#i suppose id be more inclined to someone that i had been the reason it fell apart than someone who hurt me cause id be scared of a repeat | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kiiiiiim · 3 years

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5/6. Fall/Party

it's not cheating if I combine prompts shhhhh

AO3 link if you feel so inclined

Supercorptober 2021 - Happy//Secret//Luthor//Couch//Red

Lena has never been one for parties. Sure, she goes to all of National City’s biggest social events, throws several LuthorCorp galas a year that rival the Oscars in their extravagance, but that doesn’t mean Lena enjoys them. Usually she makes her rounds, shakes hands with all the rich bigwigs, drinks one glass of white wine and makes her excuses within an hour and a half. She’s got it down to a science - her driver knows to be at the curb, ready to provide a quick getaway at exactly 10pm. There’ll be a change of clothes in the backseat, along with a pair of either flip flops or tennis shoes, depending on the weather, and by 10:15pm Lena will be in bed, eating a bowl of outrageously expensive ice cream as she revels in the absolute silence of her penthouse suite.

She’s got it all down to the minute - but it means nothing if the driver doesn’t show up on schedule.

Lena checks her phone for the tenth time in as many minutes, trying not to be obvious about it. She’s still deep in the throng of party-goers, vain and self-absorbed and continuously patting themselves on the back for their latest achievements. The charity they’re supposed to be raising money for is barely an afterthought at this point in the night; once the checks have been written and the photographs with fake smiles taken for each of the papers entertainment sections, there’s nothing left to do but preen and drink to their superiority.

Lena would love nothing more than to expose every last one of them for the slimebags they are. She’s got enough dirt to bury them all based on their personal affairs alone, without even going into the questionable (yet frustratingly legal) business deals that would no doubt raise eyebrows if the press got their hands on them. But Lena is a Luthor, powerful in her own right, yes - but these can be dangerous men to cross paths with, and if Lena is going to reveal any of her secrets, it has to be to someone she can trust. Someone who will protect her from losing everything she’s worked so hard to build and then rebuild, after Lex’s disastrous trial and incarceration. But in this city, reporters can be just as dangerous and cunning as their prey, and Lena has no interest in being the mouse in this scenario. Not when she’s worked so hard to become the lion.

She tries to be patient. There has to be a good reason for the delay. Jack has never been late in the five years he’s worked for her - he wouldn’t just leave her stranded here unless it was an emergency. She can wait.

She can wait, but the moment a drunk CEO who could barely pass for twenty slides a slow, uninvited hand down to cup her ass, Lena decides she’s had more than enough of this night, driver or no driver.

She all but thunders out of the ballroom, heels clacking in a steady rhythm as she makes her way down the hall, retrieves her coat and bag, and heads for the nearest exit. She’s more irritated at the people she’s constantly forced to interact with rather than dear Jack, who is probably sweating in traffic right now; she’ll take a cab home, or she’ll walk in these overpriced shoes and to hell with the blisters - but she can’t spend another minute here, not for anything. Or anyon-

She collides with something solid and loses her footing, falling backwards from the unexpected force. Her arms instinctively stretch forward to catch herself and Lena desperately hopes she doesn’t hit her head on hard marble, but the floor never comes. Instead, she feels warm, strong fingers grab her forearm and another hand come to support her back, keeping her in an awkward yet upright position.

“Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry! I was in such a rush I didn’t see you there! I was trying to check my notes and somehow the pages got out of order and my boss always says I should just switch to a tablet so this won’t be a problem but I just can’t get used to the idea. Call me a traditionalist but I just think a journalist should use a real pencil and real paper. It’s just in the rulebook, you know? I’m sorry, I’m babbling. That’s always been a problem too. Are you ok?”

Lena is not ok. Not ok at all. Because suddenly everything has gone surprisingly dim except for the space around this tall, blonde, positively radiant woman with a fast-talking mouth and a grip to rival Hercules. Her hand is still on the small of her back, but this touch doesn’t make her skin crawl with loathing and discomfort. It feels… really, really good.

“F-fine. I’m fine.” Lena stutters, meets strikingly blue eyes filled with concern and oh god, she hopes this woman can’t feel the shiver that just rippled down her spine.

“Oh, thank goodness!” She helps her stand up, and Lena feels a tinge of disappointment at the loss of contact when she pulls away. “I’m really, really sorry. I swear, everyone says I need to slow down and stop flying all over the place, but hey, I’m also the one who beats the rest of the crowd to all the good stories, so really, I think my speediness is more of a pro than a con if I’m being honest.” The woman suddenly ducks her head and her cheeks color a bit. “Except when I run head-first into someone like you, who probably thinks I’m a complete nutcase who’s wasting her time, so um… yeah, I’m gonna let you go now. So sorry. Bye.”

“Wait!” Lena croaks before the blonde can take more than three steps. Lena feels dizzy, like she just got off a carousel and hasn’t gotten her center of gravity back yet. She’s also trying really hard not to think about other, less professional ways this woman’s “speediness” could qualify as a mark in the ‘pro’ column.

“You said you’re a reporter?” Lena manages to spit out.

A slow nod. “Uh huh.” Then a bright grin as she sticks out her hand in a comically enthusiastic gesture. “Kara Danvers, CatCo Media.”

Lena knows that name. She’s seen it on the news recently - something about uncovering injustice in the foster care system. It was a big story, and gained a lot of media attention in the last few months. Lena takes her hand, feels warmth pool in the pit of her belly as skin touches skin. “Lena Luthor.” She all but purrs, but she’s too smitten to be embarrassed. And judging from the way Kara’s cheeks darken, Lena has nothing to be embarrassed about.

“Nice to meet you, Lena.” Kara says without missing a beat. There’s no flash of recognition in her eyes at the mention of the name ‘Luthor,’ no inhale of breath or snatching of her hand in recoil, and Lena is a bit taken aback by the lack of reaction. She’s so used to the immediate change in demeanor when someone realizes who she is, who her family is, that to be treated like any regular person on the street meeting someone for the first time is… exhilarating.

“Kara,” Lena tests the name out, liking the way it feels and sounds in her throat. She smiles, and Kara ducks her head again, and oh, that is endearing indeed.

Lena feels her phone vibrate in her hand and glances down at the text notification. It’s Jack. It’s just as Lena expected - caught in traffic, a huge accident holding everything up - he promises he’ll be there as soon as he can, he’s so sorry to keep her waiting.

Lena glances up, meets Kara’s politely curious gaze. She knows absolutely nothing about this woman except for a first and last name, and that she’s a reporter. She could be just like the rest in her field, looking to make a killing on the story of the year without caring who gets hurt in the process, but somehow Kara doesn’t seem like the kind of person who could do such a thing. She’s so different from the others, she has this quality about her that makes Lena feel… safe.

Lena makes a split-second decision. “Would you be interested in a drink? There’s a quiet little bar just down the block that’s very discreet, a good place for talking - I think you might just be the reporter I’ve been looking for.”

Kara blinks, jaw falls open a tad. “Oh, um… really? Me?”

Lena smiles. “I’ve read your work. You’re very good, and I can tell that you want to do good. You look for the truth and fight for those who desperately need someone to look out for them. Like those children in the system. You care, Kara - and I need someone like that to help me make this city a better place for the people who live in it. I think we could do great things together - if you’ll give me a chance?” Lena raises one eyebrow, holds her breath, but doesn’t have to wait long for a reply.

Kara grins widely, all but bounces on the balls of her feet. “Yes, absolutely, I’m totally interested. I mean - interested in talking to you. About reporting… things…” Kara clears her throat and starts backpedaling towards the hall. “I just need to grab my stuff. Wait for me outside? I’ll be quick.”

“Just don’t run into anyone else on the way.” Lena smirks.

“Ha Ha,” Kara mocks lightly. “Nah, I’m not that lucky.” She freezes in place, and Lena can practically see the steam coming out of Kara’s ears. “I mean - lucky like, like landing a job. A reporting job, lucky to get, to…”

“Go get your things.” Lena rescues her, biting her lip to keep from laughing. “I’ll be out front.”

Kara exhales harshly, nods, and turns to go, taking long, purposeful strides with the determination of someone who has just put their own foot in their mouth and wants to flee the scene as fast as possible. Lena watches, nerve endings on fire and a roiling in her stomach that feels less like butterflies and more like a hurricane. It’s been ages since she’s felt like this - not just the attraction bit, although that is certainly a large part of it, but for the first time in years, Lena feels hope. She can do something more than just donate money and use her name to influence projects that no one else will touch solely for the reason that they don’t garner enough media attention to be deemed worthwhile. She can help people, really help them - with someone who wants to do good just as badly as she does.

Lena sends a text to Jack, tells him to go home. She doesn’t need him to rescue her tonight. Someone else has already taken care of that.

#supergirl #supercorp #supercorptober #supercorptober 2021 #my ficlets

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andilovetowrite · 3 years

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Lockscreens and Pictures

Peter Parker x Girlfriend! Reader

Summary: You and Peter have been dating for a year, but for some reason, he never showed you his phone, and you are starting to get a little worried about it.

Warnings: A tiny bit of angst, but mostly fluff. Also, in no way do I want to romanticise the idea of always checking your partner’s phones because I think every healthy relationship should have trust, and if you ever think something is going wrong, talk it through and work things out :)

Word Count: 1.6k words

Posted June 2, 2021

Here is my Masterlist, in case you wanted to check it out :)

Requests are OPEN!

“MJ, I’m really really worried!”

It was Friday night and you were at Peter’s house, where both of you were starting a Star Wars movie marathon. It was going really well, and since you two had alot of work to do, all the time, you both cherished each other when you were able to hang out.

So why were you calling MJ quietly in Peter’s bathroom? Well… because Peter was acting strange. Stranger than usual. He had come to pick you up, and when you saw that he had bought roses for you, you wanted to take a picture...so you asked Peter if you could use his phone.

You had never heard someone say no faster in their lives. And it wasn’t even a stuttery no that sounded like Peter. It was firm and cold no. He had not even realized it and hadn’t uttered a word regarding it, but it had been playing on your mind

“Just gotta go to the bathroom...don’t start without me!”, Peter said, winking at you as he made his way out of the room, leaving his phone on the table. You could feel your hands itching to see what he was hiding on his phone… it wasn’t like you didn’t have your secrets, but you and Peter shared everything, so what was so bad that he would snap at you like tha-

RING

The phone starts blaring as someone called up Peter. Wanting so badly to turn it over and see who was calling, you resisted the urge to, instead calling out to Peter. “Hey, Pete! Someone is calling you”

Hearing footsteps, you saw Peter smile at you and then smile even larger at his phone. Picking it up, for him, you tried to give it to him, but he quickly snatched it out of your hands, nervously looking at you. Taking it, he quickly glanced at the caller ID, his eyes twinkling. He looked at you haphazardly, inclining his head towards his bedroom.

“Just gotta take this call, okay. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes”

You nodded, smiling. But the minute he left, you broke down, your fists clenching as you picked up your phone to call MJ. He didn’t know that you had seen the name of the caller...which was labelled as ‘My Favorite Girl’.

So that brought you to the hushed conversation happening in the bathroom.

“Who could it be MJ?”, you asked, your mind filling with horrible possibilities.

“Y/N, it’s probably Aunt May or something...Peter would ever do something bad to you!” MJ’s voice floated through the speaker, but as she was speaking, you heard Peter say something from the other side of the wall.

“MJ, shush, Peter’s saying something”

Craning your neck to hear him, your heart shattered as you heard him speak. “I love you too! See you tonight”

Your eyes filled quickly with tears, but you wiped them away, fury taking over your body. Who the hell was Peter Parker to break your heart?

“MJ, I’m coming over in 10 min, okay? Let me go talk to Peter first.” Cutting the line, you walked out, and made a beeline for Peter, breathing heavily to not start crying as you look at him.

“So, do we wanna start with the first movi-oh. What happened?”, Peter asked, concern showing on his face.

Taking a deep breath, you closed your eyes, saying everything out quick. “What is such a big secret that you can’t tell me, Peter?!”

For a second, he looked gobsmacked, his eyes bulging out of his head. “What? You know I’m Spiderman already Y/N-”

“No, not that. What is so special about your phone Pete? Why can’t you show me?”

Opening and closing his mouth, he just stared at you, not making a move. So you made one instead. Reaching for the infamous phone on the couch, you picked it up swiftly. Peter gasped, fingers trying to reach for you.

“No, Y/N don’t!”, Peter yelled, running to you, but it was too late. You had seen his phone, and he was basically hyperventilating at what you would say when you saw what was on there….

“Am I your lock screen?”, you asked, an amused smile making its way onto your face.

Peter looked down, his face heating up in embarrassment. “You weren’t supposed to see that”, he muttered quietly. You walked closer to him, the phone still in your hand. You stared down at it, your face flushing as you remembered when you took the picture.

It had been the week after your first date, and Peter had clumsily asked if you wanted to go out again on Friday. Since you were still in shock with your crush liking you back, you said yes without hesitation. And it had been one of the best dates you had been on.

You two had gone to a carnival, and it was magical. With several rides and attractions, you had stayed out for a long time. When it was finally time to go home, Peter insisted on getting you something as a reminder of the night, so he spent about 50 dollars on a claw machine to win you a little bear, which you had to this day.

After he had won you that, and given it to a red-faced you, you had taken a picture. With Peter holding the bear and smiling dopily at the camera while you have kissed his cheek, a similar grin on your face.

Looking back on it now, you felt so relieved. “Oh, thank god it’s just this. I thought you were cheating on me-”

“What!?”, Peter asked, a shocked look on his face. “I wouldn’t ever cheat on you Y/N”

You nodded, falling into the couch with him, your mind still whirling. “Wait, then who is ‘My Favorite Girl’ on your phone? Cause it isn’t me”

Peter laughed, picking up his phone. Opening it, he went to his contact list and clicked the number. A picture popped up, and it definitely wasn’t one that you expected. He and Morgan.

“Wha?”

“Whenever I and Morgan hang out, she always insists that she is my favourite little girl in the world, and she is definitely right”, Peter said cheekily, turning to look at you, “sorry Y/N, but you got some serious competition…”

Embarrassed, you hid your face in your hands, your cheeks red. “Shut up”, you muttered as Peter’s arms went around you, his laugh vibrating through your shoulder.

“Sorry sorry! But Morgan would be absolutely devastated when she heard that I loved her sister more than her!”

“Wait, why are you talking to Morgan?”

Peter blushed, staring at you. “She was gonna help me make you some type of promise ring… I just needed your ring size first, and she lives with you, so I thought she and I could help each other.”

Even though you were hiding your face, you could feel your face heat up at Peter’s sentence. “What did you give her in return”, you asked, knowing Morgan wouldn’t help someone for free.

“Um...back rides for eternity, BUT it’s fine!” You laughed softly but then became serious as you remember what you had stormed out here to do.

“Sorry Pete, I shouldn’t have thought you would cheat on me”, you said, a frown taking over your face at the thought.

Peter became stiff, and for a fraction of time, he didn’t say anything, but then he brought your face up to his, looking into your eyes. His chocolate brown eyes searched yours for something, and he apparently found it because he pulled you into a sweet soft kiss that left you breathless.

“You know I wouldn’t ever even think of cheating on you right?”, he asked, worried. You nodded, hugging him back. “Plus, how could I ever do better than you?”

You pulled back, giggling. “You sell yourself too short Mr Parker. There are tons of girls who would love to date you”, you said, but then whispered in his ear, taking pride in how he shivered, “too bad no one else is ever gonna have you.”

“I agree completely Ms Stark. Even though half of New York would like to be with you,” he whispered, “you are stuck with me!”

You groaned, acting annoyed. “Ugh, the puns are horrible…”

Peter smugly smiled, his eyes twinkling. “Oh, but you love them, don’t you?”

You brushed his hair out of his eyes, as you kissed him lightly. “Yes, I do love them”

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Aww, I loved this one, and I hope you all did as well. Thanks so much for reading this! Also, my requests are closing by the end of the week, so if you wanna send anything in, then please do it soon, since I have a lot of work to do, and might not have enough time to do requests for the next few weeks.

Taglist: @idkatee @eternalscribblesforthesoul @loudbluepancake @poisondevotion @scram1326 @t-hollanderr @305weasley @starknik22 @marvelfansworld @lou-la-lou @lomlparker @marvelfansworld @wowitsel @vanteguccir @fullcheesecakeengineer @ladykxxx08 @allegras-sunflower @a–1–1–3

#peter parker fluff #peter parker x bestfriend reader #peter parker x reader imagine #peter parker #peter parker angst #angst #fluff #tony stark #stark!reader #peter parker x stark!reader

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haus-seeblick · 3 years

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Suptober Day 6: “Who Brings a Gun to a Cemetery?”

For Day 6: Cemetery Boys

Rating: General Audiences; Ship: Pre-Destiel; WC: 3,219

POV Outsider (Original Male Character); full tags on AO3 or below the cut.

Summary: Jerry Wallace has seen a lot of satanic rituals. A lot. Candles and daggers, pentagrams, hoods and chanting; you name it, he’s seen it. As the head of security — and only guard — of Sullivan Cemetery, he’s bound to have run into the occasional devil worshipper. It doesn’t even faze him anymore. There’s not much Jerry Wallace hasn’t seen.

In which: Jerry Wallace encounters Dean Winchester, supposed Satanist.

On AO3 Here (or read under the cut!)

Full Tags: POV Outsider, This poor cemetery guard doesn't know what to do about Dean Winchester, Dean seems insane, BAMF Castiel, Early Seasons Dean and Cas, Pre-Relationship Dean and Cas, Pre-Friendship Dean and Cas, somehow they still manage to flirt though, POV Character is briefly threatened by Dean Winchester but it all ends OK,Humor

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Jerry Wallace has seen a lot of satanic rituals. A Iot. Candles and daggers, pentagrams, hoods and chanting; you name it, he’s seen it. As the head of security — and only guard — of Sullivan Cemetery, he’s bound to have run into the occasional devil worshipper (and worse. People dig up graves for really unsavory reasons). It doesn’t even faze him anymore. There’s not much Jerry Wallace hasn’t seen.

But tonight, as he sweeps his flashlight back and forth across the dewy grass, making his rounds and sipping on his steaming coffee, something stops him short. He narrows his eyes and cocks his head to listen. There’s a scuffling sound up ahead, from just outside the Bennett mausoleum. It sounds too big to be any of the usual animals. Humans, then. Jerry sighs. He was hoping for a quiet night, so he could make himself comfortable under the lamp at the cemetery entrance and read the book his teenage son, Andrew, had lent him. Cemetery Boys, it’s called. Jerry finds it fitting.

A man’s rough voice rings out from around the corner of the mausoleum. “Dammit, Sam, you can’t give me any hints?”

Jerry blinks at the audacity. Who sneaks into a cemetery at night and doesn’t even try to be quiet about it? He decides to give these particular satanists a little scare, just to teach them a lesson. He switches off his flashlight and gently sets his precious cup of coffee on top of the nearest headstone. Time to have some fun.

He sneaks on silent feet across the grass, clutching his flashlight tight in hand and deciding which tactic he wants to use. The reliable old jump scare? Flashlight beam to the face and an earsplitting yell — it’s worked well on thrill-seeking teenagers in the past. Or the more tricky option, creeping around and making ghostly sounds to unnerve the trespassers so thoroughly that they leave? More time investment, but also more amusing in the long run — Jerry decides on Option Two.

The wall of the mausoleum gives him excellent cover to start his performance. He sidles up along it, to the very edge. The intruders are just around the corner, and it sounds like one of them’s rummaging around in a bag of some sort. Jerry rolls his eyes. Probably some weirdos with spray paint, here to deface the walls of the mausoleum with symbols that take ages to wash off. Jerry opens his mouth and is about to emit his first long, ghostly moan, when the same voice as before pipes up again.

“Picking the lock didn’t work, Sam, I’m telling you, it’s gonna take longer. You gotta hold her off.”

The other person — Sam — doesn’t reply, though. Jerry furrows his brow. Who’s being held off? He decides to get a better picture of the scene before initiating his plan. Very slowly, he pokes just the right side of his face around the corner. The front of the small white building is washed in moonlight, the nearest lamp a ways down the path.

There’s a man crouched outside the mausoleum, maybe in his late twenties, from what Jerry can tell in the low light. He’s wearing an oversized leather jacket over a patterned shirt, with jeans and sturdy-looking boots. His short hair is spiked a bit in the front.

He doesn’t look like a satanist. Jerry stays very still, breathing shallowly and watching.

The man has both hands in a medium-sized duffel bag, rooting around. The contents of the bag are clanging and thudding. With a triumphant exhale, the man stands up, crowbar in hand. Jerry balks. This is already a step beyond chanting and spray paint. Again, nothing he hasn’t seen before, though.

What Jerry couldn’t see while the man was crouched, that now makes itself clear, is that he has a mobile phone pressed between his shoulder and ear. As the man advances on the door with the crowbar, he barks into the phone, “Update, Sammy. You still kicking?”

Jerry can’t make out Sam’s muffled response, but it obviously displeases the man, because he whacks the crowbar against the mausoleum door with a frustrated growl. “Watch your back. Figure out what the hell I’m supposed to burn!” He flips the phone shut and stuffs it into his jacket pocket.

This is getting stranger and stranger. Jerry watches as the man goes to town on the mausoleum door, an offense that Jerry would usually be more inclined to stop from happening. Something about this man, though, about the way he carries himself and the way he talks, is holding Jerry back.

He’s very glad about his decision to stay put about ten seconds later, when the man drops the crowbar to the ground with a clang and pulls a gun out of his jacket. Jerry doesn’t even carry a gun. His heart starts beating and his palms prickle with sweat. He didn’t sign up for this. Who brings a gun to a cemetery?

The man steps back a couple feet, points the handgun at the lock, hunches his shoulders, and fires. Jerry barely has the wherewithal to throw himself back around the corner and press his hands over his ears before the shot goes off. He feels it reverberate through the wall, twice, as the man fires again. Fully out of sight now, Jerry gingerly lowers the zipper on his jacket and reaches into his chest pocket for his radio. He needs to call this in. This is way above his pay grade.

“Dammit!” the man yells. The gun must’ve been ineffective. Jerry mentally pats himself on the shoulder. He requested upgrades to all mausoleum locks after a series of break ins last year, and it looks like the security company came through.

Jerry hears the keypad of the mobile phone beeping as the man punches in a number, then there’s muffled ringing. Jerry uses the sound as cover to pull his radio out and to inch his face around the corner again so he has a visual of the scene.

The man’s phone rings and rings. With another frustrated yell, the man slaps it shut and paces back and forth in front of the door, one hand running through his hair, the other still holding his gun. After a few moments, he stops in his tracks. He’s facing Jerry’s direction, silvery moonlight throwing his cheekbones in sharp relief. He looks like a respectable young man, really. Jerry wonders where he lost his way.

There’s a set of complicated emotions working their way across the man’s face. His eyebrows are pinched in concentration, eyes squeezed shut, lips moving as if he’s talking to himself. This lasts about ten seconds before he throws up his hands and glares at the sky.

“Oh, come on!” he shouts. “Get your harp-toting ass down here! Castiel!”

Jerry, who prides himself on never swearing, thinks: What the fuck.

The man is obviously disturbed. He needs a doctor. Jerry glances down at the radio in his hand, and presses the emergency button. He can’t afford a conversation with dispatch; the man will overhear. This will at least get someone out here.

When Jerry looks back up, he twitches. There are now two men in front of the mausoleum. The newcomer is wearing a long trenchcoat and standing stiffly. He’s facing away from Jerry, looking at the gunman, sensible shoes planted hip-width apart. His messy dark hair blends into the shadows.

Where on earth did he come from? Jerry darts his eyes around. The mausoleum is on a slightly raised part of the cemetery, visibility clear in all directions. Even if the trenchcoat man had approached from the opposite side of the building, Jerry would have seen him.

“Cas,” the gunman says, voice heavy with something like — relief, perhaps? His tense posture relaxes slightly and he claps the trenchcoat man on the shoulder. “You took your time,” he accuses. “Can you open those doors?”

The trenchcoat man, Cas — is this Castiel? Jerry cannot keep up — turns slightly to regard the doors.

“This is why you prayed to me?” Cas’ voice is deeper than the gunman’s, rougher. He speaks like a robot. “Heaven is at war, Dean. You call me to help you break down a door?”

Jerry’s brain is spinning. Are these… actors? Cosplayers? He learned about cosplayers from Andrew. Some of them do have very elaborate costumes. Jerry squints at Cas’ back. This doesn’t look like a costume, though. Cas looks like a tax accountant. Like he should be at home with his family at this time of night.

“Sam’s in trouble,” Dean’s saying, an ever-so-slight pleading edge to the words. “I gotta get in here, Cas, or he’s gonna meet a real bad end. I know you’ve got the mojo, come on!”

“I do not exist to do your bidding,” Cas replies. He strides over to the doors, though, trenchcoat flapping around his calves. “I do not serve you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re a warrior.” Dean’s hovering at Cas’ shoulder. “Can you blast ‘em?”

Cas lays a hand on the doors, long fingers splayed against the metal. Jerry glances down at his radio again. The red button is flashing, indicating that he’d called for help, but he can’t hear any sirens yet. He hopes they send enough officers for two grave-desecrating weirdos.

“Stand back,” Cas says. “And tell the man behind the wall to stand back, too.”

“What?” Dean’s head whips around.

Jerry hastily pulls his head out of sight, heart racing. Oh, no. He’s seen enough. He can ID these two for the cops later. He doesn’t need to be on the scene.

He turns heel to run, but makes it only two steps before a hand grabs his collar and yanks him back. The air is knocked out of him and he yelps, feet scrabbling on the pavement as a strong arm drags him around the corner. He lands on his butt in front of the doors, palms scraping on the ground. He quickly raises one over his head in surrender.

“Please— please, I have a family!” He keeps his eyes averted. Dean’s boots are inches away from his legs. “Don’t hurt me, I won’t say a word, I promise!”

“You the guard?” Dean crouches down in front of him. Oh, lord, the gun is trained on Jerry’s face. He whimpers and nods.

“Great. Give me the keys to the doors. Stat.” A palm appears in front of Jerry’s chest, held out in expectation. He hesitates. Isn’t that aiding and abetting?

No way. He’s at gunpoint. He nods again, fervently, and fumbles in his pocket for his ring of keys. His hand shakes violently as he drops them onto Dean’s outstretched palm. He sneaks a peek up at the men.

“Cas,” Dean says, tossing the keys to the trenchcoat man. “Figure out which one it is. I’ll deal with him.”

Cas catches the keys. “So, you do not want me to break the doors?”

“No— just—” Dean closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, lips pressed together. “Just unlock them.” Cas scowls, but begins slotting the various keys into the mausoleum lock.

Dean turns back to Jerry and waves a hand in front of his face. “Hey,” he snaps. Jerry meets his eyes, conscious that he must look utterly terrified. He hopes it’ll appeal to any sense of humanity in this gun-toting lunatic.

“Whatever you think I am, I’m not,” Dean says, quickly and gruffly. “I’m not some pervert tryin’ to get my rocks off with Sleeping Beauty in there. I haven’t got time to ease you in slow, so here it is: ghosts are real. There’s one after my brother. I can gank it, but I gotta burn some hair or somethin’, something keepin’ it here. That’s all. Once Cas opens the doors, I’ll be in and out. We don’t have to get nasty. I’m even saving your doors from gettin’ blasted, as a favor. ”

Jerry picks and chooses what to process of that. “You have a gun pointed at me.”

Dean glances at the gun, like he’s just now realizing he still has it trained on Jerry. He lowers it. “Sorry. Had to let you know I’m serious. You gonna let me do my thing, or we gonna have a problem?”

The police will be here soon, Jerry thinks. It’s not my responsibility to stop this maniac.

“No problem,” he says. Dean nods once, satisfied, and in that moment, the lock clicks. The doors swing open heavily. Dean springs to his feet and races toward the mausoleum.

“Awesome, Cas!” he shouts, slapping a palm against Cas’ chest as he passes. Cas looks after him, a bemused expression on his face.

“I don’t know what to burn!” Dean hollers from inside.

Jerry is so far past trying to understand any of this. He nurses his scraped palms, huddling on the cold pavement and thinking of the book Andrew gave him. He wanted to finish a few chapters tonight so they could talk about them over breakfast tomorrow. He hopes he gets the chance.

Jerry is tough, but his eyes sting a little as he thinks about it.

“Dean is a good man,” Cas suddenly says, in that mechanical way of his. “Righteous. He won’t harm a human.”

Jerry stares at him in disbelief. There’s nothing he can say to that, beyond “Okay.” Cas just nods, and turns to gaze into the darkness of the mausoleum. There’s a lot of scraping and clattering echoing from the room inside, as if Dean is dismantling the place. He probably is, Jerry thinks miserably as the sound of breaking glass reaches his ears.

Dean comes storming back out of the room, assorted items piled in his arms. Jerry recognizes the doll that’s usually propped up behind the glass of the Bennett daughter’s crypt, and a locket that hangs behind the mother’s. A whole array of other personal effects that Jerry spends his nights guarding also end up on the pavement at Dean’s feet. Dean dives into his duffel bag, pulling out a can of gasoline. He douses the whole pile in the acrid-smelling stuff — Jerry’s nostrils sting and he coughs, scrabbling a little farther away. Dean pulls a lighter out of pocket and flicks it several times, cursing when it doesn’t ignite.

“Allow me,” Cas says, stepping forward. He pauses. “Close your eyes.”

Jerry throws an arm over his eyes without a second thought, just catching sight of Dean doing the same. His jacket sleeve does very little, though, to shield his eyes from the brilliant blue-white light that rips through the darkness. It feels like a bonfire, there one moment and gone the next, leaving the tips of Jerry’s hair singed. He cowers, eyes pressed shut, heaving huge breaths.

“Damn, Cas,” Dean says, voice tinged with awe. “Thanks for the assist.”

Jerry lowers his (slightly smoking) arm and peers at where the pile of belongings once lay. It’s completely gone, reduced to ash, just smoldering dust on the pavement. How on Earth—

In that moment, Dean’s mobile phone rings. He frantically plunges a hand into his jacket and rips it out, flipping it open.

“Sammy?” he asks sharply, pressing the phone to his ear. The voice on the other end mumbles something and Dean sags in relief, dragging a hand over his face. “Close call, huh? Yeah, glad it worked.”

Jerry tunes out the rest of Dean and Sam’s conversation. His eyes travel from the smoking pile of dust, to Cas (who’s standing motionless, staring at Dean), to the open mausoleum door, to his own hands, trembling in his lap. A light catches his eye off to the side and he follows it, realizing it’s his radio, abandoned on the pavement, red emergency light still blinking steadily. He gazes at it like a lifeline.

“Is that— Did you—” Dean’s voice is suddenly closer, right next to Jerry, and he quickly looks up. Dean’s looking at the radio, too. His phone is closed in his hand; he must be done talking to his brother.

“The cops coming?” Dean demands, gesturing at the radio. Jerry doesn’t want to let on, he doesn’t, but faced with this strange, complicated, definitely violent person, he can’t hold out. He nods.

“Dammit,” Dean mutters. Just then, the first siren wails in the distance, growing louder by the second.

Finally.

Dean groans and rushes over to his duffel bag, throwing the can of gasoline back in and grabbing the crowbar off the ground to toss that in, too. “Leave the keys, Cas,” he snaps at the trenchcoat man, who still has Jerry’s key ring dangling from his fingers. Cas drops the keys on the ground.

“Can you zap me to my car?” Dean hoists the duffel over his shoulder and faces Cas. “I won’t make it if I run.”

Cas steps closer to Dean, until he’s right in front of him. Their noses are just a few inches apart. Jerry, with nothing else to do but wait for his rescuers, watches them. Dean takes what looks like a shaky breath. His eyes flick down to Cas’ mouth. “You gonna stare, or you gonna help?” he asks, but it comes out small, a weak attempt at bravado.

Cas reaches out and places his hand over Dean’s left shoulder. “I’ll go with you,” he says, deep and measured, and in the next second, they’re gone. Just gone.

Jerry could swear he heard the flapping of wings. He sits there, numb, staring at the spot where they vanished.

Eventually, the yellow beams of flashlights dart across the front of the mausoleum and voices break through the fog in Jerry’s brain. A hand lands on his shoulder. “Sir, are you all right?”

He’s saved.

There’s a lot of questions from the responding officers, a lot of Jerry having to recount what he saw, picking and choosing details — which of course renders his story utterly implausible — and a lot of nobody believing him; there’s a breathalizer test — humiliating — that of course comes back clean (whether that’s better or worse for him, Jerry’s not so sure), and a round of paperwork, and finally, finally, Jerry is allowed to go.

He stumbles down the cemetery path in a daze, passing his long-cold cup of coffee, still perched on its headstone. He snags it and throws it away in the trash can at the cemetery gates. The officers said they would lock the mausoleum and the security station; Jerry was supposed to go home. He stops briefly at his station, though, to grab Andrew’s book.

He’s not quite ready to go home yet. He’s not sure what to say.

Jerry makes himself comfortable in the front seat of his car, overhead light on, and cracks open his book. He starts to read.

#suptober21 #this was fun to write #have some silliness #i enjoy imagining what regular citizens think of the winchesters #poor jerry #he's just doing his job #early seasons destiel #pre-destiel #fanfic #ficlet

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livvywrites · 3 years

Photo

[ ID: the image depicts a knights helm with a pointed face looking to the right. it’s been edited to look like an oil painting, and overlaid with a pale grey-green color. over the image is written ‘a conspicuous lack of dragons’ in a script front, and beneath that, ‘livvy moore’ in a serif font. /end ID. ]

i posted an excerpt of this with the placeholder title “the perils of taking quests from little old ladies who live in the woods.” i’m still rather fond of that title, but it’s a little too long xD

this was written mostly as an exercise to kind of... shake the mental cobwebs off, after seeing a post about accessibility + princesses in towers. i really liked how it came out, so i decided to polish it up and post it :D i meant to have it up sooner, but... life :p

you can also read this on my website :)

a conspicuous lack of dragons

The tower is exactly as the old woman described. White brick, with a deep purple roof, standing on a mountain at the edge of a prosperous kingdom. Only a few windows adorn the top of the tower. The rest is bare, and unadorned. You are… a little relieved. The old woman had said that this tower belonged to a dragon. You weren’t particularly looking forward to fighting it—and though you’re sure you still might have to, at least you have time for a little more reconnaissance.

Save for the base, where there is a plain wooden door.

You… cannot say you were expecting that. You swing off of your mare, and stow your more important belongings with her, keeping with you only your sword, shield, and medicine kit. You examine the door carefully, and find that—at least from this side—it is as plain as it appears.

You open the door, and step inside.

The base of the tower is rather bare. There are a few crates and boxes, covered in a layer of dust and cobwebs. There is a conspicuous lack of traps. You frown, step further in, and wait for the door to slam behind you.

It does not.

Suspicions piqued, you start up the twisting and winding ramp (not stairs!) that lead to the top. You draw your sword as you do, ready to strike if anything—or anyone—pops out at you.

Nothing does.

There are still no traps; no guards; and no hints of magic. The most arduous thing about it is the trip to the top. Another plain, wooden door is there; though it has been painted a pale lilac. There is a small peephole near the top.

You see no strange mechanisms. No glowing runes. No door knockers with faces, ready to entice you into a battle of riddles.

Your frown only deepens. You push the door open, fully expecting to be greeted by the most heinous monster you’ve ever faced.

Instead, you find a young woman. You can only presume that this is the princess. She is seated on a plush couch, reading a rather thick book. She looks up at the creak of the door, and gives you a brief once over.

One brow raised, she asks, “Well? What are you doing here?”

“I’m… here to rescue you?” you say, but it comes out as more of a question. You feel dumb. Also numb. Off-balance. You aren’t sure what’s going on at all. Nothing here is what you expected it to be, and you’re not sure how to take that at all.

“Oh,” the princess says. She looks disinterested again. “Mm. Thank you, but no thank you. I am perfectly content where I am.”

“I… but…” You stop. You’re not really sure where you were going with that.

The princess sighs. She marks her place, and lays the book on a side table. She gestures to one of the chairs. “Let me guess,” she says. “A lovely little old lady hired you. Very sweet, greets everyone with a plate of cookies. She shuffles more than walks and leans on a cane. Very harmless. Very unassuming. She told you a sob story about a poor princess, shut in a tower for… Oh, I can’t imagine what she used this time. Someone was jealous? They were afraid I would be stolen away? I’ve been cursed?”

“Um.” You’ve taken a seat now. “A dragon had taken you and hid you here, to hold you for ransom.”

The princess rolls her eyes. “Ah. We’re stereotyping dragons, now. Lovely.” She rearranges the blanket on her legs. “The truth, then. I am a princess, she did not lie to you about that. However, I am not in this tower because of dragons, curses, jealousy, beauty, or whatever reasons she can dream up. This tower was, in fact, my idea.”

“Why?” you blurt.

The princess smiles. There’s something a little secretive about it, like she’s letting you in on something. “You see,” she says, “I was born a little different from the rest of the world. Not much, mind, but enough to make it hard for me to function in your world. I’ve got a touch of power in me. I can, of course, cast spells. But that is not why I am here. I am here because I also have a touch of the Sight. And that… well. It makes me a little… sensitive.” She drums her fingers on the arm of the sofa. “It is hard to explain, because I can do so many different little tricks, but I will try. Since you came all this way.

“The main one, I think, is being able to sense emotions. This one is not something I can turn off. Being in a crowded room is… overwhelming. I can feel what everyone else is feeling, and they are hardly ever feeling the same things. It is enough to drown my own emotions out, and it is—I am sure you can imagine—unpleasant.

“I can also sense surface thoughts, sometimes. When they are very loud, or when I care to turn an ear to them. When I was younger, I could not control this, and… thus, crowds of people were, once again, very uncomfortable.

“And, of course, I can predict things. With an object—clear or mirrored, preferably—I can see things going on in other places. It takes focus, and practice, and it helps if I’ve been there or have a clear idea of what I am looking for, but it is possible. I can catch glimpses of things that will happen, or could happen.

“I can also see the future of an object, if I touch it. Or look into its past, see where it’s been. This was another thing I could not control as a young one, and made things very, very unpleasant.

“There are other things, too, but these are the three that made me seek solace here. I get visitors. I leave sometimes. But, yes. My being here is very much a choice. I thank you, again, for your concern. But it is not warranted.”

“I…” You bite your lip, and shake your head. “I do not understand why I was sent here, then. If you are not in danger.”

“Ah. Well.” The princess smiles wryly. “The old woman who sent you here is not an old woman at all. That is the disguise she dons, when she sends people to me. I believe because it makes her seem more trustworthy… or perhaps because she thinks its funny. I don’t know.” She shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. She sent you here, the same way she did the others, because she wants to use you to get past my wards.” She turns her gaze from you, and looks at the door you came in. “Isn’t that right, Muriel?”

In the doorway stands a woman who is nothing like the little old lady who plied you with cookies and a sob story about a kidnapped princess. She has long golden hair that shines in the window light. She walks with a finely carved staff; a glowing orb at the top. When she gets close, however, you can see her eyes. And those—those are the eyes of the old lady. Warm brown with a touch of humor. She sits in the empty seat.

“You turned the last three away at the door,” Muriel says. “I was beginning to think that you were angry with me.”

The princess hums. “I don’t know why you bother with the pretext,” she says. “You could just have them deliver a letter.”

“I could. But then however would I test their virtue?”

“Virtue?” you ask, before you can stop yourself. You are still so terribly confused. You lost the plot somewhere around when you opened that first door—and you don’t think you’d ever quite caught back up.

Muriel looks at you, as if she was surprised that you were still there. “Well, yes, darling,” she says. “First to see if you were willing to face a dragon to rescue a princess you’d never even met. And then to see if you could get through the doors. They don’t let you in unless you’re pure of intention.”

That doesn’t really clear anything up.

“But why?”

“I presume to keep the princess safe.”

“That’s not what our good knight is asking, and you know it,” the princess chides.

Muriel grins. “Because I’ve need of you, good knight. We’ll get to that. For now…” She looks back the princess. “What do you think, dear? You know I trust your judgment more than anyone else’s.”

“Speak more plainly, Muriel,” the princess says. “I’ve no idea which scheme you’re speaking about now. I can’t possibly keep track of them all.”

Muriel huffs. “The knight, dear.”

The princess gives you another once over. “Depends,” she says. “What is it you’re needing?”

“The gryphon, I think.”

The princess seems to consider that, then sniffs. “No. You’d be better off asking one of the other three.”

You feel indignant.

“I would send this one for the unicorn.”

Less indignant. But only just.

“Oh, truly?” Muriel looks at you again, and there is a new appreciation in her eyes. “Well. You know best, on the subject of unicorns, I suppose.”

“It isn’t that I don’t appreciate the flattery, because I do. However, I really must ask you to drop the pretense. You didn’t come all of this way to ask me that. Speak true, Muriel.”

“Perhaps I just wanted to see you.” Muriel’s tone and expression goes coy, almost coquettish.

A ghost of a smile appears on the princess’s mouth. “If you wish to engage me in courtship, Muriel, there are far less roundabout ways to go about it. Which, mind, I would appreciate far more than the games.”

Muriel flushes, almost imperceptibly. “Ah. Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

The princess inclines her head, and in a gentler tone says, “Your affections would be welcome.”

“Truly?”

“I would not lie to you, dear,” the princess says. “However, once again, I must ask you to speak the truth. Why have you come?”

Muriel sighs. “Your perceptiveness grates, you know?”

“So you have said.”

“Fine. I have come to steal you away again.”

“Ah. Where to?” The princess looks remarkably calm at that comment, though your hackles have raised. Wherever Muriel wishes to go, you do not think the princess should have any part of it. You have a feeling, though, that if you said anything, the princess would—kindly—tell you to mind your own business.

“The Wilds,” Muriel says.

This means nothing to you, but the princess nods.

“Of course,” she murmurs to herself. “Right, well. When do you wish to leave?”

“Once I’ve gotten this one packed off,” Muriel says. She gestures to you.

“Do I get a say?” you ask. Demand.

“Well of course, dear,” Muriel says. “You’ll either take the mission I give you or… go off to do whatever you do when you’re not taking quests from strange women. Either way.”

You huff, but nod.

“Very well,” the princess says. “I am agreeable.”

“Excellent.” Muriel sends her a quick flash of a smile. The glimpse you catch is soft and subtle. The princess’s own lips quirk in response… and then suddenly, both their eyes are on you again.

Muriel is looking at you like she’s a cat and you’re… something small and skittering. You don’t know if she’s going to pounce, or if she just wishes to watch, but either way—you’re more than a little unnerved.

The princess, on the other hand, looks kind and a little amused. “Any questions?” she prompts.

“Why did she—you—need my help to get in the tower? If you two are friends, I mean.”

“Because Muriel practices dark magic,” the princess says plainly.

You start; sitting up right as if a rod has just been plunged through your spine.

The princess laughs. “That does not mean that she is evil. Your knightly virtue is still intact. Dark magic is simply a tool, like any other, and Muriel wields it well.”

“But…”

The princess reaches out, and lays a hand on yours. You can feel the weight of it through your gauntlet, though not much else. “Muriel is something of a trickster, it is true. She lies. Sometimes for a good reason, and sometimes simply for her own amusement. She does not mean any harm when she does it… and so, she will never quite be sorry for it. It is her way. But let this be a lesson to you. If you work with her—or, truly, anyone else—do your research before blindly following what they tell you.” She pats your hand, and withdraws. “Now. Muriel will explain what she wants you to do, if you let her, while I get ready.”

She stands, folds the blanket she had been using, and takes her book off to another room. You are left alone with Muriel, and you eye her warily.

Muriel does not seem to mind your distrust. If anything, it seems to amuse her more. “So,” she says. “Unicorns.”

“I won’t kill one,” you say, immediately.

Muriel laughs. “Nor would I ask that of you,” she says. “I do not wish for you to kill one. Nor maim one, capture one, or any other nasty thing your mind has conjured up.” She reaches into a satchel, and pulls out a small vial. Inside is a beautiful, shimmering liquid. “You are familiar with Eaton’s River, yes?”

You nod. You’d been, once.

“Mm. If you follow the river north, to its source, you’ll come to the mountains. More specifically, to the forest at the base of those mountains. Keep going, and you’ll reach a waterfall—and, of course, a lake. The lake has a dock… and likely, a rowboat. Do not take the rowboat, though you may be tempted. Instead, pour the contents of this vial into the lake.

“When that is done, make camp by the lake. You may drink from it, but do not bathe in it. Go further down the river for that—past the ring of trees surrounding the area. You shouldn’t have to stay for long. No more than three days. Eventually, you will see a unicorn. Do not worry about missing it. Its presence will wake you up.

“Do nothing to it, unless it does something to you, first. If it speaks to you, those words are yours alone. If it lays its head in your lap, that moment is yours to keep. When it leaves, you are free to go as well.

“However, there are things I wish you to keep an eye out for. First, a white deer. Stag or doe, it matters not. Only that is pure white. Do not kill it, but if you see it, I wish to know about it when both you and I have returned.

“Second, the unicorn itself. I wish to know the color of its horn; whether or not it has any markings; and if it is alone or not.

“Lastly, the water. Tell me if there is anything built on the mound in the middle; if there is anything strange about the boat beyond the urge to get in it; whether anything happens when you pour the water in; and most importantly… whether or not you see anyone or anything inside the water during your time there. Even if you believe it is a hallucination.

“Am I clear?”

You blink, but nod.

“Excellent.” She pulls out a piece of paper, and she hands that to you as well. “These are the instructions I have just stated. Now. Tell me, knight. Will you do this?”

“Why?” you ask.

“A vested interest in magical ecology,” Muriel says primly.

The princess emerges, a bag slung over her shoulder. She approaches you both. Whatever she sees on your face has her smiling. “You’ve gone and confused the poor thing, Muriel. Are you allergic to explaining yourself?”

“Yes,” Muriel says. “You can’t see it, but my arms have broken out into terrible hives.”

The princess snorts, and looks at you. “The unicorn needs to be checked on. They’re quite rare, you know, and it’s good to make sure they’re still healthy. I imagine Muriel also wishes to know if it has made any friends, or reproduced.”

Muriel inclined her head.

“The lake has its own creatures within. They’re not friendly, so do not engage with them. They’ll drown you. The potion she’s given you is… highly magical. In this case, it does many things. It will… the closest I can think of is ‘get them drunk.’ They will still overpower you if you get in the water, but they won’t actively pursue you.

“It is also power enough to attract the unicorn, to ensure that you get a look at it. And, it has the added bonus of cleaning the water out a bit.” The princess shrugged. “An ingenious little vial.”

“And the deer?” you ask.

“Attracted to the presence of the unicorn,” the princess says. “Or perhaps caused by the unicorn’s own magic—I’ve never been quite sure. Either way, it means that the land there is responding to the presence of the unicorn. It’s a good thing. A very good thing.”

Muriel said you had a choice in this, but… the way they spoke, it sounded like you already decided to go. Which… you will, of course, because while this is not the quest you had envisioned for yourself, it still sounds important, and befitting of your training. They way they assume is a bit grating, but… Whatever. Your instructor had once told you that, of those who give you quests, magical folk rank just behind nobility in how grating they could be.

“Right then,” Muriel says, at your nod. “Time for the lot of us to be off. We’ve got things to do.”

You stand. “I still don’t quite understand who the two of you are,” you admit. There is more going on here than you understand—context that you’re lacking.

“We’re a Seer and a Witch,” Muriel says, as if this makes things plain. “A trickster and a truth-seer. A commoner and a princess.”

“We are what we are,” the princess says, laying a hand on Muriel’s arm. “And what we are works very well together. That is all that matters.”

“But… I mean… what do you do?”

“What needs doing,” the princess says. “Whether that is relocating unicorns, closing portals to the abyss, or removing curses.” She shrugs. “Don’t worry about it too much. Either it will become clearer to you one day… or it will not.”

“Then you mean to see me again?”

“Well, that depends on you, doesn’t it?” Muriel asks. “Whether you decide to work with me again.”

You suppose that’s true. You give a nod, and this time it is Muriel who smiles at you.

“Off we go, then,” she says.

The three of you exit the tower, and part ways at the door. You retrieve your things where you left them, and look on towards the horizon. It’s a long way from here to the river.

You shoulder your pack, and start walking.

#writeblr #writers of tumblr #writelr #fantasy fiction #my writing #a conspicuous lack of dragons #short fiction

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today-only-happens-once · 4 years

Text

In Place

Title: In Place

Word Count: 4274

Summary: A year later, Roman returns to the Sanders’ abode for Christmas. And maybe he’s still trying to figure out where he’s supposed to fit. Companion piece/Sequel to Homeward but can be read separately. Romantic!Parents!Logicality, familial!LAMP

Warnings: Feeling out of place. Fluff. Christmas clichés and tropes. Occasional undercurrents of angst, but it’s mostly holiday found-family fluff, tbh. Patton is Latinx in this but it’s only really mentioned in passing.

A/N: Is this chock full of clichés and tropes? Yes. Am I sorry for that? Nope. Do I have mixed feelings about how this fic actually turned out? Yep. C’est la vie. Happy holidays!

…

December 23. 10:43 AM.

Roman looks over, his mouth quirking into a small, appreciative smile as Logan hands him a mug full of a steaming liquid. Roman’s folded up in the chair by the window, watching the late morning snowfall drift in large, lazy flakes towards the blanket of snow already on the ground. His first snowfall—in the middle of the night outside a broken down car with Virgil—flickers through his mind for not the first time in the past week.

Had that really been a year ago?

“Thanks, Mr. Sanders,” Roman says. A quick glance and deep inhale of the contents of the mug indicate it is coffee. He takes a tentative sip, an odd and unexpected note of affection squeezing his chest as he realizes that they remembered his usual of three spoonfuls of sugar.

Logan inclines his head. “You are welcome.” He has a mug in his own hand—and the faint scent of coffee drifts in the air around them. “How did you sleep?”

“Long,” Roman replies with a sheepish smile. “But it was good.”

The corner of Logan’s mouth twitches in something like amusement. “Still not as long as Virgil.” He glances towards the stairs and shakes his head.

Roman laughs a little. Virgil had yet to emerge from his room today. The college student quickly brushes the bangs falling into his eyes back into his hair. The brief moment of calm is interrupted by the sound of music drifting into the living room from the kitchen: a song that Roman recognizes as soon as the trumpet line kicks in, even before the lyrics.

“Feliz navidad. Feliz navidad. Feliz navidad, prospero año y Felicidad.”

Patton suddenly appears from around the kitchen doorway, dancing and singing along into a whisk. He’s in blue pajama pants and a gray t-shirt with a cartoon cat on the front. Roman can’t help the smile that breaks across his face, and though Logan rolls his eyes as Patton dances his way towards him, the spark of affection is evident. Almost as if it’s routine, Logan sets his mug of black coffee down on the side table right before Patton grabs his hand and pulls him into a dance in the middle of the living room.

Roman sips his own drink and watches them. Patton continues to sing in Spanish, and Logan matches his dancing at every step. Roman thinks it might be salsa. Or merengue. He doesn’t remember much from his dance lesson days. Logan and Patton, though, are actually…. Quite good.

Roman laughs as Virgil emerges from the stairs a moment later, confusion and bewilderment flashing shamelessly across his face as his dads dance to “Feliz Navidad” in the living room. Patton glances over towards the foot of the stairs and grins. Virgil shakes his head, says something about “too early for this”, and turns as if to go back upstairs.

Patton breaks from Logan and grabs Virgil’s hand. “C’mon, kiddo”, Patton chimes brightly at the same time that Logan says something about it being “nearly 11 o’clock”. Virgil trips a little as his dad pulls him to join the two of them dancing. Virgil lets his dad spin him around once and then stumbles his way towards the kitchen with a barely contained smile and a note about making sure breakfast doesn’t burn.

He shrugs his shoulders at Roman from across the room before he disappears through the kitchen doorway.

Patton rolls right into Logan’s anticipating arms as they dance together again until the song ends. Logan presses a small kiss to Patton’s head as the song fades out.

“You guys are really good,” Roman says.

Patton grins. “Thanks, kiddo.”

“I suppose it is mostly Patton’s side of the family to thank for that,” Logan adds as he returns to his coffee cup on the table beside Roman. “Patton has known how to dance like that for as long as I’ve known him. I picked up a few things from his family over the years.”

Patton leans over and kisses Logan’s shoulder. “You also took dance lessons before our wedding to surprise me. I’m sure that helped, too.”

Logan hums noncommittally. “The wedding was nearly exclusively your family, after all. The last thing I wanted was to embarrass myself. Dance lessons seemed like a practical investment, given the situation.”

Virgil’s voice from the kitchen interrupts the conversation. “So what’s the plan for today?”

“Shopping, I believe,” Logan calls back to him. “Patton and I have a few more things to get. You and Roman are welcome to come along.”

Roman glances outside again. From his position in the chair, he can see down the street a ways to the corner. Mr. Picani’s inflatable snowman is in the same position it was from Roman’s exhausted memory last year. Across the street, two small children are having a snowball fight. Roman snorts when he sees a man emerge from the front door—bundled up in a coat, scarf, hat, and gloves—wielding a nerf gun. The two children shriek excitedly and take off running towards the back yard.

It leaves an odd feeling in Roman’s chest.

“I’m down,” Virgil replies. “Roman? You in?”

Roman blinks and looks back at Logan and Patton. Patton tilts his head, his brow furrowing in something like concern. Roman offers what he hopes is a reassuring smile. “Yeah. I’m in.”

…

December 23. 4:10 PM.

Roman grabs a glass ornament from the vendor’s table and turns it over gently in his hand. The cold December air causes the breath of wonder that escapes his lips at the intricately designed object to form a small cloud in front of his face. Roman tucks his nose a little further into his scarf.

“That’s hand-blown,” the vendor—an elderly gentleman with frazzled gray hair and pink cheeks—tells him.

“It’s beautiful,” Roman tells him sincerely. He sets it gingerly down in the box he’d pulled it from. He glances over his shoulder as the bell above the door to the puzzle shop jingles, signaling Patton’s emergence from it. He looks left, then right, then crosses the walkway towards the ornament stand that Roman and Virgil had been perusing. Virgil, at the other corner of the table from Roman, looks up as his dad approaches.

“Is your father nearby?”

Virgil eyes the not-at-all-subtle way that Patton is hiding something beneath his jacket. He shakes his head. “I think he went to the bookstore to get something for Corbin and Sloane. Why?”

Patton pulls a blue plastic bag from beneath his gray coat and opens it. Virgil peers in. “I got your father that hand-carved chess set he’s been eyeing for a few months. I’m gonna go hide it in the car. I’ll be right back.” He gives a bright smile to Roman before rushing off towards the parking lot.

Virgil shoves his hands into the pockets of his black coat and crosses the few steps towards Roman. “Dad is terrible at hiding things. He gets lucky that father doesn’t really go looking.”

Roman’s mouth quirks into an almost-smile. “Didn’t you say something about one of them eating part of that gingerbread kit last year?”

“That was dad.” Roman doesn’t miss the look of warm affection in Virgil’s eyes, even as they both start walking towards a bench to take a seat. They pass by a chestnut stand and the earthy scent is almost enough for Roman to forget just how cold it is outside.

A father wearing a Santa hat with a young girl dressed like Elsa on his shoulders passes by. Roman gives her a deep bow before he takes a seat on the bench, and the girl grins brightly at him, giving him a regal wave in return. He sees Virgil glance at him out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t say anything. Neither does Roman. Instead, the two of them sit in companionable silence and watch families, couples, and individuals bustle around for their last-minute Christmas gifts.

People watching had always left Roman feeling vaguely uncomfortable, especially around the holidays. In the back of his mind, he realizes it’s mostly when he notices families and couples holding hands that he gets that odd feeling in his chest again. He doesn’t know what it means. It’s like a part of him is reaching out for something that he cannot find, or that he does not know how to name.

“Don’t think so hard, Princey,” Virgil chimes lightly. “You might blow a fuse.”

Roman huffs an affronted breath. “Excuse you, thinking is my specialty.”

“Is that what you were doing when you sang Mariah Carey at the top of your lungs that one Thursday—”

“As a matter of fact, it was!”

“All the more reason you should do less of it, then.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk, Charlie Frown.” There’s no real bite in Roman’s voice. The familiarity of the banter with Virgil eases some of the discomfort from a moment ago. Virgil pulls his hands out of his pockets to hold them up in mock surrender.

When he really thinks about it, Roman figures it’s a bit of an odd relationship. Just over a year ago, Roman really only knew Virgil as someone from his English 100 class. Now? Well. Roman considers Virgil his best friend. It had been a fast year: a whirlwind of undergraduate classes and exams and papers, a summer internship for Roman in New York with a magazine and one for Virgil at home with a graphic design company. They’d visited each other twice that summer, and though Roman would never admit it, he was certain that was the only thing that kept him sane.

The start of their sophomore year, Roman and Virgil both had abysmal roommates and elected to move in together. More tests, more essays, more stress. Another set of finals. And then suddenly it was Christmas break. And Virgil had acted like the idea that Roman was going with him to Maine was a given—something that was really saving grace for Roman, who wouldn’t have dared to ask.

From his very first time meeting them a year ago, Roman loved Virgil’s dads. They were everything his parents hadn’t been, and a shining example of the kind of love Roman hoped to find with a guy one day himself. But every time Roman was near Virgil and his parents…. It left an odd weight on his shoulders. As if Roman was trying to squeeze into a space he wasn’t actually wanted in.

“What?” Virgil asks suddenly, from beside him.

“What?”

Virgil shrugs, his gaze flickering back to look at the people bustling by when Roman looks over to meet his gaze. “I know that look, Roman.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Virgil arcs an eyebrow and looks at him again. “They’re glad you’re here. They’re not just, like… tolerating it, or whatever. You know that, right?”

Roman freezes for a second, then tries to recover. “Who? My adoring fanbase?” He waves at a baby that is staring at him with huge eyes beneath a beanie cap in a stroller as his mother talks with a friend.

But for some reason, Virgil doesn’t seem willing to let it go. “My dads.”

Roman glances quickly at him. “I know.”

“Do you?”

Virgil’s question doesn’t get answered as they both see Logan emerge from the bookshop with a bag in his hands and starts towards them. Roman finds himself grateful for the interruption. But he doesn’t miss the quick glance that Virgil throws his way anyway.

…

December 23. 8:01 PM.

Patton stands in the middle of the living room, the lights from the Christmas tree reflecting in the lens of his glasses, and steeples his fingers in front of his face. He looks thoughtfully at the otherwise bare tree, and Roman can see the wheels of thought turning in his head from his position on the couch.

“I think,” he says slowly, “that it needs more lights—”

“Absolutely not,” Logan interrupts flatly and immediately. “Patton, you put six strands of lights on that tree. I draw the line at seven.”

Virgil snorts from where he’s sitting at the bottom of the steps. He’s got both hands wrapped around a steaming mug of hot chocolate. Roman’s sits on the coffee table. He likes to let his marshmallows soak for a moment before he drinks it. He’s got a red blanket pulled across his lap.

“We do have one more strand,” Virgil says with a mischievous look in his eyes. “Seems like it would be a waste to just not put it on the tree at this point.”

Logan shoots a look at his son as Patton gasps. “Exactly! We can’t have one lonely strand left, Logan.”

Logan releases a long, suffering sigh, but even he can’t contain the faint glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he looks otherwise stoically at his husband. “Very well. Why you insist on personifying inanimate objects but refuse to do so when it resembles a human form, I may never understand—”

“Is this still about me eating the gingerbread man last year?”

A beat of silence. “Perhaps.”

“He’s made of gingerbread, Logan.” Patton grabs the strand left untangled on the floor and hands one end to his husband. “He wants to be eaten. It makes him feel fulfilled.”

“I see.”

Patton and Logan work together to wrap and connect the final strand of lights around the base of the tree. Patton beams, satisfied at their work, as Logan steps around and snakes an arm around his husband’s waist, pulling him in and kissing the top of his head. He then turns his attention to the green storage container sitting beside the coffee table. He pops the lid off to reveal it’s contents—shrouded in brown and tissue paper. Ornaments. Apparently, sentimental ones.

Virgil pulls himself to his feet as Logan sits on the couch and Patton sits cross-legged on the floor. Roman decides to take his cue from his friend and tosses the blanket off his legs, standing up as well.

“Aw, I remember this one!” Patton exclaims as he unwraps one of the ornaments. “Logan, this was from the first time we spent Christmas together.”

Logan gingerly takes the square ornament from his husband’s hands and dangles it from one of his fingers. Roman can see a picture of Patton and Logan together inside of it. “Yes,” Logan muses. “I remember this. We were sophomores in college. You’d heard about my… situation and asked if I wanted to join you for the holidays.” He casts a quick but gentle look at his husband before turning his attention to the tree and carefully selecting a branch to loop through the string.

“And this was from our vacation two years ago,” Patton explains, carefully finding the hook at the top to hand off to Virgil.

Virgil makes a face as he takes it. “Was this from that one middle-of-nowhere restaurant that gave me food poisoning?”

Logan studies it for a moment from across the room, then pushes the frame of his glasses up his nose a bit. “No,” he says. “That one is from the Christmas Tree farm in Vermont that your dad wanted to stop at in the middle of July.”

“It’s never too early to celebrate Christmas—Oh!” Patton cuts himself off as he unwraps the tissue paper from another one. “Virge, remember this?” Patton brandishes the blue and purple sphere to show his son before he hands it off to Roman.

Roman takes it reverently, arching an eyebrow at Virgil. The corner of Virgil’s mouth quirks in an affectionate smile at the object in Roman’s hands. “Yep,” Virgil says.

“It was the first Christmas gift you ever got me,” Patton says. “Your first year with us.”

Virgil huffs a faint, embarrassed laugh. “Not my best gift.”

“You had only known us for a few months,” Logan replies. “We were all getting to know one another still. You could not have been expected to get a particularly personal gift. And besides, it now holds significant sentimental value.”

Roman glances down at it. It was relatively unassuming—a perfect sphere, swirls of blue and purple colors, and the year it was bought printed in silver calligraphy—but Roman is careful when he hangs it off a branch. He loops the pine through the yarn tied at the top of it and stops a moment to ensure it will hold securely before he turns his attention away from it. Patton is already explaining and reminiscing about another ornament that he’s slowly handing off to Logan.

Roman can tell from the fond if slightly rote responses from Logan and Virgil that Patton’s rehashing of memories through these ornaments was probably a regular event whenever they decorated the tree. Roman hardly minds. He listens to Patton’s stories with more than polite silence—he enjoys them. Last year, Patton and Logan had waited until Virgil was there to decorate the tree as well. But Roman had elected to help Patton with some things in the kitchen so that he could lead the tree decorating. He hadn’t really elected to take part in it.

He felt like he was witnessing a surprisingly intimate moment with this family and the odd feeling from early returns to his chest. It squeezes a little harder this time, and Roman feels out of place and uncertain. Like he’s intruding.

“I think that’s it,” Patton says nearly an hour later, peering into the empty storage box from his place on the floor.

“Hold on,” Virgil says. “I’ve got one more.” The college student rushes from around the tree and disappears up the stairs. Logan quirks an eyebrow at Roman, who simply shakes his head. He has no idea what Virgil is talking about.

Moments later, Virgil comes back down the steps. Hanging from his forefinger is a gold string loop fastened to a small ornament. A red car. One that looks remarkably like—

“Wait,” Roman says, frowning.

“Look, it’s the closest I could find,” Virgil says with a slight shrug. “It’s supposed to be Maximus.”

Roman stares at Virgil, confused. He, evidently, isn’t the only one. “The horse from Tangled?” Patton asks from behind them, having not moved from his position sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“My car,” Roman replies, but he still doesn’t understand. Why did Virgil get an ornament version of his car?

Virgil carefully threads it onto one of the few unadorned branches towards the top of the tree. “Yeah,” he replies easily. “A reminder of last year. Your first Christmas with us.”

Roman stares at it as Virgil steps back to survey the addition. Roman feels his friend nudge him with his elbow, but he can’t speak past the sudden lump in his throat. He doesn’t think he’d trust himself to speak right now anyway.

“I think it’s great,” Patton chimes in thoughtfully. “I had been looking for some way to add you to our Christmas memories when we were shopping today but nothing seemed to fit.”

Logan gives an affirming nod. “Agreed. I had been doing the same without success. Although sentimental ornaments are, admittedly, not my strong suit. That is a more than satisfactory addition to the family Christmas tree.”

“More than satisfactory?” Virgil quips teasingly. “Well, now you know you’re an approved Sanders.” Logan rolls his eyes in response.

But Roman still doesn’t know what to say. The red car ornament looks like it fits. It blends into the wide assortment of random objects and shapes that had been turned into ornaments full of meaning and memory. And all Roman can do is look at it and realize that they all wanted to place Roman amidst that smattering of love put on display in their living room.

“I… are you sure?” Roman finds himself asking, in a voice that sounds too small to be his own.

He’s not really asking about the ornament. An ornament is a temporary seasonal decoration but it feels very permanent to Roman. A part of him tries to tell himself that he’s reading too much into it, but he knows. He listened to Patton share memories about every single object on that tree, he saw the warmth in all of their eyes with each one that got added and Roman knows—even if a part of him wants to deny it—that being added to this tree signifies a lot more than just. Decoration.

So he asks. Are you sure?

“Of course we’re sure, kiddo,” Patton says as he pushes himself to his feet. He steps up beside Roman and wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in for a moment.

“Roman,” Logan adds, both serious and uncharacteristically gentle, “you have a place here. With us. For as long as you want it.” Startled, Roman glances at Virgil’s father. There’s something aged and knowing in his eyes and Roman suddenly feels more seen than he has in a very, very long time. He blinks quickly against the heat in his eyes and tries to clear his throat.

“I…” Roman tries.

“And we hope you’ll want it for a long time,” Patton adds with a small squeeze to Roman’s shoulders. “Because like it or not, you’re part of this family now. The tree is just…” Patton trails off, waving a hand at it, seemingly at a loss for how to explain his point.

“It’s a symbol,” Virgil adds in. “Of what’s already been true for a while now.” He’s giving Roman a quiet, knowing look. Almost a placid I told you so.

Roman casts a look towards Virgil and hopes he understands everything he isn’t sure how to say in this moment. “Thank you,” Roman says, despite the gap between the words and what he means behind them. They are the only words that come to mind. He wishes he could think of more.

Patton laughs slightly—warm and reassuring—and gives Roman one more squeeze before he lets go. Roman glances at Logan, seeing him smile faintly and incline his head. There’s a brief pause of silence before Virgil jumps in.

“So. About that gingerbread house?”

…

December 24. 9:40 PM.

“Roman! Get in here!”

Roman rolls his eyes at Virgil’s teasingly aggressive shout from the living room, then laughs at Patton’s immediate admonishment. He finishes pouring the popcorn into the large bowl before tossing the bag into the trash.

“You got it?” Logan asks, standing beside him as he slides the tray of hot chocolates off the counter to balance on his arms. Roman has to stop himself from laughing at the man—Roman wasn’t sure he’d ever quite get used to seeing Virgil’s father in a unicorn onesie. But somehow, Patton had convinced them all to wear them in the name of tradition.

Roman’s had been a slightly-early Christmas present from Patton. His new Beauty and the Beast themed garment was now his favorite thing he owned.

Roman picks up the bowl and nods. “Yeah. I’m good. You good?” He nods to the tray balanced across Logan’s arm.

Logan smiles. “I have enough practice from my barista days. Let’s not keep them waiting any longer.”

The two of them head out from the kitchen and into the living room. Virgil is sitting on the floor in his skeleton onesie with a violet blanket pulled across his lap. Patton sits on the floor beside him—in a cat onesie of his own—and thanks Logan when his husband hands him one of the mugs from the tray. Roman sits on the couch, folding his legs up as he lowers the bowl of popcorn into Virgil’s lap in front of him. There’s an exchange of mugs, snacks, and light teasing as everyone settles in.

“So what are we watching?” Roman asks as Logan loads the DVD.

“Muppets Christmas Carol.” Patton reaches for the remote to adjust the volume up a bit in preparation.

“It’s the best of all worlds,” Virgil adds in.

“Yes,” Logan muses, padding to the light-switch to turn off the lights in the room as the movie starts up. “Virgil’s favorite holiday story is Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Patton’s fond of the Muppets. I appreciate some of the more sophisticated humor. And I have a feeling you will be fond of the music in this movie.”

“Watching this is a tradition,” Patton adds. “We just didn’t get to last year given… circumstances.”

Virgil cranes his neck back to look at Roman on the couch above him as Logan takes a seat beside Roman. “That’s one thing about this family. So. Many. Traditions. So get ready. There’s no going back now.” He says it lightly. Easily. And Roman knows without asking that Virgil is a far cry from complaining about it.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Roman says with a small but sincere smile. “I’m right where I want to be.”

He sees Logan smile a bit from behind his mug as he takes a sip. Patton glances over at him. “Good. You’re a perfect fit.”

…

Tags:

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#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #christmas #sanders sides christmas #familial lamp/calm #minor angst #found family #fluff #tropes #cliches #holiday fic #latinx #latinx mention #romantic logicality #platonic prinxiety

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leafy-wings · 3 years

Note

i actually really agree on a lot of people being hyprocritical when it comes to moral wof judgements! i think due to the nature of wof, people are inherently going to be influenced by their emotions when it comes to discussing it. personally, i'm sort of the opposite of you - i understand darkstalker more than arctic. ofc not all (mostly because he's very as you said comically evil which gives a bit of disconnect) but as someone with a lot of npd traits, i connect a lot to aspects of how he's-

-written, especially struggling with morals and the intensive desire to have prestige/a position of power/respect/etc and the desire to be loved by everyone. i feel i'm also more sympathetic because of how young darkstalker is- arctic is a fully grown adult, while darkstalker is the equivalent of a 15 - 17 year old; he's incredibly toxic, don't get me wrong, and a lot of the situations he's in are more extreme due to the nature of wings of fire being a magical fantasy series-

-but i also feel as though the general theme of struggling with toxic behaviors due to abuse/mental illness is a very relatable thing for a lot of people. i still feel as though darkstalker wasn't a good person, but i think he could have had a better chance Of being if he was in different circumstances. i have a lot of issues with tui's writing of him in general tbh though, i feel as though his story as a whole could have been handled a Lot better

(oh btw same anon! this isn't meant to be like! coming for you/mean or anything, i'm genuinely interested in this topic- i'm not great with tone due to neurodivergency and wanted to clarify since i know i can come off as trying to start arguments/rude when i try to discuss things; also sorry for the massive rant, i'm Very passionate about wof whoops- let me know if you need to drop the conversation! i don't want to stress you out)

dont feel sorry! i do like talking about this and the neurodivergent angle towards characters. its not like i CANT relate to darkstalker; ive been someone who was a toxic child before due to being in an abusive household (hell, im still in the midst of that). i think struggling hard with mental illness that makes me feel obligated to be loved and cherished by those around me due to my talents is actually something i struggle with right now, and part of the reason i actually DONT feel bad for him. because i know its a real world problem i have, im terrified of hurting other people, and i HATE seeing unhealthy toxic behaviors. it makes me feel like im losing my mind, like this is MY problem that IM trying to fix, and YOURE not trying to fix yourself? it feels like a personal insult to me, that a character that has my problems is praised where i am only excluded and isolated. i think its also just personal repression and self consciousness and self hate, like i said before about being abused but identifying with the abuser and hating the abused when we’re more similar; i really, really hate myself for being toxic, and i, in return, hate characters who i relate with. maybe its BAD that i feel like that, that a character who i see myself within is inexcusable because thats how i (knowingly unhealthily) regards myself, but i just prefer to think.. we should all try and be better people, and thats looking at things objectively and coming pros and cons and the weight of peoples crimes and their feelings. i wish it was so easy as mentally ill characters in media being sequestered from their bad situation, and then theyd just get over it. i wish that was me, and i wish that was every character who i see as myself.

i relate to peril in regards to “mental illness but its dragons”. i have very bad bpd that makes me dependent on others but inclined to hurting them by begging for attention, im just prone to violence and rash decisions. i relate to her in that i feel like every relationship i enter will end harshly; it is how i am inclined, how i was born, and how i was raised, to resort to raising my voice and turning my back on others instead of peaceful endings. i dont know why i see peril as different from darkstalker, but id like to figure it out.

i think the difference is that darkstalker doesnt really struggle, to me. from a young child he believed in himself so thoroughly, and he enters every moral argument believing himself to be right. this is understandable, this is realistic; until it happens for the 5th, 10th, 20th time. perhaps hes supposed to show off the sunk cost fallacy or denial, but to me he just shows up as someone who earnestly does not want to improve as a person. it is unfair to those who have been inclined to unhealthy behaviors but tried to improve, because darkstalker does not try, he just gets worse and worse.

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wordsfromthesol · 4 years

Text

You’re a what… (1/4)

Author: @wordsfromthesol Taglist: @ghost-brocolli Pairing: Dick Grayson x Reader Summary: Your life is turned upside down when you suddenly land in Gotham. Thankfully Dick is nearby and knows way more than he lets on. Warnings: Language, violence, uhm…rambling? Word Count: 1.7k A/N: I hate that Hades is ALWAYS the bad guy, because he’s not. Hypnos is the god of sleep and dreams.

Part Two Part Three Part Four

It was just another routine day for you. Your dad was berating you about marrying one of the lovely gods he had picked out for you. Going on and on about how you needed to assume your rightful place among the gods. All the responsibilities you were neglecting and the people you were letting down. You had heard it a million times and he never changed your mind. In fact, you were growing quite tired of this age-old argument.

*Speaking Ancient Greek*

“You know what Dad? I’m out.” You threw your hands in the air. “I’m done with you. I’m done with Olympus. I’m just done.”

“You can’t run away from this Y/N. This is your destiny. Your birthright.”

“I’ve heard it all before and guess what. I. Don’t. Fucking. Care. I’m out.”

“Out? You can’t leave Olympus.”

“Wanna bet?” And with that you were gone and now stood on a random pier somewhere on earth. You looked up at the sky to see the evidence of your father’s anger. Bright white lights flickered through the clouds, when suddenly one of them barreled straight for you. You felt the bolt run through your entire body.

“REAL MATURE DAD!” You screamed up at the sky as you watched another bolt come for you. You started to walk along the pier, absorbing several more lightning bolts that were thrown in your path. “GIVE UP ALREADY, I’M NOT CHANGING MY DAMN MIND!” You stopped when you saw a figure in front of you, stopped dead in their tracks. “Family drama.” You explained as you walked by him. To your surprise, he followed.

“Uhm, are you sure you’re okay?”

English, okay. I can do that. “Oh yeah, someone just can’t get it through their thick skull that I’M NOT MARRYING ONE OF THOSE IDIOTS.”

“Right…so, you some kind of lightning meta?”

“Something like that.” Just as you spoke a massive wave came from no where and crashed onto the pier behind you. “OH, SHUT UP UNCLE!” You snapped your head towards the ocean.

After several minutes had passed, Dick began to realize that you had no idea where you were going. At least, he hoped, because you were headed directly towards the narrows.

“So, got someplace in particular you are headed?”

You honestly hadn’t gotten that far, you just wanted out of Olympus. You weren’t even entirely sure how you came to be…where ever you were. Someone must have helped you, Hermes or Persephone maybe? Whatever the case was, you were just glad to be rid of your father’s constant beratement.

“You know, actually, I’m not even entirely sure where I am…or how I got here?” Though you mumbled the last part, realizing that scaring off the person helping you was probably not the best bet.

Dick let out a sigh of relief, “Good, because you are headed directly towards the worst part of town.” He came to a stop, and you followed his lead. “If we head back, towards where I met you, my squad car is nearby. I can take you to a hotel or…”

“Lead the way…” You paused upon realization that you hadn’t asked his name.

“Dick Grayson.” He extended a hand, you shook it before turning to head back the way you came. Dick turned and caught up to you, “And yours would be…?”

Oh right, what did these people call your father again? Zeus. Right. Τέφρα, that would roughly translate to… “Y/N. My name is Y/N.” You didn’t bother trying to come up with a last name.

“So what brings you to Gotham?”

“Gotham…Gotham! Right, that’s the city…that I am currently in. I knew that.”

Dick narrowed his eyes with concern, “You got hit pretty hard back there. Are you sure nothing was scrambled?” He gestured to your head.

“No, I’m just...I don’t have a particular reason for being here. Just trying to get away.”

“From the family drama?”

Did he understand Ancient Greek, or was that just a coincidental statement? “Yeah,” you laughed off the coincidence, “can’t pick your family I guess.”

He shrugged, not wanting to reveal his own family struggles. “I’m just up here.” He pointed to an empty warehouse building near the pier that you had landed on. “You know, I’d been staking out the place for a few hours before I noticed you. You just kind of appeared out of nowhere…much like that lightning storm.” He arched his eyebrow up, hoping his inquiry would yield some information. And truthfully, you might have been inclined to give it to him, if you yourself knew how you got here. Instead you raised your hands and gave him a confused half-smile. “Right, so where am I taking you, Y/N?” His tone became much less understanding as he opened the passenger door.

You smiled to thank him but weren’t exactly sure what to tell him, so you crawled into the car without saying anything at all.

“I’m not taking you back to your family, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He shut the door and climbed in the driver’s seat before continuing. “You aren’t a minor. So I –” His words were cut off by your stifled laughter. A minor. Oh lord, he has no idea. “Something I said?”

“Oh, uhm. Just…I’m not a minor…by a long shot.” The thought again made you chuckle to yourself.

Dick furrowed his brow in confusion, “Right, as I said…so where to? Just need a hotel or something?”

Realization struck. I have absolutely no money, no form of ID, no other clothes. Looking down you realized your garb. Why on earth was Dick helping you? You were dressed like you should be at a toga party, not on a pier. Dick must have realized the sudden worried expression across your face, “My apartment is about twenty minutes from here. If you ah…need a place to figure things out.” You looked at him with relief in your eyes as you nodded. You didn’t speak the rest of the way, you were too busy in your own head.

I know I’m away from all that, but what am I supposed to do? How am I going to eat? What does this body even need to eat? Where am I going to sleep? Do I still have my powers? I didn’t even check that. How did I not check that? Will I be able to survive at all if I don’t have my powers? Humans are so weak. I don’t understand how they do it in the first place, there is so much bad in the world that they have to overcome. How do they do it without powers? Who put me here?

You looked up to realize Dick was getting out of the car.

Had it already been twenty minutes? What are all these feelings? Why can’t I breathe? I can’t breathe. Oh my Zeus. I can’t speak. Why can’t I speak?

You remember feeling someone’s arms around you. You remember hearing noise, someone speaking, maybe? Who knows what the words were, even if you did comprehend them, your mind was unable to formulate any kind of response.

Dick was confused by your sudden change in demeanor. He watched the confidence drain out of you when he asked where to take you. He thought it was a simple enough question, but he soon realized that he had only reached the beginning of this mysterious girl’s story. He tried to talk to you in the car, but it seemed as if your eyes had glazed over. Eventually, he gave up and left you to work things out in your own head. When he finally reached his apartment, he noticed your breaths becoming more and more shallow and rapid.

“Y/N?”

Still nothing.

“Fuck.” Dick scrambled to get out of the car and pulled you out from the passenger seat. When he felt your knees trembling and your entire body beginning to shake, he scooped you up and carried you to his bedroom. He laid you down and kneeled beside the bed.

“Y/N, you need to calm down. Breathe. I need you to breathe with me okay. We are going to count. Now breathe in for seven…one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Now hold for four…one, two, three, four. Now breathe out for eight…one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” Dick repeated the mantra and watched your chest rise and fall to the count. Once your breathing became regular again, he spoke, “Y/N, you’re okay. You’re safe now. You can stay here tonight. I’ll be on the couch.” He turned to walk away, but felt your hand loosely grab his wrist. You had no idea what this human body had in store for you next, but you knew that you didn’t want to deal with it alone. Dick looked into your eyes and saw them filled with fear. He nodded and crawled next to you. Content with his presence, you closed your eyes and tried to welcome Hypnos. Zeus had different plans.

The world was covered in a blanket of death. The sky above was raging, as was the sea and the earth below your feet. You heard a voice bellow down from the heavens.

“This is what your future holds if you do not assume your responsibilities, young goddess.”

“Alright!” You screamed back. “The jig is up dad! I know this is you! Though how you got Hypnos to agree to your invasion is beyond me. I do not think that the world will fall into chaos if I don’t marry one of my idiotic cousins.”

“The world will be thrust out of balance!”

“Not because I don’t marry it won’t! This is ridiculous, you can’t expect me to believe this!”

“You must believe it! The world must remain balanced.”

“I can balance it from here! It’s not like I’m one of the big twelve! I’ve always been an outcast and everything I did up there, I can do down here.”

“HOW WOULD YOU?”

“Because I didn’t do anything up there. Anything except be miserable! For a thousand years, I was miserable!”

“Fine, if you will not heed my words…”

You began to feel the world around you heating up, unbearably hot. You screamed out in pain, as you watched the flesh begin to melt from your body, until everything went black.

230 notes · View notes

gloves94 · 4 years

Text

Sunburn [Prince Zuko] 36

Warnings: FLUFF AHEAD Rating: PG-13 Pairings: Zuko/OC

Sunburn Chapter M A S T E R L I S T My fan fiction M A S T E R L I S T

"I still can't believe I didn't come out!" Mecha complained as he leaned on the kitchen's counter sulking, about his missing appearance on The Boy in the Iceberg.

"Maybe you'll get your own spin off!" His sister said optimistically as she poured some orange blossom chamomile tea on a cup for him. It was late and the group had been emotionally drained by the time they returned from the theatre. "I mean your days in the Earth Kingdom were no walk in the park, don't even get me started on your scars." She said mentioning the lightning vines that marked his body.

"You think Mai will think they are cool?" He said looking down at his scarred arm with a dumb grin on his face. "I'm sure she'll lovethem." His sister rolled her eyes and took a sip from her own tea.

Attending to see The Boy in the Iceberghad been a terrible idea and had brought everybody's spirits down. Presently Mecha was trying to make his sister feel better by sharing a midnight cup of tea with her. It seemed like the rest of the gang was asleep. When suddenly the two heard the beach house's front doors open and close. They listened to the approaching footsteps and their mysterious guest entered the small kitchen.

He looked slightly out of breath and not like he had just been sleeping in the least.

"Zuko?" Her brother asked raising an eyebrow. "Where were you?" Tsai asked knowingly, observing he had obviously gone on a little night field trip by himself.

Their eyes met and he inhaled a deep breath.

xxx

Somewhere on the island playwright Pu On Tim author of The Boy in the Iceberg arrived home that evening and to his horror found that everything he loved and owned had either been shredded to bits and pieces or scorched into ashes by fire. He shrieked in fright as he dropped to his knees all of his works, his livelihood, his plays! All destroyed!

xxx

"Nowhere," he answered mysteriously. A blatant lie at that.

"Did you guys hear something?" Mecha asked looking over his shoulder. He could've sworn he heard a distant scream echoing somewhere in Ember Island.

"Right.…"She said narrowing her eyes in suspicion yet deciding to drop the topic. "Do you want some tea?" She asked awkwardly. "Sure," he said softly before walking around the kitchen island counter and taking a seat on the stool next to her. It didn't take a genius to sense the tension that still lingered around the two of them.

"Phew, will you look at the time." Her brother whistled out taking his cup of tea with him as he walked out of the kitchen. “You know what they say early to bed early to rise." He said awkwardly. "Got to go…." He said slowly sliding out of the kitchen area. Of course, not before flashing Zuko a deathly glare which only he caught.

She poured some tea in another cup and he thanked her for it taking a small sip.

There was a heavy silence between them.

"The play.…The actors. Geez, they were terrible. I've seen better shows at the colonial festival. Can't believe they would do that to Love Amongst the Dragons." She broke the silence.

"Yeah," He let out a humorous huff.

Both took an awkward sip of their teas glancing away from each other.

"We should watch it one day. Love Amongst the Dragons?" He suggested quietly. "I'd like that!" she said genuinely at the idea of them going back and seeing an actually decent production in a theater. "When did you have in mind? Before or after your dad makes roast kabobs out of us?" She finished in a pessimistic tone lowering her teacup.

"Let's be real you'd be fine." He smirked a little. If anybody could survive a fire blast from anyone id would be her.

She shook her head and couldn't help but smile a little. He gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze and let his hand rest there for a moment. It was nice. This was nice. Having him in her life again like this. Especially now that he was so grown. It was almost as if he was a completely different person than when they had first met…

"It's because of the comet right?" She looked at him oddly snapping out of her train of thought. "The reason why you haven't been sleeping well."

She let out a draining exhale and pressed her forehead against the counter holding the top of her head. He looked around agonizingly. Zuko wasn't good at comforting people. What was he supposed to do? His eyes scanned the room looking for an answer.

'What would Uncle do?'He thought to himself in a brief moment of panic.

"Here," he poured more tea into her cup. "Drink this," he said putting the warm cup in her hand. She rolled her head to the side and looked at him with a weak smile.

"I just have this awful gut-wrenching feeling about that day." She closed her eyes for a moment and once again saw the red skies, the ash raining as destruction and fire consumed the world. "And nobody seems to be taking it seriously. Aang doesn't seem to care, and it's-it's just so stressful." She poured out to him. In a venting fashion.

She shrugged her shoulders a little in an attempt to emotionally compose herself and sit up straight taking a small sip of her tea. As she attempted to push all fear to the back of her head. "You're not wrong to worry." He said comfortingly. She turned at him and felt a flood of emotions pour out. How had he managed to become this person? How had he managed to make her fall so deeply and unmistakably in love with him? She couldn't help but think about the first time they met. Never in a million years would she have imagined that she would feel this way about the irritable prince. She leaned forward craving for more of his comfort. More of him and hugged him tightly. She buried her face on his shoulder. He hugged her back.

"I love-" She was surprised when she was interrupted by a loud, brash shush.

Pulling away from the hug she looked at him confused. "Don't. Don't say it." He said to her in all seriousness both of his hands on her shoulders. She looked at him perplexed.

"You're acting as if we're going to die." He said to her, his brows knotting in concern.

"What if we are. What if we do die?"

He shook his head lightly and closed his eyes not wanting to think about such an abhorrent outcome. No. That would not happen. Hewould notlet it happen. "We won’t." He insisted his grip tightened on her shoulders fingers sinking into her skin.

"But what if we do?" She insisted. A cocktail of strong emotions reflected on her eyes. An exasperated expression on her face.

His molten golden eyes met her light brown ones and they starred intensely at each other. Almost like a show down. Both waiting for the other to make the next move. Who would shoot first?

He saw her open her mouth slightly and clamped a hand over it before she could speak. She let out a muffled sound and looked at him fiercely. "Don't. Say. It. Tsai." He growled out every word separately his face inching dangerously close to hers.

Her eyes narrowed intensely. The slightest of sly smiles playing on his lips. She was determined to say it. She had spent so much time plotting and worrying over how she would confess her feelings for him just for him to have this type of ridiculous reaction? It wasn't fair.

She reached for his hand and removed it from her mouth roughly. She caught the other halfway as he reached for her. She barely managed to get a word out before he silenced her. Roughly smashing his lips against hers. She couldn't help but laugh a little. The impulse so strong it knocked her off her seat. The stool noisily clattering to the floor.

They both fell to the kitchen floor ungracefully.

“Are you okay?” He asked gruffly landing on top of her. He still held both of her hands in his and held them against the floor next to both sides of her head.

She ignored the slight ache from the impact against the floor.

“Zuko I lo-“She was determined. Again, he interrupted her. He kissed her again to silence her and she sighed content relaxing into his warm touch. She wanted to touch him, to hold him, to run her hands through this hair. Maybe pull at it a little…

He pulled away and looked at her with such an emotion that she suddenly felt vulnerable under his golden gaze. She could feel his thumb stroking the side of her hand gently. She didn’t know someone could ever look at another person with such burning intensity.

“I know.” He admitted his voice gentle, tone soft almost like a whisper. “Tsai. I know.” He repeated. “Don’t say it." He asked her. "Sometimes you don’t have to say anything.”

He removed himself off her and she sat up slightly leaning towards him. She smiled at him sweetly and inclining forward touching his face with her free hand gently.

“You’re right.” She agreed. “Sometimes you just have to feel it.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his face again.

He stood up sluggishly, hoisting her up both still in each other’s arms bringing her to her feet as well.

“It’s late, let’s go to bed.” He mumbled against her arm.

“I won’t be able to.” She said letting go of him and turning away. She already knew that her insomnia will get the best of her. “Come on.” He said with a small love-struck grin as he placed his hands on her shoulders and guided her to her room.

Xxxx

"More ferocious!" Zuko barked, crossing his arms and frowning sternly as he scrutinized over the Avatar’s firebending forms.

Aang furrowed his brow in concentration as he swung his arms, bending arcs of fire from his hands medium flames spitting out. Zuko narrowed his eyes as Aang walked past him, shooting short bursts of fires from his fists.

"Imagine striking through your opponent's heart!"

Aang firebended a large blast in front of him then whirled around to face his firebending teacher, he threw his arms out in frustration. "Ugh! I'm trying. I'm trying!"

"Now let me hear you roar like a tiger-dillo!" Zuko ordered ignoring his student’s complains.

Aang growled and spun away from his teacher, stretching his arms out to the side and throwing his head back as he roared softly, weak streams of fire coming out of his palms and mouth.

"That was pathetic!” His teacher pressed angrily. “I said roar!" He ordered himself roaring as he barked out the command.

You’d think that after last night the prince would be in a better mood. However, it was of imperial importance for Aang to fully master fire bending. Hell, the fate of the world depended on it and there really was no time to waste. Sozin’s comet would be here in three days’ time.

Aang narrowed his eyes in concentration, a determined look on his face as he spun back around, flung his arms out to the side. He tossed his head back, letting out a tiger-dillo worthy ferocious roar out. Fire spewed from his palms and mouth in a violent outburst of flames.

Momo screeched and scurried towards Zuko, hiding behind his legs and lowering his ears in fear.

Zuko crossed his arms and smirked slightly, nodding in approval at his student.

"Who wants a nice, cool glass of watermelon juice?" Katara called out as she finished filling two hollowed out watermelons, holding them up with a sweet smile. It was a particularly hot day making the beads of juice dripping down the curve of the watermelons impossible to resists.

"Ooh, ooh!" Aang turned around with an excited look on his face. His mouth watering at the thought of the refreshing beverage. "Me, me, me!"

"Hey!" Zuko barked in annoyance, grabbing the back of Aang's sash when he tried to run towards the melon drink. "Your lesson is not over yet!" He held Aang up in a halt. The younger boy struggled to break free, scowling as he snapped, "Get back here."

"What's the big deal? It's just a short break." Suki shrugged.

“Yeah, and it’s super-hot.” Mecha added before taking a sip from his own watermelon.

"Fine." Zuko scowled. He released Aang and crossed his arms as the young boy dashed up the stairs the fastest that anybody had ever seen him move. He took the watermelon Katara held out to him and drank it greedily enjoying every sip of the refreshing beverage.

"If you want to lounge around like a bunch of snail-sloths all day, then go ahead!" Zuko said barked angrily addressing the group before shaking his head and walking past them and back inside the beach house.

"Maybe Zuko's right." Sokka commented mindlessly. "Sitting around the house has made us pretty lazy. But I know just the thing to do." He set his watermelon aside and stood up slowly before impulsively removing his clothes revealing a pair of shorts underneath. Woah Sokka was ready to go!

"Beach party!"

Xxx

Tsai sat in the kitchen alone enjoying two slices of toast with peanut butter and fire banana slices.

“Good morning,” she said with a sweet smile when Zuko walked into the kitchen.

For what seemed like the first time in forever she actually slept more than seven hours. Even woke up late which was a refreshing change compared to all of the disturbing sleepless nights she had endured.

“I can’t believe he’s not taking this seriously!” The other stepped into the kitchen frustrated and took a seat across from her. “Uh? Bad morning?” She questioned raising an eyebrow.

“It’s Aang.” He sighed sounding frustrated. “You’re right. Everybody is laying around like snail-sloths while the Fire Lord is planning a massive invasion in three days.”

Zuko looked at her oddly when he heard her coughing beating her chest hard as her food went down her windpipe. “What?” She choked in surprise; her eyes wide ‘THREE DAYS?’. He looked at her oddly. “I thought you knew?”

Just like that she lost her appetite. The stress once again knotting in her back.

“The day before the eclipse. Do you remember the meeting I had with my father?”

She nodded slowly following as she did memory of the day before the Black Sun.

“Sozin’s Comet will endow firebenders with the strength and power of a thousand suns. Nobody will stand a chance. My great-grandfather used the comet to wipe out the Air Nomads now my father wants to use it to wipe out the Earth Kingdom. Permanently.”

“What?” seemed to be the only word she could manage to say. Her palms growing sweaty as her mind was once again clouded with that vision of raining ash and a burning sky… It made sense now.

“And you didn’t say anything?!” She said her tone louder than she intended.

“I wanted to speak out against his horrifying plan,” he said quietly bowing his head with shame. “But I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t. You know that my whole life I struggled to gain my father’s love and acceptance, and once I had it. I realized I lost myself getting there. I had forgotten who I was.”

She looked at him with an outraged expression.

“Where’s Aang?” She said rising to her feet.

“I overheard Sokka saying they were going to the beach.”

“… bunch of lazy snail-sloths…” She grumbled under her breath and he saw her reach for the kitchen knife she had used to prepare her breakfast and rush out of the beach house.

Aang wasn’t taking this seriously enough. All he was thinking about was ways to woo Katara and beach parties when the world was about to end in just a couple of days.

“Tsai!” He called after her. “What are you doing?” He asked when he caught up to her. Her strides long and determined as she crossed the center courtyard. “I’m going to teach Aang a lesson.” She said darkly.

She continued in her strides but came to a brief halt. She brushed her hair out of her forehead and let out a sharp breath.

“Doesn’t it make you just want to- “She made a frustrated sound and opened and closed her hands in an aggressive comical gesture “Doesn’t it just makes your blood boil?Aang doesn’t stand a chance fighting the Father Lord!”

“Maybe not, but you do.”

“Me?!” She stepped back. Defeating the Fire Lord was nother destiny. It was Aang’s. Hewas the Avatar. It was hisduty to bring peace and balance to the unstable world that they lived in. Her destiny - She was the Spirit of the Sun and just another girl from the Fire Nation colonies – but her destiny… That was a whole other matter that she still hadn’t pieced together. “Why do you look so shocked? You did break his nose.”

“It was a lucky shot!” She protested. “Besides yeah maybe I can walk through fire but one shock,” she extended out her hand pretending to blast a bolt of lightning at him. “And I’m toast!”

She dropped her arms to the side and shook her head. “If the best I can do is make Aang take things a little more seriously then so be it.”

She pouted a little arm crossed over her chest, butter knife still at hand. “Want to help?”

Xxx

They looked at them sunbathing, surfing, building sandcastles and shapes in the sand. Her type A personality felt triggered by the slacking off. “I’ll take the high-ground.”

Sokka, Aang and Toph were currently looking standing around a massive monster sand blob it seemed like they were laughing at it or at Sokka. Not like it mattered. Aang was about to eat a mouthful of sand.

They watched him like predators. He was scratching his head in confusion pointing at the sand blob saying something.

“Aah!” He yelped shielding himself when a hot burst of fire destroyed the sand sculpture making a sandstorm rain. He turned gawking and saw Zuko leap of the edge of a cliff mercilessly blasting fire in his direction.

The young Avatar shouted in surprise barely managing to dodge the flames as he ran away from the raging prince leaping over an identical sand replica of Ba Sing Se. Zuko landed and continued chasing Aang.

“What are you doing?!” Aang cried out fearfully as he hid behind a sand replica of Appa.

"Teaching you a lesson!" Zuko barked and he swung his fist, sending a stream of fire at the sand sculpture completely destroying it.

Aang looked up and saw the girl with auburn red hair standing on the ledge from where Zuko had leapt down from. She had her arms over her head and appeared to be stretching lightly from side to side.

“Tsai!” Aang yelled for help. “Zuko’s gone mad!”

He jumped away from the beach and up in a rock continuing higher and higher until he stood before the girl.

“Tsai!” He said reaching for her and hid behind her as if she could shield him from the Fire Prince’s wrath. “Zuko’s gone crazy!” He said fearfully. It was then that a glimmer caught his eye. He looked down and saw the knife on her hand. “He’s not the only one.” He saw the smallest of smirks curl on her lip.

She slashed quickly turning around and Aang ducked just in time his eyes wide in surprise. He ran back towards the house as fast as he could both Fire Nationer’s rapidly trailing behind him.

Aang looked over his shoulder heaving as he ran as fast as he could. There was no time to stop and ask questions as panic surged through him. Both of them looked angry as Zuko blasted at his heels. Aang jumped on a rock and then to a palm tree clinging dearly to it. Zuko ran up the rock and flipped jumping off it hitting the ground with a roll and setting the palm on fire. Aang clung to his life as he looked down and saw the girl violently shaking the palm. Aang dove off the palm tree and landed on the roof of the beach house. Without wasting another second Zuko scaled to the roof using the side of the beach house with acrobatic proficiency hot on Aang’s tail.

She looked at the hard task and the corner of her eye twitched slightly. No way in hell she was going up there like that. ‘Yeah… I’m using the stairs.’Huffing she turned and sprinted inside of the house.

Meanwhile on the roof-

"Get a grip before I blast you off this roof!" Aang snapped angrily standing his ground defensively.

"Go ahead and do it!" Zuko snarled in response before thrusting his fist forward, bending a large jet of flames before leaping and kicking another blast at Aang, who twisted away and slid down the sloped crimson roof.

Aang slipped down and went inside a window to a storage room. He panted softly catching his breath as he hid behind a wood dresser. It was then that the roof collapsed as a blast of fire and Zuko fell through landing amongst the broken wood, debris and ceiling titles. He took a guarded stance as he eyed the room carefully seeking for any sign of the Avatar.

Aang stood up slowly and with a quick whirl kicked the wooden dresser towards Zuko sprinting out of the room. Zuko’s fists broke through the dressed destroying it in one firey motion and continued in his pursuit.

Aang ran to the end of the hallway but stopped when a flash of red turned around the corner stopping him in his tracks. He looked in between the two Fire Nationers. He was trapped. Behind him Zuko bend massive arcs of fire creating an infernal tunnel of flames that engulfed the hallway and would soon reach Aang.

He looked forward Tsai coming at him with a knife, his eyes wide with horror as he looked over his shoulder and saw the surging flames. They engulfed him on all sides. Leaping he twisted midair and bending air he extinguished the fire beneath him safely landing.

Aang bared his teeth looking between the two Fire Nationers.

“Enough!” He roared angrily as he created a wind tunnel which smothered all the flames in the room. Zuko yelled in surprise as he was blasted down the corridor and out in a powerful gust of air that shot him through the walls and out crashing against a tree landing on the ground with a painful thud.

Tsai managed to duck just in time stabbing the knife on the wooden floor managing to cling to the ground as the violent air whooshed past her. Aang was distracted looking at the gaping hole in the wall that he didn’t see her attack coming.

“Gotcha!” She pounced on him wrapping an arm around his neck roughly holding the butter knife to his face. He looked at her with a slight scowl his eyes a blend of irritation and confusion.

“What is wrong with the two of you?!” Aang said removing her arm from his body angrily. She shrugged a little and instead placed it on his shoulder as they walked towards the end of the hallway. She combed down her messy hair with her other hand. “We wanted to teach you a lesson,” she said sternly. “You shouldn’t be slacking off.”

They reached the balcony and looked down at Zuko who had landed on a bush and was rubbing the back of his head. She waved at him with a sheepish smile on her face.

‘Of course, she’d caught him.’

"What's wrong with you two?!" Katara yelled as she came around the house, the rest of the group tailing before her as they all stopped before the prince and looked up at the balcony. “You could’ve hurt Aang!”

Aang and Tsai leapt down the balcony one of them landing more gracefully than the other.

“Wrong with us?” Zuko shouted back throwing his hands to the side. “What’s wrong with you?! How can you sit around having beach parties when Sozin’s Comet is three days away!”

They all starred at him blankly.

“Wait- you guys don’t know?” Tsai stepped forward stepping next to Zuko. Everybody was looking at them as if they were lunatics.

“So the comet’s coming. Big deal.” Mecha shrugged crossing his arms over his chest.

"Why are you all looking at us like if we’ve gone crazy?"

"Uh..." Aang sighed and rubbed the back of his head as he stepped forward, "About Sozin's Comet...I was actually gonna wait to fight the Fire Lord until afterit came."

"After?" Tsai stepped forward looking at him in shock. That terrifying vision still replaying continuously in the back of her mind. This explained why Aang had been slacking off so much. What did he think he could just waltz into the Mainland whenever he wanted knock on the Fire Dad’s door and take him down?

"I'm not ready." Aang explained, he glanced at the ground with an insecure look on his face... "I need more time to master firebending."

"And frankly, your earthbending could still use some work too." Toph added with a small shrug and she crossed her arms.

Aang winced and looked away mournfully.

"So... You all knew that Aang was going to wait?" Zuko asked slowly as looked at the others in disbelief.

“How come I didn’t know?” Tsai held the back of her neck. “We discussed it before the eclipse.” Her brother answered with a casual shrug. ‘Even he knew?!’

"Honestly Zuko, if Aang tries to fight the Fire Lord right now, he's gonna lose." Sokka commented then looked over at Aang apologetically, "No offense."

Katara stepped forward before Aang could answer, "The whole point of fighting the Fire Lord before the Comet was to stop the Fire Nation from winning the War." She shrugged and looked at the others before her gaze settled on the scarred prince, "But they pretty much won the War when they took Ba Sing Se. Things can't get any worse."

Oh, how wrong they were.

"You're wrong." Zuko replied flatly. He closed his eyes and turned away from them. "It's about to get worse than you can even imagine."

He proceeded to explain everything he had said to Tsai earlier that they before they decided to teach Aang a lesson.

"I can't believe this." Katara collapsed. Knees growing weak at the horrible realization.

"I always knew that the Fire Lord was a bad guy," Sokka muttered as he wrapped his arm around Suki's bringing her close in a comforting gesture. "But his plan is just pure evil."

Suki shook her head sadly.

“Why do you all think I have been acting like a nut about mine and Aang’s trainings?” Tsai sighed crossing her arms over her chest. “I…” She hesitated in whether she should share the following information with the rest of the group. “The dragons showed me a vision when we were in the Sun Warrior Island. It’s about the day of Sozin’s comet. I saw so much destruction, fire, raining ash- I get this sickening feeling every time I even think about it.” It was almost apocalyptic.

“What am I gonna do?" Aang grabbed his head in distress.

Zuko stood up walking over to Aang. "I know you're scared. And I know you're not ready to save the world." He stopped in front of him. "But if you don't defeat the Fire Lord before the comet comes, there won't be a world to save anymore."

"Why didn't you tell me about your dad's crazy plan sooner?" Aang screeched. “And why didn’t you tell me about your vision?” He demanded.

Aang began pacing nervously both of his hands clenching as knots of stress began to form on his back.

"I didn't think I had to. I assumed that you were still going to fight him before the comet." Zuko replied defensively and he put a hand on his chest and flung the other out to the side. "How were we supposed to know you were going to wait?” The girl called out to him.

"This is bad." Aang muttered as he rubbed his temples as stress and despair began to cloud his consciousness. Aang was there, but not really there. He shook his head and groaned. "This is really, really bad." He collapsed to his knees.

"Aang," Katara said as approached him. "You don't need to do this alone,” You don’t need to this alone.

"Yeah," Toph chipped in with a cocky smirk, walking up to stand next to Katara while the rest of the crew followed behind. "If we all fight the Fire Lord together, we got a shot at taking him down."

“And don’t forget you’ve got something the Fire Lord doesn’t have!” Tsai said animatedly her characteristic optimism coming through.

“What? Something worth fighting for?” Zuko scoffed humorously from behind. His father didn’t need a good reason to destroy an entire civilization. “No,” she shot him a quick glance. “Us!” She said confidently with a cheesy grin.

"Alright! Team Avatar is back!" Sokka cheered pumping a fist up in the air. He pointed at Aang “Air!” then at his sister “Water!” He said confidently. “Earth!” He said turning to Toph. “Fire!” He motioned to Zuko and Mecha.

“Fan, spirit and sword!” He shouted triumphantly. Sokka said picking up a leaf that resembled a blade and handing Suki one that looked like a fan.

“Spirit?Really? I don’t get a prop?” Tsai eyed Sokka with the edge of her lips twitching into a grimace.

Sokka’s leaf sword wilted with his determined expression. Aang turned to look at his friends with a rare serious expression on his face. "Fighting the Fire Lord won't be easy, it's gonna be the hardest thing we've ever done together." He smiled at them, "But I wouldn't want to do it any other way." He said with a small smile.

The group all cheered and came together in a group hug. The Fire Nationers standing idly a couple of feet away from the group glancing awkwardly.

Katara glanced over at them and smiled, "Get over here guys. Being part of the group also means being part of group hugs!"

The Fire Nationers smiled at each other slightly before welcoming in the group hug. Even Appa joined in!

“So, how are we going to do this?” Sokka clapped his hands after the jovial embrace.

“You have to catch him by surprise!” Tsai explained raising her hand. They all chuckled lightly. “What?” She said confused. “I hit him once.” She admitted.

“You what?”Her brother asked with his eyes wide. Everybody’s faces seemed to reflect his surprise. “He tried to set me on fire. I had to do something. So, I used my head.”

“I see,” Sokka scratched his chin. “You stood by the fire waiting for him to lower his guard and then attacked with an elaborate strategy.”

“No,” She deadpanned. “I usedmy head. I headbutted into him.” She rubbed the top of her head remembering the slight pain.

“She’s being modest. She broke his nose.” Zuko said with what sounded like pride in his voice before dropping an arm around her shoulders.

Everybody gawked at the two Fire Nationers beyond confused. It was awkward enough that he seemed proud that she landed a strike on his evil father’s face. Talk about weird dynamics.

“Is this how you two flirt?” Her brother asked just as confused pointing a finger between the two of them.

“I’m just glad you two finally made up.” Sokka let out an exhale. “Now we can double date!” Suki said with an eager smile.

However, this was not the time for that…

“There is one technique you need to know before facing my father...” Zuko stated. Moments later he was teaching Aang how to redirect lightning. Something Tsai’s scarred brother also sat in for. Maybe an individual can survive getting hit by lightning once? But twice?

Xxx

Later that day after a long day of strenuous training the group sat for dinner in the center courtyard. They all sat together mindlessly chattering while eating with scattered conversation. Aang sat a distance away not very hungry poking at his food with his back to his friends.

“I have a surprise for everyone!” Katara rushed in from the corridor holding a rolled-up scroll in her hands. She grinned eagerly as she stood before the group.

"I knew it!" Toph exclaimed as she stopped eating her rice, "You did have a secret thing with Haru!"

Everybody turned to give Toph an odd look.

"Uh...no..." Katara said, giving Toph an equally strange look before waving the scroll she had. "I was looking for cooking pots in the attic, and I found this!" She unraveled the scroll, revealing a painting of a happy baby with a small ponytail playing in the beach’s sand. "Look at baby Zuko! Isn't he cute?" Katara cooed gushing.

Everyone but Zuko laughed at portrait. Tsai stood up taking the scroll from Katara to get a better look at it. Suki leaned over her shoulder also looking at the portrait with a smile. “Awe!” Suki coed.

“You are so cute!” Tsai said touching Zuko’s arm. However, his arms remained crossed as he appeared to be deep in thought a stoic expression on his face despite the compliment.

"Oh lighten up, we’re just teasing." Katara said to him.

Zuko opened his eyes and gave her an irritated look, "That's not me. It's my father."

Everybody fell silent. Suki cringed and Tsai grimaced as she rolled the scroll up giving Zuko a nervously apologetic look.

"But he looks so sweet and innocent." Suki murmured as she gestured towards the scroll and turned her attention to Zuko.

"Yeah, well that sweet little kid grew up to be a monster." Zuko scoffed and put his own dish down losing his appetite. He rested his arm on his bent knee, "And the worst father in the history of fathers."

Tsai placed a hand on his knees giving him a sad look.

"But he's still a human being." Aang interrupted turning to face the group from the distance. Everybody turned to look in his direction. “You’re going to defend him?” Zuko asked sharply.

Aang abandoned his plate and approached his friends. "I agree with you, Zuko. Fire Lord Ozai is a horrible person and the world will probably be better off without him. But there has to be another way."

"Like what?" Zuko scoffed.

"I don't know." Aang replied with a shrug. His expression brightened and he raised his hands up as if he was holding a bowl. "Maybe we can make some big pots of glue and then I can use gluebending to stick his arms and legs together so he can't bend anymore."

"Yeah." Zuko replied with sarcastic cheer, "Then you can show him all his baby pictures, and all those happy memories will make him good again."

Suki and Sokka sniggered behind Zuko.

"Do you really think that would work?" Aang oblivious to Zuko’s sarcasm asked his voice filled with hope.

"No!"

Aang hung his head and sighed hopelessly. “What if I do it?” Everybody turned back to look at the scarred young man from the colonies in surprise. Tsai couldn’t help but facepalm sometimes she really wanted to hit her brother. “Are you nuts? You’re notthe Avatar. That’s hisdestiny not yoursMecha.”

“I wouldn’t mind- really.” He added darkly.

His sister was about to protest and call him out on his plan for vengeance when Aang interrupted. “Enough lives have been lost. It shouldn’t be this way.”

“But Aang ending this life will save thousands-maybe millions of other lives.” The girl from the colonies tried to reason with him. “How can you measure the worth of one life with all the other ones that could be spared?”

"This goes against everything the monks taught me. I can't just go around wiping out people I don't like." Aang paced nervously in front of the group, his shadow following after him illuminated by the small oil lamp above the courtyard.

"Sure, you can. You’re the Avatar." Sokka stated matter-of-factly dismissing all of Aang’s concerns. “If it's in the name of keeping balance, I'm sure pretty sure the universe will forgive you." He added casually.

"This isn't a joke, Sokka!" Aang snapped in uncharacteristic anger as he whirled around to glare at him. "None of you don't understand the position that I'm in!"

"Aang, we do understand." Katara began in a compassionate attempt to soothe the boy, "It's just-"

"Just what, Katara?!" Aang demanded rudely. "What?!" He roared raising his voice.

"Then when you figure out a way for me to beat the Fire Lord without taking away his life, I’d love to hear it!” Aang threw his hands up in the air in frustration as the stress of the approaching date of Sozin’s Comet consumed him before angrily stomping away.

"Don't walk away from this, Aang!" Katara chased after him with a strained tone. When a hand’s grip held her back. She turned and saw Zuko standing behind her.

"Let him go." He advised and he let his hand fall from her shoulder, "He needs time to sort it out by himself."

Tsai looked in concern at Aang’s retreating figure from the distance. Her own stress building up tensing her body knotting her back as thoughts of an infernal sky and raining ash clouded her consciousness….

Xxx

Aang sat on the third floor’s western balcony meditating on his choice. Before him he had placed four lit candles, some water, citrus fruits and nuts as an offering to the spirits to guide and bring wisdom to him.

He sat on a meditating pose the only sound he could hear were the tugging and pulling waves of the ocean. Momo quietly sleeping next to him.

When a voice pulled him from his meditation.

“Hey, I love mandarins.”

Aang snapped his eyes open and glared. “Don’t touch those Tsai! It’s an offering for the spirits.” He said irritated. The girl was already peeling the skin of her midnight snack.

“Well, lucky you, I am a spirit and I accept your offering.” She smiled at him softly before walking and leaning on the balcony’s railing. He noticed she was wearing a simple loose-fitting sleeping shirt and the pair of maroon brown shorts she usually wore underneath her everyday Fire Nation robes.

“If you’ve come to persuade me to take the Fire Lord’s life, save your breath. I’m not changing my mind.” He said seriously with a light scowl on his features. She popped a mandarin slice in her mouth and let out a weak laugh. “I know that. That’s not why I’m here.”

He looked at her oddly. A feeble smile on her features. “I think there’s another way… I’ll help you Aang.” She looked at him gently.

He looked at her confused. “How?” He asked with a deflating hopeless breath his shoulders dropping at his sides. “Dunno,” she said with a light shrug. She looked away avoiding his probing gaze. Aang had a feeling she knew more than what she was letting on. “I can walk through fire. That’s got to count for something.”

xxx

Tsai walked back to the guest room she was sharing with Suki, Katara and Toph. She was about to enter the room but stopped in the hallway. A dim light coming from underneath another one of the bedroom door’s in the hallway caught her attention. It was Zuko’s bedroom.

Zuko heard a light knock on his door. His eyes looked up from the parchment on which he was writing on it and saw the door slide open.

He turned and saw Tsai standing underneath the door frame. There was a rare gloom clouding her expression.

“Can… Can I stay with you tonight?” She asked bashfully almost meekly.

“S-Sure.” He stammered pushing away the parchment and brush away from him. He hated himself for stammering and turned away hoping she wouldn’t notice his flustered expression.

He had never slept alonein the same room with a girl that wasn’t his sister. Maybe they had shared many nights together, but his Uncle Iroh or someone, anybody else was always there in between them as a buffer. For some reason it seemed like such a vulnerable act to him. Truly surrounding your consciousness to lay alongside another person. It was scary…

“Okay” She chirped with a small smiled and walked towards the large bed slipping underneath the covers turning on her side. “Goodnight.”

For some….

Feeling frustrated Zuko fought the urge to slam his head against the desk he was currently using. His adolescent concerns overshadowing his juvenile thoughts and emotions. ‘What would Uncle do? What would he say?’ He thought to himself and then grimaced when he actually gave that statement some thought. Never mind that he said shaking his head thinking of the lost advice he once whispered to him in Ba Sing Se.

He turned off the candle that lit the room and carefully slid into the bed next to her. Careful not to make too much noise or move too much. He lay stiffly with his arms at his sides and turned to look at the back of her red head in the darkness. Turning on his side he mindlessly reached for a strand of it toying with the wavy lock between his fingers.

He called her name softly.

“Hm?” She mumbled sleepily.

He was quiet. She could feel him still twirling a strand of hair in his hand. She rolled over slowly and looked at him. Both now face to face. The sounds of waves echoing in the distance.

“Tsai… I…” He was at loss of words. When she raised a hand to his lips gently silencing him. “Don’t say it.” She hushed heavy-eyed with a slight smile on her face. He didn’t even realize he was smiling back. He felt strange, soft inside, warm. It was a novel feeling he welcomed. His hand reached for her fingers.

She threw an arm around him holding him close, nuzzling against his shoulder an arm wrapping around her bringing her in close. “Come here my little fire ferret.” She said in a teasing tone.

“Ugh. Please do notcall me that…” He grumbled in protest. She couldn’t help but laugh a little at his response. “My… tiger monkey?” She said playfully. “If I’m a tiger monkey then you’re a koala sheep.”

“A koala sheep?” She asked almost incredulously raising an eyebrow at him. “What? They’re cute and cuddly,” he shrugged.

“You think I’m cute and cuddly?” She continued the painful tease slowly inching closer to his face. He turned away slightly embarrassed. “Let’s just be us.” She said placing one last kiss on his face.

He agreed.

“Goodnight.”

Xxx

Later in the undisturbed night…

The deep-toned hypnotic chanting of voices of men seemed to resound from the ocean nearby. The chanting was low almost like a hum. It rumbled.

Aang awoke from his sleep and sat up in the balcony where he had unintentionally fallen asleep. A cloud of slumber lingered over his tired features. Slowly, almost as if in a trance. He rose to his feet and walked towards the balcony rail and down to the beach without looking back.

Downstairs a sleeping spirit was also disturbed…

xxx

Sunburn Chapter

M A S T E R L I S T

NEXT https://gloves94.tumblr.com/post/623235644322447360/sunburn-prince-zuko-37 PREV https://gloves94.tumblr.com/post/622676261578342400/sunburn-prince-zuko-35

xxx

AN: Realistically speaking only 2 more chapters to go... 👀👀👀

#prince zuko #zukoxreader #Zuko x oc #Zuko x you #zuko #avatar #avatar the last airbender #avatar fanfic #avatar x oc #avatar fanfiction #atla #atla fanfic #atla zuko #aang #sokka #katara #wattpad #ao3

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grifalinas · 3 years

Text

Batter Up (Working Title) Chapter 3

-/-

Things began going wrong immediately the next morning.

Okay, maybe not immediately. Samuel arrived at the shop a little bit early, and Flint and the kids showed up a few minutes later with donuts and coffee, the former of which they shared with Samuel (and Eddie even offered to run back down the block to get a coffee for Samuel when she realized that he didn’t have any), and they had a very agreeable fifteen minutes of chat before it was time to get to work.

(Eddie spent that time asking Samuel questions about Rosie, who she had decided was going to be her best friend, and Samuel was suddenly regretting the fatherly pride that had pushed him to talk about how great his daughter was. Not that she wasn’t everything he said, but Eddie’s enthusiasm had him worried both about her own expectations as well as her behavior when she and Rosie did finally meet.)

And then everything started going to pot.

First of all, the guy who was hooking up the register and the guy who was fixing the freezer showed up at the same time. This in itself wasn’t a huge problem, since they were working in different areas of the store, but it did mean that Flint and Samuel had to split up to get them both set up.

(Eddie glued herself to Samuel’s side for this; he worried that she was going to start bombarding him with chatter that he wouldn’t be able to attend to, but she seemed to grasp time-and-place better than he’d given her credit for, and mostly just offered answers to questions the register guy had that Samuel didn’t yet have the answers to himself.)

And then the food delivery truck came while the guy was still fixing the freezer and, oh yeah, turned out the freezer needed a part to be able to be fixed, which meant the food from the delivery couldn’t be put into it.

This was all right for stuff that didn’t need to be frozen, and Flint set Radley and Eddie to getting that stuff into the stockroom to be sorted through later, when they sorted through the rest of the boxes that they’d stored back there yesterday, at which point they remembered that, oh yeah, they hadn’t put up any additional shelving in the stockroom so they’d just put the boxes on the floor, and they hadn’t wanted to go far from the door so the boxes were now stacked just near enough the door that there wasn’t space to get the food delivery in without first moving the boxes they’d put in there yesterday.

And there was still the matter of the freezer to be fixed.

“I know where to get you the part, but it’ll be a bit to go get it and get back,” the repair guy said. “Dunno what you’re gonna do with this stuff before then.”

“We’ll think of something,” Flint told her, sending her on to get the things she needed, and turning his attention to the delivery.

“I don’t suppose you can leave the trailer here for the day until we’re ready to unload?” Samuel suggested.

“No can do, chief. I need to get back to the warehouse and pick up another delivery soon.”

“Of course.”

Flint sighed and turned to head inside. “Hold on, I’ll make some calls.”

At which point they discovered that their phone line was down while the other guy was getting the register hooked up. Flint buried his face in his hands and screamed in frustration.

“We may have to send all this back to the warehouse… that’s gonna be a fee, ain’t it?” He looked a question at the deliver driver, who nodded and passed over his phone, already dialing the warehouse manager.

While Flint dealt with that, Samuel turned his attention to a young man who was watching them from a few feet away, eyes roaming the chaos with a slight disdain.

“Is there something I can help you with?” he asked.

“Uh, are you guys… hiring? Yet?”

Samuel opened his mouth to say no, please check back when the store was closer to opening, only for Flint to beat him to it with, “Yeah, you applying?”

“Yes.”

“Can you start immediately?”

“Yes.”

“Flint-“

“Can you bake?”

The boy hesitated a moment, and said, “...Yes.”

“What’s your name? Are you over eighteen?” Samuel asked, before Flint could say anything else.

“Deacon,” he said, and after another of those hesitations, “Smith. Deacon Smith. And yes. I’m twenty one.”

“You’re hired,” Flint said, interrupting Samuel’s attempts to say- literally anything responsible whatsoever.

Deacon looked as startled as Samuel felt; Samuel, for his part, hooked a hand around Flint’s elbow and pulled him toward the door. “Can we speak privately for a minute?” he growled, a little more aggressive than he meant, but it had been a stressful morning.

-/-

“So what’s the problem, Sammy?” Flint asked, leaning back against his desk once Samuel had closed the door on their office. “You can see what kind of situation we’re in; we need all the help we can get.”

“It’s Samuel. And the problem is we’ve done absolutely nothing to ensure this boy can be trusted as an employee. He probably lied in that joke of an interview, you saw how many times he hesitated.”

“So what? I don’t need to know his real name and if he can produce an id saying he’s over eighteen I don’t need to know his age, either.”

“We run background checks for a reason.”

“And we will, but right now I need someone willing to help us get the store ready. We’re opening in less than a week, there’s a lot of work to be done.”

“What?!” Samuel stared. “We’re opening in less than a week?!”

“Yeah, so you can see why I need a quick hire. Our grand opening is this Saturday.”

Samuel sagged in horror. “It’s Sunday. How are we opening Saturday?”

“By not arguing with me and letting me just hire the kid so he can help us get ready. You already seriously limited my help as it is; if Deacon out there can do the stuff you won’t let Eddie do he’s already earning his keep.”

Samuel dragged his hands down his face, and took a deep breath before saying, “Okay. Okay. We can hire him- but in future, we consult on any and all hires. And starting today, I’m taking over organization of our opening. It’s what you hired me for anyway-“

And with that he stormed out of the office, leaving Flint staring after him.

-/-

Flint took a seat behind the desk and buried his face in his hands, muffling a frustrated noise that he was careful not to let carry.

That growl in Samuel’s voice had been hot. The aggression, too. The nearly-bruising grip on his arm? Lord.

And, yes, Flint was aware he couldn’t let his business partner treat him like that, but it had been a stressful morning and he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt- though if he kept on they wouldn’t be business partners anymore, that was sure.

But. Lord. That had been hot. He couldn’t shake the fantasy, now, of that aggression in different circumstances: that growl, digging his own name into his skin; that bruising grip on his hips instead; Samuel, tightly wound and frustrated, pressing him into the desk, rutting like horny teenagers because it was too much to bother undressing.

Woof.

Flint shook his head, dispelling the fantasy. There was no point to it; Samuel was straight, and besides, Raphael had been right. Mixing business and pleasure wouldn’t work out.

But still. No reason he couldn’t enjoy his fantasy in the privacy of his own thoughts later.

-/-

By the time Flint rejoined the others in the back of the shop, Samuel had learned that Deacon didn’t have his id on him; he’d been out for a walk and asked about them hiring on a whim, and would be sure to bring his id tomorrow first thing, promise.

Samuel looked like he wanted to start scolding Flint again, so Flint told him he’d get paid in cash at the end of the day, and would start on the payroll tomorrow, and be sure to bring that id, or he was fired- and set him to work with Radley in getting the stockroom put together.

Fifteen minutes later, they were interrupted from going through the final steps of register set-up by a crash from the stockroom. Samuel took off, but Flint was faster, and beat him: the sight that greeted them was Radley with Deacon in a headlock; just as they arrived, Deacon, animal-fury in his eyes, brought his head back and cracked it against Radley’s face.

Radley dropped Deacon and stepped back, and Deacon would have taken the opening to turn and tackle him if not for Samuel getting a handful of the back of his shirt and snatching him back just as he turned.

“What the fuck is going on?!” Flint demanded, hurrying over to his nephew and checking his now bleeding nose for damage.

“Sorry,” Radley said, a little muffled for the blood pouring out of his face. “We were arguing and things got a bit… heated.”

“Yeah, no shit. What were you arguing about?”

The two exchanged a Look; not one of solidarity but mistrust, and Radley said, still muffled, “Nothing important.”

Flint looked between the two in disbelief, but Radley had clammed up and Deacon was looking surly, and neither seemed inclined to answer. When he turned to address Deacon, though, Radley said quickly, “I started it. It wasn’t Deacon’s fault. I was pushing him.”

Rather than relief, Deacon’s expression swapped into fury, but Flint waved him silent.

“All right,” he said, looking from his nephew to his employee again. “I’ll… look the other way, then. This time. Don’t fucking let it happen again or you’re both out. C’mon, Rad, let’s get you cleaned up-“

He led Radley away to the bathroom, Eddie trailing after them, leaving Samuel and Deacon behind. Samuel sighed.

“Are you hurt?”

Deacon glowered at him and swiped at a cut on his lip: it was bleeding, but not badly. He shrugged. “M’fine.”

Samuel looked, for a moment, like he meant to say more, and then he shook his head and said, “All right. Let’s get these shelves put together. We’ve got a lot to do before Saturday.”

-/-

#this one feels so rushed but w'ever #anyway here's deacon #batter up (working title)#please don't reblog this!#comments will suffice; thank you

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worryinglyinnocent · 4 years

Text

Fic: The Head That Wears The Crown

AU-gust Day Nine: Royalty AU Fandom: Stargate Universe Pairing: Nicholas Rush x Gloria Rush

Rated: G

Summary: After almost twenty years of avoiding Gloria’s heritage, a single phone call turns her and Nick’s world upside down, and they are forced to confront the fact that she is, in fact, a princess.

===

The Head That Wears The Crown

Nick knew that something was up from the moment that Gloria picked up her phone where it was innocently buzzing along the kitchen table. Having looked at the caller ID and gone as white as a ghost, her spoon dropped back down into her cereal bowl, sending milk and muesli across the table.

“Oh God.”

Nick grabbed a couple of sheets of kitchen paper to clean up. “Who is it?”

“My mother.”

Well, that was certainly a turn up for the books, and it certainly explained why Gloria had reacted the way she had. She hadn’t spoken to her mother for almost twenty years. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in her family for almost twenty years. Gloria’s family were never mentioned, the ultimate taboo between them.

“You’d probably better take it,” Nick observed. “She wouldn’t be calling you unless it was important.”

Gloria gave a slow nod, the phone continuing to vibrate in her hand as she made no move to answer it.

“Yes, I probably should.” The phone continued to buzz urgently, and Nick held out a hand.

“Do you want me to take it?”

“No, I don’t think that would help.” Gloria took a deep breath and answered just before it cut out to voicemail. “Good morning, Mother.”

Nick couldn’t hear what Gloria’s mother was saying, but since Gloria managed to go even whiter than she already was, it must have been something dramatic. When she got up from the table and vanished into the living room, closing the door firmly behind her, Nick knew that it was very, very serious. He sat back down at the table, his own breakfast completely forgotten in the knowledge that, likely as not, his entire life was about to get turned upside down.

When Nicholas Rush had first met Gloria Andrews, they’d both been studying at Oxford and had happened upon each other quite by chance at one of the rare social events that Nick had attended. A friendship had begun and turned into a relationship, and the relationship had turned into love and a proposal of marriage.

The proposal had opened a rather large can of worms, because for the previous two years of dating and sleeping together and eventually living together, Gloria had omitted to mention one very important fact, namely that she was heir to the throne of a small principality.

Nick hadn’t believed her at first, because surely if she was royalty then she’d be flanked by several bodyguards all the time and wouldn’t be hanging around in student bars in Oxford, and she certainly wouldn’t be doing something as mundane as playing the violin for a living. And surely she wouldn’t have a surname as commonplace as Andrews.

True, she had never shown any inclination for him to meet her family and he had no idea where she’d lived before going into halls of residence and then living with him. She’d always been rather vague about where she spent her holidays, and it had always been clear that she was in no way short of funds.

But the princess of a nation that he’d only vaguely heard of?

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how one looked at it, Gloria was telling the truth, and Nick found out that for the last two years he had been falling in love with Princess Gloria Catherine Anna di Marco, daughter of Prince André di Marco from whom she’d adopted her civilian surname.

Being the heir to the throne of a nation, however small that nation may have been, Gloria really wasn’t expected to marry a penniless Scottish astrophysicist, and upon the revelation of her true heritage, Nick had been fully expecting their relationship to come to an end.

He had not been expecting Gloria to go home to her father, argue with him about her life choices until he disinherited her, and then come back and marry him and live a happy and contented life as a music teacher, completely uncaring for the grandiose existence she had left behind.

Now, nearly twenty years later, that grandiose existence had suddenly made an appearance once more, reminding both of them that their lives were not as simple as they had hoped to keep them.

Nick sighed. There had been so many times over the last two decades when he had doubted his worth, knowing that he didn’t deserve someone like Gloria despite all the times she had reassured him that he was the only thing she wanted. She had given up so much to be with him and she had never once used that maliciously against him. She had never once wished for her royal life back or lamented how different things would have been if they had not stuck together. Nick knew that it was unfair to put all of the upheaval that they were about to face on Gloria. She had done her best to avoid it, and she would feel the stress of it just as much as he would.

At length – time had lost all sense of meaning – Gloria returned to the kitchen and sat back down, staring at her phone for a long time before she spoke. When she did, she didn’t meet Nick’s eyes.

“I have to go home,” she said. Her voice was measured but brittle, as if she was only keeping herself together through sheer force of will. “Actually, we both do.” She looked up at him then, and Nick could see that she’d been crying. “My father is dying, and he wants to see me. And you.”

Considering that Nick had never met any of Gloria’s family, much less her father, who was the ruler of a country, he thought that he was justified in feeling some trepidation at the prospect, and he felt guilty as he started mentally running through a thousand and one reasons why he would have to stay here.

He knew that he couldn’t. Even if none of Gloria’s family wanted anything to do with him, which was the stance they’d made clear when she’d first mentioned him to them, he needed to go with Gloria to support her whilst all this was going on. He’d lost his mother when he’d been too young to remember and his relationship with his father was strained at best, but he knew that he wouldn’t want to go through the loss alone.

“Right.”

For a long time, that was the only thing he could say. There were a hundred questions running through his head, most of them along the lines of does this mean you’ll have to run the country now and most of those followed by where does that leave us?

“I suppose I’d better start cancelling my lessons,” Gloria said. It was so practical and mundane that Nick couldn’t help but give a bark of laughter, alarming Gloria.

“I’m sorry. I think I’m still in shock.”

“Yeah.” Gloria sighed, and suddenly she looked very far away at the other end of the table. “Yeah, you and me both.”

Objectively, Nick knew that royal families generally had money to burn, but having lived on the breadline for most of his life and only gaining proper financial stability when he got academic tenure, the extent of wealth was difficult for him to comprehend – and he had wrapped his head around some of the most incomprehensible theoretical physics known to man.

Since getting off the plane, he and Gloria hadn’t had to lift a finger. There had been official people to meet them at every step of the way and a car waiting to whisk them away to the official family residence, and then another one waiting to take them to the hospital. Considering all he’d had to do was follow people along corridors and sit in the back of very luxurious cars, Nick was exhausted. All he wanted was to get back to his office and grade a few choice idiotic papers to take his mind off it all.

“Oh, Gloria!”

As they entered the private wing of the hospital where Prince André was receiving treatment, Gloria was bowled over by someone whom Nick recognised from photographs as her mother – twenty years older, of course, but still definitely the same woman. Even though Gloria was far more comfortable with invasions of personal space than Nick was, it was clear that she was rather taken aback by this sudden display of affection from someone she’d had no contact with for so many years. Eventually she relaxed into the hug and let her mother lead her down the corridor towards her father’s room.

Nick hung back, sitting down on one of the plush seats in the waiting area. He caught Gloria’s glance over her shoulder, almost a plea for deliverance, and he wondered what he should do. What could he do? He was the very definition of a fish out of water here, and Gloria herself wasn’t doing much better. People kept coming and asking if they could get him anything; it was the most surreal experience he’d ever had. Some kind soul sourced him some coffee and the caffeine helped him to focus a little, even if all he was focussing on was pretending to be somewhere else entirely.

It felt like an age before Gloria returned, sinking into the chair next to him.

“Gloria?” She looked blank, like she was miles away. “Gloria? Glo?”

She shook herself out of the stupor and turned to him.

“Hi. Sorry, I’m still trying to work out whether that just happened or if this is all just some weird dream.”

“What happened?”

Gloria shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not here, at least. God, I want to go home. Proper home, I mean. Our home. Oxford. Not here.” She pressed her hands over her face, leaning heavily on her knees. “I thought I’d left all this behind,” she mumbled behind her fingers. “I was happy to have left it all behind. This can’t be happening.”

No more was said on the subject until they got back to the house, and even then, Gloria spent a long time just wandering through rooms that had once been familiar. Nick trailed after her, unsure of what she needed. This wasn’t a problem that he could just apply maths to in order to solve.

“This was my bedroom when I was a kid.” She’d stopped in the doorway of a room that was at least the footprint of Nick’s entire childhood home and garden. Everything was covered in dust sheets, no sign of personalisation anywhere. Just as Gloria had made a clean break with her previous life, it seemed that her previous life had made a clean break with her as well.

“He wants to reinstate me,” she said suddenly, apropos of nothing. “He wants me to take the throne when he dies.”

Although Nick had suspected that this would be the case from the moment he’d known the situation, it was still something to hear it from Gloria herself and have it confirmed.

“Is this a situation where you can say no, or do you not really have a choice?”

Gloria shrugged. “I have no idea. The lawyer’s coming tomorrow to sort it all out, I guess I’ll find out then.”

“What happens if you don’t take it?”

“There’s a cousin in New Zealand. It’ll go to him.” Gloria sighed. “I’m so sorry, Nicholas. I don’t know who I was fooling when I thought that I could leave all this behind and it would never trouble us again. I’m an only child and my father’s not going to live forever, of course it would come back to bite me sooner rather than later. There was no way I could run from it forever. I’d just hoped that it would be over, done. He’s always been so stubborn. I thought that his first decision would be final. I never thought that he was one for deathbed regrets and trying to make amends. I suppose none of us know what we’re going to regret at the end until we get there ourselves. I’m so sorry.” She wiped away a fresh fall of tears on the back of her hand. “I’m so sorry, Nick. I know you didn’t sign up for all this.”

Nick didn’t reply. He didn’t know what to say, either to comfort Gloria or to try and make sense of his own position in the entire affair. He just put his arms around her, letting her lean in against him, holding her as she cried. He tried to reason that nothing was set in stone yet, that Gloria still had the choice to refuse the crown and everything could go back to the way it was before, that soon enough it would all be the cousin in New Zealand’s problem.

Deep down, though, he knew that it was not going to be as simple as that.

He didn’t think either of them slept that night, both of them caught up in their own thoughts. Nick stared at the ceiling, thinking about everything that he had to lose if Gloria were to take the throne and move their lives over here. The university, his professorship, his positions on all of the research committees he worked on. His office, his tenure, his students… Well, maybe he wouldn’t miss those as much.

Ultimately, though, he knew that the only thing he would really miss if he were to lose it was Gloria. He had started from scratch enough times and he had built himself up from the bare bones before. He could do it again. He could do his research anywhere. But if Gloria wanted to be here, then here was where he would be as well.

“Glo?” He reached across the bed to find her hand, squeezing tightly.

She rolled over, burrowing into his side. “Nick?”

“Whatever happens, whatever you decide, I’m right here with you. I love you. No matter what.”

She kissed him, fumbling and clumsy in the dark, and Nick felt wet on her cheeks.

“Thank you, Nick.”

#SGU #Stargate Universe #Nicholas Rush #Gloria Rush #Nick/Gloria #Royalty AU #AU-gust #Worry does AU-gust #Fic: The Head That Wears The Crown

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platinummice · 3 years

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This was a lot more that i thought for some reason, the answers are pretty short and to the point so if you want me to elaborate on something a bit more feel free to ask :)

@rockshortage

What of the Meyers-Briggs personality types they most fit into? INFP, ENFT, et cetera…

Did a take a test to figure this out? Why yes, yes I did. ISFP-T, or Adventurer is what I got for Archer.

Do they have any emotional or psychological conditions? Are they aware of it? Do they try to treat it?

He sure does, but he doesn’t really know what it is. He mostly just thinks he’s going literally insane. It’s a pretty big reason for him not sticking around people very much even though he craves affection.

Are they good at handling change in their life?

No not really, Archer has a hard time, now more than ever trying to keep his simple life together, he’d prefer it not change as much as possible.

Is your OC a martyr?

He tries pretty hard not to be, or at least to not show that he is. He sees the truth though.

Does your OC make a lot of excuses? For themselves? Others?

Archer is pretty straight forward, if he fucked up he’ll say something. But he’ll make things up for others if he like them enough.

Does your OC compromise easily? Too easily?

I guess it depends? If its not something that matters very much, compromise will be easier, but if he thinks it’s important then he’s going to be harder to bargain with.

Does your OC put others’ needs before their own?

Only his dogs and his friends needs get put before his own. Anyone else? so sorry.

Does your OC have any addictions? If so and problematic, have they admitted it to themselves?

He’s addicted to taking in animals? Seems harmless, but in truth he does it so he has a reason to keep living, which isn’t healthy. I can’t say he’d still be alive if he hadn’t taken Ranger and Fletcher with him the day those raiders killed the rest of his dogs.

Does your OC have any phobias? If so, where did they come from?

He’s terrified of needles. Thanks mom and dad.

Is your character empathetic?

He is, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to care.

Is your character observant?

Yes, very. Probably because he works with animals a lot, and its very important to notice their body language, so he can read people and situations pretty well. Plus he’s more of a sniper so being observant is important.

What’s one of your OC’s proudest moments of themselves?

He was really proud when he finished building his house, and all the furniture for it.

Do they get jealous easily? Do they feel bad if they do?

He doesn’t get jealous very easily, but even when he does he doesn’t bring it up. He’ll sulk around a bit, and when asked he’ll say he fine. He wont really feel bad about if? Its just an emotion, it happens sometimes.

What instantly irritates them or puts them in a bad mood?

Seeing people hurt animals for no reason. He will throw down. Might not win, but its the thought that counts.

Are they harsh on themselves?

YES.

Do they make excuses often?

Nah he’s pretty fast to admit when he’s doing something wrong.

Is your OC intended to be found generally attractive? Unattractive? Average? Is there a reason why?

I mean i didn’t make him like super ugly? But i wasn’t going for amazingly attractive either, so average i guess?

Does your OC place much importance on their appearance? Do they feel confident in it?

He wears a mask all the time so he really doesn’t care. I mean at one point he had tore most of his hair out and just had a few scattered clumps clinging to his head, but people couldn’t see his face so it didn’t matter to him.

What are some of your OC’s biggest personal obstacles? This could be emotional, physical, social… Are they aware of it? Are they trying to overcome it?

He got some damn big emotional problems, and he recognizes some, like his slowly diminishing will to live. But things like his urge to have someone else control his entire existence he doesn’t really realize are problems.

Do they believe you have to give respect to get it, or get respect to give it?

Everyone starts off with a set amount of respect. You either get more or have it taken away depending on your actions.

Is your OC considered funny? Do they believe they’re funny?

Arch can be pretty funny, if he has anything its a sense of humor.

Does your OC find any “bad” or “mean” humor funny? Do they wish they didn’t?

Yeah he does, what can you do. No guilt will stop him.

Do they have a large or small group of friends?

He has two dogs and sometimes he works with a stinky man. He thinks Gage is a friend but does Gage think he is a friend? Who knows if Gage will ever tell him.

Do they have people they are genuinely honest with about themselves?

....His dogs?

Does your OC enjoy social events, such as parties, clubs, et cetera..?

He likes talking to people, but if there are too many people around he gets overwhelmed pretty fast.

Does your OC like to be the center of attention or more in the mix?