#god this chapter altered my brain cells

[princington]

It is Beatrice, laughing.

Ava’s never seen her like this. Not with her head angled back, cheeks rounded, flush with happiness. She’s got a shadow of a dimple beside her mouth. Ava wants to see it in person.

holy ('til you let me go) ch 4 by @omomoification

#avatrice #sister beatrice #warrior nun #fic: holy til you let me go #fic rec #my art #god this chapter altered my brain cells #princington

[sortofanobsession]

To Cry for the Moon Part 7 (Moon Knight x Female Eternal!Reader)

Author's Note: The next couple chapters will be mainly the Eternals with mentions to Moon Knight. So if you are here for the guys, please hang in there, they will be back. I am not a mythology expert, and things get changed for these stories obviously. I'm trying my best. Also I'll try to update every day or two. I can't guarantee they will be everyday. So if you want to be tagged let me know, replies are the easiest but any way works. Minor DNI

The story idea by @jupitersmoon167 (the original post I saw is here!) Also realized I should probably add content warnings, so I did and tagged them. If you think I missed a warning please send me an ask. I try to tw tag even the tiniest thing so no one has to suffer if I can help it.

Y/N = Your Name. Y/N/N = Your Nickname. Reader pronouns She/Her. Story is 3rd person POV. Italics are the reflected alter talking.

Tag Requests are Open just message me.

Tagged: @rosaren2498, @yuugenmomo, @faefanatic, @urlocallsimp, @assassinsasha23, @queenariesofnarnia, @rmoonstoner, @crypticruler

Primary Pairing: Steven Grant x Eternal!Reader, Marc Spector x Eternal!Reader, Khonshu x Ma'at!Reader (It’ll make sense eventually)

Content Warning: Death, fear, depression

Word Count: 1k+

WIP Series Masterlist

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10

Part 7: The World Keeps Turning

Y/N didn't really listen or help Sersi explain to Dane that they have powers because they are Eternals from the planet Olympia and have been on Earth for over 7,000 years, fighting Deviants. Until 5 centuries ago. He learned more about Sersi and Ikaris but the main thing was that Dane accepted her explanation and reasoning far better than Marc had. Y/N didn't miss the sad look they both gave her. 

"He'll come around, probably just the shock of it all," Dane tells her.

"You handled it alright, and you don't have a centuries-old Egyptian god in your brain. Moon Knight does. They even know about some of my powers. I told them when they told me about their personalities, though they conveniently left out Khonshu. It was Truth for Truth. The full story wasn't my story to tell. Doing so might have raised questions about Sersi and Sprite. That wouldn't be fair to them or you, but I guess that doesn't matter." She sighs. "I'm glad you don't hate us. I hate to do this but can I ask you a favor? Can you watch Noob and maybe feed Bas until we get back? I would ask Steven, but even if he would talk to me, I don't think Marc would let him."

"Of course," he nods.

"Thanks, Dane, I owe you one."

"You guys saved my life and a lot of other people, the least I can do is pet sit."

"Least you can do is nothing, but I appreciate it. I know you'll be kind to them. Sorry, I can't make you a giraffe either, but I can say if you ever need anything." She takes the feather keychain off her keys and holds it in her hands, imbuing it with a tiny fraction of her powers before handing it to him. "If something really bad happens. Hold it to your heart and I will hear it. We may not have cell signal, but as long as I’m on this planet it’ll work. It works for Osiris and he’s in the underworld, it should work for you."

"Osiris? Like the Egyptian god of the Dead? He has a direct line to you? Does your family?" 

"Osiris does, my family doesn't. Sadly, I cannot feel the Eternals like I can humans. I think Arishem thinks that would be a distraction. But humans, like you, I can hear. And you, you have a good heart Dane, that's why we know we can trust you with all of this. I don't even need my scales to know your heart balances. Sersi wouldn't be with you if it didn't. Take care of yourself." 

She moves to join Sprite while Sersi says her own goodbye.

Y/N was physically sore and absolutely exhausted on the flight to the States. The only thing giving her comfort was being surrounded by so many human hearts. She reached out just a bit with her powers to feel them. She focuses on one of a child, a young girl, that seems to be enjoying a show on a tablet. An innocent and pure heart full of joy. It reminds her that humans were worth fighting for. That little girl had so much life ahead of her. As upset and sad as Y/N might be, knowing innocence and good still existed even after so many years without the Eternals' assistance was comforting. It was a constant that she could always rely on.

"You okay?" Sersi asks, drawing her attention back. 

Y/N nods. "I'm fine."

"You should try and sleep," Sersi tells her. "You fought harder than most of us and took most of the hits."

"I'm not that fragile," Y/N assures her.

"No, but we have no idea when we might get the chance to again. Might as well embrace it while we can."

"Point taken," Y/N admits and as she usually does, she takes Sersi's advice.

As they left the airport and headed to their rental car, she pulled out her phone and calls Steven. He doesn't answer. She leaves a voicemail.

“Hey, just landed in the States. We’re headed to Ajak’s place, I’ll call you when we get to her house.”

When Ajak fails to greet them, something instantly feels off. Y/N reaches out but feels nothing. No humans for miles and no apparent threats. What they do find shakes them all. Ajak is dead. Her body was cold, drained of power. Y/N couldn't breathe for a moment. It is too much. They've never lost anyone before. Ajak always healed them. She kept them alive even through the most brutal of battles. Ajak was gone. Their leader was gone. They were on their own. Y/N could feel her hands start to shake. The ache in her knee returned. They were on their own against Deviants stronger than ever and they lost their healer. Ajak had kept them alive and safe for millennia. Now, what were they supposed to do?

Ikaris admits to being the last one to see her. To say that Ajak sent him to London to check on them. But the Deviant must have gotten her before he actually made it to London because as Sprite points out the Deviant healed like Ajak. They now had an enemy that could take their powers. None of them were safe in a fight if that was true. They are all shocked when Sersi tells them the sphere Ajak used to speak with Arishem went to her. That she spoke to Arishem. Ajak chose Sersi to replace her. Not Ikaris, which was surprising. He had always been more of a leader than most of them. He was devoted to the mission Arishem gave them.

Y/N put a hand on Ajak's cold chest. 

"May we meet again in the next life," Y/N says, hoping that no matter what afterlife awaited Eternals they would hopefully be together someday. 

They agreed to gather the rest of the team starting with Kingo.

Ancient Egypt, the beginning of the age of gods.

Y/N places a set of scales before the Ennead in the Chamber of the Gods. 

"Phastos says these scales will allow you to better judge a person's heart, even when I am not here. We formed them using my powers." She takes the large feather that the people had given her long ago because of her wings that she often included in her outfit out of appreciation and holds it tight between her hands, calling on the majority of her power and channeling it into the feather. It made her lightheaded as her hands and the feather began to glow. She wills a fraction of her own heart and powers into it. When she pulls her powers back the feather continues to have a sort of ethereal glow. "This feather," she holds it out to the small cluster of gods before her. "The feather of truth," she deems it. "I've put everything I know, everything I use to aid in judgment, into this feather. Weigh a person's heart against this feather and you will know their true nature, their heart. If it balances, they have a good heart, they deserve to see paradise."

"And they shall see the field of reeds," Osiris assures her.

"And if they don't balance?" Horus asks.

"If the feather rises, and the heart stays weighted down, they have failed. Their heart has shown their true nature, that their heart is filled with malice and should be justly condemned. If the scales move back and forth that means there is conflict in the person's heart. They are not inherently good or bad. They should be given a chance to process this, to look deep within themselves and if they can balance then they have made peace with their conflict. If they can't, they shall face proper justice."

"Justice shall be swift," Osiris adds. 

"You can judge both living and the dead to ensure justice and truth remain standard as time goes on and the kingdom grows. As long as I live, the feather of truth will hold the standards I have deemed fair and just. It is part of me. You have my judgment as long as the smallest spark of my power remains. We are bound, we are one." 

Modern Egyptian Underworld

"They've never done this before." Anubis, Taweret, and Osiris watch the scales shift without anything being weighed against the feather. 

"Keep watch," Osiris commands them. "We will see what Ma'at has to say."

South Dakota, USA

Y/N tries again to call Steven and Marc. 

“Hey, um, so we got to Ajak’s. She…got attacked by a deviant and is…Anyway, we’re flying back out again, probably going to find Kingo. Let me know if you get this, we’re in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not getting any service.”

As she puts her phone away. She is shocked to see the path to the temple open before her. 

"Sprite!" She calls the younger Eternal.

"Is that what I think it is?" Sprite says as she eyes the long open tunnel. "Tell Sersi I will meet you in Mumbai." Sprite nods.

Modern Egypt: Temple of the Gods

"Osiris," Y/N greets the glowing eyes of the avatar before her. 

"Ma'at," he greets her. "I am sure you are curious why I summoned you."

She sighs, "I have an idea about that and I will share what I know, you only ever have to ask."

"Your scales shifted while not in use. The others are concerned."

"I…I have concerning news for you, Osiris. The deviants have returned, they are stronger, faster and I'm afraid I can no longer guarantee that we, that I, will survive."

"What do you mean?" He asks. "How have you come to this conclusion?"

"One attacked us in London. Ikaris, Sersi, Sprite, and I were unable to kill it. Ikaris and I could only drive it back. The concerning thing is that it healed itself, Osiris. We went to consult Ajak and she was dead. The monster had stolen her powers and in doing so became stronger and harder to fight. In 7,000 years no Eternal has died. I'm afraid the shock may have momentarily shifted and shaken my beliefs. But the scales should be steady now. We are going to gather the rest of the Eternals and return to our mission, losing our healer will not deter us. We shall do our best to remove this threat to humanity. My only request is that should anything happen and my feather fade. Please tell Khonshu that I have failed. He will know why."

"That can be done. We will be observing," Osiris tells her. "Call upon us if you have a need. Isis would be devastated if we lost you, little feather. Your heart beats here. It shall remain protected." 

Mumbai, India

Y/N steps out into the busy streets of the city. She reaches out to feel the hearts around her. Now she had to wait for the rest of the team to get there. She takes out her phone and calls Steven.

"Osiris called me to the temple, my powers wavered after finding Ajak. I filled him in on what was happening. With Ajak gone we…Osiris will let Khonshu know if anything truly bad happens, he told me he would. I'm in India now. I got here before the others because of the temple path. I'll let you know more soon. I really do miss you both."

Before putting her phone away she sent a text to Sersi letting her know that she was in India.

#To Cry for the Moon fic #eternals!reader #marc spector x eternals!reader #marc spector x y/n #marc spector x female!reader #marc spector x reader #steven grant x y/n #steven grant x female!reader #steven grant x reader #female!reader #tw: death #eternals x reader

[faeflowerz]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ORTHO SHROUD 🤖💙

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

I'm a little drunk while writing this so let's see if i can't stay on track 

Uhm i was gonna post Idia first but imma just…quietly wait for his birthday to come back around. But this isn't about him. It's about Ortho.

My light. My joy. My love. Okay let's do this.💙💙💙

Also, here is a disclaimer: while I do find Ortho to be a cute lil guy, he's also capable of being a romantic interest. It would go against his arc and characterization if he is treated differently despite being on par with the other students in mentality and maturity. Original Ortho would be the same age as the other first years and so, I treat RobOrtho the same. If that makes you uncomfortable, feel free to find another blogger.

Let's chat about Ortho!

It's been a big year for Ortho, huh? Chapter 6 really was a good arc for him. And I was struggling through those battles once I heard he was going to get a school uniform. Let me tell you, that wasn't a walk in the park.

What I love about his arc is that Ortho wants to explore and learn. While he 'knows' everything, he doesn't 'know' everything, you know? Like, being an official student may seem redundant because the material is easy for him to find and parrot back. But he's never gotten to know what it's like to tutor someone. To sit and chat with his friends, skip classes, or go shopping for himself. Hell, even writing an essay on his own is new for him. Ortho is gonna have to *create* his personality. 

He's becoming an artist. Ortho joined the film club. How cool is that? How will Ortho utilize his observations on humanity and mimic that for a movie? What can he learn from the stories he performs? And what if he was given the chance to make his own script? Film it? Direct it? There's a lot of potential for him and Vil sees it in him. Ugh its so fuckin good! Imagine if he gets into fashion and makeup?! It's exactly what he needs to feel "real". 

He also fits perfectly with the first years. I've already seen yall putting him in art and it's the only thing that keeps me alive. Ortho has to help hold the brain cell since at least three of them would drop it. It's good that he's with the babies because he's learning how to have friends and can grow with them. 

His FG is so good too. Like i'm kicking myself bc i don't have it. Like…he's enjoying the things we as humans wouldn't think twice about. He said that he was considered a magical tool before. An object. That fuckin cuts deep. Like.

Imagine being created in the image of a dead child and being vulnerable to having your being changed or altered at the whims of your creator/brother. You're designed after a real boy and behave like a real boy more or less. So u get to tag along with your brother and you see people having fun, making friends, growing up and being an individual. 

But you can't be one. You aren't considered a person. You're just your brother's thing. You're a thing to them. Like, Idia already avoids school life as if it's a major inconvenience but Ortho wants it. He wants indivality and agency over his life. And he has it. He's always been a real boy, but society didn't accept it. But there's no denying it, especially when he's creating art, which involves feelings. It involves developing ideas, thoughts and emotions and putting it into something that represents you. 

He designed his own FG gear. It's an aesthetic design. He's wearing shoes in his union gear. SHOES! HE'S STEEZY AS FUCK. 

Oh oh, it's cute that he chose Pomefiore as his second dorm. Not only would he look stunning in that uniform, his interest in Rook is hilarious. I'd imagine ortho already has a habit of following or taking obsessive notes about people. So if Rook is being stalked, that just…thats cash money. 

What I want answered is why he doesn't like lighting and if that will play a part in chapter 7. It could be related to fucking with his circuitry. But I think it's trauma based. It would be groovy if it was trauma based. That'd be so good.

As ive said in my disclaimer i feel that Ortho should be seen as the student he is. We've established his intelligence level, his maturity and his agency as a character in the story. He's not a baby. While he does have a cutesy voice that throws off the audience, he would be considered 16 like his friends. Treating him like a child is doing his character a disservice because Ortho is rapidly changing and maturing. I would say he has always been fair game but the fans infantilized him to the point where they gave him the stamp of child rather than teenager. I want to see English fans take him more seriously.

💙 i love his voice. So much. It's cutesy and when he says off the cuff shit, it's funny as fuck

Uhm my brainrot wants to gush about everything i love about him. So…

💙 those eyes! Those eyes. My favorite card is his first birthday card. Just…ahhh!

💙 his heart is where the students keep their pens. That's a nice touch 

💙 hes so??? Small??? Hehe so small!!

💙 i like when he gets cocky. Hes definitely picked up some of Idia's cockiness when it comes to his abilities as a robro. Like bro 

💙 "I'm being a good boy!" Shut the front door, that's such a darling thing to say

💙 he's probably the only social butterfly in Ignihyde. 

💙 hes so considerate of people's feelings. Hes so sweet!

💙 teeth

What i wanna see next? Uhh more costumes! Im gagging to see him in all kinds of crazy ass outfits now!! I also wanna see him dunk on his brother a little more. 

Okay, i simped enough for this guy. This cute, wonderful, small, sassy, clever, funny beautiful guy. Gyaaah!

Happy Birthday Baby Boy!

#twisted wonderland #writing #faes character reflection #Ortho Shroud #twst posting

[misslilli]

Thank you guys, for still being here with likes and reblogs ❤️ I really appreciate it!!

Felix Felicis

MSR. AU. E. | tagging @today-in-fic | read on AO3

Queen - Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy - The song that inspired the second part of this chapter, give it a listen for the full experience 😄

Chapter 4 - Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy

[ FM ]

My plan is unfolding exceptionally well, it doesn't take me more thirty minutes and two Martinis from striking up a conversation to strutting over to the guys's table with my beautiful company on my hand.

'This is cheating, buddy, you do know that right?' The voice in my head is having a hard time getting through the fuzz, I do know but I'm about three empty glasses above caring right now.

Seeing Smith's perpetual sneer replaced by a slack-jawed gape once I've gingerly placed the bills to cover my share in front of him and wished them a pleasant evening and good luck on their endeavors, makes it worth the risk.

"What's your name by the way, I don't think I caught it before!," I scrape enough brain-cells together on our cab-drive to my house to find out who I've got my arms wrapped around and whose lips feel so good on mine. The cab driver glances at us in the rear-view mirror every once in a while, clearly not enjoying the free show as much as we are. She pulls back only for a beat, to roam her eyes over my face searchingly and to answer into the space between our lips I struggle with myself not to close again before she has a chance to answer.

"Isabella. And you are…?"

"Derek. Enchanted to meet you, Isabella." Going home with a perfect stranger and making up an alternate-ego as I go along is something I've never done before and it's about 50 shades of thrilling. It takes all my inner strength to keep my hands from wandering underneath the ridden-up hem of her dress to feel the skin underneath I just know will be incredibly soft to the touch. I can't wait to shove the bundle of bills into the cab-driver's hand and finally be alone with her.

We stumble through the door still wrapped around each other, fumbling our way over to the stairs in the semi-darkness and out of the clothes left behind carelessly on our way to the bedroom.

Derek's heart almost stops the second Isabella jerks her head towards the bed in an unmistakable gesture for him to lie down, cherry-red lips curved upwards and running the silk tie she just removed through her delicate fingers. Robbed of the ability to touch her by a skillfully tied knot, all he can do is watch her drag her tongue across her smiling lips breathlessly and close his eyes in anticipation of what she's going to do settled comfortably between his thighs. Oh my, she's not only skilled with her hands.

Soon enough, he finds himself struggling against the silky fabric, fingers aching to touch the dips and curves above, so frustratingly close yet so far out of reach.

She halts the tantalizingly slow rhythm of her hips for a moment, to trace her fingertips across each restrained wrists tenderly. "Are you okay?"

"Oh God, yes, don't stop! Please!" The needy whimpered request hangs in the air between longer than necessary, to serve as a reminder on who's in charge tonight.

More than okay. Handing over complete control to Isabella, feeling her with anything but his hands, watching her unblinking to not miss a single gasp from her parted lips is more than okay. It's nothing short of miraculous. The scratches on shoulders and chest will tell the tale of the miracle happening tonight for days.

"Sooo… how did I do?," I can't help myself asking afterwards, freed from my restraints and shedding the alter-ego along with them, my insecurities get the better of me. The experience she has given me tonight has been mind-blowing from start to finish but I still need to make sure the feeling is mutual.

She doesn't seem to mind the question, she only looks down at me with the softest expression as I tuck the strands that have come loose during and are now tickling the sides of my face behind her ears gently.

"You're the perfect mixture of charming and irresistibly sexy, Derek. We should do this again sometime." Definitely. We most definitely should do this again sometime.

"Did you remember to pick up the dry-cleaning?"

"Mhh..," she hums in response, snuggled into my chest with a last delicious wriggle and a few last soothing kisses over the angry red marks. " 'S in the closet."

She's a miracle alright, everything I could ever want wrapped into a tiny 5'2" package full of surprises.

—————

[ DS ]

In the mornings, when Mulder disappears into the bathroom with his phone, I know by now that I have enough time to grab some water from downstairs, find a way to turn pebbles into gold or learn to recite the Declaration of Independence by heart. I have absolutely no idea what takes him so long in there, aside from the obvious - it's one of those man-mysteries for them to know and us to wonder about.

Back in bed and underneath the covers, I can hear the first beats of music through the closed bathroom door, over the sounds of the running sink. Oh my Lord, it's Freddie. Mercury.

"I can dim the lights and sing you songs full of sad things, we can do the tango just for two…," Mulder sings along, muffled by the bathroom door he then rips open, strutting out with nothing but his tighty whities and overly-dramatic arm waving in his best Freddie impersonation.

"I can serenade and gently play on you heaaart strings, BE a Valentino just for youuuu!" Biting my lip, I watch him prancing around the bedroom with a bemused shake of my head. Jesus Christmas, he's such a lovable dork, I just can't. Apparently, he's still riding his high of last night's victorious plan.

"Set my alarm, turn on my charm - that's because I'm a good fashioned lover-booooy!" Hiding my face behind my hand, I burst into giggles that turn into a full-on belly laugh once he's dropped to his knees at the foot of the bed, clutching his heart with both hands. I can barely see his show through the tears in my eyes.

"When I'm not with you, think of you always - when I'm not with you, think of me always!"

We wisely skip the 'love you's, not quite there yet but I do join in on the fun, it's my turn now to ask "Hey boy, where'd you get it from? Hey boy, where did you go?" and beckon my lover boy back into bed. Obediently he obliges "I learned my passion in the good old-fashioned," crawling upwards from the foot of the bed, he ends up with his nose squished into my aching flushed cheek. "school of lover boys!"

For the rest of the song, we roll around the bed in the most childish play-wrestle, laugh until we're breathless and he ends up grinning down at me widely, finishing off his performance with a last matter-of-fact "That's because I'm a good old-fashioned lover boy!" and a quick kiss to my nose. "Thank you for playing along last night, I really needed that win."

"Mhh and boy, did you win, Holly's phone number and picking up your girlfriend pretending to be a stranger," I tease upwards at his proud-of-himself face that falters just a little bit.

"Not you raining on my parade, little lady! Oh my, that hurts my soul!" Without warning and to show off his wounded ego, he drops all 200 pounds onto me, effectively knocking the air out of my lungs. Like a grown dog who still thinks he's a little puppy, he sometimes forgets how big he is and how small I am in comparison.

"Mulder!.. Stop! …You're too heavy, I can't..breathe…!" Puppy-dog look in place, how very fitting, he squints at me and mock-gasps but he doesn't move a muscle.

"You calling me fat?" Laughing breathlessly, I shove at his shoulder to get him to at least scoot downwards a couple of inches, this is nice but it's not the way I'd like to die.

"No, not fat, all muscle, lover boy!"

"Mhkay fine, I'll take it…," he grudgingly concedes and saves me from impending death after a quick smack, settling into his favorite spot on my chest with a contented sigh. "The guys invited me to go to Vegas with them…"

"O-kaay…?" I'm not sure what else to say to that so I trail off, stroking my fingers through his hair tenderly instead. They don't seem like the best company for a vacation and I'm pretty sure they're the type of guys that like to spend the majority of their Vegas trip in strip-clubs.

"Mh-hm…" Ooh, he's waiting for me to freak out and tell him absolutely not, over my dead body, no way José, njet, niente, nada.

"Do you want to go to Vegas with them?"

"No… yes… I dunno, they might need a chaperone to keep them in check…"

"If you want to go, then go. Just don't prove you can pick up strangers at a bar again." I'm only three-quarters joking, the last 25% are made-up of the knowledge that an attractive guy alone in Vegas will draw in the ladies like moths to a flame.

"Oh stop it, you know very well other women are just a blurry blob to me." Delivered so earnestly, the lovable dork's statement still makes me chuckle, blurry blob, he's a funny one.

'One of the good ones. And he's all mine!,' I think to myself, thankful that he can't see just how emotional the sudden rush of affection for him leaves me, a rush that spreads warmth through where his head is resting. I won't allow myself to cry in front of him and ruin the moment, not yet anyways, but I will squeeze him a little tighter and place a couple of thankful kisses into his hairline.

#felix felicis #msr fanfic

[writeyouin]

Swerve X Reader – Changes - Chapter 6

Chapter 6 – The Arena

A/N – I finally came back to this, my poor abandoned baby.  As usual, a special thanks to @rocksinmuffin​​ without whom, this story wouldn’t exist.

Warnings – Minor suicide mention.

Rating – T

“That is the cruellest thing I have ever seen you do,” Swerve glowered at you.

“It had to be done. There was nothing else for it,” You replied nonchalantly.

“RODNEY DID NOTHING WRONG.”

“He existed.”

“SO YOU JUST KICKED HIM OUT FOR EXISTING?”

“Look, you get to choose your Animal Crossing villagers, and I get to choose mine.”

“Abuse them, more like,” Swerve pouted.

“Fine, do you want to play on the switch and adopt an ugly-ass hamster who does nothing but bitch all day?” You asked, holding the console out to Swerve.

He took it from you, placing it on the tallest shelf in the hab-suite, “You can have this back when you learn kindness, you monster.”

“… That’s just mean,” You said, looking despondently at the shelf which was labelled No Man’s land. Beside the switch was a copy of Harry Potter which had been removed from you until you could read it without yelling at Snape every time you saw his name, and several pictures of Getaway which you had scrawled insults on; Swerve wasn’t punishing you for those, he just liked admiring them every now and then while you worked on new insults to scribble.

“Okay, fine, you can have it back right now, if you say that hamsters are cute,” Swerve grinned.

“Clearly, you’ve never seen one in real life. They work for the devil and steal people’s souls. I’m ninety percent sure that they also have armies ready to-”

Pain wracked your body and you woke up screaming to find your captors prodding you with weapons akin to cattle prods but much larger and stronger. It was the same creatures that had captured you.

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?” You yelled through the pain.

The humanoids didn’t reply, staying eerily silent; you wondered whether they were even capable of communication in a way that you might understand.

“All right, that’s enough… For now,” A human called, stepping forward, looking completely out of place among the others.

Your captors backed away, leaving you alone with the human on the opposite side of the cell. You glared at the woman, who couldn’t have been older than thirty. She wore acidic green armour that bore a symbol of a decapitated robotic head with wires and cables sticking out from the neck; the ensemble made you nervous.

“So… You’re our newest contestant. How dull,” She commented boredly, examining you.

“Contestant? What do you mean?” You asked fearfully.

Once again, you were left without a reply as the woman pulled out a dictation machine and began talking into it as if you weren’t there. “Subject is of questionable build. A Minibot. No definable insignia – probably a NAIL. Presumably no fighting skill of which to speak. No weapon attachments that can be seen. One noticeable draw to the crowds is that it’s a female – a rarity in itself.”

“Oh my God, are you- Fuck, are you putting me in the hunger games?” You demanded incredulously.

“The bot uses organic terms in communication. It’s possible that it has spent much of its time around organic communities rather than with its own kind.”

Although you knew you could argue that you weren’t originally a Cybertronian, you decided that it probably wouldn’t get you very far with your captor; she was clearly only interested in her job, whatever that was. You doubted that you would get anywhere talking to her.

“So that’s it? You’re going to put me into an arena to fight? Did I get it right? Hey! HEY, I’M TALKING TO YOU. YEAH, BITCH WITH THE BAD HAIR, YOU!”

The childish attempt at an insult earned you a bemused glance, and the woman paused the dictation machine.

“You ought to mind your manners, or you’ll be in a much worse condition before the fight, and that will only bore the spectators,” She warned you.

“I’ll behave, if you at least tell me your name. I’d like to know who I’m insulting.”

Your roguish attitude earned a sadistic smile; it wasn’t every-day that your captor met a Cybertronian with any spirit left, “Lady Ouida.”

“Stupid name,” You murmured, mostly to hide your fear. “So I’m right about this being a colosseum of sorts?”

“Yes. You are to fight in the arena.”

“And if I win, I go free?”

“No. If you win, we kill you anyway. The people are out for Cybertronian blood after all.”

“Wow… That’s so fucking stupid. Like for real, did you take this out of a book? It’s not very creative is it? How many movies have you seen where the hero is thrown into a death ring to battle? Plus, there’s not going to be much of a fight. I mean, look at me. My arms are all fucked up from your bodyguards, I’m clearly not a fighter, and I’m like only three feet taller than you. Factor in multiple opponents and you get a five-minute fight, tops which will mostly be me running for my life.”

“You don’t seem too concerned with your fate.”

“Bitch, I am terrified, but I’ve seen death and been dragged back from it. I have defined the meaning of an out of body experience. Right now, I am competing with forces that you cannot even imagine in a brain that was not meant for me. In other words, there is nothing you can do that is worse than what I’ve been dealing with for the last forty-eight hours so GET FUCKED.”

The words PERSONALITY MALFUNCTION appeared on your visor, and you knew they were true. In your human form, you tended to avoid confrontation where you could. However, faced with the prospect of unavoidable death, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. There were only two options left for you anyway. Die in an arena, or wait for the Lost Light to come to your rescue. As you stared into the grinning face of Lady Ouida who had developed a sudden interest in you, you hoped it was the latter.

Chromedome sat miserably in the brig, having been put there for attempting to forcibly alter Swerve’s memory banks with mnemosurgery. He had lost count of how many times he had been in that exact scenario, where mnemosurgery was the only way forward, but nobody else would see it that way. How many times had Rewind refused to talk to him because of it? How often had he been forced to alter Rewind’s memory afterwards so he wouldn’t leave him? Chromedome held his head in his servos, thinking of Rewind. He wouldn’t believe it if Chromedome said it was all for Swerve. So what if mnemosurgery felt good, as long as it helped people it wasn’t that bad. Sure there were risks, but there were risks to all sorts of things that people did anyway.

With nothing else to do but think of his failure, Chromedome waited despondently in his cell, with the faintest of hopes that Rewind might deign to visit him, even if it was just to yell.

Ultra Magnus watched the security footage stoically from the computer panel in his office. As well as Chromedome, he was also watching Swerve, who had been restrained for his own safety and was sobbing loudly, screaming your name, and Whirl who was in the med-bay, awaiting yet another energon transfusion. Of the three, Whirl worried Ultra Magnus the most; he was not taking well to Ratchet’s surgery. He had damaged one of his internal components beyond repair and it was now up to Perceptor to create a suitable replacement. The replacement would undoubtedly need constant maintenance for the rest of Whirl’s life if he survived, but it was the only way forward.

Ultra Magnus looked up as the door flew open, and Rodimus came barging in.

“THIS IS A DISASTER!” Rodimus roared.

For once, Ultra Magnus didn’t have the spark to placate Rodimus; he was right, everything was going disastrously.

“WHIRL IS DYING. CHROMEDOME IS ALL KINDS OF MESSED UP. REWIND BLAMES ME FOR WHATEVER REASON. SWERVE IS SUICIDAL AND (Y/N) IS MISSING. Please tell me you have something that might help fix this mess?”

“I do not,” Ultra Magnus replied quietly. He had never felt like such a failure. Under his watch, everything had gone wrong. The Magnus armour was getting heavier every day; he didn’t deserve to wear it.

“FRAG! WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO? SHE COULD BE IN DANGER. THE ROD POD’S TRACKING SYSTEM IS FRAGGED. THE CREW ARE FURIOUS. THEY HAVEN’T BEEN THIS MAD SINCE-”

“OUT OF THE WAY, COMING THROUGH,” Nightbeat’s voice called in the corridor as he weaved through the few bots out there and made his way into the office with Megatron close behind him.

“Rodimus. Ultra Magnus,” Megatron greeted professionally, before gesturing for Nightbeat to take over.

“I FOUND (Y/N),” Nightbeat began ecstatically, completely missing the sombre atmosphere.

“What? How?” Rodimus asked, dumbfounded.

“I watched the Rod-Pod’s ejection from the bay and followed it through the security cameras. After that, it was simply a matter of predicting several plausible trajectory’s considering that (Y/N) isn’t a pilot-”

Rodimus waved his arms, “Forget I asked. Just tell me where she is.”

Nightbeat ignored his disappointment that the big reveal had been ruined; it had taken a lot of work for him to covertly listen to all the radio stations where you might have landed and then locate you from that. “She’s on a privately owned planet called The Arena.”

“The… The Arena?”

Megatron nodded solemnly, “Yes. My research tells me that they capture stray Cybertronians and-”

“Don’t tell me. They put them in the arena ‘cos they think that’s creative… Primus, that’s annoying. All right, plan time. We change course, go to The Arena, break in, rescue (Y/N) and make everything go back to normal. Any questions?”

Megatron took a moment to consider the plan, “How-”

“No? Great. Then let’s go. We’ve got work to do.” Rodimus transformed and drove out of the office to head to Brainstorm’s lab. He had brushed it off with his usual casual demeanour but just like everyone else, he was furious that anyone would want to hurt you. If he was going to rescue you, he would need weapons; the morally-grey kind that Brainstorm made.

Swerve sniffled, feeling pathetic as coolant that he couldn’t wipe away under his constraints dripped down his front. Yet another failed suicide attempt to go on his record; he couldn’t even do that right. He remembered the last time he had done something so drastic, when you had come to save him from himself; you had probably only married him out of pity. Despite the depressing thought, Swerve found himself unable to believe it. You had married him because for some reason that he didn’t understand, you loved him. The two of you had spent one year married and it had been the best year of Swerve’s life. When you brought up the idea of sparklings on your anniversary, Swerve couldn’t believe that life could be any better, and now after all of that you were gone.

Although Swerve longed to wallow in self-pity, he couldn’t help thinking of Chromedome. It seemed that his last conversation was finally sinking into Swerve’s processor. What was it he had said exactly? Swerve vented air through his systems, calming himself so he could isolate the memory file.

“YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT (Y/N)!”

While it was true that Chromedome could have just said that to stop Swerve from ending his life, there was also a slim possibility that Chromedome really did have new information about you.

Swerve kept replaying the memory’s audio, listening for the truth. As a bartender, he liked to believe he was good at separating lies from the truth, but when the other bots were sober, he wasn’t very good at it.

“(Y/N)…” Swerve whispered your name, wondering what he might not know about you as of that moment.

What if you had come back and he was wallowing in his cell, too wrapped up in himself to know about it? It wasn’t possible. If you were back, it didn’t matter what state Swerve was in; he would have been taken to you. Unless…

Swerve struggled to sit up, his processor racing with endless possibilities pertaining to your fate. What if he hadn’t been taken to you because your new body was failing? What if you were dying and Swerve wasn’t there? What if he was the only one that could help you?

Unbalanced as he was, Swerve managed to stand up. He started kicking at the door, yelling as loud as he could.

“HEY! GET ME OUT OF HERE! TAKE ME TO MY WIFE! TELL ME WHERE (Y/N) IS!”

Swerve didn’t pay much heed to what he was saying. All he cared about was getting to you, no matter what it took.

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#swerve #swerve x reader #swerve x human reader #ll #lost light #The Lost Light #mtmte #more than meets the eye #maccadam #transformers #transformers idw #idw #tf #reader #reader insert #fanfiction #fanfic #chapter 6 #chromedome #ultra magnus #rodimus #Nightbeat #megatron #the arena #changes

[loveafterthefact]

Love After the Fact Chapter 57: Wasting Time with a New Friend

Lotor makes some new friends. Together, they discover that word of Lance and Keith's union has reached video game developers in the worst, best way.

Featuring Leakira in the role of comic relief (Not to offend Leakira fans, this is meant to be a fun, happy place. I just thought it might be funny little detail) XD

First  Previous  Next

Lotor finds them sleeping in a hallway. A much-needed distraction.

More specifically, it’s an adolescent Olkari with orange feelers, dressed in green and white garb stained with red dust. They’re incredibly small, even for a smaller species. Pretty adorable, like a wolf cub.

So obviously he nudges them with his foot.

“Can I help you?” the kit growls, amber eyes glaring up at him.

“You’re sleeping in a hallway.”

“And? What’s your point?”

“... You know what? I’m not really sure.”

With a groan, the kit sits up, tugging on their feelers. “So what are you up to, Mr. Prince?”

“Oh not much. Wandering around, looking for trouble.” He’s actually looking for a distraction, but that’s almost the same thing as trouble.

“Trouble, huh?” The Olkari smirks. “I’m Pidge. Lance’s resident tech genius and vent crawler- I mean spy.”

“Ah-haha, I see. You’re one of his ‘associates’.” Lotor grins, helps Pidge to their feet.

“Yes. Working for Lance usually involves some level of trouble. What are the princes up to today, anyway?”

“Lance is with Allura. She’s having a hard morning. Keith is with Thace, our emergency medic and reproductive specialist.”

“Oh, really? Making sure his junk works?”

“That’s the idea. Why?”

“It’d be awesome to have some dirt on Keith. He’s just so perfect.” Pidge skips down the hallway, a curious prince following behind them. “The worst thing he’s done is drink a bit too much, find his happy place at a party, and get really snuggly with Lance.”

Following Pidge into what should have been an old, empty storeroom, Lotor’s eyes widen in surprise. The typically ignored room is set up with monitors and a work table covered with Balmeran crystals and a few other tools.

“Where did you get some of these tools?” he asks, eyeing a choice laser of Galra design.

“I crawled through the tunnels underneath the actual labs and stole them. I’m welcome in the labs, of course. I just don’t want to share my work with them. The field of science is rife with thieves.”

“You found the tunnels already?” Lotor stares. There are tunnels all under the mountain, his ancestors making the massive peak into an insect hive. There are escape tunnels and hidden caches and underground pools and even a forge made of volcanic glass that he discovered as a small boy.

He still likes to go down there on the rare occasion he can find the time. Someday, he’ll take his children down there, and tell them all about the stories carved into the ancient walls.

“Yep! Anyway, let’s see if I can hack into Thace’s equipment. And by that I mean give me like, thirty ticks because I can definitely do it.” While Pidge types away on their computer, Lotor sits himself on the floor, eyeing a faint square cut into the stone. Most people don’t notice, don’t know to look for the fine edges carved into the floor. “Ooh… Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?” Lotor asks. “Is Keith okay?”

“You really care for him, don’t you?” Amber eyes smile at him, intuitive.

“Of course I do! He’s my cousin! And my friend!” And he has more than his fair share of health problems. Lotor himself was not a healthy kit, so he understands the worries that his cousin might have.

“Aw-w. You’re just a big ol’ sweetheart, aren’t ya?” Pidge turns back to their computer. “What’s interesting is that Keith is… surprisingly healthy. His weight and body mass index are good… Thace is optimistic about a successful pregnancy.”

“Why is that interesting?” Lotor scratches his head, frowning a little.

“Because our boys requested contraceptives, probably due to health concerns.”

“Miscarriage risks are higher for him. That’s partially due to his sex, and partially due to his condition. Do you think they’ll use contraceptives?”

“Pfft. No. They’re young, they’re stupid, and they both want pups. I doubt Lance can keep it in his pants.”

“What about Keith?”

“He’s shy.” Pidge shrugs like that explains everything. It kind of does. Keith’s priorities are probably more of the cuddling variety than the ‘aggressive hugging’ variety. “Can I have some of your blood?”

“Hm? Uh… How much blood?”

“I dunno. A few vials? Maybe I’ll swab your cheek too? It might help with my experiments.”

“And what might those be?”

“I’m trying to invent Altean-friendly prosthetics. It’s not going well. Alteans are stupid inside and out.” Pidge gathers their tools to stick him, and Lotor stares. This tiny little Olkari is far more than they appear. “Who do you think will kill Lance for getting Keith pregnant? Krolia or Shiro?”

But they're young, still playful and carefree.

“Hm… My money’s on Krolia. Or the creepy friend.”

“Adam? Oh, he’s softer than he looks. More likely he’ll live vicariously through their children and terrorize anyone who tries to mess with them.” Pidge sticks a swab in his cheek as they fill a second vial with his blood. “Your fangs are adorable.”

“Thanks?” Lotor regards them. “So you do science, you do people… What don’t you do?”

“Relationships.” Pidge cleans the crook of his arm, bandaging the spot where they bled him. “And genders. Those are for more primitive individuals.”

Lotor laughs. “More highly evolved, are you?”

“Exactly. Unlike Alteans. Stupid, scaley assholes with stupid, cranky cells.”

“I don’t get it. What exactly is the problem?” Lotor peers over Pidge’s shoulder as they examine his cells under their microscope.

“Not sure, but Alteans have some odd properties that make their biology incompatible with metal, coral, bone, wood, and other prosthetic materials. When used, the Altean’s cells refuse to accept the forgein material, even if it’s biocompatible. Hence, their cells are stupid.”

“So it would seem. How are my cells?”

“Hm… I'll have to run some of my own, secret tests. I may try to culture your skin cells to figure out how it all works.”

“Have at it. Can I interest you in a secret?”

“Always!” The young Olkari’s eyes shine, eager to learn. To know. A person after his own heart.

“Most of Altea’s technology is rediscovered. Thousands of decaphoebs ago, there was what’s known as The Forgetting. The Altean’s powers were quite suddenly drastically altered, and their society descended into chaos. Much of their technology was lost, then rediscovered within the last few milophoebs.”

“No fucking way!”

“Way. This includes their lauded Teludav technology.”

“Those fakers! How have I not heard of this?”

“I know! It’s their best kept secret. Also, beneath Mount Sil’brana is a petrified forest.”

“Oh, that’s so cool!” Pidge makes a note on their datapad. “I wonder… I don’t know if I could interface with that or not. Probably not, since it’s no longer organic, but then again perhaps I could reach the echo?”

“Echo?”

“All organic life leaves behind an echo. Sometimes, I can reach that echo. I’d be great at solving murders!”

“Well, if ever I am murdered, do find my killer. I’m sure my wife would appreciate it.”

“Unless she did the murdering,” Pidge snickers.

“Some days, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. She’d say it’s my fault, but…”

“Pregnancy.”

“Yeah. How do you think Keith will be when he gets pregnant?”

“He’s relatively mild-mannered as long as Lance keeps him happy, so either unbelievably psychotic or unbearably sweet.”

“He is really sweet. I honestly didn’t expect it when he first arrived. Lance is a little… He’s reserved, but also high-strung at the same time?”

“He definitely can be. But he can also be very playful. Those two are either quiet and reserved together, or cutting up and goofing off together. But Lance is the high-strung one, for sure. Keith just wants to know whose head to crack open. Lance wants to know every single little detail about everything.”

“So he’s a control freak.”

“Little bit, yeah. We’ve all got our thing.” Pidge smiles. “But Lance gave me a home when mine was lost. He had no reason to do that. He didn’t know what I was capable of.”

“I had assumed you were on Altea for research?” Lotor's curious, but won't push.

“No. Though I do enjoy research. For example, I have the new Phantasm Killbot game. I just got to the first visual novel part where they introduce the characters and their little side plots and all. Wanna help me out? For research?” The Olkari holds up a controller.

“Yeah alright. Anything for research.” Lotor takes the controller, waits for the character introduction screen. He’s played this game before. “Player one… Leandro.”

“Player Two… Akira.”

The screen loads.

“Uh… That’s… Interesting. Is that- Does that look like Lance to you?” It really does, at least to Lotor. The only difference is that ‘Leandro’ has brown hair and his scales are a very pale blue.

“Wow, that’s weird. Okay. Let’s see where this goes- Oh my fuck, this is going to be good.”

Lotor can’t help but agree, staring at a screen of a smirking ‘Leandro’ lounging with a wide-eyed Galra presumably named ‘Akira’. The Galra has purple hair and golden irises, dressed in what might loosely be referred to as clothing.

It’s exceptionally weird, even weirder given that Akira is the name of Keith’s father, Lotor’s uncle.

“I cannot wait to tell my cousin about this,” Lotor breathes, coming to the realization of exactly what’s before him.

“Yes! We have to! Right now!” Pidge stands, tugs on his arm.

“Well, let’s not be too hasty.” Lotor stares at the screen, that mischievous part of his brain clicking and whirring. “I mean, we have to do our research, right?”

“You know…” Pidge taps their chin. “You might be onto something.”

“I mean it’s just courtesy, right? Making sure we can give them all the information we possibly can?”

“You’re absolutely right. Okay, so you get first choice for dialogue and it looks like Not-Keith has a prompt for us.”

“Oh, gods. Okay, I am so sorry, Keith… Let’s see, here.”

…

Akira: We can’t keep meeting like this. What if people find out?

Leandro: I’m a prince, my sweet. I do what I want.

Akira: But you could be killed!

Leandro: You’re worth dying for.

Leandro: It’s my fault, anyway. I just couldn’t resist you.

Akira: It’s not your fault. I let you have me.

Leandro: You should let me have you again.

Akira: Please… I need it…

*Kiss Passionately*

Leandro: Oh, my sweet. You’re in season!

Akira: Make love to me, and I will give you a son.

…

“I feel dirty,” Lotor mutters. “This is what’s passing for entertainment right now?”

“It’s so bad! I love it!” Pidge snickers.

“Lance is going to be mortified.”

“No, he won’t.” The two new friends turn to see Adam leaning in the doorway, smirking.

“And why, pray tell, is that?” Lotor asks, one eyebrow almost reaching his hairline.

“Lance is bigger than that. He’ll be filled with a sense of… well-being.”

“Oh, gross! Adam!” Pidge chucks a wrench at the Altean’s head, the trio laughing as he dodges, then retrieves it for them. “I don’t want to hear about my friend’s dick!”

“Am I wrong?”

“No, and I hate it.” Pidge drags Adam to the floor, sits in his lap. “Okay, you can help us. What should Leandro say next? ‘A daughter would be fine’ or ‘Honor me with the gift of your flesh’?”

“Who the quiznak wrote this?” Adam mutters. “And we want ‘Honor me with the gift of your flesh.’”

“I don’t know, but I will find out. And kill them,” Lotor mutters.

“Easy on the instincts, Mr. Prince.” Pidge continues to the next cut scene.

“It’s nothing to do with instincts! I just hate that I had to read that!” Lotor sighs. “At least that cut scene is over. Now we have… Brothers, Sven and Kuron? Lots of new characters for this one.”

Adam blinks, gaping at the screen. “What. The fuck-”

...

Allura sighs, running a hand through her loose curls. It's been a rough morning, one that doesn't promise to get easier. A howling chorus of laughter cuts through her stressed thoughts. Cracking open a storeroom, she spies her husband, Adam, and Pidge laughing away at a video game.

"I wOuLd DiE fOr AkIrA," Pidge mocks, cackling.

"Leandro, please!" Lotor laughs, cutting through a false simper as he pretends to swoon. "I couldn't live without you!"

"That's such a toxic sentiment, honestly." Adam shakes his head, but his eyes are glittering bright.

Shaking her head, Allura leans in the doorway, settling a hand on her slightly protruding stomach. Life is never perfect, not for anyone. But seeing her husband playing around and having fun with their friends -his new friends- suggests that everything might still turn out alright. Or at least, not as awful as it sometimes seems.

#LoveAftertheFact #LAtF #klance #galtean au #altean lance #galra keith #adashi #altean adam #galra shiro #voltron legendary defender #vld

[violetsmoak]

Philtatos [5/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20101543/chapters/47690671

Blanket Disclaimer

Summary: During a patrol where Red Hood and Red Robin cross paths, Jason is infected with the blood of the Eros, the ancient God of Love, who informs them that they must track down his missing bow and arrows, or Jason will go slowly mad with an obsessive desire–for Tim. Though overwhelmed by the sudden attention being paid to him, Tim sets to work trying to solve the case, before Jason succumbs to madness. In the meantime, Jason discovers that there’s more than godlike powers at work here, as well as a legacy that reaches back through the sands of time.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

Beta Reader: None at the moment.

JayTimBingo Prompts This Chapter: #secrets

First Chapter

Author’s Note: Someone mentioned in the comments about the characters ages. As I mentioned at the beginning of the fic, this story mostly follows the New Earth canon. I disregarded anything in the New 52 that directly contradicts that. So the ages of the characters are about as follows: Bruce: 44 Dick: 25 Cass: 20/21ish Jason: 20 Tim: 17 Damian: 13 Ages have been approximated based on clues from the comics. I may eventually tag this as Underage, but it depends on whether I decide to write a certain scene or not.

________________________________________________________________

Tim’s first instinct is to go after Jason, which is why his irritation is entirely justified when a caped shadow detaches from above and lands in front of him in a crouch, blocking his path.

“Father says to check to the condition of Hood’s victims, then wait for medical units,” Robin informs him.

Tim frowns. “Good for him. You don’t need two people to do that.”

He begins to head off again, only for Damian to bar his way again. “Obviously. But he was adamant about it.”

“And since when do you listen to everything he says?”

Damian’s mouth thins, nose wrinkling as it does when Tim does something irritating to him, like exist. It takes him a moment to catch up.

“Wait—he meant me?”

“He meant both of us, for whatever reason is beyond my comprehension.” His permanent scowl slides more to the side of a pout, suggesting he isn’t pleased with the directive. “He was determined to reach Todd on his own when he requested help.”

The kid sounds like he is confused and disapproving all at the same time, which Tim can kind of agree on.

Reaching out to Bruce for help is not something he saw coming. Though, maybe he should have, since Jason always did have a unique ability to act outside the parameters of his own established patterns. It’s why it was so hard to pin him down when he first returned to Gotham.

It’s practical, too, I guess.

Jason’s the sort of no-frill logic kind of guy. He knows out of everyone in the family, the person best suited to take him down if he needs taking down is Bruce—and much as he cares about him, Bruce will do it, too.

He really must be rattled to go with that option.

Tim’s heart thuds a little in sympathy at that, understanding exactly what Jason’s afraid of.

Before he died, he acted rash and could be violent, and was already justifying why certain kinds of people should be forfeit their lives. That conviction magnified when he came back to life. Killing another person, that might not have been something outside the realm of possibility—in a purely utilitarian way. But this—the idea that he might lose control of himself to an extent where he has anything in common with the creeps he’s killed?

Tim wants nothing more than to go after Jason himself, to assure him that he’s nothing like those criminals. But he also recognizes why it’s not a good idea right now.

Besides, B has him. Just have to hope their…usual issues don’t get in the way.

“I’m going to find the kid that was here,” Tim tells Damian. “Got to make sure he’s okay, maybe explain what happened.”

“Whatever,” Damian replies, toeing at the faintly stirring bodies.

Nice working with you, too…

Tim finds the teenager three blocks away, ducked into a corner to avoid the wind, sucking down a cigarette from shaking hands. When Tim rappels down in front of him, he gives a curse and jumps backward, nearly upsetting a trashcan.

“What the hell, man?” he demands.

“Sorry,” Tim replies. “I just wanted to make sure you didn’t go anywhere.”

“Why, so you can have a go at me to?”

“I need to know what happened back there.”

“Twenty bucks.”

If this were a gangster or some rogue’s henchman, Tim would probably just beat the answers out of him. But he recognizes that this is a scared kid, who needs to feel safe right now, and who needs to feel like he’s in control. Given the background Tim suspects, it’s not something he gets very often, and will determine how helpful he could be in the future.

So, he counters, “Thirty, and you also give me your name.”

The kid snorts, but nods; as soon as he pockets the cash, he says, “Matt. Smith.”

“Nice to meet you, Doctor,” Tim deadpans, and the kid smirks, but he lets it go. It gives him something to call him, helps ground himself in the fact this case is now involving actual people.

“Okay, Matt. Tell me what went down.”

“Usual thing. Some guy wanted to, uh, show me somethin’ in the alley. Turned out he had a bunch of buddies waitin’. Pretty sure I’d’ve gotten worked over if it weren’t for the guy in the helmet showing up.” Matt hesitates here, his eyes flickering with vulnerability in a way that tells Tim he hasn’t been on the street very long. “After he wiped the floor with ‘em, he went weird. Got real quiet, and he started lookin’ at me like…” He shrugs. “Like, I couldn’t see his face, but it felt like the way some of the junkies look when they think you’re easy pickings. And…”

The kid actually shivers here.

“Man, I thought he was supposed to be cool?” he snaps. “That’s what the girls all say. But if he’s a creep too, why d’you Bats let him go around like he does?”

“He was exposed to a mind-altering substance some time ago, and it’s messing with him,” Tim replies. “He’s not entirely himself right now, but I’m sure he’ll be fine after a bit of detox.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Matt continues to look distrustful. “We done here?”

“Yeah, we’re done.” Tim digs into his belt and passes him a card for the Neon Knights foundation. “Take this, too. It’s not just for younger kids, you know. There’s a program set up for teens and young adults that have aged out of the system.”

“So?”

“I’m not saying you have to go there or even asking you to trust them. But for tonight, at least, a bed and a hot meal are probably a safer bet than working a corner.”

Matt’s shoulder slump a little in defeat, and he looks away. “Whatever.”

“Second person that’s said that to me tonight. I might develop a complex being brushed off so easy.”

The teen’s mouth twitches.

Good sign. If you can still smile so easily, it’s not to late for you.

There’s buzz in his ear and Tim’s comm crackles to life. “B is bringing Red Hood back to the Cave.”

“Without a fight?” Tim asks, pressing the speaker to his ear.

“Hood asked him to sedate him.”

Shit.

If that’s not an indicator of how dire he thinks the situation is! Something like this only happens in life or death situations involving the whole Family, or the Joker. Or both.

“I’m on my way.” He turns back to Matt. “You going to be alright?”

“I’m always alright.”

That startles a chuckle out of Tim; he makes a mental note to track the kid down at as soon as he’s got a better idea of what’s going on

Hurrying back to Damian, Tim finds him watching with folded arms as an ambulance loads the last of the injured and unconscious men through their doors.

“Father, the clean up is finished. I am returning.”

Batman’s voice echoes in both their comms. “No. Continue with your patrol. Red Robin, he’ll stay with you for now.”

“Excuse me?!”

“What?!”

“Rendezvous at the Nest afterward and stay there until you receive further instruction.”

He signs off.

Damian and Tim exchange looks that are easily interpreted even behind their dominos.

“He knows that’s not happening, right?” Tim says. “You’d probably set my place on fire.”

“And I’m sure it would be an improvement. But no, it’s not happening.”

“Good. Glad we established that. How are you getting back to the mano? B brought Hood back in the car, so…”

“Obviously, with your bike.”

“Oh, obviously.”

“You would take issue if I stole a car. And you intend to return to the Cave anyhow.” Tim glares but doesn’t correct him. “I’m driving.”

“Fine.”

“Tt, you people and your antiquated—wait.” Damian sounds like his brain has to reboot. “Really?”

“You have an obsession with sharp objects, you’ve tried to kill me more times than Hood has, and you hate me. You really think I’m letting you sit behind me?”

Damian snorts. “That’s the first intelligent thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“That is, of course, assuming you can reach the gears.”

He’s kind of surprised he doesn’t get punched for that one.

It’s an awkward right back, made even more so when Tim insists they duck into a treelined cove on the way to the manor and hide the bike to change into their civvies.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“B’s probably keeping Jason in a holding cell,” Tim explains, “which is on the same level as the garage. We’ll be seen.”

“So?”

“So, you want to get sent off to bed like a naughty kid before you even step foot in the door, or do you want to go down the stairs and find out what’s going on before B can stop you?”

Damian thinks it over, and nods. “This is tedious, but very well. We’ll do it your way.”

Tim exhales a bit at that. Though none of that was entirely a lie, he’s more concerned that if Jason’s woken up, he might see Tim coming in through the parking area and get upset.

“Look at us getting along,” he murmurs as he struggles out of his boots.

“This truce is temporary at best. If you continue to patronize me, I will have Titus defecate in your shoes.”

They arrive in the manor, slipping in through the family entrance, where they are greeted by Alfred.

How does he do that?

It’s a question Tim is pretty sure will never be properly answered.

“Master Timothy, Master Damian—what a novelty, you two entering the house together.”

“We didn’t enter together, Pennyworth, he followed in my wake. As usual.”

Alfred and Tim watch him head toward the main study.

“He’s in a good mood tonight,” Tim remarks.

“Indeed. He spent the afternoon following his studies playing Cheese Viking with Master Colin.”

“Oh, well, the world will be forever grateful.”

“I am considering a gift basket.”

“Can we get some coffee downstairs, Alfred? I have a feeling tonight’s going to be a long night.”

Actually, I have a feeling it’s going to be a long week…

“Of course, Master Timothy.”

“Thanks.”

When they get down to the Cave, it’s both a relief and not to see that Bruce isn’t waiting. Mostly because it’s Dick sitting in the big chair at the meeting table.

Crap. Crap crap crap, what is he doing here?

“Richard,” Damian says, a frown in his voice. “I was under the impression you were on your way back to New York.”

“O caught me on the way, said there was a Family emergency and I might need to hang around for a bit. Here I was hoping she meant something else by that, but…”

Tim’s brain stumbles to come up with a reason why Dick shouldn’t be here. Either this will become the stuff of teasing material for years to come, or Dick will be disgusted at the possibility of Jason entertaining any kind of feelings for Tim.

He has no idea which option is worse.

“B’s handling it,” Tim says. “Maybe you should do a quick patrol, though, since we’re all back here right now.”

“It’s covered. O said Batgirl and Signal are covering any gaps in our routes tonight.”

And Cass is in Hong Kong, which is at least a bit of good news.

He has a hard enough time hiding his feelings for Jason on a good day; if she were here while all of this is going on, there’s not a prayer he gets out of it without someone knowing.

“So, who’s going to fill me in on what’s actually going on?”

“I will.” By now they’re all conditioned to ignore Bruce’s sudden appearances. He’s still in the suit, but the cowl’s off, granting Tim a good view of the glare he’s levelling at his younger sons. “You two aren’t supposed to be here.”

“Sorry. I didn’t care,” Tim replies, his discomfort starting to crack his usual composed mask.

“And I am your partner,” Damian adds. “I will not be kept out of matters because of some misguided attempt to pander to my age. I had thought we came to an understanding on this, Father.”

“This isn’t about that.”

“Then what is it about?” Dick demands; he’s getting impatient.

“Jason’s been infected by a toxin that manifests itself by triggering obsessive behaviour.”

Dick processes that, then furrows his brow. “Are we talking Sheldon Cooper obsession or Alex Forrest obsession?”

“At this point it could be either,” Tim answers, and gives a quick rundown of everything Cassie told him.

“And who exactly is the poor fool Todd’s supposed to be fixated on?” Damian asks, looking repelled at the very thought.

Tim battles down his own embarrassment, reasoning that everyone needs to be on the same page if they’re going to help Jason, and gestures wearily at himself. “That would be me.”

Silence rings.

Damian tilts his head to one side. “Are we positive we shouldn’t just allow this to play itself out?”

“Damian!” Dick snaps, scandalized.

“Well, the outcome benefits everyone. Todd gets to drag the object of his interests somewhere that’s elsewhere, and we get rid of Drake.”

“It’s getting really old, Gremlin,” Tim sighs, rubbing his temples.

“No one’s getting rid of Tim! And Jason’s not…doing that!” Dick snaps. “We’re going to fix this. Don’t worry, Tim, he’s not going to get a chance to do anything to you this time.”

Tim shoots him a sharp look. “You know it’s not his fault, right? It’s like being dosed by Ivy, only stronger.”

“If what Wonder Girl told you is true, though, the infection may capitalize on feelings that are already there,” Bruce says. “And the fact is—”

“Jason’s tried to kill me before? Yeah. I was there. But it’s been years, and things have been getting better.” Everyone looks skeptical at that, and he scowls. “They were.”

“Be that as it may, you shouldn’t be here. Damian either.”

“Todd’s not obsessing over me, thank god for small miracles.”

Bruce ignores the byplay.

“Since you are here,” he says, turning to Tim. “I want Eros transported to the Cave. We can better interrogate him here and find out if he’s holding anything back. I don’t trust that he isn’t manipulating you both.”

“Oh, I know he’s manipulating us,” Tim replies. “I also know you won’t be able to interrogate him the way you want to, not with his powers slowly growing more out of control—and yes, they are doing that, don’t make me explain how I know that.”

“How do you—?”

“Nair, Dick. In your shampoo,” Tim snaps, jabbing a finger in his brother’s direction without looking away from Bruce. “Also, there’s no guarantee he won’t try to escape and give us the sleep because we underestimate him. And since I can’t be around Jason, I can at least keep working on that angle of the case back in the Nest.”

Because no way in hell are you benching me from this completely.

He can work from his place, and if there’s anything important, he can send it over. And he cam patch into the comms to follow along with the investigation from afar.

Whatever Bruce wants to say to that is interrupted by a tweeting noise from the computer. A beat later, a holographic projection of Wonder Woman appears in the front of them.

“You got my message.”

“Yes,” she replies. “And I can only corroborate what you already know. Nothing mortal can be done about the boy’s condition. Only an arrow from Eros’ bow will be able to temper the infection.”

Bruce’s expression doesn’t change, but Tim can sense his disappointment.

“I must also warn you that the further his condition progresses, the less conventional sedatives will work. I am surprised they even worked this time.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Modern pharmaceuticals might be able to render him unconscious, but it will not stop his brain function. The fixation will continue, thoughts unrestrained, and could overstimulate his brain to a fatal degree.”

They are all silent, digesting this.

“You said ‘nothing mortal’,” Bruce says after a moment. “There’s another option, isn’t there.”

Diana sighs. “Yes. I do have access to a method of pausing a gradual descent into madness, or rather I can locate it.”

“Great!” Dick says. “Let’s do that.”

“What’s the catch?” Tim wants to know.

“The only means I know of stopping the progression is Stygian Sleep.”

“No,” Bruce says immediately.

“What’s Stygian Sleep?” Dick asks.

“It’s in the myth,” Tim says, his research brain kicking in. “In the story of Cupid and Psyche—or, Eros and Psyche, I guess—Eros wife was put into a cursed sleep. But I thought that was just a poetic way of saying ‘really deep sleep’.”

“No. It’s a philtre created using the waters of the River Styx. Extremely powerful,” Diana explains.

“What happened to Psyche?” Dick asks.

“From what I read, she got woken up by her husband.”

“Well, that’s good, right?”

“In the story,” Diana agrees. “In actuality, he was unable to wake her. Her body wasted away and her soul was trapped in one of the darkest parts of Hades, bound to the Styx itself.”

And…that’s less good. Explains why Eros didn’t want to talk about it.

“None of this matters, because it isn’t an option,” Bruce declares.

“Don’t be closed-minded about this, Bruce, it isn’t a magic potion in the sense you think it is. The Sleep functions as a means of preserving his brain function without allowing the same deterioration that would be caused by mortal medicine. It will freeze him in the moment, keeping him safe and preserved while you seek out the means of his recovery. But if you don’t act quickly, his condition will worsen, and even if you employ the Sleep, it will be far from peaceful for him.”

“And if we don’t find that cure, he’ll be effectively braindead. No. We will find another way.”

Diana makes an impatient noise. “While I know you have every right to be confident in your abilities, you’re talking about a life. Your son’s life. Hubris is not a condition that was lost to the ancients.” The translucent body of her hologram turns as if to leave the room. “I will procure some of the philtre in case you change your minds,” Diana says, not sounding pleased. “I would hope you choose to think of the boy and not your own feelings on the matter.”

And she leaves them alone to stare at each other, the choice hanging over them more tangibly than the bats.

⁂

Next Chapter

#jaytimweek2019 #jaytimweek #jaytim #jaytimbingo2019 #fanfic #jaytim fic #batfic #tim drake #damian wayne #dick grayson #bruce wayne #secrets #warriors #angst #drama #stubborn boys trying to save stubborn boys #undying love #reincarnation

[fanfictionized]

Help Me Help You - EXmode (5/?)

Character: Bucky Barnes x Enhanced!Reader / OFC

Chapter summary: They've finally cracked Hydra's database, meaning that they have a name; The next one of Hydra's victims and they need to find her before they do.

Also they have more of an idea of what enhancement-program they're dealing with...Something familiar, perhaps?

Warnings: Mentions of torture and death, angst?

Words: 1.9k

Previous Chapter // Help Me Help You - Masterlist

“It didn’t occur to me until I tried matching the people’s blood samples up with the rest in S.H.I.E.L.D’s database.” Bruce recited as he called up the different hemograms. Bucky wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at, numbers and percentages listed in tabular form that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him.

Bruce rambled on about the numbers and percentages and Bucky noticed that he was not the only one drifting off until the next swipe with his hand showed a microscopic animation of real blood cells. He remembered that much from school. Micrography had been quite a new technology, allowing to show real, yet blurry and black and white examples over a projector. But that was nothing compared to this.

Those cells were red and pink with a purplish center and it seemed as if they were vibrating as they coursed slowly into one direction like a current. The dark purple was starting to spread out into its entirety, the yellowish green edges of the cell beginning to extend small antenna-like arms that wiggled their way outside the cell. Bucky had never, in any way, been good at biology or science, but he didn’t need to to determine it strange. Nothing but normal.

“But I had kept myself so busy with the mutation in your blood and what the super serum did to you” He continued, looking at both Steve and Bucky “That I didn’t think about the rest of Hydra’s altering experiments.” His head turned towards Wanda. She had been staring at the screen for quite some time now.

“It’s… mine, isn’t it? My blood?” She asked cautiously and Bruce nodded, pushing back the glasses onto his nose and continued explaining with a soft tone to his voice.

“Strucker’s experiments were revolutionary after Zola’s.” Bucky looked up at the familiar name, a shiver running down his spine. “It seems as if Hydra has gotten more information on how to put both of their lives’ work together.”

“To create the ultimate weapon. Indestructible and enhanced.” Vision stated as he had entered the room by floating through the glass. Another thing Bucky wouldn’t be able to get used to. It was only the third time he had seen him. He had disappeared to go on his own mission weeks before. Something about S.H.I.E.L.D he assumed, but it didn’t really matter anyway.

“Vis!” Wanda squealed excitedly as she saw him floating towards her and wrapped her arms around him. The others smiled and greeted him back. “Vision is right. I’m not just talking about your super strength or physical resilience” He looked back at Bucky and Steve “Or your enhanced abilities, Wanda. This could be a whole new thing.” He shook his head in disbelief as he showed the next picture.

A sea of dark purple spots trembling across the screen. The room got quiet as everyone watched the oval cells with jet-black cores quivering with, what everyone assumed; pure fucking energy.

“What the hell is this?” Sam asked, clearly shocked. “That’s the sample of Nina Alice, one of the victims.” Bruce added before Sam interrupted him “And let me guess; the others look exactly like hers?” Bruce nodded. “More or less, yes. You can see a slight change in the bloodstream, but my guess is that Hydra is still playing with the formula…” “But” Natasha inquired “They were all dead when they found them, right?” Her voice was laced with something Bucky had never heard from her. Possible fear of what they were facing. “Yes, unfortunately-” Bruce began but she continued. “Then how… are the cells still moving?”

Goosebumps crawled over Bucky’s skin at the realization and the others looked just as horrified as him as they faced each other. Bruce sighed deeply.

“All of them were found within 24 hours after their initial time of death. The autopsy showed that even though their hearts had stopped beating, they were not quite… dead… in a literal sense.” “What are you talking about?” Wanda asked, as confused as the rest of the group. “Their brains are still active. Something inside them was still keeping them alive for a couple more hours.” “The new serum?” Natasha asked. “Probably.” Tony responded “Their brains’ activity essentially shut down after an average of 16 hours after their death.” “Actually, post-mortal brain activity is not uncommon, but the average time span for that is maybe up to six minutes.” “Not sixteen hours…” Steve repeated calmly as he looked down, either thinking or processing. “How the fuck are you so calm? Man, we got a new Hydra weapon that could take us all down, how are you not freaking out right now?” Sam clearly wasn’t. Rightly.

Bucky’s own heart had begun to thump inside his chest at a maddening pace. He didn’t want to imagine what those people must’ve gone through in comparison to him. His story was one to ignite nightmares by its own. He had gone a long way to become what he was, but it was the aftermath that still traumatized him. They had died getting there.

“I’m not.” Steve replied “But we might be able to stop them before anything else happens to any more civilians.” He said and gestured to Tony who was still pacing around restlessly. “…Tony? Do you know something we don’t?” Natasha asked as he picked up his tablet. “Maybe.” He shrugged and projected the picture on the screen above the table with a tap of his fingers.

“S.H.I.E.L.D has found more than one of Hydra’s programmer. They… interrogated them-” He raised his brows and Steve scoffed “What do you want from me, Cap? Because I want this to end.” Steve crossed his arms in front of him but let Tony continue.

“-Anyway, they got enough information from them to add to the hacking of the system they had already achieved to find out the plan on the new serum.” The information on the operation appeared with a title.

“The Exome-Modification and Enhancement Program.” Tony said “Also called EXmode.” He remarked, letting everyone observe the information in front of them. “We have the names of the victims right here- “ “Along with their process-evaluation during their treatments.” Bruce finished his sentence “They never wrote down the actual formula, but what it did to the people as they used it on them.” “Something like a fucked-up diary…” Sam muttered angrily. Bruce began to look more and more depressed during the course of explaining the current situation.

“They have all the names here in order. But not only the ones that were found… but also the ones they still… want to experiment on.” “There, after Yorick Lambert.” Natasha pointed out the name on the sheet. “Has anyone after him been reported missing yet?” “Not yet, no.”

Annabelle Feldner. Bucky read inside his head. She was the next one on the list, right underneath Yorick. There was nothing else, no date, no information.

“We need to find her, Tony.” It just slipped out, his thoughts running freely and he felt the need to express them. “We can’t let them get to her.” All eyes were on him. Although he didn’t speak much, his words had value once they were out. And of cause he was right, they all knew it.

“S.H.I.E.L.D is already on it.” He assured him, but it didn’t quite answer his question. “Are they bringing her to a safe location?” Bucky asked, but Tony only fidgeted on the spot, looking over at Bruce who was already eyeing him.

“Not exactly…” Bucky’s scalp began to prickle, the fiery sensation spreading over his skin. Nausea settled inside his stomach the second he thought about other people living through the same hell as he did. This was no longer a simple mission. This was personal.

“What do you mean…?” His voice was low and dark. “Well, first off; There are a few Annabelle Feldners on the face of the earth. Trying to find out which one Hydra is interested in is a bit of a predicament since we still don’t know what connects all of them.” He tried to explain. Bucky’s shoulders tensed up.

“Second, I have my doubts S.H.I.E.L.D will tell us once they’ve figured that one out, because, well…” He sighed and took off his yellow sunglasses “They still don’t have the serum. My guess is that once they know which Annabelle they’re after, they will wait for Hydra to show up so they can see where they’re taking her.” All of them listened carefully as he explained his theory.

“Of cause this is all just assumption, but I’ve known those guys for a couple of years. They are trying their best to find her, but also they won’t let an opportunity like this slip through their fingers. Thinking about the greater good- “

“No way.” Bucky interrupted as he stood up, almost knocking over his chair. He was angry. Tired of this, but mostly angry. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t let one more person be the victim of the “greater good” because the “greater good” had him killing pointlessly for decades for it. Who were they to decide if they could spare that life? They would take Hydra down to help themselves to their knowledge to use it for whatever, but not for the greater good. “They can’t do that.”

“I’m afraid that’s not up to you anymore.” Tony said and sunk back into his chair with a huff “We’ve come this far but I wouldn’t count on S.H.I.E.L.D taking us any further than that. Maybe they’ll call us if they want their base destroyed or their agents taken out. But I doubt they’ll let us know about the formula once they have it. They want to avoid this- “He pointed at Bucky, Steve and Wanda “-happening again. Not unless they know how to control it.” “So what? You’ll let them play god?” Bucky asked incredulously. “Buck…” Steve started reaching for his friend’s arm but he pulled it back. “Bucky is right.” Wanda agreed and stood up as well “You’ll never know what it’s like to be experimented on like that. They cut you open, the pump you full of stuff that makes your veins burn and make you wish you were dead.” Tony lowered his head at her words and even though she had hit a blade in his heart with the accuracy of her words, Bucky was proud of her speaking up as well.

“They don’t have a voice, Tony. But they don’t deserve it. No one does and that should be out first priority instead of being sad because we cannot change how it is.” “She’s right, you know.” Sam muttered. “I know!” Tony groaned “Of cause I know that.” “We’re Avengers.” Steve spoke “We need to stand up for the little guys. Especially since no one else will.”

Bucky chuckled. Captain America in its full glory. He was expecting nothing less. “Then it’s settled.” Vision spoke with a faint smile on his lips. “Oh, so what now exactly? I’m supposed to break into S.H.I.E.L.D’s security network?” Tony huffed sarcastically. “Haven’t you already...?” Bruce asked him, but Tony immediately tried to shush him. “Shhht! All right, okay.” He threw his hands into the air dramatically “God, I feel stupid for saying this, but let’s spy on S.H.I.E.L.D.” “We can do it. As a team.” Steve said and Tony rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Miss American beauty pageant. I’ll do most of the work anyway so lay back until I’ve found a name.” Everyone laughed at that.

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Next Chapter

#Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #help me help you

[maevefiction]

Your Light in the Mist - Chapter 42

We left the Gold Coast on February 13th, returned home for two days, then were off again…first to Berlin for a screening of ‘The Night Manager’ with a Q & A session, then on to Vietnam, where shooting began the day after we arrived. The entire experience there was life-altering, in a way. The people, who were so kind, generous, and welcoming, and the locations, some of which had never before been filmed, were majestic and evocative of a land time had, to our benefit, forgotten…but most of all, the opportunity to immerse myself in a culture I had little knowledge of was humbling, and miraculous, and I made every effort to be out and about with every spare moment I had. When production wrapped in mid-March, Jordan announced that he was planning on relocating to the area, and I found myself just the tiniest bit jealous. There was such a sense of peace there, despite such a tumultuous upheaval in the not so distant past…a testament to the human spirit, our ability to keep pressing onward, to continue to live, and even thrive. A lesson in perspective, I suppose.

Tom was due in Los Angeles on March 20th for a photoshoot, so we opted to go directly there instead of heading home to London and then back out again. The 21st was booked with interviews, which would be followed by the official ‘I Saw the Light’ premiere on the 22nd. This was the first time I’d be walking a red carpet with him, other than the brief appearance at the Cube. Though Tom normally preferred the Beverly Hills Hotel, we were staying at the Loews Hollywood due to its proximity to the Egyptian, where the screening would be held, and Sadie’s Kitchen, the venue chosen for the after party. Our room was on the 15th floor, modern décor in shades of grey, white and burgundy, with a view of the Hollywood sign…currently packed with a team of stylists, garment bags and rolling racks making me feel like a sardine in a tin. Granted, a very lovely tin, but a tin nonetheless. Tom was almost ready to go, his bright blue suit complementing his eyes perfectly, black necktie offering a bold contrast to his white dress shirt. I was still in my skivvies, one of the gals taping me into my strapless bra ‘just in case’. Despite the opportunity it created for an epic wardrobe malfunction, I was totally in love with my gown. It was strapless with a sweetheart neckline, gradient purple, near black at the top, fading to pale lilac midway down in the front and plum in the back. The skirt was floor length and full, and both a portion of it and nearly the entire bodice were decorated with silver vines and leaves, cascading downward like a waterfall. I’d opted for dark purple heels, on the thick side because I figured there was less of a risk of tripping in front of the press line that way. Around my neck was my tourmaline necklace, and my hair had been pinned up in a loose bun. As I pondered what food choices awaited me at Sadie’s, the gal announced that my tits were secure and I was instructed to step carefully into the gown, zipped up, and released into the wild to fend for myself. Tom’s hands descended upon my shoulders as I inspected the contents of my clutch one final time, making sure I had a room key, my cell phone, tissues and a Snickers bar.

“You look gorgeous, as always.”

I turned my head to meet his gaze. “You don’t look half bad yourself.” He grinned, releasing me, and I spun around to get a better look at him. “Mmm. That is a nifty suit. To the left…to the right…where will…aha, LEFT. What’s that, eight out of ten or something?”

“I didn’t realize we were collecting data. Will the results be in the form of a bar graph or a pie chart?”

“A fifty page thesis, actually. Available for sale on Amazon. I figure we can fund our retirement with it.”

He laughed, interrupted by his phone chirping. “Car’s here. Let’s roll.”

“Walk. I’m going to walk. Probably. Rolling sounds like ‘a YouTube Star is Born’. But I suppose that could fund some shit too…”

We exited arm in arm, piled into the elevator with a bunch of other fancy people I didn’t know, then climbed into the black SUV waiting for us. It was still light out, the day bright and sunny. Our vehicle was sixth in line when we pulled up to the Egyptian Theater, and my jaw dropped at how old-school big-glam Hollywood it looked, the red carpet lining the courtyard, velvet ropes and press wherever I looked. It was far from my first rodeo, but it was the first time I’d be at such an event in the capacity of ‘movie star’s plus one’. A low whistle escaped my lips.

“Wow, so we’re like, really doing this. Surreal, Tom. Sur-REAL.”

He took my hand in his, pulling my attention away from what I could see outside the window. I smiled at the sight of the excitement written all over his face. “It is that, positively. And I’m…I’m…well, I’m like a live wire, Maude. Crackling and vibrating and super charged with energy because I’m not walking this one alone, you’re going to be right by my side and…” He let go of my hand, flinging both his up in the air and waving them around jazz-style as he grinned. “I. AM. UNCONTROLLABLY EXCITED!”

I leaned in to kiss his cheek, quickly wiping the lipstick I left behind away with one of my tissues. “My god you are just too cute. Does this car have a sick bag? Because the cute is going to make me barf, for sure.” I mock-gagged.

He continued to grin like a fool as he pointed to the window behind me. “We’re up! It’s time! Let’s go, my lady. LET’S GO!”

Before I could ask for a moment to get my shit together, he was out of the car, the roar of waiting fans greeting him as he ran around to my side and opened the door for me. I took his proffered hand and stepped out into the daylight, the roars growing louder, our names being shouted above the din by press and onlookers alike. As we made our way down to the entrance, Tom stopped to sign and take selfies as long as time would allow, and then it was time for us to strike a pose. The flashes were the worst part, a ceaseless strobing that made it very difficult to focus, but mid-way through my eyes and brain seemed to adjust and I found myself having a really good fucking time mugging for the cameras with the man of the evening. The interviews were a blast, Tom taking the lead and doing most of the talking, pulling me in here and there when it was someone he’d interacted with on previous occasions or mentioned my name. We were like a comedy improv team that sang on command, and by the time we made it into the actual screening I was totally high on fun. Not exactly the right vibe for such a serious, angsty, sad movie, but in the end I was grateful I went into it with a boost because the ended pregnancy talk scene was difficult to watch even though it was the second time around. There I sat, holding back tears with Tom’s hand in mine, shaking, and me rubbing his wrist with my thumb. As soon as the credits rolled we were ushered quickly to the car, and then it was off to Sadie’s. I was a very intimate setting, the décor an eclectic mix of woods, stones, metals and glass. The food was a bit too micro for my taste, and there were moments when I seriously considered grabbing an entire tray of hor d'oeuvres and making a break for the coatroom. Tom had been indulging in champagne all evening, and Rodney’s band was in the house, so I knew that it wouldn’t be long until an impromptu jam session occurred. I’d avoided going to the bathroom since we left the hotel, and the three sodas I’d guzzled made it impossible to postpone any longer. I kissed Tom on the cheek, leaving him with the drummer whose name I’d been given but could absolutely not recall and headed for the rest room. Fitting into the stall was the first hurdle, turning around was the second, and it actually got more and more complicated every step of the way until my hands were full of fabric and my ass was on the chilly seat. Figuring out how to wipe was the Rubik’s cube of the process, and I stared at the toilet paper dispenser for an untold amount of minutes. I heard the band begin to play Move It On Over, heard them finish, then start up with Long Gone Lonesome Blues. Tom’s yodeling snapped me out of my stupor and I bunched all the fabric in the crook of one arm, tore off the necessary quantity of sheets with my free hand and took care of business like a boss. As I thanked the gods for auto-flush, I unlocked the stall, dropped the fabric back in place and propelled myself outward…right into Lizzie, who was wearing a far more practical dress that wasn’t all floaty and poufy and just waiting for an accident to happen. She grinned.

“So? Enjoying the party? Or did you come in here to hide like, you know, I DID?”

I laughed. “So far, so good. Nice to know it’s not just me who seeks refuge in bathrooms, though. But this time it’s a legit visit. Which was terrifying.”

“Maude, there are more dresses in my closet that I wound up buying because they were unfit to return then I care to count. Wine, toothpaste, hair gel, lipstick, chocolate, things I don’t even know what they are and probably don’t want to…and lemme tell ya, I know all the best bathrooms for hiding in SO many cities all around the world. The private ones with really loud fans are just…” She sighed. “Perfection.”

Washing my hands, I nodded. “Oh yeah. Peace and quiet. If they only came with a Do Not Disturb sign…”

“Oh my GOD, there’s a bathroom in a restaurant in Toronto, I can’t remember the name but I know where it is, I can see it…damn…anyway, they HAVE that.”

“No they do not.”

She nodded, walking to the stall furthest from the door. “Yes they do! Best twenty minutes of my night a few years back.” Turning, she waved. “Okay, I’m goin’ in. If anyone’s looking for me…”

“I have no idea where you are.”

She blew me a kiss. “Bless you.”

As I re-entered the chaos, I was hit with an extra-loud, slightly slurred version of Hey Good Lookin’, and I couldn’t wait to round the corner and see Tom in action. And take a video. Which I’d totally post on Tumblr because surely it was something the entire world needed to see. The band had set up on one side of the dining area, which had been cleared of tables, and they were surrounded by cast and crew, some standing and clapping, others dancing. Tom was easy to spot, and as I worked my way through the crowd, I noticed that there was a woman hanging on him, her arm resting on his shoulder as she shimmied to the beat. She was waiflike, incredibly thin and tall, taller than Tom, even, in her white stilettos, her white mini dress so short I didn’t think it would be possible for her to sit down without putting on one hell of a show. There were triangular cut-outs at the waist, and her platinum blonde hair hung halfway down her back. Her eyes were huge, greenish-grey, and beautiful, the stand out component of her heart-shaped face with its perfect Cupid’s bow mouth. I’d never seen her before and had never asked him to point her out in the film, though I now recognized her from it, and as I registered that it was the woman he was terrified of running into, and that we’d forgotten the possibility of her being there, or at least I had, my heart began to pound in my chest. Claudia. Right there, in front of me, rubbing up against my fiancé.

As the song ended everyone cheered, and she placed her hands on either side of Tom’s head, turned his face towards hers, then kissed him squarely on the lips in far too intimate a fashion and for entirely too long. I heard a few gasps, but they were eclipsed by the roaring of my heartbeat in my ears, and I fought the urge to scream as I watched him gently push her away. He turned back toward the crowd, stone-faced, and when his mask slipped almost imperceptibly I knew he’d spotted me. I wanted to run, flee the scene, disappear into the night but this was a party full of his co-workers, part of the promo, and doing so would certainly hit the gossip rags in a flash and had the potential to damage the success of the film and so I stood, and I faked a smile as he walked toward me with the woman who possessed a cache of sex tapes starring them both at his side. Once they were two feet away, she opened her clutch and pulled out what I knew to be a hotel room key, as it bore the same logo as the one in my own. Her voice was a much higher pitch than mine, volume just loud enough for both Tom and I to hear when she spoke, pressing the plastic rectangle into his hand.

“Here’s my key. Panorama suite two. I’ll see you shortly.” She turned to me, smirking, then back to him, gesturing in my direction with her thumb. “You can bring her too, if you want, even though she’s not exactly my type. That giant cock of yours more than makes up for it.”

She grinned widely at me, then walked across the room, hair swaying back and forth as she rolled her hips, finally vanishing around the corner and into the hall that led to the exit after what seemed like forever. I heard Tom say my name, and I looked up, but I stared at the knot in his tie because I couldn’t look him in the eye. He took my hand in his, which I permitted, and after his first ‘good night’ it dawned on me that one, I should do the same because two, apparently he’d decided it was time to get the fuck out of there. As soon as we rounded the same corner Claudia had minutes earlier, I pulled my hand from his. Neither of us spoke then, and when he began to do so in the car, I silenced him with a terse ‘not now’.

The ban continued as we entered the hotel, and throughout the elevator ride. Once the room door was closed and locked behind us, I held up both hands, palms toward him.

“Tom. I’m going into the bathroom. I’m going to take this dress off. I’m going to take a shower. I’m going to try and calm down and return to some sort of quasi-rational version of myself. You are going to stay out here.” I could feel the rage bubbling up, words I shouldn’t say spilling out of my mouth. “Unless, of course, you’re planning on joining Claudia, which, FYI, I am NOT.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for that. That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid. I’ll be out when I’m ready.”

Once safely tucked away, I focused on each individual detail of every task. Zipper down. Dress off. Hang up the dress. Tape off. Bra off. Underwear off. Water on. Test water. Step into shower. By the time I’d dried off, I once again understood that the man on the other side of the door loved me, and that I loved him, and trusted him, and that we needed to discuss what had happened because there was a side to this story I’d yet to hear, and doing or saying or thinking anything without having that knowledge would be unreasonable. And wrong.

He was sitting on the floor, jacket and tie off, shirt unbuttoned ,back leaning up against the bottom of the bed with his knees up and his head in his hands. Hearing me pad across the carpet, he looked up at me, his forlorn expression shifting briefly to one of desire, which baffled me until I realized I was naked. Knowing that he wanted me in the midst of all this was strangely comforting, and empowering. I pulled a robe out of the top dresser drawer, wrapping it around myself as I walked to the bed and sat down, his body to the left of my own. His gaze was cast downward again, and I reached out and began rubbing the back of his neck, speaking softly.

“Will you sit with me and tell me what happened?”

He nodded, rising quickly and joining me on the mattress. His eyes met mine, and he inhaled deeply.

“I had no idea she’d be attending. I didn’t even think to ask. If I’m honest, I hadn’t given her a single thought in months, not until we watched the movie here, and even then the possibility of her turning up didn’t even cross my mind for more than a few seconds…and I pushed it away as me being paranoid. As soon as I started in on Hey Good Lookin’ I felt someone to my left, which wasn’t out of the ordinary as people had been all around me since we began playing, but the someone was incredibly close, and at first I thought you’d snuck up on me and were going to join in, but when I turned to look it was…her. And there I was, in the middle of a song, in front of everyone, and I wanted to stop and get away from her but…”

It was my turn to nod. “In front of everyone. I know that feel.”

He shook his head. “I told myself to remain professional, to keep going, and I thought if I pretended that we were filming I’d be fine. Then she…she…she kissed me in front of everyone, and I just couldn’t believe it and she just kept going and I wanted to shove her off me but that would have looked…and so I did it as normally as I could and the whole time I was hoping you were still in the bathroom but then I saw you…” He paused. “And when I started toward you she came WITH me and then the keycard and what she said…then watching you keep yourself together when I knew you were…I’m sorry. So, so sorry. If that kiss makes it online…my god. I’m sorry.”

His head was in his hands again, shoulders shaking as he wept, and I recognized that this experience had been so deeply traumatic for him that he didn’t quite realize it yet, his unconsciously focusing outwardly serving as diversion. I wrapped my arms around him and held him to my chest, stroking his hair until he quieted enough to listen. When he was able to look me in the eye again, I began to speak.

“Thank you for explaining. That’s essentially what I thought had happened, and, I’m very sorry it happened to you.” His left brow rose. “What she did was so completely inappropriate…I mean, that’s not really surprising, but…yeah. Is it okay if I go through my thought process here?”

He half-smiled. “Yes.”

“Obviously, there’s a component of jealousy. That hit me first. This beautiful woman that’s been intimate with you kissed you right in front of me, and you look amazing together, and she’s tall and blonde and skinny…and the way she presented the keycard to you made it seem like you had an arrangement, a plan in place. Most of way back here all what was going through my mind was that you’d been secretly contacting her and set this all up. But, then I reminded myself exactly who, and what, she was to you, and the jealousy turned primarily to anger, directed at her, but there was still enough jealousy left to generate some serious nastiness on my part directed at YOU. And, like I said before, I wanted to avoid that because it was likely baseless and unwarranted, the jealousy. So I showered, and I listened, and DAMN that anger is way worse now and you should probably keep that room key far the fuck away from me…” I took a deep breath. “Sheese. Again, I’m very sorry this happened to you. However you want to handle it, I’m here to help. Whatever you need, okay?”

He reached out to touch my face, letting his fingertips drag across my jaw and down my neck before grasping my hand.

“I wasn’t even thinking of anything happening to me. I was afraid of what you’d think, and…”

I entwined my fingers with his. “I know. And I appreciate that. We’ve been through some shit, my dude, and I’m a runner. Or, I was. Now…you’re more important than my internal bullshit struggles.”

A smile lit up his face, but it faded quickly, replaced with fear, then sorrow, then anger over the next several silent minutes as he stared at me.

“Maude, all I know in this moment is that I’m finished being afraid of her. I remembered what you said back in New Orleans, our options, and…well, it’s time, I think, for her to know that what she views as having the upper hand…isn’t. Not anymore.” He ran one hand through his hair. “So. I’m going up there, and I’m going to deal with this for once, and for all. Unless you think it’s utter madness to do such a thing.”

My mouth dropped open as my brow rose. “Oh, it’s madness, alright. But I like it. Hmm…”

He laughed, then poked my collarbone softly with his finger. “Ah, a plan is afoot, is it?”

“No. A plan is a plan. Not a foot.” He groaned and covered his eyes briefly, gaze returning to meet mine as I continued. “Okay. Several things to consider here. Ideally, you’d do this alone. Are you comfortable with that?”

“Well, yes and no. Going in, absolutely. But when I visualize reaction scenarios, I am concerned that a situation might arise that would result in an unfavorable outcome.”

I snorted. “Yeah, as in her recording the entire exchange and then heavily editing it to paint you in a…a…let’s go with ‘negative light’.” He nodded. “The hotel security feed would take care of pinpointing when you entered and when you left, but everything in between is up for grabs, and that’s not acceptable. Having a witness seems warranted, but who’s the witness? Am I the witness? Does my bias preclude me from being reliable in reporting the truth?”

Tom nodded again. “Likely, yes. But you’re the only witness available who’s privy to all the details of the history involved, and I wouldn’t trust anyone else to maintain any sort of confidentiality.”

This was something I had zero desire to participate in, for a multitude of reasons. It was pre-Maude, and in that aspect, none of my damn business. But since Claudia’s future actions could significantly impact my life, even if said impact was short-lived, that made it potentially my damn business. Then there was what I knew…what she’d done with him, and, far worse, what she’d done TO him. Unsettling at best, rage inducing at worst…in other words, I’d be walking into a situation wherein keeping myself in check was questionable, but of the utmost importance. And there it was, another lightbulb moment in the life and times of Maude Gallagher-soon-to-be-Hiddleston. I chuckled, and he stared at me, confused, head tilted to the side as he attempted to discern what was amusing.

I patted his knee. “I’m just laughing at my own stupidity, because I totally forgot that I’m a member of your PR team and thus have a rather valid reason to accompany you since part of the discussion will include…PR. And it ALSO gives me a reason to behave myself. Total coup, right?”

His arms wrapped around me, kissing first one cheek, then the other. “Oh, yes. Check mate.”

“No, that’s just the check. The checkmate is me recording the whole exchange on my phone, which will be tucked in my bra. Or somewhere.”

He pulled back, eyes wide. “Isn’t this a two party state? I recall you mentioning that…”

“Yeah. It is. But that won’t stop me from leaking it if the need arises. You know, someone could steal my phone at any given moment. It’s totally possible. I’m forgetful. I leave things behind ALL THE TIME…”

“Maude, you are deliciously fiendish. And I love you so.”

“Aw, thank you, baby. And I’m a total hypocrite, because I just admitted to being willing to do what I believe she shouldn’t. Anyway…criminal prosecution for this sort of thing is very rare. She could sue, of course. But I don’t think I care. Do you care?”

“I do not.”

“Cool. Hopefully we’ll never need to use it.” I rose, both hands finger-gunning in his direction. “Let’s do this.”

He stood, tugging at the fabric of my robe. “Should you dress first, do you think?”

I glanced down at myself. “Oh. Right. This is not one of my ‘don’t fuck with me’ ensembles.”

Snorting, he began re-buttoning his shirt. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

“Thomas. I’m struggling to keep a firm grasp on my professionalism. Cease.”

“Firm grasp, you say?”

I pretended to not hear him and searched my travel wardrobe for something that would work, in the end opting for black leggings, a fluffy, grey, oversize turtleneck sweater and my Birkenstock boots. As I caught sight of myself in the mirror on the way out the door, I decided my choices were just the right mix of business and badassery…but a V-neck would have made hiding the phone a whole lot fucking simpler.

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

There we stood, outside Panorama suite number two, me turned away from the door with my shirt lifted and bra on full display as I wedged my phone into it and hit record. Tom and I exchanged a few words, and then it was Titty Time again. I was relieved to hear the playback was nice and clear and began another session, putting a finger to my lips to let Tom know we were on the record, so to speak. He knocked loudly, then even louder when there was no immediate answer. When he paused, a clicking that could only be high heels on tile was audible, its increasing volume indicating the wearer was travelling in our direction. The door swung inward to reveal Claudia, now clad in white lingerie, a lacy bra, bikini panties, garters and filmy white stockings, all paired with the same white stilettos she’d worn to the party. She placed one hand on her hip, smirking widely.

“Well, well, well. Hello, Tom. I expected you to turn up, but not…” A thumb with a fuchsia fingernail jerked in my direction. “…her. Not exactly a pleasant surprise, but, whatever. Come on in. I’ve gotten off with my vibe three times already but I’m still SO fucking horny. Just one kiss from you, that’s all it takes…mmmm…”

Tom held up a hand, palm towards her. “Stop, Claudia. Right now. Control yourself until we’re behind closed doors, for god’s sake.”

She bit her lip. “Oh my, someone’s feeling forceful. Must be my lucky day!”

We walked in past her, and she followed after closing the door and engaging the slide-bolt lock, stopping in front of the not-so-mini mini bar to face us.

“Anyone else want a cocktail before cock?” Neither Tom nor I replied. “Well I do. I need one. Who wears a turtleneck to a threesome? Christ.”

Tom’s jaw clenched, then released as he spoke. “I’m afraid you’ve misinterpreted the reason for this visit, Claudia. Hint, it’s not for a threesome. I’m only here to have a conversation with you, one we should have had quite some time ago. Maude’s presence is due to the fact that she’s a member of my PR team, and will serve as my advisor if necessary.”

She was stunned, silent, and the fingers she’d wrapped around a bottle of rum went white with the strength of her grip. When Tom noted it didn’t appear as if she’d reply, he continued.

“I’m not going to waste my time re-hashing the past, but I will say this…I made it abundantly clear that we were done when I discovered you were secretly filming our encounters. When I also made it clear that I didn’t love you, and pointed out that I’d never given you any reason to believe our relationship was anything more than purely sexual in nature, you threatened me. You threatened to provide a detailed account of our interactions to my family and friends, you threatened to publish all of the videos you’d made online, and you threatened to ruin my career and make my life a living hell.”

She’d done several double takes during his speech, looking at me, then back at him, then back at me, as if she couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that I might be aware that something had transpired between them. She finally relinquished her hold on the rum bottle, lifting her hands in surrender. “Tom, that was…I was…I just said all that because I was angry. I didn’t mean it.”

He scoffed. “Really? You didn’t mean it? Yet you accepted a million dollar payout from me?”

“I thought we had a future, Tom. Together. The money was like…alimony.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response, Claudia. What I want you to know is that from this day onward, you are to come nowhere near me. If for some reason we find ourselves at the same event or function, don’t approach me. Don’t speak to me. And most of all, don’t fucking TOUCH me. If you refuse to comply, I will not hesitate to file a restraining order against you.” He took two steps closer to her, his face now inches from hers. “Do you understand?”

She didn’t respond, and he repeated the question, his tone far harsher, volume ratcheting up five notches on the dial.

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

Crossing her arms, she sneered at him. “You know, I still have all those videos...it would be such a shame if they went public and Maude found out what kind of person you really are…”

And there was my cue. I pulled Tom backwards and away from her, then stepped in front of him.

“Maude is acutely aware of the contents of ‘those videos’, Claudia.” Air quotes. I felt like an Office Space character for a second, and really, really wanted to tell her that if she would kindly fuck off and die that’d be great. “Opting to publish them is entirely your choice to make.”

Her laugh bordered on hysterical. “So you’re fine with ruining his career and making yourself a laughing stock? That’s cool. I’ll totally publish them then.”

I shrugged. “Be advised that there will be repercussions that will affect you personally and professionally if you choose to take such action.” She opened her mouth to speak, and I held up my hand to cut her off at the pass, my right index finger pointing up toward the ceiling. “First, since you’ll be violating the terms of the NDA you signed, a suit will be filed for breach of contract wherein we’ll be requesting both expectation and disgorgement damages. That means you’ll be on the hook for repayment of the one million dollars you received as a settlement, as well as any lost revenue Tom incurs as a result of the breach. Secondly, criminal charges will be filed under California’s Revenge Porn Law, which defines said revenge porn as the publication of nude photos or videos of a person one used to be intimate with, without their consent, with an intent to cause serious emotional distress. Each video that was filmed in the state of California would incur a penalty of a fine in the amount of $1000 and up to six months in jail…based upon Tom’s estimate as to video quantity, you’d be facing a prison sentence of up to ten years. Thirdly, and lastly, criminal charges and a civil suit will be filed for your violation of the Invasion of Privacy act. California is a ‘two party’ state when it comes to audio recordings of confidential communication in situations and locations wherein there’s a reasonable expectation of privacy. Audio that’s a component of a video is covered under this particular statute, and penalties include a fine of up to $2500 and a year in jail. Long story short, Claudia…do you want to wind up in jail? Because publishing those videos is how you wind up in jail.”

While I spoke, I’d witnessed her face first going pale, then gradually reddening until it reached a final almost-purple hue. She was shaking with rage, and I just stood there, certain she was going to attack me Dynasty lady-feud style. But she didn’t, pausing, instead to digest what I’d said as best she could and find a way around it. Her eyes, now more grey than green, narrowed as she spoke.

“My attorney will drag out your breach suit for years, and if you win, I’ll hide all my assets and file for bankruptcy and you won’t see a dime, ever. As for the rest, there’s no proof Tom never consented to filming. Same with that distress bullshit. My word against his. I’ll take those odds, and when I’m acquitted of all charges I’ll sue YOU guys for damages and take even MORE of Tom’s money.”

Raising my brow, I leaned in a little closer to her. “Tom saved all your texts and voicemails. Every. Single. One. They’re tucked away, safe and sound, on the very phone you sent them to.”

If Tom hadn’t been paying such close attention, the highball glass she picked up and threw would have hit me right in the face. He’d jerked both of us to the side, and the glass shattered when it hit the wall. With me in front of him, he propelled both of us toward the door at top speed, slid the bolt and pushed me out into the hallway, slamming the door behind him in the midst of the sound of more shattering glass and her screams of ‘get out, GET OUT’. We headed for the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator, rushed back to our room, entered and locked our own door, both of us unsure as to whether we were pleased, frightened, or a bit of both.

I reached up under my sweater to pull out the phone, hitting the stop button to end the recording. Tom placed his hands on my shoulders, eyes on mine.

“Are you all right?”

Nodding, I felt my mouth twist into a half smile. “That went better than I expected, honestly.” I stood on my toes and planted a kiss on his left cheek. “Thanks for rescuing me from death by assorted beverage containers. How do you feel?”

His eyes shifted down and to the side, then returned to my face. “Relieved. Like I’ve gotten some closure, and that I’m no longer at her mercy. The fear, the anxiety in regard to my past actions becoming public…that’s subsided significantly. But there’s trepidation present, resulting from her expression of violence towards you, which I’m not quite sure how to handle.”

I slipped my phone into his pocket as I wrapped my arms around his torso. “She just realized she’s powerless, and she was NOT happy about it. Probably best to let it go and hope she finds a new hobby. Or a good therapist. Or Jesus. Something.”

“Maude, if that would have hit you…”

“It didn’t, though. I’m fine, you’re fine, and…that was over the top, wasn’t it? Was she aiming for me? Or you? Or the wall? Wow, I’m kinda freaked out now.”

He pulled me to his chest, kissing the top of my head. “I’m sorry. I knew her behavior as I experienced it was abnormal, and I shouldn’t have involved you.”

I leaned back, reaching up to caress his cheek. “You realize I knew too based on your description of your experience, yes? I’m glad I went with you. She would have spun that visit in the worst way possible, Tom, if the opportunity presented itself. Now she can’t, and I’m glad for that. As for the rest…we have a plan in place if she releases the videos, and we’ll follow through with it. She knows now that you’re no longer afraid of that happening, and that you’ll fight back, and I’m thinking maybe that will take all the fun out of it for her.”

A heavy sigh escaped him. “I hope that’s the case, my love. Truly I do. And I’m not going to dwell on it, because allowing her to diminish our joy is akin to giving her precisely what she wants, and she’s stolen enough already. This shop’s doors are closed. Permanently.”

“That’s an excellent way to look at it, Mr. Eternal Optimist. The doors are closed and the shop’s in the rearview as we travel the road ahead of us into our future.”

He simply stared at me, a small smile upon his face, his eyes once again full of all those things that made me both weak in the knees and disgusted with my sappy-ass self all at once. I rolled my eyes.

“Man, you’ve gotta lay off that adorable shit. We’ve got three months to go until the wedding and when you look at me like that…I just want to say fuck it and go find a judge and do it, like, right now.” Next came the tears shining, ready to spill over. “No. Oh my god, not helping, Tom. NOT. HELPING.”

He laughed. “I’m not even sorry.”

“Color me thoroughly unsurprised.”

“I’d rather color your inner thighs with love bites.”

“That can be arranged.”

Less than an hour later, we were spooning, and I felt his breathing change as he slipped into sleep. I lay nestled against him, wide awake until near dawn, trying to force myself to stop thinking about Claudia. Her actions seemed, as I reviewed the evening’s events, to indicate she hadn’t quite…let go. Far from it, actually. I wondered what she actually wanted, after so much time had passed. Was it more money? Was it revenge? Was it still…Tom? Was it all three, perhaps? And then I found myself wondering how far someone who behaved as she had tonight was willing to go in order to get it. Whatever it was she wanted. And it shook me, so I sang our wedding song to myself in my head until I calmed down, finally dozing off reminding myself that things which were terribly frightening in the dead of night were often immediately vanquished as nonsense by the light of day.

#your light in the mist #chapter 42

[juliairian]

Chapter 06 | “…Adrenaline.” | A fluffy short surprisingly long johnlock ficlet story

John jogged up the stairs to his room, taking two at a time. He hadn’t felt this motivated to get dressed for a date in a long time. And the most bizarre of dates it would be. For one, he was taking his flatmate (who happened to be a man) on said date. Second, that flatmate also happened to be Sherlock, a person John had not thought capable of knowing what a date was. Third, he and said clueless flatmate had already made out quite passionately on numerous occasions now (okay, not so clueless, actually), at least one of which had been pure indulgence, no matter what Sherlock might think.

Once again, he didn’t quite understand why Sherlock had bolted that night. At the same time, neither had he expected for his little experiment to really produce any results. Sometimes, Sherlock’s sudden one-eighties truly gave John emotional whiplash.

That they wanted each other was embarrassingly transparent at this point. That was not to say John wasn’t worried. He knew going down this path with Sherlock would irrevocably alter their relationship, for better or for worse – and precisely that was up in the air at this point. Sherlock was a wild card in any given situation, who knew how he’d react to… intimacy? Another stab of arousal shot through John, and he tried to calm himself, doing up the buttons of his dark blue shirt. He ran his fingers through his hair a couple of times, feeling completely silly. No, this was definitely about more than just sex, for John. But what exactly was it to Sherlock at this point?

The entire cab ride, John could not keep his eyes of Sherlock. He’d chosen to wear his bloody purple shirt of course, under his impeccable dark suit. John sighed inwardly, wishing he could in any way keep up with that kind of effortless grace, but Sherlock seemed to read his mind and quickly sent him a flash of a glance, his eye lit up in pleasure, that assuaged John’s worries. He remembered Sherlock shuddering under his lips, pressed against the wall of the warehouse. A thrill of power went through him again at the idea that he could make Sherlock feel like that.

They arrived at Angelo’s after a short stint in London evening traffic. Sherlock had given the driver the address without even having to ask John. Their destination had been obvious to them both. Angelo waved them in enthusiastically, settled them at their usual table and this time, nobody protested the addition of a romantic candle.

John would later be hard-pressed to recall exactly how long he and Sherlock sat at their table, eating, drinking wine and talking in a strange hushed tone that seemed entirely new to them both. The evening went on in a softly lit blur, a warm sensation of happiness and anticipation being all that John really could swear to experiencing.

Sherlock actually ate, but he didn’t take his eyes off John. At some point, their knees brushed, and John shuffled just an inch closer to make sure they stayed that way. Sherlock leaned closer when he spoke, his deep baritone chuckle reverberating all the way through John’s core. Sherlock smirked in a way that made his eyes crinkle at the corners and made John’s brain dissolve.

Of course, Sherlock was still himself. He deduced the other patrons a little bit too loudly, making one woman leave indignantly and her husband trying to revenge himself with his fists before both John and Angelo intervened rather physically. John promised Angelo it wouldn’t happen again. Sherlock called John an idiot for thinking he could ensure that and nibbled stoically on a bread stick. But then John leaned in closer and promised dire consequences if he didn’t behave and suddenly Sherlock’s eyes widened and his breath hitched. “I’d be a fool to argue with my doctor, I suppose,” he murmured darkly, a twinkle in his eye.

“Thank God you’re no fool,” John said, his face close enough to feel Sherlock’s answering breath rushing out against his skin.

After that, Sherlock focused his entire considerable attention simply on John. He internally deduced every single facial expression, John could tell from his rapidly moving eyes. Sherlock, after all, was Sherlock, and he was clearly now experimenting with just what kind of effect he could have on John if he chose to. John was, for lack of a better word, flattered. He’d known Sherlock could be charming if he wanted to, but this was stunningly genuine. Sherlock seemed like a boy enjoying a new game he’d finally understood how to play. John kept waiting for the façade to crack, for Sherlock to roll his eyes at the silliness of dating and to just leave to experiment on something more interesting.

But Sherlock stayed. And laughed and talked and bloody flirted with John. That was not to say that John didn’t give as good as he got. At first, he felt himself blush and look away, ready to reign in his reactions to Sherlock, as he’d always done. But then he remembered that he was the one who had actually drawn Sherlock out with his unnerving closeness and casual touches over the past few days. He could want this, Sherlock had shown him that much. John pulled himself up a bit straighter and met Sherlock’s eye more steadily. Oh, this was achingly perfect, being allowed to just let himself go and show Sherlock exactly what he was in for.

He casually brushed their fingers together on the table. When Sherlock was being amusing or appreciated something John had said, John allowed himself to truly show how happy that made him. He thought that he usually wore his heart on his sleeve; well, here was the bloody placard. Let the entire restaurant, Mycroft’s cameras, every passer-by who happened to glance through the window see: John Watson was in love with Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock seemed at first taken aback at the open, honest admiration shining his way. His lips parted and he looked confused, properly confounded for a moment, before something like pleased understanding dawned on his features. They were really doing this. He quickly drained the last of his wine, his eyes burning like fire into John’s. Suddenly, he knew this was it. They had to get out of there and get back home as quickly as possible or John wouldn’t vouch for his composure much longer.

It was late. They hastily pulled on their jacket and coat and Sherlock reluctantly pocketed his wallet when a relentless Angelo refused his money once again. They stepped out of the restaurant and John shivered when the cold night air came into contact with his heated skin. Darkness settled on the empty streets, slick from rain. John felt as if he was going to explode if he didn’t get to kiss Sherlock in less than five seconds.

He turned half-way, already standing close enough to touch him, but then he froze. Sherlock was standing still, staring at his phone. The screen illuminated his face as he frowned at it.

“What is it?” John stepped a bit closer, trying to see. Without thinking about it, his hand hovered over Sherlock’s back.

Sherlock looked at him, his face disturbed and torn. It looked like for once, he couldn’t decide how to. Some of the passion from a few minutes before still simmered underneath, yet now it was tampered with worry.

“It’s the man from the drugs bust the other night. He was found dead in the factory next to the warehouse.”

John saw the text from Lestrade. Can you come? it said, and John could practically hear the words in the man’s pleading voice.

“Well,” John cleared his throat and zipped up his jacket, his body slowly cooling down, his mind adjusting to the new situation. “Let’s go.”

Sherlock hesitated a moment, his lips softening into a smile. He seemed glad that it was John who made the decision. John returned the smile. We’re good. Plenty of time.

I’ll hold you to that. Sherlock’s eyes bored into his a second longer, before he flung his arm out, hailing the nearest cab.

They found the police in a small make-shift shipping office in a large container next to the warehouse of the original drugs dop. It was functional; a desk, a couple of chairs, an outdated laptop and a few empty shelves the only things in the room.

Sherlock watched as John stepped forward, efficient as ever, to kneel by the body. Who here could guess that not half an hour ago, this same John Watson had been ready to devour Sherlock alive if they didn’t get in a cab (and somebody’s bed) quickly enough? The doctor’s hands moved over the silent form on the ground, examining the eyes, the mouth, the neck. Sherlock couldn’t tear his eyes away from the precision in those hands. He realised it was a bit not good to be turned on next to a dead body, but…. He usually felt exhilarated by a case, so perhaps his brain was getting its wires crossed? Whatever the reasons, it was enough to drive him insane. His skin was still burning from before and, more annoyingly, his groin was protesting at the tease without a follow-through. Most tedious.

“Why are we here again?” He turned to glare at Lestrade.

The DI ran his hands through his hair. “Well, you were the ones to catch him,” he shrugged. “And… uh, the room was locked from the inside, there’s no murder weapon, no obvious cause of death and we don’t even know how he got from his holding cell to here in the last few hours, so I thought…” he trailed off.

“Yes,” he mused. “So of course this has nothing to do with the fact that you’re clueless, tired and really just want this solved as quickly as possible so you can go back home where you hope that lovely redhead from reception will still be waiting for you.” Lestrade gaped. The people around them had fallen silent. Sherlock clapped his gloved hands together with a loud smack. “Well! For once, Detective Inspector, we find ourselves in similar positions. I also would very much like to get back to my date, which you so rudely interrupted. So let’s solve this and go home, shall we?” Sherlock gave him a cheerful grin and turned back to the body. “John?”

John stared at him, mouth slightly open in amused shock. He snorted through his nose but Sherlock saw his eyes darken and his cheeks flush. He blinked, then quickly pulled himself together as he realised his hand was still resting on the dead man’s pale throat. “Asphyxiated,” he said as calmly as he could.

Lestrade was looking between them as if the Queen had just bestowed him a knighthood. His lips parted and he gaped at John, then at Sherlock, then back at John, and a twinkle entered his eyes. “Date?” he mouthed, and John lowered his face to stop smiling. Dead body and all. Sherlock found it incredibly endearing, if pointless (nobody here cared either way) but he was also aware that all of this bantering was taking too long.

“You two?” Lestrade mouthed with an even more intrigued look. Luckily none of his officers stood close or they might have asked why their Detective Inspector suddenly looked positively gleeful at a crime scene. Perhaps Sherlock was rubbing off on him. John shot Sherlock a ravenous look, one that sent his brain spinning for a moment. Then he smiled back at Lestrade and shrugged. Lestrade huffed a silent laugh and then cleared his throat. “Right. You sure?”

“Yes, yes, he’s sure,” Sherlock replied before John could explain every single sign of asphyxiation. Time was of the essence. “Just because your team takes forever to determine a cause of death doesn’t mean there’s any doubt. Now.”

He stood and walked over to the door. “The room was locked from the inside. Our killer broke out the deceased from a holding cell – no small feat, I imagine – therefore, we’re looking for someone with significant experience in high-profile burglary. He’ll have known how to get around the security cameras at the Met; locking a door from the inside after he left can’t have been much of a challenge.” Sherlock picked up a thin white thread that clung to the opened lock of the door. “No doubt some ingenious mechanism that triggered once the door was pulled shut.”

A forensics officer quickly hurried forward and let him drop the thread into an evidence bag, looking as if Sherlock was going to swallow the evidence otherwise. He sighed at the idiocy of everyone besides John in the room. John… he quickly looked around …was watching him, an amused smile lingering on his face. All good then.

“Someone with that kind of skillset who also had something to lose by this man confessing everything – and he would have, he was a coward – now that should lower the potential suspects down considerably. The murder weapon is the more interesting bit.”

He stepped over to the body again. “John, what’s your estimation of the state of his throat?”

John clasped his hands behind his back. “Well, if he wasn’t dead, I’d be hard-pressed to say he was strangled at all.” He kneeled again and pointed. “Do you see these small marks?”

Lestrade kneeled by his side, examining two small, faint bruises in the dead flesh, just underneath the man’s jaw. “Yes?”

“Easy to miss here,” John soothed, hoping obviously not to insult the incompetent forensics team further. “But I’m sure they would have picked up on it at the morgue.”

“Yes, yes, John, stop being nice,” Sherlock muttered, earning him a fond eye roll from John.

“The killer pressed these two points to obstruct the air flow. The victim must have been drugged very heavily. Even if he was only asleep or lightly sedated, the body would have reacted instinctively to the lack of oxygen and begun to struggle. But there’s absolutely no sign of any fight, otherwise the bruises would be more pronounced or there would be additional injuries.”

“Right,” Lestrade said, rubbing his chin. “And he couldn’t have already been dead then?”

“His eyes and skin discoloration points towards asphyxiation, but of course you’d have to confirm all of this with the autopsy.”

“Of course he wasn’t already dead,” Sherlock scoffed. “If he’d died from the drugs he was given, there would be signs – dried sweat, frothing, saliva on his clothes, something like that. But he’s clean and looks fine… well, apart from being dead.” He stood up again.

“So… no murder weapon, then.” Lestrade looked disappointed. Sherlock knew the man liked a nice and obvious gun or knife at the scene, but he was rarely so lucky.”

“No…” he mused, but then walked quickly over to the single window. It was only a brief glimpse in the dark, but was sure that someone just slipped into the warehouse.

“Sherlock?” John was immediately by his side. Of course he’d picked up on it.

Sherlock pointed back at the body, speaking rapidly. “There’s a reason he did it here. He needed to come back and he killed two birds with one stone like this. Keep you baffled at the crime scene while he gets the rest of the goods.” He swirled around and rushed out of the door, John and Lestrade right on his heels.

“Sherlock, wait!”

He didn’t. Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he ran for the warehouse. The game was on.

Of course, everything went south very quickly after that. The suspect was indeed in the process of retrieving the rest of his merchandise in the warehouse, but one of Lestrade’s officers had gotten in his way by the door. He’d dragged the young man with him to a back room, where Sherlock confronted him. What he hadn’t counted on was that it was rather difficult to manoeuvre in this office, especially in the dark. The man managed to shine his torchlight right in Sherlock’s eyes for a moment, blinding him, and had quickly immobilized him, a practised hand restraining his arms whilst another pressed a knife to his throat. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than a minute.

Footsteps came closer. Sherlock heard John calling his name. He desperately tried to kick the killer holding him, but his stupid coat got in the way. He was also partly focussed on the young policeman clutching his side, blood slowly seeping out, his face contorted in agony. Wound not too deep; painful but probably manageable if help got here fast.

“Jones!”

“SHERLOCK!”

John and Lestrade took in the scene even as the murderer slowly backed away to the other door. Sherlock’s eyes did not leave John. He could see he was planning something, anything, probably something reckless. He shook his head almost imperceptibly and saw John frown. The man dragged him along, there was nothing he could do. Sherlock deliberately moved his eyes to the doorway through which John and Lestrade had come. Then he looked aside, trying to indicate the door he was being pulled towards. There’s another way.

John’s eyes lit up with understanding. His eyes flickered to the doorway and he nodded. He stopped moving forward. The last thing Sherlock saw before he was dragged through the door and it fell closed was John’s determined look, fists clenched at his sides.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Lestrade yelled orders for an ambulance into his radio; but John was already leaving, hearing the DI shout after him. He jogged back through the warehouse, frantically looking around.

“John! Where are you going?!”

John ran to another door. He didn’t even feel his feet hit the ground; all he could sense was his violently beating heart and his pulse throbbing in his temples. All he could think was that he had to get to Sherlock.

The murderer was dragging a squirming, resisting man, he couldn’t have gotten further up than the first floor. That was, of course, assuming that Sherlock was right (he usually was) and that the back corridor led to the staircase. John had no time to second-guess the looks he’d given him. He ran up the secondary stairwell, taking two steps at a time. He thanked his luck that the factory was old as he began kicking at the door to the first floor. After a few kicks, the lock finally gave and the door swung inwards.

After a few turns, he reached the open space of the main factory floor again. Around the hall, a metal walkway stretched alongside the wall. When he peered through the door, he noticed it was even darker up here. But Sherlock had been right; he could hear two sets of footsteps ascending and clanging loudly on the metal grating. He withdrew when he noticed them coming closer and waited for his moment. Slowly, the steps became louder. John held his breath. He heard Sherlock struggle, and both men were breathing loudly through their mouths with the effort.

Finally, he was close enough. In one fluid motion, John stepped through the doorway, immediately into the path of the killer. Clearly, he hadn’t expected him; the man jumped violently, drawing back. But then he made his first and final mistake. He removed the knife from Sherlock’s throat and thrust it towards his newest foe, and that was all the opening John needed.

With speed and unerring precision, he twisted the man’s arm and pulled his body off-centre. The killer let go of Sherlock; he was surprised and not expecting this kind of opposition from John. He still tried plunging the knife forward even as Sherlock finally slipped from his grasp, coughing, ducking away a step, breathing. John felt better instantly and hooked his legs around the man’s, brought up a hand against his shoulder and flipped him, using his loss of balance to tip him sideways. One hand shot out and twisted the knife from him; John quickly kicked it away when it landed, sending it tumbling down to the factory floor below. He had him now.

Sherlock had stumbled to his feet. “John…” he rasped and grabbed something in his pocket. The killer struggled and rambled something aggressive, readying for another attack. John quickly rammed his elbow in his nose and heard a satisfying crack that shut him up. He turned him around, pulling his arms behind his back; Sherlock shuffled closer, still coughing, and brought out a zip tie (of course he had one in his pocket, John thought) to wrap sloppily around the hands John was holding forcefully together. With a sharp tug, Sherlock tightened the hold, drawing a startled cry from their quarry.

Once the man was tied up, John forced him on his knees and the man tumbled to his side, coughing and spluttering with his nosebleed, but unable to do much else. He just let him slump there and stepped back. John heard footsteps ascending the stairs to their level quickly, but he ignored them for now.

All his focus was on Sherlock, who was leaning against the wall, steadying himself, rubbing his throat. He was breathing heavily, looking a bit sick. John felt something twist in his stomach; rage and possessiveness and fierce protectiveness. Nobody was going to touch Sherlock ever again, to threaten him like this, or….

John stepped up to him, his heart beating wildly in his chest. “All right…?” he managed, Sherlock’s scorching glance drawing him in like a moth to a flame.

“Yes… yes, of course I’m…” Sherlock swallowed and stopped himself, reaching out with one hand. “John,” he whispered.

That was all he could take.

John rushed forward, into Sherlock’s arms, pressing him up to the wall and then he was kissing him.

Sherlock moaned as their lips met, the sound being absorbed into John as he parted his lips, setting his nerves on fire. His tongue plunged into Sherlock and felt a tremor go through the body in his arms. Hands ran down his back and he felt them draw him even closer, sending stabs of pure need directly to his groin.

Amongst panting kisses, John was whispering his name and you’re safe and Sherlock simply breathed him in, murmuring oh God John and clinging on for dear life, and their soft voices mingled in the electrified air between them. John felt like he was drowning, all the adrenaline making his head spin and then he remembered they were on a walkway quite high up in the large factory hall and he stopped himself for a moment to fight the vertigo. Sherlock pressed his forehead to John’s, catching his breath, steadying them both.

“John…” God, Sherlock sounded wrecked. It set John’s chest on fire. He looked up and their eyes met before John leaned in again to…

“Oh! Hello…?”

John jumped and immediately stepped back, startled by Lestrade’s voice. The DI had managed to follow them, finally, his gun drawn. Two more police officers were running up behind him, but Lestrade waved backwards. “Stand down, it’s under control…” he coughed. “Or at least, one of them is,” he added with a relieved snort, glancing at the resigned lump of a man on the floor.

The officers came up to him and secured the culprit, pulling him to his feet. They left down the stairwell again and Lestrade turned to John and Sherlock, who still maintained a decidedly deliberate distance. He rocked back on his heels, grinned at John and wiggled his eyebrows. He lowered his voice a bit. “Well!” He sounded relieved. “Couldn’t wait to get back to your date, huh?”

John stared at him, then at Sherlock. He took a deep breath. A smile quirked on his lip. “Oh… it was just… an experiment.”

Sherlock’ answering smile slowly bloomed on his face, and he laughed.

John sobered a little, straightened his jacket and raised his chin. A few more things needed doing. “Your officer…?”

“Oh!” Lestrade remembered. “He’s okay. Jones’ ribs reflected the knife and he’s responsive and not losing too much blood.” He finally held out his arm to indicate that they should probably get back downstairs.

“Do you want me to have a look?” John opened the door that brought them back to the corridor Sherlock had been dragged from and took the stairs.

“Ta, much appreciated, doctor,” Lestrade said, before glancing at Sherlock. “You all right?”

“Fine,” Sherlock drawled, but John thought he heard traces of insecurity… and perhaps arousal in his voice. Both made him shudder. He needed Sherlock alone, back at Baker Street, as quickly as possible.

Downstairs, two people were holding pressure on Jones’ wound. John kneeled next to the man and asked them to give him some space. He began examining the wound – thankfully, it really wasn’t deep. The young man looked up at Sherlock, his face pale. “T-thanks,” he muttered, giving the detective a weak smile. “Saved my life.”

Sherlock pressed his lips together in acknowledgement, and John felt him shift uncomfortably.

The man smiled even as he winced. “They really shouldn’t call you freak,” he muttered.

John felt his heart warm a little more towards the guy. “Too right, but stop talking,” he chided gently, probing the wound before pressing whatever piece of clothing had been sacrificed back against it.

“You’ll be fine, the wound is only superficial – it hurts worse than it is.”

The man coughed a little. “That it fucking does, pardon me Doctor Watson.”

John laughed and gestured for the policewoman next to them to come closer again. “What you did was the only thing we can do until the paramedics get here,” he said and returned her hand to press on the fabric. She nodded and kneeled back beside his patient. John already heard the sirens of the ambulance outside and knew his work here was done.

He got up and almost without noticing it, he reached out. Sherlock moved closer as well, a small smile lighting up his tired face. He grabbed John’s hand and didn’t let go.

He looked at Lestrade. “You’ll get our statements tomorrow, Greg,” he said, his voice still rough. Lestrade looked surprised but pleased and gave them both a warm smile.

“I’ll make sure of it,” John added. He grinned and gave one last nod to Lestrade before he and Sherlock walked out, hands clasped tightly together.

I had to edit this chapter rather heavily after I accidentally turned the crime scene into a gore-fest. I temporarily forgot this was a fluffy one-shot. Well, it’s become longer than I expected, that’s for sure ;-)

Also on Ao3!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

#sherlock x john #johnlock #fanfiction #crime scene #bamf!john #bamf!watson #coming out to lestrade #date night #angelos #a candle so it's more romantic #deduction is the new sexy #ust #well almost rst #interruptions #writings

[buckyscrystalqueen]

Find Your Light: Part 3

Pairings: Jason Momoa x Reader

Warnings: Swearing, fluff

Word Count: 3,260

Part 1 / Part 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Alright, can I count on you not to wiggle to much?” Jason asked as he pushed his long, pale green paddle board deeper into the water. “‘Cause if you wiggle too much, you’re going in the water.” You giggled and nodded as you held his paddle out in front of you for balance.

“I think I can stay stra- oo!” Your hands flew out to the side and you nearly hit yourself in the head with the paddle as Jason launched himself out of the water to lay on the board behind you. He laughed and waited to make sure you were steady before he moved again.

“I told you you can’t wiggle to much, nani.”

“I got it. I am in control of the wiggle.” He chuckled as he braced himself on the edges of the board. With skilled, practiced ease, he pulled his feet under him and stood up. With a quick glance, you passed him the paddle and smiled. “See. I am a wiggle master!” He chuckled and started paddling away from shore.

“You say that now but what happens when your butt goes numb?” You shrugged and reached out to drag your fingers in the cool, blue water.

“Then I guess we’re going swimming until it stops being numb, how ‘bout them apples?” You felt the paddle tap your back and you glanced up at Jason as he pointed off to your right side. You looked over as a single dolphin breeched the surface of the water about twenty feet away. “God I am so freaking jealous you call this home!”

“Well I’m sure that North Carolina is beautiful, too.” You couldn’t help but sigh and shrug as you watched the dolphin swim away.

“It was where I grew up. But Charlotte is just so dang busy.” You shook your head and took a deep breath as you looked out over the ocean at the island in the distance. Jason stayed silent, knowing that you were going to open up eventually about what happened since you almost blatantly avoided the topic when you were telling him about yourself over breakfast.

“Hated that damn town.” You said as you dragged your fingers in the water, creating little ripple patterns. “It’s weird. When I was a kid, getting out of Boone and off the farm was my big dream. And those damn pageants…” You scoffed and shook your head. “But then I met David and I got out of pageants and I got off the farm. And he gave me money which, looking back now, just basically made me a hooker. But that didn’t even matter to me back then. I just jumped right in and said ‘sure, I’ll take five grand a week to be your little slut sugar baby. Why the fuck not’.” You sighed as you covered your face and shook your head.

“You know, I think I always knew he was cheating.” You sighed as you carefully leaned back on your hands and stretched your legs out in front of you. You hadn’t realized that your natural southern accent, which you had been hiding for years at David’s insistence, was starting to come out in full force in your aggravation. “After the first year of bein’ with him, he started doublin’ my ‘allowance’ and he started goin' ‘out’a town’ a lot more frequently than he used ta. But I was just… so fuckin’ blinded by the money that I told myself I didn’t care.

But thank God I had at least one brain cell that wasn’t damaged by all the damn bottled blonde that started puttin’ most’a the money he was givin’ me in a bank account in my mama’s name. But honestly, what kinda respectable woman allows herself to be treated like that, huh? What kinda woman sits in a loveless relationship and just ignores the fact that goin’ months… I’m talkin’ months without gettin’ laid is OK because he buys me stuff. I’m fuckin’ pathetic.” With a groan, you covered your face and laid back on the paddle board as tears stung your eyes. “What is wrong with me?” You felt drops of water land on your stomach and you forced yourself to open your eyes.

“There’s not a single thing wrong with you.” Jason said softly as he carefully crouched down over you so he was blocking the sun. “Money is a bitch. It makes even the smartest, most amazing people do stupid things. And that’s what happened to you, ku’uipo. But if you were really pathetic, would you have walked out on your wedding from the alter the way you did? Would you have though to put the money aside for when you were finally able to allow yourself to see the truth and not get blinded by the glare of this giant rock you have on your finger?” You blushed as he tapped his knuckle on your engagement ring.

“Stop!” You squealed as you hid your face behind your hand. He chuckled as he picked up your hand by the ring. He laid the paddle across your stomach and easily sat down on the board above your head.

“You know you’re beating yourself up for no reason, right? Sure, you got blinded for a few years… but you made sure you came out on top in the end, didn’t you?” You nodded at him as he gently took your hand in his and slowly pulled your ring off. “But now, you gotta let go. Give the pain and the heartbreak to the Gods and let the ocean wash it away.” He took your other hand and slid the ring on your middle finger. “Sure, that chapter was bad but it’s over. Close that book and start a new one, right here, right now. Let your Hawaiian vacation be your fresh start.” You nodded as you slowly reached up and brushed his long hair back behind his ear.

“Will you start it with me?” You whispered as you searched his green eyes. An award winning smile spread across his face and he nodded.

“I would be honored.” He leaned forward slightly and cupped your jaw in his large calloused hands. He brushed his thumb across your bottom lip as he searched your eyes for permission. With a small nod, he leaned forward and captured your lips with his. You let out a small whimper as you forgot where you were and started to twist. Before you could even brace yourself, you flipped the paddle board before Jason could steady it and sent you both into the chilly ocean. You felt his hand grip your arm firmly and he nearly threw you to the surface.

“I forgot to control the wiggle!” You laughed as you rubbed the salt water from your eyes. He chuckled as he grabbed your waist and pulled you over to the board.

“I told you. You should have listened to me.” You smiled at him as you wrapped your legs around his waist and ran your fingers through his hair. “And just so you know… I love the accent.” You blushed and hid your face in his shoulder.

“Damn. You know how long I’ve been hidin’ it?” You sat back and looked at him as he shook his head.

“No more hiding. Not from me, OK?” You smiled and slowly shook your head.

“No more hidin’.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Mama! We’re here! Stella!” You called out as you walked into the old, quaint, country style house that you grew up in. You dropped your purse and the duffle with your wedding dress in it on the ground in the living room and crouched down to grab your fur baby off the floor. You squealed at her as she attacked your face with kisses since she hadn’t seen you in a week.

“Back porch!” Sarabeth called out as you looked back at Jason.

“You OK?” You checked in as he set your and his suitcases by the door.

“Ku’uipo, I’m on vacation. I’m great!” You smiled at him and nodded as you turned to show him your dog.

“This is Stella. She’s my little shadow. If you ever need to find me, look for Stella. I will be near by.” He laughed and nodded as he reached out and gently scratched her head around her big pink bow.

“Tiny little thing.” He said as you passed your dog to him and headed toward the kitchen. Your mother glanced up as she walked in from tending to her small herb garden and did a double take with a laugh.

“Well look at you!” She said as she rinsed off her fingers and wiped her hands on her gardening apron. “I don’t know what I love more; seeing my baby girl back home again or her murderer looking boyfriend holding a tiny dog.” You turned around to look at Jason and tried to stifle a giggle.

“Oh, my Lord, you’re right! Wait, J, come here.” He stepped toward you and leaned down with a sigh to let you pull his hair into a bun on top of his head like Stella’s was. When you were done, he stood up straight and you and your mom burst out laughing. Jason had this look of pure hatred on his face, making him actually look like a murderer as he held your yorkie in the crook of his arm. He curled his lip up the slightest bit as he reached up with his free hand and brushed his fingers down his beard.

“Alright, you need to stop that ‘fore you burn my damn house down with that smolder.” Your mom teased as she whacked at his hip with a kitchen towel. Stella barked at her in protection as she gave him a hug hello, causing you and Jason to laugh. “Welcome home, baby girl.” You smiled at her as she kissed your cheek. “I got your old room set up for you. It’s a little messy with your stuff from the house but it’ll work until you…” She smiled weakly at you, trying to hide the hint of sadness in her eyes and shrugged. “We’ll figure it out, sweetheart.”

“Thanks mama. We’re gunna go put our bags in my room and maybe lay down for a minute.” She nodded at you and smiled.

“Supper’s at six like always so I’ll wake y’all up. Makin’ biscuits an’ gravy, fried eggs, sausage and bacon. All comfort foods.” You smiled at her and nodded before taking Stella from your boyfriend and heading back through the living room.

“Breakfast for dinner?” Jason asked to change the subject as he grabbed the two suitcases and the duffle bag off the floor. You giggled as you grabbed your purse and led him to your childhood bedroom.

“It’s a staple in this house. We do it once a week.” You paused at the door and looked back at him. “Now… ya ain’t allowed to judge me ‘cause of my bedroom, ya hear?” He cocked his eyebrows at you as you sighed and pushed the door open. You couldn’t help but cringe at the bright, pastel pink walls and the dozens of trophies, crowns and sashes on the walls from your pageant days. Garbage bags and boxes over flowing with stuff from your old house were stacked in the corner and along the wall under the two windows that looked out over the back and side of your house and the acres of Christmas trees your family had been growing and selling for generations. You closed your eyes and shook your head as Jason stepped into the room.

“Wow… that’s a whole lotta pink.” You scowled and gently pushed on his arm as you set Stella down on your frilly, pink blanket. You sighed and sat down on your bed.

“Yay to being back home.” You ran your hand through your hair and looked up at Jason. “Well. I think your vacation is going to consist of helping me paint… and get new blankets for my bed.” You glanced around your room and huffed. “And help me pack some of this shit up.” He reached out and cupped your jaw in his hands.

“I’d be happy to. Let’s start small though? And… maybe tomorrow? I gotta try some of this real southern cooking and get a good power nap” You smiled at him as he gave you a chaste kiss and sat down on the bed beside you. He picked up Stella and put her on his stomach as he pat the bed next to him and laid down.

“God, where have you been all my life with all your sexiness and your heart of pure gold?” He chuckled as you laid your head down on his shoulder with a sigh.

“In a surf shop in Hawaii… or in the Keys studying Marine Biology. Maybe wildlife biology in Colorado, painting in Paris or studying the Buddhist teachings in Tibet.” You looked up at his smirk sarcastically and rolled your eyes. You muttered ‘smart ass’ as he wrapped his arm around your shoulder and pulled you into his side. He kissed your forehead as Stella walked in a circle on his chest, laid down, and went to sleep. You giggled and snuggled into his side with a content smile and closed your eyes for a quick nap, too.

Part 4

#Jason Momoa x Reader #Find Your Light

[piecesofscully]

The After: ch. 8

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

The mud squishes like a sponge beneath their feet, expelling brownish-grey muck as they scurry along the back of the motel. There will be no way to hide their tracks, Scully thinks as their boots pull from the mud with a *pop*, like the smack of a kiss. They need to move quickly, put as much distance between them and Bobby’s boys as possible.

Their feet slide to a stop when they come to the edge of the moat. The ten foot wide body of water puckers under the Wash with ecru ripples colliding into each other, the chaos of the surface creating a milky film along the shoreline.

Mulder whistles. “Looks pretty deep. Want me to carry you-” he begins to offer, but she pushes past him. The water splashes around her boots, up to her knees as she trudges deeper, her backpack held above her head once it circles her waist.

The numbness in her legs spreads to her chest as she propels herself forward, even the smallest cells in her body recoiling at the frigid water, and she breathes through her nose to keep it from getting in her mouth.  

“Come on, Mulder,” she tosses over her shoulder through gritted teeth. She hears the splashing and feels the rush of his waves against her back as he follows, and she works quickly to lead him to the other side.

“We need to change into dry clothing,” Mulder says as they step up onto the shoreline. “We’re at risk of hypothermia.”

Scully positions her backpack on her shoulders, grabs his hand, and pulls him towards the treeline. “Right now, they’re a greater risk.”

Their feet squish in their wet boots as they race into the woodland, and Scully cringes at the thought of the blisters that are sure to line their heels in by sundown. Her chest burns with the strain to control her breathing as she and Mulder zig-zag through the trees, ducking under fallen branches, occasionally looking behind them to ensure they aren’t being followed. Fueled by the need to survive, they run. The woods grow more dense the further they go, their stoic grey and white surroundings blurring into what resembles a modern, busy printed wallpaper.

Mulder grips Scully’s forearm and tugs gently, slowing their pace. He points ahead of them to a small group of branches hanging over a fallen tree.

“We should keep going,” she insists.

“I think we lost ‘em.”

After a quick glance behind them and seeing no activity, she nods. “I think you’re right.”

Scully removes her jacket and drapes it across the top of the brush creating a temporary shelter, then crawls in next to Mulder. They huddle together and she’s thankful for the warmth of another body, knowing it won’t be long before her body temperature and heart rate returns to normal, and she’s cold again.

“That was smart thinking,” Mulder says.

“What was?”

He points to her jacket above them. “Blocking out the Wash. I think my toes are starting to prune.”

She sniffles in response and wipes her nose with the back of her sleeve. She reaches into her backpack and pulls out what remains of the crackers, handing Mulder a few.

“So, Bobby,” he says before putting one in his mouth.

“We had a...” Scully pauses, chewing slowly while she takes her time to consider her answer. “A misunderstanding.”  

“In regards to what?”

“He thought he deserved an extra payment since I decided to leave early,” she says. “And he was wrong.”

Mulder cringes. “That man’s a bully.”

The disgust in his voice isn’t lost on her, and neither is his matter-of-fact tone. He knows Bobby. She knows she shouldn’t be surprised at the confirmation, she heard the rumors, was made painfully aware that he was a frequent visitor to the Hampton. But the affirmation does nothing to salve the splinters that crack the edges of her heart at knowing the rumors are true. “You know him,” Scully states.

“I do.”

“How well?” she asks slowly.

“How well do I know Bobby?”

Scully tips her head to the side. Her brain’s weak begging for her to not continue is subdued by the strength of her heart’s urging and desperate need to know. “You’ve been in town for a few weeks. I’m sure you’ve met-” she pauses as she searches for the right wording, not brave enough to give away the true subject of her questioning. Becky. “Made certain acquaintances. How well would you say you know them?”

The crease between his eyebrows disappears as her implication registers. He shifts beside her, and then drops his eyes to his lap. He clears his throat. “Not very well at all.”

“Did you spend a lot of time with them?” she asks carefully, focusing intensely on her thumbnail that picks the salt from the cracker.

“No,” he replies. “We are, um, practically strangers, really.”

“Strangers,” she repeats.

“I know how it must look, but please believe me, Scully, it was never like that. I- we didn’t…” His voice trails off and he sighs.

Images of him with that woman flicker in her mind, glimpses of snapshots created by the camera of her imagination. She sees his fingers dig into the small of her back as he pulls her closer, her breasts pressing against his chest. She sees the smile on the womans face as he drags his lips beneath her ear, her eyes closing as his tongue flicks the skin of her earlobe. She sees the woman sigh and grip his shirt for dear life, so sure that she will combust beneath the fire of his touch.  

Scully shakes her head. She wants to believe him.

“Ok,” she whispers.

He turns to her and grasps her hand, relief on his face. “Ok?”

She *needs* to believe him.

“I believe you,” she says with a smile.

“It’s just us, Scully. Me and you against-” He gestures to the rain that falls outside of their temporary shelter. “This.”

“The Wash,” she provides.

“Someone needs to let Nostradamus know that his calculations were a little off,” Mulder says with a chuckle. “I always thought it was going to be an alien invasion, or maybe a solar flare that took us down. None of the work we did on The X Files could prepare us for an act of…” His voice trails off.

“Man.”

“I was going to say God.”

Scully shakes her head. “This wasn’t God, or even Mother Nature, Mulder.”

“It sounds like you have a theory, Agent Scully,” he says. “Care to share with the class?”

“Weather engineering.” Mulder’s head tilts back as he laughs, and Scully grimaces. “You don’t believe me.”

“You know, Scully, I expected you to have changed after two years, but-”

“But what, Mulder?”

“I never expected for the tables to turn, for us to switch roles.”

Scully chuffs, and twists the sleeve of the few remaining crackers, then stuffs them back into her backpack. “And I never expected you of all people to be completely blind to what is really going on, but here we are.”

Mulder purses his lips, suddenly serious. “Then explain to me what I’m not seeing,” he says.

“HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Program, was established in 1993. An ionospheric research program funded by the US Air Force under the facade of analyzing the ionosphere and investigating the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance.”

“In Alaska, I remember. They created the Ionospheric Research Instrument,” he says.

“The IRI. A high-power frequency transmitter which was used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere. The goal was to better understand the physics of the ionosphere, but that was a lie. It was all a front, Mulder.” She pulls her journal from her backpack and flips a few pages. “What they were really doing was nothing short of abhorrent. Instead of gathering data for research, the satellite sent high frequency radio waves back into our atmosphere, altering the weather.”

“For what purpose?” Mulder asks.

She stares at him for a moment, unable to believe that he even has to ask. “Control,” she replies finally. “Using the weather to control the human population. Wreaking havoc with natural disasters, from droughts to floods, earthquakes to super cell storms that produce tornadoes.”

“Scully, weather modification as warfare was banned by the United Nations.”

“And when has that stopped any of them?” She asks. She flips to the next page in her journal and holds it up for him to see. “Project Cirrus, 1947. The first attempt to modify a hurricane by the US Air Force, Army Signal Corps, and the Office of Naval Research. Operation Popeye, clouds seeded to prolong the monsoon in Vietnam. South Africa in 1997, seeding storms in an effort to increase rainfall to enhance crop production. It’s been going on for years, Mulder, under the guise of human welfare. This is just what we knew of, what was made public. Did you even read your own file?”

“I did, but the claims were completely unsubstantiated, Scully. Outlandish claims that didn’t offer even the smallest glimmer of proof, which is why it was never investigated.”

“You’re wrong,” she says. “It may have appeared unsupported, but we just didn’t have all of the supporting information as we do now, and didn’t know how to look at the pieces to make a complete puzzle. Like they say, hindsight is 20/20,” she mumbles as she flips through her journal. “Two years ago, that same satellite took a direct hit by a stray asteroid that charged into our atmosphere, then proceeded to send out a signal, setting those catastrophic events into motion.”

She finds the page she has been looking for and holds it up for Mulder to see, pointing at a list with her index finger. “First an intense heat, the atmospheric temperature rising ten degrees fahrenheit in just a matter of seconds. That heat penetrated the earth's surface almost immediately, resulting in an instability of the tectonic plates. This led to the earthquakes, which led to the monstrous tsunamis that wiped out the coasts.”

“But what about the rain?”

Scully closes the journal and sighs. “The satellite taking direct impact must have caused a glitch in the system, triggering constant precipitation.”

Mulder pulls his knees closer to his chest and rests his elbows atop of them. He runs his fingers through his hair, and says, “If we still had the internet, those conspiracy nuts would be going crazy for you.”

Scully tucks her journal back into her backpack and hums in response.

“So, what do we do with this knowledge?”

Scully chews her lower lip as she zips her backpack closed.

“Scully?”

“There was an address listed in one of the printouts in the file,” she says quietly, keeping her eyes as low as her voice. “Winnipeg, Manitoba. I can’t remember it entirely, but I believe it to be the most recent location of the center of control for the weather manipulation program.”

She turns to Mulder to find him staring at her incredulously, and she smiles. “I think I can stop it, Mulder. All of this.”

He opens his mouth to speak, and her jaw clenches in preparation for an argument or an onslaught of questions, but he returns her smile instead. “Then I guess we had better get moving.”

“Mulder, you don’t have to-”

“I want to,” he says as he pulls his jacket over his shoulders. “I lost you once, Scully, I’m not about to make the same mistake twice.”

#the after #the after chapter 8 #my writing #msr fanfic #txf fanfic #txf fanfiction

[mysmefanfic1]

Responsible Chapter 2

Jiho woke up slightly stiff but without any pain. The muscle relaxers he’d taken as well as the pain meds allowed him to sleep comfortably, but he knew by experience that he needed to ease up on the sitting for at least a day after overdoing it like this.

He took deep breaths as he sat up, focusing on keeping his muscles relaxed. If he felt a twinge he took another deep breath and eased into the movement more slowly. This meditative and repetitive motion synchronized with a hot shower first thing in the morning. Gradually, his offended muscles loosened further.

Shrugging back into his school uniform, he checked his phone and was surprised to find a dozen messages from Yoosung stretching from 9 pm to 3 am in the morning.

“Hey, Jiho! I talked to my friend and he’s interested in getting you hired!”

“Oh… you must be asleep. Can you message me when you get this?”

“Uh… never mind, I was doing LOLOL I just checked if you were online, you’re still asleep.”

“You’re a pretty heavy sleeper. Jaehee says that she’ll call you in the morning.”

“Ah… I just raelizde that u dont kno who Jaeeesi”

“Sorry typos. I cn barley keep my eys open.”

“I forgot to tell you who Jaehee is again! Jaehee Kang! She’s my friends assistnnt”

“Are you awake?”

Much to his shock, Yoosung was still showing as online. Did this kid never sleep?

“Hey, I just got your messages, Yoosung. I hope your LOLOL was fruitful but don't message me late at night. I don’t tend to sleep well and turn my phone on silent. Are you saying I have an interview? With who?”

The response was immediate. “Good morning!” A happy sun emoji was tacked on to the end. “Jaehee Kang. She works with C&R.”

Jiho’s breath caught in his throat. He knew C&R like most people in the city did: By the massive gleaming glass and steel tower of the C&R building, one of the tallest buildings in the city. It glowed in the dark with lights displaying its name, with a flashing red beacon to warn low flying planes of its immense height.

C&R’s property spanned outward to a plaza with fountains and eating areas. It had Valet parking in expansive underground parking garages. It was a centerpiece of downtown where only the finest of the city and even the finest of the country could work.

Jiho’s skepticism immediately brought him back down to earth. This poor gamer who couldn’t even afford tutoring and skipped classes and played LOLOL all night had an ‘in’ at C&R?

He typed a single word. “Bullshit.” and tossed his phone on the bed.

His mood sank. He heard his mother call him down to breakfast so he started to prepare for the day. So much for a new friend. Maybe he was a scammer. No way that was true.

“It’s true!” 

Jiho eyed his phone as he slowly wrapped his school uniform tie around his neck.

“Look, my cousin was engaged to Han Jumin’s childhood friend. That’s how I know him. We talked about you last night and he’s interested in you so you have to be ready to answer the phone when she calls!”

Jiho could feel his temperature rise. He picked up the phone again. “I don’t know why you feel the need to joke around like this. But it’s not funny.”

“No, wait, look, I’ll get you a photo.”

He rolled his eyes. Photos used to be proof now they’re easily spoofed and altered. Did Yoosung scam people like this all the time?

A picture came up. It was a photo of Yoosung, but he had brown hair. Several people were standing around.

“This is my graduation ceremony. Jumin Han is the farthest to the left.”

Jiho blinked at the photo. He was seeing something with his own eyes, yet his brain found it hard to accept. He wasn’t someone who followed celebrities, but he knew the Han name and he’d seen photos of Jumin Han before. Still, he found himself googling Jumin Han and comparing the pictures online. This couldn’t be, that had to be a look-alike…

“Jiho! Come down to breakfast!”

“In a minute!” He shouted down to his mother.  He turned back to his phone. 

He typed. “This seems too good to be true.”

“I understand. But please believe me.”

The screen suddenly went black and the phone was buzzing with his ring tone. On the caller ID was Jaehee Kang.

Jiho felt himself starting to sweat. He held the phone to his ear and cleared his throat. “This is Lee Jiho.”

“Good morning, this is Kang Jaehee. I’m chief assistant to Han Jumin of C&R and we are interested in offering you a position here.”

Jiho’s mouth opened and shut. “Yes… thank you for considering me.”

“Yoosung shared his math assignment with us last night and I looked over it. All the answers are correct. Your public records are also exemplary. Do you have time for an interview this morning?”

“This morning…?”

“JI-HO!” 

Jiho heard his mom coming up the stairs and quickly locked the door bedroom. “Can you give me just a moment.”

“Sure.”

He muted the phone. “Mom. I … I need some more time to get ready, I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong?” The doorknob rattled. “Why is your door locked!”

“I’ll be right down I promise. By the way, where’s my suit? The one I wore to Dad’s memorial.”

“Your suit? It should be in the storage closet…”

“Can you get it out for me? I need it…”

“What is going on?”

“Please mom, just do it. I”ll be right out.”

Much to his relief his mother shuffled away, muttering to herself.

He hurried back to the phone. “I apologize, please continue.”

“Not a problem at all.” Her voice was clipped and professional. Her words were formal. Just listening to her made him sit up straight. “The job will involve auditing archived files kept in storage. These files don’t work with any of our current software and must be audited by hand. Once these files are thoroughly checked, they must be imported into a new system and the records will be destroyed. Therefore, we need someone with a meticulous attention to detail as once the records are destroyed they cannot be retrieved.”

“I can do that, no problem.” He said. “What time do you need to meet me?”

“I have an opening two hours from now. Meet me in the C&R lobby at 9:30 am.”

“I can make it. Thank you for this opportunity.”

After bidding each other farewell. Jiho had to sit down. He held one hand to his head staring into space. “Oh… oh my god. This is it. This is it! This is my chance! I…”

He hurried back down the hall to the bathroom and brushed his hair and his teeth again, one more time. He was afraid to eat. What if she smelled something on his breath or he got something in his teeth?

His resume! He quickly hurried for his backpack and opened it up. He smiled. Still there, perfect condition.

He hurried to the kitchen where his mom had her arms crossed and her foot tapping. He would have to take the subway to get to C&R. “Mom, can I borrow a few extra dollars. I’m meeting someone for a special project and I”ll have to take the subway.”

“No.”

His mother’s words stopped him cold. “What?”

“No. The school told me you’ve been skipping classes!”

“I told you I wasn’t feeling well yesterday!” He laughed nervously.

“What about the day before? And the day before that?” She glared at him. “You’ve been lying to me! Where have you been going?”

“I’ve been applying for jobs!” Jiho blurted. “I need the suit for an interview!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t like it!”

“And you would be right! You are on scholarship! This is your one chance to go to a prestigious university!” His mother leaned on the table.

“And it’s not going to do any good if you have to work!” Jiho couldn’t believe she was being stubborn.

“What are you talking about? The whole point of university is to get a good job!”

“I’m about to get a really good job mom, really good.”

Her lips pressed together and her brow knitted. For a moment, mother and one glared at each other in a standoff.

Jiho looked away first, contrite. “I’m sorry I lied to you…” He ran his hand through his hair. “Look… I”ll cut you a deal. I’ll get this job. If I don’t, I’ll give up my job search and go to class. Okay?”

“You promise…” She asked dubiously.

“I promise. Super promise.” He crossed his fingers.

His mother hesitated for a few more seconds before reaching for her purse and handing him enough money for the fare.

Jiho took the suit from her arms and bowed deeply. “Thank you for this chance.”

“How good is this job anyway?” She glanced at him as he sat and devoured his breakfast.

He didn’t answer right away. “I kinda don’t want to tell you. I”m afraid it might not be real.”

“That good huh?” She asked. She quirked a single eyebrow.

“Yeah.”

“Well… you better hurry then. This is your last chance.”

Jiho rose from the table, walked over and gave his mother a kiss on the cheek. “You won’t regret it.” He then ran off to get changed.

Soon, Jiho was one of a river of suited individuals making their way through a labyrinth of shining skyscrapers in the business district of the city. All around him, people spoke on cell phones, the clicks of women’s heels provided staccato rhythms and the steady hum of expensive cars added a backdrop of sound.

He glanced up at the C&R complex as if it were a castle he was planning to storm. He steeled himself with determination. This was the place that would change his life.

He walked through the automatic revolving doors into a brilliantly lit marble floor.  Immediately his bravado left him when he saw a floor to ceiling saltwater fish tank complete with coral reef decorating a central column.

This confrontation with extravagance told him he didn’t have any business being here.

A woman in a brown dress suit met him. “Lee Jiho?” She bowed slightly. “I am Jaehee Kang. Let me help you get checked in.”

He fought the urge to respond like a school kid and nodded and followed her in silence. Inside, he was a raging mix of excitement, panic, and disbelief. Was he dreaming?

He looked down at the receptionist seated behind an ornate desk carved with snarling Siberian tigers. 

She was young, bespectacled and dressed smartly. She looked at him, met his eyes and suddenly exclaimed. “Ah. What beautiful eyes!”

“Uh… Thanks” Jiho stammered.

 Her cheeks turned red as she caught Jaehee’s deadpan stare. “I’m sorry. I… forgot myself. Here’s your security tag. Keep this on you at all times.”

He accepted the tag and put it around his neck.

Jaehee turned on her heel and walked towards an elevator. The doors were bright gold. Were they made of gold? They had the logo of C&R on them so that the two letters would part when the doors opened. “Have you ever worked in an office before?” Jaehee asked as she scanned her card and then looked at him. 

“I’ve never worked in an office before, no…”

“C&R is a very prestigious company and we value our employees highly but we have very high expectations of them as well. I’m happy you’ve decided to at least dress the part, but exclamations like you just heard could actually be grounds for discipline.”

“I understand.”

The golden doors opened and they stepped inside. Jaehee pressed a button and the doors slid shut. She then turned and smiled at him, her eyes warm and friendly. “Don’t be so nervous.”

Her sudden shift in attitude was jarring; he wasn’t sure how to react.

“Yoosung had a lot of good things to say about you. To be honest, you’ve already made a good impression. This interview is just a formality.”

Jiho gaped wordlessly for a few seconds. “Wow. I … I didn’t believe him when he was telling me.”

“I can sympathize. I got into C&R on the word of Jumin’s friend as well. Jumin values his friends’ opinions highly. This job is yours to lose.”

“Ms. Kang, I…”

“You can call me Jaehee.”

“But aren’t you my supervisor?”

“Not directly. You’ll be with our accounting division. All the usual formalities will be there.”  

The doors opened onto an elaborately woven carpet. There was another receptionist who only glanced at them as they passed by. “This is our archive. Should you accept the position, this is where you’ll be working.”

She scanned her card again at the double doors and they opened to a large windowless server room. Three huge center silos occupied most of the space along with industrial printing machines.

“Every day, you’ll examine a set of financial records. You’ll have your own desk and will be expected to work alone, but don’t be a stranger. The accounting division is a close knit group. It's in your interest to get to know them well.”

“They’re not here?”

“They work on a different floor. They’ll be in meetings right around this time.” Jaehee checked her watch briefly.  “Do you have any questions for me?”

“Uh… when do I start?” He laughed, and hated the high pitch of it. He cleared his throat. 

“Immediately. The reason we’re so eager to have you is... “

Her phone suddenly rang and she picked up. “Mr. Han. Yes, I’m with him now. Yes. I know. Now? Yessir. I’ll be right there.”

She hung up the phone. “Something’s come up. I’m afraid…” She suddenly sighed and looked incredibly tired. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to sign the employment forms right away. I am very sorry.”

“I do have one question. Did you… seriously grade my homework?” Jiho’s eyebrows rose.

“Hahaha!” Jaehee’s laugh held a quiet bit of madness. “Yes. I did.”

Jiho bowed. “Thank you.”

She smiled at him. “Here.” She handed him a stack of forms. “Just sign here… and here… and here….”

This was real. He was going to work at C&R. C and freaking R! Every signature was like the unlocking of a massive door to a shining opportunity. His dad must be throwing a fit up in heaven. His boy did it! He probably couldn’t believe it. He said an opportunity would come knocked, but no way he expected something this amazing!

“Here’s our welcome packet, look over and sign everything you like. It includes our retirement, savings, and investment plans, alternate insurance, et cetera… I … am sorry I’ll have to escort you out. Security will provide you your badge you’ll need to enter when you start tomorrow.”

Jiho put a cap on his excitement but a glance at Jaehee’s smile told him he didn’t fool her at all. He was ecstatic. “Thank you ma’am. I mean… Jaehee.”

He followed her outside. “Take your time looking through those things. Be at your desk a little before 8 am to meet your new friends. Eat lunch in the common cafeteria to get to know your new coworkers.”

She suddenly removed her glasses. “You know… looking at you, reminds me a lot of when I started here. Working at C&R is indeed a great opportunity. Don’t lose appreciation for it. Now. If you’ll excuse me.” 

Jaehee placed the glasses back on her nose and walked back into the building, leaving Jiho to stand in his own disbelief and joy.

Jiho made his way down the city walk to the central park. The green was cut through with shady walking trails around a large lake. Jiho settled down on a bench and sighed. He then opened the package and began to read it over.

After about half an hour, his phone rang. It was his mother. He answered.

“Did you get the job?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you would. I wish I had good news for you.” Her voice was gloomy and sullen.

“What happened?” He gripped the phone.

“Your school called. They’re going to list you as delinquent, in line for expulsion. This will go on your permanent record.”

Jiho’s expression set. “Call them back. I’m withdrawing from SKY.”

“What?” His mother was voiceless with shock.

“The job I got? It’s with C&R… one of the biggest companies in South Korea.”

“C&R…?”

“That’s right. I have no need to attend classes any longer.”

“But Jiho… you’re on scholarship. They’ll require the tuition paid back right away if you drop out!”

“I don’t care. I’ll be getting paid enough to make it up.”

“They’ll want it immediately, not in payments.”

“Mom.” He shifted his eyes to make sure he was alone. “You said that we had enough to last us a while? Not according to my calculations. We should be out of money in the next month or two. You have savings besides those from selling the food truck business, right?”

His mother was silent on the other end. Then she said. “Those were for something else…”

“Mom. Please, just pay off the scholarship loan. I’ll pay you back. I’ll pay you back and then some! They’re going to match my retirement contributions. I’ll get shares in the company. This optional insurance will make sure you have the best medical care!”

“Jiho…”

“Mom! Listen to me!” His voice rose in urgency. “I know this is too fast and this is too hard to accept. But I’m not going to let you work okay? I need you to trust me. I’ll handle it. All the money, all the finances. I’ll save up. Put down money on a house! This is it! This is what I”ve been waiting for! Just… just pay the tuition. I’ll pay you back. I promise. I super promise…”

The silence on the other end just grew. “Your father… saved this money…  penny by penny… for you. For your wedding… I…”

“Mom.” Pain assailed his heart and he closed his eyes and chewed his lip. “I know you’re not used to having money. My dad. He… never wanted it. To him it wasn’t important.” Jiho’s voice cracked and began to shake. “So long as we were together. But we’re not together anymore! He’s gone! We’re not together!” He wiped his tears angrily. “So please. Just. Just do this!”

His mother’s voice came through, small and quiet. “Okay… I’ll call the school. I’ll sign the withdrawal.”

Jiho sighed, trying to get control of his breathing. His face was burning hot and his blood was racing through him. He hated this feeling of desperation after elation. It exhausted him. “Thank you. I love you, mom.”

“I love you too… I’ll see you when you get home.”

He pressed the end call button and lowered his phone to his lap, staring out over the lake. Emotion rattled about inside him but he couldn’t let it out. It crawled up his neck, twisting his muscles and tightening them. He stood up to walk it off.

By the time he got home, he was in agony and had to lay down. A therapy pillow with electronic massage balls provided some relief. His phone vibrated.

“Grats on the job!” Yoosung had texted with a celebratory emoji.

Jiho smiled weakly. “Dude… you’re amazing.”

“Nah you’re amazing. You can finally relax!”

“No way.” Jiho texted. “My work has just begun. But… I guess I can celebrate.”

“Do you still have your LOLOL account? Wanna come play with me?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t. My neck is killing me and I can’t sit up.”

“Seriously? Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yeah. Hey. Maybe I can listen to you play?”

“That’ll work!”

Jiho sat up painfully and got his laptop and signed into LOLOL.

“Add me to friends! I’m Super Yoosung!”

“Gotcha. I’m Mighty Taco.”

“Wat. lol”

“Don’t knock it.” Jiho logged in and then activated his bluetooth headset. “Here, invite me to your voice chat.”

Soon, Yoosung’s voice filled his ears. “Hey, can you hear me?”

“I hear you just fine.” Just that small effort was tiring. He lay back down and got comfortable.

“You sound kinda sick.”

“I’m fine. What’s the dungeon?”

“Elynor’s Keep Insane.”

“Ohh… is that from the latest expansion?”

“Yep. It’s progression so… we’re going to die. A lot.”

“I look forward to it.” He smiled and closed his eyes, already feeling the knots work out of his neck.

#Mystic Messenger #Jaehee Kang #Yoosung Kim #Fanfiction #Mysme

[storyiicharacter]

5. Belly of the Beast

The five stages of grief, she’s been told by her therapist, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. “Stages” is a bit of a misnomer: it’s common to experience the stages out of order, and not all people experience each stage. Everyone mourns differently, she’s told.

Lena starts with anger.

She stabs Hank Henshaw in the eye with a screwdriver.

Well, she attempts a stabbing. He catches her movement at the last second and it ends up being more of a glancing blow.

Now she’s been relieved of her “weapon” (it’s laughably tiny- she’d been using it to tweak her latest adjustments to a portable holo-projector for smart phones) and zip ties pinch the skin along her wrists, seat harness firmly in place across her shoulders.

Still, there’s a new jagged gash across Henshaw’s metal-plated skull and she finds satisfaction with each glare he throws her way as he dabs at the fluid oozing from it. Her mother watched their scuffle disinterestedly from the front of the helicopter, a sigh of exasperation her only comment.

With nothing to do with her anger, she thinks.

——

Denial comes next.

Kara’s not Supergirl.

And Supergirl isn’t dead.

First, what are the odds that kind, clumsy, adorable Kara Danvers and the bold and powerful Girl of Steel are one and the same? The odds that Kara is managing to pull off such a critical deception and doing it with only glasses, a ponytail, and some cardigans? Astronomical. On top of that, what are the odds that Lena Luthor would be best friends with a Super’s alter-ego, after what happened with Lex? Ridiculous.

As to the similarities between the two, well, it’s not the first time she’s noticed, but adrenaline and fear are powerful psychotropics. Surely she misinterpreted that look from Supergirl, her brain making connections where there are none, casting desperately for some semblance of control in an out-of-control situation.

She knows Kara. Kara is kind and trusting and beautiful and believes in her. Kara wouldn’t- couldn’t- lie about something like this.

Some of the icy panic gripping her heart subsides.

Kara’s not Supergirl, which means Kara is fine. Though they were supposed to meet for lunch later today and she’ll be worried- she’s probably heard the news. Lena can see her now, crinkle firmly in place. Another bit of her heart thaws.

And Supergirl- well, she’s Supergirl after all. It’s going to take more than a few bullets and a fall to kill the caped heroine.

Lena stares out the window, the arid landscape a blur of tan, gold, and olive.

(This is perhaps the biggest deception- convincing herself that it wasn’t that bad. That she didn’t just watch bullets tear into- and through- Supergirl’s body, blood seeping from wounds, pain etched into her features. That as she was shoved toward the chopper she didn’t feel the building shake beneath her feet at what she can only assume was Supergirl’s impact with the ground. That the glee in her mother’s eyes, mouth twisted in a smile, didn’t cause her heart to drop further. That she didn’t press her face to the glass, searching for any sign of red and blue through the plumes of grey dust.

That she’s not worried out of her mind for the hero who has become her friend.)

But these are lies that match the others she’s been harboring, carefully tended deep within.

Lies about the place Kara has come to fill in her heart.

Lies about the attraction that strikes each time she lands eyes on that red cape.

Lies about the connections she’s been making, subconsciously, ever since the day Kara Danvers walked into her office with Clark Kent all those months ago.

Lies that are supposed to protect her, keep her heart safe, tucked away behind the walls she’s been building since the first night she cried herself to sleep within the lonely depths of the Luthor mansion.

But Kara can’t be Supergirl.

And Supergirl will be okay.

Because even if Supergirl were injured (she refuses to entertain the idea she’s dead), she’s got super-alien-friends and whatever covert government agency she’s working for to help. They’ll save her, surely.

And Supergirl risks her life every day. Lena’s heart might clench each time she sees the hero thrown about by some hulking menace, but it’s somewhat expected- the danger and the heroics.

Blue eyes flash in Lena’s memory, the scent of wind and rain and vanilla, the feeling of strong arms and the weightlessness of flight.

I will always protect you. I promise.

Supergirl can’t be Kara.

Because Supergirl was shot, and if Kara is Supergirl… then Kara was shot and might be dying and Lena’s hands are literally tied and-

Oh God, Supergirl was shot. Kara-

The cold burrows its way deep inside her chest, icy tendrils latching on.

Lena spends the next ten minutes with her eyes closed, breathing evenly through her nose, desperately fighting off the panic that threatens to drown her.

——

Eventually, the hum and vibration of the rotors seeps through her body, the sound of a powerful machine functioning as it should steadying her.

She’s just gotten her breathing back to normal when they land, rough hands forcing her from the helicopter and out on to the bland roof of an abandoned building. Lena catches glimpses of industrial-looking buildings and desert landscape before she’s shoved unceremoniously forward.  They descend, winding through nondescript halls, past labs and offices, until they reach what she can only assume is to be her jail cell for the foreseeable future: a small room with no windows and a small bed in one corner, bolted to the floor.

Her foot catches at the entry and her knees clap painfully against the cement floor, palms aching as she catches herself, the man who had been her “guide” doing nothing to stop her fall.

Lena doesn't give them the satisfaction of seeing her wince, pulling herself up with as much grace as she can manage with her tied wrists.

Someone makes a scolding tsk behind her, and her mother appears in her line of sight, hand extended.

Lena glares icily, pushing herself to her feet with the help of the wall.

Lillian pulls her hand back, looking unsurprised. “I do apologize. Some of my associates are a bit… rough around the edges.” This is followed by a meaningful look at the man who allowed her to fall. “There will be repercussions, I assure you.”

She turns back to Lena, “Are you hurt?”

Lena’s sure her tone is meant to be soothing, but she knows that any time spent in her mother’s presence will be a game of calculated moves- one which she will need to play. But there is an ache, a throbbing beneath her sternum that is rage and sorrow and will not be ignored.

She’s found the anger again.

“Are you really going to stand there and pretend like you didn’t just shoot someone- that you didn’t just try to kill Supergirl right in front of me?”

There’s a brief glint of something at the word “try,” gone in the next breath, Lillian looking for all the world like a caring mother who is explaining something to a willful child for the umpteenth time. Pity lines her face. “Supergirl is not the hero you think she is. If you knew the truth-“

Lillian breaks off, shaking her head, and her pain looks genuine. “Lena, I will explain everything, I promise. I apologize for the abrupt extraction but I mean you no harm, and I assure you, you were only brought here out of necessity.”

She gestures to the guard and he cuts Lena’s cuffs, then retreats to the hall.

“It’s clear you’re upset, and I have some things I have to attend to. I apologize for the sparse accommodations but I need you to stay here for the time being. I will explain everything soon enough.”

The door creaks shut behind her and Lena stares at it, rubbing the circulation back into her wrists. She begins to pace, the crisp echo of her steps tapping in time to the pulsing in her head.

Kara, Kara, Kara.

Fury and terror vie for her attention but she pushes them down. The coming hours are sure to be a match of wits and deception, and she cannot allow her emotions to tip her hand. She doesn’t know much, and she’ll need to use every bit of cunning she possesses to gather information without revealing anything in return.

Two things Lena is certain of:

Her mother needs her cooperation for something, and will do whatever it takes to get it.

Her mother has figured out Supergirl’s identity and will try to use that against her.

Lena paces, and as she paces, she plans.

——

A knock thuds dully on the heavy door not much later.

Lena keeps her expression neutral as Lillian enters.

She pauses a moment and then sits, folding her legs, the picture of Luthor grace, even perched on the edge of a glorified cot.

Lena wants to snort at the ridiculousness of the visual but doesn’t.

She leans against the opposite wall, arms crossed, eyebrows raised in invitation.

Lillian clears her throat. “I need your help.” She pauses. Lena doesn’t take the bait. “I know you don’t share in Cadmus’s vision, but after the Daxamite attack on National City, after what they nearly forced of you- I would assume we can agree that aliens- some, at least- pose a very real threat to our world.”

Lena is careful not to react to the mention of the Daxamites. She won’t allow the guilt and shame she carries over the invasion become another weapon in her mother’s arsenal. She simply inclines her head, once.

Lillian uncrosses her legs, leaning forward. “We’ve been tracking a building movement of radical aliens- a terrorist group of sorts, amassing on the west coast. They saw how close the Daxamites came to ruling the city and are apparently tired of being relegated to the outskirts of society. They’re calling themselves Chimera.”

She spreads her hands, elbows resting on her knees. “I know you think I’m… extreme. But I have proof of this group’s existence, and their plans to wipe out humanity and install their own alien-led regime. They are a credible threat.” She clasps her hands, looking at Lena imploringly. “And I need your help to stop them.”

Lena looks away as she considers her mother’s words. One way or another, her mother is lying, that much is certain. But she’s also skilled in half-truths and so deciphering her true motives will be like trying to pull apart a tangled knot of thread: a job that requires patience, time, and deft handling.

Lena rolls her head back to face Lillian from where it rests against the wall. “And what is it that you need me for?”

Lillian sits upright again, the formal pose returning and clearly more comfortable for the Luthor matron. She looks pleased with Lena’s question.

Lena wonders what tactic Lillian will employ to finish her sell.

“Besides what you might offer with your proficiencies in engineering and mechanics, you and you alone can provide us with the tool that will save humanity.” She raises her chin proudly. “Just like you did with the Daxamites.”

Flattery, it would seem, is the name of the game. Lena tries to ignore the warmth that spreads through her at the praise. Stupid, traitorous heart.

Lillian frowns a little, clearly expecting a bigger response, but quickly smoothes her expression once more. “That’s all I can tell you for now. Tomorrow I can show you the evidence we’ve gathered, and the crucial part you play in our plan to stop them.” She stands. “If you decide not to help us, I’ll have one of my men return you to the city in the morning.” She gestures to the room at large before clasping her hands again. “I hope you’ll understand that until you’ve made your decision I can’t let you go wandering the facility. I’ll bring you something to eat in a few hours and we can talk a bit more then.”

Ah, a bit of bait dangling as well.

Lillian takes a step toward Lena. “You don’t have to agree with me, but you should consider working together on this. Many lives hang in the balance.”

Like Rhea, Lillian knows Lena’s weakness: that despite the cold and ruthless Luthor reputation, she does, in fact, care a great deal about the people of National City, that she will do whatever it takes to protect innocent lives, that she’s spent the last few years trying to do just that with L-Corp’s resources and influence.

Lena wonders if she would’ve recognized that manipulation for what it is had Rhea not just pulled the same trick- capitalizing on Lena’s desire to change the world for good.

Lillian heads for the hall but pauses at the doorway. “In Greek mythology, the Chimera is depicted as an inhuman monster, made from the parts of many different beasts. To see a Chimera was an omen of impending disaster.” She waits until Lena meets her gaze. “Please think about what I’ve said.”

“Wait!” Lena calls out just before the door is about to close. Lillian stands in the gap. “Yes?”

“You just- Supergirl. How am I supposed to trust you after what you did?” Lena allows some of her frustration to slip out. “You said she’s not the hero I think she is. You said you would explain.”

Lillian looks conflicted. She steps back inside, closing the door gently.

When she turns back to Lena, she seems to have come to a decision. “Supergirl has been lying to you, since the moment you met.”

Lena frowns, saying nothing.

Lillian sighs, as if what she’s about to say pains her. “You deserve to know the truth.” She looks away briefly. “I suppose it’s best to just come out with it.”

Lena crosses her arms, not caring that it looks defensive.

“Kara Danvers is Supergirl.”

The breath leaves Lena’s body. Even knowing what her mother was about to say, the words strike a blow, confirmation of what she’d realized just hours ago.

She lets her mouth hang open for a moment before snapping it shut, jaw clenched. She stares,  feeling the moisture gathering behind her eyes. She doesn’t fight it.

Lena swallows hard, shaking her head. “That’s impossible. You’re- I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

Lillian steps toward her and Lena retreats, still shaking her head, a hand held up between them. “No.”

“Lena-“

Lena turns away, taking a moment as if she were processing this information, putting the pieces together. She gathers herself to sell the last bit of the reaction. When she turns back around slowly, betrayal and anguish are clearly written on her features. “Why- why would tell me that?”

The question comes out as a hoarse whisper.

This time, she thinks, Lillian is actually genuine. “Because you deserve the truth. And because you need to know who we’re dealing with. They are not human, Lena. They only play the part long enough to get what they want from us. But we are nothing to them- just a means to an end.”

Lena’s fingers dig into her arms. It’s risky, but she has to know.

“Is she-“ her voice wavers. She swallows and looks away. “Is Supergirl dead?”

Lena forces her body to stay still, stiff with anger and shock. She knows Lillian is reading her every move.

Lillian is slow to answer. “What if she was?”

Lena looks at her mother, letting the swell of emotions she’s felt all day play across her face: confusion, fear, hurt, betrayal, sorrow, and anger mixing in a storm that darkens her countenance. “…I honestly don’t know.”

It’s truthful: she wouldn’t know what to think, what to feel- just probably not for the reasons Lillian is imagining. Her mother’s expression shifts and Lena can tell that bit of honesty is what finally sells it all.

“I’m sorry, my dear.” Lillian looks at her a moment longer before exiting.

The door closes with a snickt.

Lena slides down the wall.

——

The bargaining begins as she sits with her back pressed against the cool cement, eyes pressed tight. Over the thudding of her heart, her mind begins to examine the last several hours, turning each moment over like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

She can’t help but wonder, if she had known, if she had just realized- put the pieces together sooner… she might’ve been able to do something, to warn Kara or protect her, prevent all this-

But she hadn’t. And Kara hadn’t trusted her.

And now it might be too late.

Lena wrangles that train of thought back in line. Lillian hasn’t confirmed anything- not really.

She considers what might’ve happened after they flew away. Alex. Alex will have come for Kara.

Lena speculates that Alex must work for the same secret government agency that employs Supergirl (she’s quite certain FBI agents don’t receive Navy SEAL training) and if she knows one thing about the older Danvers, it’s that she’ll move heaven and earth (and then some) for her sister.

(It’s the same kind of awe-inspiring devotion Lex had once shown her. She’d been convinced there was nothing in the world that could shake their bond- and it had, in fact, taken someone from another world to do so.)

So since her mother hasn’t gloated about Supergirl’s demise, the most likely scenario is that Kara is injured but alive- hopefully having been swooped up by Alex and the non-FBI and taken somewhere safe.  

Kara’s alive. She has to be.

Because Lena is going to play Lillian’s game, and she’s going to win. And if- when she gets out of here, she and Kara are going to have the conversation they’ve been dancing around for weeks. That and several others.

Something steely and molten anchors itself deep within, and she promises to whatever God might be listening that if Kara’s alive, if she gets to see her again, then she will do whatever it takes to stop Cadmus once and for all. She will bide her time and learn her mother’s plan and when the time comes tear this place down with her own two hands if she has to.

——

After a short and mostly silent dinner, Lena lays down on the bed, the wall cold and firm at her back.

She’s never been comfortable with tears- not since the words “undignified” and “weak” became synonymous with any outward show of emotion, especially tears. It’s taken years of therapy to be comfortable showing anything other than calculated masks, strategic smiles- always aware of who might be watching, judging.

But now she lets the saltwater slip from her eye, pooling along the bridge of her nose before slipping over the edge to drip softly onto the mattress. She knows the room is most likely bugged, but if her mother is watching, the display of emotion won’t be unexpected. After all, she already believes Lena to be weak. Take the trauma of the day’s events, add the proverbial bomb of Supergirl’s identity and the corresponding betrayal of Lena’s trust and- well, it’s a lot, even for a Luthor. And it’s true- all of it. Lillian’s just a few hours off on the timing of the big reveal.

So Lena grieves, and she lets her mother see it. Shades of the truth make the best deception.

One thing about growing up a Luthor- you become an excellent actor, or you don’t survive.

It’s a good thing, too. She’ll have to put on an Oscar-worthy performance to pull this off.

——

Lena sleeps, and as she sleeps, she remembers.

A Few Days Earlier…

Lena smiles to herself as she dries her hands and leans back against Kara’s counter, watching the competitive chaos unfolding in the living room.  

They’re ten- twelve?- rounds into charades and the teams have evolved nearly as many times. Winn is doing his best “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” impression of Gandalf, alternating between repeatedly striking the ground with his invisible staff and making a desperate “wizard hat” gesture that is starting to look more like a shark fin the longer Maggie looks at him bewilderedly. James has his phone out and looks to be discreetly taping the entire thing, eyes wide with amusement.

Kara looks up from where she has her face buried in Alex’s shoulder to (ineffectively) hide her cackling. Her face is split into a wide grin that softens and deepens when she meets Lena’s eyes and sees Lena grinning as well. She gives her signature head tilt.

You doing okay?

It’s been months since Lena first came to game night, long enough for the awkwardness to dissipate, long enough for Lena to actually feel like she’s been accepted by this unexpected, remarkable group. To have a tentative hold on the sense that, maybe, she belongs here.

Lena nods back.

More than okay.

If you had asked her, a year ago, what her weeks looks like, she would’ve said something about staying late at work, the occasional traveling for business meetings, maybe a macabre joke about Lex’s quarterly attempts on her life. L-Corp was still shaking off the reputation of its old branding and leadership and she was working night and day to prove that it- and she- could be a force for good.

She never would have guessed that the budding friendship with a certain reporter would come to change her life so dramatically.

She couldn’t have imagined bi-weekly game nights, hosted more and more frequently at the spacious and lonely apartment she rarely spent time in herself.  Or how she would come to arrange her schedule to allow for as many shared lunches as possible. That some of those lunches she’d be joined by Winn, his delight in discussing technology contagious and disarming, his nerdy-ness drawing out her own. She certainly wouldn’t have guessed that some of those lunches would be spent with Alex, talking engineering or security. Or that they might eventually move past those topics to the everyday things one shares with a friend. She’d be surprised to learn that when Kara is short on time and they lunch at Catco, James sometimes joins them on the deck. And that he is warm, and thoughtful, and good at teasing smiles from both Kara and Lena. She wouldn’t have believed that when those frequent attempts on her life continue, she’d have not only a caped heroine there to protect her, but a tenacious NCPD detective on scene almost every time who would greet Lena with genuine concern or a dimpled smile, her presence steadying and reassuring even as she does her job.

She never would’ve guessed that meeting Kara would mean gaining a family.

Although, based on her own initial reaction to the blonde- that instinctive pull, the subconscious trust and endearment- she maybe should’ve guessed that she’d be where she is now.

Which is making heart eyes across the room at her best friend.

Lena drops her gaze but can’t stop the smile, busying her fingers with adjusting her watch band. When she looks back up Kara is still grinning at her. She rises, glass in hand, and makes her way over to the kitchen, pausing to pat Winn’s shoulder sympathetically as the timer runs out and he throws his hands up in defeat.

Kara is mid-laugh, just turning toward Lena when the glass shatters.

They both stare at it, tiny shards catching the light as they fall in slow motion to the floor, a shower of diamonds.

Kara looks up at Lena and mouths “I’m sorry” as a hand comes away from her stomach, red. The second bullet strikes her in the chest with a horrifying, wet, thuk, knocking her backwards a step.

Lena reaches out but she’s too far.

She sees Kara’s blue eyes fade to grey.

Supergirl falls.

Lena wakes with a flinch, memory morphing into nightmare and back into cruel memory.

The pillow is damp beneath her cheek. This time, the tears are all too real.

She draws a deep breath, willing her chest to expand, the oxygen to chase away some of the tension and terror.

Tomorrow she will be strong. She will fight as best she can, the only way she knows how.

Tonight, she curls into herself, and in the darkness allows the despair to take her.

——

Lena bides her time.

As the hours pass- a day or two by her calculation- something like acceptance fills the aching holes in her chest.

She may be stuck here, but that doesn’t mean she can’t help Kara.

She examines the evidence presented, tucking away as much information as she can to check independently. She takes in the labs, the experiments, the weapons Cadmus has amassed in this facility- most of it revealed only in glimpses as she’s escorted down winding hallways.  She’s allowed to work on some of the tech, to improve on their designs, always with the promise of more involvement, more information- but only when her trust is proven.

So she plays the game.

Lena uses her genuine worry for Kara, her frustration at being trapped here (despite her mother’s assurances, she’s under no illusions: she is a prisoner), her disgust with Cadmus’s actions- allowing all of it to show.

And if her mother sees the sadness and frustration and anger and believes it to be Lena working through Kara’s “betrayal”- well, who would blame her? Lillian believes she’s dealt the fatal blow to Lena’s relationship with Kara. She can’t see past her prejudice and righteous anger to imagine a world where Lena might be able to forgive that deception.

And that’s her mother’s fatal flaw, Lena reflects as she tinkers with yet another weapon made from alien tech, parts and pieces strewn about the work table in front of her. Lillian truly believes she’s right, her actions justified. And as such she’s certain, if given enough time, Lena will eventually come to her side.

It’s an odd reversal of their positions. As a child, Lena was sure if she could just be smart enough, perfect enough, that Lillian would give her the approval and love she so craved.

But she sees now that neither of them will ever get what they desire.

Because Lena is never going to approve of this- of these atrocities committed by her mother.

And despite the longing that still aches in her traitorous heart, Lena knows her mother is incapable of loving her in anything other than the twisted ways she always has.

Even now, with Lena cooperating, aiding Cadmus, Lillian is distant, calculating, any attempts at warmth or affection clearly just another move on the board.

But two can play at that game.

Lena’s own charade is made all the more real by the churning of conflicting feelings within- underneath everything there is a sting of betrayal, of hurt.

It’s not like she hadn’t considered the possibility, Kara being Supergirl. The poor excuses for being late or canceling, her abnormal appetite, the “flew here on a bus” of it all… but she hadn’t allowed herself to come to the inevitable conclusion- not until she’d been forced to her knees on that rooftop. Not until the horror of the moment had bypassed all her carefully crafted excuses and walls (fragile attempts to shield her heart from it’s growing love for her best friend and her crush on National City’s own hero). And in that moment the veil had lifted and it was clearly Kara standing there, bleeding and-

Lena leans her head back for a moment.

Dwelling on what happened won’t save her and it certainly won’t help Kara any.

She’s already reliving those moments in the night- pulled from sleep by the cold grasping fingers of her dreams. She doesn’t need to revisit them by the light of day.

There’s a knock on the door. Mealtime, then.

Lena pushes back from the work table. Time to see which unwitting Cadmus goon she can extract information from this time.

Her heart thuds steadily as she walks down the hall and beneath it all the refrain continues:

Kara, Kara, Kara.

#supergirl fanfiction #supercorp #fanfic #supergirl #mine

[violetsmoak]

Appetence [7/?]

AO3 Link:https://archiveofourown.org/works/20251420/chapters/47997634

Blanket Disclaimer

Summary: Red Robin is investigating the disappearance of a friend and stumbles into a spot of supernatural trouble. He doesn’t expect to be saved by Jason Todd, miraculously alive five years after his death and now with the inexplicable ability to commune with the dead. Meanwhile, when Jason returned to Gotham he meant to maintain a low profile and not get involved with Bat business. That was before he found out how hot his Replacement is.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

JayTimBingo Prompts This Chapter: N/A

First Chapter

Author’s Note(s): Apologies for the wait. As you may know I had an adventure with my dropbox wherein I backed up all my files because I had to restore my laptop, and all of the files ended up mixed up in the wrong folders and I've been tracking down files one by one for the past week. I hate technology. I mean, I guess I should be happy the files didn't get deleted, but it's still a pain in the ass to re-organize manually.

Beta Reader: I’ll get back to you on that.

________________________________________________________________

Tim stares at the business card in his hand long after Jason disappears, thumbing over the false name and phone number with a reverence once reserved for clandestinely captured photographs.

Victor Shelley, Paranormal Investigator.

He wonders if Jason was trying to be funny choosing that name. Given what Tim’s heard about him in the few instances where Dick or Alfred talk about him, and what he saw for himself in the past, he thinks it’s entirely likely.

God, Dick and Alfred.

He knows they’re going to be just as blindsided about this as Bruce when they find out.

If they find out.

Guilt flickers through him now at the promise he made to Jason.

Why the hell would he promise a man he doesn’t really know—a man he’s spent a grand total of an hour and twenty-three minutes in conversation with—that he won’t let his adopted father knows he’s not dead.

That he hasn’t been dead for years.

That he’s in Gotham right now.

Tim wishes he could say it was one hundred percent his shock at Jason being alive, but that would be lying to himself. His mind flashes back to Jason’s face, his slow smirk and the smooth, deep voice, and he swears, letting his head fall against the counter.

Apparently, I promised him because he’s pretty.

It’s a new feeling for Tim. He’s never been easily swayed by looks, but something about Jason is attractive enough to put him off-guard, or at least loosen his lips more than normal.

I thought I was over this…

“I know that face.”

Tim startles and glances up at the bartender—Trista—who he had forgotten was there. He’d forgotten he was sitting in a bar, to be honest.

“Judging by the ass on that man, I can guess what it’s about,” she continues in a wry tone. Then she’s sliding a shot of amber liquid toward him. “Here. To steady your nerves.”

Tim stares at the alcohol in numb confusion.

“That’s on the house, but only because he talked more with you tonight than I’ve seen him do with anyone since he got here,” she goes on. “We’ll both pretend I don’t know you’re underage.”

Tim is too flustered by everything she’s just said to do anything other than accept the shot under her knowing gaze. Then, he beats a hasty retreat from the bar as fast as humanly possible without it looking like he’s running away.

Distracted, he returns to his apartment in the Theater District, trying to parse the events of the night from an objective viewpoint. He’s not entirely sure he didn’t dream it all up, considering whatever that incubus did to him, and so he runs tox-screens on his blood and gives himself a full physical just to make sure.

Other than spikes in several hormone levels—adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin—his results are normal. Nothing that would really alter his perceptions of reality, the way Scarecrow or Poison Ivy’s concoctions tend to do.

That confirmed, he should be able to leave the matter alone for now. There are more pressing matters to deal with—Dante’s continued disappearance being one of them.

But thoughts of Jason continue to assault Tim’s thoughts.

Something has been bothering him since his conversation with Jason, something he wondered before but couldn’t ask because Jason got skittish and made a run for it

How the hell did Constantine cross paths with Jason anyway?

Aside from his inexplicable presence in Gotham at some point in the past five years without attracting the attention of Batman, what would interest him in a teenaged John Doe with no identity or memory?

Sliding into the chair in front of the computer in the Nest, Tim calls up the autopsy report, even though he doesn’t really need to see it. He memorized it years ago. Still, if he’s going to investigate this, he needs concrete facts, not just his memory.

It’s not difficult to create a timeline of events, between Jason’s official death and now. Or to search a list of John Does at various hospitals in Gotham within the last five to ten years, whose condition upon admittance matches the description of Jason’s injuries at death.

He finds the information he’s looking for within twenty minutes.

As it turns out, things didn’t happen quite as neatly or quickly as Jason’s story suggested. His stay at Gotham General was a lot longer than he let on, and Tim’s stomach twists as he reads the medical reports.

Various physicians left their comments on the patient, a young man of about fifteen or sixteen, severely beaten and malnourished, picked up several miles from the hospital.

The file includes a mugshot of a heavily bandaged youth, head shaved from what records indicate were several procedures to repair brain bleeds, skull, and facial fractures. Bruises and swelling make his features almost unrecognizable, except to someone who has memorized pictures of that face since he was ten years old. Someone who knows the cut of that jaw and the color of those eyes, however bleary and vacant they are as they stare into the camera.

“God, Jason…”

Tim reads over the doctors’ notes that span the course of a year, cataloging how well the boy is healing considering the heavy damage he sustained, and how he would be considered a miracle patient but for the fact whatever happened to him caused significant brain damage.

Clear psychological damage, hearing voices, incapable of speech, easily upset.

On several occasions, the boy became unaccountably terrified, screaming and yelling and trying to claw out his own eyes. Sometimes it even became violent, and in his struggles, he put three doctors, a nurse and two orderlies in the emergency room.

I’m surprised it was only that many people. Considering his training, he could have done a lot more damage.

Eventually, he always had to be drugged and restrained.

Demonic possession, maybe?

It’s not the first thing Tim would think of, but if Constantine’s involved in all this, it would make sense. And coming back from the dead like Jason says he did, it had to have side effects.

Except, there’s no mention of anything superhuman or beyond the realm of possibility regarding Jason’s strength. Surely the doctors would have made note of anything beyond the abilities of a normal, scared teenager—especially in Gotham, where strange behavior was a sad norm.

No mention of anything resembling supernatural or metahuman abilities anywhere here.

Jason was eventually placed permanently in the psych ward and likely would have stayed there for the rest of his days, except the hospital’s budget was cut in his eighth month there. Space issues required moving patients to other hospitals, and—

“Oh, no. No-no-no, tell me they didn’t,” Tim murmurs, heart sinking as he scrolls down the page of the report, knowing exactly what he’s going to find.

They sent him to Arkham.

If Tim was horrified before by the notion of Jason’s resurrection and his condition afterward, it’s nothing to how sick he feels to learn that his predecessor was sent to the cesspool that is Arkham Asylum.

He needs to turn away from his computer for a few seconds and breathe, close his eyes and concentrate on not hearing the lilting, singsong voice and tinny voice in his head.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

Ever since his kidnapping, it’s the one place in Gotham Tim won’t venture—he’s not sure what would happen if he did. Whether he’d suffer a crippling attack of flashbacks, or march into the high security ward and slit the Joker’s throat with one of his birdarangs.

If Bruce realized Tim honestly can’t decide which would be the worse outcome, he knows he’d be benched for the rest of his life. He might not be Robin anymore, but the Family would find a way.

It’s fear of that more than anything else that helps him get a handle on his panic, tethers him back to reality better than anything else. Tim takes another series of deep, grounding breaths, before he feels confident enough to be able to get back to his research into Jason.

At least they didn’t put him anywhere near the Joker, it seems, he notices as he goes through the room assignments and Arkham floorplans. That’s about the only good thing about it, though.

Jason’s ward was for the non-communitive patients, the ones the experts considered untreatable. The ones that get forgotten about in the mayhem of the monthly outbreaks and pandemonium.

Tim’s stomach clenches tight again as he remembers incidents and dates over the years where Batman visited inmates at Arkham to interrogate them on the latest escapes or crimes happening in the city, or just to test the security there. Based on the location of Jason’s cell and Batman’s usual route, there are times when the two were only a floor apart

Tim’s heart aches for them both.

They were so close to each other! If only they’d known—!

And just as suddenly as Jason was transferred to Arkham, all records of him vanish. There’s no information about patient transfers or deaths or releases; instead, like many a nameless patient to be lost to the asylum over the years, he just vanishes.

People don’t just vanish. And in this case, I know he didn’t.

Tim goes on to cross-reference the potential dates of Jason’s disappearance with any visitors to the asylum. It doesn’t take much to identify the only visitor to the asylum for a span of weeks as a certain Chandler Ravenscar—names which another quick search link to aliases used by John Constantine in the past.

That brings Tim to a whole other avenue of research, refocusing him investigation on Constantine himself and his movements over the past years. He tends to keep to the UK, but every now and again travels to various mystical hotspots around the world.

There’s a backlog of security footage to weed through, occultist forums discussing the man and his exploits. Half of what’s written about him online is clearly conspiracy theories, a quarter of it related to some punk rock band called Mucous Membrane and something to do with the Reagan assassination. Those who have actually worked with him either seem too terrified or pissed off to say much about him.

Even harder is finding a video of the man; cameras and other surveillance devices appear to stop working around him. It’s even more of a challenge to catch a glimpse of the teenaged assistant that starts being mentioned several months after Jason’s disappearance from Arkham.

A chance freeze-frame from an airport in Beijing, however, is all Tim needs to confirm it’s Jason.

It’s hours later when Tim sits back, exhausted but now having at least a general timeline of what happened.

One thing is for damn sure—I can’t take this to Bruce.

The story is too painful, too unbelievable. If it doesn’t break him all over, it will have him lashing out at Tim for making up stories about a touchy subject. There’s enough tension between them both right now that he’s likely to question anything suspect Tim brings to him.

Or he would insist it was a trick, that someone had faked all of this. He wouldn’t take Tim’s word for it, would investigate himself, prepare himself for an interrogation when what Jason needs is to have a face to face with his adopted father and mentor.

And Jason’s story still has too many holes in it for Tim to tell it, begging more questions than answers.

Like why Constantine took you from Arkham in the first place. And also…there’s one other thing that doesn’t make sense.

Well, a lot of things don’t make sense, but this stands out.

Tim goes back to the hospital records, scanning for the section where he remembers reading the information.

John Doe’s injuries in the medical files are all consistent with those in Jason’s autopsy, with every scar and broken bone accounted for and described.

Except for an autopsy scar.

That would have been the first thing medical professionals remarked upon when Jason was admitted, but it’s not mentioned anywhere. Which must mean that somehow, Jason no longer has it.

So why did that heal and nothing else did? Could it have something to do with what brought him back?

There’s a sudden dull, clunk in the background and the slide of elevator doors, and Tim glances up to watch Stephanie Brown stride into his base of operations.

“I was on the way out and Babs sent me to check on you,” she tells him. “Apparently someone missed work today without calling in and isn’t answering their phone.”

Tim startles at that, glances at the clock in the corner of his screen and swears when he realizes she’s right. He was supposed to be at Wayne Enterprises an hour ago. When he glances at his cellphone, he sees twelve text messages and three missed calls from Lucius, Dick and Bruce.

“I didn’t even notice,” he groans. He was so caught up in finding out more about Jason that he lost track of time. He quickly taps out a group message reassuring them he’s fine and will be in soon.

“At least being flaky is characteristic of billionaire teenagers,” Steph says as she wanders over.

Tim quickly minimizes his search and swivels around in his seat to face her. “Why are you even awake this early?”

Given the way she spends her nights, Steph made a point of having all of her classes in the afternoon. She’s possibly less of a morning person than Tim is, to the point where even coffee doesn’t make her a little more human.

“Blame my new roommate,” she grumbles, and that earns a surprised look because it’s the first time he’s heard of this. “Right, I didn’t tell you, did I? So, a couple of weeks ago this cat shows up on the fire-escape outside my window. And I didn’t mean to feed it, but it looked so sad and pathetic and I had to, so now it won’t leave me alone. What am I supposed to do? I don’t have time to be a pet owner.”

“Cat’s don’t actually take that much care.”

“That’s what they want you to think. And then one cat becomes two, and two becomes three and the next thing I know, I’m going to be the crazy cat lady on the block,” Steph complains. “And not to cool, sexy, Selina kind of cat lady but the sad, single shut-in.”

“You could never be a shut-in. No four walls can keep your raw joie de vivre inside,” Tim says in a flat tone.

“You’re just saying that because you’re my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.” She frowns in confusion. “Are we in an on-again or an off-again right now? I forget.”

Tim remembers Jason’s cocky grin and muscular thighs and his mouth goes dry. “Off. Definitely off.”

Steph’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline. “That was weirdly assertive. Am I sensing a pretty girl behind that sentiment? Do I need to give a shovel talk?” Something occurs to her and she scowls. “It’s not that Lynx chick, is it? Trust me when I say that would be a bad idea.”

“There’s no girl,” Tim mumbles. “Trust me.”

“Okay,” she allows, slow and still somewhat dubious. “But you’d tell me, right? If you were seeing someone? Only so I don’t go crossing lines or causing jealous rage or something.”

“There’s nothing going on, yes I would tell you, can we please move on?” Tim huffs. “Tell me about your cat.”

“He’s not my cat.”

“You fed him, he’s your cat.”

“Stop changing the subject. You’re being evasive—there so is a girl.”

“There’s no girl!” Tim groans, half tempted to tug at his hair. “Who could look at another woman after being with you?”

“I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or as an insinuation I was so horrible that I turned you off women for good,” Steph says, eyes narrowed in suspicion. A beat later, she tilts her head to one side as if something has occurred to her. “Wait. That’s it, isn’t it? It’s a guy. This someone’s a guy. You know you can tell me, right? That would totally be okay—would actually explain a lot, actually—you know, you liking guys—”

“One guy does not equate guys.”

“Oh my god! There is! There’s a guy!” Steph squeals. “Who is it? It’s that friend of yours, that went missing, isn’t it? Dante something? That’s why you’ve been so obsessed with finding him!”

“I’m determined to find him because he’s my friend,” Tim counters, a bit irritated. “The same way I’d be determined to find Ives or Bernard or anyone I cared about. And I’d be doing that right now if someone wasn’t distracting me.”

Two someones, but she doesn’t need to know about Jason’s role in it.

“And I’d believe that if you weren’t looking at me like you wanted to jump out of your skin. There’s something going on here, Ex-Boy Wonder.”

“There’s nothing going on.”

“Lies!”

“For something to be going on, you have to actually spend more than an hour with someone. You have to have known them for more than an hour.”

“Not if you have chemistry,” Steph points out. “Sometimes, it’s just like. Bang.” She grins. “And then you have to bang.”

Tim rolls his eyes.

“Do I need to give you the safe sex talk?” Steph asks with concern that’s only half teasing. “The gay-sex safe sex talk? Because to be honest, I don’t think I’d be able to do it with a straight face.”

“Steph, that was awful. As a former Robin, you should be ashamed.”

“And as a former Robin, you should be better at lying. So, spill. What’s going on?”

Tim studies her, chewing on his tongue; he knows she won’t let it go unless he gives her something. “Okay. Fine.”

“Hah! I knew it!”

“Not that. This is…something else,” he says. “Sort of.”

“Okay?”

“What would you do if…say you found out something really important to a person you care about. But you promised someone else you wouldn’t tell anyone about that something because of…reasons. Personal reasons.”

Steph crosses her arms. “Is this about me?”

“Not everything is about you.”

“Then it’s about Mystery Boy.”

“It’s not about—” Tim gives up, and then sighs, because it’s just easier to give her that one. “Fine. It’s Mystery Boy. He asked me not to say something that’s really important. I figure it’s because he wants to say himself in his own time. Except. Except it’s a huge thing.”

“Starbucks discontinuing pumpkin spice lattes’ huge, or ‘Hush trying to destroy B’ huge?”

“Closer to the second. Not dangerous like that,” he adds quickly when he sees her face. “It’s just…serious stuff that could hurt if it’s not handled the right way. Or if certain parties found out later and thought they were having stuff kept from them.”

“Well, now I’m curious…”

“I’m not telling you.”

“I know that. I’m just saying.” Steph sticks out her tongue at him, but then becomes contemplative. “I guess I’d keep my mouth shut. Or try to, at least. Stuff like that always tends to come out eventually. But if you’re worried it could hurt someone, maybe you can convince Mystery Boy it’s in his best interest to tell someone.”

“Yeah, that didn’t go over too well.”   

“Well, whatever you do, don’t get into your micromanaging, control-freak headspace,” she tells him. “That’s one of the things that torpedoed you and me, and if you want things to work out with this guy, you should respect his wishes.”

“I never said anything about wanting anything to work out with anyone,” Tim protests. “I just met the guy.”

“And somehow he got you to promise not to tell something that’s apparently really important. Which means you already value him somehow, and that only happens to you when you really like someone. Also, you might be able to straight-up bluff Batman or Ra’s al Ghul, but I know how you look when you like someone and don’t want anyone to know it.” There’s a beeping noise and Steph digs out her cellphone. “And with those pearls of wisdom, I have to get going. My mom found the cat and she’s having a conniption.”

She turns to leave, pauses once she enters the elevator and turns back around, jabbing a finger at him.

“Shower, eat, go to work, stop obsessing about stuff you can’t control—and don’t try to control stuff that’s not your business.”

Tim bristles. “Yes, Mother.”

“Oh, you did not just go there,” she growls as the elevator doors close and Tim grins until she’s gone.

He knows that Steph’s right, to a certain extent. This whole Jason thing isn’t his business—he was only ever an outside observer, a legacy after the fact. And even if it was his business, it’s not his predecessor’s sensibilities he should be protecting.

Ill-advised crush aside, he doesn’t have any connection loyalty to Jason Todd. He does owe Bruce—he should be going straight to him about this.

Except…

Except, Tim really doesn’t want to be added to the list of people who betrayed Jason’s trust. Especially given how fragile it is given their short acquaintance.

Tim groans and leans back against his chair, wishing for an easy solution. He’s usually able to figure out what to do, even when it comes down to the hard choices.

“Stop obsessing about stuff you can’t control—and don’t try to control stuff that’s not your business.”

Steph’s right.

He’ll do as Jason asked.

Or, at least he’ll give it a week.

If he hasn't figured out any other way to deal with the situation, he'll go to Bruce.

In the meantime—he has an investigation to get back to.

⁂⁂⁂

Next Chapter

#jaytimweek2019 #jaytimweek #jaytim #fanfic #prompt: supernatural #jaytim fic #tim drake #drama #mystery #angst #romance #instant attraction #steph being awesome #tim being nosy

[arghseriously]

New Story Chapter 2

Emily didn’t always know the family secret. Her brain had done a good job of blocking a lot of what happened when she was younger. It wasn’t until she went to college and away from her parents that she found herself plagued by reoccurring dreams. They were so disturbing that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing it with friends. She kept the contents to herself. One drunken night, during her freshman year of college, she up and called her older brother in Virginia. “Steve, I’ve got something to ask you,” as her drunken bravado had gotten the better of her and she was talking to her brother who hadn’t had contact with her or their mom in dad in at least ten years. Steve had cut almost all ties with them, well, definitely with Mom and Dad. As they got older and Emily got her own phone, re-connecting with Steve wasn't hard. She found out (but was never invited) to his wedding. She saw her nieces first pictures but not mentioned. Emily often wondered why she allowed this glimpse into Steve's perfect life without his family. Something inside her always told her not to ask questions. She never even told her parents of her occasional contact with Steve, thanking God each time that neither had the time or the inclination for social media. But tonight, rather than ask him why the obvious question as to how someone could cut off all ties with them, she wanted to know if what she was seeing in the night had any type of reality tied to it.

“Emily, we can’t talk about this on the phone,” he said, after a long pause.

“You don’t even know what I’m calling about, ” Emily countered.

“Yes, I do. And this isn’t something we can talk about on the phone.”

“You know Steve, you’re a real asshole. I reach out to you after you like abandoned me when I was 8 and you won’t even allow me to ask even on question…”. Emily wasn’t sure if she was as coherent as that, but fuck it, she deserved some type of answer.

“Emily, I think its time to come visit you now. But tonight, you need some sleep.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. But I never get any sleep nowadays anyway.”

“I’ll text you my flight information tomorrow, can you take a day or two off from classes?”

“Yes, I guess. When are you coming?”

“I’ll try to be there Wednesday. Take Thursday and Friday off.”

“Will you bring Tracy and the boys? I’d love to see them…”

“Emily, no. And this is important. No one can know that I am coming to visit.”

“Well I don’t think Mom and Dad would want to see you anyway.”

“Emily, I’ll say it again. No one can know. Especially Mom and Dad. Now have you told anyone else about these dreams?”

“No, I…”

“Good. Keep it that way until I arrive.”

“Steve, you’re sort of scaring the shit out me here. Is there something wrong?”

“Em, I suspect you know that answer. Deep down, you know. Listen, I have to go, one of the babies is making noise. Remember, do not tell anyone anything.”

He then hung up, no pleasant “goodbye” or “I love you,” Emily sat in a bit of a stupor in her dorm room. Her friends and roommate were probably still on Frat Row. They probably wouldn’t even hear their cell phones if she called. Hell, she didn’t even notice when she walked away. Emily was feeling insecure, upset, tipsy and all she wanted was her mother. But that was the exact opposite of Steve’s instructions. How did he know she was having nightmares? And what about them were dangerous? Disturbing, yes. Mortifying, of course, but she assumed it was a product of an active imagination.

Her mother and father have always said she was prone to wild exaggeration and stretching of the truth. Her mother had told her that she should take that imagination and give it a job, become a writer. And Emily always knew that she wanted to be one. But when faced with a computer, her mind always drew a blank. Well, that wasn’t really true. Her mind would be flooded with images, black and red with screams of terror. Shrills. Things that would make a horror fan recoil upon reading it. So what to do when all that is in your mind is twisted darkness?

To compensate, Emily tried to immerse herself in reading instead of telling her own stories. She thought if she filled her head with other more magnificent stories, hers would in time alter a bit. But they didn’t. They never quite went away. She got up from her bed and rooted around her roommate’s desk, where she knew Alison always kept a spare joint. Alison wouldn’t care, she’s offered it enough when Emily was stressed. In fact, she probably would be surprised. The ever meek Emily stoned and drunk in their room would be enough for her to have an out of body experience.

But, when in Rome. And maybe one or two hits would numb her enough to sleep. She had four days until she saw Steve again. She climbed out on the ledge at Hume Hall so the R.A. wouldn’t smell the weed. She had seen the other girls do it and knew the ledge could hold at least 300 pounds easily. As she rested against the window and slowly slid down, she took out the lighter and put the joint in her mouth. Slowly inhale and hold it. That’s what they had told her when she had tried before. Hold it as long as you can. Then release. Close your eyes and release.