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honestsycrets · 8 months

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brujería i: inhuman | ceo!miguel x succubus!reader

❛ pairing | ceo!miguel x succubus!reader

❛ type | doubleshot, explicit

❛ summary | since taking over his bio-father's company, miguel just can't seem to sleep. there may be someone behind that though. or, a succubus wants miguel.

❛ tags | some sacrilege, succubus!reader, ceo!miguel, sex-dreams, sleepy sex, dub!con: miguel is asleep during many encounters, exhibitionism outside of a church, f!reader, some mention of blood and wounds, au with deviations from canon, slight hurt miguel, slight caretaking peter, excessive bodily fluids, some mindgames.

❛ request fulfilled | Was wondering if i could request ceo!miguel x succubus! reader? whether he’s spider-man is completely up to you but reader is basically like a demon hiding in plain sight, toying and feeding on the sexual energy of people. maybe she’s a new hire and then she visits him in his dreams or smth. miguel becomes her target and he finds himself falling in love with her and wanting her so much it brings out an intense carnal desire inside him (1/2)

❛ sy's notes | i based some of miguel's sleep paralysis on my own experience. the catholic religious connotations are not very heavy, but if you're sensitive to that sort of thing, i'd probably skip this one.

Miguel O’Hara was never a superstitious man.

He grew up in a deeply Catholic home thick with superstition. His grandmother’s rosary still sat on his desk, enveloped in a spherical glass alongside stacks of organized paperwork on the latest drug his not-so-dearly held biological father left before he kicked it. Corruption was fiercely rooted, a fact that Miguel was not so subtle about. The papers he rifled through that morning revealed the stupidest account of Brujería among reports of Rapture.

“Brujería-- what bullshit,” he murmured as he dropped a stack of papers back onto the oak desk. He glanced at the glass tabletop and found his reflection therein. His eyes, crinkled at the edges, carried the reflection of countless days of his dark exhaustion. “Si no es una cosa es otra.”

“Miguel?”

“What, Lyla?” Miguel threw a glare at the ceiling at the AI that sang at him. She seemed far too happy with her position as the resident terror of his new office. New was an overstatement. It was his father’s before he croaked, reflected in some of his tacky taste in the things Miguel had immediately thrown out. Why else would it have a picturesque, but grandiose view of Nueva York but for a great view of the people he was destroying? The bright windows also did a bang-up job of burning his eyes

“The psychiatrist is here,” she chirped. “Are you going to tell her about your wet dreams?”

The flutters that danced over his skin at night at the strike of three. Foreign warmth caressed his skin like a warm blanket over his skin. His heart rate raced, and pleasure burrowed under his skin. It never failed that Miguel would wake to a rush of pleasure, cum painting his sheets sticky, his heart soaring into his throat. With such pleasure, why would he tell anyone but Lyla about his pathetic, ruined state that came night after night?

Miguel waved his hand in dismissal. He instead checked the chunky watch on his wrist. You're just on time. He appreciates a punctual professional given how much work he had to complete. In lieu of the report of spiritual abuse, he picks up the pile of sexual misconduct. That was a more pressing matter to address. The actual victims were far more important than some bruto’s complaint of ojos based on a huevo in some water. He should send these idiots to any middle schooler’s chemistry class. The bruja who was coming to visit him today could hardly be a source of concern.

“Why would I do that? Let her in. You listen in and I’ll unplug you.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Lyla teased, but he knew she was right. Lyla was one of his only friends and by far the one he spent the most time with. She has patience for him. He slips his reading glasses out of their holster as the lock on his office door hisses apart, welcoming in the strange woman whose name he could never find but in Stone’s personal records. A chroí, my love, like Stone could love anyone else but himself.

“Dr. O’Hara.”

Miguel slipped the lenses on. Not only was the woman before him, not the sort of hippy-dippy woman he expected, but you were… familiar. Oh, so familiar. He’s never met you before. Yet, he finds himself inexplicably pulled to closing the gap between your bodies.

You extend your hand for him to take.

“Dr…” You finished his sentence by offering your name.

“Have I met you before?” His large hand clasped your own. A blanket of warmth blossomed from your small hand in his grip. Gentle at first, your very same small hands laced in his. The sudden realization of where he’d seen you hit him like a bullet through the head: unexpected and instantaneous. The image rippled across his mind, Miguel’s hand collared on your nape, his fat dick splitting your cunt against his office’s wide windows. Another pulse of heat soared through his hand--

Miguel jerked his hand back. What in the hell?

“¿Estás bien?” You were so close that he could smell the perfume on your skin. A dark cherry, sultry, and so good. He was swimming in the vague delusion that was your skin against his. There was something delicious about the way you looked at him, tracing the outline of his tie that sat tightly behind a constricting vest. He was hazy, clumsily falling back into his office chair. Moving was tiring with the sudden vial of desire that flooded through his veins. You were at his side in an instant.

“I’m fine,” he lied. “It’s… the heat.”

“Oh! Stone's office is always hot. Here, I'll help you,” No-- he tried to argue. Against his wishes, you slipped his suit jacket off his shoulders and down his muscular arms, loitering a bit too long along his pumped biceps. “Though, I guess it’s all yours now, isn’t it? We all are.”

Miguel has no energy to fight you, lost in the haze that was last night’s forgotten dream. He’d never met you before, that much he was sure. Yet he swore, on all that was scientific and right, that he dreamed of your body on his, emptying him of any worries as he came into the nothingness of his sheets. It wasn’t just pleasure, it was a sea of rapture, and he drowned in it.

“According to your AI, you’re burning up lately.”

How do you know? You walked around his chair, your slender heels clicking over the hardwood floor. His eyes traced the curves of your velvet red pencil dress up to your bust as you leaned in, the back of your hand taking his temperature on his forehead. Your bust had delicate black lace detailing that enhanced your natural beauty. It scorched his ability to be a decent gentleman. Every man had their limits. He’s nearly at his, and you’ve only just arrived.

“You're so warm,” you gasped, but it's strained, a crack through stained glass. “Let me help you.”

You reached for the knot of his tie. That’s enough-- Miguel shoves your hand from his neck. He tugs the charcoal tie away from his throat, drawing it away from his white button-up. You wet your lips, drawing a sheen across your perfectly applied lipstick. You came in here with a plan and purpose to inflame him-- and did just that.

“Careful.”

A pause-- your eyes challenged him, seemed to know how weak he was in resisting the strain of lust that came with your mere presence. He was losing the fight quicker than he’d like. Miguel has to focus. “Your findings on Rapture’s… trial run. Where are they?”

“Destroyed,” you answered curtly.

"Project 2099?"

“Under seal. Oh, don’t look at me like that, hermoso. It wasn’t my choice.”

Hermoso. A flicker of anger shot through him as you reclined on his desk and ran your hands across the rim. You seem to notice the rosary on his desk, eyes lingering on it for more than a few seconds. You dipped so comfortably between propriety and looseness. The distance between your easily accessible skirt and his hardening erection is the entirety of only a few steps. “Stone’s orders, not mine.”

“There are no copies?”

“Why would there be? Stone was always very persistent with what he wanted.”

You? He doesn’t ask.

Something in him doesn’t want to think of it, what his father could have done to you that would make you so willing to stand so close to him. Your gaze faltered. You bore at his groin, his sleek dark slacks straining against his length.

“Now you want to know if I fucked him, que no?”

That's a yes. The way you slip onto his desk, legs slightly apart, tells him all he needs to know. His gaze falters, down then up again, an irrational amount of envy welling low in his belly. He found himself wondering what you’ve done in this very room. You bat your long lashes, far too pretty. He isn't easily dissuaded.

“I've barely met you and you want to know everything about my work and personal life. You’re so greedy. So like him.”

“I am nothing like that man.” At that very moment, his eyes locked with yours. A distant rage filled his belly. No one, he meant no one, compared him with that maniac. His tongue twisted in his mouth, ready to make some sharp remark, but you snatched his words by leaning forward, pressing your lips to his head. Your fingertips combed through his dark hair, a warm comfort. A kiss? His hands felt heavy, weighed down by an impossible weight, one he couldn’t push off no matter how much he strained.

"Hasta luego, Miguel.”

The door closes behind you with a clap. Back in the chair, Miguel was heaving heavy breaths. The restriction on his body loosened up and allowed Miguel to grab the black mirror stashed in a drawer below his desk. Your sticky lipstick left a stain on his forehead, strained with stress lines. He wiped away the red stain of your lipstick and rolled the remnants between his thumb and middle finger.

"Like Stone," he repeated with a hiss. "Mierda."

He wracked his hand around his swollen cock-- panting as he beat himself off, ecstasy claiming that he had to have you. The insatiable need to have -- his father’s whore-- overrode any of the papers on his desk. He came into the cold nothingness that is the air, his hands coated in his own essence. Miguel untucked a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped himself clean.

“Lyla? Who?” he gasped a breath, “Who is that woman?”

“Beats me,” Lyla thought she was so funny. “She’s not in any electronic records.”

“Really.”

Even if that was the case, Miguel would be damned if Stone got the better of him in death. Miguel cleaned up his hand and whirled open the sexual harassment folder-- he was nothing if not a determined man.

You shouldn’t be here. No, really, you should not be employed here.

He doesn’t know your qualifications because he cannot find them. In the electronic documents, your file is bare bones. The suggestion of your education is non-verifiable but signed off by Stone himself. If it were only him, he might chalk it up to corruption. But there were others-- other dead bodies-- who signed off on your highly amended report on Rapture. The board claimed your employment was not a subject for discussion. Even if he were the face of the company, you were untouchable.

He left his office to the small coffee shop on the third floor. The man who ran it, Peter, was a refreshment from the stress of the day in his own, weird little way. It was probably the high quantity of caffeine that kept him awake.

On the surface, Miguel’s dreams are unoffensive. Light things, like fingers brushing veins that creep along his muscles, soapy breasts dragging along his chest. Using your body like a sponge to clean him after a heavy session at the gym. You are always on your knees, suckling the cum free from his cock with an angelic little flutter of your lashes and those sultry, cat-like eyes. He was in a state of constant arousal with nothing to show for it but a consistently swollen dick. At his age, he considers it a feat.

“You’re so sexy, Peter.”

There it was again. Your giggle over top of the sound of the hiss of a coffee machine. Peter was laughing, shy, or uncomfortable, he couldn’t quite tell. Miguel slips off his wire sunglasses, looking along the bar for the source.

“Hey, Miguel!”

He paced around the corner, then back. There are a few work couples and colleagues speaking with one another. Their tables are fresh with coffee and tea, tiny wrapped sandwiches a poor lunch. You’re conspicuously absent. The lack of sleep was fucking with his head, it had to be. He settled the glasses into the lining of his suit pocket and withdrew his wallet.

“Miguel! You'll never guess who came by. Uh, the usual?” Peter bounced over, leaning over the cash register with a glitter in his eye. He was more upbeat than even usual. Some girl must have made his day, he decided. Sí, he rumbled. Miguel dipped his fingers into his wallet to pull out his card only to be stopped short of the action.

“Nope,” Peter pushed Miguel’s hand away. “Someone paid for you.”

“For me?” Miguel settled the card in its proper slot. “Who?”

“You know,” Peter whispers. "The bruja."

“She was here?” he repeated, following Peter across the side of the bar as he began to make his coffee. Peter is an airhead, a wonderful airhead. Some part of him is infectious on days when he’s not being stalked by a woman with no traceable name. It was as if you were wiped clean. “When?”

“About two hours ago? She said you looked spooked and left me some money for your coffee. I think she likes you.”

You were doing more than liking him.

“And why would you think that?” Miguel pulled out a chair at the bar, humoring the scrawnier man. Peter frothed some milk, a fluffy cloud of relaxation on top of his usual coffee dusted with cinnamon and nutmeg. Miguel takes the mug from Peter, wrinkling his nose at the addition of nutmeg.

“Well, she turned down some dude from marketing,” Peter mentions. “I've been here for a while and-- she rarely turns anyone down.”

You rarely turn anyone down?

It bothered him long after he finished the coffee. You’re so sexy, Peter. You weren’t there. Peter told him that you’d been gone for two hours. He should not have heard the wisps of your caramelized voice in the coffee shop.

It’s the exhaustion, Miguel convinced himself. He just needs the weekend, to rest.

By Saturday night, he hit his last nerve.

Restful sleep would not come. He lay in his large, empty king-sized bed after searching through files for another project that had no other name but 2099 for the entirety of ten long hours. Any information-- redacted-- but your name slapped over the top and bottom of countless documents was like a great, big fuck-you O'Hara. The more he read about you, the angrier he became. You enraged him, but he was positively enthralled with your presence.

He lay in bed listening to should-be soothing jazz that now grated his ear. Night after night, his torment never failed. When he finally found an instance of peace, his muscles locked up. Not quite awake, but not quite asleep. Heavy pressure overtook his chest and arms forced him to remain still. The world fazed in and out, doom on beating alarm bells in the back of his mind. Then he felt it, the phantom pressure on his neck that slid over his tawny skin, from his belly to the dark happy trail that dipped below his silky pants.

Miguel gritted his teeth and ripped himself from his trance. When his eyes popped apart, he was greeted by his shock. Hunger flowed through him in warm waves, piercing underneath his skin. Miguel’s fingers twinged, your phantom figure on top of him. It looked like you, but misty, as though an illusion. In the darkness, he can only make out the shadows that bounce off what little light is in the room.

“Motherfucker--”

Though he said that, your teasing fingers freed him from his cozy pants, ripping them around his hirsute thighs. His length lulls against his body, a shameful drool of cum gathered at his cock. A night of phantom touches has done him in. Miguel lurched back onto his flat pillows when he was abruptly shoved down by an outrageous amount of force. With his arms thrown up by his head-- he whimpered, frustrated with tonight's-- dream, delusion, dare he say-- reality. His joints were locked by invincible chains that forced him to stay in place. The more he fought, the hotter his need became for what came next. His body was pitifully trained.

He wasn’t certain that it was you-- but it smelled so deeply of your perfume, rich and cherry, flooding his nostrils. So familiar. He glanced down at the opaque figure, grinding over his hard cock. A pair of hands crashed onto his shoulder, claws curling into his broad shoulders. Blood seeped forth. A growl gathered in his chest, ripping up when something warm and tight sunk down on his bobbing dick. Miguel gritted his teeth: it had been a long time since he’d been with anyone. Not for a lack of viable partners, but his annoyance with them all.

Despite his immense muscle, he was too weak to do anything about it. Even if he could, what would he do? Throw off the sex-crazed hallucination on his dick? You rolled your hips over him, suckling him right back up. Hypnotized by the smoky illusion, Miguel gazed on begrudgingly, grunting as you rolled over him, his dick straining your insides. He was a toy, nothing more and nothing less, used for his fat cock that split your airy body apart. His hips jerked, frustrated as he found he could go no deeper. You punished him by dragging your claws over his swarthy shoulders, over his collarbones. Blood ripped free, sliding down his deltoids.

“Chingado,” Miguel’s lips parted for the word, hips juddering up like a hungry slut. It wasn’t normal, the warm tickle of your lubricant over his shaft, exquisite in its nature. His heels dug into the bed, balls tightened. He was so damn close to his relief, he could taste it on his tongue, bordering somewhere between immense pleasure and decadent pain. Your need for his pain won out, dipping down over his chest and latching your fangs over his chest-- then up, hooking on the front of his throat. It was going to bruise, badly.

You shook loose his orgasm, ripped free with the need to fill you, own you-- as though he were not the one being owned. His hips staggered, sticky whips of cum coating your walls in waves. More than he’d cum before before. His eyes shut hard, tears pricking the sides of his eyes. Then, as if it never happened, the hold on his hands was released. He struggled with his freedom, his hands slack, softening cock worthlessly weeping over his thigh. The pain-- oh, the pain, it washed over him moments later.

“Woah,” Lyla interrupted, “Miguel! What happened?”

She couldn’t see you. His eyes were like two dark coins, staring up at the ceiling, wide, and unseeing. He can hear her frantic questions, the ligature marks left behind from invincible chains, and the all-too-real blood and bruising that left him utterly ruined.

“It,” he choked out, heat biting at his well-chiseled face. “It hurts.”

He doesn’t remember what comes next. It was five in the morning when he finally rolled out of bed, and onto the floor, gripping the growing headache that grew miserably behind his head. Bitterness bubbled in his stomach, exhaustion in his eyes. The aberration that was his poor sleep was irksome more than anything. He felt someone’s eyes on him, soft and worried, rushing to his aid as though he were an old man who fell off a bed.

“Hey, you’re awake,” Peter said with an undercurrent of concern soaring through his words. “No, wait. I got you.”

He helped him sit against the frame of his bed, a frame that looks small as shit with Miguel’s large body against the frame. He’s unsure of what to say, assuming that Lyla called him in desperation, and let him into the house that Peter most definitely did not have a key to. Miguel’s chest ached. “What happened? Are you… are you okay?”

Everyone seems to ask him that lately.

“I’m fine,” he was alien to the feeling of care. He knew when Miguel dug himself into a hole. Miguel didn’t want to think about what happened only a few hours prior when his exhaustion took over his body and knocked him out. He dreamed of nothing. An abyss of unsettled nothingness, the ache low in his belly to fuck you until you were soaked in his cum and Miguel could finally, finally rest his tired eyes. Miguel pulled on a fluffy white robe Peter supplied, dragging it over thick strips of gauze and medical tape.

“You don't look fine.”

They both know he’s lying, but what else could be said? That the state Peter saved Miguel from was a rarity? That he’s used to being preyed upon by his own delusions? He needs a fuck, maybe that’s it.

“If you’re going to stay, be useful and get me that file.”

“Oh-- okay, this one?” he doesn’t look surprised. He padded across his room to his desk, kicked a chair that was falling apart aside, and picked up the folder on Brujería. It was buried behind more useful folders such as sexual harassment and inter-employee workplace violence. A fact that Miguel wasn’t exactly proud about in the first place.

“Brujería? Like witch stuff, right? No way. You think work is haunted too?” Peter says with a choked-out, nearly forced laugh. Miguel doesn’t pay himself enough for this. Of all the files at hand, it was nearly untouched. It included such things as ancestors, spirits, demons, and curses.

“I don’t. But the workers obviously do.”

Peter was soft and kind, but not stupid. He plopped down next to him and crossed his legs one over the other.

“The ones that say she’s a bruja?” Peter tapped on your photo. Your photo offers emptiness. That though you have a bright smile in the photo, it is undoubtedly fake. He never saw a woman look so innocent and sweet, but dangerous.

“You’ve heard?”

“Well, the men she hangs around always end up dead. They get all successful and rich then, bam, dead. But you can’t believe that right?” Peter reasons. “She’s not cursed, she just has bad luck. She’s always been nice to me.”

“A curse?”

“Yeah,” his warm breath wavers into a sigh. “Stone wanted company, found her in Sacred Heart-- you know, the one they say is cursed?”

“A cursed church? Give me a break. The only curse at Sacred Heart are the exploitive priests.”

“I’m just saying what I heard,” he’s whispering, shivers wracking up his arms at the mere mention. He tries not to push him anymore. Peter stood up and walked to the coffee stand in the corner of his dark room. For the days that he couldn’t be bothered to leave his room, he’d make a hot coffee in the corner and keep working just as he always did. “She’s always been nice to me.”

“Maybe you’re not her taste.”

“Yeah well, probably not. I don't look like you-- but she did call me sexy, so that's something right?” Peter laughed, “Want a cup of coffee?”

Sexy. That's it, he's so fucking sick of this shit.

“No, I don’t want a cup of fucking coffee,” Miguel bit back, shoving the bed several inches as he pushed his hand off of it, storming into his walk-in closet. “Lyla. When is mass at Sacred Heart?”

“Sacred Heart?” Lyla laughed. “You’re kidding--”

“Lyla,” he snarled, chucking his bag across the closet. It connected with his tall, black safe with a loud boom. She was quiet for a moment, undoubtedly momentary confusion for why non-believer Miguel O’Hara wanted to go to, of all things, a Catholic mass.

“6:30,” she answers.

“I’ll go with you,” Peter calls out.

Don’t bother, Miguel returns from the next room.

It’s been a long time since he dressed for mass-- some dark brown slacks and a warm, vanilla button-up. He snaps a chain necklace around his thick, bruised throat and his favorite watch. As he grabbed the manilla folder on brujería he felt like a child, lectured by his grandmother to not be like his bad man-loving, alcoholic mother and go to church. Despite very much not believing in any of this shit, it was frustrating, annoying even, that he had to go back there.

He didn’t want to go but his spirit was unsettled. Something told him that going to his grandmother’s favorite church would give him a sense of illumination, that it would make sense of the things that made no sense.

Sacred Heart stands on a hill, both physically and metaphorically. It takes offerings off the backs of the poor and sits atop a lush hill. Its stained-grey architecture is only beautiful by virtue of its stained-glass murals. He doesn’t care for the saints that loom overhead, unseeing eyes judgemental and cold. Viejitos and the truly devout are the only ones in attendance. Based on Peter’s account, he should expect you there. It doesn't take long to be proven right.

“Bendición.”

Is he hallucinating again? Despite the many rows of unspoken burgundy benches, you sit by him. Miguel is disconcerted as you slide your thick hips by, sandwiching him between the side of the bench and your chunky, beautiful thighs. He worked his words in his mouth for entirely too long.

“Dios te bendiga,” he said, the words chalky and thick in his throat, drawn up from the bottomless abyss of his fluttery stomach. You sat with a black lace veil pinned to your head. The only sort of women who wear a veil are very old or not Catholic at all. He veers on the latter. “You’re Catholic?”

“If you want me to be.”

“Why else would you be here?” he reached over and plucked up a cheap bible from a pouch behind the bench before him. Your eyes follow pupils dilating in a way that isn’t human at all, staring at the many words on the page that spun under his thumb.

“I think you know why,” you said with soft and pliable words. He felt himself melting.

Of course, Miguel thought, you always seem to show up during the most inopportune times.

"You didn't bring a bible," he offers it to you. Your eyes, dilate wide and bright at the sight of the thing, flicker a look down to it, then Miguel again.

"I prefer to listen." You turn away from it. He flipped it in his hand before returning it to its rightful pouch. For some reason, you did not want to be close to the book. He thinks he knows why.

“So you are stalking me.”

"Stalking is such a mean word, Miggy. Haunting, I like haunting better." Miguel throws open the report. He doesn’t want to read it-- but it is the last folder that may hold the information he needs. Your eyes fluttered to the footsteps of others filling their spot, an archaic song on the lips of the practitioners. Wrong page, Miguel.

"What was that?" he asked you.

"Nada."

He looked down to his lap where the report sat. The voices of those present, their lips forming an off-tuned song, itched at his already exhausted mind. The more he fought, the worse it became. You flipped open a black fan and cooled yourself with long flicks of your wrist. He doesn’t think it’s so hot.

“The rosary on your desk is from here, isn’t it?”

How would you know?

“You’re hiding something.”

Page 76. His fingers thumb on the pages on their own accord. Your eyes traced the movement, looking down at the pages before him. On deaths of company men.

I just do.

The thought entered his mind without prompting. He scanned names on the page. Aaron Delgado… asphyxiation. Tyler Stone… myocardial infarction. There were photos pinned there, photos that shouldn’t be so graphic, but somehow are. The men are as naked as the day they came into the world.

“If you say so, Miggy.”

“What are you hiding?”

You brought your hand over the file, closing it shut on top of his hand. He turns his hands over the top. Your fingers run over his knuckles, in misleading circles. “Are you sure you want the truth?”

“I don’t hide from the truth.”

“The truth,” you leaned in, your words husky against his ear. “The truth is I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m a good girl, Miggy. You have to believe me.”

Something about the way you spoke enraged him, prickling him enough to force him to stand in the middle of the priest’s words. He snatched your wrist with his thick hand, gripping you enough to leave pepper bruises across your skin. Your heels clicked after his boots, out through the foyer, past the bath of holy water, and down the discolored steps.

“Miguel?” you sang like a siren.

He’s hit his limit, throwing you against the discolored church wall. A gasp punched out of your lungs, aggravated by Miguel’s large hand strangling the breath from your throat. He felt warm as he kicked your legs apart and took up that space. The heat doesn’t feel like it is his. His bulge against your skirt certainly is. Now, he seems to expect pleasure when he is in your presence.

“You want me to fuck you, sí? That’s why you’re tormenting me every fucking night.”

“I thought you liked cumming,” you relinquished with a harsh giggle. It grates his last nerve. “You finally look relaxed when you do.”

“Qué mala eres,” Miguel snatched the bottom of your skirt, ripping it up the slit to expose your warm skin. He found no panties there, just smooth skin. He cupped your sex for emphasis. “No panties in church. You're filthy.”

“¿Y qué? You’re proving why I didn’t need them.”

He stared, lingering for a moment, challenging your insistence on control. Since he took over this god-forbidden company, you had been defying him with your devilish smile. Miguel slapped your cunt, eliciting a groan that was half of the pain that he’d had only a few hours ago. You liked it, scratching lines up his arms to his broad shoulders.

“You’re so big,” you balanced his abuse with your overwhelming worship. “So big and pretty.”

“Shut up,” he bit out and slipped his middle finger inside of you, unconcerned for your pleasure. Your muscles tightened around his finger, drawing him deeper. He slides another beside it, his hand leaving your cunt to slap your jaw, forcing you to keep focus. Your tender flesh is hot and red, a wonderful tenderness radiating throughout your jaw.

“And you're dripping, do you have no shame?” He grips your chin to look at your face. Raw defiance was slapped across your face. You rolled your hips onto his hand, forcing him to caress your walls in the right spot. He perked his brow, listening to the priest lecturing in the background. Your sweetness drooled over his curled wrist, dripping from his squelching fingers.

“For you,” you whined. “I want your dick. Give it--”

“You’re a brat.”

He said that-- but he was amused. Miguel slipped down onto his knees, knocking your legs rudely apart. His mouth encircled your puffy clit, bringing it into his mouth and suckling it fat. His rhythm was quick, making a point that he could make you cum too. You weren’t debating him, your hands tight in his hair, loud little moans beating free from your lips. His tongue was warm and soft, kissing and nipping.

The priest went quiet.

“You’re being too loud. Do you want them to hear us?” Miguel’s brow furrowed, slipping up from your vulva.

"Why is that my problem?" You whined in distaste after he stopped pleasuring you, your pulsing cunt beating like an open wound. Asshole.

"You could care for someone other than yourself." Miguel tilted his head, turning you to face the wall. He pulled himself free of his pants-- his thick cock fat against the curve of your ass. That’s what you wanted, he decided, gauging by your whine that came with his action.

"How does that get me what I want?" You shook your ass at him, waiting for him to rear back.

“This is what you wanted, hm? Fine, have it. Just shut up."

He leaned over you, your scratchy black veil catching along his stubble. He doesn’t wait for a response, pushing inside. He wasn’t just thick, he was long. But he knew you already knew that-- you knew every curve of his body, loved the thick veins on his cock that filled you so well. You scratched at the wall as he crushed you into the wall, his hips stuttering with your walls tightening him, drawing him further, impossibly deep.

Estúpida, he thought-- and knew you’d hear it. Whatever you were, you weren’t human. You were somewhere between a human and desire itself, evident in the way you looked at him, pleasured by his rutting hips against the church. The priest went back to his lecture-- the churchgoers enraptured in their worship. The only thing Miguel was enraptured with was the way your pussy tingled, the fluid soaking his cock, and the stretch in your lower belly. His hand clasped over your mouth, index finger poking into your mouth. Your tongue drew him in, fangs nipping his finger.

It earned you a hard slam, stuffing you full, your strange body catching his thrusts beautifully. He slipped his hand over your soft cunt, working your clit for your orgasm, though you deserved no such thing. Habit, he supposed. Gloria a Dios-- the churchgoers clammed with one another. Nearly out of time, your pleasure won out, gushing over his fat cock. Miguel suckled a breath, his ego demanding him to hold out, batter your sweet cunt through your orgasm.

“I’m hungry-- Give it to me,” you bit on his finger, breaking the skin and urging blood to flow into his mouth. Your body twitched violently around his cock, drawing bright pleasure forth. “Give me your cum.”

"Stay out of my dreams."

"I don't want to," you reared your head back at him, your nose tight with wrinkles. He drew you fully onto his dick, the final thrusts were sloppy and immature-- but he held out, making you angrier by the second.

"I'll cum on the floor right here, I don't give a shit."

"No, no! Fine! I promise-- I'll let you sleep," the threat of going hungry is enough that you concede, punching your fist against the wall. He grunts in response and feeds your body with whips of cum that felt far heavier than his usual. A pleasure, far sweeter than any orgasm he could give you. Miguel soaked your sweet little body with his sticky cum, chest swelling heavily against your little back. He finishes and pulls himself free. To his surprise, your cunt doesn’t leak. Miguel staggers back with a perk in his eyebrow.

You look far better for wear than he does, clumsily zipping himself back into cum stained slacks, running his hand through his sweat-soaked hair. You recline on the wall, inspecting him. He knows how he looks. He's bruised, long gashes down his chest, and properly fucked-- a mess. The manila envelope sits forgotten by your heels, your skirt-- perfect, as though he never tore it in the first place.

“You’re not human.”

Miguel bends down, picking up the folder. Not like he needs it anymore. He does, however, need that information on Project 2099. I can help you, he hears. He catches your wide, toothy smile. You've grown fangs. He isn’t surprised.

“Not even a little.”

#miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara x you #miguel o'hara x y/n #spider 2099 x reader #miguel/reader #atsv imagines #atsv imagine #atsv fic #atsv fanfiction #miguel o'hara smut #miguel o'hara imagine #miguel o'hara/reader #across the spiderverse fic #miguel o'hara fic #miguel o'hara imagines

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zepskies · 11 months

Text

Break Me Down - Part 10

Pairing: Soldier Boy/Ben x Female Reader

Summary: You’re a private investigator by trade, but now you happily sit at a desk — leading a surveillance team at Supe Affairs. After managing to end Homelander in New York, Soldier Boy escapes custody. You are recruited for the manhunt, joining Butcher’s team.

Truly, you joined the S.A. for the right reasons. But after you become his accidental hostage, Soldier Boy will break down every single one of them…

💚 Break Me Down Masterlist

AN: Song inspo for this one is “Caught In the Balance” by Toto!

Word Count: 5,300 Tags/Warnings: Violence, hints of past trauma, hurt/comfort, angst, and a (mean) cliffhanger...

Part 10: Caught in the Balance

“Christ on a cross,” Ben muttered.

He was just trying to start his morning with some huevos rancheros.

He hid behind a mask of impassiveness, while his stomach turned at the sight of the open cooler Frank had been forced to show him.

Saul’s bloody severed head was stored inside. Ben had asked for a report on the man’s reconnaissance mission, but this was a bit thorough.

“Black Noir took out his entire unit,” Frank informed him. His tone was stoic, as usual, but his dark brown eyes betrayed his solemnity.

Ben shook his head and peered inside. “I fucking figured…yep, that’s Noir’s handiwork all right.”

The cut was clean at the neck—sliced by a blade.

Unfortunately, that was when you entered the kitchen in search of breakfast. Ben looked over at you, taking in your matching purple pajamas with a hint of a smile. Your hair was a bit messy, your face still tired with sleep.

But when Frank swiftly snapped up the cooler, you still raised a perceptive brow.

“What’s that?” you asked. Ben shared a brief glance with Frank.

“Just some steaks for later,” Ben replied. You didn’t look convinced, sniffing the air with a grimace.

“Is that why it smells like a meat locker in here?” you said.

After you grabbed a mug of coffee, you took a seat at the far end of the kitchen island. It left an open seat between you and Ben, and he noticed the distance.

“What’re Saul and Loco up to today? Think they’d be up for some Texas Hold’em?” you asked Frank.

He shook his head and tucked the cooler under his arm.

“They’re on a job,” he said.

You warmed your hands around your coffee mug and nodded. “Ah, yeah. Trying to figure out how Black Noir pulled a Lazarus?”

Both men stared back at you, confirming your assumptions.

“You do realize this begins and ends with your buddy, Stan Edgar,” you said, turning to Ben. “Vogelbaum was his chief geneticist, the Head of R&D during your time. But Stan was the Steve Jobs to his Wozniak. Together they created Homelander.”

Ben didn’t know who the fuck you were talking about there, but he got the gist of what you were saying.

Stan had played him from the beginning; he’d masterminded what went down Nicaragua, replacing Soldier Boy with Homelander, creating him in some petri dish with Ben’s DNA.

Now, it seemed Stan was partnering with the CIA to take him down. He’d even brought that cunt Noir back to life to do it. Also, likely, with the help of Ben’s DNA. (Well, probably Homelander’s, but that was still partly Ben’s.)

He couldn’t let that fucking stand, now could he?

His hand fisted on the counter, next to his forgotten plate. His brows fell over his eyes as he contemplated. He knew what he had to do next, just not exactly how he was going to do it.

“I’m gonna have to cut the head off the snake,” Ben mused out loud.

You watched him wearily, hiding a measure of concern at the darker shift in him.

Ben nodded at Frank and the cooler still under his arm, dismissing him. “We’ll talk later. Take care of that.”

Frank went with a nod, leaving you with Ben in the kitchen. You frowned.

“If you go back to the U.S., especially to New York, they’ll have a much easier time finding you,” you pointed out.

Though part of you kicked yourself for doing so. An idea was forming in your mind, and it could just mean your freedom…

And that was when Ben looked over at you once more. His eyes were guarded, more so than they had been with you of late.

“Why do you care?” he asked snidely. “You’ve barely said two fucking words to me in days.”

Which was true. You’d been carrying your grudges and your anger, both at him and at yourself, and your own conflicting emotions ever since you’d arrived at this new house.

The effects of V24 had long washed out of your system, but it still stung—that that poison had saved you. And so had these men, who had kidnapped you in the first place.

Shaking your head, you frowned at him to cover up your ongoing internal circus.

“Because you’re about to go on a fucking warpath. With, I imagine, a lot of collateral damage in store,” you replied, maybe more sharply than you’d intended.

Ben’s green eyes were dark and narrowed.

“There’s that self-righteous fucking tune,” he said. But his next words cut into you like so many knives. “You’ve been a fucking lapdog your entire life. Doing whatever daddy, Vought, or the CIA tells you to do. So remind me, why the fuck do you care so much about what I do, huh?”

For a moment, you were speechless.

Soon enough though, your shock melted into an angry glower as you tried to hide how much that actually hurt you.

A harsh breath expelled through your nose. Maybe he expected you to blow your top, like you usually would. Because that had worked so well at getting through to him in the past.

So instead, you tried to go with what seemed to work before.

“I didn’t used to,” you replied honestly. It seemed to make him pause, a little.

“When I joined the S.A., it was just my chance to break away from Vought,” you continued. “But…I don’t know. The more out of control supes we took off the street, the more I felt good about it. The work that I was doing.”

You let out a sigh, glancing down at your hands still wrapped around your cooling cup of coffee.

“You were right before, about me. I was part of it too. I helped cleaned up Vought’s messes. I made their supes look good, behind the scenes,” you said. “But I’m trying to do something that matters. Something honest, that actually makes people safer. It makes my family safer.”

That fell between you two for a while. Ben seemed to take it with his usual stoicism, but you knew him well enough by now. He’d been listening.

And eventually, he spoke.

“Then you should be grateful,” he said. “Noir. Stan. Vought. All those cocksuckers…I’m going to take them all out for fucking good.”

Are you, really? You couldn’t help but wonder. He’d been successful with Payback, and Homelander (with help from Butcher and Hughie).

But Vought was a machine. It had been an institution for decades. A multibillion conglomerate with a thousand and one hydra tentacles of ways to fuck people over…but if anyone was powerful enough to try to bring it all down, it was Soldier Boy.

Still, power isn’t everything. You thought of how he’d lost control against Noir, and how he’d blown up a hole in your bedroom ceiling and couldn’t remember much about it afterwards. Ben was still a mess.

But you considered a world where Vought couldn’t create supes anymore, like pop tarts coming out of the damn toaster. You considered what Ben could accomplish, now that he was properly motivated to end his six-month sabbatical.

And you considered what would happen if you helped him do it.

This is not the time to be reckless, the more rational part of your mind reminded.

And yet, you just had to continue following the impulsive voice that had led you for weeks.

“You can’t just run at this head on, guns blazing,” you told him. “Stan’s too smart for that.”

Ben eyed you with guarded interest.

“You look like you’ve got something in mind,” he said.

You nodded, though your lips pursed. You hated this idea, even though it had been growing since this conversation began. And you couldn’t even believe you were suggesting it, really.

“We can get into Vought under the radar, if you let me make a call,” you said. Ben’s expression tightened. Yours did too, with the beginnings of anxiety.

“Who do you need to call?” he asked.

“My father,” you replied.

As Stan Edgar’s Chief of Security, Jon didn’t often receive calls from phone numbers he didn’t recognize. Certainly not to his personal, blacklisted cell phone. He took the call into his personal office and shut the door behind him.

He answered it with a healthy measure of suspicion, “Hello?”

The last voice he expected to greet him was his eldest daughter’s.

“Hey. It’s me,” you replied.

Jon’s expression slackened. He sat down heavily at his desk, and your name fell from his lips in disbelief.

“You’re alive,” he said in genuine wonderment. “I thought…I thought you were dead.”

Your response was dry. “Before or after you sent Black Noir after us?”

Jon frowned, shifting back in his chair.

“That was Stan’s call,” he said. “There was no sign of you in any of our reports.”

“Then you weren’t looking very hard,” you said.

Your tone was matter-of-fact, unyielding. It was so like you that he had to smile.

“If nothing else, you were ambitious going after Soldier Boy,” he said, rubbing his chin. It reminded him that he needed a shave. “I should’ve known you were still alive…it seems I taught you better than I thought.”

On the other line, you had Ben’s cell in your hand while you spoke to your father on speaker. Ben and Frank were both in the room with you, sitting in chairs on either side. Frank suggested this conference room beside the study to conduct the call.

However, you tried not to look at either man while you tried to focus on getting through this.

“I managed to grab a phone from one of my guards,” you said into the speaker. “I can’t reach out to the CIA. They think I’m a damn turncoat at this point. But if you really want Soldier Boy, I can tell you where he’s going to be.”

“…Where?” Jon asked.

You glanced up at Ben before you replied. He gave you a nod.

“He plans to be in New York in three days.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” you said wryly. “To find Black Noir. It’s all he’s been moaning on about. He’s kind of a simpleton that way. Tit for tat on the vengeance beat.”

Ben gave you a dark look for that one, but you ignored him.

“Well, I can certainly give him a meeting with Noir,” said Jon. His voice shifted into that calculating tone you knew all too well. “That, and much more.”

“Good. Give him a big enough distraction, and I can lose his crew,” you replied.

There was a beat on the other line. You and your companions waited, for his agreement, for some kind of confirmation, but he didn’t give you that just yet.

“Are you all right?” Jon asked. “How’s your sister?”

Your lips pursed. “Clearly, I’m peachy. Are you in on this?”

“Of course, sweetheart. I’ll help you get out of there, don’t worry,” he said. He almost sounded like a father. It made anxiety crawl up through your lungs, into your throat.

“It’ll be good to see you,” he added. “What’s it been, a year? More?”

You swallowed your unease.

“Let me make this clear,” you said. “This is just business. If you want to help me, fine. But don’t make it more than that.”

There was another pause, a heavy sigh.

“Oh, believe me. I know you wouldn’t be calling unless this was your last resort,” Jon said.

You tried to swallow, and found resistance.

“Good,” you said. “I’m glad we have that understanding.”

“See you soon,” he said. You ended the call afterwards.

Both men had been monitoring you throughout the exchange, but it was Ben’s gaze you felt, hot across your profile. Even now, he watched you behind impassive eyes. You wished you knew what he was thinking.

Regardless of things you’d said when you were angry, Ben knew too much about you now. There was no way he didn’t see it—how you were putting your all into keeping yourself together.

You stared back at him, but he didn’t ask if you were all right. He just nodded.

“Are we done?” he asked.

You scoffed, hiding your disappointment, and maybe the beginning of tears burning in your eyes. You blinked past them with an unsettled breath.

“Yeah,” you replied. “We’re done.”

Ben watched you get up, and you let the cell phone clatter on the table before you left.

Late that night, Ben wandered the dark halls of this house. He was trying to familiarize himself, and remember why the hell he bought this gaudy thing.

It was another big, empty shell that didn’t have much life in it—even less than the last place in Medellin. At least that one had character, surrounded by the mountains and wildflowers.

This house, while beautiful, felt stale; like an old photograph in sepia tones.

He found himself stopping outside your door. It was late, and he couldn’t hear your TV on, so you were probably asleep by now. If he stood close enough to the door, his superior hearing could just make out your soft, even breaths.

He knew you were pissed at him, but really, he thought you were being a bitch about it.

I fucking saved her, he thought sourly, and not for the first time. She should be fucking grateful I lifted a finger.

But then, he remembered just how pale you were when he found you in the helicopter, after the blast, and after he made his escape. Ben saw how wide your eyes got when you saw what had hurt you—that giant fucking piece of wood embedded in your body.

He remembered the sound of your scream, blood on his hands. He could feel your life slipping through his fingers…and for once, he wasn’t okay with letting it happen.

So he stopped it. Or at least, he ordered Frank to do it.

And afterwards, Ben couldn’t believe how you turned on him. That you were actually angry at him for saving your life!

What kind of idiot are you. He’d wanted to grab you and shake you until you saw good sense.

You were stronger on V. You were powerful, almost his equal. And Ben could admit, if only to himself, that he craved that: having an equal.

When he’d had Countess, that bitch, he thought he had his life sorted. He’d figured he had time to settle, to have a family…

But now that life was gone. His asshole team was gone. What the fuck was left?

Ben leaned against your door, as if he could brace against the depths of thoughts he hadn’t allowed himself to fall into since he left the U.S.

Still, he couldn’t help but think…after he became a supe, he’d reveled in standing alone, in the spotlight. When did it start to get harder?

Just then, his sensitive ears picked up on something: your breath hitched. He paused, listening closely. Soon enough, he heard a whimper.

Ben debated for a few seconds, but he decided to open the door, quietly twisting the knob and pushing it open. His eyes found you in the dark, curled in on yourself on the bed.

He drew closer until he reached your bedside, and even heard your pulse starting to race. His lips drew into a frown as he read the distress in your features. You were dreaming, and whatever it was, it didn’t look pleasant.

Ben hesitated, but he kneeled by your bed and carefully slid your hair away from your face. You were an angry, stubborn, mouthy little thing. He could just hear your voice now.

You still haven’t even apologized!

The audacity you had, to demand shit from him.

But then, he almost sighed when he realized he was glaring down at your sleeping form.

What the fuck’re you doing, anyway? He shook his head at himself and got up to leave, but your voice stopped him.

It was a pained whimper, a shuddering breath. Ben’s attention shifted back to you as he watched you tighten in on yourself, your hand curling into a fist that pressed against your throat. He didn’t know if you were trying to choke yourself, or fend someone off—

And then, Ben had to struggle against a firebrand of anger under his skin.

He finally realized what you were probably dreaming about; who you were fighting, even in your sleep.

He regretted letting you call your father. Maybe he even regretted pretending he didn’t notice…how talking to your dad had clearly fucked with you.

But he wasn’t about to show weakness. Not in front of his men…

With a quiet sigh, Ben reached out and soothed a hand over the top of your head. His fingers slid through your loose hair, stopping when they reached some tangles. Slow and careful, he repeated this. Until finally, your breathing seemed to ease up.

He unclenched your fingers out of their loosening fist, and he absently stroked his thumb over the back of your hand. You’re one deep sleeper…

You sighed and shifted in your sleep, resting your cheek easier on the pillow. Your brows were still knitted, but after a while, even your face relaxed.

Ben placed your hand down, giving the back of it one more tentative swipe.

And then he left, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click. You never woke up to catch him.

A helicopter took you from the house to a private jet with Ben, Frank, Loco, and a few other hired men for the mission. You sat across from Ben, both seats facing one another. Your eyes were narrowed as you watched him accept a glass of whiskey.

“Where’s Saul?” you asked. Ben gave you a side glance, and with a quiet exhale, he answered you.

“He’s dead.”

You nodded through your sad, angry frown. You’d had a feeling that was what he and Frank had been hiding the other day, but you hadn’t wanted to face it.

“Black Noir?” you asked.

Ben nodded and sipped at his whiskey. “Yeah.”

“Do you even care?” you asked. Ben eyed you a bit sharper, but he didn’t comment.

“A couple of knocked banks didn’t get you this jet, on top of everything else,” you remarked, gesturing at your surroundings. “Where’s the money coming from?”

He’d bought back at least two properties from Vought, along with all the other shit he’d likely been blowing his money on for the last few months.

Ben sipped at his drink. You imagined it was hard for him to cross his legs in his super suit, otherwise he might’ve, to complete the air of asshole-ish nonchalance. You’d decided to dress comfortable, but prepared in yoga pants, sneakers, and a matching activewear jacket.

“Why do you think I settled in Colombia, of all places?” he asked you. His lips curved into a smirk and he shot you a wink. “Best drugs in town.”

His assets were frozen by the government, which meant he’d gotten the money from somewhere…

Your face soon fell as you realized your own stupidity. The shady characters he’d recruited, not just Frank, Saul, and Loco, but other men too that would occasionally traipse through the house. Plus the mysterious “jobs” they would routinely disappear on, sometimes for days on end.

Ben had infiltrated a drug cartel.

“Frank and his men were the muscle for some hot-shot kingpin, until I cut the head off the snake,” Ben revealed. “Which is what I’m about to do to good ole’ Stan.”

You crossed your arms with a deep frown.

“Every time I think I’ve got you figured out, I discover a new scum-ridden layer,” you said.

His lips quirked humorlessly. “Disappointed?”

You just shook your head and looked out the window of the jet.

“Mostly in myself,” you replied.

Ben didn’t show how your words sunk into him. He continued drinking.

Hours later, you all arrived at JFK Airport in New York. The jet landed far enough away from the larger commercial planes, but somehow that made you even more nervous.

You felt like you were stepping out into the Wild West as you disembarked from the jet and landed on the concrete ground of your home city.

Ben’s presence burned behind you, guiding you with a hand on the small of your back. Frank and Loco had the bags (and weapons). But before you could ask where to go next, Ben paused with a thoughtful frown on his face.

You opened your mouth to ask what was wrong, but then you heard it. A thin whistling in the air that couldn’t be attributed to an aircraft.

Ben pulled out his shield from its sheath on his back, and with his free hand he grabbed you, yanking you into his chest. He all but dragged you several steps away from the jet and then kneeled to cover both of you when a missile soared overhead.

It speared into the jet, destroying it with an epic explosion that seared across Ben’s back. He felt the heat, but it only singed the back of his neck without even burning his skin. His suit and helmet protected him from the rest, just as his shield and body protected you.

You could claim to hate him all you wanted, but your hands were braced against his chest as you leaned into him. And when you looked up, your eyes were wide with shock and fear.

“Go,” he ordered, pushing you towards Frank. You went with him, but you still looked back at Ben as worry undeniably claimed your heart. Loco and the rest of his team stood behind the supe.

Meanwhile, Butcher had appeared on the tarmac. With a rocket launcher, naturally.

He wore a smirk along with one of his customary, glaring Hawaiian shirts and long black trench coat. The hem of it fluttered as the wind blew between the long span of distance between him and Ben.

“So the CIA’s partnering with Vought now? How does that fucking work?” Ben remarked.

Butcher was joined by Hughie, Kimiko, and Frenchie, and then entire units of CIA and SWAT teams piling out of several armored cars.

“I’ll admit, you’re a tricky bugger to track down,” Butcher said. “But consider this your debt to fucking society paid in full.”

He launched yet another projectile from his gun. You gasped, but even though Frank pulled you towards the airport building and away from the fight, you still craned your head back to watch Ben bat away the missile with his shield. It landed far away, spilling concrete where it hit and shaking the ground.

Then a warning star bolt hit in front of Frank’s feet, stopping both of you short. You looked up and found Annie and M.M., the latter with an impressive gun in both hands.

“Stop right there, motherfucker,” M.M. ordered. “Time to let her go.”

“You okay?” Annie asked you. You had to smile, despite yourself.

“Yeah. It’s good to see you guys,” you said. Frank’s hand tightened on your arm, not enough to hurt, but enough to keep you from leaving his side. He was stronger than usual once again, with the help of V24. He wielded his own gun trained on M.M.

“Step aside,” he ordered.

Annie pursed her lips at shot a star bolt at him. You took your opportunity and kicked at the back of Frank’s knee. It made his grip falter just enough that when M.M. jumped in to fight him, you scrambled away and Annie took your hand.

While the two men fought, you finally noticed the black sedan the pulled up on the tarmac behind you. The tinted driver’s window rolled down, revealing your father in black sunglasses.

Annie followed the path of your gaze in confusion. “Who the hell’s that?”

“Annie,” you squeezed her hand. “You know I’m your friend, right?”

Her brows furrowed, especially when you let go of her. “What’s wrong? What’re you about to do?”

“I need you to trust me,” you said.

You knew she didn’t understand, nor did she want to let you go. But you ran away from her, towards the car. She meant to follow you, but Frank held M.M. at bay long enough to aim a few well-placed bullets between you and Annie.

It stopped her long enough for you to climb into the black sedan before it peeled away, speeding around to the private gate of the airport. While you caught your breath, Jonathan’s gaze peered at you through the rearview mirror, after he lowered his sunglasses. The car was empty except for you and him.

Good, you thought. That meant he was the only one you had to watch closely.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Just fine,” you breathed. “Where to now?”

“Let’s get you to safety,” Jon said. You nodded. And when his focus was back on the road, you discreetly retrieved a tracking device from your pocket and placed it on the side of your seat, hidden from view.

Ben had given it to you before getting off the plane.

The device was small and flat, with a smooth back that would attach to almost any surface.

You rolled it experimentally between your fingers and looked up at Ben. His face was harder to read than ever.

“Why are you trusting me with this?” you asked.

Ben’s lips quirked wryly, but there was little humor in it. His hand, half-covered by his glove, reached up to brush your chin.

“I’m not,” he replied. “I expect you’ll jump at the chance to get back with Butcher and your asshole friends. But either way, I’m gonna find out if you were worth it.”

You frowned up at him. It was hard to believe that for all you two had been through together, this was really how it was going to be from now on.

“If I was worth saving?” you challenged.

He didn’t answer you, but his hand fell away from your face.

The car soon made its way out of the airport and onto the open road. There you were greeted by the familiar highways and approaching skyscrapers of New York City. You would be relieved to be home (almost), if you weren’t so tense.

“I need to see Stan Edgar,” you told your father.

Jon’s gaze met yours in the rearview.

“I have intel that he’ll be interested in,” you said.

“Okay, and that is?” he asked.

“About Supe Affairs, Soldier Boy, take your pick. But it’s the kind of information you don’t play Telephone with.”

“Mr. Edgar is a busy man,” Jon started to say.

“And you’re his Chief of Security,” you cut him off. “Who’s wiping his ass while you’re here with me?”

Jon sighed. “Always with that fucking mouth. Do you want me to relocate you? Put you in a safe house until we finish dealing with Soldier Boy?”

And give your father abject control over your life? I think not, you glared at the thought.

“I want to speak to Stan. I don’t care if it’s here, or Vought HQ, or in the middle of Times fucking Square. Take me to his damn office,” you demanded.

Maybe Ben had rubbed off on you a little.

“Or pull over right now, and I’ll make my way to the Tower myself,” you said. Jon came to a red light and had time to regard you in disbelief.

“Jesus…all right, let’s see if Stan will see you,” he said.

You let out a breath and finally allowed yourself to sit back in your seat. When the light turned green, Jon took the correct fork in the road that would lead you to Vought Tower.

And before you left the car, you made sure to grab the tracking device from the side of your chair, carrying it with you into your bra.

It was strange to enter this building again. You had worked here for five years, but it had been a year and a half since you’d returned.

It was still as busy as ever in the halls. Though you noticed the ratio of employees to tourists was about 30-70. It was incredible what taking out Vought’s golden psycho could do to a company’s profits.

Now they just needed to put the final nail in the coffin.

Jon led you to the elevator, and all the way up the Tower to Stan’s office. You had only been to this room once, when you were hired, but it was more or less how you remembered. Very spacious, minimalist furniture in a desk and a slim couch set, complete with a long glass coffee table.

But Stan was nowhere to be found. You frowned.

“Where is he?” you asked. Suspicion and awareness pricked at your spine.

You turned around to face your father, just in time to slap away something metallic headed for your neck.

It was a syringe. You watched it spin across the floor, and you glared back at him incredulously. He had enforced his will on you before, but he’d usually managed that with his hands, not with drugs. Maybe Vought had changed him too.

“All right, easy,” Jon said, raising placating hands. He drew closer as you backed away from him.

“I had a feeling Soldier Boy let you go,” he said. “That you’d probably planned this little bait and switch with him from the beginning.”

Heat made your cheeks flush as you glared back at him. Your father quirked a smile.

“Despite what you’d like to believe, I know you better than anyone,” Jon said.

You begged to differ on that…but part of you knew he was right.

“You did what you had to do with Soldier Boy. I understand,” he said. “Playing both sides of the game was smart. But I’m going to make sure you’re safe.”

“By sedating me?” you shouted. Your voice quivered, both with rage and fear. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He knew that you’d tried to play him, but his mistake was thinking you’d been playing Ben too.

“Later we’ll talk. When you’ve calmed down,” Jon said.

He reached out to grab your arm, but you evaded him. He called your name in warning.

You just got into a defensive stance. And the next time he tried for your arm, you snapped back with a fist to the bridge of his nose. It sent Jon’s head back with a grunt.

When his hand came back bloody from his nose, his demeanor shifted, from placating to stern. His cool gaze met yours, and you stared back at him stubbornly, poised for a fight.

“You little brat,” he said, wiping his nose again. “I fucking pulled you out of the fire, and you’re being difficult. As usual.”

“You didn’t save me,” you retorted. Emotion burned in your eyes, but your anger (and a frisson of fear) allowed you to clamp it down. “You never have.”

You shot out a preemptive strike, but your father surprised you by grabbing your wrist. And he backhanded you hard enough to make you see stars.

AN: 🫣 Welp, we're back in the U.S. SB is storming the castle, but at what cost...

Next Time:

A moment later, Frank patched through while he struggled and fought.

“She needs help,” he said gravely.

Ben took his hand off the comm, gritting his teeth. Black Noir was still waiting on him, attuned to Ben’s every move as the other supe brandished one of his blades.

Shit, Ben thought. He needed to end this.

Right fucking now.

Keep Reading: PART 11

Soldier Boy Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Series Tag List:

@deans-spinster-witch @this-is-me19 @waynes-multiverse @pallographsunspot @samanddeaninatrenchcoat @spalady26 @spnwoman @syrma-sensei @wirdbeimaufhebengebunden @muhahaha303 @123passwort

@xoxovienna @magnificentnightmarehadi @lollag0w0 @globetrotter28 @nancymcl @ashbatz @secretdreamlandmentality @kristophalis @wonderland2022 @emily-winchester @shelh93 @sl33pylilbunny @spoonmynoodle @chernayawidow

@buckybarnes-1917 @asgardprincess97 @sometimes-i-sing @itsyellow @karnellius @kimberleymjw @is-this-a-febreze-commercial @iamsapphine @sanscas @se-fucking-hun @lassie-bird @jessjad @yepimthatperson @fromcaintodean @stoneyggirl2

@spnfamily-j2 @im-a-slut-for-fluff @lacilou @venicesem @mimaria420 @beautiful-life-coded @tearsfortheyouth @agalliasi @chriszgirl92 @kazsrm67

#caught in the balance #soldier boy #the boys #soldier boy/ben #soldier boy x female reader #soldier boy x reader #soldier boy x you #the boys season 3 #soldier boy/ben x reader #the boys au #enemies to lovers #frenemies to lovers #private investigator!reader #the boys amazon #soldier boy fic #soldier boy smut #break me down #Part 10 #zepskies writes

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thanotaphobia · 8 months

Text

They both startle awake to the sound of screaming.

Missa is upright before he's even conscious, blankets a tangle around his arms, heart beating like he's just run a marathon. The screaming has already died down, but there are echoes of it in the air; Philza, rolling over beside him and pushing himself up on his elbows. Rubbing bleary eyes with one hand, the other occupied by his communicator.

"Chayanne," Missa gasps, "Los huevos-"

"It's Tallulah," Phil cuts him off. His voice is raspy. Already, Missa's heart has started to calm, but when he speaks it jumps a little once more. "She gets nightmares."

He turns the blue screen of the communicator towards Missa, who squints at it. It displays a small black and white security image of the egg's room downstairs, Chayanne and Tallulah's beds visible.

"Chayanne gets to her first, usually," Phil says, and Missa makes out two small heads of hair in Tallulah's bed. His chest aches, and when he looks at Phil, the other man looks exhausted. The bags under his eyes seem deeper, somehow. "It's fine."

"I will go to them," Missa says. He shoves the blankets away- they're gathered to his side of the bed in their sleep, but Phil doesn't seem bothered.

"Nah," Phil murmurs, already pushing himself further up and out of bed. "I'll go."

"I can help," Missa insists. Philza turns to look at him, as though he's tasting the air between them like a snake, sensing the thick desperation and guilt in Missa's voice. "I have to- make up for things."

"You don't have to make up for anything, mate," Phil tells him. For a moment, his fingers twitch, and in the quiet, intimate darkness of their bedroom, Missa almost thinks Phil is going to reach out. But then he looks away, and his hands still. "But you can come, if you want. They won't mind. Hell, it'll help."

He's halfway out of bed before Phil's done. "I will," he says. He's determined to settle back into their lives, really make it up to them, no matter what Phil says. He might as well start here. Before Phil opens the door, Missa catches up to him and impulsively grabs his hand, intertwining their fingers.

Both of them stop. Phil looks back at him.

"You are not alone in this," Missa says, a little strained, a lot terrified. He stumbles over his words, struggling to translate what he wants to say, the complexity of his emotion. He settles on: "Estoy contigo hasta la muerte."

In the dark, Phil's lips press together. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," he says quietly.

"It won't," Missa says, with more confidence then he feels. Something about the night, this night, makes him feel brave. He squeezes Phil's hand.

Phil squeezes back.

"¿Los huevos?" Missa prompts after a moment, and Phil blinks back to action. He drags his gaze away from Missa's face to the keypad by the door, nodding.

"Uh, right-" he says. "The eggs." Phil clears his throat. He does not let go of Missa's hand. Missa is one hundred percent fine with that. "Now, Tallulah's probably going to want another story, so I hope you have some good ones-"

Missa smiles to himself, and for a moment, lets himself believe they'll be okay.

#qsmp #pissa #death duo #qsmp philza #qsmp missasinfonia #philza #missasinfonia #this can interpreted either romantic or platonic w/e you want #qsmp fanfic #fanfic #mcyt #if the spanish is wrong blease let me know #i only took five years of it in high school and the rest is just what im picking up from memory and streams #my writing

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ohmenai · 3 months

Text

The Dominican Boy and His Explosive Eggplant

There was something particularly sensual in the way Aaron stood up in front of the fogged mirror in the bathroom. He had just returned from the gym, his body still throbbing with the adrenaline from the workout, the freckles scattered across his skin were a celestial map that roamed even his most intimate regions. With his hands raised above his head, he showed off armpits so invitingly smooth that, coupled with his dark, wide nipples on a rounded torso, they created the perfect mix between innocence and provocation.

He was not a skinny guy, but his curves only intensified the desire he exuded. His wide hips and deep-bellied stomach emphasized his masculinity in a unique way, just like his member, a curved cock that was already beginning to react to the warm moisture of the bathroom. The reddened glans peeked out boldly, as if wanting to escape from the pressure of its own desire. And indeed, his dick looked like an eggplant in full bloom, curved and majestic, ready for its most intimate session. The best part was that his well-proportioned anatomy was completely shaved, highlighting even more the prominence of his gigantic hanging 'huevos'.

He barely needed to touch himself to reach climax, his arousal flowed naturally and powerfully. A rapid breath, a barely audible moan, and closed eyes with a blush on the cheeks were his only warnings. Suddenly, the eruption occurred. Aaron, the broad-hipped Dominican boy, came in jets without even stroking himself. The 'leche' of his pleasure pulsed intermittently, dousing the tiles with its milky evidence.

Aaron gives me a complicit and playful smile, his eyes still closed, enjoying the last spasms of an orgasm that didn't need hands to be unforgettable. It was the perfect prelude before submerging into the hot water of the shower waiting for him, another solo pleasure session to end the day.

Available now at Fanvue and Patreon

#gay hot #gay #gay men #gay male #gayhot #gay black #gay latin men #gayai #gay art #ai men #ai guys #gay ai #aigay #latino #chubby #gay chubby #gay young

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quitealotofsodapop · 5 months

Note

Dijiste que Macaque es Estéril porque absorbió muy pocos nutrientes en la luna y si tuviera un embarazo de la forma normal morirá; por lo que Wukong tiene que hacer todo el trabajo XD

En otro tema, ¿Macaque se entero en algún momento que SWK tenían la misma edad? (hablo de cuando se quedo mucho tiempo horneándose en el huevo)

translated via google;

"You said that Macaque is Sterile because it absorbed very few nutrients on the moon and if it had a pregnancy in the normal way it would die; so Wukong has to do all the work XD

On another topic, did Macaque ever find out that SWK were the same age? (I'm talking about when it stayed in the egg for a long time)"

Macaque is pretty much sterile/infertile yes, in a sense. Even with his species being able to reproduce asexually, his body simply did not develop right in the dark vaccum of the moon to be able to create a child safely.

However, that doesn't disclude him from *accidentally* creating a stone egg when his body was dragged into the Underworld by Lady Bone Demon...

In fact, as a compromise. His body decided to "split the effort" and created TWO very small slow-cooking eggs that later became a pair of tiny "clones" that arrive as premature newborns.

Rumble and Savage.

Macaque is never makign kids that way again. Especially if he's revived Stone Egg-pregnant. A certain monkey king is getting yelled at for child support for "technically" causing the process. XD

#stone egg talk #lego monkie kid #lmk #sun wukong #liu er mihou #six eared macaque #pregnancy tw #SWK is MK's stone egg dad au #lmk eclipse twins

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mariacallous · 2 months

Text

La Bola is a classic Madrid tavern. Located on a quiet backstreet, it is painted lacquer red on the outside, with a dark wood and colored tile interior. We arrived during a busy Sunday lunch service. The place was filled with multigenerational families and loud groups of friends who, like us, were there for the jewel of the crown, the most Madridian dish of all: Cocido madrileño, a stew that La Bola has perfected in its 150 years of operation.

Cocido madrileño (“the stew of Madrid” in Spanish) is a rustic dish of chickpeas, vegetables such as potatoes and cabbage, and a variety of pork cuts, sausages and marrow bones. At La Bola it is still cooked the traditional way, layered in individual clay pots over coal. The stew is served over two courses, making for a full meal. First, the busy waiter poured the cooking liquid out of the cocido pot into a soup bowl filled with vermicelli noodles, to be eaten like a soup. The chickpeas, vegetables and meats were placed on a platter for the main course (some serve the chickpeas for a second course and the meat with veggies for third). The scene repeated itself at almost every table in the packed restaurant, with guests watching in anticipation as the waiters laid out the cocido spread.

But as it turns out, the roots of this Madrid staple, this pork-laden stew, are deep in the medieval Sephardi community of Spain. Specifically, in a Shabbat overnight stew called adafina (AKA dafina, tfina and s’khina).

To understand the dish’s amazing evolution, we need to look way back.

Muslims conquered the Iberian Peninsula in the early eighth century. They brought religious moderation to Al Andalus, in addition to new dishes, spices, fruits and cooking techniques. Since Jews and Muslims both avoid pork, their cuisines at the time were very similar.

Cooking stews overnight, over or under coal, was a technique used by Muslims while still in the Levant. But in Al Andalus, it was the Jews who were most identified with this cooking method, mainly because it was a good practice for Shabbat, when lighting fire is not allowed. The word adafina comes from the Arabic word for “hidden” or “buried,” since the dish was cooked while buried under coal, though the dish is also known as ani or calinete (“hot” in Spanish) or hamin (“a warm dish” in Hebrew, a name that was used for Shabbat dishes in the Talmud).

Adafina, just like cocido madrileño, consists of chickpeas, vegetables, meat (lamb) with the occasional addition of hard-boiled eggs (huevos haminados) cooked together at a low temperature overnight. Adafina is still prepared by Tunisian and Moroccan Jews of Sephardi descent around the world. Through the years, more ingredients were added to the pot, most notably potatoes from the new world, as well as wheat berries, sometimes tied in a cloth, and a sweet loaf of ground beef.

According to author and food historian Claudia Roden, Moroccan adafina was served in several courses, first potatoes and eggs with plenty of the soup, then the wheat and/or rice and lastly the meat with chickpeas. Just like the cocido is served in Madrid today.

The first cookbook available to us from the Iberian Peninsula is the 13th century Andalusian “Kitab Al Tabikh.” It includes six Jewish recipes, and two of them use the technique of covering the pot with another pot of coal to keep it warm. A third recipe, described as “Stuffed, Buried Jewish Dish,” is called Madfūn, an Arabic word that comes from the same root as adafina, to bury. Although the recipe is different to what we know as adafina today, the method of cooking it for a long time under coal is the same.

With the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many left to Portugal, North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, where for 500 years they kept their prayers, language (Judeo-Spanish or Ladino) and their unique cuisine, which is why adafina is present in Moroccan homes today.

Those who stayed in Spain were forced to convert to Catholicism. To enforce the sincere conversion and prevent the conversos (converts) from practicing their Judaism in secret, the monarchy used the Inquisition, an institution that kept its devastating work well into the 19th century.

One of the ways the Inquisition spied on and convicted heretic conversos was by observing their food. They published guides with detailed descriptions of Shabbat dishes, matzah on Passover, eggplant dishes and the avoidance of pork. Interestingly, the conversos themselves, having no other resource available, used those same lists in order to learn how to keep their Jewish customs alive. Neighbors and servants reported their suspicions to the Inquisition authorities. And so adafina became one of the most incriminating dishes, punishable by cruel execution.

A letter written by an eager informer to King Ferdinand in 1516 says that “nearly all the residents of this city [Seville] smell Jews, them, their houses and the doors of their houses, because they are gluttons and pigs, and they nourish themselves with casseroles, garlic and adafinas,” as documented in Hélène Jawhara Piñer’s book “Jews, Food, and Spain.”

But if the roots of cocido madrileño are, in fact, in the Jewish Sephardi adafina, why is it full of pork?

While many conversos saw avoiding pork as the most important Jewish law to keep, others deliberately consumed pork in public in order to avoid any suspicion. “The conversos of Majorca were known as Xuetes (“xua” meaning “bacon” in Majorcan Catalan), explains Paul Freedman in his book “Why Food Matters.”

“Because their ancestors cooked and ate bacon in public to show their sincerity, but they only did this once or twice a year.”

“The one way to demonstrate that they [the conversos] now are Christian was to eat pork, so they introduced pork into the most famous dish they ate, adafina,” Mara Verdasco Arevalo, La Bola Tavern’s manager and owner, told me in an email.

For hundreds of years after the expulsion, Spain had no Jewish community and the Jewish roots of many staples of Spanish cuisine were all but forgotten. In recent years, Spain has been making an effort to revive its elaborate Jewish history. Spanish governments have worked to renew Jewish quarters around the country, began issuing Spanish passports to Sephardim and opened new Jewish museums. Hopefully a thorough research of Spain’s culinary heritage, acknowledging the Muslim and Jewish roots, will be part of it.

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threadandlace · 10 months

Text

In the Auditorium- Seamstress for the Band series, part ten (12.0k)

Masterlist- to start at the beginning

Your head was pounding and your stomach was doing flips when you woke up. Sake doesn’t sit well with ice cream. You barely made it to the toilet before everything from the night before came back up.

Leaning back against the cool porcelain of the tub, you took a few deep breaths to steady yourself before flushing the toilet and moving to the sink. The idea of toothpaste made you sick to your stomach again, so you used the bottle of mouthwash on the counter to quickly rinse out your mouth.

The clock on the bedside table read 8:15 am and you groaned before flopping back into bed. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep now. The thought of breakfast nearly made you sick again, but you knew that by the time you were truly awake, you’d need something bland on your stomach. Or greasy. You decided to chance it and texted the group.

You: anyone up? I need something greasy, stat.

You waited for a reply, figuring everyone else was likely still asleep. A minute later your phone pinged.

Danny: I’m up! There’s a café down the street, who’s down?

Jake: I’ll get Josh up. Give me a few.

Danny: Meet in the lobby?

Jake: perfect

You picked out a shirt and jeans and slipped on a pair of Birkenstocks before throwing your hair into a bun. Checking the mirror on your way out, you realized you looked rough. They’ve seen me look worse.

Danny was the first one you saw when you got down to the lobby. “Good morning,” he greeted with a warm smile. He always looked impeccable, not a single curl out of place. “I guess you slept well?” you asked as you took a seat at the bench beside where he was standing. He chuckled. “No, actually, Sam was mumbling in his sleep the entire night. I think having sugar late at night really just wreaks havoc on him.”

You nodded in response. “Is he up?” you asked. “Oh, no, he won’t be up for another hour probably. Maybe more. I’ll just bring him something back,” Danny replied as he turned to face you. “You feeling okay?” he asked, his eyes closing slightly as he searched your face. “Oh, just had a little too much to drink last night. Do I look that rough?” you asked as your hands raised to your hair, which you tried to smooth out. “Oh, no, you look great! As always! You just, um, seemed a little off is all. Wanted to make sure you’re doing okay. Touring is… a lot” he added, giving you a slight grin. “Nope, I’m great. Tired, hungover, but still good!” you said, standing when you saw Josh and Jake exit the elevator.

Josh looked like he felt about the same way you did. “Morning,” he said quietly to you and Danny. “You okay, brother?” Danny asked him as he wrapped his arm around Josh’s shoulders. “Don’t jostle him too much or he may get sick,” Jake said with a laugh. “That bad?” Danny asked and Josh nodded as he pulled a pair of dark sunglasses out of his pocket and slid them on. You pulled your own pair out of your purse as you all walked outside, the bright sunlight burning your eyes. “You too?” Jake asked as you walked down the stretch of sidewalk. “Oh yeah, I was pretty sick this morning. I’m better now,” you replied as you watched Danny hit the button for the cross walk. “Ice cream and sake doesn’t mix,” Josh added, repeating your own sentiments. Jake laughed as he followed Danny across the street, you and Josh following behind.

“Ah, Josh, they have bloody Mary’s! Your favorite!” Jake teased after you all had been seated at the breakfast place, menus opened. Josh looked up over his sunglasses at Jake, “I don’t even want to think about vodka right now.” Jake and Danny laughed and you shot Josh a sympathetic look from across the table. You took a sip of your black coffee, something you only craved when you were hungover. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink coffee black. Last night really killed you, didn’t it?” Danny asked from his spot across from you. You nodded your answer before turning back to the menu.

“Huevos rancheros, thank god,” Jake muttered from beside you. “That’s definitely what I’m getting,” you said, closing your menu decisively. Jake shot you a smile, “good choice. Great minds think alike.” Jake pointed to Josh and whispered to you. “He’s going to get eggs benedict, and I will bet money on that.” You chuckled before shaking your head. “I know better than to bet against a twin.”

Sure enough, Jake was right- Josh ordered eggs benedict with a side of potatoes. Danny got a BLT and you and Jake ordered huevos rancheros. “A BLT? At,” you checked your phone, “9 am?” He nodded, “I don’t usually love breakfast food. And I’m always down for a BLT.” Josh pointed at him. “Daniel, bacon IS a breakfast food. As is the toast that it comes on.” Danny rolled his eyes. “The lettuce makes it a lunch or dinner food. Or brunch. I’ll give you brunch-adjacent at best,” Danny replied, and Josh chuckled.

The four of you discussed plans for the day and the three musicians discussed the setlist. “Look, I’d like to never do Highway Tune ever again,” Josh said, pausing to take a bite of his food before continuing. “Shit is overplayed, overrated and just… I’m ready to cut it from the setlist. Forever.”

Jake shook his head, “it’s what got us here, Josh. It stays.” Josh raised his hand, about to continue when Danny spoke up. “Why don’t we do some sort of combination? Add something to Safari? Give them both, but mashed up? You know how much they love it when we give them something different. And, this way you don’t have to sing the whole thing, but we still pay homage to the original stuff,” Danny added, giving a compromise. Josh sat back, giving his suggestion some thought. “What do you think?” Josh asked, turning to lock eyes with you as he waited for an answer. “Oh, I am not the person to be asking. I’m not even completely sure what songs you’re talking about” you said, raising both hands up.

Danny pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned it to show you a music video playing on the screen. “This one is Highway Tune,” he said and you turned the volume up just enough to hear the song. You gasped as soon as you saw the band come into view. “How long ago was this?” you asked.

“Has to be about… seven? Eight years?” Jake replied, taking another sip of his coffee. “And that’s you?” you asked Josh as you turned the screen to show him. He nodded slightly, giving you a reserved smile. “God, you guys were so young. It’s crazy to see how far you’ve come,” you mused as you watched the video, taking everything in.

“I will say, I think our style has evolved. Thank goodness,” Danny pondered with a chuckle. “I don’t know… I think the completely ripped shirt was a good look for Josh,” you replied with a laugh. Josh rolled his eyes, “let’s not talk about it.”

“No, let’s!” Jake shot back, pointing at him. “You were such a hotshot back then. Would you believe that he pulled the most girls out of all of us? Looking like a guy straight out of a frat. Do you remember that one girl that produced the video for us? At the bar? Such a classy guy,” Jake reminisced, Josh clearly uncomfortable as he fidgeted with the napkin on the table in front of him. “Or,” Danny continued, “the one girl Texas? Where we had to wait outside of her apartment in the van because her roommate was home? God, that was hilarious. Luckily it only took about five minutes, but I remember Sam was so high that…” “Okay. That’s enough.” Josh snapped, giving Jake and Danny a look before looking over to you. Clearly they’d hit a nerve.

“Well,” you started, wanting to change the conversation, “if Safari Song is the other one similar in sound to this one, I think it’ll be a good mix. Maybe worth a try? Don’t listen to me though, I don’t know anything about music,” you finished. Luckily your food came out, providing another distraction. Josh nodded after taking a bite of his food, “I’m down to try it at sound check.” You all turned to face Jake who rolled his eyes but nodded in agreement.

“What will Sam think?” you asked, breaking the silence. “I don’t think he will care. He likes Highway okay, but he’s always down to do some creative mixing. He was the one that suggested adding snippets of new songs into stuff on the last few tours,” Danny added as he took another bite of his sandwich. Danny pulled the waiter to the side and gave him the to-go order for Sam. The rest of breakfast was spent discussing how the mashup would work, Josh adamant that he would not be singing more than a few lines from the one song.

“You really don’t like that song, do you?” you asked Josh as you all headed back towards the hotel. “No, I don’t. Least favorite one out of all our discography. It’s just…” he paused, picking the right word. “Stale.” You laughed at his choice. “Stale?” you questioned, and he nodded. “I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s just… old. It’s not us anymore. Neither is Safari, but I’d rather do that one.”

You nodded as you walked side by side. “Like, is there just something you never want to make another one of? Like a specific piece?” he asked, trying to help relate his feelings to yours. You thought for a minute before replying. “I’d be happy to never make another jumpsuit.” He looked at you, his eyes wide before you started laughing. “Josh, I’m kidding. I love the jumpsuits! To be honest, there’s not really anything I don’t like to make. I can get pretty tired of doing beadwork and repetitive motions, but everything I do is different. Kind of like how each time you perform, there’s something different. The crowd, the venue, the specific way you sing each part.” He thought for a minute, taking in what you’d said. “You know, you’re kind of right,” he replied, clearly thinking more deeply.

Everyone returned to their rooms for a bit and you chose to take a quick shower. You slicked your hair back into a ponytail before putting a more professional outfit back on and doing a light application of makeup. You were packed up and back on your bus within an hour, ready to head to the venue. Albert boarded the bus a few minutes after you, walking back to visit before everyone was ready to get on the way.

“How are you doing Albert?” you asked as he shuffled past you, peeking into the closet to view the outfits you’d been working on. “Oh, I’m just dandy, sweet girl,” you said, turning to give you a smile. “Can I touch them?” he asked, pointing to the suits hanging on the left side of the closet. “Of course!” you replied, turning your desk chair so you could face him.

You watched as his weathered hands moved carefully over the floral embellishments on the side of Jake’s suit for Georgia. “You are truly talented,” Albert whispered, giving you a wide smile as he pointed to Josh’s Georgia jumpsuit. “I love the yellow. What show is yellow?” Albert asked. “They’re for Georgia. I don’t know why, but I just felt like Atlanta needed some yellow,” you replied, and Albert nodded. “I like that. You’d think Florida would be yellow for being the sunshine state,” Albert said. “I thought about that. But I am doing red for Florida, switching it up. It was actually Jake’s idea- he wanted to end on red for the first leg of this tour, and I felt like that was a good idea. Ending at the beginning almost,” you said, watching as Albert ran his hands over Josh’s red jumpsuit. Albert chuckled as he turned back to face you. “He’s almost like Elvis isn’t he? With the jumpsuits?” You nodded and gave Albert a smile. “Elvis, but with a bit more rock. Little more modern too,” you added.

As if on cue, Josh walked back into the workspace, sitting down on the bench with a huff. “We were just talking about how you and Elvis have so many parallels,” you told Josh, his face cracking into a smile. “He may have me beat on the heartthrob level, but I have a better vocal range,” he said with a laugh. Albert chuckled as he headed back up to his seat.

Josh’s face fell and he turned to you. “Can I ride with you? They’re driving me nuts trying to figure out how to combine the two songs. I don’t know why it must be done by tonight, but Sam liked the idea and now it’s all or nothing,” Josh said as he rubbed his temples with his thumb and pointer finger. “Of course, Josh. You never have to ask- you’re always welcome to ride with me,” you replied, giving him a soft smile. You pointed to your backpack, “do you want some Advil?”

Josh nodded, “I could use some. My head is killing me.” You fished the bottle out of your bag and handed it to him as you walked over to the mini fridge in the kitchenette. You returned with two bottles of water, exchanging one for the bottle of pills back. You both took two pills and laughed after swallowing them with some water. “I feel like no matter what, we are always in sync,” Josh said with a smile as he leaned back against the pillows on the bench. You nodded in agreement, reflecting on how true the statement was.

Josh relaxed back into the pillows on the bench, watching you as you did a double check of everything you’d need for the night. “I’m sorry about the vulgarity of some of the topics at breakfast,” he said after a moment. He was more relaxed, the medicine starting to work on relieving his headache.

“It’s fine. I feel like we all were a little crazy in our late teens and early 20’s,” you replied, giving him a smile. “I really wasn’t. They made it seem like I was this jerk, just hooking up all the time. I promise that I really wasn’t,” he added. You turned to give him a shrug. “Even if you did, it wouldn’t matter. Although I don’t think you could have ever been a jerk. Ever.” He chuckled. “You’d be surprised. The ounce of fame we had went to my head a little too fast. Front man syndrome. I’d like to think I’ve settled into things well though,” he said quietly. “Josh, you’re a good person. Solid. A good head on your shoulders. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” He nodded slowly, his eyes trailing up to meet yours. “That means a lot coming from you.”

You both settled into your own quiet routines- you busying yourself with preparing the clothes for that night’s performance, Josh flipping through his sketchbook. By the time the bus pulled into the backlot of the venue, Josh was fast asleep and snoring lightly, his leg twitching every so often. You texted the group chat

You: Josh is passed out. What time do you guys have sound check?

Danny: Emily said we have about an hour. We are still working on this combo but will come get him when we need him.

You stood and went to lower the curtains on the windows in the workspace and close the curtain dividing the front and back of the bus before laying on the opposite bench. They’ll get me up when Josh gets up. You turned to watch him, the rhythmic rising and falling of his chest lulling you to sleep.

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The lights flipped on, rudely waking you from your sleep. Sam was staring down at you and jumped back when you opened your eyes. “God, I didn’t think you were breathing there for a moment,” he said, leaning forward to pat your arm.

“What the fuck are you being so loud for,” Josh mumbled as he sat up. “I am not being loud,” Sam shot back, turning to face his brother. “Sam, I hate to break it to you, but you’re almost always loud,” Jake replied as he leaned against the wall of the bus. “We need our front man,” Sam said, turning and starting to pull Josh up from the bench. “We need an objective third party too,” Sam added, turning to you and reaching his hand out to help you up off the bench.

“What am I being objective to,” you said as you and Josh followed them off of the bus. “We need you to listen to what we came up with. See if it’s any good,” Sam said excitedly as he skipped down the stairs. “I think it’s going to be really good. Really get people excited,” Sam added as he started towards the venue.

You gave Jake a look as you walked, and he shrugged. “We won’t know until we hear it all together,” he admitted. Danny was walking behind you with Josh, explaining something he’d scribbled out on a piece of paper.

Once you got inside the venue, you all walked in the direction of what you figured was the stage. You popped out a side door and ended up in the general admission area on the floor, security from the venue following behind you. “Well, I guess we are almost in the right place,” Sam said with a grin before taking off across the arena floor, reaching a full sprint as he ran towards the barricade. You all watched him run, laughing as he slid into the barricade, tripping as his feet got caught up in the metal feet of the fence.

Jake grinned at you before doing a cartwheel and landing on his butt, leaning back and laughing from the floor. Danny and Josh watched the shenanigans from over the paper they’d been studying, both of their heads tilting back as they laughed. Josh handed Danny the paper and started strutting towards the stage, switching the way he was theatrically walking with every few steps. You couldn’t help but laugh as you watched him- something about the almost cartoon way he moved absolutely tickled you.

You and Danny walked to the stage normally, watching as the Kiszka brothers made their way up onto the stage, continuing their antics. “Have they always been like this?” you asked. Danny grinned, “always. Some things never change.” Danny made his way up onto the stage and you leaned against the barricade, watching as they sorted out their gear.

Josh came over to the edge of the stage while his brothers got their instruments tuned and adjusted. He had his in-ear monitors slung around his neck and a microphone in hand as he came and plopped down on the edge of the stage, kicking his feet over the edge. “See, now, if I had this view each night, I don’t think I’d ever get nervous,” he said with a chuckle as he placed a monitor in his left ear. Does he mean me? Or probably the empty space.

“It’s so quiet without the fans,” you mused, turning to look out across the arena. “To think that every space will be filled is just… surreal,” you said after turning back to face him. “It is. It’s a dream,” he replied. He pointed to Jake, who was bent over, discussing something with one of the sound people. “It’s really his dream but,” Josh pointed to Sam and Danny, “I think we are all happy to be along for the ride.”

You grinned, “I didn’t think designing for a band would be my dream, but here we are.” He gave you a wide smile as Jake walked up behind him, nudging his leg with his foot. “Come on, let’s give it a shot,” Jake said, leaning forward to offer Josh a hand as he helped him up off the floor.

The creative process behind their music was unlike anything you’d ever seen. It was a true four-way collaboration as they all worked together to create something completely new, yet familiar. The band may have been Jake’s dream, but the talent each member had was undeniable. Watching these men go from doing cartwheels and goofing off to absolute craftsmen, oozing rock n’ roll and talent as they worked out kinks in the song was astounding. These were two completely different sets of people. They were congruent, yes, but the group on stage was not the same as the men you’d sat and had breakfast with earlier in the day.

Once they’d sound checked another, full song, they all came up to the front of the stage. You were still staring in wide-eyed amazement when Danny talked, breaking your trance. “What did you think?” he asked as he handed his drumsticks off to an assistant before sitting down on the edge of the stage.

“Amazing,” you answered quietly, unable to give more than that. “Well, that’s a given,” Sam said as he slid off the stage. Sam tried to vault over the barricade but ended up falling back into Jake, who had also jumped down onto the main floor. Danny pushed the barricade aside and the rest of them filed out onto the main floor. “Give us an actual review, please,” Jake asked as you all headed back the way you came.

“I can see why people fight for a spot at the barricade,” you answered honestly. “You guys are beyond talented. It’s truly something special seeing you guys together,” you added, hoping you weren’t overdoing it. Josh bumped your shoulder with his, giving you a grin, “I’m glad you liked it.”

Emily appeared above you, leaned against the railing of one of the seated sections. “What the hell are you doing down there?” she barked. “Well, we finished sound check and…” Sam started. Emily pointed towards the doors at the back end of the arena, “they’re about to let GA in! Get the hell off the floor!” Everyone exchanged panicked looks as you took off towards the side of the giant arena, looking for the doors you’d come through.

You had all barely made it through the doors to the backstage area when you heard the crowd enter the arena. Sam opened the door just enough for you all to watch the fans file in, security shouting as they attempted to control the chaos. Everyone watched in silence as they watched the various people and groups coming onto the arena floor.

“We like to read the signs,” Danny whispered from beside you, pointing out the various signs people were holding. “Oh, that is lewd,” Jake said with a laugh, pointing out a girl holding a not-so-subtle sign about a blowjob. “And look at that, she’s a Danny girl,” Sam laughed as he slapped Danny on the shoulder. Danny shook his head and rolled his eyes. “They are definitely going to confiscate that,” Josh said, pointing to a girl carrying a flag with a giant meme featuring Jake on it. “God, I hope not. That shit is hilarious,” Jake replied as he laughed.

After a few minutes of people watching, you all headed towards backstage. “I need some lunch. Or dinner. Whatever time it is, I’m hungry” Sam grumbled. Sam spotted Emily in Jake’s dressing room and yelled her name.

Emily came over to the group, looking incredibly puny. “Emily, are you okay?” Danny asked. She nodded and went to sit in a chair outside the room. “Great. What’s up?” she asked. You gave her a look. She hasn’t told them she’s pregnant?

“What’s for lunch? Dinner? Linner?” Sam asked. “Uh, barbeque. And seafood,” Emily said, making a face. “What’s wrong with barbeque? I thought that was something you liked,” Jake said, watching Emily as she shifted in the chair. “No, I do just… not today,” she answered with a weak smile. Sam backed up slowly, “are you sick? I am NOT getting another stomach bug on tour, I will NOT!” Sam exclaimed, raising his hands.

“I’m not sick,” Emily started, looking at everyone’s concerned faces. “I’m actually pregnant,” she said after a beat, looking from person to person in order to gauge their reactions. Josh was the first one forward, carefully pulling Emily into a hug. “Congratulations,” he whispered, squeezing her shoulders gently as he pulled back from her. Jake was next, giving her a careful hug as he rubbed her back lightly. Sam pointed at her belly as he moved forward. “This was a planned baby? Or?” he asked, and Emily laughed. “Not really planned so much, but we are happy about it!” she answered as Sam hugged her. Danny was last to move forward, pulling her into his chest as he wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so excited for you,” he said softly, and she pulled back, tears in her eyes. Sam turned to you, noticing your smile. “You knew?” he asked, and you nodded. “I needed help reading the test,” Emily clarified.

Sam looked at her, suddenly worried. “Does this mean you won’t be with us for the entire tour?” Emily nodded. “I probably won’t be going out of the country. But Jack is very capable and will be taking over more of my job in the next few weeks.” Everyone nodded, clearly saddened, but also excited for what was to come.

Emily headed out to check on “linner” as Sam was calling it, and everyone went their separate ways. You rounded up a couple of venue staff to get the outfits for the night’s show from the bus. You carried Josh’s jumpsuit in and directed where each of the other outfits went before knocking on Josh’s door. He opened it and stepped back to let you in.

Josh grinned as he watched you hang the jumpsuit up on the rack against the far wall. He came over to inspect it, running his hands over the fabric flowers adorning the black sparkly material. “These need to be in a museum somewhere,” he mused. “Yeah, the rock n roll hall of fame,” you said with a chuckle. He tilted his head as he thought. “Maybe. But I would make sure your name was in bold on the plaque.”

You laughed and brushed him off. “Yeah, put my name right under yours and ‘one of the greatest vocalists of our generation,’ that’ll be hilarious!” He wasn’t laughing though when he turned to look at you, his face serious, “I really don’t think you realize how talented you are.” You chuckled. “If I’m good enough for you guys, then I must be pretty good. And I’ll take that,” you replied. He nodded, finally at least slightly pleased with your answer.

Sammy popped his head into the room and looked from you to Josh and back again. “Linner is here!” he said quickly before popping out as quickly as he’d appeared. You and Josh shook your heads but followed behind him.

“Carolina barbecue is unmatched,” Danny murmured as he took another bite of his food. “Whatever,” Sam replied as he rolled his eyes. “Don’t start,” Jake warned, knowing Sam was about two seconds away from a rant about meat eating and sustainability. “You just don’t want to hear it because it’s true and you know it,” Sam shot back and Josh raised his hand, Sam falling silent. “You get it,” Sam whispered to you and you smiled, appreciating whatever alliance you could get with him. You thought back to the first week of the tour and how different things had been.

Josh finished first and threw his plate in the trash. “I’m going to go get ready,” he said, giving the group a smile. “Josh, we have…” Sam checked his phone, “two hours.” Josh nodded, “I know. Just a little antsy. It’s fine.” He turned and disappeared into his dressing room and you watched as Jake and Danny exchanged looks.

“I thought he had gotten over that,” Danny whispered. “What?” you asked, concerned over what they were clearly worried about. “Josh used to get really anxious before shows. Back for a few years with some of the bigger venues and stuff. We’d know he was struggling a little bit when he’d get ready super early and just sit, completely ready. He hasn’t gotten ready this early in… a while,” Danny explained as Jake nodded. “I’ll go check in,” Jake said as he rose from his seat. You all watched him go and you couldn’t help wishing you knew how to help.

You, Danny and Sam chatted for a few minutes before Jake returned. “He asked for you,” he said after settling back into the couch. “Me?” you questioned, and Jake nodded. “Is there something wrong with the jumpsuit?” you asked, slightly panicked. “No, no, I think it’s fine. I know he had a question about something, but I don’t think it’s anything bad,” Jake clarified. You nodded and headed towards Josh’s dressing room.

The door was slightly open so you walked in, knocking on the door as you entered. Josh was sitting on the couch in his dressing room, his black jumpsuit a stark and glittery contrast to the beige couch. He smiled when he saw you and patted the couch next to him. “What’s up? Everything fit okay?” you asked as you leaned forward, waiting for his permission to touch the front of the jumpsuit to double-check the fit. He nodded and you gripped the fabric, slightly adjusting it. “Everything is fine,” he said quietly, “I just needed a calm presence.”

You slowly looked up at him. “Me? Calming?” you said with a chuckle, “I don’t feel like I am.” He shook his head, “no, you’re very calming. Soothing. Your aura and everything.” You took a second and nodded. “Well, then I’m here. To be a calming presence,” you said with a smile. He nodded and stood, going to the table in the corner of the room. “Do you want a hot toddy?” he asked, and you nodded. “Sure. Just put like, half the whiskey you put in yours in mine please,” you added with a chuckle, and he gave you a salute in response.

You and Josh sat in comfortable silence as you both sipped on your warm drinks. Josh looked a little funny fully dressed in his elaborate jumpsuit and you in your normal clothes. He was slightly more relaxed, the whiskey helping take the edge off. Jake came in a little while later, Danny trailing behind him. They showed off their outfits, doing a little spin for you to see the entire thing.

“Feel good?” you asked, and they both nodded. “I love the boots,” Danny added, turning to show Jake the embellished flowers you’d painstakingly added to the sides. “Those are cool as hell,” Jake said as he bent to examine them closer. “Can I make a request for flower shoes?” he asked, and you nodded. “Your boots for Georgia have flowers. It’s part of the fabric, but still pretty cool,” you replied. He grinned in agreement as Sam flew through the doors.

“They said we gotta go now,” he said out of breath as he spun quickly to show you the fit of his suit. Sure enough, the stagehands were gathering outside of the dressing room, Emily appearing and calling for the group to hurry. “Good luck!” you said to them as you reached forward to quickly squeeze Josh’s hand. He turned to face you. “You got this. Just another show, just like the others,” you said quietly, and he nodded. He squeezed your hand back before letting go and following his brothers down the hall and towards the stage.

You watched the show from the TV mounted on the wall in Josh’s dressing room, working intermittently on some more sketches for the outfits for the rest of the tour. The show went as it always did- absolutely perfectly. The group was perfectly in sync even though they decided not to play the mashup that night. You watched the encore and waited for them to enter the dressing room after they had exited the stage. It was always surreal to see them on the screen and then, moments later, standing right next to you.

Danny was the first one back, waving to you from the hall as he headed to take his shower. Sam was next, coming to hand you his jacket, which he had taken off while on stage. Josh was next and he walked into the room, clearly preoccupied and deep in thought. He closed the door and started to unzip his jumpsuit, pulling it down and off his arms and chest. The fabric slid down past his waist, slinging dangerously lay on his hips.

You cleared your throat, reminding him that you were still here. He turned to look at you, wide-eyed, as he pulled the fabric back up slightly. “Shit, sorry!” he exclaimed, and you turned to gather your stuff up, shoving it into your bag as you headed towards the door. “No, my fault! It’s your space, I don’t even know why I am in here,” you mumbled.

He reached out to gently grab your arm. He was warm and his touch sent a jolt of electricity up your arm. “You don’t have to go. I will just refrain from getting butt naked out here,” he chuckled, and you relaxed. “Unless…” he joked, raising an eyebrow. “Nope, I’m going to get a pretzel” you said quickly as you headed back out the door.

You leaned against the wall after you had closed the door, waiting until you heard the shower start on the other side of the door to breathe. You zipped your backpack and slung it over your shoulder as you left in search of a pretzel.

As you walked and asked for directions, you thought about what had happened. Something about the way the fabric had just draped, barely covering him, made your stomach do flips. The way he didn’t want you to leave, had reached out for you. He was just being nice. You shook your head and turned to watch the groups of people leaving the arena.

You found a stand still selling food and purchased a cup of pretzel bites and stopped by a bar for a margarita. You headed back to the backstage area, the security guard luckily recognizing you. As you headed back through the barricade, you heard a commotion behind you. You turned to see a group of fans waving at you and gesturing for you to come over to them. You obliged, although your previous experiences made you nervous.

“Hey,” one girl greeted, giving you a smile. You nodded and smiled in greeting and waited for the group to speak. “We were wondering… we’ve seen you a lot. On twitter and stuff,” one girl started, talking quickly. “Are you dating Danny?” another girl interrupted, her tone serious. You chuckled and shook your head. “No, I’m just their designer. I am not in a relationship with any of them. Well, beyond friendship,” you answered honestly. The group nodded and you could tell that only some of them believed you. “I promise,” you continued with a smile. The group chattered and you waved to them as you turned to leave. “Have a great night!” you said with another smile before walking back down the hall and taking a long sip of your margarita.

When you got backstage, you noticed that everyone was packing up and getting ready to go. Sam pointed to your cup of pretzels, and you held it out, letting him take one. “Shit, these are good,” he mumbled. You offered Jake one and he shook his head. “I’m just ready to go to sleep,” he said, clearly exhausted as he shifted his weight from one side to the other.

Josh was the last one out and emerged with his wet curls still clinging to his face. “We ready?” he asked, and the group turned to look at you. They were all carrying their own clothes, something you weren’t used to seeing. “Here, let me take these,” you started, but they turned away. “We can carry it out, it’s fine,” Danny said. You shrugged and took the boot box off the table “I’ll never turn down help.” “Shall we?” Jake asked and Emily, who had appeared at the end of the hall, nodded.

Everyone placed their outfits where you instructed on the wardrobe bus. Jake, Sam and Josh told you they’d see you at the hotel before heading to their own bus. “Can I sleep here?” Danny asked, gesturing to one of the benches. “Of course,” you said as you began your cleaning process. “Sam has continued to talk in his sleep, and I need a break. It's always quiet on your bus,” Danny explained as he laid down on the bench, watching you as you worked.

You looked up and smiled at Albert as he made his way back to you and Danny. “Alright, we are about four and a half hours away and will be stopping for gas and snacks about halfway,” Albert said, giving you a smile. “Perfect. Thanks for keeping us updated,” you replied, Danny agreeing. Albert gave you both a nod before heading back to his seat.

You worked on quietly cleaning the clothes as Danny fell asleep. He mumbled a little in his sleep too, and you chuckled at the irony. Before you knew it, the clothes and shoes were cleaned and neatly put away. You had started your fifth check over the clothing for the South Carolina show when the bus came to a stop. Danny was still fast asleep, and you decided you’d ask the others if you should wake him. You got off the bus and waved to Albert, who was filling the bus’s gas tank. You shivered as you walked towards the other bus, where Jake and Sam were coming down the stairs.

“Danny is asleep, I didn’t know if I should wake him,” you said. Jake shook his head, “nah, let him sleep. We left Josh asleep too. We will get them some snacks for later, but they’ll probably just sleep until we get there.” You nodded and followed them towards the convenience center part of the gas station.

You felt a hand reach for yours and you jumped, twirling quickly to see who had touched you. You swung around and saw Josh, hair a mess and eyes partially closed, reaching out for you. He was clearly still half-asleep. “I thought I heard you out here,” he said with a grin as he threaded his arm through yours and headed in the direction of his brothers. “I thought you were asleep?” you asked, and he chuckled. “Yeah, but I’m up now. I’m not one to miss out on a gas station taquito,” he replied with a grin. You scrunched your nose and shook your head as you both walked into the gas station and headed your separate ways.

“We got Danny’s order,” Sam said when you approached the counter with your picks. “Great, thanks,” you replied with a smile as Jake gestured to the clerk about what items to put in what bags. Josh was the last to the counter, half a taquito sticking out of his mouth. “Josh, you literally have drool on your face,” Sam teased and Josh shot him a deadly look as he placed his items on the counter and wiped at his face with the sleeve of his shirt. Jake paid for the order and handed you the bag containing the items for you and Danny. “See you on the flip,” Sam said with a salute as he headed back onto the bus. Jake nodded to you and Josh squeezed your shoulder before climbing back up the stairs to their bus.

You fished out the Reese’s cups from the bag and handed them to Albert after you had boarded the bus. “How’d you know?” he asked, and you laughed. “Your wife always packs you Reese’s cups, I see them in your lunch! I figured you like them at least a little,” you clarified. “You’re the best,” Albert said with a gracious smile. “Need me to heat this up?” you asked and gestured to his coffee cup. “It’s still warm! Thank you though. You’d better settle in, we have probably another three hours to go,” Albert replied and you gave him a smile before heading back towards the workspace.

Setting the bag on the table, you quickly removed Danny’s items and placed the drink in the fridge. You set the food out on the side of the table closest to where he laid, still fast asleep. Cracking open your Gatorade, you took a few sips as you watched Danny sleep.

He looked so peaceful, his mouth slightly open as he breathed deeply, his hands resting gently on his chest. You dug in the bag for your nerds gummy clusters and opened the package carefully before shaking a few into your hand. Something about the crunchy, sweet and tangy candy quieted your brain. You ate a few more before setting the package on your desk and getting back to checking the clothes for tomorrow’s performance.

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You woke up to Danny gently rubbing his hand along your arm. “Hey, we are here,” he said quietly, seemingly still half-asleep himself. You nodded and pushed yourself up to sit on the bench where you’d been asleep. Danny handed you your suitcase and backpack. “Thanks,” you smiled as you took the luggage and followed him off of the bus. “Good night Albert! Thanks for getting us here,” you said, giving the older man a squeeze as you headed off the bus. “Sleep well!” he replied as he turned to finish his post-drive checklist.

Sam handed Danny his luggage and everyone walked into the lobby together. Emily was sitting in the lobby and rose when she saw everyone. She was clearly tired- probably more tired than all of you combined as she worked to keep everything running smoothly while also growing a human. She handed out the key cards and reminded everyone of the schedule for tomorrow. “Tomorrow’s time is 2:00 pm for sound check, so we need to leave here by 1:00 pm to get there without issues. Breakfast is in the dining room from 7:00 to 10:00, although I doubt you’ll be awake for that, so food is on you. Good night,” she finished before turning and heading down the hall.

The ride up to the third floor was silent, everyone exhausted. You checked your phone, the time glaring at you. 3:15 am. “Well, I’m certainly not setting an alarm,” Jake said with a chuckle as you all filed off of the elevator. “We will see you guys at some point I guess,” Danny agreed, following behind Sam who was making a beeline for their room. “Good night everyone,” Josh said with a wave as he opened the door to his and Jake’s room.

You slid your key into the door beside the twins and chuckled. “This whole floor and you got stuck next to us, how lucky,” Jake said with a laugh and you shrugged. “Better than with the two sleep-mumblers,” you replied and Jake nodded in agreement. “Night,” Jake said quietly, and you repeated the sentiment before closing the door.

You stripped off your clothes from the day and put on your pajamas, glad to be wearing something warm and comfortable. You went through the motions of brushing your teeth and washing your face before plugging in your phone and crawling under the fluffy duvet. You decided to set an alarm for 11:00 am, knowing you definitely needed to be up by then, before flipping the bedside lamp off.

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The first thing you noticed was the flashing light, which was strange because the blaring alarm was practically shaking your bed. You shot up, taking in your surroundings for a beat before grabbing your phone off the charger. 4:23 am. The smell was familiar. Fire. You shoved your feet into your shoes and grabbed your purse before swinging open your door, surveying the hall.

The hall was smoky, and you started to panic. You felt a hand on your arm, and you turned to see Josh grabbing onto you for the second time that night. This time, however, his eyes were wide with panic. “Come on, the stairs are that way,” Jake said, pulling both of you behind him.

Jake pounded on Sam and Danny’s door, yelling as he did so. People were starting to flood into the hallway, the volume rising as people started panicking. The door flung open and a petrified Sam stood in the doorway, shirtless and in his underwear. “Sam, put on some fucking pants, let’s go!” Jake snapped as he pushed his way into their room. Danny was up and pulling on a sweatshirt, throwing clothes at Sam. “Does everyone have their wallets?” you asked, pulling Josh along with you into their room. Everyone did a quick mental check before you all headed out towards the stairs.

There were tons of people making their way outside, all of them seemingly coming from nowhere. Once you’d made it out to the parking lot, the group headed towards Emily and some of the other roadies who were standing by the buses and vans. You all turned to watch as smoke billowed out of the windows on the far side of the building.

“What a fucking disaster,” Jake mused as everyone watched. “You can say that again,” Emily said, a hand protectively over her stomach. “Well, at least we have a place to sleep,” Danny sighed, pointing to the buses. “Did Albert and Dean make it out?” you asked, searching the faces for your friend. “I’m here!” Albert said as he walked around the corner of the bus, “can’t get rid of me that easily!” Everyone laughed, exhaustion clearly settling in. “Well, I’m going to sleep,” Sam said before heading onto the bus.

Everyone worked out sleeping arrangements, Emily deciding to take everyone who didn’t usually travel on a bus to the hotel down the street. She called and reserved the rooms, doing a head count as she coordinated. The guys, along with you, decided to just sleep in the bunks. As the rest of the group loaded into the vans, you finally felt like you could relax. Everyone got out, everything is fine. You continued to watch the firefighters working to contain the fire, which you’d found out was on the opposite side of the building on the second floor. The parking lot had started to empty as the hotel relocated people, the sun starting to rise.

It was only when you turned to get onto the bus that you realized Josh was still holding onto you, one arm around your waist. “Josh?” you said and he slowly turned his head to face you, still entranced by the ongoing action. “You okay?” you asked.

You watched as he returned his consciousness back to himself, letting go of you. “Yeah, sorry,” he stammered as he took a step back, away from you. “It’s fine, Josh. But, are you okay?” you asked again. He nodded slowly. Jake turned to watch his brother, assessing him. “I think it’s time to get some sleep. Come on Josh, let’s go,” Jake said quietly as he reached for his twin. Josh nodded, following behind Jake. “Good night,” they mumbled to you as they headed towards their bus. You decided to do the same thing and unlocked the door to the wardrobe bus, locking it behind you before walking back to your bunk.

You laid there for a moment, letting the stress and worry wash over you. God, all my clothes. My toiletries. But I have my purse. And everyone is okay, that’s the important thing. You fell asleep with your mind swirling with the never-ending anxious thoughts.

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A hand gently rubbing your arm woke you up. You slowly sat up and noticed Jake leaned into your bunk. “Hey, sorry to wake you. We wanted to see if you wanted to go to lunch before we head to the venue. Most of the team is going. The hotel is covering it because of the damage.”

You nodded and shoved your feet out through the curtains as you sat up. “Is our stuff…” you started and Jake shook his head. “They aren’t letting anyone go back up into the hotel right now because of the smoke and they don’t know if there’s structural damage…” Jake continued on, although you couldn’t hear what he was saying.

All of a sudden, the night came back into crystal clear focus and the realization hit you, your body going cold. Jake stopped, noticing your eyes widening and your face suddenly going slack. “Jake, my sketchbooks. With all my designs. And I had a panel for your Atlanta suit in my backpack. Oh my god,” you said in a quick, hushed voice. Tears welled in your eyes as you looked up at him, his face reflecting the panic likely etched on your own. “Shit,” was all he was able to utter before you started to sob, the panic and pain surging through your body.

You felt the bunk mattress sink down a moment later and you were pulled into someone’s chest. “All her sketchbooks were in her room, and a part of my suit,” you heard Jake explain to whoever was holding you.

“It’s going to be okay, alright?” you heard Danny whisper in your ear. You nodded into his chest as he held you. “What’s going on?” you heard Sam ask and Jake explained the situation. “Well, shit, can’t we just pay one of those firefighters to go get it? We don’t even know if our rooms were impacted,” Sam replied, his voice bouncing back and forth as he most likely paced.

“They said it’s going to take at least another day to assess the structural damage before anyone can safely go in to get stuff or see just how bad everything is. It'll probably take longer than that though,” Danny said, shifting to talk to Sam. “Well, fuck,” Sam shot back, now frustrated. “My ukulele was in there. Our clothes!” Sam said, clearly exasperated by the heightened emotions.

You wiped the tears off your face and turned towards Sam. You noticed Josh was now standing next to Jake, watching you closely. He had deep purple bags under his eyes, his face tired. You noticed how much the twins looked alike when they were both clearly exhausted. “You know what? Everything will work out. I’m an idiot for getting so upset, I’m really sorry. Let’s just go to lunch, and you guys can go do sound check and maybe some of us can go to Walmart or something and get some clothes to last us until the next break,” you said, trying to rally.

“You’re allowed to be upset. This situation sucks,” Danny replied, rubbing your arm. “You know what, you’re right. May as well just take on this adventure, right? We can all get matching shirts, it’ll be great,” Sam added, swinging to the other side of the emotional spectrum. You stood and straightened your clothes. “We all look a little ridiculous, so at least we will be in solidarity,” you said with a chuckle as you assessed everyone’s outfits. You were in a plaid winter pajama set, a stark contrast to Jake’s shorts and sleeveless tank top, Danny’s mismatched sweat suit, Sam in a pair of rainbow shorts and a hoodie, and Josh in one of the casual jumpsuits you’d made for him. Everyone realized how crazy you all looked and laughed along with you.

“How’d you manage to put that on in the middle of an evacuation?” you asked Josh as you headed off the bus. He pointed to his jumpsuit, “this?” You nodded and he shrugged. “It’s pretty easy to get on and off. And I already had it laid out to wear today,” he answered thoughtfully. “I know it’s easy on and off, I did design it,” you said with a laugh, gesturing to the closures. He gave you a smirk but said nothing else as you approached the group gathering between the two buses.

In the daylight, it was easy to see just how crazy everyone looked in either their pajamas, or the first set of clothes they’d been able to put on during the evacuation. “Alright everyone,” Emily shouted above the small crowd of about fifteen people. “We are all going to head down the street to the restaurant that the hotel has set up for lunch. While we eat, I need everyone to fill out a couple of sheets, one is of the belongings that you have left inside, and that’s for insurance purposes for the hotel. Another sheet will be of what kind of clothes, toiletries, et. cetera that you’re now missing that you’ll need for the next few stops. We will be doing a store run during sound check to try to get everything y’all need, so be specific. I have another couple of things to get signed by everyone, but we can discuss that at lunch. If y’all have any questions, some find me. And with that, let’s head to lunch!”

You were already amazed by Emily and her ability to be calm, cool and collected in all situations, but seeing her orchestrate a plan in a set of leopard pajamas and serious bedhead had you realizing she might actually be superhuman. Everyone walked together to the small Italian restaurant down the street, chattering about the events of the day.

“This is the Dreams in Gold nightmare part two,” Josh said from next to you with a sigh. Sam nodded in agreement, “I think our tours will just forever be cursed.” “Don’t say that, or it’ll manifest,” Jake hissed, and Josh waved him off. “It’s too late- it’s already a shit show,” Sam replied, Josh nodding in agreement.

Everyone sat around a couple of big tables, a waiter passing out menus as Emily passed out the forms and pens. You scanned the lunch menu and made your selections before turning your attention to the forms.

“Hey, what size pants do I wear?” Sam asked you from across the table, pen suspended in the air as he waited. “Your street size is probably a 30x32 and a large,” you answered. Jake turned to give you a look from his seat next to you. “Do me.” You thought for a moment. “32x30, medium,” you answered easily. “There’s no way you just know that” Jake replied, signaling you got it right. “I think you’re forgetting I have made you all countless outfits and know all of your measurements,” you replied with a laugh. Jake shrugged and went back to assessing the menu.

Josh leaned towards you from his spot on your other side. “Did I do mine right?” he asked in a whisper, pointing to his measurements. “Yes, those look right,” you replied with a smile. “Look right? Or you know they’re right?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure. Your jumpsuits are made a little differently than suit pants and their sizes,” you added, giving him a nudge. He rolled his eyes but nodded in understanding.

A waiter came around to take everyone’s orders. “I’ll do a tuna melt with sweet potato fries,” you told the man, a strikingly handsome guy about your age. He gave you a wink before moving on to take the other orders. Sam tapped his hands on the table in front of you enthusiastically. “A tuna girl too! We will be matching!” Danny made a face at Sam’s comment and Jake laughed. “Matching in smell,” Jake dug, Sam kicking him under the table. “Because your cheese steak with roasted cow is going to smell so much better,” Sam shot back, Jake laughing in response.

Everyone continued to fill out their forms as they ate, struggling to remember everything they had left in their rooms. “Did I take my camera in with us last night?” Sam asked Danny, who shrugged in response. “How much do you guys think toothpaste is worth?” Josh asked in regards to the question about how much your belongings were worth.

“Yeah, I have no idea how much to value my sketchbooks at. The hours of time and creative energy is just… immeasurable,” you added quietly. “Easily worth a million, maybe even two” Danny replied with a smile, obviously trying to up your spirits. You put down a general guess based on your hourly rate and the hours you’d likely put into the designs. “Jake, how much is my iPad worth?” Josh asked and Jake laughed. “The one from like 2018? With the cracked screen? Maybe $20,” Jake replied. “No use getting a new one when the old one works,” Josh replied with a hint of sass.

After the meal, Emily gathered everyone’s sheets up. She caught you on the way out and pulled you aside. “Can you come help me get the items on everyone’s lists? We will compensate you, I promise,” Emily asked, her eyes tired. “Of course. I need to be back to double check everything with costuming though before they go on,” you replied, giving her a squeeze of reassurance. “We will be, don’t worry. I’m going to probably have to do everything in like, two shifts. At least. Because this,” she gestured to the lists in her hands, “is a lot.”

On the walk back to the hotel parking lot, you helped Emily sort through the paperwork. Danny walked alongside both of you, acting as another set of hands as papers were shuffled. Emily went to give a hotel administrator the paperwork outlining what everyone was missing as you climbed onto the wardrobe bus and prepared to make a master list of all the things you’d need to buy.

Everyone needed at the venue headed to sound check on the other bus while you, Emily and Ava prepared for the supply run. Ava had volunteered to help, ensuring that Olivia could take care of the social media side of things for the afternoon.

“Okay, so for toothpaste, most people didn’t put a brand or flavor,” Ava said as she read the lists scattered across your workspace. “Well, they’re going to get what they get and not pitch a fit,” Emily replied, rubbing her temples. “Sounds good to me,” Ava said with a nod as she added ‘toothpaste- qty 15’ to the list. Going over everyone’s lists and figuring out how many articles of clothing and of what size was proving to be more difficult.

About an hour later, the three of you loaded into a van and headed to the local Walmart, giant list in-hand. You all worked well together and were able to get the toiletries sorted out within another half-hour, using tote bins and a sharpie to separate the supplies by person. Emily also consulted the rider list from the venues and texts to ensure the right products were being purchased.

Emily sat on a bench in the pharmacy area, stretching her back. “Onto clothes?” she asked, you and Ava nodding. “Do you think it’d be easiest if we each took five people?” Ava suggested and Emily nodded in agreement. “I do not want to do the boys,” Ava added, putting her hands up in defense, Emily agreeing. “I don’t mind doing them,” you replied with a chuckle. “They may not get exactly what they want, but hey, I’m pretty sure I can ensure comfort and fit.”

The three of you split up, Danny, Sam, Jake, Josh and your own totes laid out in your cart. Choosing clothes for yourself was easy, the other four a little harder. You decided to mess with Sam, his personality making it easy, as you picked out more colorful clothes. For Danny, you stuck with mostly tee shirts, grabbing a few pairs of jeans and casual pants. You stayed on track with Jake’s style, picking casual button ups and lighter pairs of pants. For Josh, you grabbed a pack of his signature white, long-sleeved tee shirts and a couple other staples.

Everyone reconvened at the checkout, equally surprised that the entire trip only took three hours. The checkout process took nearly another hour, but you were walking into the venue right at 6:00 pm, having made perfect time.

When you rounded the corner backstage, Sam was the first one you saw. You were surprised that he seemed to be the first one ready, sitting outside the dressing rooms in his suit as he ate a piece of pizza. The gold accents on the right side of his suit were a striking contrast to the pearls aligning the left side of the dark purple suit jacket.

“If you get sauce on that, I will kill you,” you threatened as you walked over to him. He gestured to the stack of napkins in his lap and the plate he was holding directly under his chin. “I’m being careful!” he mumbled, his mouth full. You rolled your eyes and pointed towards the other rooms. “What’s the status?” you asked and waited for him to swallow. “Jake and Danny are good, Josh is having a zipper issue,” Sam answered, gesturing towards the furthest dressing room. “Shit, okay,” you said as you headed to find Josh.

You knocked gently on the door and heard Josh shout his approval as you entered. Josh had the jumpsuit partially on and was working with the zipper on the front of the jumpsuit. “I can’t get it to unzip,” he grunted, gesturing to the zipper. He released it and the jumpsuit fell loosely around his hips, the front dipping dangerously low.

“Josh, are you wearing compression shorts?” you asked and his face paled. “I just wanted to make sure it fit before I got fully dressed,” he started, and you took a deep breath. “Okay, do you have a pencil?” you asked and he nodded, gesturing to the sketchbook and pouch of writing utensils he had on the coffee table. You rummaged through the pouch and found a sketch pencil. You held it out to him. “Okay, rub the lead on the zipper and then try to zip it up,” you instructed. He gave you a questioning look, “do what?” You gestured to the zipper and tried to explain again. “Here, you can do it, I’ll just push the fabric outwards,” he said, slipping his hand between his pelvis and the jumpsuit.

You swallowed before bending down to grab the zipper and start to rub the pencil tip along the metal. Josh was breathing slowly and deeply as he watched you work. “So, uh, what is that supposed to do,” he asked. “Graphite is a natural lubricant for metals, so it will hopefully help the slider over the chain,” you answered. He took a deep breath but kept his lower body completely still. You pulled the zipper upwards before trying to unzip the jumpsuit a bit more. Sure enough, your trick worked, and it unzipped easily.

“Oh, shit,” you heard come from the direction of the hall and you spun around to see Danny standing in the doorway, his eyes wide. You quickly stood up, turning to face Danny as you held up the pencil you had in your hand still. “Stuck zipper,” you offered, Danny’s eyes darting from you to Josh and back again. Jake walked in past Danny, clearly unaware of the position you’d just been in.

“How do I look,” Jake said, doing a spin for you. You heard Josh shuffle into the bathroom and close the door, and you turned to focus on Jake. His suit was slightly more plain for this show, a deep purple base with golden accents on both the jacket and the pants. “Looks great! How do the shoes feel?” you asked, trying to change the subject. “Good!” Jake replied as he moved to take a seat on the couch in the middle of the room.

You turned to Danny and held the pencil out to show him. “The graphite acts as a lubricant for the metal mechanisms on the zipper,” you explained, and he nodded. “Lubricant?” Sam asked as he walked into the room, rattling the ice in his drink as he walked. “Yeah, Josh’s zipper was stuck,” Danny clarified as he moved to sit down next to Jake, pulling a pair of drumsticks and tape out of his back pockets.

Josh emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, fully dressed. “That was uh, a great trick,” Josh said to you, gesturing towards the pencil, which you’d placed on the table next to his sketchbook. “Yeah, you work in fashion for so long and you learn all kinds of weird things,” you replied with a chuckle, hoping the exchange was less awkward than you felt it was.

“Well, what do we think?” Josh asked as he posed for the group. The shape of the jumpsuit was fairly plain, but it was covered in iridescent tiles which shone purple, the color of the night, in the light. “Looks great,” Danny said with a tight smile. He looked great in his own outfit- deep purple pants with rhinestones along the sides and a black, sheer top with strategically placed embroidered flowers. “I think you all look really great in purple,” you added, all of them smiling in response. Emily stuck her head through the door. “Let’s go,” she said, gesturing for everyone to follow her.

You waved the group off as they headed towards the stage, Sam already barefoot. You looked around for his shoes, but realized it wasn’t worth it. “They’ll show up,” you whispered to yourself as you turned and headed in search of the pizza you’d seen Sam eating.

After walking back and forth along the entirety of backstage, you realized there was likely no pizza left. You texted Ava, whose number you had gotten during the shopping trip.

You: Did you see pizza anywhere?

Ava: Dave said it’s all gone. Want to go hit up one of the concession stands?

You: Yeah! Do you not have to film?

Ava: Nah, Tim the sound guy is covering for me. I’ll meet you by the bus exit?

You: Perfect!

You waited for Ava, who showed up within a few minutes. “I should’ve figured you’d already be back here,” she said with a smile. “What does that mean?” you asked with a laugh as you both headed in the direction of the main part of the venue. “You’re always back here, working on stuff! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out on the floor,” she clarified.

“Yeah, no, too many people. It’s nice and quiet back here- I’m able to get some work done which is good,” you replied. “Well, in Georgia you need to come out with me, see them in action. It’s a surreal experience,” Ava countered. You agreed to try it, knowing you’d probably come up with an excuse when it came time to deliver.

Ava ordered chicken fingers and fries and you got a baked potato from the first vendor you saw. You topped your baked potato with sour cream and cheese before heading back towards the backstage area.

“I can’t believe you have to remake an entire part of a suit,” Ava said, shaking her head as you chatted on your way back. “It’s a bummer for sure. The beading was almost complete too. I can probably finish it tonight though, on the drive to Atlanta,” you replied, contemplating the amount of work you’d need to complete.

“It’s only gonna be like, four hours. If that,” Ava added, balancing her food as she dunked a fry in ketchup. “I think I’ll simplify my original design, and it should be doable. I know we have the day off tomorrow, but I won’t be able to relax until it is done,” you continued, mentally piecing together the design as you walked.

A worker from the venue recognized both of you and let you both backstage. “I think we are going to the zoo tomorrow too, I don’t think you’d want to miss that,” Ava added as she scooted past the worker, nodding her thanks as she slid past. “I definitely do not,” you said decidedly, knowing that Sam at the zoo would certainly be a sight to see.

Once you and Ava made your way backstage, you both sat and worked for a bit as you finished your dinners. Ava was editing a TikTok video she had been working on while also editing a marketing plan for new merch. You had begun redoing the sketches you could remember from the sketchbook you had been forced to leave behind at the hotel.

“It’s crazy how different our jobs are,” you mused as you sat back in your seat, watching Ava as she hunched over her laptop. She paused and stretched, closing her eyes as she took a deep breath. “You got that right. Incredibly different, but essential.” You nodded in agreement before returning to the sketch you were working on. Ava leaned over to examine your work and you turned the book so she could see. “I know who that’s for,” she said with a smile.

You looked down at the design you’d been working on. It was clearly a costume for Josh, the outline of a jumpsuit giving it away. You’d been sketching the outline of his face, something you had recently started to do more often. You looked up when you heard the tell-tale commotion signaling the end of the show as the group headed back to their dressing rooms.

Sam was the first one you saw, jacket in hand and pants already unbuttoned. He was still barefoot, and you grimaced. “What?” he asked, noticing your face. “Your feet!” you replied, pointing. He lifted his foot to show you the bottom, which was completely black. “Disgusting,” you stated, rolling your eyes as Sam cackled at your reaction before disappearing into his dressing room.

Jake and Danny were next, completely engulfed in a conversation but pausing to give you and Ava a smile before heading to shower. Josh brought up the rear, Emily at his side. “She passed out,” Josh said, helping Emily into a chair. “I did not!” she protested, Josh lifting his brows in response.

An EMT rounded the corner and Josh waved him over. It was quite a sight- Josh gesturing and explaining things to the medical worker in his fantastical jumpsuit, iridescent panels shining in the bright light.

“And she’s… Em, how far along are you? In the pregnancy?” Josh asked, placing a protective hand on Emily’s shoulder as the EMT worked to get a blood pressure reading. “I… um… I think I’m about 12 weeks, but I’m not sure” Emily answered, her face pale. “Your blood pressure is pretty low. I’d like to take you in, just to get you and the baby checked out,” the EMT responded, and Emily waved him off. “We need to be on our way to Atlanta, I’m sure I’m just tired,” Emily responded, removing the blood pressure cuff.

Ava set her computer down on the table and went to sit next to Emily. “I’ll go with you Em. It probably won’t take much time and then we can head to Atlanta together,” Ava said quietly, giving Emily a reassuring smile. Emily looked up at Josh, who was standing with his hands on his hips.

“I agree. And technically I’m your boss, so I feel like I have some pull in this situation,” Josh replied, giving her a soft smile that ensured he was serious, but it was because he cared. Emily nodded, but reached for her clipboard, calling out for Jack. He appeared and sat next to Emily as she handed over her clipboard, explaining all the details about the hotel and reservations for Atlanta.

The EMT finally convinced Emily to give it up when his partner showed up with a gurney. “I will not be getting on that,” Emily contested as she pointed to the apparatus. “It’s procedure,” the new EMT said with a smile that said he truly hoped Emily would go willingly. Josh offered Emily his hand and she took it before standing, shimmying onto the stretcher. Josh gave her a quick hug and you gave her a wave before the EMT’s took her down the hall, Ava trailing behind.

Josh turned to face you. He had unzipped his jumpsuit slightly and his hair was sweaty and clinging to his forehead. “You think she will be okay?” Josh asked, concern bubbling in his voice. “I’m sure she will be fine,” you ensured, giving him a small smile. Josh nodded and looked in the direction Emily had gone. “I guess I’ll go shower then,” he replied, and you nodded. You watched him go, his way of moving utterly effortless.

What a day.

taglist: @eyelinerjake @radmads-gvf @gretavansara @everyglowinthetwilightknows @joshs-jonch

#seamstressfortheband #greta van fleet #greta van fic #gvf

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noellawrites · 2 years

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Y Tu, Mamá? - Yandere!Lalo Salamanca x reader

summary: your plans with your daughter change when you recognize someone from your old life and make a snap decision that will change everything.

warnings: kidnapping, manipulation, pregnancy, birthing, blood, crying/screaming, being restrained, mentioned drugging with chloroform rag, isolation, rape. 18+ readers only! this is sad & dark so beware.

“Por favor, mamá? Fruta?” your daughter begged, jumping in front of you.

“Ah ah ah, sweetie. In English, too,” you said, cocking your head to the side and raising your eyebrows.

“Please, mama? The fruit?”

“Of course, here you go Leticia. You know I just want you to use both mommy and daddy’s languages, right? It’ll be helpful when you get older,” you said, ruffling her hair.

As your daughter brought the bowl of fruit to the table, you brought over the rest.

“There you are, my beautiful girls!” Lalo exclaimed, entering the room and making a big gesture of kissing your forehead and your baby bump.

“Papá!” Lettie squealed, running up to your husband and wrapping her arms around his leg tightly.

You watched as he scooped her up and her legs wrapped around his midsection. She was five, still small enough to be held.

“Huevos rancheros? You spoil me, cariño,” Lalo exclaimed, placing Lettie in her chair and sitting down at the table next to her.

At seven months pregnant, you just didn’t have the energy to hate Lalo anymore. He was a good father, and he provided for your growing family. You tried to forget everything he had done to you.

And as much as you loved your daughter, she just looked so much like him. That playful smile, the dark eyes. When you gave birth to her in the bathtub just over five years ago, you were in so much pain. There was so much blood that it turned the clear water red. But when Lalo lifted Leticia up and put her on your breast, everything changed. She was your priority.

“Can we go to the zoo today?”

“Ask your mamá, I have work to do,” Lalo responded, glancing over at you. You were lost in your thoughts again, he could tell.

You were thinking about his work. It was always him and his work: hunting someone down, disappearing down to Mexico, fraternizing with the dealers.

When you found out you were pregnant with Lettie, Lalo wanted to move you all down to his house in Chihuahua, but you put your foot down. You would not leave New Mexico or America, it was your home. And, surprisingly, he agreed. He could conduct his business here just fine.

When you had gone down to Mexico on small trips with Lalo, Lettie always seemed to enjoy herself. Abuelita always spoiled the hell out of her, and she loved playing with the animals outside and practicing her spanish with her relatives. You, however always felt like you were on the outs. The family knew Lalo had kidnapped you and they looked the other way. Abuelita, the twins and Hector never even spoke to you. You were like the scum on their shoes.

“What do you say, amor? Can I trust you to take Lettie to the zoo?” he asked, giving you a half-glare that your daughter couldn’t see.

“Yes, Lalo. We’ll go after breakfast,” you sighed, forcing a smile.

—

You were certain that Lalo put the binoculars back in the closet. As you dug around in the dark, your hand brushed against a small shoebox. It felt empty, so you lifted it up. Tiny light-up sneakers: Lettie’s.

The box contained only a small, rectangular business card. Saul Goodman: Speedy Justice For You! There was an address and phone number on the back. Without thinking, you shoved the card in your pocket and continued looking for the binoculars.

—

You drove towards the BioPark, drumming your fingers to whatever pop tune was on the radio. Lettie sat quietly in her carseat behind you, playing with one of her toys.

You pulled up to a red light, your gaze unconsciously drifting to the car on your right. Your eyes narrowed and your back stiffened. The woman looked familiar. Suddenly, it clicked. It was your mother.

All you had wanted through your entire pregnancy was your mother. To speak to her, hear her voice, feel the warmth of her touch, anything. It was what you thought of when Lalo tied you down to the bed, when he stuffed your mouth with socks to quiet your screaming, and when you sat alone, numb with only your thoughts and the sensation of a body growing within yours.

So badly you wanted to cry out to her, to roll the window down and scream and weep and say anything, anything. But instead, you did not. Your voice caught in your throat and your mouth wrinkled at the corners and the light turned green and she drove off, never once looking your way.

You fought against tears as you made the split second decision to pull into a gas station and thumb out some change for the pay phone.

“I’ll be right back, sweetie,” you reassured, rolling down the window for your daughter.

Your fingers prodded the buttons shakily. “You have reached the law offices of Saul Goodman, my name is Francesca. How can I help you?” a voice spoke through the other line.

“I need an appointment with Saul Goodman as soon as possible, it’s an emergency. In fact, it’s a matter of life and death,” you urged.

“O-okay, uhm, He can fit you in at eleven thirty, that’s in half an hour. Does that work?”

“Got anything sooner?”

“When can you be here?”

“I’ll be there in fifteen. Make sure he’s ready,” you said, then slammed the phone down.

—

Driving east down Lomas, you could only think of one thing. How selfish you were. Because if you cared about what was best for your daughter and unborn child, it would be staying put with Lalo. You never wanted Lettie to find out that her father was a monster. No. You should be okay with playing house for the rest of your life, but you weren’t. You couldn’t do it any longer, knowing your family and the people you loved might still miss you. That’s why you had to do this.

You lifted your daughter from her carseat swiftly and held her around your waist.

“Mama, where are we?”

“It’s gonna be okay, Lettie. Don’t worry, mama’s got you,” you assured.

The waiting room was full of loud, filthy people, so you opted to head right for the next door in front of you.

“Could you please at least sign—“ Slam.

As you closed the door behind you, you almost laughed at how… American the office was.

“Are you Lalo’s lawyer?” you seethed.

“Mama, I’m scared,” Lettie cried.

“Well, attorney-client privileges state that—“

“Do you have any headphones?”

“What? What is going on here?” he laughed.

“Give them to my daughter now.”

“Okay, okay,” Saul sighed, shuffling through his drawers and coming across a Hello Kitty iphone and some knotted earbuds. He un-knotted them and plugged them in.

“This should have some teeny bopper music. Here, little girl.”

Lettie cautiously took them and you carried her away from Saul’s desk, setting her on the couch.

“Sit here and be good for mama, okay? We’ll be done in a second,” you promised, and she nodded. You put the earbuds in her ears.

“Alright, now back to the main attraction. What do you want with this alleged “Lalo” person?” Saul asked, sitting down. You cautiously sat in the chair behind you as well.

“Six years ago, Lalo Salamanca kidnapped me from my job at Los Pollos Hermanos. I was working the closing shift and everyone else had left. He grabbed me as I was leaving and shoved a wet rag in my mouth. I woke up in the condo we’ve been living in for six years. He threatened my family if I ever left. But I… I saw my mother today, at a stoplight. And now I’m here.”

“Look, I don’t want to ruffle your feathers too much, mama bird, but when it comes to Lalo, I usually lay down and take it up the ass, uh so to speak.”

“Are you saying after all this, after I find your business card in a dark closet and call your number, that Mr. Speedy Justice can’t help me?”

He laughed nervously, glancing around the room. His eyes stopped on Lettie.

“Is… is she…?”

“He raped me. Over and over, for months until he was sure I was pregnant. And now I’m pregnant again,” you stated, blinking back tears. If this man couldn’t help you, you were out of time. Lalo would punish you. Maybe even hurt your family. You were so close to seeing them again, you could feel it.

“Let me give my girlfriend a call. She works at a big firm and I’m sure she’ll take your case pro-bono. Now, I’m not a big fan of the coppers but I think it would be best to call APD and have them assigned to your family members in case word gets back to Papa Lalo.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“Here,” he tossed you a black burner phone.

As Saul called his girlfriend, you typed in 911 and hoped to god that you weren’t making the biggest mistake of your life.

#lalo salamanca x reader #better call saul x reader #lalo salamanca imagine #better call saul imagine #lalo salamanca #better call saul

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huevobuevo · 1 year

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anyways. Ahem. The 3W’s logo makes me so ill

It’s the cybermans eye. It’s the earth and gallifrey. It’s earth and the heavens. It’s the dead outnumbering the living.

#doctor who #dark water #🏜huevo watches shit

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honestsycrets · 8 months

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Posted

sy’s notes | querido should have an update this week. the spoiler below is a succubus!reader x ceo!reader request.

tags | succubus, some explicit content near the bottom, magical themes.

Miguel O’Hara was never a superstitious man.

“Brujeria-- a bunch of bullshit,” he murmured, dropping the papers back onto the oak desk. He glanced at the glass tabletop, finding his reflection therein. His eyes, crinkled at the edges, carried the reflection of countless days of his dark exhaustion. “Si no es una cosa es otra.”

“Miguel?”

“What, Lyla?” Miguel threw a glare at the ceiling at the AI that sang at him. She seemed far too happy with her position as the resident terror of his new office. New was an overstatement. It was his father’s before he croaked. Why else would it have a picturesque, but grandiose view of Nueva York but for a great view of the people he was destroying? They also did a bang-up job of burning his eyes.

“The psychiatrist is here,” she chirped. “Are you going to tell her about your wet dreams?”

He’s reminded of the flutters that danced over his skin at night at the strike of three, caressing his skin like a warm blanket over his skin. His heart rate would race and pleasure burrowed under his skin. It never failed that Miguel would wake to a rush of pleasure, cum painting his wet sheets, his heart in his throat. With such pleasure, why would he tell anyone but Lyla about what he couldn’t deny?

Miguel waved his hand around, checking the chunky watch on his wrist. She’s just on time. He appreciates a punctual professional given how much work he had to complete. He glazes over the report of spiritual abuse and picks up the pile of sexual misconduct. That was a more pressing matter to address-- far more important than some bruto’s complaint of ojos based on a huevo in some water.

“Why would I do that? Let her in. You listen in and I’ll unplug you.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Lyla teased, but he knew she was right. Lyla was one of his only friends and by far the one he spent the most time with. He reaches for his reading glasses as the lock on his office door hisses apart, welcoming in the strange woman whose name he could never find but in Stone’s personal records.

“Dr. O’Hara.”

Miguel slipped the lenses on. Not only was the woman before him not the sort of hippy-dippy woman he expected. You were… beautiful, familiar. Oh, so familiar. He’s never met you before.

You extend your hand for him to take.

“Dr…” You finished his sentence by offering your name.

“Have I met you before?” His large hand clasped your own. The sudden realization of where he’d seen you hit him like a bullet through the head: unexpected and instantaneous. A blanket of warmth blossomed from your small hand in his grip. Gentle at first, your very same small hands laced in his over his body, from his slender legs up to his straining dick. The image rippled across his mind, Miguel’s hand collared on your nape, taking you against his office’s wide windows. Another pulse of heat soared through his hand--

Miguel jerked his hand back. What in the hell?

#miguel x y/n #miguel x reader #atsv imagines #atsv fic #Miguel O’Hara x reader

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bitchinfawkseh · 4 months

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Heaven Knows Your Name, I've Been Praying: Chapter 8

————————————————————————

Summary: Although it's less than ideal, Sam, Dean, and Cheryl stay at her mother's place in New Orleans and prepare for her sister's funeral.

W.C: 5594

Warnings: Death, funeral, religious imagery, grief.

[A/N] For the full sentences and conversations in Spanish, there are translations below them. I don't speak fluent Spanish so most of it is done via Google translate. Sorry to any Spanish speakers out there!! P.S, I've only ever been to one funeral before and they were cremated and my family isn't religious at all so I have nothing aside from research to go off of

Masterlist | AO3

Damn near ice box is what this basement is. Due to the boy's generosity, she was "sleeping" on the pullout couch while they took a makeshift bed on the floor.

Cheryl picked and pulled at the skin on her lips, staring up at the unfinished ceiling blankly. Was this all even real? Was it some sick nightmare? Is Rosità even dead or was she crazy and hallucinating off of whatever they gave her in some psych ward.

She inhaled deeply and lazily rolled her head over to watch Sam's chest rise up and down. Maybe if she kept her eye on him he wouldn't die either. A quiet ticking sound began, then the furnace began to kick into gear. A quiet electric hum filled the room and warm air started to blow out from the vents above them. She blinked slowly and let her hand drop to her chest, instead feeling the steady beat of her heart. Deep down, she desperately wanted to wake Dean up. Just to talk, or watch TV, anything really... He may not know what she's feeling right now, or be able to understand it in depth, but he is an older sibling too. If Sammy died... God she didn't even want to imagine that.

Should she wake him up? Cheryl sat up onto her elbows and peered down at Dean. He was closest to the pullout, facing it even. She swallowed hard and gripped the cotton sheets, "Dean." She whispered. He didn't stir and she felt her stomach tighten. "Dean..." She said again, a smidgen louder. Her voice sounded hoarse, like she was begging for him to wake up.

She didn't want to be a bother, or make him upset - she knew he got cranky when he was woken up before he was ready to be a person. Cheryl's brows furrowed and she reluctantly laid back down, whatever, she was fine. She didn't need to wake him up for company - it was stupid to try anyway (and utterly embarrassing.)

"Chiquita! Breakfast!" Cheryl's Mother (Maria) called out. Cheryl reluctantly slid out of the arm chair and padded into the kitchen adorned with various apple themed things. Cheryl's brows furrowed and her nose scrunched up, "Where's Sam and Dean?" She asked quietly. Maria glanced up, her frazzled dark hair pinned up away from her face - not that it did much, there were still a few free pieces here and there. "They offered to do the shopping for the wake. They'll be back soon."

"Mom, they're guests - you can't make them do stuff..."

"They offered, Cheryl Lynn. How could I refuse? They are such nice and handsome young men."

"Mamá..." Cheryl trailed off. Maria poured some salsa onto a breakfast dish, her finishing touch to Huevos Rancheros.

She passed the dish to Cheryl and smiled faintly, "Please eat, we have a busy day." She sighed deeply and took the dish, setting it on the round dining table. When her Mother grieved, she liked to keep busy by cooking, cleaning, anything that involved her hands pretty much. Somehow she was keeping it together amidst all the chaos, and Cheryl admired her for that.

Cheryl picked at the meal with her fork and inhaled deeply, "Mom?" She asked. Maria hummed in acknowledgement as she plated up Sam and Dean's meal. "How did Rosità die? Nobody’s told me yet." Maria went silent, her movements completely stilled and then the front door opened.

"Hey! We're back!" Dean called out as he kicked off his boots. Cheryl had a damn near heart attack when they first got here and he tried to just walk in with his shoes on. He carried two quite heavy paper bags full of groceries to the counter and smiled at the Mother and daughter. "Hey." He repeated.

"Thank you so much for going to the shop," Maria began. She quickly shoved a hefty plate full of some delicious smelling breakfast into his hands and smiled kindly. "Relax, relax."

Maria snatched up some bags from Sam before doing the same, "Relax, boy's!" She insisted. San smiled awkwardly and set his plate down on the dining table. "I'd like to help with the groceries - Miss. Jones."

"Nonsense! And call me Maria." She waved him off. Cheryl shoved some eggs into her mouth and snorted, shaking her head in amusement. "It's no use, Sam. She's very particular about how the kitchen is organized."

"Oh..." He trailed off.

Dean took one bite of his food before completely melting, this may be the best damn thing he's ever eaten. "This is delicious." He commented. Maria smiled wide and came around to give Cheryl's shoulders a squeeze. "Well, Cheryl Lynn makes it much better."

"Cheryl Lynn?" He asked with raised brows. Cheryl sighed and rubbed her nose, she was surprised that it took this long for them to figure out she had two first names. "It's normal in our culture to give children two first names instead of a first name and a middle name." Cheryl explained. Dean’s brows shot up and he nodded slowly, Cheryl Lynn was a cute name. Rolled off the tongue nicely.

Maria clapped her hands together and hurried back to the kitchen to put the groceries away. "Busy day, cooking and cleaning. And Cheryl Lynn, I want you to go buy a dress today. Your clothes aren't church appropriate."

She sighed in annoyance and pinched the bridge of her nose, she was tired and barely had the energy to do anything. "Mom." Cheryl said, more impatient than before. Sam set his fork down and glanced between them, the energy was tense. Like a fight or something was about to break out. "Si, mi amor?" Maria hummed out. She sucked in a breath and leaned back in her chair. "How did Rosità die?"

Now everyone was silent, Dean even stopped eating (which was rare.) Maria slowly turned her head and put the whole milk in the fridge. "Cheryl..."

"How!? How did it happen, Mom!? She was only twenty-two!"

"It... it..." Maria squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Parents were supposed to outlive their children. Having to attend her young daughter's funeral brought more than enough heartache. "The... police said it was an animal attack."

Cheryl's eyes widened and her heart dropped, a creeping feeling of dread slowly filled her. It was her fault... Rosità died because of her... Meg. Cheryl felt bile creeping up her throat - she quickly pushed herself up from the table and darted to the bathroom. She hunched over the toilet - emptying the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl. She retched again and shook violently, she felt paralyzed with grief - the crushing weight of being responsible for her baby sister's death was gut wrenching. Cheryl panted and sniffled deeply, blindly reaching for some toilet paper to wipe her mouth with. She pushed the nob down and watched as the water swished. A quiet knock at the door roused her attention and she scowled at the door. "What?" She heaved.

"It's me... Sam."

"Come in..."

The door creaked open and Sam slipped in, shutting the door behind him. Her bottom lip wobbled and he crouched down onto the floor next to her. "It's my fault..." She croaked. He shook his head and his eyes softened, this was a difficult situation. Meg and the Daeva went after Rosità after they ditched Chicago. For whatever reason that may be - revenge, mind fucks, just for fun - whatever. It wasn't Cheryl's fault, they had no way of predicting this would happen. "It's not, Cheryl. There was no way you could've known."

"I should've known!" She cried out. Sam's lips thinned and he glanced down at the old tiled floor with tiny flower decals on them. "We all should've known, I mean, I should've. I have weird dreams. But you don't blame me." He said. Cheryl sniffled and hugged her knees to her chest, "That's not... It's not your fault. I don't see how it would be."

His brows raised, "And it's not yours either, it's Meg's."

Tears rolled down her cheeks and she clenched her teeth together. "I'm gonna kill her." She hissed. Cheryl's eyes met Sam's and her nose wrinkled, sadness and guilt, now rage. "We're gonna send that bitch back to Hell after this." She shook her head and gripped her knees so tight her knuckles went white. Then, she exhaled sharply. "What's Dean doing?" She asked.

"Uh, he's helping your Mom with the dishes." Sam answered. Cheryl snorted and chuckled humorously, was he being serious? "Dean? Doing dishes?"

"Yeah, I know." He breathed.

Cheryl wiped her eyes with the butt of her palm and sighed deeply. "Can you take me to the store? I need to get a dress for tomorrow."

He nodded. "Of course, I'm sure Dean will let us borrow the Impala." Cheryl shook her head and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. Maria lived close enough to everything, they didn't need to take the car. "Nah, the store isn't far. I wanna walk."

"Okay."

Cheryl dragged her boots along the linoleum flooring lazily, she didn't have the energy to pick her feet up. "Maybe I can just show up naked." She joked. Sam snorted and his lips quirked up into a slight smile, "Yeah, maybe. Wouldn't you be kicked out of your church, though?"

"Not much to believe in anymore." She muttered. Her eyes caught on a row of various black shirts in different styles. "Maybe I can piece something together with stuff I already have."

"That's a good idea."

Cheryl scanned each shirt quickly, pushing them aside on the rack until she found this nice simple black blouse. She held it up for Sam's inspection and pursed her lips together, "I could wear this with those wide leg pants I have. The ones that go with the pantsuit."

"That'd look nice." He nodded. Cheryl nodded and pulled it off the rack, well, that was easier than she thought. She thought she'd have to go through the annoying process of finding a dress and then shoes to go with it. She opened her mouth to speak when her eyes landed on a gorgeous black trench coat. It looked to be made of wool, so it'd be nice and warm - and it would last forever. "I want that coat." Cheryl breathed. Sam spun around and tilted his head, it was a double breasted coat - with large buttons on the cuffs of the sleeves. "It's a nice coat." He commented. He glanced down at her, "If you want it, you should get it."

"You're so right."

When Sam and Cheryl got back, Maria had of course put Dean to work - because there he was, fixing the leaky tap in the kitchen. Her face fell and she glanced over at her Mother, "Mom..." Cheryl trailed off. Maria stopped vigorously mopping the floor for a minute and smiled wide. "Ah, how was the shop? What did you get?" She asked. Dean looked over his shoulder and screwed the cover back onto the kitchen tap. He didn't mind doing all these things around the house, in fact, he actually liked it. He's never lived in a proper house long enough to do things like this.

"It was fine..." Cheryl murmured. She set the bag down on the table and pulled out the blouse for her Mother’s inspection. "This was on sale," She said. Maria's brows raised and she ran her fingers across the fabric of it. "Very nice, is that all?" She asked, trying to peek inside the bag. Cheryl then pulled out the trench coat for Maria to inspect, her eyes widened and she hummed lowly. "Oh... this is so nice. It is made of wool, it'll last you years."

"Exactly what I thought."

"Try it on! Show me how it fits." Maria demanded. Dean crossed his arms against his chest and watched as Cheryl reluctantly pulled the coat on. He wondered what she was thinking, what was going through that pretty little head of hers. He knows how he'd feel if Sammy died, but this was all real. Her sister was gone, and there was no bringing her back.

Maria smoothed out the coat's fabric at Cheryl's waist and clapped her hands together. "Dean, do you think she looks nice?" Maria asked with a raised brow. Dean flushed and he swallowed hard, he ran a hand through his hair out of nervousness and nodded. "Uh, yeah." He answered. Her mother pursed her lips together and looked back at Cheryl - she was scowling (pouting.)

"Me gusta el, arregla mis cosas y come mi comida. Es un buen novio." Maria said.

("I like him, he fixes my things and eats my food. He is a good boyfriend.")

Cheryl's eyes widened and she glanced over at Dean, wrinkling her nose in distaste. She couldn't ever imagine him being her boyfriend, he was so... Dean like. His brows furrowed in confusion and he looked to Sam as if he was expecting a translation. Sam only shrugged, he didn't know what they were saying either - he only knew a little Spanish. "¡Puaj! Mamá, él no es mi novio." Cheryl groaned.

("Yuck! Mom, he isn't my boyfriend.")

"Porque diablos no?"

("Why the hell not?")

"Porque él no es..."

("Because he's not...")

Maria rolled her eyes and waved Cheryl off, "¡Él arregló el grifo que goteaba en la cocina! ¡Él es mi yerno, no me importa!" She ignored.

("He fixed the leaky faucet in the kitchen! He's my son-in-law, I don't care!")

Dean was a good man in her eyes, and she thought he would make a lovely suitor for her daughter. He was handsome too, they'd make beautiful grand babies. Dean glanced between the two of them before smirking proudly, having no idea what they were saying - but still wanting to participate he said: "Si."

Maria's head snapped over and then she smiled widely, well that was just adorable to her. "¡Él también tiene unos ojos preciosos! Cásate con este chico, él está enamorado de ti."

("He also has beautiful eyes! Marry this boy, he is in love with you.")

Cheryl scoffed and rolled her eyes, "Mom! Stop! Is this really what you're concerned about?" She hissed. Maria set her hands on her hips and her face hardened, she would not take this attitude from her. "Cheryl Lynn, do not use that tone with me." She warned. Her lips thinned and she shrugged dramatically, she didn't care if she was being a brat, or rude. Or the fact that she was making a scene in front of Sam and Dean - how could her mother be so concerned about her love life when Rosità is dead? It baffled her. "I'll do you a favor and go to the basement then!" Cheryl yelled.

Maria flinched when Cheryl slammed the door shut and she sighed deeply, hiding her face in her hands. "I am so sorry about her attitude." She whispered. Sam frowned and shoved his hands into his pockets, she was bound to snap at some point. He was surprised it took this long. He nudged Dean's arm with his elbow and Dean's brows knitted together. "What?" He asked.

"Go talk to her."

"Why me?"

Just do it, man." Sam sighed. Dean swallowed hard and nodded curtly before slipping past Sam and heading down to the basement. He hadn't had a chance to talk to Cheryl one on one much since they got here. Hell, he was still processing that Meg killed Rosità. He felt at fault for not being able to do anything - Meg got away because he let her. Cheryl's little sister was dead because of him and his laziness - his stupid mistake of not killing the bitch when he had the chance.

Dean crept down the unfinished stairs and managed to catch her pacing back and forth, muttering incoherently. A step on the stairs creaked and he cringed, shit. Cheryl's head snapped over and she shot him a glare, "Go away." She fumed. His eyes softened and his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, he padded towards her - slowly so she didn't startle. "Cher..."

"I said go away!" She yelled. Tears welled in her eyes and her face contorted from anger to pure grief and sadness. She set her hands square on his chest and pushed him back weakly. "Go away." Cheryl sobbed. Dean's lips curved down into a frown and he took every push and fragile punch she sent his way. "Cheryl, I'm sorry." He said in a hoarse whisper. "I'm so sorry." He repeated. Cheryl let out a choked sob and clutched the fabric of his shirt in her fists. "I killed her..." She whimpered. He shook his head and hesitantly raised a hand to cup her cheek, he wiped a stray tear with his thumb and his jaw twitched. "No, you didn't."

Cheryl sniveled and buried her face in his chest - she desperately held onto him - sobbing into his shirt and blubbering unintelligible words. The dam had finally broke and now every emotion, bad thought, piece of guilt, memory, and regret was rushing through like a tidal wave. Dean instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist and cradled the back of her head. His eyes watered and he inhaled deeply, "Yeah, let it out." He whispered. He hesitantly rested his chin on top of her head and rubbed her back in slow soothing circles.

Eventually, her crying died down to just sniffles and that's when he felt safe to pull back to survey her face. "You wanna talk about anything?" He asked. Cheryl shook her head and her bottom lip jutted out, threatening more tears. His shirt was stained with her tears and snot - which was utterly embarrassing. "Oh..." She whimpered. Dean's face fell and he quickly glanced down, sure it was a little gross but who the fuck cares? A little snot never hurt anybody. "Hey, hey, hey," He began. He raised his hands and cocked a brow, now he had to tread carefully if he didn't want her to cry again. "It's okay, it's okay. It's just a shirt, it can be washed." He soothed.

"You're not mad?" Cheryl sniffled. Dean quickly shook his head, he could never be mad at her, not for something like this. "Hell no."

She nodded slowly, "Okay..."

Maria leaned back in the pale green rickety chair sat at the little table in the kitchen, "When Rosità was little, she adored Cheryl Lynn. She was a copycat, too. Whatever Cheryl did, she had to do." She smiled faintly. "She loved her big sister so much, and now one of my baby's is gone." Her lips curled down into a frown and she glanced over at Sam who was listening intently. He nodded in understanding, "I can't even begin to imagine what you're going through right now." He said. Maria's eyes watered and she quickly looked away from him, she placed her hand over her mouth and inhaled deeply. "You remind me so much of her, you're very kind and empathetic. It is a good trait to have."

"Thank you..." Sam flushed. He'd never been complimented on something like that before - he didn't think anyone cared or noticed. Shit, he didn't even know people thought of him like that.

Maria nodded and clasped her hands together in her lap, "I may seem weird... For worrying so much about Cheryl Lynn right now." She said. "But, they were quite close. And Cheryl... She is my baby too. And I want her to be happy." Maria sighed deeply and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. Cheryl may not "need" her mother anymore, but that didn't stop Maria from needing her baby. Her dark eyes met Sam's and she smiled warmly, her eyes crinkling with gratefulness. "I'm happy she has found happiness with you and Dean."

"Me too..."

The rest of the day was much calmer and uneventful, Cheryl and Dean came out of the basement about 30 minutes after her outburst and she apologized to her mother. Then, they cooked and cleaned like crazy. They made all sorts of things, tamales, taco salad, pozole, and pan de muertos (bread of the dead.) It took a lot of self control for Dean not to eat most of it, it smelt and looked fucking amazing. He wished he had tried all of this Mexican food sooner just based on its smell.

Cheryl dried off the last bowl from dinner - which was just extra pozole and set it back on the tea towel that was laid out on the counter. Dean tilted his head and watched her body move, her hands, her arms, he noticed the slight waves in her hair from it being in a bun all day. "How're you feelin'?" He asked gently. He knew she'd probably get mad if he asked if she was okay, because she wasn't. Nobody was. She shrugged and her eyes met his, "Tired." She replied. He nodded in understanding and scanned all of the dishes that were yet to be put away. "I'll deal with these, you go to bed." Dean said.

"But... the kitchen has to be -"

"Precise, I know. I'll figure it out." He cut off. Cheryl's lips thinned into a straight line and reluctantly hung the towel she had in her hands over the oven handle. "Okay... get some sleep too." She whispered. Dean watched over his shoulder until she descended down the basement stairs before getting to work. Putting away dishes couldn't be that hard, right?

Maria sipped on her tea, standing just near the little hutch full of her fancy second hand china. She pursed her lips together and her eyes narrowed, "Are you sure they are not dating?" She asked in a whisper. She glanced up at Sam who snorted quietly and took a sip from his own tea. "Yeah, it's weird. I know." He replied. Maria nodded and looked back just in time to see Dean finally figure out where the spoons went. She smiled sadly and tapped her fingers along the side of her mug. "That's a shame."

"Yup." Sam sighed.

Rain poured from the clouds and wetted the sidewalk - forming large puddles. How cliche, a funeral and rain. Cheryl let out a heavy sigh, a wool coat was a great buy now. She clenched her fists and nervously tapped her foot on the ground. "I know catholicism isn't your guy's thing. There's gonna be praying... and singing. You can leave if you want." She said to Sam and Dean. Dean's brows furrowed and he scoffed, he adjusted his tie with one hand - the other was holding up an umbrella. "You're kidding right? We aren't leaving." He responded. Sam nodded in agreement and tucked his hands into his suit pockets. "We're here for you Cheryl, whatever you need."

"Thanks..." She whispered, trying to ignore how their support and kind words made her heart feel warm for the first time in a long time.

The church usually was so crowded while everyone found seats, Cheryl preferred to go inside after all the chaos. Honestly, with all the people piling inside she was shocked that Rosità knew this many people. Cheryl's eyes landed on Marshall and Owen - Rosità's beloved husband and son. He struggled with getting Owen out of his car seat, and that's when Cheryl went to help. "Marshall, hi." She said softly. His dark bushy brows raised and he smiled slightly - his curly tufts of hair were getting soaked by the rain. "Hey." He replied. She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth and peaked inside the car. A little (much bigger from when she last saw him) boy with big brown eyes and curly black hair smiled at her. Her sweet, sweet nephew. Cheryl waved at him and chuckled softly, "Wow he's gotten big."

"Yeah... he has..." Marshall trailed off. He hadn't left the house much since Rosità died, and hadn't had much energy to do anything aside from take care of their son, honestly. "Look, I've got some flowers in the back. You mind taking him?" He asked. Cheryl smiled and shook her head, she loved kids - and she especially loved her nephew. "Not at all."

Cheryl leaned down and pushed at the little red button with her thumb, Owen's seat belt popped open and then she worked on the chest piece. "You remember me? Huh? Your auntie?" She asked, using a tone she only ever used with babies. He babbled incoherently and clutched onto Cheryl's arms as she eased him out of the car. Once Sam and Dean realized she had a damn baby - and no umbrella, they rushed over.

"Who's this cool dude?" Dean asked, his lips quirking up into a slight grin. Cheryl cooed at Owen and booped his nose - making him giggle. "My nephew, Owen." She answered. His brows shot up and he nodded slowly, well he didn't know that. Not that it was his fault or anything, Cheryl was a private person. "Wow, well. I see the resemblance."

"He looks like his mama." She sighed. She pointed to the backpack on the floor of the car under Owen's car seat. "You mind grabbing that, Sam?" She asked. He nodded and heaved the heavy diaper bag over his shoulder. Having a baby seemed like a lot of work, carrying them around, a heavy ass bag, and of course planning around their nap time. There was no way in hell Cheryl would have any kids anytime soon.

Marshall pushed the trunk door shut, he had at least three bouquets of red roses. Roses were his wife's favorite and he'll be damned if he didn't get them for her funeral. "Cheryl," He called for her attention as he adjusted how the bouquets sat in his arms. He glanced up and then his eyes widened, "Who are these guys?" He asked. Cheryl smiled faintly, and balanced Owen on her hip "This is Sam and Dean. They are my friends, we live together."

"Oh... well, I'm Marshall... I'm Cheryl's brother-in-law."

"Nice to meet you," Sam smiled. "I'm sorry for your loss." He added.

"Thank you..." He trailed off. Owen fussed and fisted his tiny hands in Cheryl's coat, she propped him up higher and smoothed out his hair. "Let's go inside... he's probably cold."

As soon as she saw that casket at the end of the aisle, posed at the altar, she wanted to crumble right then and there - sink into the earth and become one with it. But she couldn't - not with a baby in her arms - and not with all these people around. "Sam..." Cheryl whispered under her breath. Luckily, he heard her and dipped down. "Yeah?" He asked. Cheryl swallowed hard and staggered back, her breathing became unsteady and quick - and it felt like she was sweating buckets. "I... I can't do this." Cheryl wavered. "Where's my mom?" She breathed.

"Uh," He glanced around before his eyes landed on Maria - she was in the second row, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. "Over there, come on."

Cheryl slid into the seat next to her mother and set Owen in her lap. "Mom..." She trailed off. Maria gratefully took her grandson and bounced him on her leg, "Mi corazón..." Maria whispered, referring to Cheryl. She offered her hand for her to hold and Cheryl immediately took it, lacing their fingers together and squeezing it tight. Everyone else filed in next to them, Marshall, then Sam and Dean. Maria leaned over and smiled sadly at Marshall, "The roses are beautiful, my boy."

"You think Rosità would say the same?"

"Absolutely."

Once everything was settled, the priest read a variety of transcripts from the Bible - then, it was time for prayers. Cheryl reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her old set of rosary beads. She hadn't used it in forever, it felt a little weird even - but right now it oddly brought her a sense of comfort. Her and Rosità used to pray together all the time before bed, they would pray about things children should never have to wish for - like for dad to stop hitting mom. They recited some prayers - and when she cracked an eye open and took a peek at Sam and Dean, she saw that they were praying too. Well - Dean, not so much, he had bowed his head and closed his eyes - but nonetheless, it was a kind gesture.

Cheryl clutched the beads in her hands, the little silver cross dug into her skin causing a slight twinge of pain, but it kept her grounded. She squeezed her eyes shut and mummered under her breath along with the priest, group prayer was always her favorite when she regularly went to church. All of the quiet whispering made her insides tingle, it sounded nice.

The priest sprinkled some holy water onto Rosità's closed casket, a way of blessing her body. Then, he crossed himself and everyone else (minus Dean) followed suit. Owen started to fuss and whine just as the priest began to give his whole speech about Christ and death - Cheryl wasn't paying much attention. Maria adjusted how he sat, maybe he was uncomfortable but of course that didn't work - babies had funny timing. Marshall leaned over and stroked his head, "He may be thirsty, he hasn't had much to drink today." He whispered. Maria nodded and clicked her tongue, she leaned forward a bit and sucked in a breath. "Sam, can you get the water out of the bag?" She asked in a whisper. Sam quickly nodded and fished the little yellow sippy cup out of the side pocket. He handed it to Maria, who gave it to Owen and he immediately called down. Gulping back what looked like a ton of water at once - he was left breathless, panting heavily once he pulled away from the straw.

Cheryl smiled softly, kids didn't even have to try when it came to being cute. She better not get any damn baby fever because of this kid. Cheryl took the chance to glance around, the church was full of people - some she recognized, from high school and from Rosità's quinceanera. Rosità was always popular, well-liked, surrounded by tons of friends, and even in death they were here for her and her family.

----‐--------------------------

Now was the poem reading before they lowered Rosità's casket into the ground and put her to rest. The rain continued to pour - but almost everyone was safe from the angry downpour because they all had planned for it and brought umbrellas. Dean had taken the roses from Marshall to hold onto so he could carry his own son - the roses were supposed to be set on the casket before Rosità was buried - they were important.

Cheryl clutched her mother's hand tightly - so hard that her knuckles were turning white. She couldn't move, she was paralyzed - her little baby sister was getting put into the ground for the rest of eternity. She was in that coffin, she was in there - her lifeless corpse.

Everyone took turns walking up and saying their final goodbyes, taking the tiny shovel spiked in the pile of dirt and scooping some onto the casket below before dropping a rose down. Then, Maria went, Marshall and Owen, Sam and Dean. And now, it was Cheryl's turn. Her breath hitched as she approached the deep hole, her hands became shaky and her heart started to race. There was one last rose, one last goodbye left to be said.

Cheryl's eyes welled with tears and she twirled the stem of the flower between her fingers. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." She croaked. Cheryl's lip curled down and she sniffled deeply, it felt like there were a ton of bricks sitting on her chest - she couldn't breathe. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you." She choked out.

It felt like the sky was crying with her, it soaked every inch of her sniveling and shivering form - leaving her number than she already is. Cheryl clenched her fists and hung her head, her stringy wet hair stuck to her cheeks and neck uncomfortably. Her shoes were sinking into the mud - and she was left alone here as everyone was on their way to Maria's house for the wake. Cheryl couldn't move - she didn't want to move. She couldn't leave Rosità again, that's how she got killed in the first place. Cheryl wasn't there to protect her. She was a bad daughter, a bad wife, a bad friend, and now a bad sister. There wasn't a place in heaven for her, she was damned to hell the second she was born.

Suddenly, the rain had stopped pittering her and she glanced up. An umbrella, Dean's umbrella. Dean's lips thinned down into a slight frown and he swallowed hard. "It's, uh, she - she's goin' to a better place." He said in an attempt to comfort her. Cheryl nodded slowly and covered her mouth with a trembling hand. She hoped that heaven was real and that her sister was there - but she wasn't sure.

Hesitantly, she tossed her rose onto the coffin below and let out a shaky breath. "Is it bad that I don't want to go to the wake?" She asked softly. Dean shook his head and watched little pools of water form in the shoe prints in the mud. Cheryl sniffled and her arm swayed back, her hand lightly brushed against Dean's and they both tensed. Her eyes darted around and she tucked some of her sopping wet hair behind her ear. "Let's go." She whispered. "I'm cold."

"Alright..."

#Spotify #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #dean winchester #spnfandom #dean winchester fanfiction #dean winchester x oc #spn fanfic #spn fanfiction #spn

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hydesjackiespuddinpop · 8 months

Text

Full Name: Carly Lisa Shay

Nicknames: My Sister (by Spencer), Carls, Cupcake, Carly Girl, Mrs.Benson (by Sam), My Best Friend (by Sam and Freddie), My Girl, Frisky, Life Alert (by Freddie), Little Baby, Kiddo, My Sweet Carly, Girl, (by Spencer), Stupid American Girl (by Wade Collins), Dumbo, Dummy (by Mrs. Benson), Aunty Carly (by Charlie and Julie)

Gender: Female

Birthday: July 24, 1994

Age: 29

Occupation: Host of iCarly/YouTuber, Student at Ridgeway Junior High School (formerly, graduated), Employee at The Groovy Smoothie (formerly), Employee at the 32 Flavors Ice Cream Shop (formerly)

Education: Ridgeway Junior High School (graduated)

Residence: Apartment 8-E, Bushwell Plaza (currently), Apartment 8-C, Bushwell Plaza (formerly), Italy (formerly)

Hair Color: Dark brown, Brown with blonde highlights (revival season 1 & 2), Dark Brown (revival season 3)

Eye Color: Brown

Family: Colonel Steven Shay (father), Mrs. Shay (mother), Spencer Shay (older brother), Granddad Shay (grandfather), Gramma Shay (grandmother), Great Grammy Shay (great-grandmother), Barry Dorfman (uncle), Tess Dorfman (aunt), Faye Dorfman (cousin), Ozlottis Dorfman (cousin), Margaret (aunt), Sunny Johnson (11th cousin), Potter Shay (niece), Julia Puckett (honorary niece), Charlie Shay (niece), nine other nieces and nephews

Friends: Harper Bettencourt (best friend; roommate). Freddie Benson (best friend), Tori Vega (close friend, future girlfriend), Millicent Mitchell, Sam Puckett (best friend), Principal Franklin, Sunny Johnson (11th cousin), Gibby Gibson, T-Bo, Melanie Puckett, Wendy, Shelby Marx, Missy Robinson (formerly), Claire, Toji, Gwen, Paul Denham, Lewbert Sline, Tinsley

Romances: Tori Vega (crush, has feelings for), Sam Puckett (kissed one, bi awakening), Freddie Benson (Ex Boyfriend), Ben Huebscher (first kiss), Jake (former crush), Gibby Gibson (one date), Shane (dated), Nevel Papperman (alternative reality boyfriend), Griffin (ex-boyfriend), Austin (one date), Adam (former crush), Steven Carson (ex-boyfriend), Kyle (ex-boyfriend), Cort (former crush), Lance (one date), Gary Wolf (former crush), Luke Tyler (one date), Justin (dated), Trenton (one date), Beau (ex-boyfriend), Wes (ex-boyfriend), Troy (dated)

Pets: Cookie (former bunny), Shelly (former baby chick), Huevo (former baby chick), Omelet (former baby chick), Benedict (former baby chick), Yoko (former baby chick), Poachy (former baby chick), Sparky (former dog)

Enemies: Nevel Papperman, Tasha, Valerie, Ms. Briggs, Mr. Devlin, Jonah, Amber Tate, Zeebo, Ms. Ackerman, Kyoko and Yuki, Wade Collins, Missy Robinson, Chuck Chambers, Chip Chambers, Mr. Howard, The Petographers, Nora Dershlit, Mr. and Mrs. Dershlit, Penny Tee Employees, Steven Carson, Aspartamay, Ashley, Dana Bukowski, Mandy Valdez, Griffin, Beau, Wes, Argentina Woolridge, Pearl Wallace, Prunella Pitz-Papperman, Emily Haines, Myrtle, Her mother

First Appearance: iPilot (OG), iStart Over (Revival)

Last Appearance: iGoodbye (OG), TBD

#icarly reboot wikis #carly shay

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halothenthehorns · 8 months

Text

Chapter 2: I BATTLE THE CHEERLEADING SQUAD

Just because I'm taking the whole entire month of September and the majority of October off, here's the first chapter in honor of Will's birthday! I do still promise regular updates will resume on Halloween day and then proceed every Monday!

PJOPJOPJO

Alex came in the next day with a bright pink jacket tied around his shoulders in a very classic posh way, wearing a matching polo and green slacks with accompanying colors on his loafers, while sporting rose tinted sunglasses upon his head, at the bottom of the ocean. All of his green hair was swept to one side, and Magnus's heart skipped a beat, his toast falling into his lap jelly first to splat on his pants. Alex would be the most sophisticated guy on the golf course and still somehow make it look like the most useless sport in that getup.

"It's he/ him pronouns," Alex announced as he casually walked to his seat like he was ordering his plate of huevos rancheros for breakfast.

The book had been in the seat beside Magnus, like anybody was insane enough to think of taking that seat from Alex. The plain black somehow accentuated the look when he picked it up. He brushed his hand over the blue four on the spine with hunger to see what was so dark about this one.

"Um, it's my turn to read," Magnus said in a daze, and it was a good thing he'd managed that before Alex looked at him because then he lost the ability to speak. Hopefully it was temporary.

"Well hurry up and eat then," he dropped the book at his feat and dug into his own food, "or I'll happily read twice."

Magnus couldn't figure out why that was a bad thing for a moment, and yet his breakfast vanished faster than Percy's. He pretended the others were laughing at the chapter title and not his idiotic ass as things picked right back up as usual with these strange book descriptions.

Thalia sighed one last time and looked at Jason and the array of books that might contain his past. She really wanted to skip this one, ie delay it permanently by hearing of some of her little brother's times. She was obviously the only one though as everybody turned attention to Magnus for the next part. "I really hope that's not a euphemism for something Percy, or Annabeth's going to be very upset with you," Thalia rolled her eyes.

"I'm just hoping this isn't some elaborate pyramid scheme," Jason grinned, "Percy has enough trouble already."

"Boooo!" Percy called at him, even giving a thumbs down. "Man, that was the worst one yet!"

"Deadly pompoms! I knew those things were no good!" Alex nearly lost half his eggs he was laughing so hard.

Will made a deep noise of contentment, almost a purr to be hearing so much laughter first thing in the morning.

The last thing I wanted to do on my summer break was blow up another school.

"And here I thought that was number three on your list, at minimum," Jason snorted.

"Percy, there's not a world record for that, nobody's competing with you for this," Magnus agreed with a chuckle, but it was sort of depressing too. The school system was hard enough without this guy blowing literal budget holes in the teacher's planning.

"It has to happen though, remember?" Percy gave them a very sardonic brow. "If it doesn't happen, the world will end early! I still have another year of life!"

"And it won't be a pretty one," Thalia muttered. The Labyrinth was one of the quests Annabeth talked about least. Whatever had happened this summer, she was almost as ill prepared as Percy.

But there I was Monday morning, the first week of June, sitting in my mom's car in front of Goode High School on East 81st.

Goode was this big brownstone building overlooking the East River. A bunch of BMWs and Lincoln Town Cars were parked out front.

"I still don't speak car," Nico finally spoke up, hesitantly. A part of him still expected everyone to turn and yell at the sight of him.

Percy gave him the strangest, most awkward smile yet, like he had no idea how to even look at him after yesterday.

Then Percy gave himself a sharp mental smack. Nico and his maybe, hopefully not crush that he'd said was gone was ten times less strange to deal with than Alex being...Alex. So he answered almost as casually as ever, "they're 'middle class' cars," he used air quotes and everything. "Not some swanky private school with Maserati's and Porsche's, and not broken windows and running on faith rather than fume cars."

"Ah," Nico nodded his thanks, and sat back in his seat. His arms were crossed low over his stomach, hands in each sleeve like a monk today like he was trying to be as invisible as possible.

But he wasn't hiding behind the couch today to listen in like he'd originally intended. He'd actually spoken at all, which was more than Will had thought he'd do. The only backfiring going on was he'd either missed breakfast or eaten alone, and Will filed that away for when lunch came up.

Thalia and Will exchanged a pitiful look and kind of hoped Percy pulling mad gymnastic abilities or something would kick in soon, for once. Adrenaline distracting Percy from killing them all would be better than this awkward stiltedness.

Staring up at the fancy stone archway, I wondered how long it would take me to get kicked out of this place.

"What's your record?" Magnus asked into the slightly awkward silence that he'd tried to keep reading through.

"Two weeks," Percy sighed. "In my defense, I really thought that teacher's cat was a demon, and the milk didn't hurt it!"

"Well now you get a chance to do one better, be expelled before you even attend," Alex said plenty cheerfully for all of them.

"Just relax." My mom didn't sound relaxed.

"Do as I say, not as I do," Thalia nodded sagely.

"Okay mom," Percy rolled his eyes so hard it looked like it hurt, "thanks I really needed that translation."

"Don't mock your mother Percy, she's a good woman," Jason laughed, but Magnus kept reading before that could escalate, these were not the kind of jokes he'd ever find funny.

"It's only an orientation tour. And remember, dear, this is Paul's school.

"Ah, nepotism used for good, that's a new one," Alex said in surprise.

"It was a public school, it's not like he bribed anyone to let me in," but Percy didn't sound that confident. If a Blowfish library wing popped up, he didn't think he could blame the Mist.

So try not to...you know."

"Destroy it?"

"Yes."

"All relationships go through their own trials," Thalia said with barely suppressed mirth. "This is just a very great, early indicator if Paul's going to last in this family." She knew he did, but that didn't mean she couldn't laugh about it.

"Better than the usual cheating and lying bullshit adults deal with I guess," Percy grudgingly agreed.

Paul Blofis, my mom's boyfriend, was standing out front, greeting future ninth graders as they came up the steps. With his salt-and-pepper hair, denim clothes, and leather jacket, he reminded me of a TV actor, but he was just an English teacher. He'd managed to convince Goode High School to accept me for ninth grade, despite the fact that I'd gotten kicked out of every school I'd ever attended. I'd tried to warn him it wasn't a good idea, but he wouldn't listen.

"Not a great teacher then," Will looked very disappointed. "He should take his students observations into account, especially these budding adults."

"He actually loves to tell this story about his favorite essay that helped one guy into a great college he never would have applied for," Percy defended, and the ready response surprised him. He paused with a smile at all the memories over the winter and summer of how often Paul had been over, how easily his mom continued to laugh, how Paul never talked down to him like a delinquent from day one. "I think he was just trying to show off he could, though it wasn't nearly as impressive than if he'd gotten me a C in class," he finished with a chuckle Chiron still had the guy beat out on one point.

I looked at my mom. "You haven't told him the truth about me, have you?"

"How would that conversation even go?" The bitterness in Alex's voice could be missed by no one, clearly that wasn't a happy story.

"Historically, not well," Percy agreed in a quiet, gentle voice. He knew the others all envied him for his awesome mom, but that had come hand in hand with Gabe through the majority of his life. Gabe might not have known the truth, but he'd been a part of it.

She tapped her fingers nervously on the wheel. She was dressed up for a job interview—her best blue dress and high-heeled shoes.

"For what?" Will asked. The general question still held a hint of intrigue coming from him, the way he always talked to everybody. Like it was a vitally important question he couldn't wait to know the answer of, Nico smiled.

Percy didn't seem to hear that part, he just glanced at Will with his own proud smile and said, "publishing company. She was done with the first draft of her book, but wanted to check out some of the footsteps before she, um, buffered it? Or maybe buffed it? I'll be honest, I'm not sure what she meant," he finished sheepishly, addressing everybody in general.

It didn't seem to bother Will, and Nico marked that for future reference, trying to scratch off a list in his head of defining what he might have a crush on Percy about, and what he just admired about him. In a group, it was probably weird to expect someone's soul attention.

"I thought we should wait," she admitted.

"So we don't scare him away."

"You should definitely build up to something like that," Magnus agreed as if totally off hand. "Try jumping out of the closet at him a few times, maybe a few toned down side quests like trying to get past a murderous dog with a rubber ball, just to see how he takes to it."

"I should start with the one about how Grover got his mango chutney recipe," Percy mock agreed. "Crashing a wedding and piranha sheep are surely the best way to explain, this," he finished with a vague wave around being trapped at the bottom of the ocean.

"I'm sure orientation will be fine, Percy, It's only one morning."

"Great," I mumbled. "I can get expelled before I start the school year."

Alex laughed raucously Percy said the same thing he did, and he grinned along with him and even offered a high five which he happily air slapped.

"Think positive.

"The country ran out of schools and the universe can stop mocking me for this?" Percy sighed.

"There's the bright side," Thalia snorted.

Jason wasn't so convinced that every school would ban him for his record though. He started rubbing thoughtfully at his tattoo, but as always no real memory would connect to that random thought.

Tomorrow you're off to camp! After orientation, you've got your date—"

"It's not a date!" I protested. "It's just Annabeth, Mom. Jeez!"

Percy blushed the color of Rachel's hair, but Magnus readjusted the book to hide his slight hesitation over his continuing wasn't snickers like the others. He, stupidly, wanted to offer, something. Some dumb warning of a 'you better treat her like a lady,' when it was obvious Percy was head over heels in love with her from the beginning.

Uncle Fredrick was obviously kind of useless in that department though, and Chiron seemed the next closest thing and obviously had higher concerns. He just thought his cousin should have some family show support, but then, she probably forgot he'd existed already and this was just as dumb as it could be of him.

"She's coming all the way from camp to meet you."

"It didn't work out with Fredrick again?" The harshness in Magnus's voice was doubled from his own thoughts, and obvious by dropping the familial title.

"She stayed the rest of the school semester with him out there," Percy said cautiously. "She sent me an Iris message every few weeks about the goings on, they were being a lot more understanding when there was a monster attack, and it weirdly didn't happen as much as she thought it would. You know, she just missed Camp and came back earlier, she still called it her home." He finished with a carefree smile.

Will kept the comment to himself she'd showed up at Camp twice. One time had only been through word of mouth, Clarisse had made a passing comment about her being back while getting her ankle wrapped. Judging by her tone, she'd been expecting to find Annabeth in the medical cabin, though Will hadn't seen her. The second he'd only passed her leaving her cabin with a book bag and going up the hill to leave again. Her passing in and out of her home was not exactly his business to share.

Magnus gave a hesitant nod, but Jason wasn't so ready to let it go as he pondered over that. He'd originally balked at the idea of San Francisco being a dangerous place. Nico had said he found another camp in California he hadn't shared with anyone else. The obvious dots being connected only gave him the usual headache, but he still hoped that somehow, someway, he might have made Annabeth's time with her mortal family just the slightest bit easier no matter how foolish it probably was.

"Well, yeah."

"You're going to the movies."

"Yeah."

"Just the two of you."

"Mom!"

She held up her hands in surrender, but I could tell she was trying hard not to smile.

"She must be really nervous about that job interview," Thalia really was trying her hardest not to snicker. "You're lucky she didn't somehow slip into another baby story about you next." She was doing a terrible job by the end.

"Stories you still owe us by the way," Alex only teased, he knew Percy didn't owe them any of this and could leave to read these alone whenever he wanted.

He showed he wasn't going to be doing anything like that when he only groaned loudly and covered his ears to mock ignore them instead until Magnus kept going.

"You'd better get inside, dear. I'll see you tonight."

I was about to get out of the car when I looked over the steps of the school.

Paul Blofis was greeting a girl with frizzy red hair. She wore a maroon Tshirt and ratty jeans decorated with marker drawings. When she turned, I caught a glimpse of her face, and the hairs on my arms stood straight up.

"No," Alex began in awe.

"Way," Magnus barely finished since his mouth was hanging open quite a bit.

"I mean, we knew you'd have to run into her again eventually," Jason agreed. "Nearly killing her on the Hoover Dam couldn't have been the only time," she'd been perfectly comfortable in here beside Percy and still gave him the creeps with the way she'd watched him and pegged him an outsider. "I just expected her to pop up at Camp."

"Yeah, um, small world," Percy agreed with all the blurry confidence he could.

"Percy?" my mom asked. "What's wrong?"

"N-nothing," I stammered.

"Very believable," Alex snorted. "I think you need to start taking some acting lessons from Rachel."

"I'll get right on that when I'm done freaking out about her existing," Percy sighed.

"Does the school have a side entrance?"

"Down the block on the right. Why?"

"I'll see you later."

My mom started to say something, but I got out of the car and ran, hoping the redheaded girl wouldn't see me.

"And yet you're going into the exact same place she is," Jason pointed out in exasperation. "I don't get it, are you avoiding her or trying to get her alone to talk?"

"Avoidance, definitely," Percy was squirming in his seat like a burrito was about to be launched at his head. Annabeth and Grover were the only two who had ever overlapped with his normal life. Rachel just popping up like that set all of his instincts on edge like a monster was going to appear any second...wait. Gods, did he help defend Rachel from the cheerleading squad?! Agh, and there was the headache!

What was she doing here? Not even my luck could be this bad.

"Percy," Will said to him as if in fear he had a concussion for not remembering this. "Your luck is historically the worst."

"Exhibit A," Nico muttered, trapped at the bottom of the ocean with no memory.

Yeah, right. I was about to find out my luck could get a lot worse.

"I swear that should have just been the summary plastered on the back of these books," Percy groaned.

Sneaking into orientation didn't work out too well. Two cheerleaders in purple-and-white uniforms were standing at the side entrance, waiting to ambush freshmen.

"Were they smoking?" Jason asked with weirdly serious concern.

"Didn't smell anything," Percy shrugged. "The blonde one was kind of cute, but way to intense, she had that fake smile that gave me the creeps," Percy shrugged.

Thalia smacked him upside the head, hard, and called him an idiot, while looking at Jason in concern. Beryl had been a chain smoker, but she hoped he wasn't trying to connect plastic girls with the smell of cigarettes in general and he was just being an idiot too.

"Hi!" They smiled, which I figured was the first and last time any cheerleaders would be that friendly to me. One was blond with icy blue eyes.

The other was African American with dark curly hair like Medusa's (and believe me, I know what I'm talking about).

"Hmm, yes I suppose, but does this girl also make a mean burger?" Alex asked.

"And is she going to have a weird obsession with turning you into a statue," Magnus added uneasily. They hadn't gotten any repeat monsters yet aside from the gorgon coming back, so maybe this was how Medusa looked now and found a way to hide her gaze?

Both girls had their names stitched in cursive on their uniforms, but with my dyslexia, the words looked like meaningless spaghetti.

"Welcome to Goode," the blond girl said. "You are so going to love it."

But as she looked me up and down, her expression said something more like, Eww, who is this loser?

The other girl stepped uncomfortably close to me. I studied the stitching on her uniform and made out Kelli. She smelled like roses and something else I recognized from riding lessons at camp—the scent of freshly washed horses. It was a weird smell for a cheerleader. Maybe she owned a horse or something.

"In New York?" Will couldn't imagine the miles of acres from camp and where he'd grown up cramped around all those buildings.

"We have suburbs you know, it's not all Times Square," Percy shrugged.

"Or maybe her dad owns one of those cop horses, or maybe she can turn into a horse," Alex nodded along. "There's really just no guessing here."

Anyway, she stood so close I got the feeling she was going to try to push me down the steps. "What's your name, fish?"

"Fish?"

"That's actually a very fair question with a really interesting answer," Magnus grinned like Percy's was a mistake anyone could make. "Classification of what a fish is is so broad most scientists don't-"

Percy used just a tiny bit of his power, but enough he splashed Magnus in the face with just a few twitches of his finger. "Smart ass," Percy's laugh had them all grinning along.

Magnus brushed his damp hair aside and kept going while Will admired how easily Percy could fit in anywhere he wanted. He was positive Percy's internal thoughts of how he never fit in couldn't be too accurate of his time in mortal schools, he just never wanted to fit in there, considering it was the opposite at camp.

"Freshman."

"Uh, Percy."

The girls exchanged looks.

"Oh, Percy Jackson," the blond one said. "We've been waiting for you."

That sent a major Uh-oh chill down my back. They were blocking the entrance, smiling in a not-very-friendly way. My hand crept instinctively toward my pocket, where I kept my lethal ballpoint pen, Riptide.

"That is one of my favorite sentences," Alex snorted grandly.

"And I use it without mercy!" Percy pulled it out now and waved Riptide around like a writer on a mission.

Then another voice came from inside the building. "Percy?" It was Paul Blofis, somewhere down the hallway. I'd never been so glad to hear his voice.

The cheerleaders backed off.

Nobody had much more than halfhearted confidence these were just regular mean girls slinking off because a teacher was around. Maybe, if it wasn't for that blasted chapter title they could have fooled themselves for a while longer. Now they all just sat there waiting anxiously for Magnus to get to a half-time show that would probably end with confetti and death to a lot of innocent people.

I was so anxious to get past them I accidentally kneed Kelli in the thigh.

Clang.

Her leg made a hollow, metallic sound, like I'd just hit a flagpole.

"First the French guy, now prosthetic leg girl?" Thalia couldn't help but tease, "are you just out here fighting everybody with a disability Percy?"

"I have no problems throwing hands with you," Percy wagged the pen cap dangerously close to her nose.

"Besides, he's never tried to fight Chiron," Will easily slid in to disengage. "I'm just chalking it up to more of his bad luck."

Magnus quickly kept reading before that could escalate anyways.

"Ow," she muttered. "Watch it, fish."

I glanced down, but her leg looked like a regular old leg. I was too freaked out to ask questions. I dashed into the hall, the cheerleaders laughing behind me.

"There you are!" Paul told me. "Welcome to Goode!"

"Hey, Paul—uh, Mr. Blofis." I glanced back, but the weird cheerleaders had disappeared.

"Percy, you look like you've seen a ghost."

"I've done that too, and I'll take Bianca and Nico over those girls," Percy shivered.

"Um, thanks," Nico muttered in surprise, but then Percy winced and groaned, looking around in confusion, and Nico realized Percy wasn't literally talking about the time he'd talked to Bianca's ghost, but was making a morbid joke in general about them being children of Hades. His usual way of laughing off everything that Nico had always equally admired and been so conflicted about, because sometimes it made him come across as an idiot. He didn't know where to place that on his list.

"Yeah, uh—"

Paul clapped me on the back. "Listen, I know you're nervous, but don't worry. We get a lot of kids here with ADHD and dyslexia. The teachers know how to help."

I almost wanted to laugh. If only ADHD and dyslexia were my biggest worries. I mean, I knew Paul was trying to help, but if I told him the truth about me, he'd either think I was crazy or he'd run away screaming. Those cheerleaders, for instance. I had a bad feeling about them...

"Lots of people have bad feelings about cheerleaders," Alex agreed wisely. "Usually because they accuse you of stealing their phone and throw a bucket of piss at you after you got them expelled."

The book fell out of Magnus's hands while everyone felt the awkward silence, but Will got out first, "um, that was a little too specific Alex. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, why do you ask?" He asked casually.

There was only a hint of blood lust in there, but just enough Magnus swiftly decided he heard nothing and nobody was going to get the chance to say otherwise.

Then I looked down the hall, and I remembered I had another problem.

The redheaded girl I'd seen on the front steps was just coming in the main entrance.

Don't notice me, I prayed.

She noticed me.

"Rachel is a very observant girl," Thalia rolled her eyes at him. "She'd pick you out if you were in the mascot costume."

Percy believed her, and it still kind of freaked him out. The mascot was a roadrunner too, and he still didn't think he'd escape this.

Her eyes widened.

"Where's the orientation?" I asked Paul.

"The gym. That way. But—"

"Bye."

"Percy?" he called, but I was already running.

"And you're worried Paul's going to run away from you guys," Nico said mildly, just a little more confidant than the first time.

"Wouldn't be fair of me to have him do all the work, here I am putting in effort too," Percy grinned back with an even shorter hesitation than last time.

I thought I'd lost her.

A bunch of kids were heading for the gym, and soon I was just one of three hundred fourteen-year-olds all crammed into the bleachers. A marching band played an out-of-tune fight song that sounded like somebody hitting a bag of cats with a metal baseball bat.

"I seriously worry about the neighborhood you grew up in," Jason said, with no joke.

Percy had no nice response for that. By the time he came downstairs all he usually found was blood.

Older kids, probably student council members, stood up front modeling the Goode school uniform

"Ugh, I'd get expelled just for getting out of wearing a uniform," Alex gagged.

"Rachel didn't make it look to bad," Magnus said to be fair. He'd trade the stupidest bowtie every day just for a chance at something that kind of routine, normal, mundane.

Alex must have heard the wistfulness in his voice, because his voice went just a hint gentler than usual. "Mm, I've seen worse."

and looking all, Hey, we're cool. Teachers milled around, smiling and shaking hands with students. The walls of the gym were plastered with big purple-and-white banners that said WELCOME FUTURE FRESHMEN, GOODE IS GOOD, WE'RE ALL FAMILY, and a bunch of other happy slogans that pretty much made me want to throw up.

"Glad it's not just me," Thalia raised a hand, the other pressed theatrically to her stomach.

None of the other freshmen looked thrilled to be here, either. I mean, coming to orientation in June, when school doesn't even start until September, is not cool. But at Goode, "We prepare to excel early!" At least that's what the brochure said.

"And we always do what the brochure says," Will nodded saintly.

"Gods, please never give Camp a brochure," Percy muttered, he was terrified what Mr. D would put in there.

The marching band stopped playing. A guy in a pinstripe suit came to the microphone and started talking, but the sound echoed around the gym so I had no idea what he was saying. He might've been gargling.

"His warm up I guess," Alex said, "most people just do the classic picturing underwear thing, but I never could figure out why that would make you less nervous. Naked people usually cause more stress."

"I can't even begin to imagine what would make you nervous to begin with," Jason admitted, "let alone what you would do. Probably rip someone's head off."

Alex considered for a moment laughing that off, but then in a rare moment of vulnerability, he glanced at the book, and said honestly, "being trapped."

At least Oceanus wasn't trying to take away his identity, but the mystery of why only his abilities seemed gone while among the Big Three's kids bothered him greatly.

The reality still hit them plenty they were trapped. Even if it wasn't unpleasant, that didn't make it great. They all just made it better for each other with laughter instead.

So Alex finished with a snarky remark true to form, "and look at you all, not a single headless person! Let alone nearly headless!"

Magnus snorted fantastically beside him just like always before he kept reading, so the others just let it pass with a light chuckle too.

Someone grabbed my shoulder, "What are you doing here?"

It was her: my redheaded nightmare.

"How often do you dream of her?" Thalia had tried for sisterly concern, but ended with to much laughter for it to hold.

"Oh gods," Percy buried his face in dread and decided he would have to personally put these books through a shredder and then burn the scraps if he wanted to live when all his memories were back.

"Rachel Elizabeth Dare," I said.

Her jaw dropped like she couldn't believe I had the nerve to remember her name. "And you're Percy somebody.

"You told her your name was Percy Gotta-go," Jason easily recalled, "I can't believe she'd forget that, it's quite memorable."

"Not everybody always has a toilet on the brain Jason," Percy rolled his eyes.

"I wouldn't have to if your life wasn't trash Percy," Jason smirked.

"Boys!" Will groaned. Magnus very quickly kept reading, and Thalia sighed in relief. They were all getting a little to comfortable with each other down here.

I didn't get your full name last December when you tried to kill me."

"Look, I wasn't—I didn't—What are you doing here?"

"Same as you, I guess. Orientation."

"You live in New York?"

"What, you thought I lived at the Hoover Dam?"

It had never occurred to me. Whenever I thought about her (and I'm not saying I thought about her; she just like crossed my mind from time to time, okay?),

"Yeah, okay Perce," Thalia was obviously about to engrave this passage in stone so that Annabeth and Rachel could laugh at him forever with it and he sighed as he knew there was nothing he could do to stop her.

I always figured she lived in the Hoover Dam area, since that's where I'd met her.

"A reasonable assumption," the eye roll Jason added to that didn't help Percy believe him even before he said, "considering you traveled there from New York!"

"Not everybody travels the country in a week on a magic train provided by a homeless God named Fred," Percy said back in exasperation. "Unless she's some weird, rich version of Annabeth who just sporadically wanted a tour there, it makes sense!"

The others were to busy snickering he'd still managed to bring up Annabeth during this to stop them for a second, but before Jason's chuckle could subside and he did manage Magnus loudly kept going without prompting this time or they'd never finish this one dam chapter.

We'd spent maybe ten minutes together, during which time I'd accidentally swung a sword at her, she'd saved my life, and I'd run away chased by a band of supernatural killing machines. You know, your typical chance meeting.

"That is definitely going to be the next poster for a romcom. Call it Hauling Ass," Alex paused to give a very suggestive look at Percy that made him squirm. "You're a construction worker building the historic monument, she's a southern bell dragged there by her father-"

"Dude!" Percy finally protested. "Write whatever the hell that's manifesting into on your own time! And leave me out of it!"

"I hope this guy's never introduced to fanfiction, his brain would rot," Magnus muttered, making Alex laugh harder than ever, which wasn't very encouraging to Percy. It took every ounce of self control for Alex to suppress the question if Sally ever mentioned that stuff, but when Magnus kept reading, he persevered. He could ask Sally on his own time anyways.

Some guy behind us whispered, "Hey, shut up. The cheerleaders are talking!"

"I bet that guy's one of their girlfriends," Thalia rolled her eyes. "Hope she gives him a thumbs up for sucking up."

"Hi, guys!" a girl bubbled into the microphone. It was the blonde I'd seen at the entrance. "My name is Tammi, and this is like, Kelli." Kelli did a cartwheel.

Will gave a little applause just for the girl/ maybe monster being able to do that, it looked hard when he watched others try.

Next to me, Rachel yelped like someone had stuck her with a pin. A few kids looked over and snickered,

"I swear it's a staple kids will laugh at anything in an auditorium," Nico muttered, the noise always carried and sounded mean no matter who was doing it.

"I don't laugh at everything," Will gave him a very exaggerated pouty frown that Nico fought hard not to grin back at. He lost that battle, and he couldn't say that about many fights.

but Rachel just stared at the cheerleaders in horror. Tammi didn't seem to notice the outburst. She started talking about all the great ways we could get involved during our freshman year.

"All the normal things a half-blood could want," Percy gave a mock yawn to show how much he'd listened to that. "Like volunteer work that looked good on college applications and where the study hall was. I didn't hear anything about where the fire extinguisher was."

"I'm surprised they don't have your name engraved on it just for being there," Thalia agreed.

"You'd have to pull an active miracle to get a college education at your rate," Jason muttered for himself, because he felt bad Percy probably was going to be denied that with his record.

"Run," Rachel told me. "Now."

"Why?"

Rachel didn't explain. She pushed her way to the edge of the bleachers, ignoring the frowning teachers and grumbling kids she was stepping on.

I hesitated.

"Why?"

Percy winced as all six of them yelped that at once. Jason was already winding up for a rant as he began, "do you have any clue how useful that is? She can see through the Mist which you're repeatedly fooled by-"

"Paul," Percy's answer was sharp enough to stop him cold. He really hadn't gone into this trying to make the guy already disappointed in him and his mother look bad and everything that was about to happen because he couldn't have one normal day!

There was a beat of silence. "Sorry," Jason said.

"Yeah, it's fine," Percy sighed, letting it go as fast as it had happened.

Tammi was explaining how we were about to break into small groups and tour the school. Kelli caught my eye and gave me an amused smile, like she was waiting to see what I'd do. It would look bad if I left right now. Paul Blofis was down there with the rest of the teachers. He'd wonder what was wrong.

Then I thought about Rachel Elizabeth Dare, and the special ability she'd shown last winter at Hoover Dam. She'd been able to see a group of security guards who weren't guards at all, who weren't even human. My heart pounding, I got up and followed her out of the gym.

"I'm getting, follow her to the ends of the earth vibes already," Alex chuckled.

"Stop writing fanfiction about them," Magnus muttered to him, "Annabeth would not approve."

"I bet she'd get a laugh out of it," Alex insisted.

Percy was wincing and muttering uncomfortably though, and since they had no idea how she factored into Percy's life it was probably safer not to push his buttons about what they did get up to until all was said and done.

I found Rachel in the band room. She was hiding behind a bass drum in the percussion section.

"Are these monsters sensitive to noise?" Jason asked eagerly.

"Either that or it's a really good spot to grab lunch," Percy shrugged.

"Or the first place she found, you triangles," Thalia said in exasperation. "She's an untrained mortal!"

"Right," they both agreed sheepishly.

"Get over here!" she said. "Keep your head down!"

I felt pretty silly hiding behind a bunch of bongos, but I crouched down beside her.

"Obviously," Alex rolled his eyes. "Everybody knows you should hide in the brass section, that's why they're the ballsy ones." He concluded with a wink at Thalia, "and I mean that totally gender neutral."

"I'm sure they've never heard that joke before," Jason scoffed.

"Did they follow you?" Rachel asked.

"You mean the cheerleaders?"

She nodded nervously.

"I don't think so," I said. "What are they? What did you see?"

Her green eyes were bright with fear. She had a sprinkle of freckles on her face that reminded me of constellations. Her maroon T-shirt read HARVARD ART DEPT. "You...you wouldn't believe me."

Magnus had seen in person how much that could mess a person up. It still really bothered him he didn't know what to go back and do with this kind of information. Telling the homeless mortals who went on about metal angels they weren't crazy would only put a band aid on the grander problem.

"Oh, yeah, I would," I promised. "I know you can see through the Mist."

"The what?"

"The Mist. It's...well, it's like this veil that hides the way things really are. Some mortals are born with the ability to see through it. Like you."

She studied me carefully. "You did that at Hoover Dam. You called me a mortal. Like you're not."

"So she's always been that perceptive," Jason murmured in appreciation. Her gift truly was special, he wished he could pin down why he felt like he had a name or something attached to this odd power of perception and sight she had.

I felt like punching a bongo. What was I thinking? I could never explain. I shouldn't even try.

"Don't be so down on yourself Percy," Thalia frowned at him in surprise. "You're really not as stupid as we all like to say you are."

"Thanks Thals," Percy rolled his eyes and waved at Magnus.

"Hey," she grabbed his wrist, "I mean it."

He looked at her and saw she really was being serious. "Um, thank you," he was probably blushing just a bit. "I really didn't have a clue what I was doing though."

"Never stopped you from trying to do anything," she released his wrist with an eye roll of her own, resisting the urge to try and smack him in the face with his own hand. No way would she be fast enough to do that in the water.

Percy grinned at her. Coming from anyone else, even Annabeth, he'd have thought they were lying just to make him feel better. Thalia knew exactly how he felt, because she tended to have the same self-doubts.

"Tell me," she begged. "You know what it means. All these horrible things I see?"

"Look, this is going to sound weird. Do you know anything about Greek myths?"

"Like...the Minotaur and the Hydra?"

"Yeah, just try not to say those names when I'm around, okay?"

"And the Furies," she said, warming up. "And the Sirens, and—"

"Okay!" I looked around the band hall, sure that Rachel was going to make a bunch of bloodthirsty nasties pop out of the walls;

"We have yet to see that actually," Alex had the audacity to eye the walls in betrayal. "I'm starting to think Chiron and Grover lied to you about that, it's only ever caused Zeus to make thunder at ominous moments."

"Why push my luck?" Percy asked in exhaustion.

but we were still alone. Down the hallway, I heard a mob of kids coming out of the gymnasium. They were starting the group tours. We didn't have long to talk.

"All those monsters," I said, "all the Greek gods—they're real."

"I knew it!"

I would've been more comfortable if she'd called me a liar, but Rachel looked like I'd just confirmed her worst suspicion.

"First Tyson, now her," Will sounded like he was pretty impressed with Percy's ability to help take first steps into this world. "You're blunt and get to the point, but don't try to scare them, let alone impress them. All you're really missing is the orientation video to explain the rest."

Nico snorted in delight beside him and Will smiled with pleasure.

"Yeah, yeah," Percy was shaking his head in exasperation at all the praise. "Been and done the whole TV show routine, not looking for round two."

"One slow news day and I'll bet that reporter will be back around," Will said confidently, mock framing Percy with his hands. Percy flipped him off and said, "show that on TV!"

Magnus loudly kept reading before they got too sidetracked among the chuckling.

"You don't know how hard it's been," she said. "For years I thought I was going crazy. I couldn't tell anybody. I couldn't—"

Thalia tugged at the links in her bracelet with the same feeling of uselessness Magnus felt. What were they supposed to do, post a billboard with a number to Olympus Hotline?

She imagined for a moment borrowing these books when they were done with them, maybe giving some mortal a sense of salvation if they read it like this was some fairy tell, Sally apparently might be some help with that. A world they could never be a part of, but at least wouldn't think they were crazy for.

She glanced at Percy with guilt though and decided she might have to tweak a few details.

Her eyes narrowed. "Wait. Who are you? I mean really?"

"I'm not a monster."

"Well, I know that. I could see if you were. You look like...you. But you're not human, are you?"

I swallowed. Even though I'd had three years to get used to who I was, I'd never talked about it with a regular mortal before—I mean, except for my mom, but she already knew. I don't know why, but I took the plunge.

"I'm a half-blood," I said. "I'm half human."

"And half what?"

Just then Tammi and Kelli stepped into the band room.

"Half-fish," Alex supplied as if poor Rachel had really been left in the lurch.

"Paul is only his step dad Alex, keep up," Magnus smirked.

The doors slammed shut behind them.

"There you are, Percy Jackson," Tammi said. "It's time for your orientation."

"They're horrible!" Rachel gasped.

"A blonde, a burnet, and a red head walk into a band room-" Alex began.

"If you make one more joke about this I'll put you in the perconcussion section," Percy mispronounced with a hard look at Magnus not to correct him.

"Who says I don't already know how to play the bongos?" He challenged back.

Percy sighed in defeat, he really should have known better by this time.

Tammi and Kelli were still wearing their purple-and-white cheerleader costumes, holding pom-poms from the rally.

"Well those are going to be covered in blood and monster dust here soon," Nico said confidently.

"Don't forget the fire," Will nodded, "he can't leave school without it."

Percy groaned, as much because they were right as his head ached in pain, and because he believed they were right.

"What do they really look like?" I asked, but Rachel seemed too stunned to answer.

"Oh, forget her." Tammi gave me a brilliant smile and started walking toward us. Kelli stayed by the doors, blocking our exit.

They'd trapped us. I knew we'd have to fight our way out, but Tammi's smile was so dazzling it distracted me. Her blue eyes were beautiful, and the way her hair swept over her shoulders...

"Percy," Rachel warned.

I said something really intelligent like, "Uhhh?"

"And we can officially ear mark the moment Percy hit puberty," Jason mock clicked a pen to jot that down.

"When he sees Annabeth again it's officially going to be a, treat," Magnus sighed, gods he did not want to hear his cousin described by a male teenager.

"I can and will make your lives hell without drowning you," Percy pleasantly reminded.

Jason pretended he couldn't hear him and was still scribbling, making sure Percy could hear words like, "needs the talk," and, "date do's and don'ts," so Magnus very loudly kept reading over that before Percy acted on the urge of breaking his fingers like he was obviously considering.

Tammi was getting closer. She held out her pom-poms.

"Percy!" Rachel's voice seemed to be coming from a long way away. "Snap out of it!"

It took all my willpower, but I got my pen out of my pocket and uncapped it. Riptide grew into a three-foot-long bronze sword, its blade glowing with a faint golden light.

"I hope Rachel didn't have to many nightmares about that," Percy sighed, still fidgeting with the cap uneasily. It took a lot of concentration to constantly remind himself the adrenaline dump was all in his head and there was nothing to kill in here.

Tammi's smile turned to a sneer.

"Oh, come on," she protested. "You don't need that. How about a kiss instead?"

She smelled like roses and clean animal fur—a weird but somehow intoxicating smell.

"Note to self, nobody spray Grover with roses, then he'll be unstoppable," Thalia nodded for herself.

Rachel pinched my arm, hard. "Percy, she wants to bite you! Look at her!"

"Well that would get anyone's attention," Jason rubbed his arm and studied the book in concern.

"Are they vampires?!" Alex's eyes went comically wide. "Are we really about to get vampires up in here?" He looked ready to lunge for Magnus's throat to see for himself.

"Note to self, keep the fangs away from this one," Thalia said in concern.

She's just jealous," Tammi looked back at Kelli. "May I, mistress?"

Kelli was still blocking the door, licking her lips hungrily. "Go ahead, Tammi. You're doing fine."

Tammi took another step forward, but I leveled the tip of my sword at her chest. "Get back."

She snarled. "Freshmen," she said with disgust. "This is our school, halfblood. We feed on whom we choose!"

Then she began to change. The color drained out of her face and arms. Her skin turned as white as chalk, her eyes completely red. Her teeth grew into fangs.

"That is so cool!" Alex really did reach over to steal the book, but Magnus hugged it close and shuffled as far away as he could on his end of the couch. Alex turned pleading eyes to Percy, "did you at least get an autograph?"

"I'll start a book of monsters just for you," Percy said, rather nonplussed at Alex geeking out over something else wanting to kill him. It really was par for the course at this rate.

"A vampire!" I stammered. Then I noticed her legs. Below the cheerleader skirt, her left leg was brown and shaggy with a donkey's hoof. Her right leg was shaped like a human leg, but it was made of bronze.

"And that somehow made them cooler," Magnus agreed with Alex's yelp. "I'll give them this, it's original."

"They don't need compliments Magnus, they need decapitation," Nico reminded in exasperation.

"They can have both," Will said fairly. "I'm sure Kellie and Tammi appreciate compliments once in a while, it must get exhausting with how popular vampires are now adays to hear themselves described wrong."

"I just hope Percy doesn't ask if they sparkle," Thalia sighed.

"Uhh, a vampire with—"

"Don't mention the legs!" Tammi snapped. "It's rude to make fun!"

She advanced on her weird, mismatched legs. She looked totally bizarre, especially with the pom-poms, but I couldn't laugh—not facing those red eyes and sharp fangs.

"Then you need more fun in your life," Alex told him, he was still laughing plenty at this development.

"Cheerleader vampires, I'm surprised that's not a book of its own," Magnus agreed.

"A vampire, you say?" Kelli laughed. "That silly legend was based on us, you fool. We are empousai, servants of Hecate."

"Mmmm." Tammi edged closer to me. "Dark magic formed us from animal, bronze, and ghost! We exist to feed on the blood of young men. Now come, give me that kiss!"

"Maybe they shouldn't lead with the gross details of their existence if they want a smooch," Jason frowned, clearly unimpressed as he flipped his coin around.

"Dating is weirdly hard, kudos for trying their own approach," Percy shrugged, "it just didn't work on me."

"Liar," Thalia waved to the book where he'd yet swung his sword.

"I was caught off guard, not considering it!" He insisted.

"Uhhu, that's exactly what I'm hearing, not that Rachel had to save you," Thalia reminded.

Percy tried to splutter some denial together, but Magnus saved him the effort.

She bared her fangs. I was so paralyzed I couldn't move, but Rachel threw a snare drum at the empousa's head.

"Exhibit A your honor!" Thalia crowed.

"I want this case dismissed! Objection!" That was the only lawyer speak Percy knew though and sat back in his seat with a sigh at the accompanying laughter.

The demon hissed and batted the drum away. It went rolling along the aisles between music stands, its springs rattling against the drumhead.

Rachel threw a xylophone, but the demon just swatted that away, too.

"I would pay all of the money for her to throw a tuba next," Alex said with a disturbing kind of gleam that usually meant he'd be trying this himself eventually.

"You would make a great one man band act," Magnus agreed. Alex would be the only person who could make a guitar riff and then bash a monsters head in and still get a tip.

"I don't usually kill girls," Tammi growled. "But for you, mortal, I'll make an exception. Your eyesight is a little too good!"

She lunged at Rachel.

"No!" I slashed with Riptide. Tammi tried to dodge my blade, but I sliced straight through her cheerleader uniform, and with a horrible wail she exploded into dust all over Rachel.

Rachel coughed. She looked like she'd just had a sack of flour dumped on her head. "Gross!"

"First Annabeth, now her," Jason chuckled. "Does the value of a thank you just not mean anything anymore?"

Thalia stepped on his shoe, and he yelped in pain. She raised a brow at him and asked, "now where's my thank you for shutting you up?"

He tucked his aching toes behind his other heel and decided against answering like the smart kid he was.

"Monsters do that," I said. "Sorry."

"You killed my trainee!" Kelli yelled. "You need a lesson in school spirit, half-blood!"

"Anything but math club, anything but math club," Percy crossed his fingers and leaned forward in his seat.

"Technically attempted murder is not math club, so wish granted," Thalia sighed.

"He could start a junior detectives club, help the local police solve crimes," Will grinned.

"They'd arrest me on sight," Percy reminded with a huff.

Then she too began to change. Her wiry hair turned into flickering flames. Her eyes turned red. She grew fangs. She loped toward us, her brass foot and hoof clopping unevenly on the band-room floor.

"I am senior empousa," she growled. "No hero has bested me in a thousand years."

"Yeah?" I said. "Then you're overdue!"

"As leader of the squad, you'd really hope she'd be more prepared for the time restraints of multiple responsibilities," Alex said in mock disappointment.

"High school life is hard and stressful enough, Percy will help her balance some of it," Magnus reminded, and by that he meant cut her into evenly squared pieces of monster dust.

Kelli was a lot faster than Tammi. She dodged my first strike and rolled into the brass section, knocking over a row of trombones with a mighty crash. Rachel scrambled out of the way. I put myself between her and the empousa.

Will's adams-apple bobbed as he nervously swallowed. There were a few training scenarios where you had to defend someone on the ground pretending to be unconscious while a 'monster' attacked. Percy got in repeated trouble for those from him and Chiron for always taking more hits than he should.

Kelli circled us, her eyes going from me to the sword.

"Such a pretty little blade," she said. "What a shame it stands between us."

Her form shimmered—sometimes a demon, sometimes a pretty cheerleader. I tried to keep my mind focused, but it was really distracting.

"The first monster I've heard that seems to have adapted to your ADHD perk," Magnus said nervously. He wondered if it would work on those who wouldn't be naturally attracted to a pretty girl, or was the scent a universal lull no matter the case?

"Gods, please don't start trying to classify us with ecosystems and Latin names," Percy sighed, "I avoided biology as much as calculus."

"Poor dear." Kelli chuckled. "You don't even know what's happening, do you? Soon, your pretty little camp in flames, your friends made slaves to the Lord of Time, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. It would be merciful to end your life now, before you have to see that."

Percy's blood boiled at just the hint of that threat, making the water heat up around them all. Thalia tugging at the collar of her shirt caught his attention fast enough and he took a deep breath to settle himself, but that headache was back in full force. Chiron had warned an attack coming this summer on his camp. Whether Kellie knew something about it or was just taunting him, he needed to find out.

From down the hall, I heard voices. A tour group was approaching. A man was saying something about locker combinations.

The empousa's eyes lit up. "Excellent! We're about to have company!"

"Why is that a good thing?" Nico asked with growing dread. Monsters weren't usually psyched to have a mortal audience.

Percy didn't seem to hear anything at the moment but the words of the book, his attention laser focused and Riptide now fully in hand. They all sat uneasily in place and hoped this fight wrapped up quickly before he lost track of the fact there were no empousa in here to kill.

She picked up a tuba and threw it at me. Rachel and I ducked. The tuba sailed over our heads and crashed through the window.

"You got your tuba Alex," Jason half-heartedly reminded now.

"I wanted Rachel to throw it," he sighed with disappointment. "That's okay, I can imagine it landing on Kellie just fine without the book."

The voices in the hall died down.

"Percy!" Kelli shouted, pretending to be scared, "why did you throw that?"

"Oh shit," Magnus groaned, guessing exactly what she was doing. It really didn't seem fair Percy kept getting blamed when it was the monsters destroying the school and he just happened to be there. And he'd thought little of the justice system before this mess.

I was too surprised to answer. Kelli picked up a music stand and swiped a row of clarinets and flutes. Chairs and musical instruments crashed to the floor.

"Stop it!" I said.

People were tromping down the hall now, coming in our direction.

"Time to greet our visitors!" Kelli bared her fangs and ran for the doors. I charged after her with Riptide. I had to stop her from hurting the mortals.

"Percy, don't!" Rachel shouted. But I hadn't realized what Kelli was up to until it was too late.

Thalia tightly pinched the space between her eyes with defeat. Once again, she couldn't imagine chastising Percy for doing exactly what she would have done. He really would have made a great Hunter.

Percy still didn't seem to hear what the problem was now. He was tapping his feet rapid fire on the ground, tightening and loosening his grip on his sword with his urge not to swing it on anyone in here.

Kelli flung open the doors. Paul Blofis and a bunch of freshmen stepped back in shock. I raised my sword.

At the last second, the empousa turned toward me like a cowering victim.

"Oh no, please!" she cried. I couldn't stop my blade. It was already in motion.

Just before the celestial bronze hit her, Kelli exploded into flames like a Molotov cocktail. Waves of fire splashed over everything. I'd never seen a monster do that before, but I didn't have time to wonder about it. I backed into the band room as the flames engulfed the doorway.

"Paul," Percy muttered in a daze, shaking his head and finally coming back to himself in here with concern. He remembered Paul talking about some kid who accidentally started a trash fire when he'd tried to stub out a cigarette and Paul had gotten him off with a warning. He'd used that story as a way to assure Sally accidents happened and her accident prone son wouldn't be blamed for something like that.

That fire alarm had been really loud going off and still had nothing on the dread filling him at the shock, the horror on Paul's face. He'd almost rather it be Gabe sneering at him and calling him a freak.

"Percy?" Paul Blofis looked completely stunned, staring at me from across the fire. "What have you done?"

Kids screamed and ran down the hall. The fire alarm wailed. Ceiling sprinklers hissed to life.

In the chaos, Rachel tugged on my sleeve. "You have to get out of here!"

She was right. The school was in flames and I'd be held responsible.

Mortals couldn't see through the Mist properly. To them it would look like I'd just attacked a helpless cheerleader in front of a group of witnesses.

There was no way I could explain it. I turned from Paul and sprinted for the broken band room window.

Percy swallowed the bitter smell of smoke, the screaming and his own self-loathing for all the problems he caused. Paul would probably dump his mom after this, another screw up.

I burst out of the alley onto East 81st and ran straight into Annabeth.

"That's almost a step down from her usual grand entrances," Alex noted with mild disappointment. "I half expected her to show up and stab them for flirting with you."

"I don't know what you're talking about, her timing is still amazing," Percy grinned in delight just like he always did when the slightest exchange between them was revitalized in his mind, but there was something off about it than usual. He didn't glow and straighten up in his seat. He was starting to ask himself what the heck had possessed Annabeth to kiss someone so wholly not at her level.

"Hey, you're out early!" she laughed, grabbing my shoulders to keep me from tumbling into the street. "Watch where you're going, Seaweed Brain."

For a split second she was in a good mood and everything was fine. She was wearing jeans and an orange camp T-shirt and her clay bead necklace. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her gray eyes sparkled. She looked like she was ready to catch a movie, have a cool afternoon hanging out together.

Then Rachel Elizabeth Dare, still covered in monster dust, came charging out of the alley, yelling, "Percy, wait up!"

Annabeth's smile melted. She stared at Rachel, then at the school. For the first time, she seemed to notice the black smoke and ringing fire alarms.

The black singes on his shirt and wild look in his eyes probably caught on right about then too, Thalia winced. It was kind of sweet though, that Annabeth always smiled first at the sight of him and then everything else kicked in.

She frowned at me. "What did you do this time? And who is this?"

"Oh, Rachel—Annabeth. Annabeth—Rachel. Um, she's a friend, I guess."

I wasn't sure what else to call Rachel. I mean, I barely knew her, but after being in two life-or-death situations together, I couldn't just call her nobody.

"Why would you call her Annabeth?" Alex asked glibly.

"I have a cyclops who will chase you for a hug and I'm not afraid to use him," Percy answered.

"Hi," Rachel said. Then she turned to me. "You are in so much trouble. And you still owe me an explanation!"

Police sirens wailed on FDR Drive.

"Percy," Annabeth said coldly. "We should go."

"I want to know more about half-bloods," Rachel insisted. "And monsters. And this stuff about the gods." She grabbed my arm, whipped out a permanent marker, and wrote a phone number on my hand. "You're going to call me and explain, okay? You owe me that. Now get going."

"But—"

"I'll make up some story," Rachel said. "I'll tell them it wasn't your fault. Just go!"

She ran back toward the school, leaving Annabeth and me in the street.

Percy remembered her maroon shirt flapping around her and the slight burntness of one strand of red hair like she'd been too close to the fire too. A part of him wanted to go back in there with her. Maybe for once give Rachel and Paul that explanation they both deserved.

Annabeth was already walking off though. He could see her in his mind, her ponytail whacking him as she stalked away like he'd brought one of those empousa out to introduce instead of a mortal girl who had helped him out because he'd ruined her day too by attracting monsters.

He sighed, and knew he'd followed her. He'd follow her anywhere.

"Hey!" I jogged after her. "There were these two empousai," I tried to explain. "They were cheerleaders, see, and they said camp was going to burn, and—"

"You told a mortal girl about half-bloods?"

"She can see through the Mist. She saw the monsters before I did."

"So you told her the truth?"

"She recognized me from Hoover Dam, so—"

"You've met her before?"

"You didn't tell her about that?" Magnus asked in surprise. "No wonder she's so short with you."

"It was the highlight of the last book," Alex agreed in shock.

"Why would I tell Annabeth about nearly dying on a dam, or on a mountain, or in a museum?" Percy asked in exasperation. "There were evil skeletons chasing us across the country, Nico made them vanish!"

"I'm suddenly grateful somebody recorded your thoughts instead of you trying to explain all this," Jason frowned. "You are horrible at telling stories, including the one you just tried to tell Annabeth."

"I didn't ask for any of your opinions on this!" He snapped and slammed back into his seat.

"This chapter's almost done," Magnus promised, "hopefully, we um, get a change of subject."

"Um, last winter. But seriously, I barely know her."

"She's kind of cute."

"I—I never thought about it."

"That was probably the correct response," Alex still gave him a tragic look like he should be wearing a dunce cap. It was sort of funny to Alex, Annabeth was so instantly jealous of the first girl she ever saw Percy around. Weren't the Aphrodite kids at camp all over him? It would be interesting to to see if that was her real problem and it wasn't something else this had just brought up.

Annabeth kept walking toward York Avenue.

"I'll deal with the school," I promised, anxious to change the subject. "Honest, it'll be fine."

Annabeth wouldn't even look at me. "I guess our afternoon is off. We should get you out of here, now that the police will be searching for you."

Percy crossed his arms and glared at the cracks in the floor he'd caused. He felt like a shmuck, now ruining everybody's day around him too. There was no more laughter or jokes to be had because of him too.

"It's alright Percy," Will promised, "you remembering this can't be any more fun than the monster attacks."

"Thanks," Percy muttered, trying to unclench his jaw from how instantly stressed he felt from Annabeth being mad at him.

While Thalia shifted protectively beside him, wishing she could tell Annabeth to take a chill pill. The boy didn't know how to flirt, let alone find anyone other than her attractive.

Behind us, smoke billowed up from Goode High School. In the dark column of ashes, I thought I could almost see a face—a she-demon with red eyes, laughing at me.

Your pretty little camp in flames, Kelli had said. Your friends made slaves to the Lord of Time.

"You're right," I told Annabeth, my heart sinking. "We have to get to Camp Half-Blood. Now."

Magnus handed the book over to Alex with a wince. So much for his concern Annabeth would be the one to need someone in her corner, now he felt like he should be fleeing the scene.

PJOPJOPJOPJO

Here at last! Oh the things to look forward to in this book! My personal favorite is the three parter of the Demon Dude Ranch. Let me know what you're looking forward to?

#pjo #reading the books #fanfiction #Percy Jackson #Thalia Grace #Jason Grace #nico di angelo #will solace #Happy birthday will solace #alex fierro #Magnus Chase #HDYSG's

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