#but yeah it felt short and a good chunk of it was just like doing those post story quests on ruhnuk or manaan | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

syddsatyrn · 3 months

Note

Omg your requests are open. I've seen some of your work and it's amazing❤️

Can you do a smut with Lucifer. He's become my new obsession.

⛧Idle Time is the Devil's Play⛧ By Sydd Satyrn

⛧Pairing: - Lucifer Morningstar x Reader

⛧Warnings: Shameless smut, fingering, swearing, fluff

⛧Words: 2.5k

⛧Notes: This was actually rather fun to write, thank you for the request! My head canon in this one is that Lucifer wears reading glasses.

The day started out on the wrong foot from the second you woke up. The dishes are piled up, laundry needs to be done, and how is there so much dust in here?! Nifty does her best to keep up but she's only one tiny person. You begin with the dishes, stack and stacks of plates and bowls, cups and flatware cover the counter. You let out a sigh of disappointment. After working for a short while, Angel Dust walks in with a surprised look on his face. “I thought you were dating the King of Hell, why are you wasting your time with chores?” The tall spider asks, holding a stack of dishes from his room. “Angel, I work here. I don't know how many times I have to tell you…” You reply with an eye roll. “Yeah, yeah, Charlie’s dreams, blah, blah, motherly nonsense. I’m just sayin’ you could totally slack off and get away with it.” He says, placing more dishes on the counter. You give him a side eye, and Angel laughs. “Chill out toots, I’m just playin’.” He says and heads back to his room. He’s right, you could slack off if you wanted to, but you felt the need to try for Charlie. You and Lucifer have been dating for a little over 6 months and within that time you’ve become rather fond of his sweet daughter and her dreams to rehabilitate sinners. So you took on a role at the hotel and did what you could to help make it possible. You wanted to impress Lucifer's daughter, maybe one day she might even see you as family, if you’re lucky. You finally finish the dishes and take a step back and admire your handiwork. A clean sink, and counters, all the dirty dishes are now washed, dried and put away. It took a good chunk of the morning but it was worth it. The kitchen looks spotless and you decide to move onto the next chore. You tidied a few empty rooms and then delivered clean towels to each room with an occupant. You’re already running out of energy and it's only noon. “You look like you could use some coffee.” Husk says from behind the bar while wiping down the countertops. “You read my mind, Husker.” You say and take a seat at the bar. He pours you a cup of black coffee and sets it in front of you. “Thank you, you have no idea how much I need this.” “Don’t mention it” He says and returns to his countertops. Husk may seem grumpy all the time but you’ve come to know him as a rather genuine and helpful person.

You drink your coffee slowly and contemplate what you should do next. There are so many chores that need to be done, where should you even start? Nifty should be cleaning the bathrooms or taking out the trash by now. You decide to start dusting next, it shouldn't be too hard.

After dusting the common areas, you begin on the hallways. You start at the top floor and work your way down. You hum quietly to yourself while wiping the window sills. As you turn a corner, you run into Angel Dust, and spill dusting spray all over his jacket. “Shit!” He says while wiping his jacked off with his hand, Angel looks frantic and upset, you’ve never seen him so scared. “I’m so sorry! Are you okay?!” You immediately apologize. “Y/N, I can't find Fat Nuggets anywhere! I took my eyes off of him for one second and he disappeared! My poor baby!” Angel says, clearly in a state. He looks like he might even cry. It’s gonna be okay, we just…need to split up! I’ll head downstairs and you stay up here.”You say, trying to remain calm. Angel nods, and you both go your separate ways.

You search all the rooms on the first and second floor, the lobby, the bar, and even the basement. There is no sign of the little pig. You were sure you would find him rooting around somewhere in the kitchen but still, no Fat Nuggets. You notice the back door is slightly ajar, you definitely didn’t use that door when you were down here earlier. You open it, expecting to have solved the mystery, but still nothing. You lean against the wall and let out a defeated sigh. “Dammit, Fat Nuggets, where are you?” You say out loud. Suddenly there is a rustlin noise inside a tipped over trash can. You lift the lid and inside is a very happy looking little pig. You scoop him up and give him a big hug, he must have gottens stuck out there looking for a snack. As you carry Fat Nuggets upstairs you hear a shriek of joy coming from Angel Dust. “My baby!” He cries as you hand him over. “Don't you ever leave my side again!” He says, baby talking to the little pig while giving him a snuggle. “I owe you one, Y/N.” Angel says with a smile. “Dont worry about it, I’m just happy we found the little guy.” You gently boop the little pig’s nose. —------------ As the sun dipped below the horizon, casting hues of pink and orange across the sky, a sense of tranquility settled over the hotel. The warm glow of the fading sunlight painted the walls in soft, golden hues made the place feel somewhat serene. Finding Fat Nuggets took up the rest of your afternoon and you were feeling unusually exhausted.

You head down to the lobby and see Nifty cleaning up the last of the dusting you did earlier.

She greets you as usual. “Good Evening, Miss Y/N! How was your day?” She pauses her cleaning and stares up at you with her single cyclops eye. “I am so worn out, Nifty. How are you?” You return, smiling down at her tiny figure.

“I’m okay. There aren't as many bugs in the hotel to squish anymore so I’m getting pretty bored.” You smile at her, Not entirely sure how to respond to that statement. She always says the wildest stuff, but you’re used to it. Alastor says she's always been pretty quirky. “You should go spend time with your boyfriend.” Nifty teases,”I’ll deal with the rest of the chores.” “Thank you, I could really use a break. Today was a mess.” You say with a sigh of relief. After walking down the long, lavish hallway to Lucifer's room. You open the door slowly, you don't want to wake him if he is asleep. The King is already in bed wearing nothing but a robe and his reading glasses. The lamp next on the bedside table is the only source of light in the room. The blonde haired man is reading a book and glances over at you when he hears you come in. “I was wondering when you’d be here.” He says with a smile on his face. He closes his book and sets it on the nightstand along with his gold rimmed glasses. “Sorry I’m late, I’ve had a really long day.” You admit as you sit on the edge of the bed. “Oh? What did you get up to today?” He asks and crawls toward you. “There was a lot to do around the hotel today, a mountain of dishes and so much cleaning. Like seriously, where does all this dust come from?! Then Angel lost Fat Nuggets and he was outside…” You ramble on and Lucifer listens intently. “Fat Nuggets?” Lucifer chuckles and cocks his head to the side. “His pet pig.” You remind him. “Oh, I see…” Lucifer places his hand on your cheek. His warm touch sends shivers down your spine. He pulls your face closer and kisses your lips gently. Your heart flutters and you kiss him back, blushing slightly.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here now.” Lucifer laughs, knowing exactly what he's doing to you. “Sounds like you need some time off. I notice you do a lot around here, you shouldn’t wear yourself out like that.” “I just want to show Charlie that I support her dream and believe in her.” Your words make Lucifer’s heart swell, the fact that you are trying so hard to impress his daughter is quite possibly the cutest thing he’s ever seen. He smiles at you, his expression full of love and admiration. You return his smile, your face bright red. He pulls you in for a tight hug, burying his face into your hair. “You’re doing just fine, my love. You can let up a little.” He whispers in your ear, “You should let me take care of you for a couple days.” Lucifer's voice is sticky sweet, you can see why Eve was so easily swayed. You melt into his arms and he kisses the top of your head. “I know exactly what you need…” Lucifer days, his voice laced with a mischievous tone. “Do you…?” You ask and giggle at his bold statement. He reluctantly lets go of you and takes off to the bathroom connected to his room. You can hear him turn on the faucet to fill up the tub. Lucifer walks out of the bathroom a few minutes later, he grabs your hand and pulls you close, his eyes half lidded. He kisses your cheek and wraps his arm around your shoulder. “Come with me, my dear.” He leads you to the bathroom, the tub is filled about half way with warm water. The room is filling with steam and the lights are low, a few candles are lit. The ambiance is warm and charming just like he is. Your eyes widen and you feel Lucifer hands tug at your clothes, silently telling you to take them off. Your face feels hot as you start to remove your clothing, piece by piece. You leave them in a pile on the floor, trying your best to keep your composure. “I have to admit I wasn’t expecting this…” You say, Lucifer smirks, pleased with himself and your reactions. He removes his robe, revealing his perfect body. He steps into the tub and turns to you.

"Well, are you coming or not?" He teases, you take his hand and slowly get in the tub with him. He sits behind you and wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you just a bit closer. Together, you both leaned back against the edge of the tub, letting the warmth of the water soothe your weary muscles. The stress of the day melted away, you could feel your muscles relax, you lean the back of your head on his shoulder, breathing him in.

"See? Isn't this much better?" Lucifer purrs in your ear.

You nod and let your eyes close. You can feel him kiss your temple and you can't help but smile. “I definitely needed this…”You murmured, Lucifer's hands begin to roam your body, his hands trace down your arms.

"You have the most beautiful skin...I can't help but touch it." He whispers and kisses your neck, you sigh softly. "And you always smell like vanilla, I adore that..."

“You flatter me, Lucifer.” You reply. He kisses the back of your neck, sending a shiver down your spine. His hands begin to massage your shoulders, "Are you cold?" He asks, noticing the goosebumps forming on your skin. With gentle hands, his fingertips traced delicate patterns along the contours of your skin. In the hushed ambiance, time seemed to slow, as if caught in the embrace of the moment. “No, I’m fine.” You assure him.” You’re just really good with your hands.” “Is that so?” Lucifer says with a playful tone. He can barely contain himself, the way your body responds to his touch is fascinating to him. Lucifer's hands travel lower down your torso and gently cup your breasts. You hum softly and push your body closer to his.

"My, you're a needy one tonight, aren't you?" He chuckles and runs his thumbs over your nipples. "I think I know exactly how to help you." His hands travel lower and lower until they reach your core. Your breath hitches and your face turns a bright shade of red and Lucifer notices. "Is that okay, my love?" He asks, making sure he's not overstepping his bounds.

"Y-yes, it's more than okay.”

Lucifer's fingers explore your folds, teasing and prodding. His movements are slow and deliberate, as if he's trying to memorize every inch of your body. You gasp as he enters a finger into you. You moan softly and your back slightly arches. "That's it, my love, just let go, let me take care of you." The King’s tone is lustful and alluring. Lucifer adds a second finger and starts thrusting in and out, his thumb rubs your clit. He moves his fingers faster and harder. “Luci…fuck…” You swear followed by another moan, the pleasure is overwhelming. You can feel him smile against your skin, his hand working wonders between your thighs. You bite your lip and whimper, gripping the edge of the tub. Lucifer bites the tip of your ear and quickens his pace. “That’s it my dear, are you gonna cum for me?” Lucifer groans and pushes his fingers deeper inside you. You let out a whimper, a feeling of warmth growing deep within your core. Between the steam from the bathtub and all the stimulation you start to feel a little dizzy. Lucifer groans and buries his face into the crook of your neck. He focuses back on your clit, his middle finger massaging little circles, picking up speed with each second that passes. You can't stop the moans from escaping your mouth, the pleasure is too much. You can't hold back any longer and your body is rocked with wave after wave of pleasure. Lucifer's fingers move slower, helping you ride out the waves of your orgasm. Your chest rises and falls rapidly, your face is bright red. Lucifer pulls his fingers out and wraps his arms around you, hugging you tight.

"Are you alright?" He asks, kissing your neck. You nod and completely relax into Lucifer's body. You lay in the bathtub together, his fingers caress your arm, he presses another kiss to your temple.

"I think it's time you got some rest." He says, barely above a whisper. You both get out of the tub and Lucifer wraps a towel around you.

"You're absolutely perfect." He says with a grin and kisses your nose. You smile at him, continue to dry off and wrap your hair in a towel. Lucifer loans you a pair of his silk pajamas, they are just slightly too big for you. But all that does is add to how comfortable they are. You lay in bed next to him, the covers pulled over your shoulders. He pulls you close and runs his fingers through your hair.

"So, tomorrow you will do no chores, no errands, just relax and take it easy.” He says, with a slightly demanding tone. You lay your head down on his bare chest and he picks up his book. “Yes sir…no chores…” You murmured against his skin. “He chuckles, "Good girl. That's what I like to hear.” He praises while putting his glasses back on. You're exhausted from the day and can barely keep your eyes open. Before long, you fall asleep in the arms of your love, ready for a trouble free day tomorrow.

#hazbin hotel #lucifer x y/n #lucifer morningstar x reader #lucifer x reader #lucifer fanfiction #lucifer smut #hazbin hotel lucifer #lucifer morningstar #hazbin hotel lucifer x reader #hazbin lucifer #lucifer #hazbin hotel smut #hazbin hotel fanfiction #syddanswersasks

1K notes · View notes

number1jeonginstan · 3 months

Text

A/N: just some horny thoughts I had in my car waiting for food, nothing that serious

Pairing: Changbin x Afab!Reader

WC: idk, I wrote this on the app and in my car

Warning: unprotected sex, cumming inside, coke can cock Binnie

“Stop biting me bun” he whined underneath you.

“But you look so edible Binnie, I just wanna take a chunk out of your arms”

“I mean they are pretty big aren’t they?” He giggled, flexing his biceps as you laid on top of him.

“The biggest” you whispered as you kissed his cheek.

“We can make yours bigger too, by going to the gym, getting shredded” he said, poking your cheek.

“I mean there are other ways I can get stronger” you sighed, before slowly getting up and straddling his lap.

“Yeah, like what bunny?”

“I don’t know, make something like this” you whimpered as you began to grind your clothed cunt along his semi-hard cock.

“Oh fuck, bunny” he groaned underneath you, slowly propping himself on his shoulders. “I think I like this idea”

“Yeah?” You asked, grinding down particularly, rubbing your clit exactly how you like it, eliciting a moan from your lips.

“Yeah, I think that this was a brilliant idea, one for the history books” he chuckled before he slowly took off your shirt, your lack of a bra causing him to whine.

“Fuck, these tits are beautiful bunny, can’t believe they are all mine”

“All yours Binnie, all my handsome boy’s” you placed a chased peck on his lips before he dove in, kissing your tits, nibbling at each one, while he played with the other with his hands.

“I could cum just looking at your tits” he groaned as you slowly got up “Where are you going baby?” he whined.

“Wouldn’t you rather cum inside of me?”

You slowly pulled down his shorts before pulling down your own. You could feel the wetness of your cunt slowly drip down your thighs due to grinding on his cock and how sensitive your nipples felt after he abused them.

You watched as his cock hit his stomach. It wasn’t long, but it was so fucking thick. It usually took the two of you thirty minutes of prepping your poor pussy before he could fuck you, but thankfully the two of you already fucked earlier in the day, allowing you to take him right away.

You slowly got on top of him, grabbing his dick on his hands before slowly sinking down on to his cock.

“Fuck bunny, it’s like your sweet little pussy was made for my cock” he moaned as you slowly began to move up and down on his cock.

“Am I taking your cock well Binnie?” you whimpered as he hit that specific spot in your cunt, causing you to squeeze around his cock.

“Yes bunny, taking it so well” he replied, grabbing your ass in his hands before forcing you down on his cock.

“Gonna cum for me pretty girl?” he whispered against your lips before kissing them.

“Yes Binnie, gonna cum for you” you moaned, bouncing on his cock faster.

“Fuc, Binnie can feel his bunny clenching on his cock, gonna cum. I’m gonna cum inside of my poor bunnie’s cunt”

“Yes Binnie please, please cum inside me” you groaned as you met your high, him following close behind, your walls covered in his cum.

“That was a good workout” you giggled, hugging his sweaty body.

“ I think we should do another rep” he whispered back before turning the two of you over, him still inside of you.

“Harder for round two?” You giggled, “definitely baby”

#ju <3 writes #ju’s <3 hardthoughts #skz changbin #stray kids #skz #skz smut #straykids x reader #skz x reader #straykids smut #stray kids smut #changbin x reader #changbin smut #changbin

308 notes · View notes

0ne-shot · 2 months

Text

its gonna be okay.

team chaotix fic that KIND of counts as angst? idk but some shit happens. tw for major child injury.

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

``Fine, you barbarians want to ignore my warnings and keep wrecking my newly-built lair? I’ll teach you the lesson the hard way.`` Eggman’s static voice rang out from the now deactivated badnik’s screen as it flashed back to black, leaving the three to soak up what he had just threatened.

Vector fixed his eyes over to Charmy and Espio beside him. The chameleon seemed to digest the information well enough to put on a brave face in response to the threat. But Charmy.. The kid tried to be brave, too, but his body language said otherwise: his own arms were grasping onto each other for comfort as he stared at the black screen with a glint of fear in his orange eyes. A small, worried smile grew on the crocodile’s long, sharp muzzle as he knelt down to the bee’s height.

``What’s worryin’ ya so bad?`` Vector’s rough voice had a hint of sympathy.

``I- `` Charmy put his head down, considering how he should really phrase this to Vector.. ``I know Eggman’s enough of a doof-y coward to not really act on what he just said.. But it’s just this gut feeling that this whole case is gonna loop us into Eggman’s blacklist for good.``

Vector tilted his head in thought, before putting his large hand on the bee’s shoulder and giving him a reassuring smile.

``So what? We’ve probably gotten into Eggman’s bad side loooong ago, and what’s he done? Throw a couple o’ badniks in front of us? It’s really nothing to break a sweat over, kid. It’s all gonna be okay in the end.``

``And besides, if Eggman does try anything, I won't be far behind you and Espio. If we detectives kicked his butt once, we can kick his butt again.`` Charmy giggled a little at Vector’s last line.

Espio exhaled, the smallest of smiles creeping up on his face. He knew all three of them were too strong to falter at Eggman’s schemes, no matter how difficult it was to undergo. Almost all recent crime cases have started to revolve around Eggman, so if they can confront him face-to-face one time, they can do plenty more.

Yeah. It was all gonna be okay in the end.

It was all gonna be okay…

…

————

``....A-Agh..`` Charmy grunted as he slowly opened his eyes, nothing but darkness surrounding him.

…Not much was okay.

He couldn’t remember much happening, really. The rapidness of it all, the screams, the panic, it was too much for him to process in that short of time when they were all in battle with Eggman. All that was left for him to remember in the midst of the haze that was his memory was Vector and Espio yelling.. Well, it had to be something. Something important. A warning that didn't get to Charmy in time before it all went white for him.

Even if it wasn't, Charmy couldn't help but feel like it was his fault. His fault for not being able to listen to the two while he was facing Eggman full head-on.

Vector was gonna be so mad…

Well, if he could already imagine the trouble he’d get in, he’d better get started getting himself out of this enclosed area. But that was basically near impossible when all of his lower body was throbbing with pain, especially at his abdomen... His right wing hurt so much, too—immobilising any sort of flight the bee could’ve used instead. Probably just from the adrenaline of the fight.

The pain in his abdomen felt like there was a chunk of metal lodged into his body, some tears falling down his muzzle in sheer agony from it.

The rest of his small body felt numb and cold. That’s fine: it beats pain..

The little bee attempted to just walk it off and attempt to lift his body off the ground anyway, but that only ended with a yelp of agony as his body staggered quickly back to the floor.

Ow. Okay. Definitely not trying any funny stuff, then.

Charmy gazed around the tight space keeping him pinned down to wherever he was. Thick metal sheets, rubble and ruined debris of what used to be badniks piled up and enclosed the space of where the bee was — some remains were even on his body and crushing some parts — only having small creaks of openings that let air in and allowed Charmy to peer outside of where he was trapped. Whatever he could actually see outside didn't make one difference when his blurry vision clogged up any possible insight he could've gotten on how to get out or at least alert Vector or Espio.

His fuzzy antenna twitched with a constant ringing sound pulsating in his ears, deafening any familiar voices he could’ve heard from outside.

The world really was itching to kick his butt today with completely closing off all his senses when he needed them most, huh?

The bee didn't really know if the cause of his weird sense of sleepiness was from staying up all night yesterday, or from barely getting any oxygen intake and only breathing in dust and oil fumes from broken machinery mending itself one with the debris.

In either case, he felt the urge to just listen to the sensation and go back to sleep, but he needed to at least try and escape first.

…

He suddenly heard a soft static noise in his left antenna, buzzing (pun intended) in his ear quietly. Charmy weakly lifted a hand up, grazing the coarse floors with his elbow, and touched it to try and see what was causing it..

…

Right. The communicator. It was an earpiece Vector had been working extra hours and saving up for, just so the crocodile could get three for each of them — and to say that it has improved their missions in terms of coordination would be an understatement. Still, it was pretty new to Charmy, and the little bee had to fumble with it a few times until he heard—

Chrrrk!-

``Charmy?! Charmy, are you there?``

A familiar voice rang in his antenna, the bee recognizing it upon the first syllable it enunciated. A weak, small bittersweet smile emerged on his face upon it.

It— It was Vector!

``...Mmph- `` The little bee tried to reply to the voice, but it only really came out as a muffled noise of struggle. `` ..I- ..Mhm.. ``

Charmy couldn't see right now, but he could definitely sense the relief yet fear that came on Vector’s face when he heard just how weak the bee’s voice was. Practically inaudible if they didn't have earpieces heighting up eachother’s volumes.

`` Oh thank Gaia... You gave me a scare there, kid. `` Vector then seemed to yell something from afar, something not directed to Charmy. He then heard the second voice he had wanted to hear…

``Charmy? Where are you now?`` The ninja’s usually sage voice seemed to come off with a small hint of worry right now.. But still, Charmy was more than glad to hear the voices of the two people he held close in a situation like this, calming down the little kid’s internal stress.

Charmy wondered why his right wing still hurt so bad when the adrenaline he had had before was now calmed down by Vector and Espio..

`` D-.. debris.. ``

``’Debris’?`` The older reiterated as he turned back to Espio ``The kid’s under some sort of pile of remains, keep that in mind.. ``

His body seemed to not take that sudden usage of energy from just speaking well, every part of him growing more numb by the second as he felt the urge to just let go of consciousness for a while; eyes growing dull and heavy.

`` Charmy? `` The crocodile got back to the bee.

`` … ``

`` C’mon, don’t leave me hanging, little guy. ``

The kid only mustered up a feeble groan of pain instead of words, really.

``How bad are you hurting? What are the injuries?`` The slight anxiety in Espio’s voice was really starting to peek out now. It wasn't the chameleon’s fault—it’s not the end of the world if you drop your cold demeanour for a near-dead kid.

…Shoot. Charmy really didn’t want to worry the two in this case: stressing the older ones out more than he already was, was going to get them nowhere… He just wanted them to come here, not to waste time while his body was hurting most.

But he just needed to tell them, or Espio would keep insisting on knowing.

``..It- …It hurts.. A lot…``

Vector’s concerned grunt only indicated to Charmy that he was starting to get more and more worried about the bee’s general health and safety.

``Just stay with us on the line, okay? Keep breathing as deeply as you can, and we’ll be here in a blink. It’s gonna be okay, kid.`` Vector must’ve noticed how shallowly the bee was breathing.

Charmy doesn’t know if he could even really trust Vector anymore with that phrase when the croc’s already promised it once and it ended in this ruined predicament.

But he couldn’t blame Vector.

He couldn’t blame Espio.

He couldn’t blame anyone.

All he saw on who’s at fault for this was himself.

For getting himself this hurt and putting that burden onto their shoulders because he was reckless. Because he couldn’t listen.

Tears started to leak out again from his orange eyes, but now it was paired with a lifeless expression. An empty, tired expression. All his energy was being slowly sucked out of him each second Espio and Vector weren't here, and the little bee couldn't do a thing about it. Nothing but lay here and wait for exhaustion to finally pull him under.

Charmy could feel the weight of his body start to grow on him as his attempts in moving became more sluggish.

The world started to spin.

Eyelids were heavier than ever.

He finally stopped trying to hold on and let his small body rest.

`` …M’s-sorry, ‘ector… and Esp..io… ``

————

``Damnit! The communicator just went off with no signal!``

Vector struggled as he ripped the earpiece off and tried everything he could to connect back to Charmy and communicate with him, tinkering with it with shaky hands. But no — too much to ask for, it seems. To have basic communication with a dying kid you hold dear.

Espio nudged the crocodile’s shoulders to get him to focus on what’s at hand, the final door in front of them. Charmy must’ve been in here.

``I’ll need help getting these doors down. I’ll skewer the hinges, you pull each door apart.`` Vector only replied with a quick nod as Espio already made his way up the wall and against the rim of the metal doors, taking out a kunai and preparing himself to aim at the ends. The elder put his two large hands on the crack of the door, left on left, right on right.

…

``Pull!``

The crocodile exerted himself with a low grunt as he gripped and pulled apart the two openings so hard his knuckles were turning white, while the ninja kept swiftly screwing the kunai’s sharp end into the hinges until they were loosened and now susceptible to the force of Vector’s push as the two doors ripped right off.

The two immediately dashed into the final room, debris being the only thing that filled the space as toxic fumes and dust emanated from destructed badniks and other machinery.

``Charmy? We’re here! `` Espio called out from the ceiling he was clinging onto to get a better view of the room, swirled tail latched on a hanging, turned-off light

Vector checked every pile of debris with a keen eye, making sure to not miss any signs of Charmy possibly being in one of them.

``C’mon, kid.. You’ve gotta be okay. You’ve gotta be here somewhere.``

It didn’t take long before he spotted something standing out from the rest of the clumped up remains of metal and rock, near one of the piles of debris.

Something colourful that stuck out from the dull shades of everything around it.

A torn piece from Charmy’s vest.

``Espio! C’mere!`` He called out to the chameleon as Vector started to frantically lift off and throw away each piece of remains from what looked to be the bee’s body, and no sooner had Vector started to dig away into the pile that Espio had deftly sprinted next to the larger to help him out, lifting off the smaller parts more faster as Vector lifted off the bigger parts more carefully.

He made sure not to jostle anything around: he didn't want to hurt Charmy more than he already was.

Espio was able to uncover some of the smaller bee’s lower body, an icy sweat running down Vector’s forehead when he saw a large, thick sheet of metal jabbed into his abdomen with red bloomed over it. How long had the poor kid had that metal part stabbed into him like that?

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t look at the blood for too long. You’re gonna make it worse if you panic.

Vector finally lifted and got off the biggest clump of debris enclosing Charmy, the little bee’s body now in full view. He was laying on the ground flat, bloodied face slack, eyes shut and head lolled over with antennae drooped limply to the side as blood was pooling underneath him. His right wing had half of it torn off, too.

Vector wanted to punch himself when he saw the tear-jerking sight.

How could he have not gotten Charmy out of this sooner?

The pain the bee must’ve felt…

…But, he couldn’t dwell on that now.

``We’ve got you, we’ve got you.. `` He knelt down, carefully scooped up Charmy’s limp body and propped his head with his large hands, getting up again. Espio looked to be just as horrified, shuffling next to Vector as he gazed at the unconscious bee in his arms.

``That’s…- …That’s fatal. We need to rush.`` All attentive eyes, the chameleon could tell about the bee’s condition from just one look. ``..He can pull through, th-though. Correct? ``

Vector frowned at the slight wobble in the ninja’s voice. `` The little guy’s resilient; he won't give up to Eggman that easily.. Don’t worry. And you don’t have to tell me twice about getting outta here, big guy. C’mon, let’s get outside and get some medical help for Charmy.``

Vector securely kept Charmy’s small body cradled in his arms, not minding the blood and dust now covering himself as they made their way back from the doors they entered, now with their missing member with them.

As Vector took deep breaths as he walked past, today might’ve just had the most fear he’s ever felt in forever.

But they made it through.

It was all gonna be okay.

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

note: charmy i am so sorry for your hurting its for the audience i swear

also its like. my first time writing a proper fic thats not a draft. can you tell

#sonic #sth #sonic the hedgehog #team chaotix #charmy bee #charmy the bee #espio the chameleon #vector the crocodile #angst with a happy ending #fic

39 notes · View notes

ryik-the-writer · 1 month

Text

No one:

Me: You know who would have been better as Belle's infidelity partner than Will Scarlet? Jefferson.

Before I begin, THIS IS NOT A BELLE HATE POST! Yes, I am going to address IT, but I am not putting her down for this...and I'll tell you why.

So after that god-freaking-awful twist in 4x11 when Belle sends Rumple over the town line, both he and Belle are left shattered at their dubious betrayals, the latter of which so much so she sought additional comfort (again, not hate, just hear me out).

That love interest ... for whatever reason ... was Will Scarlet, a cameo from Once Upon a Time's short-lived spin-off OUAT in Wonderland, which had ended a few months prior.

I, along with a good chunk of the fanbase, thought it was a unique choice, and most likely a way to acknowledge the spin-off in canon.

Don't get me wrong, I like Will as a character in OUATIW, but he was just off to me in OUAT. Like he was just shoved in there without a real purpose. Even his scenes with Robin Hood felt forced to me.

And honestly, it seemed strange to me that Belle, the logical scholar and fruitful romantic, would break her wedding vows of all things even after what Rumple did.

BUT THEN AGAIN, I also don't think it's established how intensive wedding vows are in this universe. I mean, Snow technically cheated on David with Dr. Whale, and while it's addressed comedically, it's not really addressed as an issue in their marriage but they comfortably move on from none the less.

Of course, it's obviously just the show's weakest attempt at *drama* and a way to baffle the Rumbellers into stunned silence so they can focus on *other things* (I am NOT going THERE today.)

And I think I remember an article or something about Will's actor's Michael Socha, feeling underused and wanting out especially since he had a kid at home. While he has a few zingers between him and other characters like Rumple and Hook, he looks so awkward when he's on-screen with Belle, like even he doesn't know why he's there!

But for the sake of *drama* Belle needs some side yum. Cool. Girl's gotta work out her frustrations some way right? But WILL SCARLET?!

This Will Scarlet?

"I love you Anastasia Tremaine" Will Scarlet?

Who ripped his heart out because her betrayal was just too much?

For freaking sake, they had a TLK!!!

I will only, and I mean ONLY accept the following two theories as a reason why...this happened...

1. This takes place during Will and Anastasia's break.

It's established in the OUATIW that the events in the spinoff are happening sometime in either late-season 1 or early season 2's canon. I think. But maybe, just maybe, it was actually around season 4's timeline? The timeline is screwed to hell anyway so...

Ana's presence is established in OUAT after Will, who broke into the library and vandalized a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is arrested and held indefinitely. And while Will looks distraught at the mention of his former love, but he's not devastated enough

The scene subsequently serves as a pointless but sweet way to introduce Belle and Will. I myself wrote a fic few years back as a way to fill in how that played out afterwards. But the actual writers just kind of tossed it in there.

And dropped it.

Yeah, WIll just kind of disappeared after season 4. Thanks for stopping by, I guess.

And btw, you cannot convince me that a guy who reacts like this after watching the love of his life get killed in front of him:

Like I kid you not, Will's screams and cries were stuck in my head after that episode. I gasped and covered my mouth. I remember feeling the same way when Graham died in OUAT because Emma's grief was just as raw as this. This is not the kind of grief you just up and move on with so casually. This sticks with you.

BACK TO JEFFERSON

Okay, I swear, I have a point.

Again, if Belle just *needed* a love interest during her break from Rumple, fine, but why not use the opportunity to do some freaking fan service after that Frozen mess?

Bring. Back. The. Hatter.

Why Jefferson?

He has an established relationship with Belle.

Even if the ugly truth is Jefferson had to know Belle was being held captive in the hospital asylum, Belle would still, begrudgingly, be grateful he freed her and reunited her with Rumplestiltskin. Maybe he tried apologizing with coffee, and...things happen.

Plus he has an established relationship with Rumplestiltskin PRIOR to Belle.

No. You cannot tell me these two:

...were just "business associates". No these two were hitting shroons in Wonderland every Tuesday at happy hour, do I make myself clear? It's obvious they weren't friends but they worked well together.

That scene in the shop would have been BANGER if Jefferson had been in Will's place. I mean the possibilities are endless with their establishment. They could have opened up an opportunity to explore more of Rumple's deals with Jefferson to find a way to the Land Without Magic, or even their shared connection with Regina, established, beloved connections in the series the audience would be comfortable with.

And honestly, I think Belle and Jefferson could have very nice chemistry too.

Their both worldly, and I can see these two sitting at a booth in Granny's forever as Jefferson told her her stories about his travels, maybe even a few tales about his deal and possible friendship with Rumplestiltskin. And maybe he helps her heal a bit.

That scene in 4x12 where Belle and Hook talk about Rumple really rubbed me the wrong way. What Rumple did to Belle and, yes, even Hook, was awful, but Hook never had to answer for his part in Rumple's decline. What did he think would happen if he threatened to blackmail him with Belle of all people?

Not to mention, Belle and Grace would have gotten along so well.

At this point in the series, Grace is a young teenager, and could possibly use a female presence. She like Henry, would probably understand that her father needs more companionship and would support their relationship. And it would be great foreshadowing to Belle's own relationship with her child later on. And Belle LOVES kids and could have formed a very promising bond with Grace. Regardless on how her relationship with Jefferson could have ended, Belle would have this girl over for sleepovers every week.

#doing this instead of updating my fics #-_-***#rumbelle #ouat #jefferson #the mad hatter #will scarlet #belle french #belle gold #rumplestiltskin #anti ouat #anti killian jones #anti hook #anastasia tremaine #scarlet queen

26 notes · View notes

lazypanartist · 2 years

Text

It's Okay

Leonardo x Reader

Rise movie caused me emotional damage 🥲 So I'm writing this for me, because I need it

Warnings: MOVIE SPOILERS, Angst/comfort, depiction of injuries

Some of this is from the movie script itself!

Word Count: ~1000

-----

Everything hurts

You groaned quietly, trying to reach up, rub your eyes.

You couldn't move your arm.

Where am I?

Eyes snapping open, you tried looking down. You could feel something hard against your back, something holding your arms to your sides-

Metal..?

Yes, metal restraints of some form. You could hear voices approaching rapidly, someone muffledly saying "They're awake- yes, I know I'm not in there, Leon, their blood pressure just spiked-"

Leon..?

Leo!

It was as if the previous day's happenings all rushed back into your mind at once. The Kraang invasion, pink goop and tendrils covering much of the city, your friends all getting hurt..

The last thing you could hear was.. some sort of goodbye message from Leo.

Self-sacrifice.

---

Leo's voice rang over the communicator beside your leg. "Casey, it's the only way. He's too strong. He's not gonna stay on the other side unless I keep him there."

"There has to be another way!"

The vagabond from the future sounded desperate. Uneasy. His voice cracked with what you assumed to be the effort it took to not cry.

"We tried everything, Cass. This is the only way."

You laid on the ground, several injuries scattered along your torso. You weren't a fighter by any means, but.. you couldn't just let them go without you. Besides, the lair was covered in Kraang goop.. unfortunately, most of the rest of the city was under their control as well. Most of your injuries had been accidental, but-

There was one gash, just below your ribs. Sister had thrown a large chunk of rubble at you. It was rather impressive, the size of the injury compared to the weapon.

"Leo, please don't do this! Leo!"

Raph's voice matched Casey's. Desperate. You felt a tear drip down your cheek at whatever the ex-leader was trying to convey to his little brother... What was he even doing?

Leo chuckled, but you could feel the sadness in his voice. "You're one to talk, big bro. Hero moves are totally your style."

Kraang laughed, barely audible through the comm at first. It sounded like he was getting closer, his voice fluctuating with the fighting that must have been occuring on the other side of the line. "Outmatched and alone, yet you persist. For what? Honor, redemption? Sacrifice? All meaningless."

"We'll see about that."

Casey's voice rang out through the comm. "Leo, please! I can't lose you again."

"Hey, future me would be real proud of you. I'm proud of you."

The line went dead. Even in your injured state, you could feel.. something besides pain. Dread.

You felt another tear drip down your cheek as darkness began creeping into your vision.

Losing him..

No...

I can't.. he can't do this...

And everything faded to black.

-----

"There we go, see! They're okay, Leo."

You blinked harshly, bright light filling your vision

"Pupils are normal, and their pulse is slowing down.. (Y/n), can you hear me?"

"Yeah.."

You mumbled weakly, turning your head to try and escape the lights. Luckily Donnie took pity on you, retracting the light back into his battle shell.

"Good.. your condition is stabilizing, that's good.. hey, you okay?"

You shook your head, tears falling down your face. He quickly undid the fastenings around your wrists and waist, helping you into a sitting position upon your request. Hissing, you pressed a hand against the wound on your torso.

"..Sister got you pretty badly. It'll most likely leave a scar, but the internal damage is minimal.

"..Okay."

The purple-clad turtle sighed, glancing towards the closed door of the lab.

"...You're worried about Leo."

Your head snapped up, tears still streaking down your face. Eyes widening, you followed Donatello's gaze to the door.

"Is he-"

"He's fine." He chuckled, though the faux-happy sound was short-lived. "Mikey's magic hands brought him back.. from the prison dimension. A few cuts and bruises, but nowhere near as bad off as you."

"..Can he.. come in? Please?"

Donnie nodded.

"That was the plan.. just wanted to make sure you were okay, first. Y'know, make sure he wouldn't further injury my patient."

"Thanks, Don."

He smiled towards you, walking towards the door.

"Of course."

Almost as soon as the door was opened Leo was in the doorway, practically blocking his twin from leaving the lab. He gasped, eyes widening when they met yours.

"(Y/n)!"

Your name was barely a gasp falling from his lips, rushed as he bolted to your side. Tentatively, he sat on the edge of the makeshift hospital bed, offering a hand to you.

"(Y/n).."

You cut him off, eyes welling with more tears

"I thought you were dying.. the- the last thing I heard was you telling Casey that you were proud, and then-"

You choked, tucking your head into his chest as you struggled to both cry and breathe.

"-then you were gone, Leo. We could've lost you! I could have lost you!"

His free hand smoothed along your spine. He scooted closer, pulling you onto his lap as you cried against his collarbone.

"I know, (Y/n).. I'm sorry. It's all I thought I could do... I thought that if I did that, then the rest of you would be safe.. now look at us."

He chuckled, hand falling to rest against your wound. You could feel his lips above your ear, pressing a gentle kiss as he held you.

Sighing, he settled the hand on your hip, the other pressing you closer by your spine.

"It's okay.. let it all out."

You shook your head, hiding your head in the crook of his neck, as if the action would hide your tears from the body they landed upon.

"It's okay. We're both here, see?" He began rocking you lightly, careful of your wounds.

"There we go.." He was whispering now, mouth still resting against your temple as he cradled you.

He chuckled again, settling his shell against the wall as he held you closer.

"See..? We're okay. We're going to be okay."

It wasn't hard to believe him.

You could feel yourself drifting back to sleep against his plastron, sniffling quietly as Leo continued mumbling words of comfort into your hairline.

"It's okay."

#ROTTMNT leo x reader #leo x reader #rottmnt leo x reader #rise leo x reader #rise leo #rottmnt leo #leonardo x reader #leonardo #rottmnt x reader #rottmnt #x reader #xreader #tw angst #tw injury #timeskip leo x reader #timeskip leo #timeskip rottmnt

418 notes · View notes

pinkandgoldensoul · 1 year

Text

Already Home || Chapter 4 - Nothing Is What It Seems

Navigation || Masterlist

Previous || Next If this is your first time here on this blog, please check the Disclaimers here.

pairing: max verstappen x female!reader genre: friends to lovers, kind of slow burn, angst, fluff and comfort !tw!: swearing, drinking, makeout session and mentions of sleeping together (but no description of it, SFW), insecurities, lot of fluff, angst other notes: y/n catches a cold? word count: 11.6k (and I didn't even include all the scenes I wanted to, but it was getting out of hand. I always put dividers, if you want to read it in chunks!) A huge thanks to whoever reblogs or likes the story ♥

You took a sip from your cup. The water felt warm around your waist, making it pleasant to stay in there under the moon’s soft beams. You took another sip. While glancing at the dim lights set around the patio, you paid attention to the speakers blasting club music in your direction. You hadn’t noticed them when you had first arrived. To be fair, things had got more than hectic when you had entered Max’s house: a lot of people were already packed in the kitchen, filling up cups and glasses, toasting and talking loudly. As you drank once again from your cup, you placed it right behind you on the poolside and rapidly submerged to warm your arms and hair, which had almost dried out. Underwater, you saw a blurred wood of legs moving, dancing, jumping. You came back to the surface. «All good?» You heard Max say, leaning against the pool right next to you. You turned towards him, a smile on full display. «Yeah. Really good.» «Happy to hear that.» he whispered, getting a little bit closer so that only the two of you could listen. You quickly turned to grab your cup back in your hand and addressed him once again. «Cheers, Max!» «Cheers.» You both toasted lightly, bringing your cups together with a small movement, since they were already close, and stared at each other while doing so. Someone yelling at the opposite end of the pool made your heads turn, just in time you could see Daniel bomb-diving into the pool. Covered in splashes, you all laughed at him; he was definitely enjoying himself a lot. Better than being given pity looks in the paddock, that was for sure. Max had decided to throw a party during the short two-weeks break before Singapore would host the next Grand Prix, and invited friends as well as F1 drivers, plus people he had never seen but were admitted anyway. With a bit of convincing, he managed to bring you there and so far you had been having a whole ton of fun.

Out of the water, right next to the door which divided the patio from the inside of the house, where the heart of the party was, you eyed Carlos and Lando having fun on their own. «Y/n!» As Daniel called you, you diverted the gaze from the drivers’ couple. «Dan!» «I missed you a lot.» he theatrically put his arms around you, engulfing you in a drunk – but still affectionate – hug. «I know, Dan, I did too.» you chuckled, trying not to crush under his weight. Max patted Daniel’s shoulder, in an attempt to help you out of his grubby-drunk hold. «Come on, mate, it isn’t time to be sentimental yet!» «Isn’t it?» Daniel said, rapidly letting you go and turning towards Max. The Dutch simply smiled at him and drank from his cup. Dan, lips parted, looked at you with lost eyes. «It isn’t time yet…» he reasoned under his breath. «But… IT IS TIME TO GO CRAZY!» Before you could make sense of his yell, you felt him wrapping his arms around your legs and raising you out of the water. Letting out a squeal of surprise, you then leaned your head back down and started laughing, lost in joy, as Daniel made you twirl with him and showed you like a trophy all around.

You danced with Daniel and a little group of people he knew before going back to Max, who was laughing and drinking with his close friends. Willing to join them, you took the cup you had left on the edge of the pool, only to see it was empty. Getting out of the water, Max immediately noticed and turned towards your standing figure; as you quickly dried your body with a towel, he looked at you, arms resting on the wooden poolside. «Where are you going?» he asked. You shook your empty cup in front him. «Quick fuel pit-stop.» you said. «Don’t spill it, it’s flammable!» he said laughing, turning back to his friends. Walking to reach the kitchen, you got near Carlos and Lando, who smirked at you. «Did he like it?» the Brit asked. «Uh?» you asked, confused. «The little striptease she gave him? Oh, Max liked it for sure!» Carlos said laughing. «Yeah! Did you see him staring back at her when she walked towards us? He’s so-» «Do you want me to show you something as well?» you asked with a seductive tone, interrupting Lando’s rumbling. As they looked at you surprised, clearly not expecting such an offer, you raised both your middle fingers in front of their faces. Getting past them, you heard them burst out laughing uncontrollably, and didn’t stop yourself from smiling lightly as well. You briefly glanced at the inside of the house: the big room arranged as a dance floor was packed with people dancing at the rhythm of the beats exceptionally chosen by a dear friend of Max who had joined the party at the last moment, Martijn. Everybody was so worked up and hyped you couldn’t even see him through the crowd.

Walking down the corridor, you were drawn to a rapid flow of French talking; you then eyed Charles and Charlotte, clearly having a discussion, as they entered a room and locked it. A little bit uneasy at the sight, you shook your head trying not to think of it and kept going. You reached the kitchen, definitely a calmer and quieter place; you searched for the pack of beers you had seen at the beginning of the party, a few hours earlier, but you guessed it had probably vanished quickly. You then decided to have a look in the hall, sure you would find at least the boxes you had brought. «Here you are!» you said, getting close to the new-found box, opening a bottle and starting to fill up your cup. «Here I am.» You heard a soft voice speaking in front of you, right next to the entrance door; deep inside of you, you knew who that was, and you would’ve preferred to keep your eyes glued to the cup instead of raising them to look at the person. You didn’t, of course. You were met by Kelly’s stare, indecipherable. Without knowing how to react, you slowly became aware of your hand being strangely wet. You had just forgotten to stop pouring beer in the cup; your gaze dropped down and you realized the carpet beneath you could be considered drunk enough for the rest of its lifeless life. «Fuck- Sorry, I mean, ehm…» Panicking and unsure of what to do, also thanks to you not being sober enough to process the situation, you downed the liquid which you had actually poured into the cup and then got rid of it hiding it in the box, together with the beers. «Do… do you know where Max is?» Kelly asked, a brow raised. «Ye-yeah! Of course!» you answered, nodding convulsively. You both stood in awkward silence. «So… Can you bring me to him?» she asked you, trying to read into your dead-panned face. «R-right! It’s this way!» You rushed your steps towards the pool and, after thinking you had got lost, you successfully reached the patio. You halted before the window-door. Was it the right thing to do? Max had told you Kelly had broken up with him over text… You two had briefly discussed it after Monza, and he seemed pretty determined not to hear from her ever again. How could you lead her in front of him without being taken as cruel? «What’s wrong?» Kelly asked, her voice urgent. You didn’t answer. You opened the door and got close to the pool, stopping once again as you stared at Max. He seemed to feel the weight of your eyes, because he turned to look at you standing, motionless, concern written over your face. Max hadn’t time to react, since Kelly brushed past you, sick of waiting, and quickly reached him. Brain fogged up because of alcohol, he stared at her without being able to react. What was she doing? Why was she there?

Did she want to talk? Do that stupid chasing game, leaving him with no mercy and then coming back playing the victim? Max turned his back to her, pretending not to care. He’d suffered because of her shitty silent treatment, and it was time for her to reap what she sought. As soon as he felt the warmth of her hand, carefully placed on his shoulder, though, Max knew his propositions were going to crumble like a house of cards. «Max… Please…» she whispered softly. He abruptly turned his head to her. «What do you want?» he asked, plain yet sounding aggressive. «I want you out of this pool so we can have a talk like adults do.» Kelly stated, determined. Max dryly chuckled and stopped looking at her, his eyes back to the pool. «Do you think you acted like an adult towards me? Because I don’t.» Kelly put a hand on her forehead, exasperated. «Max, stop being a child. I’m not here to waste time.» «Then leave.» «I won’t leave until we discuss.» Max tried not to give up on his words: he wanted her to disappear, so that he could go back to drinking carelessly and having fun. But he couldn’t ignore her, as much as he would force himself to. He quickly got out of the pool, using the same towel you dried yourself with, and pulled Kelly aside, so that they could speak without being heard or interrupted. As they did, a group of people out of the pool started yelling and pushing each other; waking up from your dozed state, you rushed towards them to prevent the brawl from growing even bigger and creating further problems. «I… I didn’t mean to sound rude with my texts. I just needed time to think, and I couldn’t do it with you next to me.» Kelly started. «So?» Max asked, his impatience beginning to soften. «I don’t think you can have both me and y/n.» «What?» Max couldn’t make sense of it: what did that mean? Before he could even act or say something, he felt Kelly’s hands surrounding his neck as she got closer. «But I would never give you up, Max.» she said, tender. As you vainly tried to split the two guys who started fighting, you had time to direct your gaze towards the scene unfolding between Max and Kelly.

Those seconds of distraction, in which you saw the two of them inching closer and closer, prevented you from noticing someone out of the brawl coming towards you. You realized it the moment you lost balance and spun your arms in hope of regaining it but without success. Max, confused as to why Kelly’s lips seemed so near, got startled by the loud sound of splashing water behind him. He turned and saw your hair floating and waving, until you emerged and got checked over by Daniel, who was already in the water. «Are you okay?» the Aussie asked you. «Yeah.» you slurred, looking back to where you were standing before the fall and trying to push away the sense of dizziness. Without even noticing, your gaze turned back on Max, who was still dazed. «Love?» Kelly whispered, to regain the Dutch’s attention. At the word, Max’s head snapped back up to her. How did he call him? «No.» He quickly removed the hold she had on him, almost disgusted, and definitely disturbed by the pet-name he was so used to hearing. He didn’t want to listen to it anymore; not there, not in that moment, not after the way she’d acted. Max found Kelly’s way… weird. «Now what?» she asked, snorting, eyes wide-open. He really wanted to tell her to never search for him again, but he was way too drunk to be able to make sensible decisions. Passing his hand through his hair, he answered. «It’s better if you leave.» Kelly’s heart dropped. «No… No, you don’t mean it, right? Right, Max?» her voice cracked. «Go. Please.» he added, trying to sound as polite as he possibly could but still convincing. Tears in her eyes and pride torn apart, Max saw her furiously pacing towards the exit, without sparing anybody a glance. He thought he’d try to avoid the sight of her leaving because of how difficult it would be to bear; he was ready to feel that tight clenching in his chest, the usual discomfort it would arise inside of him after they’d had a fight. It didn’t. Max felt empty, as if emotions couldn’t fill him anymore nor touch him a bit. Turning on his feet to watch you talking with Daniel, Max suddenly perceived a weight being lifted off his shoulder. The way you swiftly moved your arms in the water, your soaking wet hair, the glossy color of your skin, pearled with drops under the dim lights set around the pool, brushed away any other thought like a gust of wind would do with dark clouds. You were there, with him, having fun and deliberately spending time together. Could things be better than that? Could he ask for more? Electricity and adrenaline rushed through his fingertips. A new wave of energy pushed him inside the pool, taking your hand and pulling towards him. Thinking Max was still talking with Kelly, you got a little startled by his presence right next to you. «Let’s go dance!» he told you full of enthusiasm, smiling and dragging you out of the pool without waiting for an answer. You weren’t embarrassed dancing in a bikini and neither was Max with his swimming trunks; nobody even dared to point out you were getting the floor all wet with water, because it soon started being mixed with sweat due to the heat. Max had asked you to get drunk with him; the way he had whispered it into your ear made you figure out he was probably upset because of Kelly and wanted to get it out of his head. You simply accepted any drink he would pass you without even complaining; you were there to have fun, so it simply felt right. Plus, you didn’t want to make him feel like an outcast or bad in any way by leaving him drinking alone. You had already drunk more than you usually would anyway, so there was no reason in trying to hold back at that point. If you had to drink, you had to fully experience it and enjoy it. «Full send, okay?» he told you, shots in the hands of both of you. You nodded, giggling, your head feeling light. «Now!»

For a while, you had Lando and Carlos dancing around you, laughing, teasing each other and then paying full attention to their girlfriends, who suddenly appeared next to them. In the meantime, Max had joined Martijn to the console and you saw them half-hugging, arms around each other’s shoulders. You stopped dancing to take a look at them, a fond smile adorning your lips. He seemed so happy. You… liked it. Music blasting, lights pouring down on dancing bodies, glasses and cups floating in the crowd: everything seemed in place, where it belonged, how it should be. When did you start liking parties so much? Before you could answer yourself, a weight plopped on your shoulder. «He’s beautiful, isn’t he?» «Yeah.» you answered Daniel, absentmindedly. He didn’t seem surprised by your words, though. «He’s happier when you’re around.» he spoke again, lifting his chin up from your shoulder. «I don’t think it’s just because of me.» you chuckled. «I mean, he’s got so many reasons to be happy.» Daniel deeply stared at you. «Do you think so?» «Yes?» you said, confused at his question. «Y/n, you seem happy too, here, right now.» «Well, I am.» you affirmed, smiling. «Are you?» Those two words had you self-doubting and prevented you from saying anything else. «Everybody hides stuff. We’re all here to forget things, we drink, we laugh, we dance, because we’ve got nothing to lose.» «Or… maybe we’re simply celebrating together.» Daniel sadly smiled. «That seems like a better option.» «C’mon, Danny, we’re here to have fun!» You dragged him in the middle of the dance floor and moved around him trying to get a reaction out of him; he followed you, wooing and acting as crazy as he did before coming to you. Daniel, after minutes which seemed hours, got taken away by some people you didn’t recognize and you were left alone, tired. You stopped dancing, as your limbs suddenly felt heavy. Your eyes locked with the ones of someone who was watching you across the room. Max’s stare was so intense, so deep, so unreadable and cryptic you couldn’t help but let your certainties crumble as he started walking towards you, taking slow and firm steps. None of you diverted gaze, both chanted and connected by the same unknown spell. As your lashes clashed and reopened, they showed you Max had got closer. Flattering them once more, he was now standing right in front of you. He bent his head towards you, letting his fingertips brushing against the back of your hand. «Let’s get out of here.» His words sent chills to your spine and paralyzed you so that you didn’t react to them; you then felt his fingers gently wrapping yours and carefully bringing you out of the room.

The wooden door behind you didn’t give you the support you needed in that moment. The strength, the force, the drive that had taken you and Max couldn’t be restrained. You were crushed by Max’s hold: his hands were desperate, taking advantage of all the skin your swimsuit let on display and bare for him to touch, to explore; yours simply tugged at his damp hair, as your mouths joined in multiple kisses and breathed into each other whenever you’d halted momentarily to look hungrily in each other’s eyes. You felt drunk, overwhelmed; but you couldn’t stop his roaming hands, you couldn’t get away from his lips, quite the opposite, you tried to get even closer to him, to keep his head steady onto you, Max gently nibbling at every inch of skin he could reach. Your lip, earlobe, neck: he needed to taste it all. You could hear him groaning inside the kiss, as much as your faint moans would fuel the pace of your tongues, joined in a desperate dance. It didn’t feel messy, just blissful. As you finally stopped making out, you drank Max’s smile like sweet wine. His eyes searched for yours and pierced right through you, making you shiver. Once again, he took your hand and carried you over the bed; you both laid down, facing each other. You giggled, probably due to your drunk estate, and left a quick kiss on Max’s lips. Before you even realized it, he spun you around and captured you with his arms. «Come here.» he said, as your back leaned on his warm chest, closing your eyes. Max’s started whispering sweet nothings in your ear, so that shivers would run through your spine. «Y/n…» Your body was almost shaking because of the power his voice had on you, because of the chills pervading your body. As your name left his lips once again, an umpteenth shiver had you trembling. His arms’ grip became tighter, hands resting on your belly but slowly making their way upwards. Another shiver caught you, and another one followed. Then suddenly Max’s warmth disappeared, leaving you in a shaking mess, freezing cold.

You opened your eyes. The room was still quite dark, but lit enough to realize it was a place you had never seen. Faint and vague images lingered on your mind, not even able to think about them. Could it all be… a dream? That freezing cold feeling, the one that got you awake, immediately caught your attention, making your hands reach for your arms. Your fingers were soon met by someone else’s arms, though. Startled, you retracted your fingers as if you’d touched fire. Then you slowly and carefully freed yourself from the hold, so that you could look with your eyes a reality you couldn’t, would never accept. As Max’s sleeping figure appeared before your eyes, you gasped and stared at him speechless. His features were relaxed, hands still unconsciously reaching towards you. Before proper panic could occupy your thoughts, a deep pain in the middle of your forehead caught you, as well as your bare, shivering skin: you looked over the room and saw a window opened, cool air entering. «Fuck.» you sighed in distress. Your neck hurt as well and, bringing a hand on it to soothe the pain, you noticed your hair was still damp. Did you sleep with wet hair? But first and foremost… Did you sleep with Max? Suddenly, all the kisses and touching scenes your thoughts had tried to show you were given a face, a name to link to them. Max. You held your breath. For a split second, you reasoned it could simply have been a dream, an overly inappropriate dream, something that made you feel deeply embarrassed and confused, but at least only a fantasy. Even if it had, though, you had drunk too much to know: your memory blurred every time you tried to recall any event of the night and your temples pounded restlessly. And you still woke up hugged with Max, which didn’t exactly fit with the chance of it just being a dream. You got up from the bed carefully, trying not to wake him up. As soon as you saw a bathroom door, you entered it. Zigzagging through a few empty bottles on the ground, you reached the sink and looked at the mirror. You checked your appearance: tired, all over the place, lips a little bit swollen. You brought your fingertips on them. As much as you would’ve liked to abhor what had might happened, a desperate thought pierced its way in your mind: you didn’t remember how it had felt like kissing Max. You touched your lips hoping it would trigger some sensorial memories, but it just replayed all the kissing, the nibbling, the moaning of two friends who got drunk together and went beyond any limit. How did you get in that room with him? How didn’t you stop him before he could do, you could do something so illogical and stupid, something both of you would regret? You put the toilet seat down and sat on it, staring into the void. How did it happen? Well, you were dead drunk. But was it enough to cross any boundary? Did something more happen between the two of you? Something you couldn’t recall at the moment? Did anybody see you, if you’d kissed before getting in the room? Did anyone take pictures? You pressed your cold hands onto your cheeks, trying to halt your worries. You got up and wore one of the bathrobe hanging on the wall, so that you’d stop shivering and trembling while you searched for your clothes.

Walking silently down the corridor, you heard some sizzling noise coming from the kitchen. Your tummy grumbled. Having some breakfast wasn’t a bad idea, after all. Turning towards the kitchen counter, you didn’t expect to find anybody; pretty dumb of you, since a frying pan on a stove meant there was someone cooking. Yet, when your eyes met Carlos’ towering back you gasped and brought your hand to the chest, afraid your heart may flee away. Startled, he briefly checked over his shoulder who it was, acknowledging your presence. «Oh! Hola, y/n.» Carlos greeted you, a veil of surprise in his tone. «H-hi.» Your voice came out hoarse, shivers still travelling through your skin. He kept his focus onto the pan, as silence settled in the room once again. Unsure of what to do, you moved closer to the fridge and opened it. «Sorry if I didn’t believe you when you told me you were an early bird.» you said, referring to a conversation you had with him and Charles back in Monza. He giggled. «You should trust me a little bit more.» he replied. The pounding in your head made you incapable of choosing any of the food inside the fridge; there wasn’t much anyway, you figured. Carlos, turning towards the counter – and towards you – as he put his cooked eggs on a plate, saw you standing still and silent. «Hangover?» he simply asked. You nodded, then regretted it as pain cursed through your forehead. «Drink water, then.» Following his advice, you took a huge 1,5-liter bottle and grabbed an empty cup, still placed on the counter from the night before, and sat in front of Carlos. You stared at him eating for a while, Carlos eyeing you up from his plate a tad confused, then decided to open the bottle and pour a cup. As you did so, Carlos broke the ice. «Did you have fun with Max?» The counter got soaked with water. Either miscalculating the amount of water coming out of the bottle or being hit like a freight train by Carlos’ words, you avoided his gaze and dried the surface with your sleeve. «Why are you wearing a bathrobe?» he then asked, noticing for the first time your unusual mise. «Carlos!» you half-screamed. «What?» His doe eyes forced you to put a softer tone and involuntarily show a bit of discomfort, closing the hems of neckline with your hands. «Can you stop making weird questions?» «You’re making it weird not answering them!» You sighed, frowning. You weren’t ready to tackle the topic, and certainly not in the right condition to. But would you ever find yourself ready for it? Probably not.

«Did… did you see anything?» you half-whispered. «You mean, between you and Max?» You hummed. «Well…» he cleared his throat before speaking again. «I saw you in the pool, when I was with Lando. And I also noticed you were pretty close back inside, while dancing. For a moment I thought you had kissed.» he nervously chuckled, embarrassed. «Did we?!» you asked, eyes wide-opened. «I didn’t see, the floor was packed.» Carlos said matter-of-factly. He realized you were edgy, way too edgy about it. «Did something happen?» The calm tone of his voice contrasted your racing thoughts. «I don’t know, Carlos!» Your hands ran through your hair, not caring about how messy they would be afterwards. «I… I woke up in bed with him.» «Okay.» he said. «Probably there wasn’t room elsewhere, y/n. You were both drunk and-» «We were spooning.» you added in a breath. Carlos stopped, a bit taken aback. «Maybe you were clingy-drunk. But now you’re going to tell me something else happened, right?» He said that as a joke; he was smiling. As he saw your features not reciprocating his, he sighed and let the forehead drop on his hands. «What else, y/n?» he asked, monotone. «I think we made out.» Carlos’ head immediately snapped up to stare at you. «‘You think’?» he said, bewildered. «I don’t know if it was just a dream… But when I woke up, I just had images of it in my head. They felt real, Carlos.» As your voice cracked, you searched for reassurance in his eyes. Right when he opened his mouth to talk, you sneezed. «Bless you!» «Thanks.» you whispered, your forehead aching as much as your throat did. «Don’t think too much about it-» «Achoo!» «Bless you. Maybe Max remembers something and will-» «Achoo!» «…tell you. Are you sure you are okay?» Carlos got up and tore off a piece of paper towel, handing it over to you. «I think I might have caught a cold or something. I woke up shivering because the window was open and my hair was still damp.» «Well, I guess that’s the prize for sleeping with Max.» «Carlos!» You patted his shoulder, while he laughed off, sitting back again in front of his breakfast. «You going home?» he asked you, noticing you were searching for something in the living room. «Yes, I just need my clothes.» «Nah, you don’t. You have your cute Max’s robe, what else do you need?» he said, munching. «Max’s robe?» you asked confused. He gestured with his finger towards the front of the robe; stitched there was his name. «Oh no.» «Did you also wake up with that on? Because then you definitely fucked. That’s some kinky stuff I don’t want to know about.» «Who said kinky stuff?» Before you could scream at Carlos, Daniel entered the kitchen, interested in the strange and inappropriate discussion. «Nothing, Dan. Did you see my clothes by any chance?» you asked him, trying to subtly change the topic. Not very subtle, since, prompted by the question, he naturally looked at your mise. «Why are you wearing a freaking bathrobe?» the Aussie frowned. «You see? I’m not the only one finding it weird!» Carlos said. «Oh my gosh.» You walked away from the two of them, going to check over the pool for your clothes; they were, in fact, still laid on a deck chair. «Are you already leaving?» Daniel asked you as you entered, changed. «Ye- Achoo!» You startled the two drivers, saying in unison “Bless you”. «I’m going home, I don’t feel good.» you rushed. «I see. Get well soon, so we can throw another kinky-party.» Daniel said, playful. «Bye, guys!» Before they could turn around to wave goodbye, you were already gone.

Daniel and Carlos had breakfast together, lazily chitchatting for a while. Max got awakened by their laughter. He opened his eyes, head pounding but no headache in sight. He deeply inhaled. He moved his arm on the other side, expecting to find someone. Instead of noticing the sheets were cold and empty, Max gazed at the ceiling questioning his own gesture. Why did he automatically reach out for someone? Did he sleep with anybody? Like a lightning through dark clouds, the image of your face struck in his thoughts. You had shared the bed. A faint trail of your scent still drenched the pillow next to him, making him long for your presence, your skin, your hair, your smile. Max suddenly wanted to touch you, to hug you, to stay in bed all morning with you without talking or moving, just spending time together. But you weren’t there. He spread his arm over the empty side of the mattress. You had probably already got up. He decided to do the same.

Entering the kitchen, Max got blinded by the sunlight coming through the huge glass windows. «Look, the sleeping beauty woke up, Carlos!» «Seems more like the sleeping monster.» Carlos and Daniel both laughed at Max, who raised a middle finger towards them. «No, Max, that’s not polite. Please, behave.» Daniel said with a faked sweet tone. «Do you know where’s y/n?» he asked, his sleepy eyes trying to adapt to the brightness. «Mate, you don’t even greet us first and you ask about y/n instead?» Carlos mocked. «Yeah, Carlos is right. You forget your friends?» Max opened the fridge, annoyed. «What are you talking about, y/n is also a friend…» he said in a low tone of voice. «Sure?» Carlos spatted, amused. «For real guys. Do you know where she is or not?» Max turned back to them with some juice in his hand, awaiting an answer. «She’s gone home.» Daniel said. «Home?» Max asked, frowning. «Alone?» «She’s old enough, you know?» Carlos smiled. «Yes, but she usually waits for me.» Max got lost in thought: why did you run away without even saying bye if you would be heading towards the same destination anyway? «Maybe she got tired of waiting.» Daniel said, smile getting bigger as he expected a reaction from Max. But the Dutch didn’t pay attention to him; instead, he searched for his phone. He ran to the room and took it in his hand, dialing.

Your phone rang as you tried to reach out for the spare keys Max had given you, still deep in your pocket. «Hi, Max!» you quickly said. «Whe– where are you?» He sat on the bed, hand on his forehead as the hangover started building up. «I’m back at the apartment, I…» you sniffed, «I don’t feel good.» Max tried to speak but got interrupted by your sneeze over the phone. «Fuck… Do you have a fever? How do you feel?» He passed a hand through his hair, rushing questions. «No, I think it’s just a cold… The window was open last night, this morning I woke up shivering.» As you finished the sentence, you mentally facepalmed: had you just implied you two had slept in the same room while not being ready to talk about it? Yes, you had. «Do you need medicine? I can go to the drugstore before I get there.» «No, don’t come here! Max, you’re going to get sick as well!» «I won’t leave you alone if you’re ill, y/n.» You sighed. «Max…» you said, soft, «You still have a lot of races to go. I don’t want to infect you with whatever I have.» «Okay, but… All my stuff is at the apartment. Eventually I’ll need to come and take it.» «Hopefully I’ll be fine by that time.» you let out, sighing. «Well, I guess I’m going to stay here, then. The simulator is upstairs anyway.» «Perfect.» you hissed because of the headache. «But I’ll come see you in three days.» «Max!» you complained. «Do you need a maid? You know, to cook, clean and all that type of things?» «Max, it’s just a cold, I can manage.» You heard him sigh, resigned. «Promise you’ll call me if you need anything.» «Promise.» you smiled. «And don’t even try to ghost my texts!» «Of course not.» you laughed. «Take care of yourself.» «Take care too, Max.»

You quietly made your way up the building stairs, slowly approaching the apartment Max had asked you to share. Still feeling off, you opened the door and dragged yourself inside. A shuffling noise coming from one of the bedrooms made you stop in the middle of the living room. As a flash, you saw Kelly cross the corridor and rush to the bathroom. With unsure steps, you got closer hoping she would notice your presence; she did, exiting the bathroom with a beauty-case in her hand, and you immediately regretted it. She looked awful: mascara all over her face; red, puffy eyes, trembling hands. And words sharper than knives. «What the fuck are you doing here?!» «I… live here?» you answered, scared of her reaction. She dropped the beauty-case to the floor, making you flinch, then she pointed her finger towards you in accusation. «Why is it always you, uh? You’re literally wherever Max is! You’re like a little puppy, following him and preventing him from spending time with me, his fucking girlfriend! And he dumped me because of you! I can’t believe it… You had to get in our way, didn’t you? We had it all, we were starting to build a family… Do you even know what a family is?» She quickly took her phone and angrily showed you pictures of Penelope and Max, all of them together, all of them happy. «Do you see it? Do you see what I’ve lost because of you? You ruined it!» You stood still, unable to react. Kelly hid her face in her palms, sighing and crying, only to look back at you. «I hope you’re happy now! But you’re not going to be the one who tells my daughter she’s lost him as well, right?» «It’s not my fault.» you whispered. But you didn’t mean it: it was a poor attempt to convince yourself it wasn’t. Your teary eyes showed the truth: the hurt, the untold truth they desperately needed to unveil. «Right. It never is! My relationship falling apart isn’t because of a girl living with my boyfriend and being around him more than I do! You know what? Just take it, take him, learn how to stand by a F1 driver! But don’t come at me when you realize you can’t keep up with it, because it will be way too late!» She entered the main bedroom and then stormed out of it, bumping into your shoulder while doing so. As you heard the door slam, a tear escaped your eyes. Right after, a waterfall of tears rained down your face. You had dreaded it, you had foreseen it; you had weakly tried to prevent it from happening, causing a bigger mess with Max; then you simply ignored it and forgot it. You had ruined it. The opportunity of a new beginning, a newfound love for Kelly; the support of a much-needed family for the little Penelope; lastly, the chance for Max to escape old toxic bonds and start over, writing a happier ending to such a tough and traumatizing childhood. You had ruined it all. Being accused felt nothing compared to seeing Kelly’s sadness painted on her features, nothing compared to the thought of her finding a way to explain the situation to her daughter. Sorry, Penelope, nobody loves you and you’ll never have a father.

The guilt was creeping out and eating you alive, paired up with an incurable despair. There was sickness, yes, you felt sick inside, cold climbing up your limbs, lips quivering and trembling convulsively. You nestled up on the couch, grabbing the first cover you had found in your bedroom, and cried until you fell asleep, finally finding peace and being able to rest, just for a while.

Darkness was all around. That was all you could see once you had woken up. Your nose felt stuck and it was difficult to breathe; your forehead still ached a little. You couldn’t tell whether it was for the crying or the illness; maybe because of both? Trying to get up from the sofa, with tired steps you searched for some tissues: you figured out you would need them a lot. Plopping back near the armrest for better support, you stared into the void: the apartment was sunk in a comfortable silence, veiled by darkness, almost floating above Monaco’s streets. It felt lonelier than expected. Those were the moments in which you’d think accepting moving in had been a stupid idea, a reckless and non-sense one. It felt empty, now that you knew Kelly had moved out, or at least had tried to. Her hurt face still distressed you. For a second, you tried to put yourself in her shoes: you couldn’t even imagine how stressful being a single mom was, especially after being left twice. The trust issues Penelope would have to face in the future due to her paternal figures disappearing after a few years; her thinking the fault may be hers. A daughter growing up and believing she is the problem. Nothing new, after all. Right?

You decided to get up and stop pitying yourself; cooking something for dinner seemed a reasonable and quite useful option. Opening the fridge, you found… some salad in a plastic envelope, a cart of milk, three lone tomatoes and a pack of Red Bull’s cans. Salad and tomatoes would be. While searching for a plate inside the cupboard, you heard your phone vibrating on the couch. You went grab it to read the new text you had received, curious to see who it was from. Strange someone had remembered you even existed. “How are you doing? All good?” It was Max, and you smiled. How could you not? You were sick and lonely, but your heart would race faster regardless of the distance, just because he had thought of you. Just because he cared. “My nose and throat doing a lil bit worse I’m good tho” “Need anything?” You flipped your eyes back to the counter and snorted, amused. “Actually yes” “Shoot” “Groceries. Your fridge is full of red bulls and nothing else I’m going shopping tomorrow, this is unacceptable” «Fuck!» «What?» Daniel turned around and saw Max facepalming. «The fridge back at the apartment is almost empty.» «Poor y/n…» Daniel laughed. «You were all worried she’d die because she’s alone and ill, but she’s actually going to die of hunger. She deserved to live, she was a good friend…» the Aussie said, dramatically pretending to wipe away tears. Max sighed. “Sorry, I forgot. Do you want me to order something for you?” “No, three bold tomatoes survived the war” Smiling, you sent him a picture of your plate. “It looks better than whatever Daniel is cooking for the two of us” You raised your eyebrows surprised. “Can he cook???? I didn’t know!” «Y/n is questioning your cooking abilities.» Max laughed. «You’re about to have the best dinner date of your life, so don’t try to distract me.» “Food intoxication could occur within the next 24 hours, so it’s been a pleasure y/n” “Bet Dan can cook better than you do” «What’s this silence, buddy?» Daniel asked. «I can smell the roasting from here.» «What are you talking about…» Max said, while typing an answer. «She roasted you because of your nonexistent cooking skills, right?» «Stop it!» «Okay, she definitely did.» Max and Daniel both smiled without looking at each other. They had missed spending time together. It wasn’t planned. That morning, Daniel had sat next to Max on the couch and started talking as some people, still in the house, began awkwardly walking away. Chatter and laughter filled the room with that light, pleasant pinch of fun Max had always loved about Daniel, so it simply felt natural to ask him to stay over for dinner. Just as normal friends do. Max couldn’t recall the last time they had seen each other off the track to have a good time. «May I have your attention?» Daniel asked in an overly formal tone. He invited the Dutch to take a seat and put the dish in front of him, as a waiter would do. Max tried to hold back a laugh: he had also missed his silliness. «What’s the name of the dish?» «The art of regretting life choices.» Daniel said, sitting in front of Max. «Oh, is it your speciality?» They laughed at the same time. «It quite is.»

After a careful and thorough taste-test – just to be sure the food was edible – Max and Daniel started eating, looking at each other at times and smiling for no reason. The sun was already setting down, still letting a few shining flakes of light reflecting onto the pool water. Daniel attentively watched Max’s every move, almost studying his behavior, and he easily noticed the way he would check over his phone quite often. «Did she stop answering?» Daniel asked, looking down at his food, unable to stifle a smile. «Uh?» Max’s head snapped towards him, clearly taken aback by the question. «Y/n. You’re waiting for her to reply, right?» Daniel saw a flash cross Max’s face, a light, a sparkle inside his eyes now lit up, but the Dutch was quick to divert gaze and react to being caught red-handed. «Yes, but probably she’s eating as well.» he said, scratching his nape. «Oh, did she manage to find something inside your dusty pantries?» Daniel chuckled. «Yeah, she did.» Max felt awkward, now that Daniel had brought the topic onto the table: you. It made him nervous and excited at the same time, and it weirded him out because he couldn’t understand why it had such an effect on him. «You two had a lot of fun yesterday, didn’t you?» Daniel then asked. «Yeah, it was really nice.» Max simply grinned at him, but the Aussie was having none of that practiced-media-smiling expression. «I saw you getting in your room together.» Max swallowed and looked at Daniel straight into his eyes, waiting for him to go on. «Max… I want to know if our relationship is at risk.» the Aussie said, with a pathetic worried expression that got the both of them cracking up. «But actually… I mean, it’s you guys’ business, and you know I’d never tell Kelly about it…» Max stopped Daniel rambling before he would get more awkward than it already was. «Kelly and I broke up, it’s fine. And there’s nothing between me and y/n. But now I’m curious, what did you see, mate?» he said, chuckling in anticipation. «Oh, I’m sorry for you and Kelly.» «It’s okay, not a big deal.» «Uhm, okay… Anyway, my phone ran out of battery, and I desperately needed to record Lando drunkenly talking to a door to blackmail him in the future… So, I went to your room to search for a charger and basically right after you came in hugging with y/n. You seemed pretty shit-faced, to be honest.» «Why were you searching for a charger in MY room?!» Max asked, in disbelief. «Guess I was shit-faced too.» «Oh my god…» Max said, shaking his head. «You two fell onto the bed like a couple of zombies and laughed as two idiots.» «Luckily, I don’t remember a thing.» «Luckily… unless something has happened.» As Daniel stared at Max expecting him to say add anything to the conversation, Max, who was trying hard to recall the moment, got struck by a memory. «Wait a minute… You… Daniel, you opened the window, right?» «What?» «Yes, you opened the window because you said it felt too hot in there or something like that.» Daniel, lips slightly parted, looking for that piece of information with his eyes, almost as if they were plumbing the depths of his brain’s abyss, suddenly got enlightened. «Oh yes, I remember! Ah ah! It was a good joke.» Silence followed and Max, not quite enjoying the embarrassment starting to veil his cheeks because of Daniel stare, broke it. «Let’s eat, it’s going to get cold.» «Yep, this amazing food deserves true appreciation.» «And the cook does too.»

A buzzing noise woke you up. It was low, almost inaudible; yet, it broke your sleep and your hand felt forced to reach for the bed-side table. It was your phone, someone was calling. «Hello?» you said, trying to cover the hoarseness of your voice. «Hi, y/n!» It was Charles. «Hi! All good?» you asked, a bit surprised by the call. He chuckled. «Carlos told me you’re sick, I wanted to check up on you.» «Oh, that’s really nice of you…» you smiled. He had woken you up so damn early and your eyes, your throat, your nose hurt, but it still was incredibly nice of him. «I’ve caught a cold, but I’m doing better.» «Guess you stayed in that pool a little bit too much!» You both laughed at it. «After I got in, I kind of lost track of time, to be honest.» you added. «’Cause you were having fun?» «Yes.» you admitted, half whispering. There were a couple of seconds of silence, which gave you time to sit on the bed, in an attempt to get your body more awake. «Uhm, y/n, can I ask you something?» «Charles, of course.» «But don’t get me wrong, okay?» «Okay…? You’re making me worried!» you chuckled. «At the party… I saw you getting in a room with Max.» Your heart stopped: your cheeks immediately flushed because of embarrassment and also due to the covers still over you, making an effect. «I… I was just wondering how things are between you two after, you know, after Zandvoort and Monza-» «Charles, what- why are you asking this?» «Because you’re a friend of mine and I just want to make sure you’re happy, especially after I’ve picked you up drunk and crying in the middle of a street.» Heavy silence fell on both ends. «No, I’m fine, Charles… And there is nothing between us.» you rushed. «Okay, that’s fair.» he stated. Other moments of silence occupied the line, before breaking the ice once again. «Charles… I saw you too, at the party.» you began, unsure. «Was it a good sight, at least?» he asked, playful. You couldn’t help but chuckle at him. «No, I mean… You and Charlotte… I think you were arguing or something.» Your worried and tensed tone of voice poorly concealed the implicit answer you really wanted to ask him. «Arguing is part of being a couple. Sharing life together also brings discussions. It’s all good, y/n.» You couldn’t help but sadly frown at his words and at how defeated they sounded. Naturally, a hit of self-doubt didn’t miss the chance of hitting you. «Was it for the picture?» «What picture?» Charles asked. «The one in Zandvoort, of us entering the hotel… Sorry, Charles, I didn’t even know it was posted, Max showed me the article a couple days before the party and-» Charles stopped your rant before it would uselessly get any further. «No, y/n, it isn’t because of that, don’t worry. I had talked about it with Charlotte right after and she was fine with it.» You suddenly heard on the other line a lot of chatter and someone seemingly talking to Charles. «Y/n, sorry, I have an interview and I need to get ready… But it was nice to hear from you!» «Oh, thanks, Charles! Have a good day.» «You too, y/n. Take care!» Once you tossed your phone on the other side of the bed, you closed your eyes and sighed. You felt trapped. Those covers chained you to your thoughts, your illness, your monotony; you didn’t feel like doing anything and couldn’t stand the weakness draining you. It was a simple cold. You would get over it quickly. But why did it feel like a lethargy? Why did it take any bit of energy out of your body, out of your mind?

Hunger pushed you out of the bed; a blanket still over your shoulders, you walked towards the fridge and had your breakfast – a cup of cold ice milk – at 11.34 a.m. You laid down onto the sofa. Stared at the ceiling. Every single cell of you felt bored and tired; it was only natural for you to slip again into Morpheus’ arms.

«Y/n…» Y/n. All you could hear was your own name, someone whispering it against your ear. A sudden wave of heat reached your skin: you felt a presence next to your face, hot breaths hitting your sensitive neck. It was all around you, all onto you, a body radiating warmth and making you crave even more closeness. «Y/n… Y/n, I need you.» It was no longer a whisper, no; you could clearly recognize the voice and, before being able to react, skin was touching skin, tight, in an unexpected, intimate hug. You naturally wrapped your arms around him, beyond overwhelmed: everything about Max, everything about that situation felt intense and amplified. Your heartbeat seemed to resonate in each fiber of your body, making it blatantly evident how the closeness affected you, how Max affected you. While holding onto him, you suddenly felt his body taken away, together with his comforting presence. «We don’t need you.» A loud, painful pang in the middle of your chest. It hit you, struck you, wrecked you without warning: you recognized the voices, you could even see their faces despite the dark room you suddenly found yourself in. You got up and tried to escape it. You couldn’t bear to hear your parents’ words echo and ricochet onto the walls just to crush you harder, but you soon noticed there was one door and it was tragically locked. Ugly tears probably cut through your cheeks, as sighs made way for a defeated and helpless scream. «Y/n!» Your name felt like nails on a chalkboard: sharp, unbearable, getting your senses on full alert. «Y/n!» Why did it sound so… close? «Y/n!» Like a slap on the face, it woke you up and got you jumping forwards, but the hold two hands had on your arms stopped you halfway, so that you locked eyes with someone, with Max. He had come over to check on you, as he had promised, and found you lying on the couch, far from being quietly sleeping as he expected. His own breath mimicked yours, as he got closer to you trying to make sense of the whimpers coming out of your lips. You trembled, and still trembled in his hold after he got you awake; he couldn’t help but stare at your teary eyes, your flushed face. Max tried his best not to sound or act harshly, but a flame burned inside of him and consumed him. Frustration. He should’ve expected you to get worse, to be feverish, not being able to do everything on your own. He should’ve done something more to help you, instead of giving up to your stubborn self. And now he had to look at you, blaming his choices and in search of a way to compensate. «M-Max?» you fluttered your eyelashes multiple times, afraid of hallucinating. Your hoarse voice triggered his frustration even further. He simply sighed at you. You saw him getting up and coming back quickly with a big glass of water, a thermometer and some pills. «You keep a thermometer in here?» you asked, still a little bit shook. «It was Penelope’s.» he said, handing it to you without looking. «Max, I’m okay, I don’t think I have-» «You’re taking it right now.» His tone didn’t leave much room for discussion. But you failed to notice his distress, too caught up in your own. «Max, really… I’m okay.» You didn’t mean to, of course. How could you even do it on purpose? «No, you’re not.» Still, you pushed him over the edge. «I-I had a bad dream, Max, that’s it.» you gulped, his tensed expression making it hard for you to keep it cool. Because with that, you had twisted the knife inside his wound a little bit deeper. «‘That’s it’.» he let out a nervous chuckle. «That’s it, right. You’re shaking, it seems like you’re having a fucking panic attack in your sleep, you wake up with flushed cheeks and you’re about to cry, but you pretend everything is fine! Maybe this isn’t even the first time it happens! How do I know? How can I even-» Max’s hands reached his face before he could say anything he would possibly regret saying.

You tried to get up so that you could face him properly, not able to sustain his hurt tone washing over you from above. Though, Max immediately stopped you and kept you down onto the couch. «Y/n…» Max closed his eyes and kept repeating your name under his breath like a chant, his hands still on your shoulders, trying to calm himself down by preventing you from involuntarily fueling his frustration even more. Then his irises pierced right through you, tinted with an something you had never seen in them. Pain. And it was inside his eyes that you felt your inner world collapse. Deep down, Max was expecting you to cry, somehow; but when the moment came, he felt totally unprepared to take in your emotions, since he was trying to deal with his own. He took your hands, which were trying to hide your freed tears in vain. «I… Max, I took a family away from you.» Not able to cover your face with your hands, you buried it onto his chest, defeated. Max didn’t hesitate at the gesture, but lingered over your words. «What are you talking about?» he whispered, a bit confused, placing a hand on your head and slightly pressing it towards him. «Kelly… I saw her an- and she was so sad…» As you mumbled several times “I’m sorry” through sniffles, Max immediately grabbed you and gently pushed you away from him so that he could look at you. «What do you mean? When did you see her?» He panicked at the idea of Kelly trying to ruin things between you as a stupid revenge. Did he think she would manipulate or tell lies just to purposely make you feel bad? No, Max didn’t. But the mere thought drove him crazy, and he needed to know whether she had or not. «She was here to get her stuff,» you sniffled, «and she was upset… She doesn’t know how to tell Penelope… It was your new family, Max, I’m so sorry I ruined it all.» Max’s heart shattered. Splinters of it hit you as well, lacing blood and tears through the same river, pouring down as an only waterfall. You could hear the turmoil, the blast raging inside of him, and you could see it portrayed in his eyes, wandering into yours in search of peace, in need of reassurance, though you had none to give him nor yourself. As Max unconsciously pulled you close and gently rubbed your back while you sobbed, he started analyzing the consequences of his decisions. Did he care about Kelly being gone? Not really, after the things she had said. Did he care about Penelope being gone? Yes. But he knew she was an extremely loved daughter, surrounded by the Piquets, and had a father, as well. It seemed easier to subside his own attachment with cold logic, even though he perfectly knew there would be much more to deal with other than scratching the surface. He would do that, someday; he would. Not now. Not with you weeping in his arms because of a situation you were completely foreign to, and still felt guilty for. Not with you igniting a stronger flame of sadness in the middle of his chest, capable of eclipsing any other thought or worry. «Y/n, I want you to listen carefully, because this is the last time I’ll tell you.» His calm yet serious tone made you shiver, while he took your face into his hands. «You’re the only family I need.» Max didn’t look away, not even for a split second. And neither did you; like two opposite poles being locked in their attraction, you stared at each other as deeply as you had never done before; your eyes being the same ocean, waves of emotions overflowing into one another. «Whatever Kelly told you, forget it. I just want you to stop crying because of stupid people, and I want you to heal, so that you come back to have fun with me as we always do. I don’t want anything or anyone to take the relationship we have away from us and I don’t want it to change.» Max swept with his thumb a warm tear you couldn’t keep in after hearing his words. «I hate to see you cry.» he said in a whisper, wiping away other tears away from your skin, away from your heart.

A tingle in the middle of your chest urged you to speak, to thank him, to say something in order not to leave him with dead silence as an answer, but your mouth opened a couple times without emitting sound. As unexpected as a thunder during a summer, sunny day, Max quickly leaned towards you and left a slow, soft, affectionate kiss on your forehead. It seemed to take away all your worries and to put order through your chaotic brain, making you forget everything else with a pleasant confusion and the tingling near your heart began radiating through your body. Max got up and offered you his hands to help yourself stand up as well. Still a bit confused, you followed him to the kitchen, where he made you sit back again. «Bought some food to get you in shape as soon as possible!» With his bright cute smile, he took all the things he had brought with him out of bag and showed them to you, as to get your approval. «And I bought some dinner, too!» Max raised his eyes to see whether you felt happy about it; your faint smile and your hands travelling up and down your arms immediately activated his protective mode. «Are you cold?» «I don’t kno-» He had already gone towards the bedrooms and come back with a blanket, which he placed over your shoulder carefully. Before moving on, he stood still looking at you: you seemed off, both physically and mentally. «Do you want to eat?» he asked, at this point doubtful his plans would work. «Not really.» you said, sad. «It’s okay. It’s a bit early for dinner anyway.» Max said, checking the time. Think, Max. Think. He had to find an idea, a sparkle, anything that could make you feel better, because he couldn’t stand seeing you so low. He sighed. «Why don’t you take your temperature?» You avoided him. «Didn’t you say you would pass by in three days?» «Oh, did you want me to leave you starving?» he smiled. And your heart skipped a beat. «Uhm, no, but I…» Unsure of what to say, aware of the lie you had right on the tip of the tongue, you let Max block any excuse. «No, y/n, you wouldn’t have left the house to go shopping, since you’re here trembling like a leaf.» At this point all your walls and defenses had fallen down, turned into ashes, and despite the blanket you tightly held, you felt naked, vulnerable under Max’s stare. Those seconds of silence made you nervous and tense, but at the same time a flame was slowly melting you inside; you wanted to curl up into a ball, so that you could keep yourself together without falling apart in front of him, because of him. «Is there anything you’d like to do? Something that would make you feel better?» You gulped, trying to push away your trail of thoughts. «Right now, I think I would only be able to lay down on a bed and do nothing.» you lightly chuckled. «Okay, let’s do that.» Uh? What? «C’mon.» Max got closer to your chair and gently placed his hands on your arms, as an invite to get up. «What are you doing?» you said, your voice cracking. Because you were ill, you thought. Because you were close to him, you knew, deep down.

«If it makes you feel better, we’ll lay on a bed and do nothing.» Like two feathers carried around by the wind, you both reached Max’s bedroom; not really able to get a hold of the situation, of what was happening exactly, you froze. Something stopped you, something blocked you. Memories from the party and whatever might have happened that night haunted you after the words Max had said. I don’t want it to change. You were the only family he’d need, but he was the only family you had. The only one you couldn’t afford to lose. That knot in your stomach, the warmth in your chest, the tingles caused by his stare, all those feelings that you had started picking up along the way like small flowers suddenly revealed themselves as a heavy and deadly weight: you couldn’t allow them to grow roots in your heart and they couldn’t show through in any way. And as flowers, they would wither, eventually. Max’s touch awoke you and painfully reminded you how much of a hard task it would be to let whatever you felt for him die, with him happily floating around you. «Do… do you prefer the couch?» Max asked you, mistaking your hesitation. «N-no, it’s okay.» He sat onto the bed, took off his shoes and kind of jumped on it, smiling at you like a happy kid having fun, then laid down and got comfortable. In quick and small steps, you mimicked him and got next to him, careful not to get too close. Max, who was having none of it, swiftly pulled you near to him, scooting over a bit so that you could lean on his chest. Well, so that you could hide your blushed cheeks. Max noticed, and he simply found it cute. «Don’t act like this is the first time.» His words made you open your eyes wide in embarrassment. You tried to avoid the topic, hoping silence would kill it. «Y/n?» It didn’t. «Mmh?» you hummed, face still pressed down to him. «You don’t need to be embarrassed. I mean, even Daniel saw us.» Your heart was about to blow up: Daniel had seen you. Okay. Not okay, but okay. What were you supposed to say? What would Max want you to tell him? Was it the start of a much-needed confrontation you guys should have had earlier? Your pupils flicked left and right in search of clarity, without finding any. «Saw what?» you whispered as if you didn’t know, as if you didn’t want to know. «He saw us at the party. You know, when we entered my room and basically passed out onto the bed because of how drunk we got.» Slightly moving your head towards him, you watched him smiling as he recalled the moment. And a wave of relief mixed with doubts immediately hit you. «Did he see us down the corridor?» you asked, still trying to make sense of it. «No, he was already inside, he was searching for a charger in my room. He said we didn’t even acknowledge him and simply snuggled together.» «Oh.» Lie. You had lived the last couple days trapped in a stupidly beautiful yet scary lie: that you and Max had kissed each other, craved each other, maybe even slept together. All those images your mind had played were mere illusions, dreams, indicators of underlying feelings which went unnoticed by the radars. Nothing had happened. Your worries should’ve melted like snow under the sun, but they didn’t; indeed, they multiplied, and they showed on the outside, since Max easily read into your silence. «You okay?» «Yes! Yes, I, uhm, I just don’t remember anything of it.» Truth. It was the truth, after all. «Ah, don’t worry, neither do I!» Max laughed off. Your head laid back onto his chest, once again, as if it was its place of belonging, its natural place.

Forced to let go of all the fake kisses, you were now left with the other memories you had gathered over time and they lingered in your mind, lightly floating and giving off a sweet taste though a bit faded. You noticed how close you and Max had grown after time and how comfortable you had got to physical contact; was it normal? Was it something friends would do? After all, Max often initiated it, so was it okay to him as well? As your and Max’s hands found each other onto his chest and began tenderly and unconsciously intertwining, your thoughts raced and a thousands of questions popped into your mind, but being unable to answer them, you simply gave in to the moment and to Max’s fingers playing with your hair. «I’m going to fall asleep.» you giggled, hinting at the overly relaxing situation. «Okay.» Max said in a whisper. Instead of stopping his hands, he guided your arm over his torso, so that you would cling onto him and get totally comfortable, and he protectively held your shoulder to have you even closer. Your eyes shut, your lips involuntarily curling upwards and comfort radiating through your entire body, wanting to get lost in his embrace. Max felt you relaxing under his touch and couldn’t help but smile as well. Silence and stillness seemed to move away the chaos, the loud media writing shit about him, people hating or always ready to put their sharp tongues into use. On that bed, lying next to you, with you, Max’s heart swam in a lake of joy and calm, and the magic bubble you two were able to create made him crave those moments more and more. No, Max didn’t want to change any of it: that little piece of heaven you had needed to be protected, nurtured, and taken care of. He would do anything to preserve it, to keep it safe. To keep you safe. «Let’s sleep, y/n.»

It took me two days to post this. Two freaking days. But I've learned a few tricks to post chapters faster, so I guess it was worth it? Hope it was worth waiting for it!

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING! ♥ I’D REALLY APPRECIATE IT IF YOU LEFT A NOTE FOR FEEDBACK, SO THANKS IF YOU DO! HOPE YOU HAVE A NICE DAY! . · ˚✧

Previous || Next

#max verstappen x reader #max verstappen x you #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 fic #f1 fluff #f1 angst #golden #max verstappen x y/n #max verstappen fluff #max verstappen angst #formula one fic #formula one fanfiction #f1 fanfiction

151 notes · View notes

lunchmeat-supreme · 9 months

Note

Oh god wow I really enjoyed the Stan fic and how you portrayed him and the reader!! The pacing also felt super natural aaaaahhhh<33

Could I request hcs for Kyle (in hs) where reader is kinda like a spiderman for the town? Reader and Kyle are already friends but reader (as their superhero self) goes to Kyle for help with intel and stuff and is kinda flirty w him kinda like a chat noir type beat. And then there’s some attack on the town (maybe Leslie with some big robots or something) and Kyle gets hurt trying to protect reader while they’re in their superhero form and then reader gets mad at him for it and slips up and reveals their identity to him? Sorry if this is too specific haha take your time!!

OMG ANON I LOVE THIS

i love the idea of kyle being the guy in the chair for the reader lol like he totally would be. i debated on whether or not to have kyle be the human kite, but i decided against it because i feel like the idea is so much better with him just being some guy.

i originally planned to write a little drabble bc this gave me hella inspiration but that drabble turned into basically a oneshot oops so thats why the hc section is so short.

hope you enjoy this one :)

Out of the Chair

Kyle Broflovski x Superhero!Reader

Summary: By day, Kyle's a regular guy. By night, he's still a regular guy. Sometimes he's a valuable sidekick to you, the town's local superhero. Today, however, he gets swept into the action in the worst way.

Warnings: Mentioned injury

A/N: I honestly had no idea how to end this so shhhh

Okay, so Kyle being your “guy in the chair” totally inflates his ego and makes him feel soooo important.

He knows he can’t say anything about it to any of his friends (He likes feeling like he also has a secret identity) so sometimes he nearly explodes from trying not to tell them that he’s basically a sidekick to the town-famous superhero.

This is especially true when he’s around you (when you’re out of your superhero persona). He’ll ask what you were up to the other night, and when you lie and say “oh, not much,” he’ll stretch his arms out real wide and be like “Hm, yep, me too, just an ordinary night for ol’ Kyle here.”

He’s so bad at playing it cool lol

Every night he waits by his window for you like a kid looking to catch a glimpse of Santa on Christmas Eve.

When he sees your dark shadow in his window overtake the moon, he’ll scramble to sit in his bed or at his computer all cool like he totally wasn’t watching for you and hoping he’d see you.

It smells strongly of AXE and hair spray every time you sneak into his room, looking for intel on the latest neighborhood bad guy.

Kyle’s had straight A’s in English since elementary school, so that’s why you chose him as your go-to research guy. He’s great at organization and gleaning the most useful information from bloated, ad-riddled internet news articles.

He gives you his findings, and when you tell him a simple, “Good job, Red,” and pat his shoulder, he gives meaning to the nickname.

“Oh– yeah–” *nervous laugh* “it’s, uh, it’s– yeah. Anything for you– UH– anything for the town…” *more nervous laughing. And sweating. Lots of sweating.*

Bro is smitten

---

“Kyle?” You press a finger against your earpiece as you slam the bathroom stall shut. “Kyle, do you copy?”

A voice sizzles through the ear bud. “Yeah, I copy. What’s happening?”

You toss your backpack off your shoulder. “That’s what I need you to find out. Get to a computer ASAP. Tell me what’s going on.”

“The computer lab’s just down the hall. I’ll be there in a sec.”

You start to shimmy out of your clothes, trying to kick off your pants and pull your shirt over your head at the same time. There’s a rustling sound on the other end of your piece. You can hear muffled voices on his end, a jumble of noise talking loudly about something. Then, there’s a bang, and the background noise goes silent. After a few seconds of albeit unnerving silence, the comforting ca-chunking of an old mechanical keyboard rhythmically pulses in your ear.

“Tell me what you got, Broflovski.” You stuff the heap of clothes into your backpack and pull out a hefty, full-body concealing outfit with a flashy design that you came up with yourself.

There are a few clicks from the other end and a contemplating hum. “Some of my classmates caught it on camera. I can’t quite tell what it is…” there are a few soft thumps — most likely his thumbs on his phone’s screen — and then, a small gasp.

“What?” You pull on your outfit, fingers fumbling with the clasps and latches that decorate it.

“Leslie?!” He says the name like you’re supposed to recognize it.

You have to pause from lacing up your boots. “Who?”

The stunned moment of silence passes. “This weird kid — well, not really a kid, I guess — who showed up when I was, like, ten. She’s a living advertisement. I thought we killed her back then…?”

You don’t have time to question what the hell a living advertisement is. You finish the last bunny knot on your boot and kick open the stall door. Pulling a mask down onto your face, you leave your backpack and push the heavy bathroom door open to the halls of your high school. Confused students are shouting at one another and stumbling away from where they had just seen an innocent looking little girl rip the school's front door off its hinges. Thankfully, they’re too caught up in the panic to notice your entrance. You swim upriver through the pack, pushing aside students as you press your finger to your ear.

“What am I dealing with here?” you shout.

“Ads,” Kyle says quickly. “She can interrupt any sort of frequency — TV, internet, radio — and insert ads into it.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“It can be very distracting, but it also makes it easy to track her. She has her own IP address.”

The crowd begins to thin out as you reach the stairwell. You slide down the rail and continue to run, double tapping your earpiece as a holographic interface appears in front of you. A red dot sits on the interface – a ping of her location. She’s in the school, approaching the science wing.

“Anything else? Any sort of weaknesses?”

“Punching a hole through her head should do the trick,” Kyle says matter-of-factly.

“Morbid. What about upgrades? You said you already killed her. Whatever created her must’ve updated the code.”

“On it.”

You turn the corner, the science wing in sight. There’s a flash of yellow, and you can hear light footsteps tapping down the hall. You yell after the flash, hoping to slow it down, but it disappears behind the door without so much as a glance your way. You sprint down the hallway and barrel into the door, catching another wisp of yellow and a fan of shiny raven hair bolting away.

Kyle’s voice crackles in through the earpiece. “I’ve got something.”

“Shoot,” you say, as measured as you can be while in hot pursuit of a girl half your height.

“There’s been several instances of explosions in and around South Park the past couple days. Looks like mostly at tech firms and labs.”

Rounding another corner, you catch a clear glimpse of the little girl, Leslie. She’s slowed down considerably, looking at each door as she passes them.

“You think it’s from her?”

Leslie does a double take at one door, then stops completely. She throws it open, and the door goes flying in your direction. You weave out of the way, feeling the breeze from the force, and skid to a halt. You clench your fists and square your shoulders.

“Yeah, these articles say the servers got overloaded by so much so fast that they completely broke and…”

The words fade out as the sound of your own heartbeat fills your ears. You honestly stopped listening after he said the word servers, and you definitely stopped when he started to read the tech jargon verbatim from the article. None of it would’ve helped, anyway. Nor would it have mattered, because behind a seething Leslie stood a tower of blinking lights and jumbled cables.

The school’s server closet.

“Kid,” you start gently, slowly reaching out a hand. Your other hand reaches to your earpiece, and your voice stays steady. “Kyle, get out of there.”

Leslie’s irises flare an icy blue, and electricity crackles around her hand.

Kyle stops midway through his reading. “Huh?”

“Get out—”

She slams her palm against the server.

In one moment, you’re opening your mouth to scream. In the next, you’re on your back with static crackling in your head.

You hardly register the sensation of opening your eyes and looking around. The world is moving beneath you as you instinctively lift your head and try to make sense of what happened. Great plumes of dust and smoke billow up from behind crumbled walls and jagged rubble. Wires, their innards exposed and frayed, snap like rabid dogs all around you, on the ground and hanging from what’s left of the ceiling. Your doubled vision slowly reorients itself, two fuzzy pictures combining into one that’s clear. The ringing of tinnitus in your ears fades, replaced instead by an uneasy buzz from your broken earpiece.

Leslie is gone. So is most of the high school, it seems.

Suddenly, your veins explode with adrenaline and you’re on your feet as though you weren’t just knocked out and disoriented a few moments ago.

Kyle.

You suck in filtered air through your mask as your brain surges alarm directly into your bloodstream. The computer lab is only a few doors down from the server closet. There’s no doubt the blast affected the area. You stumble forward into the smog as fast as your numb legs will allow.

It’s not hard to find him. Besides the puff of unruly red hair blaring through the smoke like an exit sign in the dark, his coughs reach your ears before you even see him. Kyle’s on his stomach, his right leg twisted at an uncomfortable angle. He’s breathing through his fingers, trying to snuff out the terrible cough that wracks his body. Between dry hacks, Kyle calls out for you. Not for your superhero persona. He’s calling your real name.

“Kyle!” you say, weaving through the rubble and crouching at his side. “Thank fuck you’re okay.”

Kyle’s eyes light up, and he exclaims your super-powered alternate’s name. “I didn’t know she could do that,” he says weakly through watering eyes.

Your hands ghost over his body, looking for the best way to lift him without disturbing his broken leg. “We gotta get out of here, man. It can’t be healthy for you to be breathing in all this shit.”

“No!” Kyle shouts all too forcefully. He repeats himself, softer this time. “I— no. Not yet.”

You retract your hands. “This building is going to collapse in on itself. You may be able to survive the outskirts of an explosion, but you won’t survive getting crushed by a thousand pounds of rubble, Kyle.”

Kyle looks at you like he’s a kicked puppy. “My— my friend—” he says your name, “is still in here. We need to find them first.”

Fuck. There’s no time to dance this tango right now. Your voice becomes less firm and more of a plead. “This wing was clear besides you, me, and the crazy child. Your friend is fine.”

“No, they were here with me, then— then they took off when the whole thing started. I don’t know where they went. Please,” a dry throat cracks and wet eyes spill, “I need to find them. I need to know they’re safe.”

You grit your teeth behind your mask. “I’ll come back and look, I promise. But we need to leave right now.”

You shove your hands under Kyle’s body and start to lift, but he struggles away from you with a “stop!” and a swallowed yelp of pain. You lose your balance and tip backwards, falling flat on your ass. Kyle tries to push himself up, but his broken leg gives out, and he crumples right back to the ground. He cries your name out into the ruin.

He peers back at you and your stunned state. “What if they’re hurt?” He flexes his fingernails into the cracked linoleum. “What if they’re scared?”

“Kyle…”

“I’m not leaving until I know they’re okay.”

He’s stubborn. The most frustratingly stubborn person you’ve ever met. You’d have an easier time separating Eric from a family size bag of potato chips. As Kyle waits for you to say something, to try something, and preps himself to fight back, he suddenly finds his stomach being squeezed with anxiety as you instead stay perfectly still. You’re weighing your options. He watches with a dry mouth as you gingerly reach for your neck.

You peel the mask over your head and fight back against the settling dust that scratches at your throat and stings your eyes. Now you’re both sitting still in the hazy rubble, your hair flat against your head and him staring at you with owlish eyes. You silently will him to say something, even if it’s snark. Anything would be welcome as you wait for him to break the heavy silence.

Kyle lowers his head to the floor. “Oh, god…”

“I’m sorry, I should’ve told you—”

“The two people I’ve been crushing on are the same fucking person.”

#south park x reader #south park x y/n #kyle brovlofski x reader

51 notes · View notes

thepaintedlady00 · 7 months

Text

Once again is this what I should be writing? No. 😅😂 Another friend requested I post something for House of Dragon/Daemon and I've had this in the workshop since first watching season 1 so I figured now was as good a time as any to share it. 🤣 It's short and leaves out a lot of other stuff I wrote with it (but I'm evil and like to torture my friends xD). The basic premise of the idea is that the OC, Nyssa, is one of the dragon keepers or whatever they're called, notably the only one Caraxes likes and/or listens to. She grows up with Daemon and Viserys, a "servant" but one they all love - Daemon more than anyone.

NOTE: I do not know a lot about GOT or F&B lore. I know a general timeline and outcome for the story but this does not follow that like at all, and I've taken a lot of creative liberties. I'm a slut for everyone getting a happy/happier ending, so yeah. 🤣 I could see this being a fun fic to explore, but lemme know if y'all like it or whatever xD Enjoy!

"Nyssa!" Daemon screamed, forcing his voice to be louder than the screaming and dead men wailing. He had to find her. He had to get her out of there. "Nyssa!" He cried out again. Gods dammit, woman, answer me! Below him, Caraxes bellowed as if calling out for her as well. He bathed the Crab Feeder's men in fire, the desperation woven between the two of them slowly building. "NYSSA!"

"DAEMON!" His whole being tingled at the sound of her voice as it cut through the darkness and smoke.

He breathed, and Caraxes breathed with him. "NYSSA!" He called out again, urging the blood wyrm to step forward in hopes it would help them both spot her.

A flash of her muddy white gown and her disheveled hair appeared from the smoke. She was soaking wet, her dress was held up by her hands as she ran through the bodies of the battlefield, avoiding the fire and the fighting. Terror was etched on her face - terror that was replaced with relief when she finally caught sight of him. Daemon, too breathed out a sigh of relief. I came for you, he wanted to say, but such soft words could wait until she was on dragon back beside him. "Naejot, Caraxes!" He commanded though the dragon had already begun moving toward her.

With his long neck, he lurched forward and clamped his jaw around a soldier who had rushed for Nyssa as she made her way toward his saddle. Nothing would touch her, not while he or his dragon drew breath. Daemon pulled himself to lean over as far as he could, reaching down toward her. She climbed one of the taller pieces of ship wreckage to help make up the difference in height between the ground and the dragon's back. "Take my hand!"

Nyssa struggled for a moment, tentatively leaping on the thin unsteady chunk of wood in her heavy dress. Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks. "Daemon..."

He hushed her quickly, knowing full well she'd insist she couldn't do it and try to tell him to leave her. "Reach!" He ordered. "Or I'll climb down and throw you up."

She huffed but followed his desperate command, jumping once or twice more as Caraxes held off any intruders and blocked incoming arrows with his wing. Finally, he felt her hand in his, the leather of his glove squeaking as he tightened his grip and strained to pull her up. Her nails left indents in his leather as she gripped onto him. Just as he was almost fully sat upright in his saddle, ready to haul her into the space behind him, a sharp pain shot through his shoulder and engulfed his neck in fire.

A scream tore through his throat, and Caraxes’ roar pierced through the chaos of the battlefield. The flaming arrow continued to burn as Deamon looked down at the woman clinging to his arm. Still screaming, he pulled harder, straining to lift her through the pain. Nyssa's feet dragged against Caraxes' side, trying and failing to push herself the rest of the distance. She squeezed his hand and smiled up at him. "It's okay."

"Don't," he growled. "Nyssa!"

"Sōvegon, Caraxes!" She commanded.

The dragons high pitched pur echoed his hesitation. Daemon did not want him to fly. Daemon did not want anything but her safety, but the fire kept burning through his shoulder, and the need to go, to flee, grew greater as the last of the Crab Eater's men fled into the caves, and the archers opened fire once again.

"SŌVEGON!" She screamed, pulling her hand from his and falling back down into the mud.

Caraxes wailed but followed her command as if it had come from his rider. Daemon pulled the burning arrow from his shoulder and braced himself as the wind pulled him back against the saddle, and Caraxes began his ascent. "NYSSA!"

Smoke rushed past his face as they flew above the battlefield once again. From the sky, he couldn't see her, just the blazing fires and the reflection of it on the black water. Daemon forced the chilled air into his lungs and suppressed a sob. He'd failed. He'd failed, and now she was truly gone. His whole body shook as he let the scream tear out of his lungs. Caraxes’ scream covered his own as they retreated back toward the cliffside camp without her.

#daemon targeryan #daemon targaryen #daemon x oc #house of dragons #house of the dragon #house of the dragon daemon #daemon targeted x oc #hod #house of dragon #caraxes

48 notes · View notes

lfghughes · 11 months

Note

could you write something for luke based on kill bill by sza

a/n: i've now been playing this song on repeat for the past couple of days. hope you like it!

This whole staying friends things had been a horrible idea and you had only agreed to it because it meant Luke would still be in your life. Maybe a part of you naively thought that if you remained in his life that eventually he would want to be together again. Guess you were wrong about that because now he had a new girlfriend. Of course he also was clueless to the way your attitude would shift when she was brought up or was around.

You had remained pretty active in his life, you were still a fan of his and he still invited you to his games. You were also close to a lot of the boys on his team but now you felt like you hung out with the boys more than you did with him because he was spending a lot of his time with his new girlfriend. You knew this anger inside of you was unreasonable and you tried to be mature and push it to the side but you couldn’t.

“I heard Luke is actually coming out tonight.” You heard one of the boys say and your ears perked up. Not that you had known anything because he hadn’t messaged you about coming to meet you all. One of the boys had invited you to this hangout and it was fun but you still missed the good old days. It didn’t take long for Luke to show up, his arm around his girlfriend and you did your very best to not roll your eyes. Be mature, you reminded yourself.

This mature thing sucked. You finally understood the saying ‘if I can’t have him, no one else can’ because that is literally what you were thinking when it came to Luke. Not that you would actually physically say that to either of them but you could sure as heck think it at least. “Hey.” Luke told you as he nudged your shoulder playfully as he sat down next to you, his girlfriend sitting on his other side. “Hey.” You replied, keeping it simple and short as you got up from your seat. You needed something to drink and to be far away from him.

You made your way to the kitchen, leaving all the boys to their video games in their little man cave. Maybe hanging out with them is better when Luke isn’t around if this is how you were going to feel the whole time. You grabbed a cup and looked through the fridge for something good. “So you gonna tell me why the hell you just gave me the cold shoulder like that?” Lukes voice came from behind you and you jumped from the surprise of him being in the room.

“I didn’t, I said hey.” You pointed out as you closed the fridge behind you and turned around to look at him. “Don’t act like that’s your normal hello.” Of course he knew you too well, even if he liked to pretend otherwise both of you had dated for a good chunk of time. “Honest truth?” You asked him, irritated at him, this situation, and everything in between. Forget being mature. “Seeing you with your new girlfriend bothers me and I wish it didn’t but it does so yeah, not really in the mood to talk with either of you.” His jaw fell slightly open like you had caught him off guard.

“Don’t worry, I’m going home anyways this night is lame.” You told him with a shrug. “Come on, you don’t have to do that.” But you weren’t going to stick around not after your confession either. You waved off his words and started towards the door. “Have a good night, Luke.”

#luke hughes #luke hughes x reader #luke hughes fic #luke hughes imagine

89 notes · View notes

cuprohastes · 1 year

Text

Lunch In Space Part 5

To be fair, the two Tsin med-tech were being really quite considerate. It's a Tsin thing.

The Tsin eat their honored dead, and thus, the question of whether they could persuade the Human Admin team to let me be dinner was kind of an indicator of high regard.

Either that or the Caf was out of Grottled Greebs and they were snacky.

They also were the techs there to keep the medbay hardware running and not the people who were allegedly treating my case of non-fatal death, so they get a pass on not noticing I was still alive.

The fact I was sitting up without any large chunks falling off told me that the how-to revival guide had been used and nobody had tried throwing hot water on me.

The actual medical team arrived in short order, no doubt alerted by one of the machines that was attached, or possibly by the brief screaming fit from the Tsin.

After an hour or so I was feeling much better, and me and my new tech buddies were shooting the breeze about the station, which had stopped falling apart.

"It's the space squid." I told them.

They politely indicated that I was obviously deranged.

"No really... Say did they bring in all the stuff that was with me? There were a couple of busted batteries."

"I dunno. I guess?" Said one who I'd decided to call Gnax, since that was what he introduced himself as. The other was Gwingbit, by which I determined they were a small male and a small female. Large females traditionally get descriptive names like Walks-In-Sunlight, over in Admin.

Gnax pulled out a tablet and held it in his upper right hand and checked. "Yeah. We grabbed everything in case... you know."

In case it turned into an inquest.

"Sure but uuuuh, you really need to grab those batteries before they get recycled, they may still have evidence - the same thing that got the station got me".

Gnax scampered out eagerly. I got the feeling he was excited to be part of the big story and that his day-to-day wasn't very interesting. While he did that, Gwingbit sidled closer. For someone who looks vaguely like a four armed pangolin with ears way too close to their nose, the body language is often surprisingly human.

"So uh, you know Strong-Like-Sunlight?" She said.

"I cannot say I do... or," I said getting a suspicion, "I might not know that name?"

Gwingbit muttered, "Dave The Human".

Oh right, Dave's actually a Large Female - Not that they're much bigger than the Small females. The names don't really translate well, so it's a sort of... For Dumb Humans label. Tsin have four genders, and I have very politely never asked about how that works.

I never thought of Dave as anything but one of the Daves, but from what I know, I suspect she's actually kind of all that and a purple breadroll by Tsin standards.

"Oh, I'll tell her you said hi!" I told Gwingbit making her day, and then clammed up because Gnax trundled back with a cart, upon which were the smashed batteries.

I had a vague memory of trying to feed my space squid one before going under.

The induced hypothermia pretty much conserved my oxygen and power past the projected point of death, but reading between the lines, everything was tapped out by the time the rescue drone caught up. I got lucky.

We peered at the batteries, and the two Tsin made subtle "crazy human" gestures at each other, so I grabbed one and peered into it. Nothing.

I picked up the other... well well! I dug my thumbs in and eased the already split case open, and lo and behold, there was my little buddy the space squid, tentacles curled, evidently napping after having snacked on the good stuff.

Gnax said something that the translator declined to provide a translation for but it was probably "oh snap" or "Gosh!".

"Who's the crazy human now, huh?!" I said with glee then screamed and dropped Squiddy because he just unfurled and tentacled my fingers a bit.

He tucked and rolled and we stuffed him in a plastic storage tub. I dropped the battery in and then we all looked at each other and felt dumb because this guy and his friends had eaten the station apart, so maybe a little plastic tub was not the impermeable barrier we hoped.

Squiddy on the other hand explored a bit, using it's little silvery tentacles to pet around the tub while we watched and made videos, then went back to nibbling the splayed open battery.

We could see the little grinder it was using to snarf down little flakes.

I was very glad it was a dry battery or we might have had a nasty leak.

And about then, Raxy came screaming in.

You ever heard an Atrix screaming? Not reccomended. For a start, when you see a little guy on his own, it means that things are bad. And I knew Raxy so this was going to be something bad happening to someone I knew.

I knew it was Raxy, he was still wearing his jumper. I - in my spiffy paper pants and shirt - leapt off the bench and almost twisted an ankle.

"Where's Gondy?!" I screeched and Raxy grakked at me, about a tenth of which I got, and hit turbo mode, doing a u-turn and heading out.

I am a highly trained EVA specialist. I can tell a "Timmy fell down the Well" scenario, and I was already moving.

"Call the emergency response team" I yelled as I hurled after the small lizard. There was only really going to be one thing this could be - Gondy was hurt or in trouble.

Three turns and a sprint later he hit one of the bulkheads to a damaged section. The airlock was closed, but through the window I could see Gondy floating just beyond the airlock door on the other side. She was feebly pawing at her helmet which... Grak in a basket, it was cracked and leaking!

I yanked the lever for the airlock, closing the far door and crash equalised the pressure, hauling the door open before the atmosphere had stopped being misty and ploughed in, bare-foot into the freezing cold room to take a closer look.

I was sure Gondy was still alive but I could see she was in a bad way. I couldn't tell if it was an impact or one of the space squid.

"Where's the emergency team?!" I screamed - Gnax was screaming into his tablet and Gwingbit was hauling the emergency cart towards us.

Well, clearly this was not going fast enough and given the fairly traumatic colours Raxy was displaying, he shared my opinion.

I looked him in the eye and said with a calmness I didn't feel; "I'm going out." And then scooped the little guy up and bowled him out the airlock and pulled the door shut, panted deep and hard while I braced... and blew the atmosphere.

OK so things got unpleasant fast. When you crash dump the air out of an airlock, it vents both up and and down from the station, not out the door.

It takes about ten seconds and then the door lock releases and it automatically opens - It's designed on the assumption that if you just pulled the lever for an emergency vent, you really need to get out fast. Think Fire.

Anyway about now my hands were swelling up, and it felt like I was drowning - Pretty much the case since I was screaming, and my lungs were filling with a froth, which itself was expanding and evaporating.

Top tip: Don't try and hold your breath when you depressurise. It will kill you even worse than vacuum exposure, and that's saying something.

In low pressure, water boils and freezes at the same time and I was exhaling all the water that had been keeping my tissues nice and plump.

You don't want to know what it felt like on my eyes. Or my skin.

About now I had maybe thirty seconds before I was dead. Maybe half that before i lost the ability to move.

I lunged and wrapped my arms around Gondy's leg, hauled her into the airlock by yanking back as hard as I could.

As she slid in and the gravity field hooked her she hit the floor and slid... I already was staggering over, mostly blind and kind of hooked my forearm around the big emergency lever: Designed for anyone in a spacesuit to operate: Thank my lucky stars it was, because my hands were swollen up too far to use my fingers.

I wondered why I was still screaming, and realsied the door was shut and the air was flooding back in. I yawped like crazy to equalise the pressure on my ears, tongue swollen up kind of hilariously. I mean I'd laugh but I was having problems breathing around it. Come to think of it, it might be because I just blew out a lot of tiny blood vessels in my lungs too. I wondered if my lungs might be filling with blood.

The inner door opened to show two horrified Tsin. I walked past them and then passed out mid step.

When I woke up, I felt like I'd been sand blasted and there were a lot of tubes in places that didn't normally have tubes.

There's a joke about nurses installing new holes in you if you're not polite and at some point I must have said something bad about coffee, because someone had come along and punched an exciting number of new orifices into me.

I also had a fanclub.

My two adoring Tsin were practically glued to my side, and Gwingbit was making those soft little chirps which is the Tsin way of beaming so wide the top of your head comes off.

"You guys really are space orcs!" She squeeped. "Nobody believes it. you walked into a vacuum, like..." she waved. "If I didn't have the video, they'd never believe it! You're like a... a... I don't know! In one day you got hit so hard it tore the docking rail off, then you discovered the things that ate all the seals on the modules... And then you ran out of air and got frozen and just got up from being dead. And and and then you walked into space and just grabbed Atrix..."

"She's called Gondolier Dottirsdottir. Picked it this morning" I rasped. Wow. This morning? Less than 10 hours ago.

"... and Strong-Like-Sunlight came in to see you..." Gwingbit added. Ah. There we go.

They saved Gondy. Her helmet got cracked by high velocity crap that punched through the wall, stunning her and giving her a slow leak. I don't know how much longer she had but when they got her helmet off, she'd already taken some damage to her eye and face.

Luckily, not more damage than we can deal with, though she was blind in one eye for a month.

I got off lightly! My skin peeled off like a sunburn and I had to spend time on a ton of steroids and on extra oxygen since I slightly freeze dried most of my lungs and throat.

As for the space squid? As near as we can tell they're a Von Neumann machine. They mine, replicate and use a distributed network. They might even be smart, if you get enough together!

When they hit the station they just saw a big lump of something useful and started by stripping out all the most useful things they could find. Which largely was the stuff that held the place together.

There's a frequency they don't like. They poured off the station like you wouldn't believe once we blipped it at them. Who figured that out I don't know.

As for me? Now I just have to live with everyone wearing t-shirts that say "EVA 43: Just Going Out."

They couldn't have used my name?

#HASO #humans are space orcs #humans are deathworlders #Humans being weird little guys #EVA 43 #Lunch in space #Lunch in space part 5 #atrix #tsin

92 notes · View notes

saintsofwarding · 10 months

Text

WE SHALL BE MONSTERS

Banner by @keltii-tea

Chapter 26: A Lost Cause

Heisenberg's boots slammed into stone. The impact rang through him, echoing into the snowy darkness. He heard Mia's too-fast breathing, felt her warmth against him, her arms hooked around his neck, her face pressed to his scruffy cheek.

After a beat, her arms slid free, and she stood on her own, by his side in the darkness.

Around them spread the pit. They stood on a chunk of broken fortress, red brick seared black from the force of the bomb. Past its edge rang empty air, the depths of the crater. Where they stood, moonlight illuminated well enough to see, but in those depths there was nothing, no trace of light. Just the echoes of lycan snarls, the occasional clatter of falling stones, a deep, subsonic rumble that might have been rock shifting, might have been something else.

Water rushed close by, a gout pouring from a gap between two fallen pillars. It spackled Heisenberg's face with cold mist as he strode to the edge of the platform to shine his hip flashlight down into the dark.

It yawned below, endless and absolute. Mist and fog and a kind of grimy haze unfurled around him; each inhale stung with cold, and mold, and the smell of a place long-since removed from the sun. Usually, a big pit full of garbage was Heisenberg's idea of a perfect vacation. Less so right now. Chalk that one up to circumstance.

"I guess that's where we're headed," Mia muttered.

"Guess so."

She sniffed. "In sickness and in health, right?" she said, with a hiccuping little laugh. Then, in a kind of rush- "God, I miss him."

"Yeah?"

"Everything," she pressed. "Everything about him. You know- when I first met Ethan we were just a couple dumb college kids and I..."

Her laugh softened. "I thought he was unbelievably boring."

"Heh. No kidding."

"It was at this house party I didn't even want to be at, and he was in the corner with a red solo cup, and he was dancing to the music in the straightest way possible, I mean-" She demonstrated, holding herself stiffly while she bobbed her head and tapped her thigh in time. "But I didn't know anyone, and I ended up in the corner of shame with him."

"Let me guess. Love at first sight?"

"No!" she snorted. "It took like...three more accidental meetings before he awkwardly asked me to go get coffee, and he turned the brightest shade of red I've ever seen. And it was easy from there. Being with him. It was good. It was so, so good."

Her expression was lethal, like the sun was shining on her face. Hard not to notice her beauty, now, even through the hard days of grime and bruises and exhaustion.

"It crept up on me," she said. "Love. Little by little. That's how he was. You don't think about it, and then you realize what he's done. What he's been doing, all along. What he'd do for the people he cared about."

Her brief look of joy, lost in memories, faded.

"It was the big stuff I missed most, at first," she went on. "But now...it's the little stuff, really, you know? Redfield shuttled me from safe house to safe house after you took Rose, and I thought at first it would be a relief. Nothing to remind me of them, changing scenery, all that. But it's funny how losing someone works. You don't run away from it. The world remakes itself into the shape of that person."

She lifted her face, her profile limned with the red moonlight.

"He'd play piano, sometimes," she said. "Late at night. He always said he wasn't any good. But I'd stay up and listen without him knowing. I'd listen until he was done. Every time."

"He probably knew," Heisenberg said.

A faint smile touched Mia's face as her eyes turned, slowly, to rest on him. Heisenberg felt the weight of her gaze, its soft intensity, like she'd reached up to take his face in her hands.

"How long until dawn?" she asked.

"Hour, maybe."

"Then we're burning time." She cocked her rifle, checked its sights, gave a short nod. "Into the dark."

"And let's hope it doesn't fuck us."

The first few lycans jumped them as they skidded down the scree of broken masonry on the far side of the platform. Classic lycans, hairy wolf-men with makeshift weapons. Mia's rifle spat; Heisenberg crushed a couple skulls with his hammer. His Cadou wriggled inside him, sluggish as it struggled to metabolize the suppressant drug he'd been shot with. He kept his awareness engaged, but metal didn't sing; no hum or crackle of electricity. For the time being, he'd have to do this thing without the use of his power.

Fucking touche. Miranda had given him his powers, had twisted his body into a vessel for them. Typical that now he'd have to fight her without their help. He imagined her face, coldly beautiful. Her smile of calculated triumph.

Show me what you can do now, Little Karl.

Go on. I'm waiting.

One of the lycans lunged for him; he smashed it aside with particular force, splatting it against a block of cracked stone that still bore the paintings of dolorous, long-faced saints, rendered in faded blues and reds. Lots more red, now.

He twisted as gunfire cracked over his shoulder: Mia. The next lycan crumbled apart, its head and chest blown into chunks.

"I had it covered," Heisenberg drawled, shouldering his hammer as he flicked a fragment of crystal off his lapel.

"Uh-huh." Mia scanned the darkness, rifle trained outside their circle of light; howls echoed through the fog, but nothing leaped out at them immediately. "Anything here look familiar to you?"

"Nothing looks familiar to me, sweetheart, this place got put through a meat-grinder."

"That's not what I mean." She huffed a sigh. "I saw the explosion from the chopper. It...it went off in midair, not on the ground. The megamycete had lifted itself free of the cave system. If it blew aboveground, not below, the, uh- the-"

"Chunks?"

"...Sure. The chunks would have rained down on this place. Crushed it."

And Ethan below, Heisenberg thought. Mia must have come to the same conclusion, judging by the haunted look in her eyes.

"Your point?" Heisenberg prompted.

She gave her head a little, annoyed shake. "My point is that maybe there's something intact. Down below."

She pointed further into the pit. "Part of the old fortress, part of the old ceremony site...a cave system...I don't know."

"Could be."

Mia cocked her gun. The snap rang through the fog. "Let's find out."

The haunted look was gone as soon as it had come; now, Heisenberg saw the fever light of determination fill her gaze. That determination must have been what had allowed her to survive all these years, even with Miranda's ghost rattling around in her skull.

Had she known what it was at first? Or had she chalked it up to trauma, PTSD, what the fuck ever?

Of course, she was no stranger to voices in her head. She'd survived Dulvey, too. Three years under Eveline's control, three years of fighting the horrors inflicted on her by the child she'd helped mold into a monster. You had to emerge from that unfathomably strong, or completely insane. As Heisenberg followed her down the crumbling, makeshift pathway, spiraling deeper and deeper into the darkness, he wondered if she hadn't emerged as both.

More lycans. From all directions. They hit fast, hit strong. The smell of rot thickened in the air as Heisenberg and Mia descended, and between the bursts of claws and fangs and gunfire pound, Heisenberg caught sight of the various makeshift dwellings the lycans had fashioned from bits of the village, stacked stones, animal skins, antlers and gnawed bones. Even crude ornaments, dangling from entryways, crow feathers and pebbles, vertebrae and chunks of crystal.

What god did the lycans worship? Their memory of Miranda, and the Black God? Or some eldritch thing birthed from the dregs of their hive-mind, the kind of god only a feral predator could dream up?

Eyes glimmered from caves formed from collapsed pillars; one lycan, massive and musclebound, wore scraps of what looked like scavenged Soldat Panzer exoskeleton, a walking biomechanical wonder.

What an enterprising lad. Shame he had to die.

That was a group effort- Heisenberg swept forward and with a colossal swing of his hammer, smashed the front plate of its helmet off, exposing a scarred-up face twisted with rage. Mia sprang under his arm and delivered the coup de grace in the form of a bullet to the gob. As it slumped to the side, raining in shards into the darkness below, Mia paused, breathing hard, scanning their surroundings. Heisenberg did the same, but there was nothing. More lycan dens, more broken masonry, more blocks of cracked stone wreathed in mist.

A chorus of growls and snarls, the screech of claws in stone, scrabbled somewhere behind them. Mia pushed off; Heisenberg followed her. She was in charge, now, a woman on a mission. Her head down, she ducked under a gateway formed of blocks of fallen stone and into a narrow channel beyond, a ravine formed of rubble. Lycans advanced. She sprayed an arc of bullets, her lips drawn back from her teeth. When one collapsed at her feet, wounded, still crawling toward her, she drove her boot onto its head, crushing it to the dirt.

"Come on!" she yelled at Heisenberg, a few meters behind her, and headed into the fog again. "There has to be something- we just need to keep looking!"

"Mia," Heisenberg muttered.

"Don't you dare say my name like that," Mia snapped, glancing back at him. "He would do this for me. He...he already did this for me. I have to keep looking." "I know-"

"Then keep up!"

She rounded a corner and almost ran head-first into a knot of lycans. She stumbled back; her rifle came up, muzzle flash illuminating the fog in one, two, three bursts. Crystal shattered, bone reduced to hissing pulp under the anti-mutant rounds. Mia's scream filled the air as the lycans fell, as she demolished the next wave, and the next.

They were coming, and in force; Heisenberg glanced up at the ring of glimmering green eyes, the bared fangs, the rusty metal and pieces of broken antler clutched in clawed hands. With a little shake of his shoulders, he waded in. His hammer swung through the flashes of gunfire, through Mia's howl of rage as she fought them back, on and on until the air was as thick with gore as it was with fog, a bloody mist that clung in a pinkish sheen to Heisenberg's coat and dripped down from his hat brim.

The last of the lycans crumbled apart, ribs gaping to the sky. Mia stared at it, panting, eyes white-ringed and bright. She slumped against a block of ancient brick, closing her eyes.

"Mia," Heisenberg said, approaching her. He reached out for her arm. A gash had sliced through her sweater- a lycan's claw swipe- and bled freely down the thick material.

She rounded on him with a gasp, lifting her rifle. Its barrel knocked him in the middle of the chest; he didn't flinch.

"Do you understand?" Mia said. "I have to keep looking."

"I know."

"He...he's dead because...because I didn't tell him, because I...lured him there..." Her rifle barrel dipped. She shook her head back and forth, glazed and manic. "If...if I hadn't, he would still be alive. He would still be-"

"Eveline did that. Right? Not you."

A sob choked her. "You don't get it. It doesn't matter." She shoved back from him, stumbling through the rubble. "It doesn't matter. I-"

She drew a short breath. "I..."

She blinked.

"You what?" Heisenberg said.

"I recognize that," Mia said, staring over his shoulder.

Heisenberg turned. It reared through the devastation: part of a gateway, attached to a short, broken flight of steps. Heavy, blocky, chiseled from red-brown rock. The same bedrock the village had been built atop; the same stone he'd stared at for countless hours while Miranda indoctrinated him, or sliced into him, or rummaged around in his insides, trying to perfect him. He remembered the flicker of flame-shadows off its surface, the play of flashlight beams on its distant walls.

"Shit," Mia breathed.

She moved past Heisenberg and toward the gateway. It listed to one side, half-sunk into the earth, but it was still connected to something. Mia vaulted onto the steps and climbed up, pulling herself onto the lip of the gateway and balancing atop it to peer inside. Heisenberg followed, setting the head of his hammer against the frame, staring in after her.

Beyond-

A narrow cleft of darkness breathed frigid air across them.

"This was the entrance to the lab," Mia murmured. "I remember from when she brought me here. I remember thinking...it looked beautiful. Like an ancient temple. Something from a dream..."

"Yeah, well, bet she broke you of that opinion real fuckin' fast."

Mia sniffed, scrubbing her bloodied palm over her face. Heisenberg could hear her heartbeat, fast as a hare in a trap's. He knew what she was thinking, as much as if they shared a hive mind themselves. Miranda's lab had been built right below the ceremony site. The caves, too. The hallowed cathedral in the earth, the inner sanctum of the Black God.

Ethan had died right above the caves, and if they were still, in some way, intact, and the whole place had fallen in...

Well.

Mia was silent. No big surprise. Few words sufficed when staring down at the tomb of a loved one.

Heisenberg glanced at her.

"You gonna stand there all night?" he said.

She gave a small shudder, as if bracing herself, then shook her head. "No." And without another pause, she stepped over the edge and dropped into the darkness below.

Heisenberg was right behind her, clambering down the three-meter incline and into the passageway beyond. The cavern stretched beyond, a hallway chiseled of that same bedrock stone, torch brackets set into the walls, the floor scattered with chips of stone and a decade's worth of dust. Great cracks seamed the walls, but the place was intact, relatively speaking, the entire hallway tilted downward at a sharp angle.

In the explosion the entire cavern system must have just fallen into the earth, the tons of rock above it burying, yet also preserving, it. Like a mausoleum. As Heisenberg took a deep breath of the still, damp air, he smelled a familiar trace of incense, rich spices and musk winding its way deep into his skull, illuminating the century of memories locked within.

How many times had he walked this hallway? How many times had he strode between enshrined saints, hammer dripping with their devotees' blood? A traitor in their midst, an impostor saint, a false prophet's mongrel. They stared down at him now, statues of long-dead holy men anointed with dust, with the crystallized remains of their dead god.

He thought of Ouroboros' files on him, the rote, dry facts of his unnatural life that Mia had offered to him, and that he had refused. If the devout were right, these saints had seen those years, too, had whispered the litany of his life to the Black God itself, so it might dream of him forever. Did they remember him now, all the things he'd done, who he truly was, even if he didn't?

Didn't matter. Fuck them. Their god had demanded death, and if Heisenberg knew one thing, it was that everyone got what was coming round to them.

Mia's breathing quickened as the caves sloped down, and down, as they climbed over a stream gushing from a crack in the cave wall, as her boots crunched on broken glass, and crystal, and the remnants of a shattered gilt icon.

And when Heisenberg's flashlight beam struck the bolt-studded wood of a door, her gasp was painful, a blade-edge rasp on the edge of a sob.

It was warped in the broken frame, but as Heisenberg and Mia alike set their weight against it, it juddered open, spilling a cloud of dust and light into the broken space beyond.

Miranda's lab, Heisenberg thought.

The remains of her lab, anyway, the vaulted chambers where she'd conducted her personal experiments well-away from the eyes of the villagers. Couldn't have them believing she was capable of anything less than sorcery, after all. A column of ruddy moonlight filtered down from a rift in the cavern roof somewhere high above, filling the ruins with a bloody pall. A shelf of shattered specimen jars, each filled with a lump of crystal that had once been a Cadou, leaned drunkenly against a collapsed heap of brick wall. Shreds of decomposed papers and files were scattered like leaves; Heisenberg scuffed aside a damp-spotted photograph of Moreau without his overcoat. Crushed tables, and broken glass, and cell bars bent and warped from the bomb's heat. Everywhere, calcified roots burst from walls and floor, crushing the lab into a nearly-unrecognizable mess.

Above all loomed the broken remains of a statue. One of the Four Kings that had once ringed the ceremony site. His melancholy face was blackened on one side, a point of his crown snapped off at the root.

This was the ceremony site, Heisenberg realized, collapsed inward, crushed into this cavern space. He sent his awareness, all his enhanced senses, into the darkness. Searching for a trace, a flicker of hibernating essence, of a mutant in stasis.

Silence.

"Ethan?" Mia called. She pushed forward, stumbling over the calcified roots. "Ethan? Are you there?"

She bent and began to dig through the rubble with her bare hands. Stone clattered; dust billowed, thick and choking. "He's...he's got to be here...could he have regenerated? Like the others? Ethan!"

Her voice rang over the distant rush of water, the sound of crumbling stone, echoing from deeper inside the ruins. Heisenberg picked his way after her as she dug her way on, as she clawed at the broken masonry, her eyes wild, her entire body shaking.

"I know he's here," she said. "Heisenberg, you've got to...you've..." She took a sharp breath, jagged and choked. "He'll be so glad to see you. You saved Rose, after all- you're gonna..."

She cut off as she bent to drag aside a slab of flagstone floor. "We're all going to be a family again. Just like I planned. You'll see. You'll see..."

She trailed off. The echoes of her voice rang away and away, fading into dusty silence. Heisenberg caught up to her, watching the back of her head, the rise and fall of her shoulders.

Before her, the column of moonlight glimmered off milky crystal.

Ethan's body lay at her feet.

He was broken. One arm missing, shattered off at the shoulder. His face had cracked down the middle, his single remaining eye closed. He knelt there, head lowered, his body half-buried, his hand clasped to his heart.

The crystal there had warped in strange, intricate patterns. In this light, they almost looked like roses.

Mia made a small sound. She edged forward, one step, another.

"Is he..." she whispered. "Is...is there..."

"No, Mia," Heisenberg said. Weary, weary. "There's...nothing. Nothing left. He's gone."

She reached out with a trembling hand. "It's okay, baby." She smoothed it over his cheek, thumb tracing his lips. "It's okay. I found you, didn't I?"

All at once, she fell to her knees, holding his face, holding him. Her shoulders curled in; she shook under the weight of her tears. Terrible, wracking, like they'd been torn from deep inside her. She buried her face in the broken crook of Ethan's neck and sobbed, her hands in white-knuckled fists, clinging onto his body as if that would prove enough to bring him back.

***

Mia's sobs wound down into silence, and the hush crept in. Still she held him. Heisenberg leaned on his hammer, eyes lowered, watching the dust dance in the moonlight.

Saints and gods, sacred words whispered in the dark. There was nothing holy here anymore. Nothing sacred. All of it had died with Ethan, with his last kiss pressed to little Rose's head. All of it was gone with him.

At last, Mia let Ethan's body go. She crawled away, into a corner of the rubble, where she sat, slumped over her knees, staring into nothingness.

"I think part of me always knew," she said after a while. "All this time. All these wasted years." She gave her head a little shake. "I was so stupid to think I could save him. To think I could make this all better, make all this go away. I already got my chance for that."

Heisenberg made himself speak. "Yeah, you did."

She closed her eyes, bowing her head.

"Doesn't mean he loved you any less." Heisenberg approached her. "Doesn't mean you get to give up now."

She laughed, emotionless. "Too late."

"No. No." He swooped to one knee at her side, grabbing her face in his hand. He turned her head, away from Ethan's body, toward him. "No, Mia. You don't get to. Because if you do then so do I. You understand?"

He gave her a shake. He felt her tremble under his glove, her face so close to his he could see the tears clinging to her lashes, the blood spackling her mouth.

"You don't give up, Mia," he said. He ran his thumb over her lips, taking the bloodstains with it. "I'm not gonna let you."

Slowly, he released her face. His fingertips left red welts against her skin. "We might have failed Ethan," he said. "But Rose is still out there. And we. Won't. Fail. Her."

She blinked. A flutter of lashes. Then something seemed to leave her. Mia's head slumped forward, against his chest, one hand curling into his shirt, pulling herself closer, against him. The other brushed the scar crossing his throat, the scruff at his jaw, a lock of dirty gray hair.

Heisenberg hesitated. She was so warm against him. He felt the pressure of her breathing on his skin. The gentle pulse of her heartbeat.

Another long moment of silence, of dust and ruin around them. Just two horrible people, kneeling together in the dark.

Then he lifted his hand and ran it, slowly, over her hair. It was just as filthy as his. Something kind of sweet about that.

"I think I already failed her enough," Mia murmured, as he stroked her head. "Ethan...Ethan would want me to live. To keep fighting."

"Yeah, probably."

"Are you gonna be any more comforting than that?"

"Sweetheart. We've spent the past few days in each other's fine company. Surely you know better by now."

"Right, right, fine."

"Besides. We still have enemies, even once the other Lords deal with Ouroboros," Heisenberg went on. A snarl entered his voice. "Don't you want the chance to destroy that bitch Miranda for good after what she did to you?"

"You're such a bad influence," Mia told him. "Ruining all my aspirations toward achieving a moral high ground."

"Cool your jets, Winters. You managed that all by yourself." He pressed his forehead to hers for a moment, then pulled her to her feet. "Any bright ideas on how we can deal with that big, bad artillery unit topside?"

A dark light entered Mia's eyes. "I'm sure I can think of something."

She pulled from his hands and went to Ethan's remains, kneeling once again at his side. The moonlight filled its facets, made it seem to glow softly from within. Mia brushed her hand over his crystallized hair, as if to straighten it. She clasped his hand, stroking her thumb over the ridge of his knuckles.

"Goodbye, my love," she whispered to him, and leaned forward, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "I promise I'll come back for you."

***

Another burst of flames lit the sky as Heisenberg and Mia emerged from the crater depths. Even down here, the air smelled like ashes, cutting over even the overwhelming reek of lycan and rotting flesh.

"What's your power situation?" Mia asked.

Heisenberg splayed a hand, then shrugged, the movement accentuated by the hammer propped on his shoulder. "Still suffering from projectile dysfunction."

"Of course you are. Ugh..." She was checking over her weapons, taking stock. "Shit. I'm almost out of ammo."

"Then make what you've got count."

She glanced up at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed, dark circles so pronounced her face had a faintly cadaverous appearance, a new sharpness. Something inside her had set, and hardened. He heard it in her voice, too. "If I can get to that lab with the lycans, there's gonna be an antidote. It should get your Cadou metabolizing fast enough to work through the suppressant."

"Uh-huh." He'd barely heard her after she said the words lab with the lycans. "Now there's an idea."

"I'm almost afraid to ask."

"Are you, though?" He grinned at her. "I'll explain on the climb up."

Another artillery shot blasted the skies as they reached the lip of the crater, Mia sporting a couple new scratches courtesy of the lycans. If she was in pain, she didn't show it. She scrambled to a rock shelf behind a copse of trees and crouched down, rifle at the ready like some kind of black ops guy from one of the shitty action movies Heisenberg had binged with Rose.

He ambled behind her, squinting over his glasses at the camp. With Regan and company gone, the amount of soldiers was cut down significantly. Still, he could see the black-armored figures ringing the artillery, moving in and out of the prefabs, keeping the lycans back from the fence as, above, the Rose monster dived and strafed through the clouds, the pressure of its wingbeats driving spikes of pain through his head.

Well, fuck me, he thought, a little impressed despite himself. Somehow, the artillery fire was keeping her back.

And maybe something else was, too.

Keep fighting, kid. I'm coming for you. I told you I would, didn't I?

Still, Ouroboros knew what they were doing when it came to holding off giant flying bioweapons. And he had little doubt Regan had left orders to shoot them both in the head if they showed their faces in camp without Ethan in tow. And he wasn't about to suggest Mia bring his corpse back up to use as protective coloration.

Well. He might have. Her face if he did would be something to behold. But right now, it would only waste time.

"There," Mia whispered, pointing. One of the lycans had wriggled partway through a gnawed gap in the fence; a bullet drove it back, and it hightailed, but the loose scrap of fence lingered. "Through there, and to the lab."

"After you."

Mia gave herself a little nod- then darted. She streaked through the shadows, little more than a flicker of movement, a scatter of snow, ducking and rolling through the fence before the artillery unit's searchlight swept the area. Heisenberg shook his head in approval and followed, somewhat less gracefully, shoving his shoulders through the fence and into the camp in a clatter of metal. Fuck this, he thought, grinding his teeth. The second he got his powers back, he was taking this whole goddamn camp and crushing it like a car compacter.

Pressing into the shadows cast by an old house, he and Mia watched the flurry of movement in camp. Soldiers trooped by; a temporary munitions stand had been set up alongside the Maiden of War, gunmetal and carbon-fiber at odds with the crystal growths and painted wood surrounding them. The heat from the artillery unit shimmered in the air, melting the snow into a glassy sheen over the ground below.

Heisenberg eyed the artillery, assessing it with a flick of his eyes. Simple enough. A lot like the ones he'd spent decades playing with back at his factory, mounting them on anything stout enough to hold them purely for the fun of seeing how the vehicle in question held up under fire. Pop a couple wires here and there, and the whole weapon would be dead in the water.

First things first. He jerked his head toward the lab with brows raised.

"Hang on," Mia whispered. She stared toward the group of Moreau-aficionados still huddled on one side of the square. They had all joined hands and were singing in old-tongue, some ancient prayer to the Black God for protection. "We need to get them out."

"Seriously?"

"Yes!" she hissed. "Moral high ground, remember? Shut up and follow me."

They ducked through the ruined house itself and came up behind the prisoners. A punch from Heisenberg launched their guard straight into unconsciousness; he yanked him backward into the house, leaving him in a heap on the kitchen floor.

The girl with the shaved head gasped as Mia shook her shoulder, then blinked, her pale eyes widening so far they looked as if a good slap might knock them right out of her head.

She flung herself to her hands and knees as best she could in her shackles. "Lord Heisen-"

"Shut it," Heisenberg growled. "And listen."

"We're gonna get you out of here. This place is about to turn into a shitshow," Mia said. "You need to get as far away as you can before-"

"-Before I release all the lycans in that lab over there on the poor, unsuspecting fools you see before you," Heisenberg cut in.

The girl's mouth opened in a perfect O. "The lycans?" she echoed.

"That's what I said. Now how do these cuffs-"

The girl babbled over him. "Lord...Lord Moreau prophesied this. He in his infinite wisdom...he saw that this day would pass, that there would come a time when I, and his other loyal followers, would need to walk through the ranks of the monster wolves themselves, and emerge unscathed from the other side!"

She launched into rummaging through the mess of amulets and charms she wore slung about her neck, her skinny fingers trembling. At last she came up with a phial attached to a long piece of cord. It was made of old, yellowed glass, sealed with a gob of wax. Inside swirled a thick black substance.

"This holy relic will protect us against the lycans," the girl said.

"What is that?" Mia squinted at the stuff.

But Heisenberg grinned, with as many teeth as a lycan itself.

"It's spores," he said. "From the Black God. Take too long to get into the science, but this shit's what the megamycete seeded its hosts with to maintain control, stop them from slaughtering one another. Anything with this stuff on them will read as one of the lycans. They'll smell it on us and ignore us."

He chuckled. "Well, well. Moreau, you clever bastard. There's hope for you yet."

"It won't last long, so you must hurry," the girl said. She had already popped the wax and was busy smearing the other cultists with the black spores.

"Nag, nag, nag, buttercup," Heisenberg said. The girl pressed the vial into his hand, holding on for a moment. He tugged his hand away before she might start kissing it or whatever. "Get ready to run along to the reservoir. Your- uh, Lord Moreau's down there."

Elation lit the girl's eyes. "Black God bless you, Lord Heisenberg."

He didn't bother pointing out the Black God would probably rather eat him than bless him. He rubbed a streak of spores on his wrist, then did the same for Mia.

The monster strafed by; it swept through the clouds, the backdraft from its wings blasting through the camp. The timbre of its roars had changed- they now were an enraged, thunderous bellow, each strafe growing lower, lower, shaking the ground like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

Was Miranda winning?

Hang on, Rose.

Shouts filled the air as Heisenberg and Mia burst from the ruined house, Mia peppering the snow with suppressing fire, keeping back the few soldiers who weren't focused on the black-feathered monstrosity circling ever-closer. One of its tentacles lashed down, tearing a gash from the roof of a dilapidated house, then furling back into the clouds. Heisenberg's hammer cracked skulls, shattered firing hands, sent the door guard sprawling aside as they ducked into the lab.

The sterile air hit him like a punch to the teeth, light burning his eyes. The researchers within all sprang to their feet, scrabbling for the peashooters at their belts. Mia stuck her rifle under the first guy's chin.

"Get out of here," she growled.

The gun would have been enough, Heisenberg figured. But Mia's whole look- ragged and bruised and splattered with lycan gore- sure as hell didn't hurt. The scientists scattered. Mia pushed a rolling chair aside and tapped at a computer, its pale light illuminating the lines on her face. Behind them, the rows of lycans clawed at their cages, desperate to get out.

"You got the accelerant?" Heisenberg said.

Her eyes flickered back and forth. "I...I don't see it-"

Shouts echoed outside the lab. Heisenberg leaned alongside Mia. "Come on, it's gotta be there somewhere-"

"I-"

Gunfire pounded the air. Heisenberg ducked over Mia, bringing them both down against the console as the air filled with sparks and the rattle of bullets against metal; the lab door hung crooked, half-torn-away by gunfire. They were coming in.

Heisenberg saw it, now. There was no time. They'd run out of options.

All except one.

Fuck it, he decided. "Mia."

"What?"

"Release the lycans. Then get to the big gun."

"Huh?"

"I'm going after Rose. Fend her off with the artillery so I can draw her away."

"Without your power?"

"I don't need my power for this. I know Rose. And Miranda." He pressed his finger to his temple. "I can fuck with her head just like she fucked with mine. Now you get your ass out the door and into that gun or we're all screwed."

She rounded on him, the small of her back pressed to the console. For a moment he thought she would protest. For a moment he thought she'd try to stop him, spare him, like she'd fought so hard to spare Ethan. Her face was hard, the look in her eyes bright enough to burn him alive.

He heard the hiss of her breathing through her parted lips, made out the tremble of her lashes as her eyes held his.

Slowly, Mia slipped his glasses off his nose. She lifted her face, her knuckles to his chest as she gripped his shirt in both hands, as she pulled him down, as her mouth canted, desperate, devastating, to his.

A hesitation-

A brush of her mouth, a lilt of her lips over his-

And then she was kissing him, and her fingers were tangled in his hair; his hands found Mia's face, her waist, the soft press of her hips into his. Her lips were chapped, were bitter with blood. For a moment he was lost, adrift, nothing in the world but the feeling of her mouth on his, of her grip on him, her knuckles pressed hard to his chest, just over his living, beating heart.

Her face fell from his, her mouth from his, her face brushing his cheek with a rasp of scruff to skin. The cold twined between them again. Heisenberg's heart pounded, his Cadou pulsing in time; pressed to him the way she was, Mia probably felt that as much as she felt everything else. He didn't care. He traced her cheek with his thumb, not wanting to pull away, not wanting to let her go.

"We can still cut and run," he murmured. He cocked an eyebrow. "Last chance."

Mia snorted. She nudged her forehead to his, kissed the delicate skin just under his jaw. All too soon, she pulled back.

"Go," she told him. She returned his shades to his face. "Find Rose. Get her back."

She stood from him, gripping the cage control on the console- a big, red handle surrounded by warning signs. "For Ethan."

Heisenberg gave her a single nod, his hat brim dipping. "See you around," he said. "Winters."

Her small returning smile would stick with him a long, long time. "You, too," she told him. "Karl."

He swung his hammer back onto his shoulder with a clang.

Mia turned the handle.

With the screech of hinges, every cage in the lab swung open at once. The lycans lunged out, a seething tide of matted gray hair and savage, starving eyes, claws and twisted muscle and teeth asnarl. Moreau's spores did the trick- none of them paid any attention to Heisenberg or Mia. As the creatures leaped for the exits, tearing great holes in the prefab walls with tooth and nail, as they hit the Ouroboros soldiers outside hard and fast as a lightning strike, Heisenberg strode out after them, rummaging in his coat for a cigar.

Just like old times, he thought. Practically nostalgic.

By the time he ducked back into the camp, it was in chaos. Gunfire lit the skies, muffled under screams, snarls, feral howls as the lycans clambered atop buildings and vehicles, as they took down commandos three to one. A couple of the beasts tore through the fence, collapsing it under their weight. More lycans surged in from outside, tangling and tumbling over one another in their greed to get in at the fresh meat.

The screams began to die, began to be replaced with the sound of tearing flesh, of bones snapping and crackling from their joints.

Heisenberg lit the cigar with what appeared to be the last of his matches as he left the camp, as he ascended the rise beyond. If he was gonna die today, might as well do so feeling like himself. The cigar tasted a little stale, a little moldy, but it was better than nothing.

Besides. A good Cuban was a good Cuban, and- even better- it looked like it was gonna be a nice morning.

At the edge of the horizon, past the mountains, a faint trace of gold lit the blizzard. Dawn. It illuminated the monster, illuminated the impossible span of its eight wings, the rain of mold sheeting down from them as the artillery fire ceased- gunner dead or tossed out on their ass, courtesy of Mia. As the monster wheeled round, coming back in his direction.

Heisenberg took a deep drag off his cigar, let the smoke twine through his lungs- one last time, heh- then flicked it to the snow and crushed it under his boot.

He lifted his arms to the monster.

"Miranda!" he yelled. "Remember me?"

And in a rush of darkness, the beast that was Miranda, that was Rose, fell from the skies, wings spread, talons open and aimed straight for him.

33 notes · View notes

priceof-freedom · 2 years

Text

Drabble: Tenderness (Bradley Bradshaw x Reader)

Pairing: Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw x F!Reader (Top Gun: Maverick)

Summary: A part of you still couldn’t believe that Bradley Bradshaw asked you out on a date.

Warnings: None

A/N: This is meant as a follow-up to my Rooster x Reader one-shot called “Impact”. It is also part of the larger TGM universe where my other fics exist, so please check those out if you haven’t!

Not beta-read, so errors are entirely my own.

Word Count: 622

TOP GUN: MAVERICK MASTERLIST // MAIN MASTERLIST

Since that day on the beach, you were in a constant state of disbelief.

Bradley Bradshaw asked you out on a date. And you agreed.

The events of that day on the beach kept replaying in your head. Granted, you were unconscious for a big chunk of it, but the moment you kept coming back to was between you and Bradley. There was something about the look on his face that stayed with you: he was determined and steadfast that you say yes. You did, but there was still a nagging feeling inside of you.

You were expecting to receive a text from him to cancel. Or worse, he would come to the Hard Deck and make some excuse to get out of it. Yet, neither of that happened. In fact, no text ever came nor did you see him at the bar. The day of your date arrived, and you were fully convinced that it was all just a joke.

So the plan for the evening instead was to stay in sweats, munch on popcorn, and find a new show to binge.

At about seven, just as you were about to get settled on the couch, a knock disrupted the silence of your apartment. When you opened the door, you were greeted with the sight of Bradley, dressed in another one of his Hawaiian shirts and dark pants, clutching a bouquet of flowers.

You gaped at him: it was like your brain short-circuited and you momentarily forgot how to speak.

Bradley took in your appearance and frowned. “You’re in sweats,” he said, in lieu of whatever greeting he had planned. It wasn’t a question nor an accusation; it was an observation made out of confusion.

“You got me flowers?” you said, that being the only response your fried brain could muster.

“Yeah, you gotta get a lady flowers on a first date.”

“A date?” you repeated foolishly.

“Yes, a date, the one you agreed to a couple of days ago.” The frown on his face deepened further, not fully understanding what was happening in front of him.

You felt yourself heating up and your hands flew to your face in embarrassment. “Oh god, I am so sorry.”

“Did— did you change your mind?”

The tone in his voice gave you pause; it sounded almost uncertain. Peeking through your fingers, you saw his handsome face still with that frown and lips pressed into a thin line. You felt a pang of guilt in the pit of your stomach.

“N—no! I thought you might have changed your mind,” you said, wringing your hands helplessly. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him anymore, shame overcoming your body.

A beat of silence passed and neither of you spoke. The air was quite thick with tension, and you were at a loss of what to do or say next.

Bradley, still quiet, stepped over the threshold of your apartment and closed the door behind him. He crossed what little remaining space there was between you, so close that you could already smell his cologne. With his free hand not holding the flowers, he nudged your chin up to look at him. The moment your eyes met his brown ones, you were taken aback by the tenderness on his features.

When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Do you still want to go on a date with me?”

There it was again: the determination on his face, but this time, mixed with a tender affection that threatened to make your knees weak. All you could do was nod.

The smile he gave you in response was so breathtaking that you could have literally melted into a puddle.

“Good. I promise to make it worth your while.”

A/N: Thank you for reading! I really enjoyed writing these short drabbles. My ask box is definitely open for prompts for headcanons / blurbs!

Please do leave a comment and reblog. 💖

Check out the other stories in this universe:

A one-shot featuring Bob and Doc!Reader, plus the follow-up smutty outtake

A fluffy drabble on Bob and Reader’s first date

A smutty drabble on Bob being called “lieutenant”

Currently, I do not run taglists. I might in the future. :)

#bradley bradshaw #bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw #rooster #rooster x reader #rooster bradshaw #rooster bradshaw x reader #top gun maverick fanfiction #top gun: maverick #fanfic

192 notes · View notes

carnifexa · 1 year

Text

bedroom hcs for jasipereo because I can't hold it in anymore

their dynamic in the bedroom shifts from piper holding the reins and boys rarely initiating anything out of lack of experience to piper holding the reins bcs they enjoy it.

switches all of them. but piper is dom leaning one while jason is sub leaning. leo's surprisingly chill about it, piper had trouble with amount of vulnerability subbing requires, while jason was a bit scared of the control that he had

sex playlists have a place but only after some time together

piper is demanding in hygiene both of herself and her partners. do NOT touch her with these hands, you didn't fucking wash them

(she got experience and she knows she's right)

leo has no problem with this requirement but often forgets about it

jason grumbles but acquiesces even if he sees nothing wrong in fucking right now instead of waiting

jason loves leaving marks just as much he likes having them. bruises, hickeys, scratches, anything.

(may that come from feelings that if they mark him they own him and then if they own him they won't leave him →his abandonment issues showing through? probably but he refuses to talk about it)

he's a rope bunny too, sorry not sorry

has a weak spot on the nape of his neck. generally sensitive neck

was quiet at the beginning, got louder as the time passed

i already said that but he blushes brightly down to his shoulders

a bad case of oral fixation. loves going down on both of his partners. they have a designated pillow that goes under his knees when he kneels

often service tops bcs he likes giving pleasure and hearing leo and/or piper enjoy themselves

has praise kink as well. also loves being on the receiving end of the dirty talk but can't reciprocate

loves and hates edging. he has a short fuse and short refractory period

does NOT like asphyxiation and degradation. will gnaw out a chunk of meat if there's any indication that it's going to happen (result of a very bad experience)

leo has a thing for public and likes to watch/be watched. if there's a chance that they can be caught he will get louder and cum faster. a just making out in a specialized club right in front of the public made him cum. has a thing for being subtly groped in public too.

(is that a byproduct of his fucked up self image where his partners must be ashamed of being seen with him thus them touching him in public is like an acceptance? yeah, but he won't talk about it)

is the one who ties jason up bcs he knows the knots and actually has the patience to all the work first and fuck jason later

dies and explodes everytime piper wears lingerie. it doesn't even have be fancy and/or suggestive, he gets boner from a sight of the pretty bra.

really good with his fingers

can do the deed for a long time but can and will fall asleep without second round

loves and hates overstimulation bcs of this

loud. a talker. won't shut up unless his mouth is busy. he does have an oral fixation too. loves having fingers in his mouth

appreciates hair pulling

fucking hates face slapping. do not attempt unless you want a serious fight with him. it throws him out of the good mood straight into incoherent rage

has a very strong grip and sometimes doesn't control it well and leaves bruises

at first felt bad about it until both jason and piper told him that they like it

piper hadn't much kinks before these two, she was pretty content in domming the fuck out of her previous partners. whatever made them happy was good for her as long as she had control of the situation

at the start she didn't allow any piv sex at all because of her problem with orgasms

she's good when it's her and vibrator/hand but when there's a living dick involved it's like her body forgets orgasms exist

(is that a consequence of her first bad relationship where just letting herself be fucked was easier than saying no? sure fuck it is but she won't talk about it)

they did resolve that particular problem with unholy amount of patience and obscene amount of talking about their feelings

she was happy to learn that actually there's nothing wrong with her she can cum with somebody else involved her ex was just a fucking dick

chronic biter. she's just as bad as jason. leaves scratches too but mostly on accident because she cuts her nails short or gets acrylics

also she got a crumble of somno kink

when all three of them were stuck in this is-this-friendship-or-relationship phase they often ended up sleeping on the same bed somehow

cuddles transformed into two boners poking her in the morning but not being able to do anything about it, or her own, ahem, morning excitement... awoke something in her she didn't know existed

she wasn't happy about it

loves restraining both of them. is the one who overstimulates leo or doesn't let jason cum without her say-so.

started wearing skirts and dresses routinely because of a) jason's habit of eating her out in unexpected places; b) leo's loss of braincells whenever he sees a smidge of a stocking's welt

she's a tease. can and will send leo the photos in the middle of the work day, can and will call jason while jacking off

after fucking she likes to take long bathes. boys tried to partake but she likes them either boiling or ice cold and neither leo nor jason can stand that

previously had mixed feelings about giving head to anyone amab. bad experience made her feel that it was demeaning and whenever she felt pressured to do it she got so pissed several partners ran from her

changed her stance on this only after sometime in relationship and one long honest talk. still doesn't enjoy it the way jason does but now it doesn't feel demeaning and actually, this position allows more control than receiving. after all, what can you do when you have your dick in someone's mouth?

#jason grace #piper mclean #leo valdez #jasipereo #pjo #hoo #the lost trio #dear god i have even more

19 notes · View notes

myers-meadow · 1 year

Text

House of 1000 Corpses AU ch. 6.1: Initiation

Title: chapter 6 Initiation

Summary: Doe Eyes' initiation into the darker part of the family. Shared AU with @immortal-velociraptor and @vincent-sinclair-deserved-better, who Blinky and Selena belong to, respectively.

Wordcount: 2278

Warnings: canon-typical stuff. Gore, blood, grossness, psychological torture, cigarettes. Also: some fluff.

Trying to make chapters smaller so it's less daunting for me to write, so I cut the current chapter I'm working on in two (the thing is already longer than 5k words and I'm still going). Quite a large chunk of this was written weeks ago. Hope you enjoy <3

Divider by firefly-graphics as always.

“What you wanna do with him, princess?” Otis asked, as I finished my braid, leaving the end untied for now. It was greasy enough for it to stay decently enough. His hand that first pet my head, now warmed my thigh. “Take his fingers? His hand? Baby’d wanna scalp him, we can do that too. It’d be fitting.”

“Do you want to use him for a project?” I asked, keeping my voice quiet. The excitement was practically buzzing from Otis as he thought of the numerous ways he could torture poor Neil, but he kept his attention on me.

He hummed. “Don’t think this one’s inspiring me much. So, tell me, what’s your idea? I can tell you have some in that big brain of yours.”

“What you do with him is not up to me, you do as you like anyway.”

Glancing at panicked yet tired Neil did not give me any hope for him. His fate was sealed the moment he set foot in this house.

Otis barked out a laugh. “You’re part of this, whether you like it or not. May as well have some fun with it. Come on, Doe Eyes.”

“Okay, fine, but outside,” I said, playing with the charm on my earring.

After telling him my idea in hushed voices in the hallway, Otis could not contain his grin – and I felt like a true part of the Firefly family, however strange that sounded. Not wanting to see or hear whatever he got up to until it was time for my part in it, I wandered the house to look for chores to do.

“Doe Eyes! There you are,” it was Blinky, who rounded the corner, rushing to get to the attic.

“Blink! What are you up to?”

“Selena said that RJ was trying to catch raccoons, but that will hurt them, so we need to save the them.”

“Ah, I’ll come with. He put traps in the attic?”

After gathering the traps, and making sure neither of us got hurt in the process, we sat in their room with a bowl of sugary cereal.

“I don’t think there’s really any raccoons,” I tried, to make sure they wouldn’t worry, “or we would’ve seen traces of them up there.”

“After all that crawling around, we have to do something fun,” they said, head already somewhere else. Resolutely they set the bowl down on the nightstand. “Baby went through her old make-up, wanna try something out?”

“Yeah, of course. I’ll be your canvas if you like.”

Blinky chatted as they did my make-up, something colourful, in pink and blue. I wasn’t allowed to talk or I’d move my face too much. At the end, they held a mirror up like they would at the hairdresser’s. “What do you think?”

“It’s so pretty, thank you. My turn next? I have an idea.”

“Oh, exciting!” They sat down, kicking their feet since they were short enough for them not to touch the floor.

“Sit still,” I warned, although that was just a formality, a habit. It didn’t matter if it takes a little longer. Dipping the brush into yellow first. I wasn’t practiced like Blinky was, but I used to paint kid’s faces sometimes, on special days at the end of the school year – colourful things.

“There, all done,” I said, trying to hide that I was proud of how good it came out. A yellow-brown butterfly, the one with many gorgeous eyes on its wings. I held the mirror up to show them. “Mein schöner Augenfalter. Do you like it?”

After dinner, it was time to do my part of the idea I had – wanted to give Neil the advantage of darkness. Nerves made my hands tremble and my heart race. I went up the stairs, feeling like each step made terrible noise from how uncoordinated my body felt, then crept in Otis’ dark room, only lit by a strip from the door that I left open to hear if anyone was coming. Neil’s chair was in the middle of the room, his back to me. The knife still stuck in the arm rest of the chair where Neil was sitting. He looked pretty beaten up, cuts all over, some even on his face and I cringed just looking at him. But now was to moment to prove my worth, my place in this family – so I kneeled down in front of the chair and pried the knife from the wood.

“Hey Neil,” I whispered. He was awake, and tried saying something through the rag in his mouth. I held my finger in front of my lips. “You gotta be very silent, okay?”

Pulling the gag down, he coughed and licked his dry lips, trying to croak out words, I shook my head.

“Quiet, or they’ll hear you.”

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like? They’re all downstairs in the living room, except Tiny, he’s in the basement. Can you remember that?” With the knife out of the way, I untied the ropes binding his wrists and torso.

“You’re all going to jail for this,” he managed to get out.

I halted my movements, raising my eyebrows at him. “Do you prefer me to leave you here?”

Neil’s eyes widened as he realised he messed up again. “I mean, you’re with them, aren’t you?”

I shook my head. “I was like you not too long ago,” and I pushed up my sleeve enough for him to see one of the scars, “but it’s fine. Even if I go to jail, it’s fine. Please just get help.”

Neil, impatient, bend down to help me undo the ropes around his ankles. He looked at me then, only nodded.

“There’s a set of car keys by the door or in one of the coat pockets. They have a dog tied outside somewhere. I’m gonna go back downstairs and try to keep everyone there for a bit – wait until I’m down, yeah? Yeah.”

And so it began. I trailed back downstairs, where I made tea with hands that shook so bad I only dared fill the cup halfway. The danger of what I did felt terrible. What if Neil really got away? What if he really went to the police and- the thought of it was too much, making my heart beat a terrible rhythm. Blinky in jail- no, never, that should never happen. Even if Blinky was safe, and Selena too, on reasonable grounds of having been imprisoned, the thought of the rest of the family torn apart and imprisoned like common criminals was a horrifying thought. They had it coming, according to some, perhaps. But no, this family was more than just- than just criminals. They were a family. It felt like they were well and truly above the law, like nothing of the morals and values of the world outside of this house applied to them. And by now, I’m part of this. I’m part of this family. I pulled the tea bag from the mug and left it for later on the counter; time to go to the living room and hope for the best.

Mrs. Firefly, Baby and Blinky occupied the couch; RJ and Ghost must be in RJ’s room. Or walking the dog. Once I reached the living, Otis pulled me to sit with him in the armchair.

“Careful with the tea,” I said, which he ignored. I sat down on the matching ottoman in front of him. Our knees bumped into each other, which only further frayed my nerves.

He leaned forward. “You’re nervous.”

I hummed as I took a first sip of the tea that was still too hot, but I needed the comfort.

“Let’s have smoke,” he said as he stood up, expecting me to follow.

The cold January wind bit my face as soon as we stepped outside. Otis got the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, let me take one first.

He chuckled as he lit it for me and I took a first, big drag.

“Shut up,” I said, before he even opened his mouth.

“Don’t you love a good hunt?” he said, choosing to ignore me. He breathed in deep. “Can already smell the fear.”

“That’s just me.”

He put his smokes away – did he take me outside just so I could smoke?

“Princess, what are you afraid of? It’s not your hide on the line.” His voice was smoother as he talked, pleasant to the ears. As I toyed with the cigarette and looked anywhere but him, he trailed his finger up my arm, teasingly. He steadied my hand, raising it to his face so he could take a drag for himself.

“You’re in a good mood and it’s making me even more nervous,” I mumbled, messing with my earrings. His hand found a spot at the back of my head, underneath the braid, and he pulled it lightly so I’d look up at him as I exhaled the smoke. His unusual amber eyes searched my face, and as he pulled at my hair, that specific spot, it was like a switch flipped. His hold was not tight, but I felt like a puppet, easy for him to manipulate, easy for him to overpower – cruel hands so tender then, so sure of their hold on me. It was an almost a primal, base feeling, something ingrained, something I couldn’t stop. With a soft gasp, my eyes flickered shut as arousal stabbed my gut unexpectedly with each small tug.

“That’s a sweet sound, princess,” he chuckled darkly. “Be patient, I’ll spoil you after I’m done with the Scot.” His breath was hot on my face, and I felt caged by his presence alone. His tongue darted out to wet his lips as he looked to mine. “You can be good and wait for me tonight, yeah?” Then he let go of my hair, and the spell was broken. Shakily, I took a last drag, staring at my boots in the mud.

As soon as I caught a glimpse of Neil’s auburn hair, I retreated to brush my teeth, even though it was rather early. In the bathroom, I stared at myself for a long while, before washing my make-up off. I looked normal. Fine. Just like any other day. It felt like I should be going grey from stress by now, but no, no such thing. A dangerous mood to be alone in, but I didn’t want to worry Blinky, and Baby would just tease me about Otis. I was already halfway down the stairs to the basement, before I realised that it was Tiny I headed to. I knocked and he opened the heavy basement door.

“Hi, Tiny, how are you? Can I stay here for a little bit? You can kick me out any time.”

His movements slow, he stepped aside to let me enter, and nodded to let me know he understood me. He handed me the book on his nightstand, even though Mrs. Firefly said he couldn’t hear well, and gestured me to sit down on his bed and read to him. The story was a simple adventure story, and halfway through, tiny laid down with his head in my lap. Not long after that, his eyes fell closed, and I replaced my thigh with the pillow, hoping he’d continue his sleep.

Immediately as I closed the basement door behind me, being careful with the noise even though Tiny wouldn’t hear, the dread and jitters were back. Right. Neil.

Up the stairs, on my way to brush my teeth a second time – just to stall, I passed Otis’ open door. He noticed me walk by, and went over to pull me inside, a knife in his hand, blood dripping on the floor.

“Nice of you to join us,” he said, grinning smugly. “All thanks to you, Neil and I had a nice time getting to know each other, didn’t we, Neil? Why don’t you say ‘thank you’ to sweet Doe Eyes for setting you free?”

Otis pulled down the gag and Neil spit out a string of profanities so vile, I flinched. “You betrayed me, you fucking cunt-”

Otis, who noticed my discomfort, shoved the gag back in his mouth, but the grin remained on his face. I’d truly done my part, and my stomach twisted itself into knots.

“Oh, Doe Eyes, come over here for a second, yeah, come ‘ere,” Otis opened his arms for me, and feeling lost and sick, I walked around Neil’s chair and right into them. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, then rubbed my back. “You did well, real well. Couldn’t have thought of a better gift.”

“Gift?” I echoed, swallowing the bile in my throat. He released me, turning his attention back to poor Neil.

Otis chuckled. “If you wanna give the knife a try, he’s all yours.”

“No,” I said, voice firm for the first time that day.

Otis shrugged and twirled the knife in his hand. The handle was slippery with blood. “No matter.”

“I’m gonna try to sleep,” I said. “Do you know if Baby still has hers? If not, I can sleep with her if it’s quieter.”

He shook his head. “She’s gonna stretch ‘em out for a while – had a crush on the short one.” With the confidence of a jaguar, he walked around the tied man, seizing me up like he once seized Neil up. His eyes caught mine and it felt like a stab in my gut. “Don’t forget my promise, we’ll play too, tonight. I won’t be long.”

“You know Spaulding will complain if you don’t keep it down; don’t make it too late.”

#house of 1000 corpses #otis driftwood x oc #manon “doe eyes” driftwood #otis driftwood #baby firefly #tiny firefly #blinky firefly #selena “ghost” firefly

30 notes · View notes