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chatsu · 3 years

Text

˗ˋ there you are

genre — angst, fluff (?) warning — mentions of death, grief words — 2,124

notes — it is 3:07 am, and i don't want to come up with a synopsis so, i shan't <3 this is my first writing post,, so uhh, please give me criticism !

violet chrysanthemum — unbearable pain at the thought of losing a loved one white chrysanthemum — reserved for sympathy and remembrance lyra — a constellation, which you can read more about here !

hugging his knees on the pavement, oikawa tooru couldn't help but overhear the faint chitter of loved ones greeting each other, serving as a reminder to why he was lamenting in the first place. a combination of heavy sobs and pleas of a miracle, he had grown used to, yet he still found the letters engraved on the cold stone in front of him almost foreign.

the anniversary of your death was fast approaching. caught in the fast lane of change, tooru has experienced almost every stage of grief. almost.

he remembers a shade of reddish brown framing your corpse. a metallic odour accompanied by tears burning every inch of his face, creating a sickly feeling in the back of his throat, which only multiplied as he released his frustration in the form of bargains.

' if only's ' and ' what if's ' his brittle voice had echoed — temporary truces, in which he begged and pleaded with every god and goddess known to the universe, in an attempt to negotiate his way out of this harsh reality.

from denial to anger, and from bargaining which soon melted into his current state of stark numbness in your absence. the past seemed more alive than the present.

stationed on the 4th, hazy reminders of a once living past seemed to obstruct his path of progression leading to the 5th and final phase of this grieving process that must inevitably follow. acceptance.

tooru is a competitive man. on the court, he is capable of adapting to new environments, examining their playing style, studying each and every player in a matter of seconds and having the ability to draw out their strengths — thus, blending into the team as if he was apart of the original line up.

yet, surrounded by this atmosphere of sorrow and anguish, he stuck out like a sore thumb. even after scrutinizing how others had dealt with this profound feeling of misery, their so called 'methods' were in vain, and he continued to suffer.

his fear of being second best, he now had no chance of overcoming. because as if in a race, tooru was exasperated, struggling to catch up with everyone else.

even the stars are lonely, but at least there were a multitude to keep company, and he couldn't help but envy them. your family, friends, hanamaki, matsukawa, hajime, even takeru had accepted the fact that you were gone, as they smiled fondly, memory sweet with you.

tooru could not remember the last time he smiled — a genuine one, that is. one that isn't plastered on when prompted with the constant ' how are you holding up? '. one that creeps up to his eyes to resemble a crescent moon. one with familiarity and love. one because of you.

the setting sun bathed everything in shades of lavender, painting the flowers propped beside your grave a colour he had wished they were. telling a tale of many consecutive days spent in this location, they bloomed brightly and never wilted away for they were regularly changed with a newer, hand picked bouquet. today, the flowers hadn't the ability to mock him, for today was different.

earlier, under what he thought were unfortunate circumstances, he was left stricken by the lack of purple petals accessible. left with no other choice, he let his fingers fumble along those coloured as snow instead. however, opting for these flowers proved to be difficult, as he realised he was breaking his routine.

because the shadow of the past still hung over, his fear of being second best soon morphed into a fear of change. a fear of everything changing. again, while he still had not adjusted to his scars wounded by time. it was nearing a year since tragedy struck. a year since that decisive moment of change.

but due to a sudden yet short lived act of bravery, tooru chose to cease sewing the seeds of habit, and as of right now, he found himself laying these flowers in their accustomed seat atop the gleaming stone. stems slightly compressed due to his secure grip, but petals remaining untouched. although both were chrysanthemums, the previous batches had been violet, and the current were white, simple as.

it is only when his nephew appears in his peripheral, he is snapped out of his trance, plastering a soft smile to veil his conflicting thoughts. hardly a word is spoken between them as takeru gently places an article of clothing on his lap, then is soon walking off.

leaving tooru with more questions than answers, his eyes shift downwards and widen at the sight of his old aoba johsai uniform folded ever so neatly. at an agonizingly slow pace, his slender fingers start to inspect every nook and cranny of the oversized — on you, not him — jersey. he holds it gingerly for this specific piece of fabric is a memory preserved.

and like a bridge to the past, tooru finds himself traversing along the nostalgic path, illuminated by memories time seemed to have dimmed.

as if the past is burned into his psyche, he still remembers the day you ignored him, well at least tried to.

though your actions were deemed fruitless, as you soon dropped your facade when he eventually caught up to you while you were walking home. mentally cursing yourself for your futile attempts at avoiding him, you had confessed that you were not in fact jealous, but curious as to why there were so many girls wearing his exact jersey. there was an attempt to stifle a laugh, yet one look at the stubborn pout on your face was all it took for tooru to burst out laughing.

"what is so funny?" you had tilted your head with a slight scowl painting your features.

impatiently tapping your foot, you waited for a response, but from his hunched figure and the smack! when he brought his hand to his knee was confirmation that his fit of laughter wasn't going to die out any time soon.

"oikawa" you had puffed, and the use of his last name was enough to get his attention, as he flicked an invisible tear off his face.

dramatically, with his hand latched onto his hip to form his signature stance, his free arm stretched out and squeezed your shoulders.

"they're not mine" he chuckled with a shrug and a smile — smug, yet genuine.

"listen tooru, i'm not dumb. you're the team captain right? the number 1's on the back practically mocked me!"

"may i ask, how many were there?"

"you mean how many were wearing your uniform? hmm i don't know, maybe every single girl i saw cheering?"

"yeah, and do you really think i'd have that many jerseys to give away? iwa-chan would be kicking my ass if i was constantly getting new jerseys!"

moments of silence passed and you figured that he was right, but your stubborn demeanour wasn't going to admit defeat that easily.

"i suppose that it would cost a lot of money, which you don't have, seeing as i was the one who had to pay for lunch yesterday. plus, you uhh, still seem as small as you were in first year so i assume you wouldn't need a change in size"

feigning a gasp, he clutched his heart and claimed that it was his turn to ignore you. snickering in response, he cupped your face and peppered it with kisses until he spoke up again.

"you know, ordering uniforms are pretty common for fangirls. buuut, you don't have to spend a single dime 'cause there's only one i'd like you to wear"

digging into his bag whilst motioning you to lift your arms up, he pulled out his aoba johsai jersey. he quickly put it on you and stood back, admiring how the cloth adorned you — no, how you adorned the cloth. this went on for a while, him staring at you in pure adoration, until his face lit up and he went back to fumbling in his bag.

"here! to fully establish that this is for you and you only, a limited edition, aoba johsai uniform, signed by the oikawa tooru" he beamed, placing the top of a permanent marker in between his teeth and biting the lid off.

his left hand found purchase on your waist as the other was in the midst of signing the front and back of your shirt with his signature. tooru being, well, tooru, he began to embellish the entire fabric in little hearts with ' tooru + y/n 's in large lettering, until he was interrupted by your arms outstretching and pulling him in for a hug. deciding against sulking about not getting to finish his oh so lovely drawings, he instead chose to reciprocate and nuzzle into your neck, basking in your warmth.

from then on, it was an essential garment to your outfits. yes, you were reluctant as the bright turquoise colour certainly did not match with everything, but ' you can pull off anything ' is what tooru had claimed. some fashion advice coming from the mf who wore plaid shorts <3

unlike the rest of your clothes in the closet collecting dust, it remained hung up on the handle, ready for use. from matches to study dates which later transitioned into sleepovers, he always complimented your attire in different ways as if it was your first time wearing it.

braiding his chocolate coloured locks, he lay on top of you, the back of his head on your stomach as he made an effort to mirror the rhythm of your breathing with every rise and fall of your chest.

after a lack of commentary, you noticed that he was not staring off into space, but rather the glow in the dark stars you had stuck up on your ceiling. deciding to take advantage, you extended your arm to switch off the lamp adjacent your bed, and while the light faded, the stars gathered overhead.

"oh - hurry up tooru, look! it's a shooting star, make a wish" you gushed, having one eye shut while the other awaited his reaction.

"come on now, you know i didn't bring my glasses with me today, hmph"

"no no, how does that saying go — you don't have to be able to see it to believe it! you're the one always saying those cliche quotes all the time"

".. angel, i'm sorry but this is all just a yellow blur to me. i really can't see anything"

huffing at his habitual use of endearment, you wrapped your hand around his wrist and straightened out his index finger to guide it towards the ' shooting star ' that had not moved from the centre of your ceiling.

"better?"

"much"

letting out a satisfied hum, you both closed your eyes, your conversation, but not your minds as they wished upon the faithful glints of gold which magnified the tranquility of it all.

you eased your grip around his wrist but he took this as an opportunity to interlock his fingers with yours. and with the stars winking from a pitch black sky, your wishes combined, and the soft squeeze of your hands, it was a silent promise that you would always be with each other.

perhaps it was the flower's slight change in hue which resulted in this caprice of fate, because for the first time, he finds himself recalling positive memories rather than remnants of your death.

and for the first time, tooru accepts. the unknown feeling envelops him, yet it does so with open arms, a welcoming smile, and no judgement.

the way he allows his tears dye the turquoise clothing a darker shade, he recognizes that he is no longer under the false pretence that all is well.

he need not question why the corners of his lips subliminally upturn, because as as he clutches this jersey, it's almost as if he is clutching you once more.

while the last stars still fleck the sky, he thanks those lucky stars, for it is you there with him, and he finds solace in your presence.

but this time, tooru isn't afraid to let go.

by no means does he intend to let go of you, no — never. but to let go of the affliction, pain, and instead have regard for the past in preparation for the future. in preparation for change.

and with his damp high school uniform, his smile that is heartful, and the lyra hanging heavy in the eastern sky, they all begin to coalesce into his former self.

the tooru who is not a genius. the tooru who underestimates his own strength, the tooru who overcomes adversity. the tooru, whom you are in love with.

and with the knowledge, and most importantly, acceptance, that you are no longer here with him physically,

oikawa tooru knows that wherever he goes, there you are.

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serrj215 · 3 years

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There is no place like home for the holidays (Thank god! One is enough)

Beast Boy closed the door and put his back against it. He had let out a breath he had been holding since they came onto the estate grounds. He slid down the door to the floor in defeat. He should have known better, he should have known that this was going to happen. It's not like these people were going to change since he left. They were not going to put any effort into being better people just because he was doing something as trivial as bringing his girlfriend for Christmas. Still the Doom Patrol was family, and that was what holidays were supposed to be about right?

"You're late." That was Steve's greeting when Beast Boy and Raven came to the front door. No Merry Christmas, no how are you?, or how have you been? Just "You're late." and "Dinner is on the table." As Steve walked away. Leaving them holding their bags standing on the snow covered landing. They were actually almost 20 minutes early but that was late enough for Steve. Then, right then Beast Boy knew he should have grabbed Raven and ran. Rita was a different story and was quickly at the door ushering them inside, trying to warm the cold welcome her husband had given them. It was Rita that had asked them to come, wanting to see them, wanting her family together for Christmas.

It was December 23rd a Friday and a holiday weekend, that is when it started to set in that this might be the longest 72 hours of their lives. Beast Boy knew that bringing Raven home for the holidays was going to be rough, a bit awkward, he just didn’t think that Steve's greeting was going to be one of that high points of the evening. Everything went downhill from there.

From the moment they came into the dining room they were bombarded with horrible questions. Negative man kept asking Raven "So what do you see in him?" He repeated the question throughout the meal. Like Raven was going to change her mind since the last time he had asked. When he alternated it with asking Beast Boy "You off that no meat thing yet?"

Robot man was almost as bad, after shaking hands with Raven he asked "So when are you due?" Raven tried to take it in stride but her other hand tightened around Beast Boy's . "Come on, to stick around Jolly Green midget he must have knocked you up?" he said with a laugh. Raven's fingers tighten so hard Beast Boy was sure something cracked in his hand.

"Charming." She said in her monotone.

As they sat down at the table the questions just got worse.

"So are you a Rabbit too, or do you eat real food?"

"How is his training going, been keeping him off the furniture?"

"Has he met your parents yet?"

"The last election was a sham wasn't it?"

"What are you exactly?"

He couldn’t remember who asked what, it was coming at them from all sides. It was like a mortar attack of all the things normal people knew better to ask. All Beast Boy could do was look at Raven and try to convey to her how sorry he was with his eyes. It was like they were trying to one up each other, who could ask the absolutely most Inappropriate thing. Raven did her best to stay polite, trying to redirect the conversation and sipping water. Rita tried to cut through the noise, asking about the other Titans, or talking about the holiday plans, but those conversations got lost in the storm of the others awful comments and horrid questions.

The food was not much of a distraction. Roast Beef, a rice pilaf with bits of sausage, and salad drenched in a ranch dressing. Apparently they really did think that being a vegetarian was a phase. This left their two guests a dinner of some steamed green beans and peanut butter sandwiches that Rita made for them on the fly.

Then came the stories that Beast boy had hoped they would have forgotten already, and politics, and more questions. The meal lasted about 15 years, or about an hour and a half depending on your perspective. Neither of the couple ate much, who knew that embarrassment was so filling.

The desert course was an augment about sleeping arrangements. After a lecture about what is proper and how they went to the trouble of getting the guest room ready for Raven and the old chestnut of "No unmarried couples are sleeping together under my roof!" Beast Boy found himself alone in his old childhood bedroom. Raven was ushered off before he could even really say "goodnight" or more importantly "I am sorry".

He sat there staring at the carpeted floor for a while. Eventually he lifted his head up to look around. Cartoon posters, some of his old action figures locked in the same battle he left them in years ago, a dozen other reminders of how young he was when he lived in that room. It was exactly the same as when he left. Beast Boy was not sure how he felt about that. He remembered Robin once telling him that when he went home to Gotham his old room gave him a sense of comfort. This place just reminded Beast Boy that no matter what, to the Doom Patrol he will always be a child. Reinforced by the fact that his bunk bed was made with his old Snoopy bed sheets.

He took off his shirt and let it drop to the floor before laying down on the bottom bunk. His feet stuck out over the end of the mattress by a good 6 inches. He closed his eyes and folded his arms under his head. He had to figure out what to say to Raven to make up for all of this. What could he say? "I am sorry Raven I was raised by horrible people please don’t leave me!?" He thought it was a miracle that she put up with his personal brand of bullshit, asking her to put up with his families collective insanity, he half expected her to teleport all the way back to Titans Tower as soon as she was alone.

"What is it with you and bunk beds?"

Beast Boy's eyes shot open and he sat up so fast that banged his head on the bed above him.

"Aaa…That sounded like it hurt." Raven said quietly, her head hanging down from the bunk above him. Her head disappeared and she gracefully lowered herself to the ground. She was wearing her night clothes, an oversized T-shirt and cotton pajama pants. Beast Boy didn’t know what to say as she joined him on the small mattress.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, messaging his aching forehead.

"Cuddling" She said as she wrapped her arm around his chest. "We have done it before, or did that blow to your head affect your memory?"

"Ha ha, Seriously. We're going to get in trouble."

"Oh yes" she said pulling herself tighter to him . "They might find us and throw us out of here," She softly kissed his bare chest "Force us to go get a hotel room" another kiss just below his collar bone. "Where we could share a bed like we have been doing for the last year now." Her lips touched the base of his neck. "Then the next morning we can get food we can both eat and might even have sex. " She raised her eyes to meet his. "Wouldn’t that be awful?"

Beast Boy's smile broke though. "Rae I am-" He couldn’t get the words out, she attacked, the kiss was insistent and hungry. Her tongue pushed its way in to caress his. His arms out of pure instinct wrapped around her, his left hand sliding down her back to rest on her ass. What had happened and where they were had started to fade away as she nipped on his earlobe knowing exactly what it would do to him.

"Raven" he groaned out as he felt her teeth gently biting into his neck, a distraction from her free hand undoing his belt

Knock!

"Garfield? Can I come in?" Rita was outside the door immediately breaking the two apart, off the bed and onto their feet.

Neither of them thought about teleporting, or shifting or anything that they had practiced or trained for. At that moment they were not superheroes, they were two young people about to get caught. So in a panic Raven hid in the closet and Beast Boy tried to look and sound calm when he said "Come in"

Rita came in wearing a silk robe that went down to her bare feet. "Are you okay?" a look of genuine concern on her face.

"Yea, I mean I am fine" He was trying to stay calm, hoping Rita wouldn't notice that anything was amiss. If she had knocked just a few minutes later…Beast Boy sat back on the bed and tried to appear calm, but if there was a woman on earth walking that knew him as well or maybe better then Raven it was Rita.

"About Dinner, it's just how they are. " She said as she walked over to sit on the bed next to him "They mean well. Is Raven alright? Steve might be a telepath but that man can be cast Iron dense. "

"I hope so. " He said, trying not to look at the closet door with his lover on the other side. His sharp ears could hear Raven's heart jump when Rita mentioned her name.

"Let me make this up to you both. Do you remember that breakfast place we used to go to?"

"Bennet's?" Near the park!?" Beast Boy's ears perked at the suggestion and the memories of peanut butter pancakes, and a blueberry oatmeal that he couldn't find anywhere else.

"Why don’t the three of us sneak out early for Breakfast, do you think Raven would be up for that?"

"Totally! she loves waffles." he said with a grin. Finally something was going right on this trip.

"I do want to get to know her better, but be warned an embarrassing story or two might slip out. Oh, one more thing." She said as stood up and made a beeline for the closet.

"Ah ugh Rita!" Beast Boy started to stammer out. As Rita gently rapped on the closet door.

"Raven, Sweetheart. You can come out now, It's okay." Her tone was soft and motherly and It nearly floored Beast Boy to hear Raven be called 'sweetheart'.

Not waiting for her. Rita opened the door to find the flustered young woman. "I think you will both be more comfortable in the guest room." she said with a smile.

Raven walked into the room slowly, as if she was about to spring a trap. "Thank you" She was able to eke out "Are you sure? I mean Mento s- "

"It was not that long ago that I was young and in love. I am sure." A smile on her lips. "As for Steve," Rita leaned in close to whisper to Raven. "I will take care of my man, you take care of yours. The guest room is on the other side of the house, but we will try not to keep you two awake."

Rita turned quickly and was out the room with a hast "goodnight kids" leaving the young couple to stand there processing what just happened.

"What did she say to you?" Beast Boy asked.

Raven came up from behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest. "Gar, with those ears you heard what she said to me. Do you really want conformation?"

"No" He shook his head "I don’t need that mental image."

"Good, Because there is a fairly large bed downstairs waiting for us. "

In a swirl of black energy they were gone.

****************************************************

"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!" Steve said as soon as Rita entered their bedroom.

“Do what darling?” Rita was completely calm knowing her husband's words were all bluster.

“You know exactly what I am talking about!” He folded his arms across his chest. “Why did you-”

"Because Steve, this is my home too! And sometimes I think I need to remind you." She said slowly walking toward him. "Because they're in love and I think you forget what that is like as well.” Her hands pulled the knot apart on the robe she was wearing. "Because you may have no interest in grandchildren does not mean I feel that way. “She pulled the robe off her shoulders and let it fall around her feet. “Because you have more pressing matters to attend to at the moment.”

So its been a while. This has been sitting in my draft folder for too long, I wanted to get it done by Christmas but that didn't happen. I do not know if I will write more but trying.

Also I am on Ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/30270621 here and other works.

#bbrae fanfiction #bbrae

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jessicalucas · 3 years

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Why did Jeremiah want Ecco dead, and how did he pull it off?

It is my solid belief that Jeremiah wanted Ecco to die, and I have several reasons why. It starts when he was sprayed, however back then it was more of an indifference to if she died or not. If you think about what he made her do, he made her shoot herself, he put her in the bunker to keep Jim there with the chance that it could blow up with her still in it, he almost definitely made her be the one to converse with all the dangerous gangs and criminals to exert his dominance over them. All were high risk situations where she could have died, but there was always a chance that she wouldn’t. We know that a lot of Jeremiah’s relationships were fuelled by obsessions, but I don’t think he was obsessed with Ecco as a person, I think he was obsessed with the fact that he had been able to manipulate a person so well into being entirely devoted to him and changing their personality and manner, and Ecco was just the walking embodiment of that. Alongside her being useful due to this, by keeping her around he was constantly reminding himself of his achievement in making her who she was. He saw her as a possession of his own creation, but as he was just obsessed with that and not actually Ecco herself, she was expendable, but precious enough to allow a chance at living.

Which means that something changed between 5x07 and 5x12 in that ten years, something that changed Jeremiah from not caring if she died, to wanting her to die. That difference is evident in the finale, because if he didn’t actively wish for her to die, I imagine that he would have just left her dying with the stab wound, rather than ensuring that she would definitely die. There was a chance that she could have survived, I don’t know tons about stab wounds but people in Gotham have survived much worse injuries, Jeremiah has survived much worse injuries. But for once he didn’t allow her to have that chance.

This brings us to the ultimate question: why would Jeremiah want Ecco dead? She was loyal, he knew that she would do what he wanted, and he had his own personal protection wherever he meant. Clearly, the big event linking this change was the 10 years he spent in Arkham. Obviously we don’t see much of them there, but we see enough to establish that Ecco was his nurse and the person he solely relied upon, he used her to get information in and out and as far as we know, for a very large chunk of that 10 years she was the only person who knew he wasn’t braindead. Now, that has some very striking similarities to the role she played when she was his proxy, as back then he was reliant upon her to do so much, without her being able to leave the bunker he would have struggled a lot more. He was very dependent upon her, and at that point, I don’t think he minded. However, when he got sprayed and certain elements of his personality were intensified, the arrogance and self-obsession did as well, and he no longer wanted to be dependent upon someone, he believed himself to be the most important person that doesn’t need to answer to anyone. He brainwashed Ecco to flip it around, she was now the one dependent on him, and he had the full power.

When he went to Arkham, he no longer had that control over her. Ecco had no guidance, and automatically switched back into the role that she was most comfortable doing: looking after him. We don’t know how long Jeremiah was pretending to be brain dead, but when he woke up, he had to start pretending straight away. There was no way he could have done it without Ecco. Once again, their roles had been reversed and he was once again solely relying upon Ecco to look after him, to carry out everything he needed done, and to make sure he wasn’t discovered. He must have resented the fact that she could do everything he wanted to do, all his anger about having to wait for the right moment was now being channelled into his relationship with her, because that was the only real relationship he had at that moment in time. Unlike before, he no longer had an outlet for his anger. He couldn’t move, the only thing he could do was think. That would be enough to drive you further into madness, and to warp feelings towards someone else into negative emotions because that’s all you know. If Ecco brought him any messages from the outside, for example the news that Bruce had left Gotham, he couldn’t see them to develop hatred towards them, and so he does towards the nearest person at the time, which is Ecco. The resentment that he was dependent on her once more, the mixed messages in his brain from madness and the anger he felt for others all manifested itself into him beginning to develop very negative emotions when she was around.

But when does the line between disliking someone and wanting someone dead get crossed? For me, there’s two main reasons, and the first goes back to the point that she was acting very similar to her proxy phase. Not only was it echoed in actions, it was also similar in terms of her movement, body language, facial expressions, and appearance. She is quiet, stoic, she delivers her actions swiftly and with no theatrics. Sure, she had to blend in, but she didn’t need to when she killed the two men in Jeremiah’s cell.

That reminded me of the scene where Jeremiah gets her to shoot the two guards, she does it with no hesitation, silently, deadly. Without the constant influence of Jeremiah being able to control her with words and actions, the façade he built up for her is ebbing away, and surfacing is the Ecco that was always still there, just hidden under the many layers of devotion that Jeremiah had built up. It’s not a quick process, she still has the same voice and wording as she does before, but she’s definitely changed from the person she was in 5x07. Note how she’s still in Arkham when I say this, because the rapid change in her between Arkham and Barbara’s club is important and I’ll get to that later. Essentially, what Jeremiah is seeing before him is all his work that he put in to manipulating her is fading away, that his power over her is no longer as strong as it was. Which makes him question: if it’s happened once, what’s to say it won’t happen again if he manages to brainwash her again? It’s bad enough letting people know that her manipulation wasn’t strong enough to hold when he wasn’t there to constantly enforce it, but for it to fail a second time? He could not allow it. The only solution for him to protect his status and for her to not break free from him, was for her to die.

Furthermore, her acting like his proxy again would have really brought him back to who he was the last time she acted like this, the man that had to fight so hard against his true nature that it made him ‘weak’. He did not want to be that person again, being terrified of his brother, hiding away for years because he couldn’t face the world. Ecco was a constant reminder of that, and I do think that he decided that Ecco was a very strong link between his past and present self, and the only way that the link would be severed would be for her to go away completely. Maybe that is what he tried to do initially instead of killing her, to make her into a different person with a new appearance that wouldn’t remind him of the labyrinth every time he looked at her, but he realised that it really was only a temporary fix and the only way to truly cut off his past was to destroy it. That’s what he did with the labyrinth itself, and it seems fitting to him to destroy all parts of it, including Ecco.

The second reason does have links to the first, and it is his vulnerability inside of Arkham. He pretty much had to be guided with Ecco, she was his ears, his eyes and his legs outside and inside Arkham. He had to let her, there was no other way that it could have worked to the extent that it did. He isn’t able to defend himself with words or physically, but also cannot do anything for himself, he can’t wash himself, dress himself, feed himself etc without dropping his act. The person who is seeing this helplessness first-hand constantly is Ecco. Jeremiah canonically sees himself as this godly figure, one who is all-powerful, who people look up to. To him, being vulnerable is not an option. Being helpless is unthinkable. How could he ever allow someone who saw him in that state live? He may not be able to forget, but he could get rid of any reminders, and also eliminates the idea that people would see Ecco and recognise her as the person who kept him alive, he can’t have anyone on the same level as him, he is alone in his own hierarchy and it must remain that way.

So, that’s pretty much the reasoning behind why I think Jeremiah wanted Ecco dead. Which led me to think how did he manage to pull it off, how did he manage to kill someone who was very smart, a great fighter, and had escaped many dangerous situations before? This leads us back to that sudden switch between Ecco killing the guards and Ecco who is the bait for Barbara. Right, we know that Ecco is more ditzy and less collected when she’s in that state of mind, but examining her behaviour in the scene when she holds the knife to Barbara’s throat, she’s even more off, she’s not focusing on anything, she just seems a lot more relaxed which is such a major difference to how she was in Arkham that it seems too different to be true. I think it is, I think Jeremiah drugged her. He has the access, being in Arkham, and if he asked for it, Ecco would get it for him. I don’t know specifics about medicinal drugs but I imagine that getting something with relaxing properties isn’t exactly uncommon for Arkham, where they need to keep their residents as calm as possible. All he needed to do was get it into her system, Francesca has said that the deleted scene in Arkham involved Jeremiah pulling her into his lap from grabbing her face, kissing her and then carrying her out in his arms. My theory is that he did that as a distraction as he didn’t know how this changing Ecco would react to him trying to inject her, so it would have been easy to inject her when she was distracted and in that close proximity.

Not only would drugging her affect her reflexes, lengthening them and making her more vulnerable to attack, but he also armed her with a knife. We have seen Ecco use a knife before, but we know that she’s much more comfortable with a gun as that is the weapon we see her with the most, and holding someone at gunpoint is going to be a harder situation for the person to get out of, as one movement and bang, you’re dead. With a knife it requires more force and will take longer, even if it is held at the throat. Jeremiah knows Barbara is a skilled fighter, he’s met her twice before and seen her fight, he would have known that she would have been able to disarm a weakened Ecco and stab her. Which is also why he doesn’t make any attempt to restrain her, the only thing stopping her from disarming Ecco is Ecco’s hold on her, which wouldn’t have been that strong if she were drugged and easily distracted. If he really wanted to ensure Ecco’s safety, he could have binded her, or given Ecco a gun, or even shot her in the leg straight away. But he didn’t, and everything worked out like he thought it would. Barbara broke free, Ecco was too slow to fight back, and she was stabbed. Something that would look like an accident to her, but it was completely planned.

(note how Jeremiah waited until after Ecco was disarmed to turn around)

It’s clever, yes it is clever, but it’s the cruellest thing to do to a person that has devoted their entire life to you. Making it so that she was completely defenceless so she didn’t even have a chance to protect herself. This is why I don’t follow the theory that he shot her out of mercy, he shot her to finish the job that he had set out to do a long, long time ago.

#so i sent this to Kat a while back and finally got the courage to post it #idk why i was worried about this but i have thought about this a LOT #and this is just my opinion on the matter #and plus i made gifs #don't steal them #i'm also going to sleep now but i would like to hear your thoughts #do you think it was an act of mercy or do you think he wanted her to die?#i think my opinion's pretty clear lmao #gotham #ecco #jeremiah valeska

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cupcakemolotov · 3 years

Text

Fall With You

I ended up pinch hitting for the exchange! It was fun, if slightly wild 48 hours to put this together. Written for the lovely @queencarolinemikaelson. I’m really glad you enjoyed it since it ended up being a fluff fest of roommate co-hab. Also a big thank you to @bellemorte180 for putting this graphic together!

I put the first but under a cut, bit under a cut, but the full story is almost 9K, so the link to the story is at the bottom. :)

Summary: When life throws her a curve ball in the form of her good looking, yet moody roommate, Caroline takes it in stride as best she can. Her living situation was a favor, after all, and rent is anything but cheap in NYC. Its the part where she actually starts to like him that she can't quiet figure out how to manage. Lust was one thing, but feelings?

Warnings: Alternate Universe; Alternate; Universe - Human; Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates; Minor Character Death; not otp; Family Drama; Family Dynamics; Fluff and Humor; Domestic Fluff; Tooth-Rotting Fluff; Mild Smut; Human Caroline Forbes; Human Klaus Mikaelson; Living Room Picnics; Wine; Dates That Aren't Dates; They Could Really Get Their Shit Together Faster; but not really; Making Out; Some petting; NSFW just to be safe

It was almost three am, her feet were killing her, and her key was stuck in her front door.

Seriously, what was with her luck today? The door had always been finicky, but until earlier this week the lock had been behaving itself. It’d gone from not wanting to turn properly to straight up mutiny in four days. It was an easy fix, unlike the door, but it also required a trip to the store and she just hadn’t had time. Amazon could have delivered the powdered graphite, but she was on a budget and believed in shopping local.

Her two year savings plan to finish her degree would not manifest itself if she bought things simply because they were convenient.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Caroline seriously considered just leaning up against the door jam and spending the night outside. It was early summer, and the air had cooled to a balmy sixty-five degrees, leaving the usually stifling hallway almost comfortable. If only she didn’t smell so heavily of beer. Shifting her weight, she winced as her shoes squelched, a reminder of the truly spectacular ending to her night. Her eight hour shift had almost doubled when the night shift manager had called in sick. Usually that wouldn’t have been a problem, but the only other person with keys was out of town leaving Caroline holding the bag to close.

She knew from experience that she had about an hour before she crashed, the rush from kicking out the lingering guests who had been clearly on an epic brawl crawl having mostly faded after the hour long subway ride home. Right then, the only thing keeping her upright was the fact that she was starving, her dinner had been rushed and only half eaten, and the knowledge that if she made it into her apartment she had the next two days off. Tomorrow she could sleep in, and if she was really lucky, her roommate’s night had gone well enough he could be coaxed into making pancakes.

Cheered by the thought, Caroline dug out her cell phone from the backpack she’d slung over her shoulder and checked it for a response. She hadn’t been sure if Klaus had beaten her home or if he was still out celebrating, but either way, he hadn’t bothered to respond yet. Her lips compressed into a thin line.

Usually, she could depend on Klaus to be awake when she finished a night shift, her roommates' hours were only reliable on how sporadic they were and depending on her schedule, hers weren’t much better. But with his big event tonight, she had no idea what he had decided to do. Honestly, would it kill the man to respond to her texts?

She’d expected him to ignore her rapidly typed apology and well wishes she’d sent in-between bites of food. Klaus wasn’t particularly good at handling sentiment of any kind and supremely anti-emoji, and she’d made a point to send several of them. She’d hoped it’d give him something to be annoyed about that wasn’t his evening plans. He needed to schmooze, and a scowl-y Klaus would not accomplish that at all.

He could be charming, when he wanted to be. She’d seen it. He just didn’t deploy full dimples unless he wanted something. Her reminders the night before that he needed to earn his half of the rent without getting carpal tunnel hadn't impressed him.

Too bad. She’d been right, and he’d known it.

He had mentioned a couple of his friends were trying to talk him into drinks afterwards, back when she had thought she might be able to join him. Usually, she would be thrilled that he was getting out and actually seeing people instead of trying to live off granola bars and tea. But right then she really wanted him to be home and grumpy so he could unlock the door. She wondered if texting Marcel with an S.O.S would be rude?

Things were a lot less complicated when she only liked Klaus for the rent he helped cover. Wanting him home, even just for a lock-related emergency wasn’t a thought she would have had even six months ago. Klaus was not what one would label as a comfortable roommate for most of the time. He was far too prickly for that, and he could be snarly in the mornings. Which fair, so could she, but the moodiness. Caroline hadn’t been one to spend much time around the art scene, either at Uni or in high school, but she’d spent the last year learning that there was a lot to be said about artistic temperaments, most of it unflattering.

She was fairly certain Klaus had been born a contrary grump, his winning personality had nothing to do with his chosen profession, she could certainly see how he’d been drawn to the lifestyle, talent aside. Most people immediately laughed off his acerbic tongue once they learned he was an artist, his behavior brushed aside as temperamental. His goods certainly helped his cause, and his accent added a layer of charm that otherwise might not have existed.

She was not so forgiving.

The first few months of their co-hab had not been easy. Klaus was messy, absent minded, and had ruined three of her towels with paint splatter before she’d blown her lid. The apartment was small enough that avoiding each other was nearly impossible, and her preferred kind of stress relief had to be timed for when she was alone, and so they’d been forced to deal with their annoyances. To Klaus’ credit, while he’d been snappish in return, he’d somehow managed to keep a lid on the worst of his temper.

They’d argued, multiple times, they were both stubborn and used to being right, but they’d eventually found some kind of middle ground. Snapping had softened into bickering, and Caroline had stopped nitpicking him about his notebooks being spread across the house and the incorrect way he rolled his toothpaste, and he stopped leaving towels on the floor and made a point to contain his absentminded mess to his room.

And then they started to talk, sometimes about work, sometimes about art, and she’d realized she kind of liked him as a person. She’d started dragging him to her group lunches on her days off, much to Rebekah’s despair, and they might have become something like friends. Except for the part where every so often, she’d look at him and something about the way he stood, the angle of his jaw or the line of his throat left her wanting to jump his bones.

It was really frustrating, when her existence didn’t even seem to phase him.

So she’d done her best to ignore whatever that little spark was between them when it flared up, and not upset the status quo. Because the past year had been better than she could have imagined. Before her mom had died, she would never have considered the life she found herself living now as a good one.

She’d just wrapped her third year at NYU, had exactly 24 hours of classes left before graduation, and had managed to wrangle her schedule so that her final semester would be a cake walk of classes. The cherry on top had been the kick ass internship she’d lined up for the summer. Her five year plan was perfectly on track, her excellent grades gave her a shot at graduating with honors, and she couldn’t wait to show her mom around New York City from the eyes of a local. She’d spent three years putting together a binder, collecting menus from her favorite places to eat and brochures from all the museums and the jam packed tourists locations to offer her mom some variety.

Then she’d gotten that phone call that had thrown everything into a tale spin.

Blowing out a breath, Caroline bounced on her toes and debated best her course of action. She could probably get her key out of the lock if she was very careful, though the past twenty minutes said her luck wasn’t great, Forbes women were nothing if not stubborn, but there was also a chance she would break the key off in the lock and she could already see the little smirk on Klaus’ face if she did. Her hand tightened on the strap of her backpack. He still hadn’t forgiven her for being far more comfortable with power tools than he was and her perfectly reasonable gloating probably hadn’t helped much, if she was honest.

She kind of didn’t regret it. Poking Klaus sizable ego was a favorite past time of hers, and he seemed to enjoy their back and forth as much as she did. Her mental tally had her up two points this month, and she wanted to keep her lead.

Unfortunately, things weren’t really going in her favor just then. Sighing, Caroline tucked her phone back into her bag and admitted defeat. She’d have to figure this one out herself. Either Klaus’ event had run long and he had actually taken her advice to schmooze people or he was home and had drunk enough that he was sleeping like the dead.

Either of those options would not help her now.

Her best bet now was to go and eat a giant piece of pie, drink her weight in caffeine, and trudge her way to the little mom and pop shop that sold a little of everything, including graphite, once it became a reasonable hour. She’d fix her lock and then crash for the following eight hours of hopefully uninterrupted sleep, and leave a very pointed sticky note on the coffee pot so Klaus knew not to disturb her.

Satisfied with the makings of her plan, she shifted her backpack to her other shoulder, mentally reviewing the pie menu, and paused when the elevator dinged from behind her. Sliding her teeth between her lip, Caroline turned and blew out a breath when she recognized the tumble of ruffled curls stepping into the hall. The hallway was dimly lit, so it took a moment for her brain to really understand what else she was seeing.

Klaus was wearing a tux.

Logically, she’d known he was going to be wearing one. His event that night had been important, his work had finally made it into a gallery tonight and it was a Big Deal. His first real show outside of the fancy art school he had attended, and he had spent months fretting over his work and brooding silently in his room as nothing met his incredibly exacting standards. Klaus had even brought home a couple of canvas to work in the questionable light of his bedroom instead of the small studio space he and five other artists pooled their money to share.

Much to her annoyance.

No amount of febreeze really removed the scent of acrylics and turpentine, and she’d been worried if she tried to burn her stash of scented candles something would catch on fire. She’d held her tongue though, because Klaus was never nervous. He was in fact annoyingly difficult to rattle even in the most ridiculous of situations, the man had absolutely no shame, and the way he’d almost jittered had been weird and kind of enduring. Since he’d seen her in numerous states of frantic and alarmed, it was nice for things to end up on a little more even ground for once. She’d done her best to force him to eat something that looked like actual food every so often, and tried to stay quiet when she knew he was working in his bedroom.

She’d even helped him pick out the tuxedo from the catalogue he’d brought home from the store he had planned to rent from. There was a fancy evening gown that she’d rented hanging in her closet that Caroline had planned to wear to go with him before work had made that impossible. But knowing all that, and actually seeing him in that tux were not nearly the same thing.

Caroline blinked rapidly. Her paint speckled roommate, with his surly attitude and annoying dimples, was wearing a tux. And he looked really, really good. He’d undone his tie so it hung loosely around his neck, and his jacket was loose and unbuttoned around his waist, his curls still somewhat tamed along his forehead. Something very much like arousal jolted through her as he looked up, the low light highlighting the scruff along his jaw and the length of his neck. For a moment, he just stared at her, as surprised as she and then his head tipped and his brow arched, lips tugging up at the corners.

“Waiting on me?”

The rest can be found here: A03

#my fic #klaroline #klaroline fanfiction #exchange fic

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akiraidraws · 3 years

Text

Imperfection AU: Beginnings Chapter 2

Summary: With the help of the ink machine and a little magic, new life is created. A new little toon in the shape of a little devil darling. But when he turns out to be riddled with imperfections can Henry save him from Joey's wrath?

Trigger Warning:Violence, light swearing

Walking into the room that housed the machine, Joey made his way over to a strange man that Henry didn't recognize. The man was taller than Joey and himself with broad shoulders and short darker blonde hair styled in a military cut. Except it was longer towards the front and curled slightly with only the back in the usual buzz cut. Inspecting the man, Henry noticed that the patch on the strange man's chest read 'Gent'.

Ah, he was one of the engineers Joey had hired to build the machine.

From what Henry could hear of the conversation, the man, Thomas Connor it seems his name was, and Joey were going over some final details of the machine.

So, this man was the head engineer from Gent that Wally had told him about. Well, more like he complained to Henry about.

Tom, correcting Joey on what to refer to himself as confirmed that everything was in place and that the machine was ready to use for whatever it is that Joey had planned.

The conversation coming to an end, Joey dismissed Tom.

Tom glanced Henry's way as he walked past him, a neutral expression plastered across his features. Henry noticed a small scar that cut across Tom's left eye, and continued up past his brow. Probably from a past work injury. Maybe military? Tom on the other hand was looking Henry up and down as if studying him before he turned away from Henry with a small exhale and walked out of the room.

Henry's brief encounter with the man left him feeling just a little intimidated and with a slight sense of unease, don't get on Tom's bad side. Duly noted.

Usually Henry wouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but something about Thomas Connor just felt... off. It's no wonder Wally had such a distaste for the man.

Turning his attention back to Joey who was now facing the large machine with his back turned to Henry, his eyes wondering to the floor at Joey's feet. It looked like there was some sort of large circle messily painted on the floor with black ink. A pentagram? Some sort of binding circle maybe? Henry wasn't sure, he didn't really know too much about Joey's... hobbies.

"Joey, what is this?"

"Oh, this? It's nothing to worry about. Just a little something to strengthen the incantation."

"After all, we don't want any mistakes now, do we?"

"I guess not..?"

Henry watched as Joey walked over to a mid sized wooden table that was along the wall to their left. He grabbed an armful of well used black candles and placed them at each point of the star within the circle. After making sure each candle was properly lit, Joey walked back to the table and grabbed a thick purple book with a black binding along the spine and a similar looking symbol to the one on the floor.

To say that Henry felt uneasy about this was an understatement, but any second thoughts he may have been having were interrupted by the sound of Joey's voice.

"Henry, if you could just stand right over there." Joey gestured across the room to the far right wall.

"And be careful not to step in the ink, please."

Henry strolled to the other end of the room and crossed his arms giving Joey a quizzical look.

"Watch the machine. You'll want to see this, trust me."

"... Okay." Henry said as he looked the machines way.

He didn't believe a word of what Joey had said but he was willing to entertain his notions. After all, Joey had plenty of experience in this type of thing so Henry trusted him enough to stop if things got dicey.

Joey flipped through the pages of his book with ease and began to chant when he landed on the desired spell.

The ink used to form the circle began to glow a harsh gold and the candles flames swelled. Henry rushed to cover his eyes, momentarily blinded by the unexpected flash of light. In his moment of blindness he failed to notice a small pastel blue orb that radiated from his chest and made its way within the pentagram. A piece of his very soul. As soon as the blue soul piece touched the ink, the harsh gold immediately faded away to a soft pastel blue.

A blue that spread upwards forming an almost invisible wall around the symbol painted on the wooden floor.

A sudden gurgling noise from the machine drew Henry's attention as he uncovered his eyes. He was still blinking away the stars in his vision when ink began to pour from the machines large nozzle with a plethora of sloshing and splashing sounds. The ink was rushing out in alarming amounts but never left the bounds of the circle.

As the last words of the chant left Joey's lips he snapped the book closed with a loud resounding 'CRACK!". Almost as if on cue, the candles flames fizzled out and the ink stopped flowing save for a few drips that lingered on the nozzle of the machine. The pool of ink on the floor began to recess and form a small figure in the middle of the circle.

Henry couldn't believe what he was seeing as a figure began to take shape within the ink puddle. It was small and it was... moving?

Henry must have taken an involuntary step forward because the next thing he knew Joey had him by the arm pulling him away from what was happening before them.

"Wait, Henry! It's not done yet!" Joey all but shouted.

"I-I cant believe it..."

"I know! Isn't it exciting!?"

Henry nodded and turned his attention back to the figure within the ink.

With the last of its little body formed, the excess ink evaporated away like it was nothing more than water in a hot skillet. The last of the ink gone, the soft blue light emanating from the circle burst like glass and faded away leaving only the newborn creature in its wake.

The creature managed to shakily prop itself up on its small arms and onto its knees. It looked from Henry to Joey then back at Henry and smiled a familiar blocky smile on its yellowed face. Its black pie cut eyes looking nervously up at the men before it, its horns twitching before going still.

"Is... is that? Bendy?" Henry asked cautiously, taking a few steps forward to get a better look.

Joey didn't respond. He made no effort to move from where he stood as Henry left his side and approached the little toon devil.

Kneeling down in front of him, he was so small, so... infant like.

Black pie cut eyes watched the man in front of him as Henry tilted his head to the side curiously. An action that Bendy mirrored.

The toon copied every movement that Henry made.

Henry smiled and let out a laugh at the way Bendy was mirroring him.

As a result, Bendy let out the cutest little giggle that Henry had ever heard.

There was no doubt that this little toon was in fact, a baby. Well, maybe not a baby per say but he was definitely in an infant like phase of his life. New, and small, and so so innocent.

"Hello, little one. My name is Henry and that-" motioning over his left shoulder "is my good friend Joey."

Bendy reached his little yellowed hands out and beamed "Henry! Hen, Hen-Henry! Henry!"

"Yes. Yes, that's right."

"Henry!" Bendy giggled as he repeated the name a number of times to Henry's amusement.

Henry reached out and placed a hand under each of Bendy's arms carefully lifting him up off the floor to get a better look at the toon. Bendy letting out a small squeak as he was lifted from where he sat. Henry was shocked to see that in place of the usual skinny legs and large shoes were a set of almost gazelle like legs minus the hooves. His legs simply petered off into rounded hooveless points. And now that he was looking closer he could see what appeared to be a little pointed tail curled slightly around the toon’s dangling legs and it was twitching slightly. The little demon whined and wriggled as he tried to free himself from Henry's grasp.

"Hey now, it's okay. I'm not going to hurt you. Don't be scared." Henry cooed as he pulled the toon to his chest and gently caressed the tiny demons cheek in an attempt at comfort.

He was so small. Henry could cradle him with a single arm.

Bendy looked up at Henry and then over his shoulder, his eyes going wide. He grasped Henry's shirt tightly and buried his face in Henry's chest, whimpering. His tail trying to wrap itself around the mans waist but being too short to do so.

Confused, he turned to look over his own shoulder now, coming face to face with Joey who was leaning forward just behind him. Looking rather displeased with the situation at hand. Joey was glaring at the little toon in Henry's arms.

Bringing himself to his feet, Henry turned to face Joey.

"Why are you looking at him like that?"

"This is all wrong. How could this have happened?!"

"Huh??"

Joey sneered disgustedly at the little toon. Using Henry's soul piece should have worked, should have made the perfect toon. So why didn't it?

Joey snatched the frightened newborn toon from Henry's arms, knocking him to the floor in the process. He was going to return this little abomination to the ink like he had done to the countless before him. Imperfection will not be tolerated. Bendy crying out loudly in fear as Joey made his way back to the machine. Dazed from the impact, Henry quickly collected himself and picked himself up off of the floor. Adrenaline was rushing through his veins. Bendy's wails grew more frantic sending a shockwave of alarm through Henry's core. His eyes now set on Joey. He rushed towards Joey wrapping his arms around the smaller mans shoulders in a vice grip causing him to drop the toon like a rock. Bendy hit the floor with a loud 'thud', knocking the breath out of his little inky lungs. Dazed, confused and frightened, Bendy was frozen were he lie, curled into himself with his tail wrapped tightly around his small body. Henry immediately abandoned his hold on Joey and scrambled for the newborn toon on the floor scooping him up into a protective embrace.

Angry, Joey dives at Henry shouting.

"Give it to me!! It's an abomination!"

Henry's temper flares as he bristles. His hold on the little toon growing tighter while he shields Bendy from Joey's grasp.

"He's just a baby, Joey!!"

Joey dives for the toon in Henry's arms once more. The two men joined in an intricate dance as Henry dodges Joey's prying clutches. Set on protecting the frightened whimpering bundle in his arms.

"I knew it was a mistake bringing you here for this! Of course you would try to protect an abomination! You've always been too weak for your own good!!" Joey hisses. His own temper flaring at Henry's intervention.

"Really?? Well how's this for weak?!" Henry roared back, planting his foot squarely against Joey's chest sending him reeling backward into the cold metal of the machine. Knocking the air out of the fuming man.

Henry hated doing it, but no way in hell was he going to let Joey harm the defenseless little bundle he had cradled protectively in his arms. He stood defensively, ready for Joey to make another move.

But it never came.

Joey sat up slowly, rubbing at the side of his head. A pained expression plastered across his features.

"Fine." Joey spat coldly. His gaze focused entirely on Henry.

"You want it, then you take it. But you would do well to keep that abomination away from me, Stein."

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dameronology · 4 years

Text

your voice is a gun {obi-wan}

'and i don’t pick up when you call, ‘cause your voice is a gun/every word is a bullet hole, shot a hole at the sun’ - forgiveness, paramore

warnings: angst, language

enjoyyyy

- val xx

p.s this has not been proof read cos i’m living life in the fast lane

One of the greatest things about humanity was its imperfections.

That meant that they could do some really unclever shit - and Obi-Wan Kenobi was no stranger to that. Like every other human being, he felt a lot of things. He said a lot of things and did a lot of things. For the most part, he was calm and collected - other times, he managed to bat things right into the realm welp, I fucked up!

Obi-Wan didn’t mean to say the thing (more on the thing in one moment). You’d both fallen into the trap of arguing; it was the sort of slippery slope that started with mostly valid bickering and ended with insults flying back and forth. He was spitting venom about your bad habits, and you’d managed to make a backhanded comment about his mother. Punches were being thrown left right and centre, tempers heated - mostly as a result of a bad day at work and much less because of one another - and it was only a matter of time before one of you tripped and fell past the point of no return.

That’s when the thing happened. You know the kind of comment so treacherous and so awful that it felt like Satan himself had put the words in your mouth? Yeah, one of those.

‘When you’re like this, it makes me wonder if all this sneaking around is worth it!’ Obi-Wan had not-so-wisely yelled. ‘It makes me wonder if you’re worth it!’

You both froze. You fucking froze. He wanted to reach out, to grab the words and swat them back into his mouth, right out the air and right out of your ears. Alas, they were gone, released out into the wild for you to hear. He was usually quite quick on his feet, good at solving problems as soon as they happened, but he had never felt so helpless. The bullet had left his gun and now, all he could do was wait for your reaction.

Obi-Wan could have sworn that he saw you go through the seven stages of grief in the space of three seconds. Your eyes fell to the ground, mouth falling open and twitching slightly as you fought for something to say. What could you say? He’d gone lower than low. If this was a game of limbo, he would have won first place - and it felt as though he were hitting you over the head with the limbo stick. Repeatedly.

‘I-’ Obi-Wan went to speak first, but you stuck your finger up to silence him. The audacity.

‘Say nothing.’ Your voice was a little shaky.

He had taken the one thing you were terrified of and thrown it back in your face. How many times had you opened up to him about your fears? About your doubts that the fuss of sneaking around wasn’t worth it? You were both putting so much on the line to be together. Your jobs, your livelihoods, the very purpose you had sworn your lives too.

‘Darling, I-’

‘- I said don’t fucking say anything!’ Oop, there it was.

It was though you had finally found your footing. The bullet had hit you - it had gone right through you, exit wound and wall - and all you could do was reel back with the sheer force of it. The one person you loved most in the galaxy, the one person who completely fucking cherished above anything else, had swept the rug out from under your feet. You’d opened up to him about your worst fear and he’d used them against you.

‘Get out.’ You murmured.

‘I didn’t mean that.’ Obi-Wan tried to take a step towards you, hands reaching out to grab yours. You swatted them away. ‘You know I didn’t mean that-’

‘- maybe you’re right.’ You cut him off. ‘If we keep arguing like this, maybe sneaking around is more trouble than it’s worth.’

You both knew that was a fat fucking lie. Going behind the Council’s back and sneaking around was a small price to pay. It was something you worried about constantly, but the minute you melted into Obi-Wan’s arms or woke up beside him, all that doubt faded away. He was all you needed and you thanked your lucky stars everyday that you’d found him in such a vast galaxy.

Then he had to go and say dumb shit like that. Well done, Kenobi.

‘You don’t mean that.’ Obi made another attempt to grab your hands.

‘I just...’ you let his fingers briefly brush against yours before firmly placing them on his shoulders and physically pushing him away. ‘Get out.’

‘It was the heat of the moment.’ He was barely phased by your actions. ‘Please, be sensible-’

‘- you’re telling me to be sensible?’ You could hardly hide the humour in your voice. ‘Imagine if I took the one thing you were most scared of and thrust it back in your face!’

‘I can’t imagine it because I know that you would never do that.’ Obi-Wan admitted.

‘And yet, you managed to.’ You spat. ‘You know where the door is.’

‘Darling, will you just listen to me-’

‘- so that you can hurt me again?’ You gave his shoulder another jab. ‘So that you can say something that will rip my fucking heart out?’

A sob escaped your throat, hands flying up to cover your mouth. It felt like you were drowning, like your worst fear was consuming you and dragging you under into an angry sea. Your mind was racing with thoughts - what would you do without him? How you could you cope? The galaxy was dark. Frankly, it was fucking horrible. You couldn’t do it without him. He couldn’t do it without you.

Obi-Wan felt like his heart had been ripped out. Admittedly, he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to be hurt by a situation that he had caused but seeing you so upset made him want to cry along with you. He took a step forward, ready to cling onto you, ready to hold you and make it all better -

- but you pushed him away again. You stuck your hands out and you blocked him. You wrapped your arms around yourself and you turned our back away. Forget what had been said about pain earlier: this made that pain feel like a tickle.

‘Go.’ Your voice was firm. ‘I don’t care where. Just go.’

So, he did. Obi-Wan got his cloak and he left. It was just him and his pity, wallowing and simmering as he endlessly floated around the halls of the Temple, nothing but his absolute fucking stupidity to keep him company. He could only hope and pray that you would come around in the next few hours - he wasn’t going to sleep other wise.

Neither were you. You dragged yourself to bed, heart aching a little bit and your chest heavy. The worst part was that you couldn’t even remember how the argument had started. You hadn’t meant any of things you’d said, and nor had he. Why you felt such the intense need to attack the person you loved was beyond you - beyond both of you. Like I said: humans thrived on their imperfections. Other times, it was their fall from grace.

Obi-Wan could have gone back to his own room. He could have slept in his own cold bed and spent the entire night worrying about you - and letting you worry about him. He was suddenly hyper aware of the fact that his absence was your worst fear and leaving you alone was a catalyst to that very phobia.

He didn’t know what to do. First and foremost, kicking himself seemed like a good idea. He’d spent so many years banging on at Anakin for not thinking before he spoke and yet, he couldn’t even manage it himself. He didn’t know how his Padawan had made it this far. He had a way of doing things that Obi-Wan could never quite grasp - but in a way, it was something he envied.

And so, the Jedi found himself asking an important question: what would Anakin do?

(God - he really was desperate, wasn’t he?)

Skywalker, Obi-Wan figured, probably would have done as he always did: as he pleased. He would have slipped back into bed with you, acknowledged your anger and then said tough shit, because I’m here now. Anakin’s logic would have been of the why are you shutting me out when you’re so scared of me leaving? variety. That made a lot of sense.

Obi-Wan shivered at that thought. It made sense.

So, he turned on his heel and he made his way straight back to your quarters. The door was still unlocked, as it had been when he’d left two hours previous.

You were curled up in the corner of your bed, one his cloaks covering you and the sheets tangled over your forms. The fact that you’d cried yourself to sleep over him felt like a punch to the gut. He’d hurt you and he’d hurt himself. The latter part couldn’t have mattered less but frankly, he probably deserved it.

Obi-Wan quietly kicked off his boots, clambering into bed beside you. His side of the mattress was cold - almost refreshingly so - and a horrible reminder of the very absence that you had demanded. He held his breath for a moment, half expecting you to turn around and sock him around the jaw.

‘You are worth it.’ He laid behind you, words soft as you form stirred slightly. ‘Every close call, every stolen kiss and every moment of panic is worth it because it brings me closer to you.’

‘Don’t be shy.’ You whispered. ‘Say some more.’

It was working. You were coming back to him.

‘I’ve never doubted you for a second.’ He slid an arm underneath you, pulling you towards him so that your back collided with his chest. ‘I love you more than anything in the world and I never meant to hurt you. I know you told me to leave but I’m not going to do the very thing that scared you in the first place.’

You shuffled around to face him - his heart broke all over again at the sight of your puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks.

‘Bold move, Kenobi.’ You murmured, voice bleary with sleep. ‘But I don’t want to fight with you. I’ve said some dumb shit and you’ve said some dumb shit.’

‘The dumbest.’

You leant up, gently brushing your lips against his. ‘It’s not so much what you said - it was just the thoughts it triggered. Everything feels so fragile and the idea of us being more trouble than it’s worth is really fucking painful.’

‘I know.’ He nodded. ‘But you’re worth all the trouble in the world and then some.’

You gave him a soft smile. ‘I love you. You’re an idiot but I love you.’

‘I love you too.’ He replied. ‘And I’m going to prove it you, I swear.’

{tags: @cherieboba @likeshootingstarsinthenightsky @aty-cgca7 @corellians-only @highlycommendable @saintlaurentkenobi}

#obi-wan x reader #obi-wan kenobi x reader #obi-wan imagine #obi-wan kenobi imagine #obi-wan angst #obi-wan kenobi angst #star wars x reader #star wars imagine #star wars fanfic

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whaticannotshowyou · 3 years

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Cursed? Lambert being obsessed with losing weight because he had a chubby phase pre trials. He starves himself to the point of being dizzy, and his body is weak all the time, but he cant eat. He gets cold and will let his brothers do anything to him as long as he can sap their heat. They feed into his delusions, pinching imaginary fat so he can remain weak and unwilling to fight them when they drill into him any time they want. The darker the better on this

Gods this is... amazing. Lambert being teased by his fellow trainees as his puppy fat doesn’t seem to leave on it’s own, him slowly growing tired of their words and actions. And each winter he sees the grown witchers walk around with sculpted bodies and muscles he could only dream of when he was still living with his mother. That’s when he starts growing weary of himself, cutting down on his meals slowly just in case and making sure to push himself during training. By the time of his trials he is slim and has grown into his own skin, happy with how he looks.

As a witcher he manages to keep it under control, knows that as long as he does his work he can wolf down as much food as he pleases and still lose weight if he is not careful. After the sacking everything crumbles.

Suddenly he is stuck with his two brothers and Vesemir, his life even worse than before and Kaer Morhen in ruins. He finds his weight as the only thing he can control, can be the master of his own self by restricting his intake as well as training until he can barely stand. Geralt and Eskel catches on soon enough, sees Lambert grow thinner and thinner yet refusing to eat more than a few bites each meal. One night he is shaking and his teeth rattling as he hugs himself close, staying like that for an hour before slowly tiptoeing to Eskel’s bed for any warmth. His brother is confused at first, Lambert always a grumpy piece of shit but suddenly looks so tiny standing by his bed, eyes averted as he asks to share the bed. With a smirk Eskel makes space for him, cuddling up behind his back before grinding his hard cock against the pup’s arse.

Lambert knows Eskel got the wrong idea, but he’s too tired to say anything and far too cold to risk getting kicked out, so he stays still like that and let’s Eskel rut against him, shuddering as he feels the messy seed spurt out over his lower back and that thick cock smear it on his skin. Then finally he can sleep, warm and cozy.

That’s how most nights go after that, Geralt joining in as a bedwarmer within a week when Eskel tells him about their nightly endeavours. Lambert lets it happen, pretends he gets any pleasure from it just to please his brothers, panting out a “gods, please-“ when Geralt moves in close and licks against his ear while asking if he wants it. That night he is fucked open on the man’s fingers, the next night on his cock. At times both of them have him a few times before sleep, taking his mouth and arse simultaneously while Lambert focuses all his effort on not collapsing from the slightest strain on his withered muscles. It’s all a blur, a mess of sounds and sensations that he can barely register as he tries to just stay awake.

Eventually Geralt and Eskel figures out that he isn’t enjoying himself, only doing it for the sweet praises he gets on his now boney body and the heat he can fall asleep in as they are done. But they don’t intend to lose their perfect little toy, instead amping it up to keep him as small and fragile as possible. Eskel will give him a look over as he scoops food onto his plate, making sure to hide his smile as his brother instantly looks guilt ridden and panicked as he stares at the meagre meal he has given himself. Geralt makes sure to pinch the loose skin between his fingers as he fucks him open in front of a mirror, commenting on his “love handles” and how plump his arse has become.

Lambert’s delusions only gets worse from then on, the man staring into the mirror for minutes on end while noting every little problem he can find, making sure to put more training on his schedule and skipping out completely on meals from time to time. The days melt into each other as he walks around in a foggy head, even the smallest of exertions forcing him to sit down and rest. It’s all the better for his brothers though, Lambert barely realising he’s bent over a table or counter until he’s speared open on their cocks. His protests are jumbled together into gibberish, body dragged onto the thick member inside him like he’s a rag-doll. The jostling makes him even more disoriented, head pounding as he’s trying to just get a grip on anything to keep him stable. Then suddenly he’s left alone to collect himself, shivering against the cold, hard wood while the come drips out of him.

He wants to stop them from using him like a toy, tries to tel them that the gentlest of grips leaves nasty bruises along his hips that takes ages to fade, that he isn’t consenting if he can’t even bring up the energy to speak. But if being rocked onto their cocks as he wakes up in the morning means he can stay in bed until he’s sure he won’t pass out from just rising to his feet, then maybe it’s something he can live with.

#answer #nc #misc #tw

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fancyfade · 9 months

Text

DC Superhero Girls Barbara Gordon action figure

This doll was pretty simple b/c Babs is wearing shorts so I didn't have to apoxie around the joints. :P Sadly as with all the DC superhero girl dolls I modded, the hard plastic made taking the plastic away from the joints REALLY difficult, so there are clear visible knee joints.

the wheelchair is a painted version of the chealsea doll wheelchair, which works really good for 6/7" scale dolls!

#fades action figure collecting phase #dc comics #barbara gordon #oracle #custom action figures

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beetlebitchywitch · 4 years

Note

hey uh could you do a smut fic where it’s incubus beej (idk if i spelled that right lmao) x bratty reader and they are just teasing him to gods end and no matter how many punishments he’s givin em’ they are still being a brat? (also btw i wanna let you know that oml your fics are a m a z i n g you really are a insanely talented writer!!)

YOU BET YOUR ASS I CAN!

Warning: lots of name calling, Daddy kink, punishment, rough sex, v mild blood kink, just an all around good time

From the very beginning, Beetlejuice was drawn to you more than any other breather he’d gotten to feed him in the last century. Usually, the people that called on him were looking for a rush of excitement, longing for the forbidden touch of a demon in their otherwise meaningless, trivial lives. But they’d get bored of him too, eventually- in reality, they weren’t interested in a demon, in him...they just wanted something new, something to excite them. It could’ve been anything, so long as it wasn’t the same old same old. He just so happened to fit the bill.

And then you came along. You, who only met him through an accidental summoning after a ritual gone wrong. You, who seemed not to care one iota about him being an incubus, seemingly untempted by his otherworldly charm. You, whose utter indifference intrigued and excited him more than anything had in a long, long time. Screw anyone else- he knew he had to have you. He finally managed to earn himself a place in your bed after several infuriatingly long weeks of pining, flirting, and peak levels of seduction. You’d wanted him the entire time, of course, drawn in by his playful demeanor and the promises of pleasure unlike any you’d ever known, but you weren’t about to give in that easily, especially if he was inclined to give up after only a few days. If he wanted you, he’d have to be patient enough to fight for you...

...And that tendency of yours to make him wait stayed with you well into your relationship.

One weekend, he was away on Netherworld business, so you’d had to banish him for the time being. He’d cupped your cheek, dragging his clawed fingers lightly down your skin and promised you that when he was ready to return, you’d know. The thought sent a bolt of excitement down your spine, and you spent the next few days drunk with anticipation, wondering just how he planned on getting your attention. The longer he left you alone, however, the more mischievous you became, your plan of action slowly coming together over the several days you spent in your empty apartment. When the day finally came that he’d attempt to return, something in you just knew. You dressed with purpose, slowly rolling your favorite thigh high stockings up your legs and revelling in the silky feeling on your skin. Paired with a matching bra and panty set that highlighted the curves of your breasts and ass, you stood in front of the mirror, admiring your body and how your choice of lingerie highlighted its best features. You had to admit, you looked hot as hell, and you knew that Beetlejuice would think so too.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear, or so it seemed, since you suddenly felt a cold breeze sweep into your room, raising goosebumps on your exposed skin. From in the mirror, you could see a vague, shimmery outline of a figure standing behind you, seemingly staring directly at your ass. You turned around to face it, but couldn’t see him at all, so you turned back around and saw him even closer now, seemingly only visible through the mirror. You looked up towards his face, where his eyes would be if he were fully corporeal, and you smirked, lifting your hand to your bra strap and slowly sliding it down your shoulder. You shivered as your shoulder suddenly felt cold and you looked in the mirror to see his spectral, barely-visible hand stroking across your skin. You batted it away with a sly smile and slid your bra strap back up, winking at him as you decided to show him a little mercy.

“Beetlejuice…” you sighed, smiling as you saw his figure grow more solid, finally revealing his face. His mouth moved rapidly, but you couldn’t hear a thing, and his eyes narrowed when he realized it. You shivered again, but not from the cold- this time it was from the angry crimson crawling through his hair, practically glowing in the reflection. Warmth pooled in the pit of your stomach at the thought of him, angry and impatient and completely at your mercy. You didn’t want to think about the consequences of your actions, not when he was there, only visible through a pane of glass and practically vibrating with his growing rage. You looked him in the eye as you slid to the ground, spreading your legs in front of the mirror to reveal the best part of your ensemble- your panties were crotchless, easily parting to reveal your pussy, dripping wet and aching from days without him. You could’ve sworn you heard a low growl rumble throughout the room and you grinned victoriously, letting your fingers trail teasingly up your exposed inner thigh. Beetlejuice’s eyes grew wide at the sight, his mouth stretched into a scowl at his own lack of physical form, his frustration growing ever more evident on his face. You chuckled, finally dipping your hand between your folds to collect your slick on the tips of your fingers. Looking back up, you saw Beetlejuice staring with rapt attention, his mouth agape as you lifted your fingers to your lips and sucked on them, moaning at the taste of yourself on your tongue. You felt the floor shake underneath you, but you thought nothing of it- he had no power over you until you said his name two more times. Still, you missed the sound of his voice, and, well...one more time wouldn’t hurt, would it?

“B-Beetlejuice…” you moaned, your fingers coming down to circle your clit. You watched as he grew even more solid, so close to being real but still completely invisible anywhere but in the mirror. His touch was faint, but you could feel it, his claws dragging ever so slightly along the back of your neck.

“Can you hear me now, snack?” he growled, trying and failing to wrap his hand around your throat. You let out a shaky chuckle and nodded as you continued to toy with your clit, feeling his ghostly fingers phase right through you.

“Good, then you better listen the fuck up, shit for brains,” he snarled, growling as his attempts to choke the life out of you repeatedly failed. “If you don’t finish summoning me right the fuck now, you are gonna regret ever being born.”

Oh, come on. He could do better than that, couldn’t he? Your smile remained firmly planted on your face, though you bit your lower lip as you sped your fingers up on your clit. A bolt of fear shot through you at the sight of his narrowed eyes flashing a brilliant crimson, but you held your ground, throwing your head back with a moan.

“Is that how it’s gonna be, you little brat?” he asked, cracking his knuckles as he glared down at you. “You do realize you’re gonna have to summon me eventually, right? Sometime soon, you’re gonna say my name, and when you do, ohohohoho, you have no idea what you are in for. I can’t wait to see you on your knees for me, bruised and bleeding and begging for something I might not even give you. You want this cock, feeder? Then you’re gonna have to be a good little girl for me and say. My. Name. Or did you get all dressed up just to tease me?”

Fuck, his voice was starting to get to you. You rubbed yourself even harder, your lips parted around soft whimpers at the thought of what he planned on doing to you once you released him. He was right, something had to give eventually, and you knew well enough that it was going to be you. But still, you wanted to hear more from him, so you quickly slid two fingers inside yourself, whimpering as you drove them into your G spot.

“No, you want me to come out, don’t you? Tell you what, kitten. When I get outta here, I’m gonna have three fingers in your goddamn mouth to keep you quiet, and another three in your pussy to make you scream. And oh, if you think that pretty little ass of yours is getting out of this scot free, then you’ve got another fucking thing coming. I’m gonna whip you within an inch of your life, and then whip you some more- maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of the Netherworld before I shove my cock in you and fuck you up against the stupid God-forsaken mirror until you can’t walk straight for the next month-”

“BEETLEJUICE!” you finally screamed, clenching around your fingers. Christ, his words were too much, his promises too delicious for you to ignore any longer, and you couldn’t stop yourself from screaming his name as you rapidly approached your orgasm. Before you could climb and surpass that peak, however, your newly corporeal incubus was gripping your wrist harshly, tearing it away from your pussy while his other hand wrapped securely around your throat from behind you.

“Did I give you permission to cum, you little slut?” he growled into your ear, his eyes meeting yours in the mirror. You grinned at the feeling of his hand wrapped around your throat, though you whined as your pleasure slowly waned just shy of an orgasm.

“No,” you retorted playfully, winking at him slyly. He glared at you with a growl, tightening his grip on your throat, but your smile never faded.

“You still on this fucking bratty streak, feeder? Fine,” he snarled. He let go of your throat and you sucked in a grateful breath which quickly turned to a gasp as he fisted his hand in your hair and dragged you onto your hands and knees, your face directly in front of the mirror. You could feel anger radiating off of him like a warm heat as he stared you down, his eyes burning like hot coals as he pulled your panties down to expose your ass. “I better hear you count, slut.”

You braced yourself as his tail whistled through the air and landed on your ass, putting all your effort into not crying out as the pain blossomed on your skin. You looked him dead in the eye as you kept your mouth clamped shut, and after a moment, his nostrils flared and his eyes glowed a deep blood red.

“I said count,” he growled, whipping you three times in quick succession. This time, you couldn’t hold back a little yelp at the stinging pain, but you still kept your lips held firmly together. Fear bloomed in your belly as his fist tightened painfully in your hair, unbridled anger coursing through his entire body. “You better fucking count if you know what’s good for you, feeder.”

Clearly, you have no idea what’s good for you, because your first instinct caused you to stick out your chin, look him in the eye, and say “Make me.” In an instant, he was baring his teeth, tail swishing angrily across the floor, and you expected another several hits on your ass, but they never came. Instead, the hand in your hair was gone, and Beetlejuice was striding over to the bed, sitting on the edge seemingly as calm as could be. You looked over at him in confusion, sitting back up and wincing slightly at the pain from the welts on your ass.

“...Beej?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is a little brat trying to get my attention?” he asked, looking around the room and not meeting your eyes at all. “Because if she is, she’s gonna have to learn how to behave. Maybe if she tells Daddy she’s sorry for being such a fucking brat, then he’ll give her what she wants.”

Christ. You knew you’d been had, and you resented it. You knew that you could keep it up, obstinately ignoring him and teasing him until he caved, but you had no doubt that he had a much stronger resolve than you. With a sigh, you crawled over to Beej’s feet, your head hung as you settled onto your knees.

“I...I’m sorry, Daddy,” you murmured, folding your hands politely in your lap. Inside, your urge to defy him and to tease him was just as strong as it was before, but your urge to take his cock so deep inside of you that you couldn’t think straight was winning out. You heard him chuckle before feeling his fingers card through your hair.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” he said victoriously, and when you looked up at him, he was smirking proudly, red intermingling with a dark magenta at the base of his hair. “Thank you for apologizing, snack. But still, you were so naughty, teasing me, disobeying me...I’d say a punishment is still in order, don’t you?”

Oh god. You suddenly felt icy cold fear spreading through your belly at the thought of what he’d have in store for you. Before you could blink, he was on his feet again, his hand grabbing a fistful of your hair and dragging you back to the mirror, your knees struggling to keep up as you yelped at the pain. He got you back into your original position, your face directly in front of the mirror and your ass presented to him, just waiting to be whipped.

“Now let’s try this again, feeder. Count.”

This time, you cried out freely as his tail whipped across your ass, the stinging pain mingling with pleasure as it cracked against your skin.

“O-one…”

“Mm, good girl.”

It continued like this for another 25 lashes, each coming at inconsistent rates and speeds to keep you on your toes. And like a good, obedient little girl, you counted each one, no matter how loudly you screamed.

“T-twenty five!” you cried out, hot tears dripping down your cheeks as your sure this last strike broke skin on your bruised ass, which was confirmed as Beetlejuice dragged his tongue across the skin, moaning at the sweet taste of your blood. When you looked up at him through the mirror, you moaned at the sight of his lips stained red as he grinned at you.

“What a good little snack. Bet you’ve learned your lesson now, huh?” he asked, licking away the last of the taste of you from his lips. “Up on your knees, kitten.”

You obeyed him, crying out softly at the burning feeling of the multiple raised welts on your ass brushing the back of your legs as you knelt. Beetlejuice quickly undid his fly and pulled his cock from his pants, achingly hard from the sight of you bruised and bleeding because of him. He gripped your chin harshly, forcing your mouth open and pressing his thumb onto your tongue.

“Fucking gorgeous mouth,” he groaned, holding your mouth wide open with his hand until drool started to spill from the corner. “Beg for my fucking cock, slut.” He let go of your tongue, moving his hand to grip your hair.

“Beej...please, Daddy, I want your cock so badly,” you moaned, yelping when he yanked harder on your hair.

“Louder,” he demanded with a snarl. “The neighbors better fucking hear how much of a fucking slut you are for my cock.”

“Please!” you yelled, desperation bubbling up inside of you. “God, Daddy, wanna feel you cum down my throat, on my face, please put your fucking cock in my mou-”

Your words were cut off by the cock you’d been begging for being shoved into your mouth, and you moaned gratefully as Beetlejuice held your head in place to fuck his cock down your throat. He set a fast pace, forcing himself into your mouth and groaning at the wet heat as it practically choked him. Tears ran down your cheeks as you gagged around him, but you kept the worst of your gag reflex in check and groaned at the feeling of the weight of his cock in your mouth. You trailed your hand downward, hoping to be able to touch yourself while Beej fucked your face, but you suddenly felt two invisible hands grab at your wrists and pull them roughly behind your back.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he growled, grunting as he continued to thrust into your mouth. “You don’t get to cum until my cock is in your fucking cunt, understand?”

You nodded, your jaw beginning to ache from the stretch around the girth of his cock. How much longer would he make you wait? Just as the thought struck you, he pulled out, reaching out again to hold your mouth wide open.

“Mm, my gorgeous little whore,” he groaned. “Stick that tongue out for me.”

You obeyed, looking up to meet his gaze and shuddering at the pure hunger in his eyes. Finally, he let go, using the hand his hair to force you back onto your hands and knees, the invisible hands releasing you so you could rest on your elbows, your bruised ass once again presented for him. He stroked his clawed fingers over it and chuckled at the sound of you hissing from the pain.

“Looks like you stretched yourself out for me earlier, hmm?” he said, rubbing his thumb over your pussy just enough to make you moan. “Better hope so, because I’m aching to fuck that gorgeous cunt.” With no further delay, he lined up at your entrance and began to slide inside. You gasped at the delicious stretch, looking at his smirking face in the mirror as he filled you. When his hips met your ass, you cried out at the pain and pleasure intermingling so beautifully. He laughed darkly, running his clawed hands down the expanse of your back.

“Fuck, you’re always so tight, feeder,” he moaned, quickly setting up a bruising pace. “Tell me how good it feels.”

“Hnn, Daddy, feels, oh fuck, feels so good,” you whimpered, grinding back against him as he thrusted deep inside of you.

“Yeah, I bet it fucking does, you little cockslut,” he growled, letting his hand fall roughly against the raised welts on your ass. You screamed, clenching around him as the pain momentarily overtook you before immediately mixing with pleasure as the head of his cock ground deliciously against your G spot. “That’s right, you take my fucking cock like a good little whore, Jesus Christ you’re so fucking hot.”

His words sent hot pulses of pleasure throughout your body along with the drag of his cock inside of you as he took you as hard as he possibly could. He dragged his claws down your back, scratching the large expanse of skin and moaning as little pinpricks of blood welled up on the service. You whimpered at the pain, but it felt so incredibly good that you wouldn’t complain in the slightest. He leaned down and slowly licked a trail up your back, groaning harshly at the intoxicating taste of your blood paired with your wet heat clenching around his cock as he fucked you.

“Daddy, please, I wanna cum so fucking bad,” you whined, reaching down to rub at your clit while he fucked you. He quickly slapped it away, replacing it with his own, and you moaned at the feeling of his rough fingers rubbing you so perfectly. “Fuck yes, just like that, ooh Daddy, please can I cum?”

He growled, rubbing your clit in little circles while he drove his cock into you as hard as he could, his thrusts growing erratic as he chased his own high.

“Fucking cum for me you little slut,” he growled into your ear. “Let Daddy feel you cum on his cock. Cum for me.”

You felt it building, the pleasure of his cock pounding into you combined with his filthy words and his fingers on your clit dragged you over the edge and you screamed, squirting harder than you ever had before as you came. You could feel it dripping down your thighs and onto the carpet, but you didn’t care, you simply gave yourself over to it as each drive of his cock inside you made little bursts of liquid squirt out onto his cock and all over the floor.

“Oh fuck, that’s the stuff, sweetness, you give me that fucking cum,” he groaned, his thrusts growing even more erratic as the feeling of you squirting around him sent him even closer to the edge. “Fuck, you’re so fucking good, kitten, I’m gonna cum, gonna fill you up so good-FUCK!” And then he was cumming, spilling inside you with a shaky groan as he buried himself as deep as he could. Coming down from your orgasm, you moaned at the feeling of his cum inside of you, already dripping out and sliding down your thighs. After a few moments, he pulled out of you, groaning at the sight of a rush of cum spilling out of your pussy and falling to the floor. He pulled you up onto your knees and into his arms and you buried your face in his chest.

“Feelin’ alright, snack?” he asked softly, his fingers stroking soothingly over the scratches he’d made down your back. You nodded, snuggling even closer to him and smiling as he chuckled. “Looks like you are. How about I get the shower going and we’ll clean up, and then I’ll tell you all about how business went over dinner. Does that sound good?”

You didn’t answer. When he looked down, he saw your breath had evened out, unconsciousness taking you over after the exhaustion of being dominated as hard as you were. With a good-natured laugh, he lifted you bridal style and carried you to the bed, resting back against the headboard and holding you against his chest.

Never a dull moment with you around.

I FUCKING KO’D MYSELF WITH THIS OK BYE

@realmonsterboyhours sorry for @ing you so hard 🤣

#beetlejuice #beetlejuice the musical #beetlejuice nsft #nsft #beetlejuice fic #beetlejuice fanfic #beetlejuice fanfiction #incubeej #incubus au #incubus!beetlejuice #incubus beetlejuice #beetlejuice x reader #beetlejuicexreader #beetlejuice/reader

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angerissue · 4 years

Text

Confluence

House of Cards | 4,100+ words | Bruce is having trouble adjusting to life at Avengers Tower. Tony catches him at an inopportune moment.

One year earlier, when the Chitauri invasion had drawn to a close and the city was a bed of rubble and alien corpses, Avengers Tower had felt welcoming to Bruce. It was a source of temporary stability; a chance to collect himself before he faded back into the ether and progressed to the next phase of his uncertain existence. This existence had been vindicated somewhat, over the course of the team's slow formation, and his contributions (whether scholarly or otherwise) that were somehow far less ineffectual than he expected. But all the sentiment in the world didn't change cold, hard facts; in the end, his situation remained the same as ever. He was better off somewhere more obscure, and a bit slower-paced. So he reinforced the connections he made with the team, and left New York behind.

Nowadays, Avengers Tower doesn't feel too welcoming. Bruce considers it no more than a halfway house for someone down on their luck, bobbing around like a cork in the ocean until they reach solid ground again. He fits the bill for this. After his various successes with S.H.I.E.L.D. over the past year, from the developments in his research to the cataloguing of essential data on his condition, he never planned on regressing so much that he became reliant on Tony again. Unfortunately, S.H.I.E.L.D. was a little more rotten than he originally believed. He could tolerate the rationale behind Phase Two, and their intention to find applications for mildly hazardous tech, as long as the intentions remained honest, but he couldn't do much about Hydra, maddening as it was. He couldn't stop the eventual demise of S.H.I.E.L.D., or his unemployment and the loss of momentum that ensued.

Suffice to say, his options were limited.

He’s been at the Tower for a week now. Bitter about the accommodations, under the impression he shouldn't need them; he should have found a way to make do without knocking on that figurative door and begging Tony for boarding (because he refuses to believe there wasn't another option; he simply couldn't find it), he’s spent most of his time in solitude. Stuck in the liminal space between acceptance of the situation, and refusal to accept it. His status quo with S.H.I.E.L.D. had been too satisfactory to simply forget about, because it's one of the few times something had gone without a hitch for him. He was compelled to continue clutching those memories close, as if by sheer willpower S.H.I.E.L.D. would reappear with a cleaner order of business, and an opening in their research division.

Wishful thinking, Banner.

He’ll be putzing around here for a while.

In the process, he’s been excusing himself from most interactions, except when he's raiding the kitchen and passing one or two teammates on the way, or retreating to his living quarters in the early hours of the morning, at which times his teammates would not be stirring, but shut away in their own spaces, save for Tony himself, who's proven himself a night owl yet again, AC/DC on full blast. Steve has lent the occasional hand on his shoulder, and offered an understanding ear (not that the doctor's taken him up on the offer, being reluctant to unload his preoccupations on him), and Romanoff has given him a few sympathetic glances. None of these actions have been unexpected, because they both worked at S.H.I.E.L.D. with him, and he assumes they both share the aimlessness he's experiencing now. There was a predictability in the madness at S.H.I.E.L.D.; in the volatility of their everyday work. But this common thread doesn't make socializing easier.

He's been making a considerable effort to avoid Tony in particular. A week ago, when he was standing in the entrance of the building, duffel bags sagging on the floor and his posture too deflated to mean anything but weariness, Tony had subjected him to a flurry of questions, most of which were painfully direct ones about his health, diet, and whether the "other guy" was giving him a hard time. Tony didn't even pose them in a tongue-in-cheek manner; his expression made it evident that he was concerned about him. The way his gaze was poking and prodding and searching his face, like he was expecting to find additional defects in him; new lines and wrinkles that were not present before... Like he could see all the nights of debilitating uneasiness that he'd suffered. Like he was trying to find a way in. Peel back the pretenses. The scrutiny had exhausted Bruce.

Bruce never did answer his questions. He feared if he did, Tony would start following him around, under the impression he wanted the company when it wasn't the case. It would have bred resentment towards Tony, which Bruce couldn't stomach; this would not have been fair to the man. Misleading others is a familiar custom for him, dare he even call it a habit, but he tends to reserve it for the moments when it's practical and beneficial for both parties. Not the case here, evidently.

He simply bit his tongue, and allowed Tony to check him in.

This isn't to say Bruce was ungrateful for the accommodations. He was rather smitten with them, especially once he learned that Tony had overhauled certain spaces to suit his preferences. Some of the areas dedicated to R&D were soundproofed and relieved of their video surveillance, and he was even allocated his own bespoke living quarters (complete with a spacious bedroom and blackout curtains), all of which has provided a welcome and much-needed channel for his solitude. An acceptable environment in various senses. Bruce found it odd initially, knowing that Tony could decipher him so well that accurate renovations to the building were feasible; he felt more than a little exposed; turned inside-out like an old sweater, but at least it happened with Tony as opposed to a more unsavoury person. Sterns. Ross. Samson. All objectionable. Still, the renovations have been insufficient for boosting his mood. Discontentment still hangs over him like a rain cloud.

And it's been causing his symptoms to be... Rockier than usual. Earlier onset. More punishing. More difficult to conceal. Fortunately, he can be alone most of the time, and easily sequester himself in the tower's many laboratories. It's proving even more beneficial today.

Oh, especially today.

Here goes round one of trying to hide something that, if discovered, could affix Tony to his back like a kick-me sign.

Bruce crosses his fingers that someone else won't enter the lab and interrupt him, taking one last glance at the entrance before he unbuttons his shirt and removes it. With a few methodical, well-rehearsed motions, he folds it and places it down on the nearby desk stool. Then he lifts his glasses from his nose, fingers pinching the tender imprints where they'd been resting, and centers them on top of the shirt, followed by his socks. He's spent a year refining the same steps, making them more efficient and less cumbersome. The rest of the process has become easier to bounce back from as well, especially because there's no discomfort from it anymore. There's no scuffle. No tug-of-war between himself and something dark and distorted; no black ink bleeding into his mind like a swelling bruise. There was never something else in the first place, from what he’s gathered over the last year. He knows better than to believe verifiably false ideas like this now.

(Especially because it was borne of denial, which seems to be a running theme in his neck of the woods. He won’t make the same mistake twice.)

There's a forbearance, and a peacefulness to the change. By this point, it's become a routine — the muffled cracking and reforming of bones, releasing tension like a set of popped knuckles. The chill in his blood, drowned in warmth that radiates and diffuses into his fingertips, green threading and mapping itself over paling skin. Bruce reaches for the nearest desk, gripping the edge for balance as his breathing falters; stops, and under the fluorescent lights, his shadow shifts and settles into something a little less human.

It's over in seconds. He doesn't dwell on it, nor is he a host to annoyance or anger. He merely is, existing in this pocket of time with a calm awareness, albeit with ears more attuned to the surrounding space and echoes of the laboratory. For a while, he lingers in the lab, wandering around; gingerly rearranging the supplies on the desk into more organized layouts. He would keep working on the tentative linac blueprint from earlier this week, but now isn't the time. He knows his limits. Math is one of them. He won’t bother.

Then, he hears the door to the laboratory slide open. He freezes, green eyes darting to the entrance.

Tony.

Tony marches into the laboratory, staring down at a tablet in his hands. His voice is nonchalant. Unbothered. "Hey, doc, sorry to crash your party. Just gotta...” He looks up from his device, and as their gazes connect, surprise flickers across his face. He stops walking. “Oh.”

Banner simply stares back at him, his own eyes wide.

After a moment, Tony breaks the ice. His voice is casual, like a coworker walking into the office with a tray of morning coffee. “Hey, big guy. Didn’t know you were out and about.” As he talks, his eyes skirt around the room, over the desks and monitors and apparatuses, as if he's searching for proof this wasn't an uncontrolled incident. Soon, his attention catches the neatly-stacked pile of clothing on the desk stool, remaining there for a beat before he blinks and looks at Banner again, the hamster wheel in his brain clearly running full-tilt but unable to put two and two together. The look on his face screams puzzlement, and while it doesn't contain any fear, that doesn't mean much. This is Tony Stark. He must have been missing when they were handing out self-preservation and common sense, because he doesn't have an ounce of either in his body — not if Banner's previous encounters with him were any indication. Images of an electrical prod flicker in his mind, fluttering around like moths. He feels the sting in his side where it jabbed him.

Nope. No self-preservation at all.

Tony meanders toward the nearest desk and picks up a device from it, stacking it on top of his tablet. Then he looks at Banner again, still remarkably at ease. “Tell Bruce I said hi, will you?” He shrugs. “If he’s down for it, I mean. Seems a bit grumpy lately. Not that there’s anything wrong with being grumpy,” he adds, pointedly raising his hand.

Banner immediately takes offense to the billionaire's nonchalant words, because... Grumpy. That’s what he takes from this; that’s what he thinks of him? To mock him and pick on his tendencies behind his back, without realizing he's actually talking to his face, and without even bothering to read between the lines and guess for himself why he's been reluctant to converse; how abhorrent... And piteous. Surely if Tony put on his thinking cap for more than a moment, he'd learn the source of his unhappiness in the current situation; the grievances from having to depend on someone else once again. All those grievances are collecting in his brain like old and rotting bones, and if he could be elsewhere, he would, and he will; he doesn't need the invincible Iron Man to kiss his booboos better in the meantime. He’s not so weak. And he’s not ‘grumpy’. Averse to conversing, his gaze hardens, eyes acidic beneath the shelf of his brow. He straightens up and turns away, folding his arms in dismissal.

Buzz off, tin man.

But the tin man doesn’t leave. He does the opposite. Banner can hear his footsteps tracking over the tile, slowly nearing him, as if he's unsure about the situation and he wants to observe the outcome... How characteristic of him. Banner doesn’t intend on cooperating, because he doesn't want Tony breathing down his neck and puncturing his personal bubble, and he doesn't want to be treated like a doormat and a source of amusement and entertainment. This was supposed to be his own space, as Tony had claimed earlier this week, and he's compelled to defend it. Gritting his teeth, he turns his head just a little, enough to catch Tony hanging in his peripheral. Too close... Way too close. Irritation brews in the pit of his stomach and breathes into his chest like a fanned flame. When he speaks, every word is deliberate, the syllables dropping one by one with a dark rasp. "Don’t. Come. Closer.”

Tony halts. “You can talk? Jesus. Way to keep me in suspense.”

Banner stiffens, his eyes darting around the room in search of a reprieve from the blunder. His decision to speak was sloppy. Poorly considered. The less Tony knows and suspects about his condition, the less he'll bother him for conversation. But the cat's already out of the bag. No going back. All he can do is avoid revealing any more information to Tony... Which will be arduous, because Tony is persistent and doesn't take "no" for an answer; the moment he’s given even the smallest amount of leeway, the entire leash will be pulled taut until it snaps; he’ll stick his nose into matters until he’s satisfied with the answers he finds, and he’s already testing his patience; testing his nerve. Agitated by the idea, Banner turns around, chin dipping as he looks down at Tony, features bent into a frown. His lungs bloat and compress, hot air billowing from flared nostrils.

“Easy, big guy,” Tony says, beginning to back away. “I’ll get out of your hair. Before I do... You wouldn’t happen to know why Banner has a bee in his bonnet, would you? Could use a few pointers. You know, to get the ball rolling.”

A bee... In his bonnet. The second accusation of anger stings Banner more than the first, an electric shock to his confidence, and his irritation bubbles up and spills over like scalding water. He wouldn't hurt Tony because he's not a monster, and he's never wanted to be one, but he lacks the patience to let Tony bully him. He curls his lip into a poorly-contained snarl, teeth glinting under the harsh laboratory light, and he tries to contain the threatening sound that resonates in his throat, but it kicks forward at once, ragged and guttural as he leans down toward Tony until their noses are nearly touching. His words spill out, voice booming throughout the lab and blowing Tony's hair back. "I'm not mad!"

Tony staggers back and nods, trying to deescalate the situation. Then, he pauses. Skepticism clouds his features, his brow knitting. “‘You’?” After a moment of silence, his expression only crinkles more, eyes squinting as if he can’t believe his ears. “Wait a minute. Bruce?”

Banner shuts his mouth, jaw clenching as he realizes his error. Not good. He shakes his head, turning around and walking away. “Go away.”

“Nuh-uh. You can’t tell me to beat it, not after that.” Tony drops his devices onto the nearest desk. “Couples’ therapy. Now.”

Banner fumes, the beginnings of panic twisting his stomach into a nauseating knot. He knew the billionaire would stick to him like gum on the bottom of a shoe, as soon as something caught his attention enough, but he never expected their conversation to go off the rails entirely, and he needs to stem the bleeding before something more happens and he makes an even bigger fool of himself, which is imminent if he plays along with Tony's stupid games... He doesn't want Tony buzzing around him like a horsefly... No talking. No chumming around like pals at a picnic. He doesn't listen to Tony's orders and continues to trudge away, steering himself toward the entrance of the lab. He can hear Tony behind him, following in hot pursuit. Then he hears him call out.

“J, get the door, will you?”

Without any human interaction, the glass door slides closed with a mechanical click, right in Banner's face. Incensed from the sudden lack of escape, he whirls around and crouches low, staggering his stance, muscles rolling as they flex beneath sickly green skin. Ready. Waiting. He emits a low growl.

Tony crosses his arms. His feet are planted firmly, and he doesn’t budge. “Not buying it.”

Banner groans in frustration, shoulders dropping as he straightens up and kicks at the floor. There goes his bluff, and there goes the tin man's lack of self-preservation again, bothersome and impossible to maneuver around. But it doesn't convince him to cooperate, even if he's too well-mannered to smash down the doors and make his own exit; he's not going to let him win. Itching to put more distance between himself and Tony, he lumbers around the desks until he's on the opposite side as Tony is, and then he stands his ground. His breaths come in rough and forceful gusts. Every cell in his body is on the defensive, ready to move again.

Tony is unimpressed. “Really?”

“Not talking!”

“No shit,” Tony says, throwing his arms up. “Been noticing all week. Got an expiration date, for it? Because I gotta say, I’m...” He gestures to Banner's massive frame, more miffed than afraid. “More than a little intrigued, and there are about a dozen models I could use your input on. Not counting the backlog.”

The retort doesn't appease Banner, because in his mind, there is no expiration date. His openness cannot be predicted like the weather. But before he can even open his mouth and respond, Tony seems to fall pensive, and it makes Banner pause. Save for the electric humming of the fluorescence above them, and the quiet whir of devices, the room falls into an uncomfortable silence.

The silence is soon punctured by Tony, who pulls a desk stool closer with a metallic scrape and takes a seat. Mouth tightening into a thin line, he stifles a sigh and looks down at his hands, twiddling his thumbs. His earlier arrogance is gone, lost in transit somewhere.

Unsure what to think, Banner waits.

“Look, doc,” Tony begins. “Not to make this a greeting card moment, but I missed you. When you left. And I get it — you don’t want to be here. You have things you’d rather be doing.” Tony shrugs, pursing his lip. “Maybe it’s got something to do with me. Wouldn’t hold it against you.”

Banner doesn't respond. His green eyes mellow as he observes the man, because there's no frivolity in his expression whatsoever, and he cannot help the bafflement that stirs inside, because it doesn't make sense... Tony, the reason for his seclusion? No. That conclusion... How did Tony reach it? Is that how he's come across ever since he arrived; unsociable to the point of seeming cross and petty and petulant? Is it the reason for Tony's visit now? Getting answers? The room between them is quiet, but his mind is loud, spinning with questions that gain more and more speed as time ticks on.

Eventually, Banner throws a wrench into the contemplations, stopping them in their tracks. None of them matter. End results are end results, and Tony is sad. Not feeling well. Unhappy. He inhales, dispelling a sigh as he crosses his arms and looks down at his feet, toes curling in discomfort. His shadow is motionless as his awareness folds inward. It doesn't seem like a good idea, conversing with someone he never wanted to converse with, because he doesn't want to come across as a pushover; as a baby brother that Tony can boss around on a whim. Yet at the same time, it does feel like a good idea. How funny. Or perhaps not so funny.

Necessary.

Because he feels... Bad. He doesn't want Tony to tumble into his hole of assumptions again, and more self-loathing because of it. Not again. Never again. He never wanted to hurt him. To hurt people. Achieving this was troublesome at times; the "other guy" was erratic and unstable for ages, and he broke more than he built. But here, it wasn't the other guy that hurt Tony.

It was Banner that hurt Tony. And Banner is sorry.

“Not your fault,” he rumbles, still unable to meet his eyes. Then he pauses, fishing for words in the alphabet soup of his brain. He sees an intricate and profound bundle of words somewhere in his head; an explanation that could easily surface if he was less green, and he scrunches his face in an attempt to make it clearer. But the words are out of reach. “Change is... Not fun.”

In his peripheral, he can see Tony nod, appearing to process the comment. “Checks out. Thanks, doc; that’s... A load off my mind. And sorry, by the way. For calling you grumpy. Figured I was, well...” He rubs the back of his neck. “Talking to someone else.”

Banner grimaces and tucks his shoulders, disgust from Tony's earlier words sparking in his belly again. He doesn't want to hear it, and he doesn't want the reminder of how contagious his denial had been; how everyone on the team was following his lead and splitting him into halves when it wasn't so; it was a dumber and sadder time in his life and he doesn't want to relive it. But he subdues the annoyance, crushing it down like a soda can. Soon, it’s simply a nagging feeling. Done with. For the most part. He still carries the momentum from their argument, and he's not in the frame of mind to set everything to a sappy and saccharine soundtrack. He's not going to open himself up like a blooming flower. At the same time, he's not going to leave Tony out in the cold. He rolls his eyes and continues to stare down at the floor, forcing himself to respond with tact. “Fine.”

“So does this mean we’re good?” Tony asks. He stands up from his seat, stepping around the desk until he’s in front of the doctor. “Sorry — hard to tell. Not used to... This.”

He nods, still avoiding eye contact.

“Great.” Tony offers his hand. “Shake on it?”

Banner looks at him, then down at the hand. Pauses. Thinks. Too small to shake. He extends a curled fist instead, and waits.

Tony returns the fist bump, tiny knuckles tapping Banner’s own. A grin spans across his face, eyes bright. “Good to have you back, doc,” he says, reaching for his devices on the desk. “I’m gonna head out now. Give you a few. You know where to find me, if you want to say hi.” He turns around, heading for the door.

Banner stands there, shifting his feet. He’s won. Tony is leaving. But somehow, he feels like he’s lost. Because something is already missing from the room; it's like the space has broadened upon Tony's presence and doesn't want to return to normal... It doesn't want to shrink down again. Stuck three sizes too big. In that moment, Banner knows the reason. He's forgotten about the stimulating conversations and arguments and the firecracker spark that Tony exudes, without even meaning it, and after a year of its absence, he's just gotten a taste of it again. That fire. That gumption. He wants more. It felt good, to shout; to argue; to bounce off someone else. He could be brash without inspiring fear. Tony's fearlessness towards him might be dumb at times, but it's dumb in an endearing way. A tolerant way.

All those memories in his head — he's not scowling in them. He's smiling.

He doesn't want to continue everything later. Too late. Too slow. It's agonizing. He’s never been good at waiting for something he wants, least not in his body. If he were shorter and smaller; weaker, he would argue the merits of bothering Tony and taking up his time and wedging himself into a moment he didn't belong, but it doesn't occur to him. The distance between thought and action is much shorter.

He plods forward and reaches out, tapping Tony’s shoulder.

The billionaire stops and turns around again, looking up at him expectantly.

“Stay.”

Tony’s reaction is immediate. Fondness in his eyes, he starts heading toward the desks again, giving the doctor a pat on the arm as he passes him. “Happy to. Thanks, Bruce.”

#( in control. )#( paresthesia ) oneshots.#( verse ) house of cards.#tony stark #bruce banner #umm yeah this is going in the tags because i guess people might like this?#maybe i'm being overly optimistic but eh might as well.#sorry in advance if i fucked up conventions or formatting etc.#i don't even know if this qualifies as angst or h/c or fluff #i don't do this often. cx #anyways it's been a rough last few days but i'll try to write some more tonight #and get around to some of these messages. thanks for your patience guys.

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lia-jones · 3 years

Text

Growing Together - Chapter Seven - Storms and Earthquakes

Author’s Note: A special thank you to @aim170, for the beautiful quote. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,

Which yields its fruits in its season

And its leaf does not wither;

And in whatever he does, he prospers.

Psalm 1:3

Victor had heard many life stories filled with hardship and sorrow that usually ended with the protagonist rising above it all. He had heard more than he could count, but the one that warmed his heart the most was the one of the woman with whom he was sharing a bed.

He had said it before, and he would say it again: Andrea was a tree. He hadn’t seen the abuse, but he had witnessed her valiantly take everything that made her life ugly and turn it into beauty with love, perseverance and a touch of stubbornness. He watched her as she faced all the seasons, with courage and faith, and he was the one that sat beneath her luscious branches and ate from her fruit, proud to see her still standing tall, even after the wind, rain, and snow.

For that, and so much more, he loved her. There was nothing he wouldn’t in the name of love. And this was important to her. This was her lifelong dream, the thing she wanted the most, so he would give it to her. He wanted nothing more than to see his tree grow, thicken her trunk and stretch her branches to the sky, embellishing the landscape with her vibrant leaves and beautiful flowers.

When she mentioned the fertility clinic in Switzerland, he carefully read every piece of literature she provided, along with the information obtained by his private investigators. She led him to that doctor’s office and he gladly followed, with a patient smile on his face, open-minded and cooperative, even though his heart was filled with worry.

He listened to the doctor explain how Andrea would receive newly developed hormonal shots to stimulate ovulation, and how her eggs would be fertilized and inserted inside a surrogate womb. That woman would stay under the clinic’s care, and they would be informed of every step in their child’s growth and health. Victor had already prepared a set of questions to ask the doctor, and he posed every single one of them and remained receptive, although surrogacy was something that made him extremely uneasy.

When the doctor left them to discuss their options, Andrea looking at him with pleading eyes, Victor had no choice but to hold her lovingly and kiss her. He walked into that room filled with distasteful porn magazines and ignored them, making love to his wife in his mind instead. She didn’t even need to make her case, she had already won.

The first injection barely had any consequences. Andrea spent the majority of the first day sleeping, probably due to jet lag as well, only mentioning some mild nausea. After the second injection, however, Andrea’s health took a turn for the worse. Victor found her kneeling by the toilet late that night, heaving painfully, her face swollen due to the effort. Her body soon followed, to the point where Andrea found it hard to button her pants or even walk, due to her swollen feet.

Victor brought her every kind of meal he could think of, in hopes of finding something that she could keep in her stomach, only to see her run to the bathroom minutes later to empty it. While she slept, the only thing that seemed to bring her any kind of comfort, Victor would call the doctor, worried that, in the attempt of creating life, Andrea was actually killing herself.

Every night, every single night, he would ask her if she wanted to quit the treatment and fly home. Every single time he would tell her he loved her, that she was all he needed, that their life of two was already more than he ever imagined for himself. He would try to talk her out of it, saying that he didn’t like seeing her make herself sick like that, that he wanted nothing more than his wife happy and healthy. And every time she would put on a strong face, tell him it was not that bad, that she wanted to keep trying. Victor found himself with no choice but to kiss her forehead, secretly checking for fever, only to tell her to get ready for another injection. He would clench his shaking hand to steady it, torn between the feeling that he was helping her make her dream come true and simultaneously making her sick.

The day after the last injection she started eating again, preparing herself for the next phase. The color returned to her cheeks, as well as some of her energy. That allowed Victor to feel some relief, even though the concern never went away. The first battle was over, but the war was yet to be won.

He held her hand lovingly as the medical staff put her under anesthesia, promising her that his would be the last face she would see as she fell asleep, and the first one when she woke up. He never left her side. He witnessed the doctors take from her eight eggs, the seeds that would make one baby hers, and take them to the laboratory for fertilization. He stroked her curls as she slept off the medicine, knowing she would wake up with anxious eyes and a heart full of questions. He would be prepared for all of them, and he would soothe any worry in her heart. The ground was shaking violently under his tree, making her shake due to the consequences of abuse, so he would keep her rooted.

Victor watched as her eyelids fluttered open, a groggy look on her face. His face was the first thing she saw. And his hand on hers was the first thing she felt. He gave her a soft smile.

“When are we starting?” She was still half-asleep. Victor chuckled at his sleepyhead of a wife.

“It’s already finished.” His hand caressed her face, like he could remove the remnants of the drug-induced sleep. “It went very well. They collected eight eggs.”

Andrea started to fidget. Victor’s hand rested on her chest, steadying her.

“Are you in pain? The doctors said you could experience some soreness or cramps.”

“I’m fine, I just need some help sitting.” Victor’s hands immediately rested on her waist and back, supporting her as she tried to sit up. “They just collected eight? They said fifteen was the go-to number.”

“It’s an estimate, they don’t need fifteen eggs. They just need one good egg.” Victor squeezed her hand lovingly. “They are on fertilization as we speak.”

“So it went well? We are going to have a baby?” Her eyes filled with tears. “Is this really happening?”

“It appears so.” Victor smiled, trying to hide his concern.

In all honesty, he should have told her that she should wait, she shouldn’t hope this much, this battle wasn’t over, they weren’t winners yet. But that was the grey, dark, cynical part of him, which used to be all of him before she came into his life. When she did come, she filled his life with sunshine, flowers, branches heavy with leaves, the cool shade for his aching heart, so much in need of a place to rest. He couldn’t repay her with shades of grey when she needed light. So he allowed her to hope, a bit selfishly, because her colors made his colors so much more vibrant, the world becoming a better place when she had a smile on her face and hope in her eyes.

So he wiped away her happy tears and allowed himself to laugh with her, feeling his heart also becoming lighter. That was the power of her smile.

Unfortunately, her happiness would be short-lived. The doctor appeared shortly after, a grim look on his face, making Andrea’s smile fade instantly. Victor took her hand again, offering her his strength.

“Is something wrong?” Andrea questioned before Victor could, and he could swear he felt something shaking in her core.

“I’m just returning from the laboratory.” The doctor explained. “The procedure was a success, however, upon more thorough analysis, we came to conclude the eggs aren’t healthy enough to undergo fertilization.”

There was a long pause. Victor and the doctor were expecting Andrea’s reaction.

“Well, ok.” She nodded after a long deep breath. “We’ll try again, then. We can return next month and-”

“Mrs. Lee.” The doctor interrupted her, and Andrea drew in a ragged breath. “I am so very sorry to tell you this, but despite our previous assessment, your ovaries may not be as healthy as we thought. If we stimulate ovulation again, there is no guarantee that the next eggs will be viable, and doing so could lead to dire consequences to your health. I can’t in good conscience advise that.”

Again, the room fell silent. Andrea’s eyes focused on the comforter covering her legs and she remained still, reactionless. It was Victor that broke the silence.

“Thank you, doctor. My wife and I will reassess our situation and figure out the next course of action.” He looked at her, hoping for her to return his gaze. She didn’t. “She may be released today?”

“Yes, she will be more comfortable at home. I’ll come back in an hour with her release papers and to perform a final examination.”

Finally alone, Victor waited patiently for her to speak. She seemed to be taking a long time forming the words, her eyes watering, sadness seemingly building a deep pit inside her, and she was falling. He took her chin in his hand and made her face him, letting her know he was there, he wouldn’t let her fall.

“We can get an egg donor.” She finally surfaced from her thoughts. “I don’t care if it doesn’t have my DNA, it will still-”

“No.” Victor stopped her.

“Victor, we-”

“No.” He reinforced. “Either it’s from both of us, or it won’t happen.”

“Didn’t you hear the doctor? Mine aren’t...” Her voice failed. He hated to be the one giving the final blow that would crush her dream, but he wouldn’t want a child from another woman. Andrea was the woman he loved.

“Andy…” His voice was soft. “It’s over.” Victor’s heart broke as he spoke the words. He hated to be the one giving the final blow that would crush her dream, but he wouldn’t want a child from another woman. Andrea was the woman he loved.

“That’s it?” She looked down, her brows furrowing in disbelief. “We lost?”

“I’m sorry.” He wiped one of the tears that fell. He hated to see her cry. He wanted to give her everything she could possibly dream of, but it was painstakingly obvious that somethings can’t be bought.

“I should be the one apologizing.” Her voice trembled once more. “I’m the one with a broken body, I’m the one who can’t conceive a child.”

Victor pulled her closer to him. Andrea quickly broke the embrace.

“A hug won’t help. It won’t change the fact that I’m malfunctioning. It won’t ease the fact that I’m a disgrace of a woman, of a wife, I can’t give you a family. And it’s just so unfair!” She smacked the comforter in rage. “I don’t get it, women get pregnant all the time without even wanting to. Why can’t I? Why, Victor?” She turned to him, her eyes full of pain.

“Andy…” He tried to caress her, only to have her evade his touch.

“No! I don’t need comforting, I need answers!” She yelled at him, her emotions out of control. “I want to know, if there is a God, why would he do this to me! Why does he think that it’s fair that some women give their kids away or mistreat them, and I have to suffer through this! We would be such great parents; we have so much love to give, we have the means, the education, everything to make it work. You would be such a great father, we could be such a happy tight family, and I WANT IT SO FREAKING BAD, WHY CAN’T IT HAPPEN?”

The ground was shaking harder, stones coming to surface, her core shaking violently, and all Victor could do was watch. He could hear the storm rumbling inside her chest, the heavy rain taking away the ground, leaving her roots exposed. For a moment, he didn’t know how to stop it.

“This is all my fault! I let that asshole into my life, let him beat me into a worthless piece of crap, who can’t do something as simple as PRODUCE ONE SIMPLE DAMN GOOD EGG, LET ALONE BEAR A CHILD!”

Victor couldn’t stand it anymore. Pulling her towards him quite forcefully, he buried her face in his chest, holding tight to his tree. He would not let her roots be released from the earth. He wouldn’t let her topple over. He would face the storm with her. She wasn’t alone.

“Enough of that!” He commanded the storm. “I understand you are hurting, that you are disappointed, but you are never to speak about yourself in that manner again, do you understand me?” His voice spoke powerful and low in her ear, perhaps a little more sternly than he intended. “You are the most amazing woman I have met in my life; you are so far from being worthless. And you are not a disgraceful wife, you purposefully made yourself sick so I could have a chance at becoming a father. I’ve never had anyone in my life go to such lengths for me, ever! It’s only fair that you are sad, more than legitimate to be angry, but not at yourself, do you hear me?” He pushed her shoulders back and leaned his forehead against her, making her face him. “I understand that you feel like throwing punches, and the world does deserve some of them, but never at yourself! Am I clear?”

Her body shook with sobs, and she finally let herself be properly held. Victor kept her pressed to him, so close that for a moment he feared she would suffocate. He could feel the rain beating hard against her now naked roots, threatening to wash her away, as the earth broke beneath her. He wouldn’t let it happen. They would weather the storm together; he would allow no rain, thunder or lightning to ruin the most beautiful thing in his world. And at that moment, he too became a tree, and he buried his roots deep in the ground, entangling them with hers.

#Growing Pains - Series #growingtogether #victor x oc #victor angst #victor mlqc #mlqc li zeyan #mlqc fanfic #love and producer #mister love queens choice #mister love dream date

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tazzytypes · 4 years

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Apocalypse: Sanctuary - Chapter 6

Thank you guys for your continued support! Your comments really encourage me to keep writing through any personal doubts I may have in my own writing.

Read on AO3 or see Masterpost for more chapters!

Em and Timothy stood in the hall, Grey’s bustling around them, the occasional Purple or Warden passing them by with a sideways glance. It had been two days and Emily still hadn’t spoken a word to Em, making her feel isolated from the pair. She didn’t want to admit the truth in Langdon’s statement — she’d find a way to reconcile with the other girl even if it was out of spite.

“She’s coming around,” Timothy assured her, “you could always talk to her, you know?”

“She likes you more,” Em said, Timothy shaking his head as he shoved his hands into his pockets.

“You two are not great at admitting our mistakes, are you?”

“I stand by my words,” Em informed him, “and I won’t apologize unless it is sincere.”

Timothy sighed, understanding her reasoning but none the less finding the situation stressful. Emily had given him the same response only hours earlier. The two were remarkably similar, only diverging in small, almost microscopic chinks of their moral alignment.

“Perhaps if I could better explain—”

“My mom always said the best thing to fix an argument was space,” he sighed, knowing how that conversation would end, “just… be patient.”

“Hard to be patient when she misses game night,” Em jested, a small smile forming, “I had to team up with Coco.”

Timothy laughed, “the world appreciates your sacrifice.”

“Timothy!” A voice called out, the pair looking down the hall behind said boy. Em peaked her head out from behind his shoulder to see Emily standing there. Emily’s face fell and her posture became stiff, lips pressing into a thin line.

“It’ll all work out,” Timothy assured one last time before walking towards his girlfriend, hand going out to take hers when he got close enough. Emily spared Em a glance before turning to walk the opposite direction, pulling Timothy close to whisper something.

Em wasn’t good at apologies. She knew that. Her mother used to drag her in front of someone she offended and force her to say the words even if she didn’t mean them. Insincerity was a trait the older woman had refined… a tone of voice Em knew all too well.

So she turned on her heels and walked in the opposite direction, wondering if she was being sincere in her lack of action or simply being too proud. Her feet led her to the salon, not in the mood for Langdon to appear over her shoulder once more and bring up unpleasant emotions. The brunette wouldn’t even be able to focus on reading, anyways.

The salon was surprisingly empty and quiet. A Grey bustled around dusting and cleaning as a familiar tuft of white hair sat on the sofa.

“Where is everyone?” she asked rounding the sofa.

“Hell if I know,” Gallant sighed as she sat down beside him, “this place is a fucking maze.”

“Evie in an interview?”

He chuckled and smirked, “and I finally have some peace and quiet.”

“Where’s Coco?”

“She’s in one of her moods,” Gallant said, whatever satisfaction he had left him, smile fading into a frown, “God forbid I want to talk about something other than her.”

“As a hairstylist, I thought you’d be used to it.”

“It’s not like I worked the salon 24/7.”

Em reached for a glass of water, “fair.”

There was a moment of silence… peace. Naturally, Gallant couldn’t let it last for very long.

“So what’s your deal?” He asked as she leaned back in her seat.

“I’ve made many deals in my life, some savory some unsavory,” She said, “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Well duh,” he said, rolling his eyes, “I meant personally. You’ve got this whole… mysterious thing that’s great, don’t get me wrong, but also there are like… four men left in the world and three are gay so you’re going to have to change your brand.”

“Well, I’m bi so that solves that.” Em said before muttering into her glass, “bold of you to assume I’m straight.”

Gallant rolled his eyes, “Everyone’s bi in the right situation.”

Em’s lips pressed into a thin line. She had met people like Gallant, people who said the exact same thing — toxic.

“Well I’m also ace so…” she says.

“So you’re either a prude or someone did ya’ dirty.”

“Or I just don’t like sex.”

“How can you not like sex?”

“I don’t know…” Em trailed, trying to press a point, “How can you?”

“How can you not?”

Em’s nerves were already wearing thin.

“Well, we all know where it got Stu.” She snapped. They all knew Venable was homophobic. Singling out the gay men? She didn’t even try to hide it.

“You really don’t pull the punches, do you?”

“It’s the apocalypse,” she said frowning into her drink, “If I held back I’d be dead.”

Gallant silently toasted her mentality, but the look on his face displayed a sort of… judgment. She knew the look all too well. It asked — “Are you really part of the LGBT community or do you just want to feel special?”

“Let me put it this way,” She said, putting her drink down and turning to the man, “Do you like Brussels sprouts?”

He looked at her like she had grown a new head, “no.”

“How can you not? I mean you must not have had the good ones…. Maybe it wasn’t seasoned right. No one just doesn’t like Brussels sprouts.”

“Alright, alright,” Gallant conceded, raising his hands in defeat, “I get your point.”

“I get it,” Em admitted after a moment of silence, “I can pass as hetero-normative if I need to and I have due to being in the closet. But both sides of the table always told me I was just seeking attention or going through a phase.”

“This conversation got way deeper than I was planning on it to be,” Gallant noted, eying his drink before mirroring Em and putting it on the table.

“Yeah,” Em admitted with a chuckle, leaning back on the couch and staring at the ceiling, “Some things just didn’t die with the apocalypse, huh?”

“New world,” He said, glancing at Em as he mirrored her actions, “same bullshit.”

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

At some point, Em wandered back towards the library. It was a siren’s song she could not fight against. Also, one could only bare Gallant’s companionship for so long. The man had a way to take his good moments and completely ruin them. He had tried to ask her about multiple highly-sexual definitions as a sort of test of her sexuality or somehow prove it was real to begin with.

To quell her irritation, she focused on what she was going to do once she got to the library. There was a first edition Hawthorne she had her eye on, but the ever-looming threat of death made her wish for more science books. Hell, she’d take her old high-school textbooks over Hawthorne any day if it gave her the information she needed.

With a sigh, she took out her notebook and scribbled down yet another unanswered question to research into. It only grew longer as the days passed with no end or hope of answers in sight. The only way to survive was to wander out into the radiation, but she’d rather die at the hands of cannibals than fall victim to cancer and tumors. Perhaps if they focused on finding canned preserves the risk would be lower? It was more hopeful thinking than anything else.

Nose in a book, she barely even noticed the figure rounding the corner until her shoulder clashed with theirs. Pencil clattering to the floor, a hand beat hers to the mark and she pulled back as she kneeled on the floor.

Emily was before her, mouth twisting as she handed the pencil back and searched for the words to say. Em was the first to stand back up, Emily patting at her skirt to buy more time.

“Hey,” Em spoke, breaking the silence.

“Hey.”

“So…” Em bit her lip, looking to the floor to the ceiling and anywhere that wasn’t Emily before sighing and looking at the girl, “I’m sorry. I got so... consumed by surviving I talked to you like you were stupid instead of listening to your concerns.”

“As am I,” Emily echoed, shoulders losing their tension, “I pretty much called you a heartless bitch.”

Em chuckled, “we both got heated. It’s not like your mindset wasn’t warranted.”

With a half-hearted smile, Emily gestured to the library door, Em holding it open for her before following after. As always, everything was right where they left it. Books left to the side stayed exactly in the order she had arranged, bookmarks in the right places. It was the one corner of the world the chaos didn’t touch... or at least where she could begin to understand it.

They fell into place at a table, Em sitting in a seat and Emily sitting on the table itself. She looked around the room, obviously not having been in there since Em and herself fought.

“You know,” Emily began, “before all this I was protesting a coffee shop for exploiting child labor.”

“Now those kids have more to worry about than poverty,” Em finished the thought, “and they didn’t have the luxury of a decent childhood.”

Emily thinks about it and shakes her head, “I was always told I was getting angry for no reason, taking things too far.”

She looked to Em, “I’m tired of not being able to do anything and then it being too late.”

Em broke from her gaze, trying to turn the chaotic disorder of her thoughts into words, “I wish I could jump into the deep end like you, but I just… I just can’t be a hero. It goes against everything ingrained in me.”

Emily smiled sadly at the girl, squeezing her hand. She always seemed to understand without asking. Em thought it was like her superpower or something.

“Let’s collect info,” Emily reassured, “and when you feel like it’s time… we’ll strike.”

“When we think it’s time,” Em insisted, “ya’ll’s asses are on the line too.”

Emily smiled and shook her head, “we’ll take a vote. Do it like a jury or something.”

“Viva la revolution.”

They talked for a while, Em updating her on post-interview plans. They needed to find a way to conquer the radiation. There had to be more than one organization of doomsday preppers in the LA area.

“What about the cannibals?” Emily asked, “we don’t even know what or even if there’s an armory in this place.”

“That’s why I was thinking of sneaking into—”

They were interrupted by the screeching of un-oiled door hinges, both girls quickly turning towards the sound. Bookshelves blocked their view, but the telltale sound of steel-toed boots against carpet was unmistakable to Em. Emily looked to her friend as she stood, walking towards the sound.

“Erika?”

The Fist appeared from one of the aisles, smiling at the girl as Emily looked between the two. Em fell back to sit next to Emily, giving her a reassuring smile as she closed the notebook they had been looking at.

“You have a good ear,” The Fist said, turning to nod a greeting to Emily.

“Emily,” Em introduced, “Erika.”

“A pleasure,” The Fist said, Emily offering a still anxious smile before addressing business, “Mr. Langdon wishes to speak to you.”

“Me?” Emily asked, hand on her chest as she looked between the two.

“No,” The Fist replied turning to the third woman in the room.

Em’s brows knitted in confusion. “But some of the residents haven’t even had their first—”

“It’s okay,” Emily tried to reassure, nodding for Em to go ahead, “we’ll talk more about books later.”

Em gave a nod of confirmation before turning to The Fist, “lead the way.”

Once the woman’s back was turned Em sent a frantic glance to Emily. Had someone overheard their conversations? Venable killed people for just having sex. God knows what she’d do if she unearthed conspiracy.

“I’ll be with Timothy when you’re done.”

The hallways suddenly felt more foreboding, her paranoia making every shadow into an enemy. Would she be able to fight her way out of there? No… not alone, at the very least. They had guns… she didn’t. She knew how to disarm them. Bullets only went in one direction, after all. Then again, things like that were easier said than done. It was incredible what people were capable of when they were put between a rock and a hard place.

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

Langdon didn’t look up at her as she entered, gesturing to the chair she had sat in before as he shuffled through papers.

“Miss Mead tells me you’re instrumental in keeping morale up among the residents.”

Em paused at the arm of the empty chair, hand resting on the back, “Do you ever start with a hello?”

Blue eyes finally lifted from papers, a smile crawling onto his face as he put his pen down. His hands sat on either side of his work as he stared at her with what seemed like amusement in his eyes. “Do you ever directly answer questions?”

“Sometimes.”

A smirk of her own crawled to her lips as she settled into her chair, “I simply make suggestions on how to pass the time. What they do with that is up to them.”

“You sell yourself short,” Langdon noted, examining her reactions, “there must be something that drives your mediation between residents.”

“Boredom?”

“Actions cause reactions. There has to be something you wish to gain.”

Langdon leaned forward and Em’s skin prickled with anxiety. He didn’t know anything. He was fishing. He couldn’t prove anything. “Tell me… what do you desire?”

She had expected accusations, the lack of which made her at a loss for words. Langdon watched her think for a long moment. Her eyes trained on the floor, looking beyond it at something he couldn’t see. She shook her head, defeated.

“Honestly,” she admitted, “I don’t know.”

“Everyone desires something,” he pressed, “luxury, prestige, sex... Ah, well. The latter not so much in your case.”

Em either didn’t notice the faux pas or simply didn’t comment on it. Langdon knew it was low-hanging fruit, anyways.

“Material objects bring such fleeting enjoyment,” she sighed, “and then you’re bored again looking for something to fill the hole.”

She paused, genuinely unable to think of anything.

“I guess I’d like to live comfortably,” she admitted, “… not worry over rent or if I can buy food… but being here has negated the need for that.”

“Then let’s speak immaterial,” Langdon proposed.

That. That she did have an answer for, “motivation… happiness.”

Her interrogator was less than impressed, scoffing at her response, “sounds like something from an Instagram thirst ad.”

Em laughed, amused as she realized the truth in his words and how she must sound saying them aloud. Langdon was once again perplexed by her reaction. He had been expecting something much more defensive.

“But it’s true,” she assured, looking down at her skirt and fixating on a piece of fuzz that had settled on the purple fabric, “I want to have motivation to work on the things I love. I want those fleeting moments of happiness to last longer… but these days they only last a heartbeat before they’re gone.”

He continued to stare at her. She was an oddity among this lot, genuine in a way none of them could ever hope to be. Langdon could see the desire in her eyes and the sadness that came with knowing it was something that could never be given to her. It wasn’t fame or fortune… those desires were always so much easier.

“A material object gives focus to desire,” she finally finished, finally gathering the confidence to look back into his eyes once more, “but it is fleeting. I know that all too well.”

For once Langdon was the one who was at a loss for words. The two could simply look at one another for a long moment until Em broke the silence.

“May I ask you a question?”

He waved his hand for her to continue, “Why am I receiving a second interview before some residents have received their first?”

“Maybe I think you have potential.”

Em’s face twisted into a wry smile, “or you want me to think I do.”

She did have a way of making him laugh.

“You’re quite the character,” he admitted, leaning back as he chuckled, “it makes me wonder exactly what would happen if you let go.”

“Let go?”

“Of that anger boiling inside of you.”

There it was. The dropping of the pin. Langdon liked to get you comfortable before he shoved in the knife.

Once again, Em felt the need to edge around the statement. A sinner in church felt themselves being watched by a thousand eyes when the reality was not a single one was focused upon them. No. She’d watch her words until he accused her of conspiracy. She’d play it safe.

Langdon watched her become guarded. Hands once placed on either arm of the chair became centered on her lap, fingers twisted together. Green eyes dilated and he could see a muscle tense around her jaw.

“Momentary catharsis isn’t worth the consequences,” she noted.

“There are no laws anymore,” he noted, rounding the desk, “no rules. Chaos has won.”

Em shook her head, “don’t tempt me.”

If she hadn’t of known better she’d of said he looked… enthralled. There was an eagerness to his gaze. Langdon felt his heart leap in his chest. It was as if he was witnessing a phoenix rise from the ashes.

“You’re picturing it now, aren’t you?” he asked, “taking back the power Venable holds, leading a revolt to—”

“Good things come to those who wait,” Em noted, pulling back and leaning back into the chair in preparation to rise from it, “until the cards are in my favor I won’t move.”

His tone scared her as he continued to press and press a button she had been trying to ignore. It was like staring at a snake alone in the middle of the desert, unsure if its bite will simply hurt or turn your insides to mush. Either way, it was just the two of you. Even if you managed to wrangle it off you and cut off its head there was a chance you wouldn’t survive.

“Hold the cards too close to your chest and they will be wasted.”

He only moved slightly towards her and she jumped to her feet as if his mere presence was a blazing inferno. The buzzing feeling began again, spreading from her chest to her head and all the way out to her limbs.

“I think we’re done here,” Em said, words rushing from her mouth before they could catch in her chest. She took a step back. His hands moved quickly, but his touch was light as he grabbed her arm. He pulled her towards him, just as gentle.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, voice almost soft as blue eyes searched into her green ones, “I’m on your side.”

She yanked her arm from his grasp. Em did not care for cages, gilded or covered with rust. Langdon’s eyes looked hurt as she pulled away, gaze going desperately between her face and her arm as if trying to understand why she pulled away.

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you,” She snapped before leaving the room as quickly as her feet would carry her. Langdon simply stood still and let her go, hand slowly falling to his side.

In her desperation to flee, Em’s surroundings seemed to blur around her. She had tunnel-vision and all that mattered was getting as far away from Langdon as possible. What he made her feel… there were no words for it. She was terrified and excited all at once. It was like being on a roller-coaster, the adrenaline rush making you run into danger again and again. No. She wouldn’t run into the fire. She wouldn’t play hero.

“Woah!” a voice exclaimed, “slow down.”

Timothy stood in front of her, hands on either shoulder as he bent down to look her in her eyes. They were frantic, dilated, and unable to focus on anything.

“What happened?”

Movement over her shoulder caught his eye from somewhere down the hall. Langdon stood there, hands coming to rest behind his back as he eyed the pair. A noticeable frown was on the blond’s lips, eyes narrowing on Timothy’s hands on the woman’s shoulders. Timothy felt like he had interrupted something… probably for the better. He honestly couldn’t tell.

Finally noticing Timothy’s gaze, Em glanced over her shoulder to find nothing but a dark hall. She quickly righted herself, calming her breathing and nerves.

“Where’s Emily?” she asked, voice almost robotically even.

“In her room…” Timothy said, pulling his eyes from the dark hall, “why?”

Em shook her head, “You were right… something is wrong with Langdon... wrong with this entire fucking outpost. We need a plan sooner rather than later.”

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

Hours later, Em couldn’t place why she had been so scared. When she looked at his face she just felt pain striking right at her chest and there was only a moment before the venom destroyed her from the inside out.

Timothy and Emily had noted her distress, promising to brainstorm ideas and meet up later once things settled down. While Em had been the first to propose that they keep their ear to the pavement, the patience to do so was quickly thinning.

There was something in Langdon’s eye… like he could see everything she had ever done or ever will do. It was like he knew exactly what they were doing.

Em paced her room, trying to keep her mind on the tangible instead of giving in to fear. A plan… she needed to figure out a plan. The Warden’s, Grey’s, and Venable were her best bet at getting a base-level understanding of how the outpost was run. She had tried talking to the Grey’s, but they either knew

Things just didn’t add up. Most of the residents, no matter their station, seemed in the dark about The Cooperative’s movements. Venable even seemed perplexed. There could be information in the woman’s room, but doing so would lead them to a quick death.

Their best bet would be to gather information from the Greys, scattered and benign as it may be. Emily was probably talking to them now as Em paced and paced. Going as a group would make them larger targets and more suspicious, but it was maddening to just sit and wait.

A knock on the door pulled her from her reverie. Em raced to hide her notes in her desk. Putting them all back in order was taking more time than she expected. Another knock came, harder and more urgent.

“Just a second!” Em sang, deciding to just shove all the papers in the desk and organize them later. Smoothing down her hair and straightening her skirt, Em stalked to the door and opened it.

There was momentary relief when she saw Coco, quickly replaced with dread when she realized exactly who was standing outside her door.

“Yes?” Em asked, leaning forward as she had one hand on the door and another on the frame. Coco had a sickly sweet smile on her face which could only mean one thing.

“I need your help.”

At least this time she hadn’t beat around the bush and wasted Em’s time with an hour conversation about doing makeup in horrible lighting. She stared at Em, an awkward silence falling between the pair.

“With?” Em finally asked.

Coco gave her a look, “my dress! Duh.”

Em’s eyes scanned over Coco’s dress, confusion marring her features as she looked back at the woman’s face, “what about it?”

“Not this one!” Coco exclaimed, rolling her eyes, “the purple one… well… the purpler one. I asked Mallory and she had no idea what to do but I saw you out here once with —”

“Coco,” Em said, voice like a teacher trying to get a rowdy student to sit in their seat, “what do you want?”

“Can you mend my dress?” Coco grabbed on to one of Em’s hands as she begged, “There’s a giant hole in my armpit and my interview with Langdon is in an hour. I swear I’ll put in a good word with him for you!”

Em pried her hand away from the woman and resisted the urge to groan. Taking a deep breath she weighed her choices. Finally, she let out a sigh, resigning herself to her fate and trying to be as nice as possible.

“I guess I have nothing better to do.”

A grin spread across Coco’s face and she took her hand once more, hardly giving Em a chance to lock her door before dragging her along. Coco was only nice when she wanted something. Em logically knew that. Yet, somehow, the girl reminded her of an old friend, rambling about this, that, and everything as she tugged her along to god knows where. If she stared at the back of Coco’s head for a moment she could pretend the blonde hair belonged to someone else.

Em quickly threw the trail of thought away. Last thing she needed was Coco spreading a story about how she cried over the woman’s pathetic attempts at being a decent human being.

Coco threw open the door to her room and quickly shoved the garment into Em’s hand, shattering whatever illusion of kindness she had briefly created. “Here!”

“What side?” Em sighed, turning the garment around in her hands.

The blonde looked up as she thought, raising one arm, then the other as if recalling the exact moment it ripped.

“Never mind,” Em droned, “I found it.”

The hole was quite large, probably due to its poor fitting. It wasn’t as if they had someone take their measurements before they arrived at the outpost. It reached from the armpit to halfway between the sleeve and the waistline. Coco had gotten lucky, the tear following the natural stitching of the garment.

“Do you have a needle and thread?” Em asked, Coco hovering over her shoulder as she examined the damage.

“Do I look like I mend my own clothes?”

The brunette sighed once more, “get a Grey to bring me something, then.”

“Don’t you have your own tools or something?” Coco scoffed.

Em rose her eyes to look at the spoiled brat.

“When’s your interview?”

Coco huffed and went out into the hall, leaving the door open so the other woman would be sure to hear her stomping. For a moment there was glorious silence, Em examining the inside of the dress to figure out how to sew it up. After a few moments, a figure caught her eye and she looked up at the doorway.

Gallant stood, leaning against the frame with a box in one hand.

“What’s she having you do for her?” he asked.

“Mending clothes,” Em sighed, holding up the dress, “you here for her hair?”

“Yup,” Gallant said with a pop, moving to set up in the room, “Don’t know how many more miracles I can pull in that department.”

“A comment on your lack of supplies or an insult to Coco?”

The man paused, turning back towards her as he eyes the ceiling in thought, “Both?”

They could hear Coco’s stomping before they could see her, the woman appearing in the doorway with a scowl.

“Here’s your supplies,” she snapped before turning to Gallant. She mouthed something Em couldn’t hear, but Gallant’s silent response was comically easy to read as he mouthed the words “I know.”

Wearing a plastic smile she had learned from customer service, Em took the needle and thread from Coco’s hand and pulled out what she needed from the spool.

“Did you get scissors?” Em asked as she looked around.

“No.”

Regretting her decision to help, the brunette turned to Gallant.

“Uh-uh,” He said, shaking a finger in front of him, “no way.”

“Just do it!” Coco snapped, falling back into a seat before her vanity.

With the grace of a sulking toddler, Gallant made his way towards Em, reluctantly cutting the thread. His frown persisted as he went back to deal with Coco’s hair.

“You owe me,” He grumbled. Em couldn’t tell if the statement was directed at herself or Coco.

“Did they ever figure out what caused that power out earlier?” Coco asked Gallant, the two quickly creating their own little bubble of which Em was not a part of. Not that she cared.

“Probably just some minor glitch,” Gallant dismissed, obviously not losing sleep over the issue.

“That’s hardly reassuring. My father paid millions to get us in here. You’d think they’d at least be able to keep it running smoothly.”

Gallant rose his hands, giving Coco a look in the mirror, “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Coco didn’t even hear him, going on some random tirade Em quickly tuned out. What she wouldn’t do for a pair of noise-proof headphones.

Both Gallant and Em went into a trace as they worked. Em remembered when she was little and wanted to be a fashion designer, herself and another friend spending their elementary school lunchtime drawing out designs. Her grandmother had been more than happy to teach Em how to use her old and outdated sowing machine. Childlike enthusiasm led to it breaking. In the end, her grandmother was only able to teach her a few things before she passed… most of them with a needle, thread, and her own hands.

“Are you almost finished?” Coco demanded, pulling Em out of her train of thought as she paced the room like an angry chicken. Gallant followed after her, trying to keep his masterpiece in place. “He can’t finish until you’re finished.”

Em paid her no mind, turning back to her work and maintaining her steady pace, “do you want this to look like it was patched together by a drunken child?”

Coco huffed and stalked back to her seat, much to the relief of Gallant.

“I have twenty minutes…” she continued to complain.

“And the walk down the hallway takes five.” Em reminded.

Gallant was content to wait. He’d worked on models before back when he was first making his break and he was well used to clothing mishaps. Coco, on the other hand, glared daggers at Em as she worked. If she was being honest, Em quite enjoyed annoying the woman. It was comically easy to test just how spoiled she truly was.

Fifteen minutes passed and Em finally finished the last stitch, knotting the end a few times to keep it in place.

“Finally!” Coco exclaimed, not waiting for the pair to leave before changing. It wasn’t as if there was much to expose. Victorian undergarments were infinitely more modest than modern swimsuits. As soon as the dress was over her head, Gallant did a few last adjustments to her hair.

“Fini?” Coco asked, staring at the man as he focused on one stray strand. One would think he was diffusing a bomb given the intensity he looked at hair when working. Finally, he nodded and Coco was gone from the room in an instant without a single word of thanks.

“She’s a mess,” Gallant sighed, turning back to pack up his things.

“For once we agree on something.”

“Why did you agree to do this?” he asked, waving a comb as he continued to pack up, “aren’t you usually holed up in the library?”

“Bored.”

Gallant chuckled, “Fair.”

Rolling the loose thread back around the spool, Em made her way back to her room. Without the outside distraction, something to focus on, her mind went back to its earlier worries. She felt like she was staring at a brick wall, wondering how to tear it down when her only tools were her own two hands. If she got to the other side… maybe then she could find something.

Movement caught her eye as she turned a corner, looking up to find Langdon holding the door open for Coco. Something stirred in her chest and she turned away and kept walking before it could fester. Her cheeks warmed as she felt eyes burning into the side of her head.

Emotions were far too stressful. That’s why she liked logic. She just had to focus on the logic. Then she’d be safe.

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

There was nothing like the impending doom of death to make people do anything to chase away anxiety. Even after a solemn vow to never play the game again, they had brought their make-shift Pictionary once more. Bits of extra paper and a whiteboard from the Grey’s common area used to draw upon.

“Oh! Cats the musical!” Coco yelled out as Andre drew, “Horny!”

Timothy kept an eye on his pocket watch, finally looking up as he called time.

“Rosemary’s Baby!” Andre shouted at Coco, circling the spikes at the top of the head he was drawing, “They’re horns!”

Coco huffed and waved a hand as she fell back in her sleep, grabbing her water and taking a drink as Timothy’s eyes returned to his watch.

“Okay! He announced, “Emily and Emily!”

Em got up and reached into the box of folded cards, looking at the words written. Her lips twisted as she thought about how to approach it.

“Ready?” Timothy asked. Em nodded. “Go!”

Rapidly, Em drew a caricature on the white-board as Emily leaned forward in her seat.

“Dolly Parton!” Emily shouted after a few moments. Em threw down the pencil in victory, a large grin on her face.

“No fair!” Coco bemoaned, gesturing to the pair, “you have fucking Da Vinci on your team.”

“I was on your team last time.” Em reminded.

“That was ages ago!”

Em’s eyes flitted up to the balcony which loomed over the salon, a familiar figure in black catching her eye. The glow of the fire made it seem like his hair was made of gold. He leaned on the railing like a content cat watching the mice play.

She pretended she hadn’t noticed him but could feel his eyes on her back, the hairs on her neck standing on end as the buzzing feeling began to return.

“Okay, Timmy,” Gallant declared, rising from his seat to take the board from Em, “our time to shine.”

Her focus on the man watching them was interrupted by Timothy tossing her his pocket watch. If not for the way it caught the light Em would have let it drop.

When she looked up Langdon was gone as if he were a shadow instead of a man.

#michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x oc #michael langdon #ahs x reader #ahs x oc #ahs #fanfic #fanfiction #ahs fanfic #american horror story fic

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animepreferences · 4 years

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Hi sorry to bug you but I’m currently obsessed with bsd as well! Anyways...about the ship 👀 idk exactly what you’re looking for but I’m pretty short and a lil chubby but I’m always doing something and I can’t stay still or else I get bored and lazy. I’m not a fan of sweets but I love making them. I have a really good sense of humor and I’m very loyal. I’m also a Gemini so I’m kind of two faced, not the bad two faced but one day I may act a certain way and in a split second my whole mood will change 🤷🏽‍♀️ I’m kinda weird. But I’m always trying to make the people around me happy when I’m reality I’m lowkey depressed inside because life is stressful. Idk If u need anything more :/ but thank you sm and I hope we can become friends!

Hello, love!

I definitely ship you with Ranpo!

I was originally going back and forth between Atsushi and Ranpo, but then I started to consider the element of opposites attract and fell in love with the idea of you two being together.

When you would first join the agency, Ranpo would perplex you to no end. As someone who needed to stay busy and keep the ball rolling you would be unable to wrap your mind around the fact that he could simply sit in one spot the whole day and eat his snacks. It didn’t bother you, particularly, you just couldn’t understand it.

Little did you know that he had been watching you like a hawk. He couldn’t quite explain it, why he cared so much, there was just something about you. The way you cared for others, bending over backwards to ensure that everyone was okay. His heart was frenzied in a way he had never before felt and yet he also felt sad. Where you wore your bright smile around others, he could see when you were alone the way your happiness dimmed and your bright exterior faded. He hated it more than anything knowing that of course someone like you would bear the weight of the world on your shoulders.

One day, when you would be completely absorbed by the work at your desk, stress radiating off you, Ranpo would surprise you by coming to sit next to you. “Ah, hello, Ranpo.” You would greet warmly, eyes never peeling away from your screen. “Would you like some help?” He would offer kindly, eyes scanning the screen with a smirk on his face, knowing he could crack that code in less than thirty seconds. “Ah, sure.” You would oblige allowing him to take the reigns as he pulled the laptop to him studying it with almost...boredom? Unsurprisingly, Ranpo would come up with the solution nearly instantly, though you would be in shock because you had never before seen him in action. Furthermore, you had never seen anything so impressive in your life. You were completely smitten. “So, now that that’s figured out, how would you feel about me treating you to dinner?” How could you say no?

Your relationship would be nothing short of sweet. Everyone talks about the honeymoon phase being temporary, but yours never fails to end. Everyday you are surprising eachother, finding out new things about one another. You surprise Ranpo with endless sweet treats at work since you love to bake and you love to see the excitement in your eyes. He surprises you with a variation of flowers that he collects for you on his way to work. Everyone feels nauseated by how disgustingly cute you are together, but they secretly find it endearing. Whenever you’re feeling particularly upset, Ranpo will shower you with encouragements and loving words, reminding you how important you are to him and that you deserve the best.

#bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs ships

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scoobert-to-the-doobert · 4 years

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not-a-space-alien · 5 years

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Into the Unknown, Part 8: Beneath A Purple Sky, or: Crowley’s Adventures in Wonderland

Series masterpost

On AO3

“Fuck! Shite! Fuck! Fuck!”

Anyone within a mile of Crowley would have been able to hear the stream of curses pouring from his mouth. But he was up in the stratosphere and plummeting like a comet, yelling into the empty sky.

He tumbled head over heels, utterly disoriented, his vision a blur. He burned all over.

He hadn’t burned like this since he Fell. He registered dimly it was the same pain as Falling, God’s presence burning you to Hell, the same pain as the time he had been in Heaven under the protection of angel dust that had rubbed off.

It was at this point that he made the connection that Falling hurt so much because you had just become a demon, but were still in Heaven and in contact with the Divine Aura until you nose-dived out of it into Hell.

And what he felt right now was a little like that, except God had been right there, and touching him at that.

Crowley had no idea how he had survived, or where he was at the moment. The stinging sensation of God’s holy aura had been overpowering for a single, terrifying, painful moment, then it had just…disappeared.

Maybe he was in the process of dying. Somebody, he hurt all over. It was fading, though, as he got further from the source. Or maybe as he just continued on with dying.

But no, that couldn’t be right, because he could still feel things. Over the dwindling stinging in his demonic core, he felt the wind rushing past him. He wasn’t Falling, just falling.

Priority number one was to stop this free-fall that had consumed him somehow. He could almost feel the atmosphere’s friction rubbing him like a comet at terminal velocity. His vision started to return, fading back in to show him a view of the earth spinning beneath his feet, a whir of land and trees alternating with a clear purple sky—

Wait, the sky was purple. Why was the sky purple?

Crowley phased his wings into existence and tried to snap them open, but they shrieked in pain as he moved them. He grit his teeth and steadied himself, splaying out like a skydiver.

A second glance confirmed that the sky was indeed purple. Despite the direness of the situation, Crowley couldn’t help but stare upwards at it for a few moments. His tie flapping up and hitting him in the face jarred his attention back to the situation.

Crowley tried easing his wings open slowly and had a bit more success. In the end, he was able to slow his fall enough to look at the ground below him and determine where he was.

Somebody, he was so high up. He had barely noticed the air was too thin to breathe. For a moment, he could’ve sworn he could see the curvature of the Earth. A huge carpet of rugged waves hurtled towards him as he fell, and he realised he needed to take evasive action or land in the ocean.

He didn’t know exactly where he was, but he was able to steer himself so he would land in what he thought was Great Britain, at least.

He landed heavily in a tangle of trees, snapping branches beneath him and thumping into a carpet of pine needles in the dirt.

He just lay there with his wings askew beneath him, spread out looking up at the sky.

It was purple?

Crowley groaned, feeling the aches from the descent racking his body on top of the burns the Divine Aura had inflicted. His hand worked its way down his shirt and unbuttoned it to assess the damage. There was a huge hand-print of red, blistered skin wrapped around his midsection where he had been grabbed, but other than that the damage seemed to be minimal.

Thank somebody. That could have ended very differently.

His fingers worked at a patch of raw skin on his face, and he miracled a burn salve into existence and applied it to himself.

“God,” he moaned. “Fuck. Damn.”

A winged figure flickered across the sky, too fast for him to see who it was. Crowley collected himself and managed to get to his feet, teetering over to a tree for support.

He was still trying to catch his breath when a strange little angel appeared in the tree above him. They had a spacey look in their eyes.

“Hello?” said Crowley.

WHERE DID YOU COME FROM? said the angel, cocking their head. STRANGE, STRANGE.

“Um,” said Crowley. “Space? Is that you?”

I SHOULD GO FIX THE HOLE, they said, then flitted away up into the sky.

Crowley plopped back down on the ground, exhaustedly putting his head to his knees. He ended up sitting there for a few minutes to gather up his will to move, then set off towards where London should be if his rudimentary navigation during free-fall had been accurate.

********************

Crowley healed some of his more debilitating injuries on his own, but to save his energy he left some of them for the more thorough recovery session he anticipated once he was reunited with Aziraphale, Maltha, and the rest.

Somebody, he hoped they had escaped from the Judgement Room alive. He had no idea what had happened. He had to get back to them ASAP. But going back up to Heaven was absolutely out of the question with how he had left it.

There should be somebody in London, he thought, if he could just meet up with someone to make contact, and he could decide where to go from there. Last he heard, Botis and Kyleth were still in the hotel across town. They might be his best bet. At the very least, Kyleth could peek her head into Heaven and see if it was safe.

Crowley stopped in the middle of this train of thought, legs dangling and hovering in the air. Surely this was where London was, right? He had been there millions of times. He had let his wings fly him there based on muscle memory.

Crowley had never gotten lost before, not in Great Britain, his home.

He flew up higher into the sky to orient himself to try and counter his sinking stomach. Had he hurt his head somehow?

The M25 was gone. London wasn’t where it was supposed to be. And was Mayfair…in Ireland?

Crowley shook his head, but he traced his path around the bodies of water and confirmed that, yes, this big ol’ island under him was indeed the UK. Frustrated, Crowley swooped lower over a large city, scanning it for familiar landmarks.

Okay, there was Big Ben. That was a start. Crowley alighted on the hour hand of the clock, the machinations of the clockwork rumbling behind him.

Wait, what did the clock say? He turned back to look at it.

Big Ben only had six numbers on it. One through six, spread out evenly over the face as though it constituted a whole day. And in Arabic numerals, not roman. Also, the clock face was a completely different colour. Also, it wasn’t Big Ben at all, just some other iconic clock tower soaring above the city heights, some new and completely foreign clock tower Crowley had never seen in the hundreds of years he had lived in Great Britain. He stared at it, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

The bell rumbled, and Crowley leapt off before the hour hand turned and the bell deafened him.

“Okay,” said Crowley, wringing his hands. “I must have hit my head a bit in the fall. No matter. Should clear up soon.”

That purple sky felt all too real, though. He felt like he just needed one thing to orient himself. If he could just find Aziraphale….or anyone.

Crowley rubbed the silver ring on his finger, trying to activate the charm. It stayed unlit.

He frowned. When had he used it last? Surely it had been longer than 12 hours by now?

Crowley pushed down the pit in his stomach, swooping down to what he thought might be familiar territory. He drifted for a while up in the stratosphere, shading his eyes with his hands and peering down below.

There, a patch of green nestled among the grid-work of the city. It looked weirdly like St. James’s park, considering it definitely wasn’t. And there, oh sweet someone, sitting on a bench by the pond—

Aziraphale. Crowley dove straight towards him like a parched man after water.

The angel’s attention pricked up as Crowley approached, folding in his wings and jogging over, panting. “Aziraphale! Thank f— Whew, I thought I would never find you.”

Aziraphale’s stare on him was hard. He hadn’t gotten up from the bench.

Crowley doubled over with his hands on his thighs. “Are you okay? Are Maltha and Noah okay? What happened?”

“You…” said Aziraphale. “You’re dead.”

Crowley straightened up. “Ah…Nope…Gotta say, Aziraphale, I expected a bit more of a warm welcome…”

Aziraphale stood up, eyeing him critically. “You’re dead. How are you…? I killed you.”

“A little concern? Anything? Wait, did you say you…?”

Aziraphale drew his sword. Crowley held his hands out and backed up. “W-wait, Aziraphale, it’s me. Crowley.” It was at this point that Crowley notice the gold ring, which he had so lovingly slid up the finger of Aziraphale’s sword hand, was nowhere to be seen on the hand gripping the weapon pointed at him.

“Stay right where you are,” said Aziraphale, bringing the point of his sword up into Crowley’s chest. Crowley held his hands up higher. “You won’t make any sudden movements if you value your life.”

Crowley’s despairing eyes swept up Aziraphale’s weapon into the angel’s face. “Angel, I…”

Aziraphale materialised a communication device of some sort; it looked rather like an ethereal flip phone, which he snapped open. “I need to speak to Azrael right away,” he said into it.

“Aziraphale, it’s me, Crowley.”

“I’m aware,” Aziraphale snapped. “My demonic nemesis I vanquished centuries ago, somehow come back from the dead to haunt me.”

“What?” said Crowley, his heart growing heavy and threatening to break.

“I’m sure the warrior on patrol heard the disturbance and is en route, so don’t think of trying anything. We’ll get to the bottom of this, serpent.”

A few humans had gathered nearby, gawking at Aziraphale’s weapon. Aziraphale dispelled them with a miracle-laden suggestion they head home and forget what they had seen.

“Can—Can I talk to—” Crowley swallowed. Something was terribly wrong. Aziraphale was acting like a proper angelic asshole. Who would Crowley have a chance of getting to who might help? “Can you call Raphael on that thing? Or Victoria?”

Aziraphale glowered at him.

“Anyone? Any archangel?”

“Archangel?” said Aziraphale.

“Yes, archangel?” said Crowley.

They stared each other down. Had Crowley been a cat, his tail would have been floofed out.

“Ah, here comes my backup,” said Aziraphale with a smug smile, and a pair of wingbeats sounded nearby. “Looks like Hastaphael is on this route today.”

“…Who?”

Crowley nearly fainted when a second angel alighted by Aziraphale, likewise drawing his sword. The newcomer was an angelic warrior, but the face, the aura….

“Hastur?” said Crowley, absolutely floored. “Are you an angel?”

The warrior gave him an ugly sneer. “What are you talking about, demon?”

“He’s not making an ounce of sense,” said Aziraphale. “This is clearly an anomaly. We ought to take him to Gabriel.”

“Where’s his Eye of Satan?” said the angel with Hastur’s face.

Crowley yelped nervously as the warrior angel roughly grabbed him and pulled his collar down, exposing his bare neck, then twisted his wrists to perform the same inspection.

“It’s always on the wrist or the neck,” said Aziraphale.

“I know,” the warrior growled. “He dunt got one.”

“It was on his neck before.”

Crowley tried to lean away from the grabbing hands, but the warrior clamped a hand on his jaw and tilted Crowley’s head to peer at the other side of his neck.

“I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding,” said Crowley, voice muffled underneath the warrior’s hand.

“Doesn’t matter,” said the warrior. “Only good demon is a dead demon. Let’s run him through.”

“We should take him to Gabriel,” Aziraphale said.

“What for?”

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale snapped. “This is clearly an anomaly, though!”

“We can file a report after we—huh?”

Another pair of wingbeats approached.

“He’s got backup,” the warrior growled, shoving Crowley away and raising his sword to the sky.

“I-I do?” said Crowley.

Crowley let out a grunt of surprise as Aziraphale tackled him, pinning him to the ground. “Don’t think about going anywhere,” Aziraphale said.

A circle of grass nearby wilted and burnt with a sizzling sound, and a demonic warrior leapt out. His wings flared as he barreled onto the scene, shouting and sword drawn back for a blow.

“Botis?” said Crowley.

“Unhand him!” Botis shouted, flapping his wings. “Or face a solid pounding.”

The angel called Hastaphael waved at Aziraphale in a dismissive way. “Run him through.”

Crowley let out an eep and rolled out from under Aziraphale as Aziraphale retrieved his sword, still seeming conflicted. Crowley hit a pair of armored legs and peered up to see Botis’s ugly but familiar visage sneering at him. “Get out of here; I’ll find you later.”

That was all the permission Crowley needed; he leapt to his feet and sprinted away. Botis seemed to be immensely enjoying the fight as his sword clanged loudly, audible even as Crowley lost sight of the park and was swallowed up by the streets of Not-London.

***********************

So, this was some sort of alternate timeline. That was the only explanation for everything he had seen.

Crowley had no idea where—or when?—he was, what this strange place was, but clearly he was not in his own time and place. The landscape was different, and none of his friends recognised him.

And based on Aziraphale’s reaction, it sounded like Crowley had existed in this place, except Aziraphale had killed him a while back, and therefore his appearance had been interpreted as an unexplained miraculous resurrection, the same kind they had just been working to solve when he had been thrown out of Heaven.

Had he time-travelled somehow? Well, it couldn’t have been backwards, because the city had been modernised. He had seen people with mobile phones on his mad dash out—Not any brands he recognised, though. He had seen someone with what appeared to be an iPhone, but when he doubled back to look at it again, the icon on the back of the device had turned out to be a pineapple and not the signature apple with a bite out of it.

He had been responsible for that particular bit of iconography and he was curiously sad to see it go.

Surely he couldn’t have gone forward in time, either. There would have had to be some serious changes in the intervening years for Aziraphale to hate Crowley enough to kill him, but accept Hastur, who was, oh yeah, still an angel here somehow.

If it wasn’t back or forwards, had he gone….sideways?

Damn. What was so different about this place that not only did Aziraphale and Crowley not get along, but hated each other so much they actually killed one another? Aziraphale and Crowley had never even made a habit of discorporating each other, let alone going at each other with holy water and aural weapons.

Crowley found it disturbing in the highest degree. Clearly whatever God had done to him, he had been transported to some place where the capital W-War was still on. And in a heightened state at that, if warriors were patrolling and appearing at field agents’ sides in seconds.

Crowley had never been defended by a demonic warrior before the ineffable plan had been turned on its head six-thousand years in. Demonic warriors were there to have a go at angelic warriors, and angelic warriors were there to keep demonic warriors from having a go at angels that were not warriors and therefore not very good at defending themselves. The angelic warriors mostly did their job by sitting around and making their presence clear as a deterrent, and not much else.

And they had just appeared to interfere with a quarrel between two field agents seconds after it broke out…?

Crowley had sprinted away from Botis, Hastaphael, and Aziraphale until he was too far away to feel their auras. Then he kept going for good measure, sure that if Botis wanted to find him again he would manage to somehow, considering he had no idea how Botis had found him in the first place.

He legged it out of this strange city that wasn’t London, not stopping until he was back in the forest, because the city unnerved him.

Panting heavily, Crowley leaned against a tree and dropped down. He curled around himself.

This sucked, plain and simple. He had thought God was going to kill him, but He had done something else different entirely, and he couldn’t figure out what. Seeing Aziraphale want to kill him was worse, almost. He didn’t like this one bit. He hated it.

Where was his Aziraphale? That must have been a different Aziraphale. Somehow. And how was Botis here, but not Maltha? Or any other of his friends?

Well, Botis’s loyalty must just be a constant no matter the universe.

He still ached from the wounds he hadn’t healed earlier. He materialised his staff and started giving them some attention, but he was interrupted by the sound of wings drawing near.

Crowley stood up and stretched his legs as Botis touched down, sheathed sword jangling against his heavy armor. “There you are. Are you hurt?”

“A little,” said Crowley. “But it’s not—”

He was cut off as Botis seized his arm, inspecting him. “Hmm….These look like holy water burns,” said Botis, with a critical eye on the injuries he had been tending. “You really need to be more careful. If you just followed SOP for interacting with angels in the field, we wouldn’t be in this situation. The rules are there for a reason. What were you even trying to do?”

“To do?”

“Yeah, lollygagging around in that park with an angel nearby.”

“I was—I was trying to talk to Aziraphale.”

“Talk to him?”

“Y—Yes? Botis, what’s going on?”

“What’s going on?” Botis echoed dimly. He still had a hand on Crowley, and he began to sort of pat him down. “Where’s your Eye of Satan?”

“Okay, what is that?”

Botis twisted Crowley’s wrists and examined his neck the same way the angels had.

“Please fill me in,” said Crowley. “I feel so lost right now.”

Botis blinked at him.

“Eye of Satan?”

Botis held his right hand out, wrist-up. A tattoo of an eye stared back at Crowley, nestled among a lace of occult sigils.

“O—oh,” said Crowley. “And that’s…?”

The ink on Botis’s skin writhed and pulsed. The eye blinked and the pupil darted up to look at Crowley.

“Ah!” said Crowley, taking a step back.

“Botis, what’s going on?” said a disembodied voice, and the eye blinked again. “Who is that?”

“Demon I had to rescue from angelic warriors,” said Botis. “He doesn’t have an Eye.”

“What?”

Botis’s gaze moved from the tattoo back up to Crowley, mustache bristling. “Wrists and neck are both blank. Unless you authorised him to have it somewhere else?”

“No,” said the voice. “Bring him down as soon as you can so we can fix this. What class is he?”

Crowley wrung his hands and stepped in, determined to take back some modicum of control over the situation. “Field agent,” he reported.

Botis glared at him and said in a strained whisper, “Don’t be stupid.” Then he looked back down at the tattoo, the pupil of which darted back and forth between the two of them as they talked. “He’s a healer.”

“If he’s injured take him to field encampment 27, then bring him down to speak with me,” said the voice.

“Yes, Lord.”

The tattoo fell still.

“What—What the fuck was that?” said Crowley.

“That was our Lord Satan, and you forget yourself,” said Botis. “Show some respect.”

Crowley felt dismay weighing down his heart. “Oh. Of course. I-I haven’t done anything, though. Surely Satan is too busy to pay any attention to little old me.”

“Lord Satan always makes time to pay attention to details,” said Botis. “Now, follow me.”

Now that was something Crowley hadn’t thought he would ever hear a demon say. Satan was usually rather lackadaisical about the details—it’s why Crowley was able to get away with not actually doing his job. Satan paying attention to you wasn’t a good sign.

“But, look, I haven’t done anything wrong,” said Crowley, trying painfully hard to keep the whimper out of his voice.

Botis looked at him strangely. “I never said you did anything wrong.”

“Then why am I being…?”

“Punished?” said Botis. “Nobody said you were being punished. We merely need to present ourselves to Satan to correct an anomaly.”

The idea that you would be summoned to speak to Satan for any reason other than if you had done something to piss him off, and therefore were in for a bad time, was utterly foreign to Crowley. He was having a very hard time wrapping his brain around it.

“What does Satan want to…?”

“We need to get you treated first, at any rate,” said Botis. “We can’t have you walking about with burns like that.”

And treating injured demons in the field…? Part of the entire reason why Hell was shite was because there weren’t any healers, and if you got hurt you just needed to deal with it yourself.

“What’s wrong?” said Botis. “You seem confused.”

“Uh,” said Crowley. “I—Uh, um…We’re going to field encampment…?”

“Twenty-seven, yes. It’s over in this direction.” Botis steered him by the arm. “Come on, then.”

“Oh—Okay. Um, hey Botis? Thanks.”

Botis turned back and eyed him strangely.

“For saving me back there? They were going to kill me.”

“Just doing my job. You can trust me to do my job,” said Botis. “After all, it’d be a funny old world if demons went around not trusting each other.”

******************

Crowley picked up rather quickly that this wasn’t his Botis, much to his disappointment. Gone were the “sirs” and protective exclamations about Crowley’s safety and basically everything that had made Botis nice to have around.

It was the same way that Aziraphale hadn’t been his Aziraphale. He had no idea what that meant, the full extent of what was going on, but he was reasonably smart and able to tell that something was terribly amiss.

His earlier thoughts about being transposed in time or thrown into a parallel dimension had been half in jest, but he had no way of knowing how close he was to the truth.

Botis led him to a field encampment. He didn’t like this version of Botis very much, so he was relieved at the thought that maybe Botis would leave him alone here.

The camp was hidden by a protective miracle to keep humans from stumbling into it—it appeared to be nestled in a fold of space-time that a simple teleportation miracle would straighten out. There was a fence made of wooden slats, tents, a gate—the whole nine yards. It looked remarkably like one of the angelic field camps that would occasionally be positioned in Heaven’s territory on Earth. It was bigger, though.

And did they say this one was number twenty-seven? Heaven probably had only a dozen or so of them scattered about the globe. There wasn’t generally much need for them.

Botis escorted him via an overly firm grip on his arm to a tent with an icon of a green staff on it. When he pulled the curtain aside to enter, Crowley saw the interior of the tent was dominated by medical cots and demons dressed in scrubs running about madly like ants.

Crowley’s eyes widened. “Botis, is this…?”

“The infirmary, yes,” said Botis, trying to flag someone down.

“These are all infernal healers?”

“Yes,” said Botis distractedly. “Ramikale, I need to speak with you.”

Crowley was too overwhelmed to take note of to whom Botis was motioning. There had to be at least half a dozen demonic healers in here. Real healers, who were created as healing class, and fell as healing class. He could tell just by looking at them and feeling their auras.

“Botis, who are these demons?” said Crowley, but Botis ignored him, as he had finally caught the attention of one of the medical demons.

Crowley was shocked when she pulled down the mask on her face, revealing the familiar visage of his friend Ramial, except her eyes glowed an infernal red. She had the same eye tattoo as Botis, but it was on her neck. “What is it now, Botis?”

“I found this demon wandering about,” said Botis. “He has no Eye—”

“No Eye? That’s an anomaly. Satan won’t be happy.”

“I know, so I’m taking him down to Hell, but first we need to treat his injuries. If it’d be possible to put him at the front of the queue, that would expedite things for Lord Satan.”

“Sure.” The healing demon hovered over Crowley as Botis spoke, pecking at him with a trained eye. “Holy water burns, it looks like.”

“Ramial?” said Crowley. “Did you…?”

The healing demon gave him an annoyed look. “Did you get into a fight?”

“Yeah,” said Botis. “I caught him walking right up to a principality as though he wanted afternoon tea with ‘im.”

“You know very well you’re not supposed to engage angels directly,” said the healing demon. “What did you hope to accomplish?”

“I was…” said Crowley, floundering. “Ah…Just trying to talk to him. What’s wrong with that? Are you....Rami...”

Botis leaned in to whisper, “I don��t think he’s well, you know, mentally.” The volume was enough for Crowley to hear if he hadn’t been so stunned. Instead, he reached out a hand to stroke the medical demon’s cheek, thereby confirming Botis’s proclamation in the minds of everyone observing.

Botis left the tent, abandoning Crowley to the clutches of the healers, two more of which had come and started grabbing at him. They all had the same eye tattoo on their necks, and the pupils thereof would occasionally flare to life and rove about before falling inanimate again as the nurses conducted their inspection of him.

“Very intense burns,” one noted, their voiced tinged with clinical, impersonal interest. The three of them corralled him into a medical cot, and he lay on it uneasily.

“Must have been a direct hit,” said the other newcomer.

“Interesting shape the wound has taken,” said the original healer, stripping Crowley’s shirt off. “Almost like a hand-print.”

This was enough to snap Crowley back into reality. Should he try and hide the source of the wound? Even if he told them, he wasn’t sure if they would believe him, especially since they were already convinced he was daft.

Did any of these demons know it was possible to get into Heaven? Did any of them know about—Well, whatever phenomenon could have possibly shafted him into a place like this…?

His thoughts went back to the little angel he had seen upon first coming here. They had mentioned something about a hole. An entrance Crowley had come through, perhaps? Maybe he should try and find that place again, to see if there was any way of going back.

Back from where, he had no idea, though.

But part of Crowley wondered if he should be so quick to try and leave. He was surrounded by infernal healers. These demons were equipped to understand him in a way even Aziraphale wasn’t. Even Maltha.

“How did you get this wound?” said one of the healers, yanking his attention back to the situation at hand.

He looked at their cotton-clad face, mind drowning in so many layers of static he had no idea what to say.

“Was it holy water?” said a second, with an expectant look.

Crowley stuttered, then nodded.

“Told you,” said one.

“Hey…” he said as they began treating his wounds. “You guys…how did you fall? All three of you? How many more of you are there?”

One of them gave him a dirty look. The second simply shot up his eyebrows. The third tutted and patted his head, assuring him they would treat his head injury as well.

Try as he might to connect with them, they treated him as a stranger, even the demon wearing Ramial’s face and aura. Eventually he gave up and fell silent under their hands whizzing here and there and their chatter, speaking rapidly and efficiently at each other in a way only beings who have worked together seamlessly for thousands of years could accomplish.

They were faster than any healer he had ever seen. They were faster, and better, than even Raphael. Than Maltha. And they had nowhere near the aural power of an archangel or archdemon.

He was on his feet again being shoved towards the exit of the tent in a matter of minutes. He picked idly at the white cloth wrapping his wounds, trying to take it all in.

“Botis, we’re finished!” one of the healers hollered, disappearing back into the sea of beds and injured demons. “He’s yours again.”

A shadow fell over Crowley, and he looked up from his bandages. Botis was in front of him again. “Now we shall go see our Lord Satan. She’ll make sense of this.”

“Botis, I was thinking, before that maybe we—Wait, did you say she?”

“Of course. Hell has always had a queen.”

Relief flooded Crowley. The most likely candidate for Queen of Hell would, of course, be Maltha.

“You hit your head pretty hard, haven’t you?” said Botis.

“What’s the Queen’s name?”

“Satan, of course.”

“No, I mean—” He broke off and took a breath. The realisation was dawning on him that Maltha might not be the same. It wouldn’t be his Maltha. And it might not be Maltha at all. If Ramial had fallen and Hastur hadn’t, who knew what side everyone was on in this place?

What side. He hated the thought. Two sides again. He resolved to get out of here as soon as he could, his earlier waffling completely abandoned. “Botis, before we go down to Hell, let’s make a stop back to…”

He paused with horror, realising he wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to locate his point of entry again. He’d thought it had been somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, but…

Botis tapped his foot impatiently. “Back to where?”

Botis’s eye tattoo flared to life again, and the same voice from earlier snapped out, “Back to nowhere. You’ll bring him down immediately as I commanded, Botis.”

“Yes, my Lord,” said Botis. “I apologise.”

The tattoo became inanimate again. Botis reached out and seized Crowley’s arm from where he had crept back away from the strange talking tattoo. “Come on. I’m sure this won’t take long. Our Lord Satan is very efficient.”

Crowley grimaced at the thought, but he saw Botis’s hand resting on his sword hilt. Surely Botis wouldn’t cut him down if he tried to run…? But they all seemed dead set on having him meet Satan.

He squared his shoulders. Well, he’d changed since the last time he’d seen Satan. He’d faced Satan down and won. And he’d probably be seeing Satan eventually one way or the other, so it’d probably be best to face it head-on. He was already scheming his best schemes.

#good omens #my writing #my good omens fanfic

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