that Katsuki really expected her too.

Instead, she curls in on herself, sobbing even harder and—fucking dammit— he reaches out and pulls her into a hug that she immediately reciprocates, hands fisting the back of his school jacket, nearly tearing the fabric with how tightly she’s holding it. She presses so close to him, it’s like she’s trying to crawl into his ribcage.

Fucking foxes and their tactile needs.

He lets her do whatever she needs with only minimal grumbling and bitchiness. She buries her nose in the space between his neck and chest, presses her hands all along his shoulders, and doesn’t let him drop the hug until her tears slow down enough that she can talk.

By the end of the whole process, Katsuki is sure he smells more like a Midoriya than most Midoriyas. 

But whatever. Izumi’s always had weird as fuck coping skills. This isn’t exactly new.

When he feels her death grip on his shirt weakening he speaks again. “Are you done?” he asks flatly and, for whatever reason, Izumi chuckles.

“No, probably not,” she tells him honestly. He huffs, hands moving from her back to her shoulders and pulling her away just a bit, just enough to look at her face.

“What. Happened.”

Her breath stutters in her chest and she won’t meet his eyes. She stays quiet for so long that he’s just about to repeat the question when she finally speaks. Of course though, she says it so quickly—practically spitting it into the air between them—that he doesn’t even understand what it is she said.

“Hah?”

She grits her teeth before going abruptly boneless, as if all the fight has just drained out of her. Katsuki immediately hates how defeated she looks and has to stop himself from shaking her in some childish hope that it might fix that look on her face.

“I can’t be a Hero, Kacchan.”

Katsuki blinks and feels very much like he’s somehow missed the last step on the staircase.

Cause what?

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What crazy mirror verse has Katsuki suddenly found himself in that Midoriya fucking Izumi is actually saying the words ‘can’t’, ‘be’, and ‘Hero’ all in the same sentence?

Something must show on his face or his heart trips or some shit because she’s talking again without him having to prompt her. Well, it’s more like she begins word vomiting at him but she’s been doing that all five years he’s known her so he’s only a little annoyed by the habit at this point.

She spills everything. The story Nona told her and the realization and how the curse works. She tells him all about her running and using herself as a battering ram. About her questions and the nonanswers she got in return and about the way she feels like everything she’s ever known is shattered in pieces at her feet with no idea if she can even fix it, let alone how.

She’s crying again by the end of it, hiccuping little sobs and tear tracks on her cheeks.

Katsuki kind of wants to punch her in the face.

“So that’s it then?” he asks flatly. “You’re just gonna give up?”

Indignation rises slowly, then all at once, on Izumi’s face. Her eyes go hard and her ears are flat against her skull and she pulls her lips back to reveal all those too sharp teeth.

It’s a look he’s familiar with. More than anyone else in town, probably.

He pissed her off a lot in those early days. Dug himself in under all that sticky-sweet kindness, searching for some dark thing that just wasn’t there. She was patient and lenient and far too willing to put up with him, but every once in a while he’d push too far. He’d push and she’d snap right back at him with all the anger her pint-sized body could hold and more; an invisible, crackling weight in the air around her that would press on him until he felt he couldn’t breathe.

(He remembers being caught off guard every time it happened. He remembers feeling victorious and guilty in the face of her rage. He remembers preferring it to the tears.)

Katsuki wouldn’t prefer it now except for the fact that he’s pissed to hell and making Izumi angry is just as much a catharsis for him as it is an improvement over the dead-eyed look she had before.

Fuck. Izumi isn’t Izumi if she doesn’t have any fight left in her.

“I’m not giving up,” she practically snarls at him. 

His lips twist. “Sounds like you are to me.”

She sputters, mouth opening and closing without saying a word until: “Maybe you weren’t listening but there’s nothing I can do. I’m trapped! My whole family is trapped. Has been for generations and that’s not just going to change.”

“Not if you don’t do something about it it won’t.”

“Kacchan!” she yells, just on the wrong side of desperate, “There’s nothing I can do. We’ve been trapped here for two centuries. What? Do you think the whole skulk has just been sitting on their hands this whole time? They’ve tried but-”

“But you haven’t!” he shouts, flinging his hands out like that will force her to understand.

Instead she sputters, rolling her eyes. “And what can I do that the elders can’t? I’m thirteen. I haven’t even had my Witching Ceremony yet!”

“Are you a fox or not?” he shoots back. “Do you have magic or not? Have you been doing impossible things since the moment you were born or not?” he grabs her by the shoulders, staring down at her cause she’s always been short, and tries to force as much conviction in his voice as possible.

“Izumi you exist in spite of whatever shitty ass curse the skulk is under. Nothing about that makes sense. So stop whining about the thing you’ve already made your bitch just by fucking existing and start using you’re shitty-ass nerd brain to figure out a way to make it fuck off for good.”

Izumi’s staring at him, her eyes wide and swirling with too many emotions. He can read her like a book most days but not when that book is flipping through pages faster than he can keep up with.

He’s surprised she hasn’t started crying again; but then, maybe she doesn’t have enough tears left to cry. (Unlikely. If there’s an upper limit to Izumi’s tears they haven’t found it yet.)

“Do you mean it?” she asks. “Do you really believe I could do that?”

Katsuki scoffs. “Fucking obviously. I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

Which is, you know, objectively a lie. He says a lot of shit he doesn’t mean because he’s an asshole and speaks before he thinks most of the time. Not that he cares, normally. If someone gets pissed off by the things he says that’s their problem, not his. 

But not this time.

He means it now. And he knows that Izumi knows it too.

Between one blink and the next Izumi is launching herself into his arms. She hits him like a goddamn cannonball to the chest, knocking them both onto the sand and probably giving him bruises.

He keeps swearing and yelling and trying to throw her off but she stays stubbornly attached to him, laughing like the little shit she is. It’s not until they somehow roll right into a wave does she let go, yelping and running back up the beach.

They’ve definitely already missed class, which he expected, so he doesn’t even think about it when he jumps up to chase after her for the next half an hour, yelling and screaming that he’s going to explode her face.

***

Kacchan was right, she knows, even if his delivery could use work.

She supposes that it’s a little bit her fault for being able to interpret his yelling so well that he never bothered to learn how to do anything else. He’s guilty of much the same when she talks fast enough that her words blur together and only he can understand and translate them.

Izumi has no idea how to go about breaking a centuries-old curse, but Kacchan was right.

Impossible things are her specialty.

***

The first thing Izumi does when she gets home later, after her mom has finished yelling about skipping class, is find Nona. She hasn’t spoken to her in a week, not since she called for her presence, but Izumi seeks her out now.

“I want to learn magic,” she says, and it’s as close to a demand as any of them can get in regards to Nona. They are family first, but none would dare speak to the Matriarch the way Izumi does.

But Izumi’s always spoken to Nona the way no one else dares. Izumi herself will be Matriarch one day, will be mighty, and that means something in the here and now.

So instead of indignation or anger or anything else, Nona just looks at her with fond amusement and says, “Well it’s about time.”

And that’s that, really.

***

@queen-of-the-trash-planet-tm

#bnha #mha #midoriya izuku #katsuki bakugou #fem!izuku #my typewriter #wlcm

[press-x-tojason]

Giant Bomb is dead, and I care way less than I thought I would. Probably because 83% of the people who I ever cared about had already left or died, or were already relegated to reduced content roles. 

Honestly, though, the writing’s been on the wall for a bit. They haven’t had anything worthy of paying for premium in several years, and, even though they’ve had well over a year to figure out a plan for the COVID era, they maybe made it a month with their plans to have a series of streams daily. I actually managed to forget I followed them on Twitch at all, for about 4 months, because they only streamed the podcasts and the occasional former Harmonix employee (who was literally paid to make content with their games while employed at Giant Bomb, which was funny because he blocked me on Twitter for making a post, addressing no one, back in 2014, which was asking about the legitimacy of the leaked list of “games “””””journalists”””””” who had taken money from publishers for positive reviews, a list which included him and multiple then-coworkers. I didn’t follow him, he didn’t follow me. He was manually searching the keywords, because he was, and is, a prick.) solo Rock Band stream in the last 8 months or so. Even when Jeff would manage to do one of his 20 streams from home a year, it would be on his own channel. There was just no content. And they’re surprised their “pay for our unique premium content!” model failed. They always “feigned” anger at Dan for “making” them do the Mario Party Parties, and literally never promoted his and Drew’s Metal Gear series after the first game... but I bet that, when only those, UPF, and the ad-free versions of the podcasts were premium features, those two series were keeping them afloat. Well, that and the remaining goodwill they miraculously managed to hold onto for a few years after Ryan died.  Shit, I follow several people who are GB staff-adjacent, and... I can’t think of the last time they mentioned anything that happened on-site. Even the people who’ve been directly supporting them for over 10 years were out. 

But yeah, the site is super dead. They pretended in the announcements like they’re going to make a go of it still, but... you’ve got like 4 content people left, and the only one people give a shit about is Jeff. You just saw 3/4 of the side of the site that was still trying these past several months jump ship in a 3 month span. One of those was, by nearly any definition, a founding member. Of which you had already lost one, and are losing another from the main side. Jeff’s been way less active until the last week or two, probably because he heard they were leaving and was like “oops, should probably check on the ship that’s been sinking for years!” Then you have Jason “The Human Mumble” Oestricher, the charisma vacuum, whose legitimate public-facing reaction to first hearing that all but one of his GB predecessors were going to be gone. was, and I quote, “Hoo Boy.” Ben and Jan are the definition of “fine”. They would have been great, as they are today, as secondary members 8-10 years ago. But carry the site, they cannot. They’re down to, what, 5 named members now? It hasn’t been that dire since the beginning of 2009, before they hired Drew, when they hadn’t even started the P4 endurance run. You know, that surprise massive, internet-changing thing that essentially popularized the Let’s Play concept, loosening its definition and making it something that could be as personality-driven as game-driven, made simply to give them something to put on the website, beyond the rare review and, slightly later, quick look. This kinda illustrates the problem with modern Giant Bomb. When they were figuring shit out, flying by the seats of their pants, they came up with great shit, and they gave enough of a shit to make it happen. 0.000% chance they do a 10 hour Thanksgiving Kinect stream if the Kinect was new today. 0.000% chance the core members would have done an endurance run in the last 10 years if CT and Shenmue (which I haven’t watched) weren’t driven by the younger members. And you could see it in the fact that they never made a real, true mobile app. The number one thing that would have made them indispensable this past decade, an app to integrate premium features, the podcast, their video player, etc. all in one place in a mobile-friendly package, that could sync with the website... and they never even raised the idea publicly. I wonder how much of the innovation was the group think-tank of the first 5 years. Beyond Dan’s couple major contributions, I don’t think they added a single new type of content after 2012, which... still means the last 6.5 years lacked any semblance of innovation. I guess that’s a big part of why I fell off tremendously quickly after late 2014. There was just nothing new, and believe me, I was looking. I wanted reasons to stay watching. I supported them with my dollar. I believed in those brave early days. And I went back yesterday to watch the DP endurance run from VJ again. I still miss that rapport. And really, that hurt, too. Vinny moving back east, less than a year after Ryan passed... short term, it was fine. You had more people than ever to cover the gaps. But the spark was gone. The chemistry made the site. When I think of Giant Bomb, I still think of Jeff, Vinny, and Ryan, first and foremost. Those early podcasts, the NintenDownloads, the crazy tangents that everyone could seamlessly follow up on(well, except Brad, because he essentially slept through most of the podcasts, unless he was talking about the thing he did that week), the weird high-concept GOTY stuff... it wasn’t perfect, but you were entertained. You laughed. You were engaged. It never felt like you were watching them working, even though you could see the work they put in. It felt like, when they released something, you were experiencing a group of legitimate friends doing what they wanted to do anyways.(And boy have I seen enough groups do everything they can to NOT be enjoying doing that, and break up as a result due to hating the jobs that they chose to do). 

Part of me would love to make it as simple as “Ryan died, and so did the original spirit”, and... to a degree, it’s true. If you go back to any retrospective they’ve done about the founding of the site, or the podcast they recorded after Ryan passed, you can’t help but recognize that Giant Bomb never happens if these core members don’t all quit their jobs, led by Ryan,  because they respect their boss/manager, Jeff, and know he’s doing the right things(for them, for the reader/viewer, etc.) ahead of what GameSpot management wants him to do. Jeff could have been left in the wilderness, trying find a spot elsewhere, with the rumor going around between executives that Jeff wasn’t going to help them promote anything, essentially killing their revenue. He would have been done in terms of getting employed by a major site. But Ryan first, and soon after, Vinny and Brad, gave up their jobs to make this fledgling little project go. As much as the ERs brought me in and gave the impression that Jeff and Vinny were the long-standing duo, no, it was Ryan who was Jeff’s partner in crime. And, 8 years later, I can comfortably say... Giant Bomb never recovered from losing him. 

But it was so much more. Everything that set them apart slowly went away,  in time. I don’t think they’ve posted reviews for games in consecutive MONTHS since 2017; 2018 at the latest. They have done one Endurance Run in 9 years. They have not had a meaningful live event in 6 years. Unprofessional Fridays were more formulaic and lesser in volume and frequency after the major players started moving east. The lack of coordination between coasts killed the camaraderie, to the point that I think one of the last 5 true gameplay crossovers was their series of 2016-2017 PUBG shitfests. I remember when Vinny starting GBEast was supposed to be the start of a new era of content, and... it was, but not in a positive way, like it sounded. When half of each side seemed to constantly have no interest in making anything, nothing got made. But I guess that’s what happens when your second in command in one of your headquarters is just a former marketing grunt with an attitude problem, and the guy with the biggest ego on the team is the one who refuses to move to join either side, and just pushes out the most self-important drivel as a header to what were literally just copy-pasted articles from other sites every week while sitting at his desk, dreaming of the days Gawker would pay him to plagiarize political drivel instead, because that’s what really gets the soulless clicks. One of your founding members becomes depressed due to losing his two closest work friends, one for real, one to a 3000 mile separation, within a year, while the other one who is left virtually stopped playing anything but DOTA 2 for 2 years. Suddenly your most prominent personalities are the 2 new guys(one the aforementioned charisma vacuum, the other a walking mark) and your previously-mostly-off-camera producer who is best known to the wider Internet for... blinking. So, yeah, lifeless. And NOW, all you’ve got is old melancholy dad, charisma vacuum dad, and the two ADHD kids whose defining trait is that they choose to exclusively refer to their partners as “my partner” in voices that make it sound like they are embarrassed to have partners, while also talking more about what their partners are doing than what they do.  It’s confounding.

But yeah, TL:DR: RIP zombie Giant Bomb. Glad you’re finally getting taken behind the shed. It took 3 years too long, minimum.

[verai-marcel]

Ok hear me out, oh goddess of our Arthur smut, Modern day low honor Arthur (manager of [pick a store]) and fem reader, new hire. Work romance and pure smut, because I can see Arthur being the guy at work that comes in, in the morning and says “Ladies” and ALL THE WOMEN AT WORK SIMULTANEOUSLY SING “heyyyyyyy Arthurrrrr” back. XD

Business Time at the Bistro (Arthur x Fem!Reader, Modern AU, 18+)

Summary: You’re the new hire at a trendy bistro near your house; you were tired of commuting to the big city, and decided that less stress and a 10 minute walk to work was worth the pay cut. Your boss, Arthur, seems like a nice enough guy, but when he starts to handle your training personally? You start to feel things you shouldn’t feel for someone you work for. How will you deal with your budding emotions?

Author’s Notes: My title is a Flight of the Conchords reference. If you haven’t heard their song “Business Time”, go look it up. I know it’s not quite the mood I’m going for in the fic, but it made me laugh when I thought of it, so I just went with it. Anon, this is for your cute request.

Tags: low honor Arthur Morgan, smut, office sex, doggy style, dirty talk, slice of life

AO3 Link is here, you coffee snobs.

——————–

You walked into the bistro and fell in love at first sight.

There was soft folk music wafting through the air as you took in the scent of freshly ground coffee. A tray of scones and muffins, baked in house, looked appetizing behind the clean glass case, and the decor was cozy with a hint of modernity, resisting the urge to be hipster, and yet felt trendy as fuck.

“I want to work here,” you mumbled to yourself.

“Well, we’re in need of some help,” said a deep voice behind you.

You spun around and looked straight into a broad chest. Lifting your head up, you saw the owner of the voice, and presumably, the owner of the bistro.

He was a tall man with eyes the color of a lake and sandy brown hair, long enough to bury your hands in. His beard was close cut, uniform style, and accentuated his lips that you may have stared at for a second too long.

After a few moments of awkward silence, he tilted his head. “Sorry ma’am, did I mishear ya?”

You shook your head. “No, no, you heard me correctly. I’d love to work here.”

He walked up to you and held out his hand. “Arthur Morgan. I own this place. If you want work, let’s talk.”

His hand was calloused and warm, and held yours firmly but not aggressively. When he smiled, your heart skipped a beat.

***

An hour later, you had the paperwork to start a new job as a barista manager. You had prior experience with shift schedules and managing employees, and even though you didn’t have your resume on hand, you quickly pulled up your LinkedIn profile and gone over your work history. Your quick thinking and straight forward attitude had apparently won you points. 

Arthur, owner of Buell’s Bistro, said the original owner, a veteran named Hamish, had left it to him before retiring to Colorado. He said he didn’t know too much about being a business owner, but he seemed to be doing just fine, given the amount of customers you saw as you left.

Now all you had to do was give your two weeks notice to your current job, and you could finally make yourself happy.

***

You could not wait to start your first day at the bistro. The past two weeks had been a hell of a slog, trying to stay present and aware while you dreamed of an idyllic future. You were looking forward to walking to work and not having to drive an hour into the city every day. The corporate hell you escaped had made you strong, focused, and a nervous wreck at the end of each week. You were glad to be done with that career and moving on to something calmer.

Walking towards the employee’s entrance at the back, you saw Arthur get out of a dark green pick-up truck, sipping a coffee from a travel mug and checking his phone. You decided to wait for him, and waved as he walked up to you. He had told you to dress business casual, so you had on a black polo and a pair of khakis, but looking at him, you felt a little under-dressed. He was wearing a blue button-up, sleeves rolled up, with black slacks and brown Oxford shoes. 

You blinked and quickly looked away, hoping he hadn’t noticed you gawking at him. Last time you had seen him, he was in a bright Hawaiian shirt and jeans, looking very casual. You had thought he looked kind of cute at the time.

But right now? He looked hot as fuck.

“There ya are,” he said with a warm smile as he opened the door for you. “C’mon, I’ll introduce you to the gang.”

***

“Ladies.”

“Heeeeyyyyyy Arthur!”

Three women—well, they seemed more like girls to you— chirped back to him in unison. It was a little eerie how incredibly rehearsed that seemed.

Arthur gestured to each woman in turn. “This here is Karen and Mary-Beth. They’re front staff. Tilly here runs things in the back, since she’s got a good head for numbers, and she bakes too, but we all do whatever’s needed to keep this place runnin’.”

Each of them smiled and nodded at you; they all seemed friendly. You introduced yourself, while Arthur told them about your business background.

“Wow, Tilly’s in school for business!” Mary-Beth said afterwards. “I’m just getting a degree in creative writing. Not sure how much good that’ll do me, but one day I hope I write somethin’ great!”

You appreciated her optimism and positive attitude. And her Southern accent was charming.

“Write an amazin’ play, so I can be in it,” Karen said with a smirk. Then she looked over at you. “I’m a theater major, so there’ll be some times when I won’t be able to come into work.”

You nodded. “So when it’s finals week, do you all have reduced hours?”

“Yeah, Arthur just takes over,” Tilly said.

You turned to him and raised an eyebrow.

“I can make coffee,” he grumbled, and the other girls tittered. 

“The guests know it’s finals week when there are no scones,” Tilly said.

You made a mental note to get her recipes so you could keep the scones coming when she was out. 

“Alright everyone, I’m gonna train our new lady, so y’all get back to it.”

“Yes, Arthur!” they all sang. It still seemed odd to you that they did it in unison.

“Are they always in sync like that?” you asked him after they had all gone off to the kitchen to prep for the morning.

Arthur nodded. “Yeah, they’ve all been friends since they started college.”

“Oh.” It suddenly occurred to you that you were probably about 10 years older than the girls. Your back twinged, reminding you of your age.

“Now, let’s get started,” Arthur said, distracting you from thoughts. “You know how to make an espresso?”

***

You thought you knew how to make an espresso. But clearly you had to learn his way to making one, which was slow and deliberate. His unhurried method chafed your quick and efficient sensibilities.

However, the result was a smooth, rich, delicious drink, and you couldn’t fault him for that. You figured you’d have to learn some patience.

When Karen and Mary-Beth came back to open up the doors, you helped in any way you could, basically shadowing them for the rest of the morning. When they both headed off to class, Tilly came out to help you for another hour, and when she left for her classes, Arthur came out to help you. 

“How’s it been so far?” he asked when the cafe emptied out and the two of you were cleaning up. You silently hoped that no one would come in during the next thirty minutes before the cafe closed.

“Pretty good! Learning a lot. I haven’t done front of house stuff in so long,” you replied with a laugh.

Arthur chuckled. “You got a natural warmth to ya. I’m sure you’ll be alright.”

You smiled shyly and laughed, a little nervous at how your heart was skipping beats.

He said your name and it sounded like buttered rum, smooth, warm, and sweet. Your throat went a little dry as he leaned towards you.

The jingle of the door opening distracted both of you.

“Hi, welcome!” you said, switching to customer service mode with a warm smile and friendly tone. Arthur was right, it did come naturally to you, to please people, to help make people happy.

You didn’t see Arthur scowl slightly before continuing to clean the counters.

You did, however, notice when he charged the customer just a little extra without him knowing. You didn’t say anything until after the young man had left, just as closing time hit. Arthur went to the door and locked it, turning the sign around to say “Closed.”

“You charged him incorrectly,” you said. 

“Oh. Whoops,” he said, unconvincingly. 

“Arthur!“ 

"He didn’t notice. Besides, he pissed me off.”

“By doing what?" 

Arthur was silent, opting to shrug nonchalantly as he closed the curtains and started cleaning up. You got the feeling that you wouldn’t get an answer out of him, so you just sighed and cleaned up as well. Once everything was put away and clean for the next morning, Arthur locked up and walked you to your car like a gentleman, looking around for anything or anyone that might cause trouble. 

As you reached for your car door, Arthur put his hand on your arm, his fingers caressing your skin, sending a delicious heat through you. 

"You did real good today. Lookin’ forward to workin’ with ya.”

You smiled. “Me too. Just don’t overcharge all your customers,” you said, half-jokingly, taking the sting out of your comment. 

“Only the ones that annoy me.” A half-grin appeared on his face. 

“What did he do?" 

"Talked to you fer too long,” he said, his voice dipping low.

You couldn’t tell if he was joking as he said good night and went to his car. 

***

Somehow, three months went by in the blink of an eye. You learned about the cafe’s customers, got feedback, and started implementing some minor changes that made a difference in how efficiently the place was run. There was less waste and more time to spend on marketing, which brought in more customers. You felt like you were really making a difference; it was infinitely more satisfying than working for a giant corporation. 

In those three months, you had gotten to know your coworkers and boss. The girls really were 10 years younger than you, though sometimes it didn’t feel that way. They were all mature and wonderful to talk to. By now, the four of you had gotten close enough to have a text chat group, and Tilly would occasionally ask you for help with her business class assignments. 

You still refused to chirp along with the girls when they greeted Arthur in the morning, though. Seemed like it was straight out of a sitcom, and you felt embarrassed whenever you thought about doing it. 

And Arthur. Getting to know him had been a bit tough at first. For all of his friendly smiles, he dodged personal questions very well, distracting you with questions if his own, or just vaguely answering you. It seemed he didn’t want to talk about his past, so eventually you let it go. 

When you talked to the other girls about his aversion to speaking about his history, they absolutely confirmed it. 

“Yeah, he doesn’t like to bring it up.”

“Shuts up completely if you push him.”

“Whatever happened in his past, he sure as hell ain’t gonna talk about it.”

Recently though, the girls’ favorite topic was you. Specifically, their observations of Arthur in regards to you. 

On a foggy morning, before Arthur arrived, the four of you huddled around the kitchen oven, waiting for Tilly’s mushroom and kale scones to finish baking. 

“I’m tellin’ you, he’s into you.”

“Nope, not going there,” you said as you went over the inventory sheet on your clipboard. “He’s just a nice guy. He does the same for all of you.”

“There’s a difference when it’s you,” Mary-Beth insisted. “His tone is softer, and he stands closer to you.”

“And he brings you lunch sometimes. He doesn’t do that for any of us,” Tilly casually mentioned. 

“You girls usually aren’t here for lunch!” you responded, a little exasperated. 

They all laughed and kept pointing out little things that Arthur did for you and you alone, as you kept denying that it was anything more than just a simple kindness. 

But just a little bit, they got into your head. 

Right at 6AM, as per usual, the door opened. 

“Mornin’ ladies.”

“Heeeeeeyy Arthur!” the girls greeted. 

“Good morning!” you replied separately. 

Arthur’s eyes met yours with a warmth that filled you from head to toe, and gave you a smile that made your heart stutter. He said your name in greeting, his voice low and soft like velvet caressing your skin. 

Then the moment was gone as he went to his office and shut the door. 

The girls looked at you, a knowing smile on their faces. 

“See? He’s definitely into you.”

This time, you couldn’t even deny it. 

***

Another month had passed since you finally thought that maybe, just maybe, Arthur might potentially have some slight interest in you. 

For fuck’s sake, who the hell were you kidding? 

This past month had been sheer torture, as each time the two of you were alone, he’d sidle up to you and ask how you were doing and encourage you to talk to him. He’d brush a hand against yours, or lightly touch your shoulder, or if he was feeling bold that day, he’d say “c’mon, bring it in,” and open his arms for a hug before leaving for the day. 

Of course, you hugged him back. Arthur hugs were big bear hugs, his arms wrapping securely around you as he squeezed you close. They were the best. 

And you were pretty sure he knew you weren’t going to say no to any physical contact. You slowly became addicted to his touch, nearly jumping into his arms whenever he opened them. He didn’t touch you so openly when the other girls were around, but he stood close by so you could feel the heat coming off in waves from his body. 

Every day, you told yourself you’d stop inviting his touch. And every day, you let him get closer and closer to you. Like a spider weaving his web, wrapping his threads of warmth and desire around you, he’d give you little smiles and tease you gently throughout the day, making you feel like a schoolgirl with a crush on the new teacher. It didn’t help that you had a bit of a thing for a man in a position of power over you who happened to be kind and paying you a lot of attention, for that was exactly what Arthur was doing.

You had a feeling your boss kink was going to be the end of your career. But at the end of every day, when you said good night and saw the heat simmering in his eyes as you left, you wondered if it’d be worth it.

***

“Does Arthur hug you girls when you leave for the day?”

Tilly, Karen, and Mary-Beth all gave you varying looks of disbelief.

“No, he never gets that close to us. He even apologies if he accidentally brushes my arm as he’s walking past,” Mary-Beth said. Tilly & Karen just nodded when you looked at them for confirmation.

“Arthur’s got a crush on you,” Karen teased in a sing-song tone as she waggled her eyebrows. “He’s never been very touchy-feely with any of us.”

“That’s because he sees us as his little sisters,” Tilly said, matter-of-factly.

“How do you know?” Mary-Beth raised an eyebrow at her.

“He told me, one night when we were closing the cafe, during that first year.” Tilly measured some flour for the scones and gently added it to the mixer. “He said he was grateful we all were here to help when he inherited the place. Hamish told us we didn’t have to stay, but Arthur was so lost, we couldn’t leave him. Said we were like his family.”

“Awww!” you exclaimed, warmed by the thought of Arthur saying something so sweet.

“So, you thinkin’ about accepting his advances?” Karen asked all of a sudden.

The change in topic was like whiplash in your head. You had to blink a few times before what she said finally sank in. It took a few extra moments to come up with an answer.

“That doesn’t seem very professional—”

The door opened. 6AM, on the dot.

“Ladies.”

“Heeeeey Arthur!”

You sighed quietly to yourself before plastering on your game face and got ready for the rest of the day.

***

That night, as you swept the floor, you were lost in thought. What Karen had said, about accepting Arthur’s advances; weren’t you basically doing that?

You were thinking so hard that you didn’t notice that Arthur had closed all the blinds and come up to you while you were sweeping the corner of the room. You looked up just as he put a hand on the wall in front of you, stopping your progress and literally cornering you. 

“Penny for yer thoughts?" 

You felt heat suffuse your cheeks as you saw how close he was, forcing you to look up at him. He leaned down a little, his eyes flickering to your lips as they parted, your small intake of breath more telling than anything you could have said.

“Just spacing out, that’s all.”

A bit of worry crept into his expression. “You feelin’ alright? Have I been workin’ ya too hard?”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

He smiled. “That you are, sweetheart.” He slowly reached out to hold your hands in his, gently took the broom from your hands and set it aside. Then he took another step closer to you. Leaning in, he caressed your cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Real fine.”

“Ar-Arthur, we can’t.”

“Why not?” He shifted nearer.

“Because I work for you!”

“I wouldn’t force ya. If you’re not attracted to me, then say so and I’ll back off. No consequences, I promise.” He said the last part with a sincerity that you believed. Then he leaned in to graze your earlobe with his lips. “But I think you are.”

You let out a small whimper of need from his touch. He softly cradled your face in one hand as he reached around to splay his other hand on the small of your back, pulling you closer until you were flush with his warm body.

“Last chance, sweetheart.”

You were silent, staring into his eyes, your body melting against his.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he whispered against your lips before he kissed you. You could feel him pour all of the desire he had been holding back into his kiss, his tongue invading your mouth as he held the back of your neck and wrapped his other arm tighter around you. 

You wrapped your arms around him in return, grabbing at his shirt and pulling him closer to you, desperate for more of his touch. He pinned you to the wall, pressing his entire body against yours as he stole your breath, took your moans as his hands reached down and stroked your curves, brushing close but not quite touching your breasts. His hands traveled to your hips, and he squeezed with his fingers.

“I want more.” He pulled back. “I want you in my office.”

He had the look of a starving man, and you were his first meal in days. He wanted to take you, consume you, devour you.

You nodded.

Smiling, Arthur took your hand and led you to his office.

***

“Always wanted to do this,” he murmured as he lifted you up onto his desk, his hands sliding your skirt up your thighs. His fingers made their way to your panties, where he rubbed you slowly, feeling the damp fabric and smirking. “Feels like you want this too.”

You nodded, unable to verbally admit that this had been a fantasy of yours lately, a fantasy that you may have jilled off to on several occasions. 

His fingers pulled your panties aside as he touched you intimately for the first time. You let out a sigh of pure ecstasy as he caressed your core.

“That’s it, sweetheart. Just enjoy it.”

Then he kissed you once more, stealing your breath as he coaxed your tongue to play with his, the two of you making out with a frenzied passion you hadn’t felt in a long time. His other hand wrapped around the back of your neck and held you still as he kept fingering you, driving you higher and higher.

“Take yer shirt off,” he commanded. “I want to see all of you.”

You quickly unbuttoned your blouse and tossed it aside. Reaching behind you, you unclasped your bra and flung it away as well. Arthur pulled back to admire your body, a look of admiration on his face.

“Beautiful,” he breathed before he went straight for your breasts, grabbing one of them and teasing the nipple while he took the other into his mouth, sucking and licking you. All the while, he was still stroking your core, building your pleasure up more and more.

The increased sensation to your body was enough to drag you to the brink. You held onto his hair with one hand, grabbing his wrist with the other and pushing his fingers harder against your clit as he stood up straight to tower over you.

“Come for me,” he ordered.

You broke apart, burying your face into his shirt as you moaned wantonly, your legs shaking as he pressed his fingers heavily against your center, rubbing in circles.

“That’s it, good girl,” he crooned.

Catching your breath, you watched him grin and pull back long enough to unbutton his fly. Pulling out his manhood, he stepped back to you, touching the inside of your thighs. You spread your legs and smiled up at him.

“Guide me in.”

You reached out and grasped the velvet steel of his cock, stroking it twice so you could watch him let out a soft moan before you pulled him into your waiting entrance. He leaned forward, his hand cradling your cheek as he pushed himself inside of you, never breaking eye contact as you felt him stretch you.

“Oh my god, this feels so good,” you whimpered.

“Sure does,” he said in a hushed tone. “Better than my fantasies.”

When he finally hilted inside you, he leaned in and kissed you. Then he pulled out and slammed back into you, making you cry out in surprise.

And that set the tone for his passionate fucking, gripping your hips so he wouldn’t smash the desk as he took you with his powerful thrusts. He groaned against your neck when you grabbed at his clothed back as you succumbed to his unrelenting pace.

“I want you bent over my desk.”

He pulled out and manhandled you until you were bent over his desk, your ass in the air.

“Perfect,” he growled as he slid back inside of you and rammed into you again and again. “Yer so hot like this.”

Then he leaned over you, and said lowly in your ear. “You like it when your boss fucks you?”

Oh shit. He knew your kink. You moaned uncontrollably and nodded, feeling your pussy clench around his cock. He smirked, knowing how you had reacted to his words.

“Say it.”

“I like it when my boss fucks me.”

“Call me Mr. Morgan.”

“Yes, Mr. Morgan.”

“Good,” he purred, and reached down to stroke your core. “My best employee deserves a reward, don’tcha?”

“Yes, please!”

“Beg for a reward, sweetheart,”

“Please, Mr. Morgan, please give me a reward!”

He stood up and slowed his pace, but the intensity of his thrusts remained, the sound of his hips against your ass echoing in the small office.

“I’ll give you what you want.” He grabbed your hair and pulled. “I know exactly what you need.”

You felt his hand grab your shoulder as he suddenly fucked you hard and fast. The only warning you had was when his grip tightened on you before he let out a harsh moan and a string of expletives as he emptied himself inside of you, pushing his cock as deep as he could go, huffing as he finished.

“Fuck, that was… that was amazin’.” He picked you up and sat back in his chair, you on his lap, his cock still inside of you. He idly caressed your breasts as you both caught your breaths. When he finally slipped out from you, he laughed.

“Guess we should clean up,” he mumbled. You leaned your head back against his shoulder and nodded.

“Sweetheart?”

“Yes, Arthur?”

“You alright?”

You smiled. “Yeah, I’m alright. Better than alright.” You turned your head and kissed him on his stubbled cheek. “I’m glad I took this job.”

He chuckled, nuzzling you. “So am I.”

——————–

End Notes: This… got way longer than I intended. Oh well! Hope you enjoyed the ride!

#arthur morgan #arthur x reader #nsft #modern au #low honor arthur morgan #writing #fanfic #rdr2 fanfic #rdr2 #lemon fanfic #tumblr request

[siriuslymarauders]

Coffee Stain Introductions

Summary: You and Newt Scamander have a messy introduction 

Word Count: 1410

Warnings: None 

Previous works: This is based on a Head-canon I had did Newt. You can find this HC on my Masterlist which is linked in my bio :) 

 You stared in awe at the tall blackened tiled walls, making and pushing your way out of the buzzing rush hour crowd. It was your first day on the job, being assistant to the Auror team. It was not the dream job you had always wanted, but it was a start. It has been three years since you had graduated from Hogwarts, and through those years you have bounced from career to career, always losing your interest in the tasks. But here you were, the Ministry of Magic. You were a firm believer in fate, for everything happens for a reason. And if Merlin wanted you to spend three long years of repetitive firing and rehiring, then so be it. You were meant to end up here at this time, for whatever reason. With your head held high, dressed to the nines in your new works clothes, coffee, and papers in hand you began to march your way through the crowd. You somehow managed to escape the busy main hall and into the Auror department with ease, but as you turned the corner you collided with something, or rather someone. The force was hard enough to knock you on your bum, with your papers flying and coffee spilling everywhere. You forcibly closed your eyes and mumbled a spell to reduce the burning hot coffee now seeping its way through your clothes and onto your delicate smooth skin. As the heat began to reduce you opened your eyes to see a freckled man quickly compiling your papers, muttering quiet apologizes your way. Once all the papers were collected he went to hand them to you before realizing you were still seated on the hard wooden floor. Helping you onto your feet, he clumsy handed you the papers and reached within his pockets searching for some napkins to help with your wet attire.

You smiled as he kept on handing you paper towels as if he had an endless supply. He even went to help you pat the dampness but stopped once he realized he was about to touch your breast. In any other situation you would be upset and angered at the man, but the way his adorable face was looking anywhere but your own, you let out a breathless laugh. You said your goodbyes and began to walk away, but looking back once more you were left speechless as the man was now laying on the floor, reaching for something underneath a bench.

Confused and quite frankly concerned you made your way back over the messy hair man, “Sir, are you okay?”

He seemed alarmed by your voice, hitting his head on the backside of the bench. But he continued on to crawl as if searching for something that had fallen, “Hm? O-Oh, hm, yes. I just lost my Niffler, should be somewhere around here. Ah yes, that bugger.”

Hearing something move from the far corner of the hall, the strange man quickly stood up and ran in the direction. You laughed at his eagerness and made your way back to work with questions filling your mind.

You explained to your new boss of the situation that had happened and you heard him quietly curse before showing you to your desk. You expected the day to fly by with bright colors, but instead, you boredly sat at a desk filling out the appropriate paperwork. As you read each line going by, you couldn't help yourself but think of the adorable man that had knocked you off your feet. Literally. You wanted to find him again, and you knew it would easy. There were not many people who would be crawling around searching for a Niffler, so it was safe to assume that this man belonged to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. But you didn’t just want to walk in without a trace of reason, you needed to find an excuse.

It wasn't until lunchtime that you were sitting at your desk when you saw something shiny move out the of the corner of your eye. Hearing tiny pitter patters dance across the room you were left dumbfounded as the most adorable created sat on top of your desk, slowly taking your gold pen out from your hands. You laughed at the Niffler and loosened your grip on the pen, letting it slide into the paws of the treasure hunter. The Niffler seemed surprised by your willingness and tilted its head in confusion. You smiled as you reached behind your neck to unclasp the necklace that laid between your breasts. Slowly holding the jewelry outward you were able to grab on the Niffler and bring it close to your body, trapping it from escaping. Standing up you began to make your way out of the office with your necklace in one hand and the Niffler in the other. You were too distracted by the giddiness filling your body that you completely ignored the strange looks from your passing coworker named Walter.

“Miss. L/N?” the strange questionable tone broke through you happiness, making you look up at the man who stood in front of you      “Oh hello! Don't mind me! Just returning this little thing to where it belongs” you laughed, slightly holding up the Niffler cradled in your small hands.      You saw him eye you up and down before resting his eyes on the creature in front of him. With a disgusted tone, his reached for the Niffler, “I can get rid of that thing for you if you’d like.”    Staring dumbfounded at his response, you backed away, pulling the Niffler deeper within your arms as if to protect it, “Wait, what? No!”

Quickly turning away from Walter you basically ran to the Creature Department. Once at your destination, you were able to spot the ginger hair from a mile away. He seemed to be distracted, looking and searching around. Blowing the hair out from your face you confidently made your way over the man, stopping right before him. Expecting to get his attention you were left ignored until you made a loud clearing of your throat. With that he slowly looked up, eyes resting on the Niffler cuddling its way into your body.

Slightly holding the creature out, you spoke: “I believe you are looking for this?”

With wide eyes and a red face, his hurried his way over to you, gently taking the creature from your arms. Holding it up, you giggled as he scolded the creature in such a way it reminded you of your mother. With your laugh now filling the room he looked up staring into your eyes with a glisten of happiness. It wasn't until his eyes shifted downward towards your coffee-stained blouse that his face somehow turned even redder than before as if suddenly remembering the incident that played earlier in the day. He began to mumble apologizes left and right, but this time he was looking at you directly in the eyes.

Shaking your head in amusement, “No need to worry. It was surely my fault, I wasn't looking where I was going”

His eyes widen at your statement as if you had lied in testimony. His voice cracked a smidge as his exclaimed, “No, no. I was running and not paying attention”

You two continued to banter and put the blame on yourselves until you had finally given up and called it a tie, “Then why don't we put both ourselves at fault? How does that sound, Mr?”

His hand instantly shot up to met yours as he introduced himself, “Scamander, Newt Scamander.”

Giving him a firm handshake you grinned ear to ear as a blush made its way up your cheeks at the sudden and new contact. Your hands and eyes lingered on each other for a bit before he slowly pulled away, looking leftward and smiling in embarrassment. You stood there like a fangirl basking in the adorableness. But realizing your own awkwardness, you briskly nodded your head and began to walk away. You heard some shuffling of feet as you slowly made your way out of the room. Turning around to say your final goodbyes, you were shocked to see Newt standing so close to you. Taking a step back you smirked at the man, “Say, Mr. Scamander. I was just about to go get lunch? Would you care to join me? I’d love to hear more about this little Niffler of yours”

Notes: This is my first Newt short fic I have ever written! To be honest, I felt like I had rushed it, but I was trying to follow my Head-Canon as closely as possible. I might write a second part to this since it is really fun to write for such an adorable man :) 

#newt scamander #newt scamander imagines #newt scamander x reader #newt imagine #newt #Harry Potter #harry potter imagine #harry potter x reader #harry potter x you #newt scamander x you #newt scamander imagine #fantastic beats and where to find them #fantastic beast imagine #fantastic beast #fantastic beasts #imagine

[prevdustinhendrsn]

she’s the sunshine in the rain

mike wheeler/el hopper 3.8k - read on ao3 requested by anonymous from this list: 90. ‘remember when we were little?’ + 97. ‘your life was my life’s best part’

Mike’s only here because he still can’t get over her.

This morning, he knew where he’d be right now. He’d be sitting at his mother’s shiny mahogany table in the dining room, surrounded by a hundred relatives all drinking some form of alcohol and complaining about the elections and the economy and asking Mike the most boring questions about his future. He knew it when he left his apartment, when he made the two-hour drive home, when he stood at the front door with rainwater dripping off the porch eaves and down his neck. He knew that it would not be pleasant, easy, or even manageable. He’s only here because, despite the disappointment of the last two Thanksgivings, maybe things will be different this time if he sees her.

His first Thanksgiving without her wasn’t unbearable, just because they had only been apart for a month and he was still holding onto the hope that they could piece things back together after a break. When his cousin asked where his girlfriend was, he just mumbled something about them figuring things out. Then came the second Thanksgiving. He was a mess at that point. His grades were slipping, his coworkers complained about him, he barely went out with Dustin and Lucas and Will. Everything was – is – bleak and colorless without her. She took all the sunshine with her and left grey skies over him.

Now he’s here, at his third Thanksgiving since starting college, three years and a month after they broke up. He’s still miserable, still lonely, still thinking of her every minute of every hour of every day, but his feelings are number and he’s better at hiding it.

He shifts in his uncomfortable stiff-backed seat at the table. Several extensions have been tacked onto it to make room for all the relatives and in-laws, cousins once-removed and forgotten godmothers, the oldest – his dad’s great-grandfather – and the youngest – his niece’s daughter. Cutlery clangs and glasses clink, toddlers whine at the kids’ table, the radio sings in the background because nobody has had the common sense to turn it off yet. Cousin Beth and uncle Nicki are having an argument about humane animal treatment on one end of the table, two octaves away from a fistfight. Every one of his relatives has an opinion, their voices made obnoxiously loud by both the wine in their glasses and their infallible belief that since they’re older than Mike (even his twenty-five-year-old cousin) they can’t possibly be wrong. He pokes halfheartedly at his turkey and gravy, wishing desperately he were anywhere but here.

“How’s the love life, Michael? Any lucky ladies out there?” Aunt Caroline asks in her raspy two-packs-a-day voice, the glass in her hand promptly returning to her lips every fifteen seconds.

Mike’s heart curls in on itself and he’s momentarily saved from answering by great-uncle Leonard’s impatient huff that really sounds more like a wheeze as he scoops another helping of mashed potatoes onto his plate. “Quit calling him Michael, Caroline. You’re making him sound as old as me.”

“It’s a proper name for an upstanding young man! Karen knew what she was doing.”

“Do you want him to have gray hair at eighteen years old? You’re eighteen, right kid?”

“Twenty-one, actually, but, um, it’s fine,” Mike says quickly, setting his fork down before Leonard and Caroline get into a cage match over the peas. God knows they would if they still had the build for it. “Michael is fine.” It’s really not, but like hell he’s going to say that at Thanksgiving dinner with his mom three seats away. His only saving grace tonight is Nancy, sitting directly across the table from him, her hair curled and lips colored an elegant red. She’s the one thing keeping him from walking right out the front door. Judging by the pleasantly neutral expression she’s had on her face all evening, he can see it’s just as painful for her to be here as it is for him, if not more so. Lying all day is exhausting.

She subtly raises her eyebrows at him and he realizes Caroline, sitting next to Nancy, has asked him a question that he still hasn’t answered.

Yes, there’s a girl, a girl too good to be true who I just can’t seem to let go but she isn’t here and she hasn’t been here for three years and I miss her so much and I want to talk to her and I need to talk to her but she’s too far away.

His El. She lives on the street behind him. She’s probably there right now. They’ve haven’t had a full conversation since their last.

“No,” he says past the tightness in his throat. “There’s no one.”

“Shame. You should ask Beth if she’s got any friends she could set you up with. Time’s a’wasting, you know. Twenty-one, you said? You’re practically dead already. Here, drink some of this. You’re legal so you might as well. Anyways, you should be getting a move on with life, Michael. You want to settle down quick with a good, fertile woman. Child-bearing hips, you know? Get those kids out quick and early so that you can start building a steady career. My first husband was the worst, absolutely horrible, he never had any idea what the hell he was doing…”

Mike nods, carefully setting down the wine she poured for him before he can shatter it. With any luck, if he nods and hums and agrees enough at all the right times, she’ll eventually get distracted by Beth and Nicki’s slowly escalating argument.

Get over yourself. El isn’t yours anymore. She’s not here.

Something taps his ankle and he looks up to see Nancy, a question in her eyes. He shrugs. She chews on her lip and Mike watches her glance around the table, searching for something. A way out, he guesses. A moment later she finds it and pushes her chair back, standing up with her empty plate in hand. “Is everyone ready for dessert?” she asks cheerfully.

The arguments and catch-up conversations around the table are briefly replaced with a loud chorus of approval, and as the noise resumes, Nancy glares meaningfully at Mike and jerks her head towards the kitchen. He doesn’t need to be told twice; obliging Caroline’s and his grandmother’s requests for more drinks just because he doesn’t have the energy to make an excuse not to, he takes their glasses and follows Nancy as fast as he can.

The kitchen is gloriously empty, his relatives’ voices reduced to an indecipherable chatter. Nancy tosses her plate into the sink with less care than usual and she blows out a heavy breath, letting the edge of the counter dig into her palms as she leans against it. Her poised façade is gone.

“This sucks,” she says after a moment. Mike nods, setting down the wineglasses and crossing to lean against the counter opposite her.

“Yeah.”

“They’re such…” She trails off, shaking her head. Mike, on the other hand, has no qualms about name-calling, especially not his relatives.

“Close-minded pricks?” he suggests. She snorts.

“Yeah. That.”

He hurts for his sister, he really does. Lying about the existence of the other parts of you hurts and tricks your heart into feeling much lonelier than it really is. That’s what he’s been doing with El for the past three years, except he’s not sure if he’s still allowed to say she’s a part of him anymore. “I’m sorry you can’t tell them,” he says.

She shrugs. “It’s not like I’m looking for their approval or something. But everything is so much easier with Steve and Jonathan around.”

“Why don’t you just tell them? I mean, if their opinion doesn’t matter, then…”

“Because that’s too much of a pain in my ass to deal with tonight. Can you even imagine? I’m tired of defending my life and my loves and my choices to everyone, Mike. Me and Jonathan and Steve are happy with what we have, and it’s nobody else’s business unless we want it to be.”

“Oh. Right. Um, sorry.”

Nancy’s lips quirk upwards in a no need gesture and they fall silent. Mike drags his finger along the bottom edge of a heavily decorated cake sitting next to him and licks the frosting off as Nancy rolls her eyes. She drums her dark red fingernails on the granite countertop, scrutinizing him.

“What’s wrong, Mike? Is it still her?”

Mike falters, letting his hand fall back to the counter. “Aunt Caroline?” he says to his shoes.

“Seriously.”

He heaves a sigh, looking up at Nancy’s concerned eyes. “Yeah. Of course it is. It’s been three years and it’s still her, Nancy. Did you think something would be different?”

“Have you talked to her at all?”

“Not really.”

“So…you’re just…done? Just like that?”

“Looks like it,” he says flatly. Nancy sighs.

“Mike, you two were…you just were. I don’t understand how it ended like it did.”

He shrugs. “I was going to college and she wasn’t and I was just dragging her down because she needed to figure out who she was without me. That’s how it ended.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Do you still love her?”

“Of course I still love her. She’s it for me, Nancy. I’ll never love anyone else.”

It’s out before he can think about it, and the truth of it all hurts so much he’s suddenly afraid he’s going to collapse. El. Amazing, intelligent, clever, beautiful, telekinetic El. Not his anymore.

“I just want to see her,” he whispers, staring desperately at his sister, tears burning behind his eyes. “I just want to see her again.”

Sympathy crosses Nancy’s face for just a beat, quickly replaced with resolve for his sake. She strides across the kitchen to pull him into a hug. Despite the fact that he’s a whole head taller than her, he presses his face into her shoulder, welcoming the comfort.

“Then go see her,” she says, running a hand up and down his back. “You know she’s home. At least tell her happy Thanksgiving.”

Mike sniffles, half of him praying that nobody will walk in and the other half setting off warning bells about all the possible ways this could go wrong.

Just see her. You don’t even have to talk to her. Just walk by her house and maybe you’ll see her through the window and you’ll see her smile and that will be enough. It’ll be enough for now.

He manages to slip out the door just as Nancy carries in the desserts to draw everyone’s attention. The stark autumn air hits him like a brick wall, dark clouds roiling overhead, ready to spill. He runs, shoving his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders against the wind. Don’t think about it. Just run. Go.

All he sees is asphalt moving beneath his feet and before he knows it, he’s on her street. He stops at the end of it, breathing hard. It’s just as familiar to him as his own – perhaps even more so, since he consciously made an effort to avoid his house as much as possible in his teens. Five houses away from him sits the two-storied Hopper-Byers home, the lights shining warm yellow through all the windows. He looks instinctively to hers, the far right on the second floor. When they were sixteen, Dustin begrudgingly helped him hide a ladder in the scraggly bushes that separate the house from the neighbors. Hopper found it a week later, so El stayed up four nights in a row honing her powers so that by the fifth night, she could levitate Mike straight up from the ground to the windowsill without breaking a sweat. There was a lot of smothered laughter and purple bruises during those trial and error nights, but Mike would never trade them for anything.

A cold raindrop on his cheek refocuses his attention. The clouds above him are dark and ready to pour; the heady scent of promised thunder and lightning is thick in the air. He starts forward again. His heart increases its frantic beat with every step he takes, but the house is getting closer, closer, and he knows she’s there because he can feel it, he could always feel her.

He passes the windows that look into the dining room and stumbles to a stop again, his throat locking up at what he sees. It’s all of them, sitting around the table, cast in a cheery golden glow with laughter on their faces. Joyce, Will, and Jonathan, Hopper and his parents, and – her. Mike’s hands go numb. She’s leaning halfway out of her chair, wearing a loose yellow sweater, passing a bowl of mashed potatoes to her dad. Her soft pink lips spread into a smile at someone’s joke, and it’s that smile, angelic and full of love, that pulls on Mike’s heartstrings. She really is it for him. He’s never moving on. He can’t.

Every time he closes his eyes for the next few months, he’ll see this image of her, just like all the other times: when they ran into each other in the grocery store, at Christmas when their families exchanged casseroles and pleasantries, on that one spring day when she was levitating Max up to pick apples and Mike happened to be walking by with Lucas. Hey Mike, she had said to him, her voice soft and amiable, one hand outstretched behind her to keep Max aloft. Her nose didn’t even bleed anymore. Hey, El is what he had said back, barely allowing himself to breathe to make sure his voice was steady. And nothing happened, and his heart shattered all over again.

He’s seen her now. He can walk away and not make things any worse. But it’s just not enough, not like he thought it’d be. It’s never enough. These small glances across gaping distances are not enough to put himself back together. He needs all of her, because he loves her, he loves her, he loves her so much and he doesn’t like who he is when she’s not with him. His heart aches and yearns towards her, but the pain he felt when they fell apart anchors his feet to the concrete, and then – she looks out the window.

Oh.

He loves her eyes. They’re magic. They slow time.

He watches his name fall off her lips, and her family hasn’t yet noticed, and he mouths hi. She stares at him, and then he finds the will to move, dashing up the driveway and onto the porch.

He raises his hand to knock but the door opens before he can. She stands there, a head shorter than him, her curly hair tucked behind her ears and her cheeks steadily growing pinker from the sudden gust of cold air.

“Mike,” she says in a rush, at the same time he breathes, “El.”

He hasn’t been this close to her in a long time. Not enough. Closer.

“What are you doing here?” she asks quietly, her curious eyes still roaming his face like she can’t quite believe he’s standing here.

“Um, well, I just – I don’t know, actually. I – El…” He takes a deep breath. “I just wanted to see you. And talk to you. Just for a minute, unless you don’t –“

She shakes her head, and he steps backwards as she comes out onto the porch, gently closing the door behind her. “No, let’s talk. Please.”

They sit on the porch swing with the rusty chains and peeling white paint, a bitter foot of space between them.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he says after a moment. El nods, staring out at the street.

“Happy Thanksgiving. How’s your family?”

“They’re fine, I guess. Yours?”

“Good.” El glances at him with a sad, knowing smile on the corner of her lips. “But you didn’t come here to talk about family.”

He shakes his head and she turns back to the street. The rain has begun to pour, thrumming on the roof and sliding off the eaves into the flowerboxes below. Belatedly Mike realizes they’ve started swinging back and forth ever so slowly, yet he isn’t pushing them with his foot and since Hopper accidentally hung the swing too high, El can’t reach the ground when she’s sitting on it.

“Are you doing that?”

She nods. To his surprise, a dark red spot of blood trickles down from her nose. “Sorry. I do it out of habit.”

“No, no, it’s fine, but – you have a nosebleed.”

“It happens, sometimes,” she says unconcernedly, pulling a tissue out of her pocket and dabbing away the blood.

“I thought you didn’t get them anymore. Not since you were sixteen, right?”

“Well, I get them now.”

Her voice is edged with a warning not to push any farther so Mike relents. For a long minute they watch the rain from their sheltered spot, and he can’t help but look over at her every few seconds. He could never stop doing that, not even when they were together. It wasn’t just because he loved watching her, but also because some part of him was always afraid that he’d blink and she would disappear again.

“Remember when we were little, when we did this?” she asks. Mike frowns.

“Sitting on the porch swing? Of course I remember that.” There’s not a moment with you I don’t remember, he thinks, heart aching. Not a good time, not a bad time, not any of it.

“No. Well, yes, but I meant this.”

He follows her line of sight down to the space between them, where his fingers have been absently wearing at a marking in the wood there. He lifts his hand and a dull three-year-old pang resounds in his chest. Roughly etched into the old wood is a faded, clichéd MW + EH, carved while she drank lemonade and then kissed his cheek with sticky lips.

“We weren’t that little,” Mike says, looking up at her. “We were fifteen.”

“Still.” She stares down at the mark, a faint smile on her lips.

“That was a long time ago,” he murmurs.

“Yeah. It was.”

His eyes fall to her lap, where her small hands twist around and around each other in the folds of her skirt. Hands that are calloused and gentle when they play with his hair and are always decorated in pink nail polish. Hands that can split mountains in two and lay waste to interdimensional monsters, hands that can build and destroy and hurt and love. Hands that he’s held since he was thirteen, that he wants to reach over and hold right now even though he can’t.

“El,” he starts, the tightness in his throat forcing him to pause. El looks up at him, and the grey rain falling in sheets behind her is a perfectly melancholic echo to the sadness in her eyes. He takes a deep breath. “I love you. I love you more than you’ll ever know, more than I’ve ever loved anyone else. And I don’t think it’s possible for me to stop loving you, really. I’ve missed you so much these past few years, because…you’re just a part of me. But if this is how you want it to be…I mean, if you’re happier this way, not being with me, then…I need you to let me know. I’m okay with that, because I want you to be happy, but you have to tell me.”

She furiously brushes away a tear that escaped her brimming eyes. “I’m not happy, Mike.”

“You’re…not?”

She shakes her head. “I miss you. I miss you all the time. I thought it was for the best, you know, at first, because we both thought we wanted it, but I’ve never been more alone and I didn’t know how to ask you if…” She trails off, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her sweater. “Your life was the best part of mine, Mike. My nose started bleeding again after you left because when I use my powers, I think of everything I love. But when I thought of you, I just…couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t know how to be me when you’re not here. You’re more than my best friend, you’re…mine.”

You’re mine. Mike blinks at her, unaccustomed to the fireworks his heart is setting off. He feels like he’s flying but hasn’t realized his feet have left the ground yet. Your life was the best part of mine.

He swallows. “So…it’s okay if I hold your hand?”

She laughs through her tears, nodding, and he swears her smile is just like sunshine breaking through the thunderheads above them. When she leans over to kiss him, meeting her halfway is second nature. His El. Her kiss is sweet, always sweet, deep and gentle and full of stars, just like her, and she places her hands over his on her cheeks to make sure he won’t let go.

How did he live without her?

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. She shakes her head.

“My fault.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Our fault,” she concedes with a small laugh. He opens his eyes and she’s looking at him, so much joy and love in her eyes, the happiest he’s seen her in three years.

“What were we even thinking, El?”

In response she kisses him again, and again, and again. “I missed you,” she says, punctuating it with another kiss. “I love you.” Kiss. “Three years was stupid. I’m not supposed to be stupid.”

“God, I love you.” He wraps his arms around her tight, burying his face in her hair. He doesn’t have any words that could convey what she means to him. He just got his other half back – how do you put that into words? “Promise me,” he says eventually, knowing she’ll hear the rest of it. Promise me we won’t be that stupid again. Promise me you’ll never leave me again. Promise me I’ll never lose you. Promise me you’ll always stay by my side. Promise me you’ll love me no matter what, because I promise you I will.

“Promise.”

By the time Mike feels calm enough to speak again, the rain has subsided to a sprinkle, thunder cracking in the distance. He glances at the front door, which has miraculously stayed shut through their whole reunion.

“Can I stay here for the rest of dinner?” he asks her. “I hate my family.”

She giggles, nodding into his chest. “Yes. You can even stay the night if you want.”

“Your dad might make me sleep on the floor in the living room.”

“No, Joyce wouldn’t let him.”

He breathes deeply, holding her tight to him. She’s warm in his arms against the cold stormy air.

“I love you, El.”

“I love you too.”

@calprnia @you-wont-lose-me @summer-in-hawkins @elizabthturner @formerlyjannafaye @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold @mikewheeler @el-and-hop @michael-hearteyes-wheeler

#SURPRISE #EMO MIKE STRIKES AGAIN #i actually wrote something for the first time in forever #if you guys want to be added/removed from my improvised taglist please let me know #i feel like my title game is slipping #stranger things #mileven #mike wheeler #eleven #anna puts words together

[therepairdepot]

fanfic time? fanfic time it has no title and a million plot holes enjoy

As the Isle O’ Hags only hazardous waste disposal facility, A.M. Industries had always been a bustling, busy place.

High above the processing floor, Adrian Miller’s boots trod heavily and with purpose upon the catwalk. He scanned his surroundings with as much of an eagle eye as he could muster. The foreman was not searching for anything in particular, he was simply making his rounds as usual.

A sharp whiff of a sour, rotten odor nearly took Adrian by surprise. It was not a foreign smell, in fact the foreman recognized it immediately. Caustic washing had begun in the facility.

A.M. Industries began its life as an offshoot of Hailfire Peaks Oil Refinery with Adrian among its first few employees. First encountering this foul odor was one of the most potent memories of his career; the choking gag noise he made upon his first encounter would probably never leave his memory. Now, the reek simply made him chuckle softly.

Toxic waste was an unavoidable part of the fuel refining process. Though dangerous and unpleasant, the job of treating it for disposal had to be done and that job was delegated to the facility that now bore the foreman’s name. Caustic wash waste turned out to only be the beginning, however, as requests from all over the Isle began to trickle in—sewage came first, closely followed by surplus explosives. As the once single-purpose facility grew, so did Adrian’s position on the management ladder. Once a pipe fitter with a knack for oxyacetylene, Adrian fought his way up the ranks to his current position as foreman... though it was not unusual to see him on the floor among his reports, torch in hand.

The catwalk creaked lightly as Adrian neared its end and began his descent into the office. Those responsible for the smell glanced up upon hearing the noise, then returned to their task, relieved that the foreman saw no need to bark an ill-tempered order. After all, Adrian was not exactly known for being a kind or patient man.

-

“O’Malley!”

The voice over the radio was sharp, frustrated and not one that Kevin O’Malley ever wanted to hear from the foreman. The Jinjo fumbled about his belt to retrieve the receiver at his side.

“What up, boss?”

“O’Malley, please come up to the cable room. I need to discuss something with you.��

-

Adrian awaited the Jinjo at the back of the cavernous chamber, dimly lit by the flashlight he held up to a handful of cables. His face was only visible in the dark when nearby LED indicators illuminated, leaving his safety vest and steel-toed boots hidden from view.

When he heard the door open and Kevin tread towards him, the foreman grumpily stated, “O’Malley, we have a problem.”

Kevin’s eyes drifted to the distal end of the wad Adrian clutched in his gloved hand. Each cable had been cleanly severed and the insulation around them had melted, as though the bundle was slashed with a hot knife. “This does NOT happen by accident.” Adrian then gestured to the neat label affixed to the board from which the damaged cables originated.

SECURITY CAMERAS — OUTDOOR

Kevin nodded in agreement. “Er—... yeah this ain’t right, but this damage isn’t too bad. We have plenty of heat-shrink tubing and I can have it all soldered up good as new in an hour.”

Adrian sighed heavily. “The repair doesn’t worry me, O’Malley. What concerns me is the deliberate, selective damage. Someone doesn’t want to be seen.”

-

Strapped securely in their safety harnesses, Jarvis and Kevin climbed the ladder to the top of the smokestack. The rabbit, being the nimbler of the two, hopped upon the grate first, followed by his coworker.

“You’ve had the boiler locked out, right Kevin?” The rabbit inquired, suddenly quite worried about being blasted sky-high by a gust of steam spouting from the stack.

The Jinjo laughed. “I wouldn’t drag you up here if I didn’t, Jarv.” He casually tossed his brushes onto the grate. “Now come on, Miller’s gonna have an aneurysm if he doesn’t get his grates cleaned.” Kevin brashly threw a stiff wire brush at Jarvis.

Silence took over for several minutes.

Jarvis lifted an ear. A whooshing noise had become audible.

“You hear that, Kevin?”

The Jinjo continued to scrape the grates as he replied, “Nah, what was it?

Jarvis sat back on his knees. “A whoosh. Sorta like an airplane.”

Before Kevin could respond, he himself heard the noise. It was at the base of the stack. The creatures exchanged looks, then peered over the edge.

The Winkybunions had arrived.

“A foul place, this factory is.”

“Quiet, Mingella, we won’t be long. Foul yes, but useless wrong! I’ve scoped it out for several days, its potential for us is worthy of praise. The Isle O Hags has no pollution, if we get this place, we have our solution.”

Jarvis looked over at Kevin. “She spoke in rhymes.”

Kevin stated back. “Dude, that’s what you’re worried about? She‘s been stalking the Industries for who knows how long!”

The rabbit shrugged. “Dunno, man, the rhymes are pretty weird.” Jarvis lifted his ear once more to listen to the conversation.

“We’ll find the boss and negotiate, if he backs down that would be great. After all we have more power than he, in a matter of minutes this place is for me!” Gruntilda cackled. Mingella simply nodded in approval.

High up on the smokestacks, Jarvis turned to Kevin. “We gotta find Miller before they do.”

Kevin chuckled. “I would LOVE to see them try to take AM Industries from him. This place is his baby. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t thwack the witch upside the head.” The Jinjo looked at their handiwork, satisfied. “This is fine. C’mon, let’s get to the Depot. Maybe we’ll see them fight.”

-

“OVER MY DEAD BODY!” A furious Adrian banged his fist on his workbench. His roar and metallic bang echoed off the walls of the Repair Depot.

Mingella rolled her eyes. “Perfect for our plan, this place is! Too safe it is, but a problem that isn’t.”

The foreman stood back, hands in the air. “PLEASE quit the broken English. I can barely understand you.”

“Don’t yell at my sister, you grumpy jerk! If you don’t agree, we’ll make it work. You have no choice in this matter, try to stop us, your head’ll be on a platter!”

Adrian sighed sharply, then swiftly turned around, tore his flint lighter from his belt and swept the acetylene torch head from its rig. In one swift motion, as though he’d done it thousands of times, he threw the fuel valve open and lit the torch. It blazed, sooty smoke from the reducing flame nearly blackening Adrian’s lighter. The foreman brandished the torch in front of him like a shield. “Get out of my factory!”

Gruntilda backed away—not in fear, but rather surprise. “Mingella, please deal with this pest. I’ll go and tackle all the rest. Mr. Miller, we will do as we please, get used to the name Grunty Industries!” With that command, Gruntilda fled with a terrible cackle, leaving Mingella alone with the foreman.

An indignant Adrian glared fiercely at Mingella. “I don’t know what your plan is, and I don’t care. Now kindly take your disgusting sisters and leave.” His grip on the torch, once firm and confident, was beginning to falter. Sweat dripped from his neck. One knee wasn’t far from giving out. He didn’t want to show it to the witch, but Adrian was petrified.

“Combative and uncooperative you are!” Mingella flipped her book open. “The perfect spell I have for a hot-tempered boss.”

Before Adrian could bark at her, he noticed a crackle of energy coalescing in her free hand. As Mingella’s spell grew, Adrian realized just how poorly matched he was. Still, he lifted the torch to the witch’s eye level, its flame still blazing before him, though it quivered as he began to tremble.

Fully intent on at least giving Mingella a savage burn, he rushed in, aiming for her face. If he could just damage her eyes...

His flames barely licked the tip of her nose before the spell she threw knocked the torch from his hands and into his chest.

From there, it was all a blur for Adrian.

His throat and chest burned and behind them his vertebrae made a terrible crackling sound. Every pop came with a pang of discomfort. All of his senses were being stripped away. As the pain in his back and jaw grew to a blinding, borderline electric sear, Adrian could barely stay conscious. Staying lucid would allow him to fight back, but letting himself pass out would mean he wouldn’t be aware of this ordeal. He let himself go limp.

It all happened so fast.

He wasn’t sure how long he was out.

Adrian’s consciousness returned in slow, plodding stages.

Pain was the first to return. His neck ached with an intensity that seemed disproportionate to his body. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t stop himself from uttering a single sharp, distressed yelp.

As that cry escaped him however, he noticed that he didn’t recognize the way his teeth fit together. Confused, he felt around gingerly with his tongue. Of all things, the witch seemed to have given him a mouthful of dreadful canines and a jaw that opened far enough to make him worry that his mandible would unhinge from his skull. Adrian’s inspection only stopped when he became aware of a sweet, garlicky and metallic smell.

His head shot up.

Garlic was not an odor any welder wanted to smell. Did the witches knock over an acetylene cylinder? He looked around, but did not spot anything that could have leaked. The torch he’d held was nowhere to be seen. When he began to hyperventilate, however, it became apparent that it was indeed acetylene that he smelled.

That’s my breath.

As he made the connection, his heart began to pound.

That is not my heart.

The last of Adrian’s senses to return was his hearing, and with its return came Mingella’s dreadful voice.

“Finally, awake you are!” She stopped repeatedly striking him with her spellbook—Adrian was correct, the pounding was indeed not his heart—and stood before him. “Important instructions I will give you. Guard our factory you will, an—“

Suddenly overcome with rage, Adrian lifted his head off the floor to snap, “OUR factory?!” He spat. “What gave you the idea that my facility is yours?! Was that the purpose of your dreadful spell?!” As he barked, he became acutely aware of how much he towered over Mingella and how odd it felt to be able to articulate his neck so much. He realized at this point that he was definitely no longer human.

“Grunty Industries this is, and a welding torch you are. Fused you with your own weapon, I have. Protect Grunty’s gold and fight off the bear and bird, you must!”

“That makes no sense.” Adrian snarled, partly in an attempt to convince himself that this was all a terrible, albeit tremendously lucid dream.

“All the sense in the world it makes.” Mingella tapped her tome against Adrian’s side. Instead of the soft thud he expected, the foreman heard a muted, metallic clunk.

Adrian could no longer take the suspense. He turned his head.

You... turned me into a welding torch. Adrian thought. Of all things. As he looked himself over, his musing continued. Clearly you’ve never seen a welding torch before.

“A threatening name, “Adrian” is not, but your new name, “Weldar”, is.” Mingella turned her back on him.

Not really. Weldar thought, but felt it may be better to hold his tongue for now. You’re quite lucky I haven’t figured out how to use this body, because I would love to roast you alive.

Weldar simply laid back down and watched out of one eye as the witch took off, soaring upon her broomstick out of the Repair Depot. Her final triumphant cackle made him cringe.

-

The first night was dreadful.

Weldar spent most of the time trying to find a position in which to sleep. Every time he managed to get comfortable, he would grow restless. Another new position. More restlessness. As a person, Adrian had always had a restless leg that wouldn’t ever be comfortable, but now, he wasn’t sure what to move. Near dawn, the foreman reached an epiphany: human behavior doesn’t work. He had to think differently.

Using his neck, he pushed himself upright. Immediately his nausea subsided. For the first time he could see just how much he towered over the room. It was unsettling. Weldar rested the coils of his neck between his regulators in an attempt to make himself smaller, closer to where he used to be. He nestled his head atop the pile of coils.

Clearly, he thought as he dozed off, I’m supposed to act like an acetylene torch now. The thought was so ridiculous, he couldn’t help but laugh.

#o shet #weldar #banjo kazooie #banjo tooie #rareware #grunty industries #kevin #jarvis #adrian miller #fanfic #adrian is kind of an asshole #gruntilda #mingella #headcanon #theres probably gonna be more #laying a welding torch on its side is Bad