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#i was looking back at some of my old notes and idea and WOW ive come so far
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i love thrae so much grabs you by the shoulders shakes you look at my fantasy world look at this fictional planet that i have poured my soul into look at how alive and full it is
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im the anon who sent that gaz ask and omg kyle's interlude was so good!!!!! im just giggling thinking of kyle wondering how much does she know? did she catch on somehow? fuck I have to take her out quick before she finds out how many projects ive finished and the whole time miss new girl is like. wow this guy fucking sucks at his job i want him gone from my hospital >:(
mans thinks shes gonna file a case with a police and she just thinks he's incompetent as shit
I'm so tickled. That's exactly what's happening.
CW: discussions of death and dying, autopsies, medical neglect
There’s something going on on the cardiac floor that you just… can’t quite put your finger on.
This isn’t the first hospital you’ve worked at, but you’re also new to urban healthcare, so you don’t want to rock the boat by being paranoid. But traffic from the cardiac floor is… steady. You’ve read the papers, know the stats like the back of your hand. And the cardiac floor is perfectly in line with expected trends. Every. Month.
There are fluctuations, of course. Plus or minus three to seven lives is nothing remarkable in cardiology. Macabre, maybe, but true. But that’s unnatural. In the seven months you’ve worked here, you’ve seen waves elsewhere in the hospital. The plastics floor had a month with zero deaths followed by a month of a persistent infection sweeping through the otherwise reasonably healthy patients. Oncology has seen a steady decline in patients sent your way, thank goodness. Even emergency and intensive care aren’t as fixedly consistent as the cardiac floor.
When you wonder about it aloud to the director, Dr. Martins just shrugs. “We have a good team up there. Very good at keeping things clean and double and triple checking their work.”
“But if that’s the case, then the number of deaths should be going down,” you point out.
Dennis gives you a rueful smile. “That’s not always how human bodies work, unfortunately. You know that.”
You do know that. Which is why the consistency grates against your nerves. So you decide to do a little digging.
The name that comes up the most often in the chart notes is one Kyle Garrick.
That’s actually not 100% accurate. He’s charting exactly the way he’s supposed to. And no nurse has complete, individual access to patients 24/7. But every dying patient he has access to is… perfect. Their blood work, labs, vitals, prognosis, medication adherence and refusal is almost too-the-letter, textbook precise.
The most obvious answer is that Garrick, and probably a couple of other nurses on the floor, are fudging the numbers.
The idea is infuriating. You hate the way the administrators keep changing medical record systems just as much as the next person, but inaccurate charting is a safety issue. People can, have, and do die because someone writes down the wrong timing for medications or assumes that a patient’s vitals are unchanged. If anything, this is probably worse than that. The fact that everything is so pristine probably means that some patients are just being written off. The nurses might be deciding who gets the excellent care the hospital is known for and who gets neglected.
You stay three hours late investigating the next cardio patient that ends up in your morgue.
After examining the body and reading, rereading, and re-re-re-reading his chart, you find it. A stutter in the dosages of blood thinners, a slightly higher blood pressure reading from someone who isn’t nurse Kyle fucking Garrick. Just enough evidence to have you testing the body with an aspirometer almost too late. And there it is. A fatal air embolism.
You want to scream, but the dead man doesn’t deserve that.
Three weeks later, sipping from your water bottle, someone calls into the office. “Knock knock.”
Dennis practically lights up. “"Good morning, Kyle. Been a bit since you've come to see us. Care for some tea?"
Your eyebrows shoot up. Dr Martins hates unexpected visitors. Then you look over your shoulder, and you understand. Even old queens aren't immune to pretty privilege. The man that’s leaning in the doorway is gorgeous. Maybe its because you work with dead bodies all day, but his eyes and skin seem to glow, even under the fluorescents.
"Can't," the man says, apologetically. "Just dropping someone off."
"Well, at least let me introduce our new nurse!"
The fact that you’re wiping crumbs off of your mouth over a paper plate is the only reason no one sees your face fall when you hear him say, “Nice to meet you. Kyle Garrick.”
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deke-rivers-1957 · 12 days
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Scott's World of Tomorrow
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It was February 1956, a young Scott Heyward had just turned 16 years old. His father, Duster Heyward of Heyward Oil is about to spoil him.
"Well son taday's yer birthday. What do ya wanna do?"
"Can we go to Disneyland Pa? They have a whole section called Tomorrowland and a race car track called Autopia."
Mr. Heyward smiles as he claps Scott's shoulder.
"Tha's mah boy. Disneyland's gonna be a great client ta have. Can't be runnin no rides without oil."
"Yeah and maybe if they have real cars there I can take some notes for the research department."
Mr. Heyward chuckles as he goes to the phone.
"Ah'll just let yer tutor know yer goin on a field trip. That oughta make 'em happy yer doin yer science project."
"Ok, Pa."
Time Skip
"Alright then son. Ah'm gonna be talk with some a Disney's people. They said some fella named Bob Gurr's gonna be walkin ya through Autopia."
"Wow. Thanks Pa!"
Scott sits down on a bench with his camera and notepad. A young man his 20s approaches him.
"Are you Scott Heyward?"
"Yes. Are you Mr. Gurr?"
"That I am. Just call me Bob today. It's really an honor to have you and father come to the park today."
The two shake hands and start to walk to Tomorrowland.
"Now as you can see, the Moonliner was designed by one of my colleagues, John Hench and of course sponsored by Howard Hughes of Trans World Airlines."
Scott takes some pictures as they walk through the attraction. They get to the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry.
"Are you familiar with Monsanto, Scott?"
"Oh yes. I was only 7 when they had that explosion down in Texas City. Pa sent a crew to bring oil down to the site. He managed to get a deal where we can have a couple ships down at the port."
Bob nods. Eventually they make it to Autopia.
"Now this is what I helped design. I used what I learned from working with Ford."
"You worked with Ford? What did you do?"
"Well I helped design the Lincoln Continental. I published a few books on automotive design and that's what brought Mr. Disney's attention over to me. He wanted me to analyze the chassis for these cars. Originally designed by Hartmann Engineering, they were having issues regarding the ability to be mass produced. Too noisy and smokey with a lot of vibration. Eventually the company dropped out so I was brought on permanently to come up with a different design."
Scott's writing all of this down the best he can. Mr. Gurr's slowly turning into an idol.
"So where did you get the design for the cars? They don't look like anything I've ever seen."
"Take a closer look. If you're familiar with Porsche, I took the idea of their 54 550 Spyder and combined it with the recent custom made Italian Ferraris. Of course the Chevrolet Corvette also served as inspiration."
"Wow."
Bob continues telling his story. Scott listens to every word including everything about engineering he has yet to learn.
"What make are these cars now?"
"Currently these are the Mark II's. I had to fix the chassis so they can accommodate a sturdier, smoother-running engine. We've been getting a lot of youngsters so it was necessary to add booster seats and extensions on the peddles. I just finished a prototype for the Mark III and already started work on the Mark IVs"
"Why? What's wrong with these models?"
"Longevity and ease of repair. With how popular this attraction is getting it's only a matter of time before these cars will need repairing. Every month we're learning something new about what people like and don't like about the car. Just goes to show that even when a product is a success, there's still a lot that needs to be done to perfect it."
Scott writes this down as Bob finishes talking.
"Would you like to ride in one of these, Scott?"
"Yes! I'd love to."
Bob chuckles as they wait in line to ride in one of the cars.
Time Skip
"How was yer trip son?"
"I loved it Pa. Mr. Gurr let me take so many pictures and showed me all of Tomorrowland."
Mr. Heyward smiles as they make their way back to Texas. Scott would recite his notes and Bob's story. His father could only nod along as he never really got into the science side of business.
"Well Ah bet yer science project'll turn out real good."
"Oh yeah Pa. Until science finds a better way, everything needs oil. Even the rockets."
"Thatta boy. Yer gonna be takin Heyward Oil inta space."
Scott smiles and sits back in his seat. He starts to fantasize about making his own world of tomorrow.
AN: Shoutout to @xanatenshi for requesting this story.
Tagging: @mercsandmonsters, @georgefairbrother, @imaginationlast, @hooked-on-elvis, @arrolyn1114,
@teamnefarious​, @blighted-star, @ab4eva, @thetaoofzoe, @vintagepresley,
@myradiaz, @jaqueline19997, @kiankiwi, @ahundredlifetime, @mydarlingelvis,
@tupelomiss, @elvispresleywife, @karel-in-wonderland, @tacozebra051, @sillybookmarks,
@dusintv, @velvetelvis, @livelaughelvis, @slayingjd, @anamiad00msday,
@mistyspresley, @i-r-i-n-a-a, @yoooooooh, @southcarolinawoman, @peaceloveelvis,
@squaggleson, and @idk583838.
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lutiaslayton · 9 months
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Hey so, aside from that time I shared an excerpt from chapter VI a few weeks ago, I haven't posted anything related to SLS in quite a while. Earlier today I finally took the time to clean up my desk for the first time in forever, and I happened to find amongst many other things a few wandering sticky notes with SLS stuff on them! They're like. Many, many months old by now. As you can see in the one above, they date back to the times when I still thought I could fit everything into a four-part chapter IV (which explains why some chapter banners are missing, notably the one for chapter V.2). They're even old enough to date back to the times when I was still referring to the games as "PL1-6" instead of acronyms, wow.
Also hey, what's that? Seems like you get a free teaser for the upcoming chapter's banner 👀 I don't think it counts as spoilers, since just reading chapter V.2 (+ the excerpt I shared a few weeks ago) should be a big enough hint to make quite clear what chapter VI will be about.
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Also, what's that thing on the right? Very good question. I'll let you guess :P It's completely unrelated to SLS, but it is Layton-related. I have zero idea what this thing is doing here though, past me was doing something in a context that present me has no remembrance of. But hey, that makes for a fun little puzzle if you want to try to figure out what these scribbles correspond to!
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There's another interesting sticky note under the cut, but I'd rather keep it hidden so that people who are interested in the fanfic but haven't caught up to chapter V.2 yet (n° 011 in AO3 numbering) won't get spoiled. If you have read up to chapter V.2, you might have an idea as to what this means regarding its contents.
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Boom. There it goes:
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So, here it is! A sketch of what exactly was hiding inside Clay's pouch, as well as (as you likely all figured out by now) what Dimitri found in the lab amongst the debris of the time machine.
Regarding this specific sketch, I had actually planned to make a fully coloured version and share it in the end notes of chapter V.2, but alas, I was not able to finish that drawing in time, and it is still unfinished to this day. And now that the best opportunity to share it is behind us, I admittedly am unsure how to reveal it on AO3. I guess I'll make an announcement such as "btw I updated the author's notes at the end of chapter 011-V.2 with a drawing of what Clay's pouch contains, go check it out if you're interested" in the starting/end notes of a future chapter...? Either that or I'll wait for another opportunity, but that would be a shame.
I'll still let you take a look at the current state of the unfinished digital version, since I feel like this is still something you should have been allowed to see all the way back to April 1st:
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If you read chapter V.2 carefully, you will notice that the part about the QWERTY keyboard is partially incorrect -- there's also a section with four arrows and a center "OK"-like button. So you basically need even tinier fingers to use that thing.
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Aside from that, I do have more sticky notes, but they're all filled with spoilers -- so I obviously won't share them here. I hope that what I did share here was fun enough to satiate your curiosity a bit!
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springvaletales · 9 months
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((Session 56 is wrapped!))
Today is a lore-heavy session in the library, and I have to keep it PG for a while bc half the party is tuning in from the dinner table and parents are nearby.
We immediately failed to keep it PG, but at least the parents’ think we’re funny.
Bagelby: “Why is money?”
A book in a magical library: “Capitalism.”
Bagelby: “That’s boring!”
I gave Ena’s player control of the Library’s rat attendants and this may have been a hilarious mistake.
“Huckey Heese tokens are rat money!!”
Asahi’s Player decided not to share any of the lore she was researching with the party yet, so I’m just sending her the google docs and vibrating in anticipation for her reactions.
I’m also searching through all my scattered campaign notes - sketches and bullet points and random ideas written on scraps of paper from my old job - and WOW have I written a lot I might actually need to get a second folder.
A rat attendant with an eyepatch and a scar (Thiori, gleefully: “A pie-rat!”) smuggled itself into Bagelby’s Slime Pocket in a long-game attempt to escape the Library.
Bagelby (who rolled a 2) did not notice.
Asahi (who rolled a 7 and is handcuffed to Bagelby) also did not notice.
Bagelby, shoving past a zombified elven attendant without even looking twice: “Come on, Asahi, we’ve got to find my book!”
Asahi: “Your book?”
Bagelby: “Yeah, my book! The book that I will write! If I haven’t already written it yet….don’t worry about it!”
A very helpful rat attendant led Bagelby and Asahi to a secret staircase below a secret trapdoor behind the circulation desk, and the rest of the party conveniently appeared out of the bookshelves to all investigate together.
The secret room was the private book collection of Pax Achillies, and seemed to be floating in some sort of Escher-like inky void.
The rat attendant promptly shooed them back up the stairs before they could touch anything, however. They’d only asked to see the books, not to read them.
Dynamite then distracted the party from the secret books by summoning them back around the front of the circulation desk to meet the library’s demigod owner, though she threatened them under pain of being turned into a rat and then inside-out to not annoy him.
Pax Achilles, Demigod of the Cosmic Library and child of the goddess of Deception,...has Optimus Prime for a face claim. Don’t laugh I love him.
Bagelby wants books from the demigod’s private collection, but Pax Achilles doesn’t lend to mortals, so Bagelby pulls out the planatir he stole from the Mayor back in Blackstone City from his slime pocket and offered to use it to seek out books Pax Achilles was missing from his collection in exchange for knowledge.
Dynamite is horrified. Pax Achillies is intrigued.
“If you accomplish this task, you will have earned my respect. Until that time, you have only earned my contempt.”
Asahi’s Player is screaming in all caps in my DMs about the lore she researched and I have never felt more alive.
Above-the-board, Asahi’s Player voiced an interest in ‘becoming pen pals with’ (re: harassing) Senn-Dugaal.
“The Tabaxi Postal Service isn’t going to take that delivery.
“They will if you pay them enough.”
Now the party wants to do a one-shot session where they play a party of unaffiliated adventurers hired by the Tabaxi Postal Service to escort one very unfortunate mail carrier on their quest to deliver a letter to ancient reanimated war criminal and terroristic cult-affiliate Senn-Dugaal. I’m down for it.
The party left with a handful of books each, one stowaway rat, and all their collateral/mimic friends safely collected.
Y.A.W. congratulated them on surviving the library, and closed the portal behind them.
Bagelby found an extra book on his stack with a note from Pax Achillies, saying he ‘forgot this’. It’s a book on the life and times of Lord Wiggles du Sluggington IV, because I need him to have access to this lore for other quest reasons.
Ena’s/Dynamite’s Player messaged me to suggest Dynamite ‘offering’ Sir Carl Jaeger warlock powers, and by offering, she means ‘giving him Eldritch Blast and saying nothing because he’s the only person she respects in this party’. I’m down with that if Sir Carl’s Player is!
We left off with the party back in the real world, only a day or two removed from when they entered, stacked with lore books, and still craving pancakes. We’ll see what next session brings!
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batgirltraining · 2 years
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July 19, 2022
been wanting to get into better shape and form a consistent workout/exercise routine for a long time, but its difficult. today i was doing some online shopping for adidas shorts/tops and i randomly got inspired to look at this blog for the first time in apparently 3 years. wow. 
i ended up going through all my posts and previous logs, and honestly it made me feel a bit sad. years ago when i was first starting to run, i was struggling with self-esteem (i mean, i still am) and i hated the way i looked (still do, if we’re being completely honest). and it’s weird to me because now i look at those old pictures of myself and i was so much thinner. at least 25lbs lighter, stomach basically flat -- which was somehow that was my biggest insecurity. i find myself comparing myself then to now. currently, im 150lbs (at least), which apparently is the same as my last log back in 2019, so that’s interesting. i guess that means ive been in this slump for at least 3 years. i didn’t realize. (which, to be fair -- im not necessarily concerned about weighing less. i just want to be more active and feel stronger. if that means my number goes down, fine. if that means the number stays the same because the fat turns to muscle and stays that number, that’s fine too).
the number itself isn’t the problem. it’s the fact that i am basically sedentary and i feel not-great a lot of the time. last week, i worked out 2x, went on a walk with friends, and went on a bike ride with my mom. and it felt pretty good. i just would like to be in a better mind-set where i do those things more consistently and more often. i don’t like being sedentary. and i don’t like how i feel in my body. i would like to be more active and to eat healthier but it’s hard. and im so used to how things are now, that even though i don’t like how they are now, i almost prefer staying this way than to doing anything about it. PLUS, i only ever feel these bursts of inspiration in the evening and then i wake up and im like nahh im tired i dont want to do that.
but i think it would be cool to start the couch to 5k program again. baby steps. i can’t expect myself to be able to run 3 miles again out of nowhere, and there’s no shame in starting over. and i dont really think i’d enjoy running super far, like a marathon, but 3 miles is a nice number to strive for. 
but i have another big problem... i really struggle with this idea of being perceived and running alone. i feel like everyone is staring at me and even though i know they’re not (or even if they were, who cares), it still makes me anxious. i’ve never gone on a walk or run by myself, since college, because i makes me anxious. and like i said, staying the same is easier than doing something. (actually, interesting note, now that i think about it -- i used to run by myself in college and i enjoyed it. sure, i felt like people were looking at me, but it didnt make me that anxious. i think because of the environment. i think being in my hometown makes me feel that high-school-level anxiousness. i think i fear being judged by people i know from town more than i did while being away at school. sure people knew me at college - but less so than at home. WHICH, just to play devil’s advocate, it’s not as if everyone in town knows me....... food for though). 
...so! maybe i’ll start that couch to 5k program, or maybe i won’t. maybe i’ll make another entry in another 3 years, or maybe i’ll make one in 10. will tumblr even exist in 2032? i hope so. 
anyway. i’m going to end this weird rant by apologizing to my past self. im sorry that i didnt love you how you should have been loved. you deserved kindness and compassion even when i didnt think i deserved it. even though i hated how you looked, there’s never been anything wrong with you. nothing then, and nothing now. i love you <3
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little-fairy-forest · 3 years
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IVE HAD AN IDEA, HERE IS MY PRESENTATION
the boys with youtuber y/n
y/n does gaming (very good at it, occasionally streams and shes popular like 15+ million, ik a lot but she’s friends with like, jacksepticeye etc .. )
and also very funny random videos with top notch editing *wink* u get what i mean ... i hope
anyway, it’s almost like that whole, i wait for them to post if they left youtube idk what i’d do type beat and they genuinely love y/n and the content she makes.
🍀 hello again lovely! Ah I do love when a character lives the reader before they know? Or a platonic relationship :)
Boys x gamer youtuber!reader
Bakugou, Midoriya, Todoroki x reader, fluff, crack
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Bakugou
Bakugou found your youtube page when you collabed with another streamer, he liked how you played, you got straight into it without a long ass intro, you don't out adds on your videos since well, your merch sells out each restock and your streams make enough that your happy
He likes how you go "undercover" in some online games, bash people around and then turn your mic on. He loves the reactions since they normally go back on their words if they insulted you
Be baught a stingy keychain of your logo of aliexpress since he didnt know if you shipped to japan, he keeps it on his house keys. He's not ashamed to support your brand, he just does not want to seem like those weird thirsty boys over you he sees on social media
Your social media comments are...in need of a bit of holy water to put it easy
He has your notifications on on everything, when you say your going on a short break for school or social life reasons..
He's pissed...
Seriously?! Couldn't even of thought to pre plan this and have spare videos made?
Whatever he will just watch old streams of yours
But if you are to announce you are leaving forever because of a few comments gone too far or people being disrespectful
He.is.pissed
Seriously!
He made a whole ass account on twitter to bash the people who made you leave, seriously he started to gain a little bit of following since drama channels recognized the account for defending you everytime
y/n_protect0r_4/20: seriously? what a load of idiots, how are yous gonna survive without their thirst traps now huh? Exactly you can't 🤡
y/n_protect0r_4/20 : wait until they come back after their break, your asses will be blocked! Hah!
When you eventually make your comeback you tell your fans that "y/n_protect0r_4/20" will receive a facetime as a thank you if they can prove they own the account
This boy was a mess! He was so sweaty! He gets to facetime you?? The fuck-
On the call you exchange numbers so you can watch his progress as a hero, you asked him and the bakusquad to join you for a live stream and omg
Funniest video you ever made! This thing went viral! From Kaminari pissing bakugou off to Sero being a master at COD, you invite them whenever their free to play a few rounds
Midoriya
He isn't all that into gaming but when he heard the nintendo switch was making a re-make of an old All Might game, he wanted to know all the spoilers!
News got around that you had early access to the game and you went live, he stayed up to watch it and yes, it was worth the eye bags
Millions of people tuned in to you starting the game off and played small bits since it was only a teaser, Midoriya took so many notes, and may of followed you to see the other game plays you do
He liked the just dance games you played with your friends since it was funny and other small games you test out to for your fans, may they be tiny shit games from a dodgy website to high end games that look amazing!
Midoriya liked how you could remember so much about each game and you didn't even take notes!
He did enjoy watching you get scared playing horror games since your reactions were really funny, he also enjoys watching "best bits" moments on youtube
He entered a competition to win some merch you had, when he found out he won..wow this boy fanboyed so hard!
He got a signed copy of the All Might game from you and All Might, a hoodie and a few stickers and keychains
You asked him to play multiplayer with you on a stream, this boy was so hyped, he told All Might immediately and told his friends
Bakugou was jealous...but everyone times in to watch!
You were impressed about his knowledge on the hero and what the game had to offer.
You messaged Midoriya asking to chat about heros one day after the stream and that's how you became buddies :)
Honestly you were so annoyed at how much this boy spoiled the game for you...
You and Midoriya would stream together on small games such as papas pizzeria or hero themed games, all PG!
Eri has made one or two appearances when you would do maybe a hairstyling game or a child friendly game such as cooking mama ♡
You and your fans love having this little broccoli boy in your streams and social medias, they even demanded merch to be made! You said you would hold off until Izuku became a hero so he could produce his first line of merch :)
Todoroki
Todoroki doesn't seem to be the type to like video games or watching random videos on YouTube, but when Kaminari was watching youtube in the common room on the tv with some others he was intrigued, why? Well your pretty face was on the screen :)
He understood the game you were playing quite quickly, it was animal crossing...
He asked if anyone wanted the game and a switch to go with it, many people thanked him since it was hard to grab a copy but with his dads shiney credit card he was able to snatch the game for his classmates ♡
He started to watch you play the game and developed your island, he went for more of a Japanese theme to is island, and it was amazing! Like seriously have you seen his dorm room?!
When you announced you would randomly be picking players islands to visit from Twitter, todoroki enters since he wanted to know what you thought of his island :)
You were amazed at his islands development in such sort amount of time! You asked him how he accomplished so much in such short amount if time
"Hard work"
Ok, so you asked him to help you on other multiplayer games in the future since many people found his "sense of humor" hilarious (little did they know he wasnt trying to be funny..like at all)
You both enjoyed simple games that weren't too hard to understand, mario kart was a big hit and the horror game granny..
Todoroki playing a horror game was very funny. One moment when there would be a jump scare he would respond "oh..didn't expect that" but it could also escalate to "*falls of chair* well, oh my that wasn't expected...um, can you take over?"
Poor thing refuses to play horror games now :(
He did enjoy Super Princess Peach for the nintendo DS "oh look she crys like Midoriya, wonder if he can grow plants like she can.."
Honestly he got his own "funny moments" on youtube and it was trending for a while until you make little merchandise of his face on stickers
Sold out within moments
He managed to convince Bakugou and Midoriya to join you in a stream of playing Smash bros, it got very aggressive so fast you had to end the stream! Your fans found it hilarious the comebacks Bakugou would through at Todorokis silly comments
"Oh look I beat you, hmm must take notes for next years sports festival" "the fuck you say icy hot?! You are playing as Kirby!"
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Would pay so much money to see a dull voice over of todoroki playing cooking mama
Thank you for reading Navigation has been updated :)
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keilemlucent · 3 years
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pretty eyes & starshine: i
(NSFW)
hawks | takami keigo x reader
ao3
part i   ||   part ii   ||   part iii
beta’ed: @shadowworks & @keiqos​ (thank you!! 💞)
word count: ~9.4k
Keigo surrenders to losing himself in the blank-walled, temporary home he inhabits. He finds familiarity in the routine of aches, pains and pills. 
You’re his only solace. 
warnings: bodily trauma, medical trauma, PTSD, dissociation, suicidal ideation, alcohol as a coping mechanism and graphic description of sustained injury
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a/n: oh wow so here it is, big sad fic :’^) part one!! it’s canon divergent from manga chapter 296 onwards.
this one has been a long time coming. please mind the warnings!! this fic deals a lot with trauma and mental illness in tandem. the warnings are going to change with the coming parts, so please be mindful. i don’t wanna get too sappy, but this piece has been my Baby for the past few months, and i’m excited to finally share. that being said, enjoy loves 💞
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Everyone is fucked up after the War.
There is no kindness in an aftermath like this one, not so soon, and certainly not with dried blood of old comrades and mud still caking under its metaphorical fingernails. The world was in shambles, and every hero is along with it.
There is something horrifying about being at the center of it all, Hawks, no, Keigo thinks solemnly, all too often. 
He’s used to the attention he’s getting, touches and poking and prodding by near strangers. Except, he was used to exclamations of how great and powerful and remarkable he was. Now, all the attention he receives is followed by little sighs and sad, broken eyes.
He’s sure he looks equally as sad; Keigo had been nothing but an empty shell since the War had ended and he’d been carted off to his hospital room. Numb despite all of his burns. 
It’s the shock, he tells himself, he’ll snap out of it any day.
Any day.
...
And it is any day.
He wakes up to screaming from the next room over, agonized wails that pierce the air as his morning nurse enters. She’s over-worked and haggard while checking his vitals with a forced smile. They don’t make conversation with him much anymore, and Keigo doesn’t have the energy to try and force it. There isn’t enough in him to pretend that he’s okay enough to banter with folks. 
If he still had his wings, he would’ve wrapped himself up tight in the plumage and let himself rot away in some corner. He’d let the dissociated numbness fade, however long it took, and then succumb to whatever psychological wounds revealed themselves. 
Waste away, all alone.
But he doesn't have that luxury. He is in an overcrowded hospital with swarms of civilians and heroes, all stuffed in one place because the world doesn’t have the time to differentiate between the wounded, nor the space or resources to give different resources. Though, Keigo is a special case, hence why he’s had healers coming to him for the past three weeks since the War trying to coax his body into genesizing a new pair of wings. 
The Commission’s hospital has all the bells-and-whistles that a medical professional could need, but Keigo, and so many others, are facing problems that don’t have good and easy roads to healing. 
That’s assuming healing was even possible.
Keigo is convinced, has been convinced, that there is no way to come back from the War, nor the absence on his back, nor the shouts and cries of pain that echo around the hospital like a new genre of music that Keigo so desperately wants to scrub from his brain.
Things change, it’s inevitable. Everyone falls eventually, and he was just used to flying.
It’s a harder descent. 
...
Keigo doesn’t meet you on any day, he meets you on a lonely night.
The evenings and early mornings were the most peaceful at the hospital. Most folks, three weeks after the end of it all, had serious enough injuries that they had to be somewhat sedated to sleep, either for physical or mental pain keeping them from sleep.
It’s morose, Keigo thinks, quietly and privately, but he craves those hours. All he hears then is the hum of air vents and beeps of his own medical machinery. None of the audible agony of the folks he was sworn to protect.
He’s slept most of the day, not lucid enough to do much else, and the nurses haven’t been giving him sedatives unless he asked (though he always did.) Without forced quiet, he’s antsy, fingers twitching and flaring the new (and growing) pains rooted in his (empty, isn’t that horrifying—) back.
He rouses himself, adjusting his scratching hospital garb (thin sweats and a cheap crew neck with the back almost entirely cut away). With his IV pole at his side, he resolves to take a few laps and quiet himself, hopefully.
(Keigo would need sedatives, he always did, but it was nice to play pretend that he didn’t. It made things easier for a precious hour or two.)
His laps are usually quick, despite how much his body aches when he walks. So much new, burnt tissue that needed to learn how to move, how to live again, kept him throbbing and gritting his teeth.
Masochism be damned, he keeps at it during his sleepless nights. Physical therapy wasn’t an option when the world was caving in with him at the epicenter.
There’s a common room at the end of the foyer of identical (filled) hospital rooms, just a collection of stuffy, uncomfortable couches that face an aged TV and a wide bay of windows. It’s rarely used, just a formality for when the space of the hospital had regularly hurt victims and heroes. When it wasn’t bearing so much weight. 
Sometimes, he would stop to idly regard the mostly barren world around the hospital. Far from the cities, a little hideaway for heroes and their loved ones to heal in privacy. Other than sheer distance, there is a thick, organic shield around the complex.  It’s a towering forest, man-planted with identical types of trees in perfect rows. 
It’s grim in its predictability. 
(When did he get so fucking pensive?)
(Oh yeah, too much time locked in his goddamn skull.)
He hadn’t been planning to have any inner musings that night.
But, that night, he notes that he is not alone. 
On one of the hard couches, you sit, with your own IV-pole companion and injuries, an arm carried in a monochromatic sling and set in a hard cast.
You turn to him, blinking wide eyes at him.
There’s a single lamp on, and the light dances in your eyes with its own unexpected rhythm.
Something compels Keigo to smile, cocky, like he used to, and greet you with a little wave, and a finger to his lips.
Your expressions melts, a hand going over your mouth to stifle a giggle.
It’s like you’re pulling him after that, he finds himself resting across from you.
You must look like a pair, he realizes. You’re greasy, he’s greasy. He’s got a fine layer of built-up stubble that shouldn’t be called anything other than impressive peach fuzz (not that Keigo’s seen it, he’s felt it. The idea of looking in a mirror makes him sick to his stomach. Though you don’t have any pseudo-beard, you’ve got your own unkempt look and feel that makes you two kindred without sharing a word.
It feels comfortable, warm.
“Hi,” you speak first, voice soft and gentle. “Can’t sleep?”
“Nah, who can?” Keigo replies, shaking his head. “But what about you? Midnight oil doesn’t burn without a cause, you know.” 
Your expression is also painful in the way it’s so open, yet worn (most everyone had locked up by now, the ones in the hospital and Keigo imagined the ones outside of it too.) 
“I like the sky— the stars are pretty.” You sigh, wistful. “I watch for shooting stars.”
The thought, the significance of that obvious wanting, makes something pang deep in his chest. Childlike hope in a place like this, foolish as well as frail.
“Trying to get a wish?” Keigo clicked his tongue. “Smart.”
“No, no— wishing doesn’t... suit me, right now.” You snorted, shaking your head, the light in your eyes dancing, “I just think they’re pretty.”
Keigo blinks, unable to stop the way his eyes widen.
Your posture reads nothing but earnestness and vulnerability, so freely given (so undeserved) without a hint of pullback.
“What do you want to be called?”
“... Excuse me?” Keigo is not used to his thoughts being interrupted in the blanket of dark that he feels most comfortable in. Your words shock him enough with their meaning, let alone the way you’re so brazen. 
“I, uh,” You stumble on your words. “I know who you are, but I also saw that whole broadcast, which I’m going to easily assume you don’t want to talk about. But, I don’t know how much you want to be called ‘Hawks’ at this point either.”
His mouth is dry.
“So, I ask instead,” You lean forward, your IV line pulling the slightest bit and you wince. His discomfort must be very fucking apparent, because you backtrack in moments. “... Or, neither. I can call you something else, too.”
“... A nickname, for someone you don’t even know?” Keigo, Hawks, whoever he is now struggles with words. There’s too many, and they’re all too fast, and he doesn’t have his wings to catch up to them or outrun them— 
“Yeah, why not?” You shrug with a lazy smile. “I’ll call you... pretty eyes. How about that?”
Keigo does have pretty eyes. They’re gold, light and glittering amber in the lowlight. Before he, ya’ know, lost them, and when things were good, but awful, but normal, he darkened the organic marks around his canthi with liquid eyeliner. He liked makeup, prettied himself up and accentuated all the good he had. Preening.
None of that is left, just what organically was on his skin, and he hasn’t seen it in its raw state in years, and like fuck if he was going to look in a mirror just to figure out if his natural eyeliner was half as good as that by his own hand. 
“Sure, that works,” He relaxes, mirroring your expression like the practiced... pro he is. “What do I call you, starshine?”
You roll your eyes, but nothing about you fades as you tell him your name, something that calms and fills him, “But, you can call me starshine if you want. Sounds nice.”
It’s sweet.
So, Keigo greets you.
“Nice to meet you, starshine.”
...
That’s the first time you kept each other’s company. Most of it is quiet, you truly do just want to watch the stars. Keigo did with you, tracing the shadows of clouds and moonlight with his eyes.
(Occasionally, his gaze shifts to you, regarding your figure with the same care for only a moment before returning to the sky you both miss.)
Eventually, the quiet heat of it puts him half to sleep, and he bids you goodnight.
You wave goodbye, rising as he away.
The light isn’t in your eyes anymore, and your warmth feels a little too far away.
...
The next days are long.
He slips into that shell-state again, where he’s a husk that stares emptily at the ceiling as the Commission tries to piece him together to a fraction of what he once was. 
They fail, each time, because no healer they’ve brought can regenerate quirk-formed appendages, but he commends their efforts all the same. It’s out of desperation, sure, but he’s heard whispers of the new generation. In recalling his own sidekicks, he isn’t as scared for the future. 
(Everyone else’s future. He’s so terrified of his own that he turns extra numb if he thinks about it.) 
Selfishly, he just wants his wings for himself. They’d keep him plenty company. If he ever did get them back, he’d fly somewhere, faraway and alone to live out his days under his feathers and feel as empty as he wanted. 
They fuss over him all day, not knowing those desires. They are private, and he only puts on his old, self-confident bravado so they don’t lock him up somewhere to have his brain picked and to fill the new holes with pill-shaped gauze. 
As established, Keigo was content to rot.
(He can’t fully parse all of his feelings and they consume him.)
The healers for the week all failed, doing nothing but making his back bow and burn. It’s painful. Obviously, trying to stitch a body back together, or rather making a body make when it was so tired of creating—
(Feather after feather after feather, for how long?)
He’s glad his sessions are in a different room, a spare, horrifyingly metallic exam room across the hospital. It reeks like iron and isopropyl alcohol, but Keigo doesn’t mind. The filmy paper that rolls from the exam table gets soaked with his sweat as opposed to his familiar bed dressings. 
Not to mention, it’s nice, not having to hear his neighbor’s screams and pleadings to God, any god, for reprieve. Calming. 
(He feels less guilty. Less like it was his own hand that scarred up their bodies. If he can’t hear them, he only thinks of his own agony under ‘helping’ hands.)
His body is exhausted at the end of each day, and even his restlessness fades with the necessities of his body.
He doesn’t see you, and practically forgets about you.
It’s a week or so later when he takes one of his strolls, and finds you tucked away into your nook, dimly lit and with a blanket over your lap.
Keigo feels it as he nears you, that comfort that your expression bleeds into his very soul. Even as he watches your healthy hand nervously toy with the thin knit in your lap, it doesn’t dim you.
The lamplight dances in your eyes as you nod to him, “Fancy seeing you here, pretty eyes.” 
“You’d never know it, but I live just down the hallway— me,” He touches his chest proudly, surprised by his own jest. 
You gave a fake gasp, mirroring him easily, “Never knew I had such a well-known soul in my neighborhood. Forgive my transgression.”
Bending at the waist, as much as you can with your right leg extended, straight, you choke on laughter.
Keigo follows you in it, giggling, genuinely giggling, high and light and girlish like he’d never heard from himself before.
He snapped his mouth shut, thickly swallowing and shaking his head.
“No need to be shy,” You assured him with an affectionate turn of the head. “You have a lovely laugh.”
“Now you’re just flirting with me, cute.”
Your head tilted farther, confused, “I’m simply being kind to you.”
Why didn’t he have the snark to reply to that? Probably because he was half-dead and on painkillers for nearly a month. He’d beat himself up about it later, maybe.
There wasn’t an ounce of malice in your tone, just earnestness that tugged at his own insecurities.
You backpedaled. “How was your day?”
Keigo takes a few moments to respond, shaking his head without mind to the way his too-long hair flops in his face. 
The banter isn’t forced, but it’s not welcomed yet.
As comfortable as you feel to him, Keigo isn’t comfortable.
“Same old, same old,” Living hell. “Boring, mostly. Painful, but dull. It’s crazy how much hell smells like cheap disinfectant, huh?” 
You agree, quietly, “I’m pretty sure there’s many hells in this place.”
Keigo doesn’t know how to respond, so he doesn’t. 
You both regard the stars again with growing reverence. Specks of light dance back in your eyes as you both settle into the hard cushions like they were made of goose down and Sherpa. 
...
Your conversations are... disjointed, to say the least. 
There’s an inability for words and phrases to flow between you. There’s starts and stops, stalls like an engine that putters on tarry oil without ever truly firing. There are good feelings, still, safety in silence before words as you stargaze together through the comfort of a window.
It should feel disarming, to be so far from the sky yet have no way to reach it. And it is, but Keigo can swallow the reality these days. It’s easier when there’s someone on the mend close by, sharing in the discomfort of a rawed mind and the comfort of a yellow-toned fluorescent bulb.
It’s unspoken kinship. Keigo never had time for it in the past, but now it was all he had. There had to be some cruel irony in it (as if there wasn’t enough in his life), but he couldn’t make himself mind. 
Everything he’d once excelled at, everything he had was gone. He was barren and stripped (don’t think about it—), exposed to the elements in all the worst ways. At least the hospital was clean and safe, relatively. 
It feels safest with you near.
Sure, your conversations were clearly that of two horribly broken people, but that wasn’t new or surprising. It simply was.
“Do you know constellations?” You ask one night, a colder one, where you’ve got two blankets over your lap. 
Keigo thought for a moment, “A handful, but I never took to stargazing, you know?”
You don’t relate, just chew your lip, the light of the dim lamp dancing across your irises.
“Can I show you some?” 
“...Constellations?”
“What else?” You crack a smile. “Come on, pretty eyes.”
Whatever you’d like, he’d do. 
He can’t refuse, he’s already getting weak for you. 
Shifting, Keigo joins you on your typical couch for the first time. Your IV poles, thrumming and humming their own rhymes harmonize, quietly and mostly imperceptible. 
You regard him even more warmly, so close, a little smile playing on your lips.
“What’s your sign?”
Keigo deadpans, “What?”
“Like... astrology. What’s your sign?”
You wiggle your eyebrows, knowing the double-meaning of your words. 
Flirting again.
Since when had he been so bad at it?
“Capricorn,” He huffs back. He keeps his back off the stone-like cushions of the couch— his scarring had been itchy the whole day prior— so itchy— 
You tap the plastic-y fabric gap between the two of you, grabbing his attention, “Hey, pretty eyes. Stick with me, let me show you where that one is.”
So, you do.
Your light-filled eyes trace the sky’s nighttime freckles, searching until you find what you’re looking for.
“There,” Your finger raises, tracing the patterns in the air. “That’s Capricorn, can you see?”
Not really, the stars are just a meaningless smatter. If there’s some sort of pattern he’s supposed to find, he comes up with none. 
“Not in the slightest,” Keigo rolls his eyes. “Show me again?”
You don’t reply, but rather scoot a bit closer, mirror his hunch and pose with precision and tiny adjustments. 
He doesn’t dare to breathe as you carefully grab his arm, extending it. You lay your cheek over his bicep, watching from the closest view to his own that you could. 
“Do you see now?” 
The only starlight he sees is right in front of him, soft cheek pressed against atrophying muscles. Sharing your heat so graciously as you would so easily come to, you chatter about the stories that are written in the stars, by all cultures, for so long.
Keigo hears, but he’s far more focused on how he wishes you were even closer.
...
After that night, you always share the same couch. 
You face forward, right leg always extended and stiff-looking. Keigo doesn’t mind, hardly notices. He faces you, fragile back bandaged and kept away from the unforgiving grit of the uncomfortable couch. It looks a bit uncomfortable, the posing of it all, but with the words flowing easier, neither of you mind.
You keep showing him stars, the constellations you can remember and see in the night sky. 
Keigo makes fun and crafts his own, connecting new dots and winding stories about them.
“See those three there?” He guides your hand, close enough to share your breath. “That’s the comb of the chicken. Star comb, if you will.”
You snort, rolling your eyes and pulling your hand from his grip, “There’s no cock in the stars, pretty eyes. Chickens can’t fly anyways.”
You both freeze.
Keigo’s mouth goes dry—
Chicken can’t fly.
As much as you’re both learning to be human again, there isn’t talk of your injuries. Maybe, there’s mutual curiosity (you’ve been here two months. just for a broken arm, why?), but like fuck Keigo wants to broach the subject.
“S-sorry,” you stumble over your words, physically retreating. “Shouldn’t have said that.”
It is a fact, chickens can’t fly, but Keigo isn’t a chicken. He’s a debauched, defamed hero whose home is the same set of a milky white, hospital ward walls. Once, a real hero, before the war, before selling his morals just for a chance at rest, before blue flame— burning— 
“Pretty eyes,” Your voice trembles, shaking and lonesome. “Come back here, now. Come on.”
You’re holding his cheeks, unkempt nails pressing (blessedly) a bit too hard into his cheeks. The heat of you is so close, almost scalding him, but he wants more of it, more of the heat that doesn’t burn—
“You’re okay, pretty eyes, s-see?” You hold yourself together, jerking your head to the wide window and glittering stars. “We’re just stargazing.” 
Keigo’s has tears leaking down his face, but neither of you acknowledge them. You release him, quietly spinning another tale about a hero hung in the cosmos. He thanks you for it silently by tugging you into his side. 
(It was the first night you really touched him.)
(The light in your eyes was so close, he wanted it all for himself.)
...
They’re running out of healers to try.
From the weakest to the strongest quirk, no one could revive his dead wings. There was no root to push from the scar tissue, nor resolve left in Keigo to try and make new pins and feathers sprout.
His back isn’t fertile. It’s just as poisoned as the rest of him.
...
He wonders where you disappear to during the day. He takes his strolls then, too. Waves to nurses these days, not charming, just friendly, trying to make a little brightness. 
There’s one day where he asks one of the nurses he knows best for a pair of scissors.
She looks at him, worried, “Don’t tell me we need to put you on psych watch.”
“What? No,” Keigo shakes his head, shaggy hair quivering around the frame of his face. “I just need a bit of a haircut.” 
“... We can ask the Commission to bring someone in—”
“I can do it myself.”
She doesn’t argue with the firmness of his voice, rather, she hands him a pair of safety scissors with bright purple handles. They’re for a child, but Keigo’s fine with that. They’d do. 
When he was younger, and in a pinch (and so poor he tried to eat grass and lick scraps from metallic packaging of discarded junk food wrappers) he’d cut his hair with his own feathers.
Safety scissors would be even easier.
It did mean that he had to confront his own visage, which he had gotten too good at avoiding.
The bathroom in his room is small, it would’ve been claustrophobic if he was still carrying a twenty-five-foot wingspan. 
But, he isn’t. It was just him and the scars on his back that he definitely wasn’t ready to see. 
He’s caught glimpses of himself over the past weeks, but nothing substantial. No view that would’ve given himself time to scrutinize over his imperfection. 
The dull hospital mirror reveals too much about him. It feels too vulnerable, makes his chest tighten, as he stares himself in his ‘pretty eyes’.
Purple stamps below his eyes, probably not from sleeplessness itself, just the sheer exhaustion of living. The one under his left is an odd maroon color, mixing with the scar that is burned into that half of his face.
The skin was once soft, plump cheeks always tended too and well taken care of by expensive skincare products. Now, it’s charred and gaunt. Healing, but still obviously scarred heavy and deep.  The weak beard he’s been growing (accidently) is patchy around the thickened tissue. 
It bothers him— 
It doesn’t look like him in the mirror. 
It helps to take care of himself for the first time in a long while. 
He shaves with the cheap foam and single blade razor they’d given him in the toiletries pack the first days he was there, while he was still numbed out and half-dead. The metal glides over his skin, stripping away the numbness just a little. The stubble and cream slide down the drain and away.
His hair is different. The waves had for so long been pushed back and held that way with the winds of his flights. The longer, feathery patches now hang around his face, dangling down and mingling with the too-long sections that curl over his ears and down his neck.
Wetting his hair, he cuts away what he can. 
It’s blunt, messy, and not elegant. 
All the same, the trim feels good. 
Though, his mood goes sour when the screaming starts for the day.
The far wall of the bathroom was shared by him and his shrieking neighbor, and he took great care to never shower when they were singing their awful chorus. It grates on his ears; he should’ve been a bit empathetic to their suffering, but he didn’t care that much. It was so regular, that the screaming that might’ve once sent each one of his feathers (don’t think about, don’t fucking think about it) sharp as the razor in his hand, didn’t bother him in the slightest.
Just a poke at his temple, a jab and a drop of water that irks him more than anything else.
It is a... somewhat pleasant distraction. He can focus more on his fellow patient than his own haggard appearance, the scar, the lack of red at his back— 
It’s all okay, ‘okay’, until the patient starts babbling.
“M-make it stop!” 
Keigo stills.
A scream tears through the drywall. Even without his wings, it makes him thrum, far-too sensitive.
“Help!” The voice yelps. “HELP!” 
There’s a thud and thump from the other room.
“Please, please!”
Keigo’s heart stutters in his chest, and the razor falls from his hand, clattering into the sink.
“MAKE IT STOP!”
It’s you.
It’s your screaming and shrieking that’s burrowed in his ears. It’s your voice that’s trembling in desperation that has him running out of his room, nearly pulling out his IVs as the pole teeters and follows behind him. 
Why are you screaming?
Why have you always been screaming?
A nurse is trying to stop him, urging him to settle but he can’t. There's an urgency in his chest he hasn’t felt since back before and he has to heed it. He needs to.
He pulls his forearm from the nurse’s grasp, hissing in his own pain, muscles pulling and aching with disuse but he doesn’t care.
The nurses drag him back from your door, and they almost have him, almost have him on the ground.
And then he smells burning—
Cloth.
Flesh.
And something in him snaps.
He clocks the nearest nurse with a tight fist, ignoring his atrophied muscles and kicking with everything he could muster.
They release him, probably out of shock. (He’d been such a model patient, so complacent and quiet until then.) 
Then, he stumbles into your room, and sees you, and wants to die.
...
There’s plenty of times in his life where Keigo felt like an animal. When the Commission first got their hands on him, they took to studying and picking his quirk about to figure out the most efficient way to rebuild it to their needs and uses. Now then, he felt very much like an experiment, only half-human. He was too young to really ‘get’ it, but the feeling persisted.
Sometimes, he felt similarly when he played celebrity. The talk shows, the modeling and media felt hoops he had to jump through just to get a decent night’s sleep. It was an additional job aside from heroics, one he excelled at and entertained him. But that didn’t mean each flash of a camera didn’t suck him dry of a bit of his dignity. 
He was sure you had to be feeling similarly.
You’re writhing and arching in your bed, curls of smoke rising from your papery hospital gown. Every machine in your room is screaming with you, bloody and loud and angry—
And scared. Keigo recognized well, and it drove pins into his heart to realize it was you.
It’s even worse when he realizes some part of you is burning. 
At your bedside, he freezes.
Nylon straps wrap around your wrist, around your cast, and keep you held tight to the bed. You’re tied down, held to the plastic bed frame as you wretch and scream.
You don’t even notice him.
The smoke rises from your burning hospital gown. He rips it away, tears the burning section away with his shaking hand. It’s crass, and Keigo sees a bit too much.  The gauze wrapping your leg below is burning as well, in little veins of char that burns black and smoldering. 
Keigo tears it all away, he tears and tears—
And then he sees the wound.
He was trained, once, to see this type of horror and not bat an eye. That training was gone, and all that remained was his starshine with a writhing, molten wound.
Keigo is numb as the nurses drag him back to his room, trying to decide if he prefers the apathy and numbness to injury that his old heroism gave him, or the blinding pain of empathy when someone you... care about is hurt.
He can’t decide which he’d rather suffer with. 
...
You appear in the common room a few nights later.
Keigo still takes his walks in the late evening, even if you aren’t there. If anything, he needs them more. He’s restless, always listening for the screams or howls from the next room over. His annoyance towards them was gone, and all that remained was a concern that knotted in the pit of his stomach. 
There’s a sigh of relief on his lips when he finds you, nestled into a pile of blankets with your IV pole, watching the stars with sad eyes.
He joins you on your couch, cracking a decent joke that you don’t respond to.
Then, there’s silence.
It’s as loud as the stars are bright. The expanse of sound is filled by the hum of the cold air and distant beeping.
“I’m sorry,” Your voice shakes. “You shouldn’t have seen me like that. It’s not... Easy to look at. Or, I imagine it’s not.”
Keigo wants to rip the apology from your tongue and burn it.
“No, please, it’s alright,” He’s begging too much. “I get it.”
As much as he can, anyways.
You’re quiet again, biting your lip so hard it must be close to breaking skin.
“Can we... talk about things?” You ask, softer. “I can’t keep pretending.”
“...’Pretending’?” Keigo knows, but he selfishly wants to hear you say it.
“Well, you didn’t think I’ve been here for two months for my bum arm, right?” You laugh weakly. “And I’m well-aware that you don’t have wings.”
We just don’t talk about it. 
“It’s nicer to look at the stars and pretend everything’s fine,” Keigo lays the statement down and regrets it.
Your fist tightens, jaw clenching.
And there’s more silence.
It’s deafening to Keigo, he wants to speak, scream, but you’re quiet next to him. He can fill voids with his voice so, so easily, yet he turns in on himself.
“I know, it’s all hard,” Tears drip down from your words, though your cheeks remain dry. “I know, but there was a War two months ago, and we’re still holed up in a place like this, and we never talk about why.”
You turn to him, light dancing slowly in your eyes. Your lips part to speak, but no sound comes out.
“... I didn’t want to ask.” Keigo speaks, gaze shifting down to your leg. He questioned why a broken arm would keep you here, but you can’t just ask that. “It’s bad form to ask a stranger about their injuries unnecessarily when they’re traumatized.”
“But we’re not strangers, not anymore.”
Keigo can’t disagree. 
...
You had been in a conbini when Gigantomakia tore through your little suburb. It was a few miles away, but the ground shook as if the goliath was just outside the automatic doors.
Your demon was near, though.
It was a man from the PLF who tore into you so badly. Just some random, emboldened civilian who ascribed to Destro’s ideology hard enough to think about taking out his frustrations on ‘weaker-quirked’ individuals.
That meant the young couple getting slushies in the corner, the old man behind the cash register, and you.
(You’d told your roommate you’d be home quick to help her study—)
(Your roommate is dead, under several tons of rubble.)
“The old man died before the heroes even started trying to rescue anyone. The couple was begging each other to hold on, but only one of them lasted. He died within a few weeks of being taken here.”
There was just you.
You’d hardly been touched by the man, the fucking villain, who’d set his mark on you. But it was more than enough to leave a writhing scar.
Keigo asks to see it, and quietly, you oblige him.
You’re in a gown, you always have been. The hem of it is pulled up by your visibility shaking fingers, and slowly reveals the scar in the lowlight of the ever-present lamp. He’d seen it once, but that didn’t change how startling it was. 
It’s molten.
The skin is gnarled, twisting and scarred worse than anything Keigo’s ever seen. It was like the gore of a torn flesh was frozen over your right side, from your calf, to your thighs to your pretty hips—
“It goes higher, but that’s not exactly couth to show you,” you joke, but neither of you laugh. 
“... It’s not moving anymore?”
“Oh, yeah. It calms down, when it’s dark. Nighttime and all. It stops being so ornery.” 
Keigo has a laundry list of questions, but with the expression on your face that just bleeds exhaustion into the air, and the fresh burns from the restraints on your wrists, he keeps quiet. 
Maybe, three months ago, he’d jabber on about the injury, try to gode some information out on the villain, profile him, track him and beat the tar out of him for touching you—
But this is the present, and Keigo is a wingless soul. All he has is a prescription for painkillers on a rigid schedule, and the awareness that you both appreciate each other.
Keigo scoots to your uninjured side, lifting his arm up and around your shoulder. It hurts, it fucking hurts, but he doesn’t mind.
You tense for a moment, turning to him with wide eyes, scared like he’s never seen.
Then, you melt into him.
...
Keigo’s busy with healers the week, though none speak his language, literally. They’re international, foreign aid that’s been flown in to try to pick up the disaster of a society that’s been left in the wake of the War and the dissolution of Tartarus.
None of them make progress. 
As much as it burns (haha) him to his core, he’s accepting the reality, slowly but surely. 
...
Endeavor visits him.
It’s the morning after a particularly sweet night with you. You still sit together in the starlight, though you’ve run out of constellations to show him. It’s less quiet than it used to be, just little banter that flows between the two of you. It feels more genuine than his old bluntness, welcome after so much odd tension when you first started enjoying the heat of each other’s presence and the far-off stars.
You’d taken to spending time together during the day as well... As much as you could. Strapping you to your bed was for your own safety. Your broken arm had snapped the first few days at the hospital because of the severity of your spasms and flares. The nurses keep you wrapped up, but Keigo drags a chair close to your bed and talks to you as much as he can.
It helps you relax.
Though the days fill with tension as you try to negate the inevitability of your molten scar coming to life, nights remain calm.
And so, so sweet.
You’ve taken to tucking into his side, telling him little treasured facts about the cosmos. It’s easier to guide his eyes like that, as your cheek rests over his collarbone. 
It lingers with him, the feeling of your casual touch, so tentatively offered and so graciously received.
He traces his own constellations over your gown, mindful of the flesh beneath that heats beneath his palm when he gets too close.
After one of those wonderful, early nights, Enji Todoroki enters his room with all of the gusto one would expect. Which is not very much, but the sheer presence of him is enough to make Keigo quake.
 Just like the little boy from Kyushu, Keigo regards him with stars in his eyes. 
The hero, not a speck of flame on him (thank god) pulls up a chair near his bed. Keigo sits cross-legged and cocks his head to the side.
“What brings you to my neck of the woods, number one?” Keigo smiles.
“Number fifteen.”
“... What?”
“Since my injuries, I’m mostly on bedrest,” Enji replied, folding his hands on his chin. “I’m number fifteen now, and that number will more than likely just drop. I’m not much of a hero with only one lung. I’m planning to officially retire at the end of the month.”
Keigo’s chest goes tight and it feels like he’s joking. He tosses on a tight smile. 
“This is hardly time for a pillar—“
“I’m no pillar. I never was,” Enji sighs, running a hand over his scarred cheek. “The kids can handle this.”
Keigo breaks so easily these days.
“That’s not fair—” He had been tossed into this all too early and god it fucked him up— 
“Hawks,” Enji sighed. “There’s hardly anyone left to fight. They’re either dead, missing part of themselves, or gone.”
“So, you’re giving up?”
“If I didn’t, I’d die.”
Coward.
No, just honest and smart. 
“Since when are you this selfish?” Keigo’s own words surprise him, but he doesn’t back down. “And this wordy, number one? You’ve changed.”
He spits the last phrase like an insult. He hates himself for it and would hate himself even more for it later. 
Enji’s face remains solid and unwavering. The twitch in his brow is the only indication that Keigo’s words were even heard. 
“Since we lost, Keigo. Things have changed.”
Keigo knew, of course, but it didn’t stop the anger from rolling his belly.
“Oh, like I don’t fucking know,” If Keigo still had his wings, they would’ve been extended and fluffed, angry as the pinched skin of his forehead. 
This was his hero, he couldn’t be giving up too— 
“Rest, Hawks,” Enji stand up, “You deserve it.”
Seems Endeavor really died. Enji’s face is worn, his expression neutral and jaw slack. He looks hollowed out and empty, not an ounce or morsel of fight left in him, even for a flightless bird in need of some encouragement. 
There’s more to be said, but Keigo’s too angry to listen and Enji doesn’t have the energy to try. 
Whatever news the old hero had come to bring was left undelivered. 
...
You settle together the next few nights, both so damn tired, even though you’ve done nothing other than lay around a hospital for so-many weeks. 
The air always vibrates between the two of you, that comfortable warmth shared between mingling breath and senses. Light dances in your eyes, twisting and bouncing like something otherworldly.
(Maybe it is.)
Your fingers lace together, held in Keigo’s lap. You trace the others hand in relaxing little lines and shapes, trying to soothe each other’s wounds, always.
“One of the doctors said the scar might start shrinking,” You break the tender silence, nosing into his jaw in the same way an affectionate cat would. “They’re not entirely sure, but it’s been stable for a few days.”
Keigo’s feathery (don’t think about it) eyebrows shot up, “That’s amazing, and there’s only a few spasms this week, too.”
(He kept good tabs on you, he had to.)
You hummed in agreement, a sad smile playing on your lips as it so often did.
With a quick blink, the light bouncing in your eyes faded, and the world felt a bit colder.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I get out of here,” You pressed closer to him. “There’s shelters, and some cities are taking refugees, but I don’t—”
Your jaw clicks shut, brow furrowed and mood soured.
(Keigo, mind you, is still focusing on the lack of light in your eyes and the chill of the air in the room.) 
Something stirs, deep in his gut, but he doesn’t say anything. How Keigo used to have such a mouth, he didn’t know. These days, all he can is act, like somehow the loss of his wings came with the loss of his tongue.
Tugging you by the waist, mindful of the tender scar, he pulls you close, internally resolving.
...
She, the main Suit, visits him.
(It’s his last visitor at the hospital.)
There are no trumpeters, guards, or the like. It’s just the haggard president, matching Keigo with his dark circles and creased with new wrinkles and far-more grey sections in her slicked back hair.
The air stands still as she pulls up a chair, burying her head in her hands.
She, the Main Suit, has never been one to inquire as to how he is. Many of the others at the Commission were sweet, kind to him in youth, but she was all business. 
Some things never change.
She breaks the silence of the room, “... do you want to be done, Hawks?”
The cords in his chest tighten, gaze going sharper.
He doesn’t answer.
They meet each other’s gazes; twenty years of fucked-up emotion being shared between the pair of them.
“We’ve done everything. Every healer, every quirk, every treatment, conventional or otherwise,” she’s too soft. “There’s nothing left to try.”
He knew that, he had to know that, right?
His throat feels sticky as he swallows down bile, the scars on his back burning anew. It’s somatic, it has to be, but his flesh crawls and writhes just like yours. His starshine. He hates the way his mind is racing, just as fast as it always has, but his body lacks the ability to keep up.
He grounds himself in the thought of you, his starshine. Your body. Your heat. 
His narrow pupils refocus on the light tremble in her shoulders. 
“I’m being honest, so I’ll ask again,” She meets his gaze, grey eyes as soulless and full as ever. “Do you want to be done?”
“Well, obviously I can't fight—” 
“I mean it. All of it, Hawks. Maybe a few media appearances, but all this... shit. You’ve done enough.”
You’ve done enough. 
The words bounce around in his skull.
“Do you want to be done?”
Done with being a hero.
That’s all he’d ever been, right? That is him, he is Hawks, for fuck’s sake, no one other than Dabi (may he rot and die and immolate in hell) even called him his actual name in years.
Keigo is Hawks.
His mouth is dry, and he tries to ignore the tears pricking his eyes. He’s not sure why he’s beginning to cry, and definitely not sure why tension is draining from his shoulders as he sighs out an answer.
“I’ll be done.”
You’ve done enough.
...
Hospital beds are a hot commodity, and now that Keigo had thrown in the towel (along with everyone else) to stop trying with his wings, he was to be discharged within a few days.
(“Just a few more days to adjust your body to your new medications—”)
He’d stopped listening after that.
...
Your last night together is so bittersweet, you taste it on each other’s tongues.
You have an episode early in the day. Your screaming wakes the floor, the burning smell of flesh cementing that it was you.
Keigo’s only half-lucid when he shoves into your room, holding your hands while nurses desperately try to administer pain medication.
It’s too much for you, the crawling edges of the scar once again consuming you in the molten, glowing amber veins of heat that tore through you so terribly.
You sleep the day away. Keigo stays with you for much of it, stroking the bones in the back of your hands. 
...
He fucks you for the first time, that night. 
His own IVs have been removed, he’s to be discharged first thing in the morning—
And he wants one more night of stargazing, please, please—
(Why’s he clutching at you so dearly?) 
But you’re not in the common room. 
Rather, you’re under a few thin blankets, eyes tired and lightless. Your arm is out of its cast, laying over the bed clothes. It scares him shitless at first as he tentatively enters. It’s you though, and the moment you see him, it’s like a flame, a good one, heats the room full and wide. A few specks of light dance in between your irises as your skin crinkles in a gentle smile.
You both know he’s leaving tomorrow.
The knowledge settles in the room like a weight that neither of you can move. So, Keigo takes to it and does what he can.
As opposed to his normal perch next to his bed, he sits beside you, removing the restraints on your wrists and helping you to sit up.
Keigo fishes around in his pocket, pulling out a folded square of paper and placing it at your bedside. It’s his phone number, an odd detail. Relationships usually shared far-earlier.
But there is nothing linear or normal about the two of you, or the situation you both sit and stewed in.
You both are making peace with it at your own pace.
The bed creaks as you move to sit beside him, legs dangling from the bed. There’s gooseflesh beneath your gown, the boring pattern obscured by the darkness of the room, but the molten lines of the scar ever-visible.
“I’m glad you’re getting out of here.”
But I wish that you weren’t leaving.
His hand finds your waist, careful like he always is, but so giving in the same breath. 
“I am too. It’ll be nice to be.”
But I’m going to miss you.
It’s inherent, and has been forever. Since the moment you both stargazed in the common room and watched the worlds high above twist and shine without regard to your own hells, you’ve been ensnared in the other and neither of you have a want or need to let go.
Even with the inevitably of progress.
Keigo drowns in these thoughts, and has been since Endeavor visited and he was reminded of the harsh reality just outside of their tree-ringed prison. The reality he has to return to—
He presses his lips to yours, more desperate and needy than he had before.
Keigo had taken his share of you before, little pecks and the rub of the bridge of his nose over your jaw and cheeks. He had been a bit greedier with his hands, uncaring of the eyes of the night nurses when he’d touched you in the common room.
But he’s insatiable that last night.
The sheets of the plastic bed are too scratchy, they’re too harsh for you, and it burns Keigo to his core as he lowers you down. He cradles what he can, as your fingers latch onto his clothes (real clothes) and tug him as close as you can get.
The machines in your room cry, but they’re forgotten. 
You nip at his bottom lip, dragging yours across his clean-shaven jaw before laying into his neck with kiss after kiss. His muscles shake, holding him over you, both of you atrophied but uncaring.
You suck a deep, throbbing bruise on the fragile skin of his neck. It’s something dark that won’t fade for a week. The thought stirs something in his chest, a white-hot feeling that wants to crack his ribs and consume him. He doesn’t give in, he can’t—
“Stay with me, pretty eyes,” you whisper, so sweet and gentle as you push floppy strands of hair from his face. “Stay here, just for a little while longer.”
The reminder jolts him back, back to you, and the way your body (so tired, but unwavering) jumps and rolls under his touch. He’s a glutton for attention, always has been, but your particular brand and sounds keep pulse hot and hard. 
Shaky fingers pull his shirt over his head, sweaty palms push the gown over your hips. By the starlight, you’re both seeing too much of each other, but this is a goodbye, there’s no time to dwell on the discomfort.
Keigo tries to be careful as he adjusts your legs, tries to be mindful of the raw skin and flesh that makes you whine and half-writhe. You clutch at him, still trying to pull him closer despite the proximity and heat, like you need him as opposed to just wanting him. 
There’s no fanfare in it, just more rushed kisses and the swirling of fingertips over covered clit. You catch each other’s gasps in the mingling of breaths you share. It’s choking, suffocating, yet entirely not enough. You beg, quietly, for more. Your fingers latch onto his wrist and urge him to help pull your panties off and away.
More, more, more. 
By the time he slides into you, you're still tense, but so is he, and in a pile of tension and fear and wishful-thinking, you both come undone, and undone, and undone— 
...
Keigo leaves the next morning. 
The press is there, flash bulbs blinding him after so long with just fluorescents and starlight. He manages an easy wave or two, no autographs or gleaming smiles, just business and numbness that he needed to hold onto, so he didn’t fucking break.
He slips into the Commission’s car and leaves behind the hospital, you, and its wall of man-laid greenery and prays to forget it all quickly. He has enough to mourn. 
...
Keigo wants to off himself when he arrives back at his penthouse. 
How can he not?
His ‘home’ (if he couldn’t even call it that) is a dusty, time capsule of everything before. Before he got fucked up with the League, before the PLF, before the war, before Jin—
Every untouched bit of his life from when it was a few, precious fractions better stands unturned. A discarded jacket, wing slits visible and frayed. Scattered dead feathers that make his skin crawl. Memorabilia too, old merchandise that he never cared much about, but he definitely didn’t need to be seeing it now that ‘Hawks’ had burned up and died. 
All disgusting reminders. 
Something burning fills the base of his skull when his gaze fixates on one of the old plumes. He reaches out to touch the spine of it, instinctually expecting a little jolt of feeling from it, like he always had. 
But there’s nothing. It’s dead, decaying, and so is he. 
The reality of it breaks him, quick, hard and hot. He burns alive a second time. 
He clears the liquor cabinet while blaring music from his over-priced stereo system loud enough to make his ears ache and throb. The music isn’t drowning anything out, but it’s better to pretend.
He finds a bottle of old pills and downs them with a few swigs of expensive whiskey and lets go.
...
When he comes to, he’s staring into a smashed mirror, with his own nails crusted in blood from thin welts in the skin of the scar on his face.
Much to his chagrin, he hasn’t forgotten anything. The memories of blue flames, red feathers, and the smell of your skin mixed with isopropyl alcohol feel brighter than ever. He grounds on them as he sobers up, latching onto the pain of his scar tissue and the solace you gave. 
And won’t ever give him again.
Something in him wilts as he defeatedly goes to his phone, arranging any number of things to get him the fuck out.
...
The penthouse is sold, his more important belongings gathered in bland boxes. 
And he leaves. There’s no sentiment holding him there, not anymore.  
Fukuoka is gone and some distant memory as he drives (yes, he forgot that he had that skill) him and his things to his new home.
His penthouse had been immaculate. Crisp interior design, new shapes and colors that were on trend. He was hardly home to appreciate the modern beauty of it, but he’d received enough compliments from random hookups to know that it landed aesthetically.
But honestly?
Who the fuck cared?
His penthouse had been sold to the highest bidder and far behind as he arrives at his new, high home in the sleekness of his far-too fancy, disused car.
...
...
He gets a call from an unknown number, another one, on some snowy day, deep in winter. 
Keigo debates answering it. He almost lets it slip to voicemail. The only calls worth answering are the handful from the Commission that he has to heed, or the odd one from Rumi, Fuyumi, and on occasion, Endeavor.
Not random numbers, he has no patience for it. 
Yet, he answers it lazily.
“Washed up hero, how can I help you?”
“P-Pretty eyes?”
His heart stutters in his chest, he swears— 
“Starshine?” He sounds breathless, the air leached from his chest as he white-knuckles his thighs.
He’d given up on you contacting him, yet there you were, or at least your voice, mechanical and high bouncing around preciously in the walls of the cabin
There’s a moment of silence, nearly, just your light breathing that receiver picks up.
Your voice trembles when you break it, “Y-yeah, it’s me, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to call—”
You don’t need to be sorry; he would wait for you forever, and then some. 
“I d-don’t actually have a phone? Mine got trashed, uh, back then. I’m on the hospital’s line.”
Keigo hadn’t really considered that, he’s slipped the paper with his number on your bedside without a thought. 
How much had you lost?
“No worries, chickadee,” Keigo is sure his smile is audible. “Why call now? Miss me too much?”
He had no idea.
You laugh, though it soured as you spoke, “I get discharged tomorrow.”
Keigo’s heart seizes again and he’s sure he’s going to go into cardiac arrest.
“The guy who gave me the scar and all? He fucked up a few other people, word eventually got here. Once the scar stops... glowing, it rests. If you make it until then, you’re good.”
And alive.
“The whole injury is stable, has been for a week now,” Surprisingly, there’s no relief in your voice. “They need my bed, so they’re releasing me.”
No, no, no.
Where will you go?
Keigo doesn’t say it, but the question hangs in the air and is quickly answered.
“They got me a spot in one of the shelters close by... It’s only a couple hours by train!” You try to sound happy, but it’s so hollow and unnatural; it makes Keigo physically sit up.
No, no, no.
That won’t do.
“... What won’t do?” 
Keigo hadn’t realized he’d said it out loud.
Something is buried in his chest, something warm and molten, like the old veins of your scar, just kinder and better. It’s full of urges, so seldom used, selectively as needed throughout his career as a hero.
The need to keep something precious safe. 
The thing hasn’t thrashed in months.
Yet now? It’s practically screaming.
“Pretty eyes?” You sound scared through the phone. “A-Are you alright? I can call back—”
“No, don’t, do not.” Keigo lets the flame fill his chest, welcoming it. “You’re not going to that shelter.”
He has something to protect.
“I don’t have another choice—”
Someone.
“You do.” Keigo keeps his voice even, the muscles in his back writhing. If he still had his wings, they’d be puffed out and large. Impassioned with feeling he finally let breath between his ribs. “I’ll come get you, tomorrow.”
“... P-Pardon?”
He doesn’t hesitate, and for a moment, he starts to feel like his old self. 
“Come home with me, starshine.”
++++++
thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed!! 💗
look out for parts 2 and 3!!!💞
ko-fi
611 notes · View notes
hard--mode · 3 years
Text
Here's the notes for everything that would happen up until the end of the story.... as far as I had it figured out. You'll notice things are a lot less fleshed out the later things go. That's a big reason why this never got finished. the longer I tried to keep the thing running, the more I realized I never had any idea what I wanted to actually DO with this story which made it pretty hard for me to keep up. it's hard to write a story you're trying to take seriously if all you really have are jokes, it turns out.
I haven't reread any of this or edited it at all so who knows what kind of notes I might have written in between things haha
P: so as i was saying about undyne-
C: who’s undyne?
Everyone freezes. Chara just walked right up to papyrus without being noticed. Paps freaks out for a sec before he pulls sans into a huddle. Chara frowns and tries to peek around.
~Montage of papyrus’s excitement and harder puzzles, death montage
~Junior jumble: its sudoku now
Chara’s doing puzzles and sees flowey spying. They shout him over
C: HEY! still following me, loser? Don’t you have anything better to do? (but they smile)
F: somebody’s gotta make sure you don’t get killed too much out here
Flowey pops up closer to them
C: nah, I’m fine! I’ve got that reset power!
F: not for long considering how much you use it (mumbles. Rolls eyes??) (some depiction of chara dying a lot in the bg)
C: by the way…. In the ruins you were telling me to use it… care to tell me more about it since you seem to know so much?
F: I-... uh… well you already know the most of it. It just resets you back to your last SAVE point like nothing happened. Only beings with a powerful SOUL can use it, so monsters with their weak souls can’t.
Chara stops their puzzle work and sits to even the heights: Can flowers?
F: what the heck are you-... oh, no no no. I’m different.
C: so you have the power too.
F: No! I mean-, i used to before you came around. Yeah.
C: so you’ve done resets. (urging him on)
F: yep.
Chara waits a while: ...thats all you have to say?
F: yep
Travel scenes from here on out depict chara and flowey together
Gauntlet:
Flowey remarks that he doesn't remember a save point being before it. Chara goes along and gets paps’ bit. He does to activate it
C: wait this isn't for real right? U can't be srs!!!
P: yeah I am, this is hard mode!
Just show chara repeatedly spawning at the save and running back in with flowey watching them
Then cut to the end chara on the other side of it panting and exhausted, papyrus shocked but also beaming
P: wow you did it!! I'm so proud of u human! I didn’t think you would actually be able to get through it--- I mean- drat! Foiled again! I'll get u one of these times!
Papyrus runs off and Chara watches him with a look of wonder in their eyes.
F: don’t get too excited. his pride is cheap, he’s proud of everyone and every thing
Chara grumbles and marches forward: whatever. I don’t hear you saying you’re proud of me, so why do I have to listen to what you have to say
F: You know, you’re gonna have to fight him soon. Didn’t sans say so? What are you going to do then, die over and over until you give up or are you going to try to murder him just like you did with Toriel? :)
C: I am not! I’m gonna talk him out of it and go right past him like everyone else. Who knows! Maybe he won’t even fight me because he’s that cool. Even if he does, he’s probably a wimp anyways.
F: I wouldn’t be so sure! I bet you don’t stand a chance.
C: shut up! Quit following me if you’re gonna be this useless.
Paps fight
As papyrus carries their body to the shed to rest. Opens on their vision returning and they see their hands hanging toward the ground.
C: why didn’t you kill me? You’re stronger than everyone else, you could easily do it. Why dont you finish me off so everyone can leave or whatever it is you need me to do? Why did you hold back?
P: OH! YOU’RE AWAKE!
C: you held back…
P: OF COURSE i DID! I COULD NEVER KILL YOU, YOU’RE MY-- I HOPE I’M NOT BEING TOO FORWARD, BUT I LIKE TO THINK OF YOU AS MY FRIEND! AND EVEN THOUGH WE DO NEED YOUR SOUL, YOU DESERVE A FIGHTING CHANCE TO DO… WHATEVER IT IS YOU’RE TRYING TO DO.
Chara is too shocked and confused by the sentiment: I don’t… I don’t understand?
P: WHAT’S SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT A FRIEND NOT KILLING YOU? HUMANS ARE SO STRANGE ...OH! I SEE NOW! THE REASON WHY YOU CARRY YOUR KNIFE LIKE THAT. IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE MORE AFRAID OF US MONSTERS THAN WE COULD EVER BE OF YOU!
He sets them down in the shed on the dog bed.
P: I’M SORRY, HUMAN! I WOULD HAVE GIVEN YOU MORE WARNING IF I HAD KNOWN HOW YOU FELT.
C: then… does that mean you’re going to let me go?
P: ABSOLUTELY NOT! I ALREADY CALLED UNDYNE TO MEET ME SO SHE CAN TAKE YOU! AND YOU NEED TO REST NOW AFTER ALL THAT!
C: !! I-I don’t know who Undyne is, but I can’t do that. I’m in a hurry to get out of here.
P: HMM… IF YOU’RE IN A HURRY THEN… NO, NO YOU CAN’T! WE NEED YOUR SOUL, I CAN’T JUST LET YOU LEAVE. UNDYNE’S REALLY COOL TOO, YOU’LL LIKE HER!
C: No, I have to go.
P: AGH, WELL… I SUPPOSE IF YOU CAN GET PAST ME BEFORE I CAN CATCH YOU, THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO. BUT I WON’T GO EASY ON YOU!
Cut to chara walking toward waterfall, papyrus calling after them to come back and hang out sometime. They keep walking and mutter to themself: Sorry, but I’ll get out of here before that ever happens.
WATERFALL
They see monster kid and side eye sans as they charge in, hurriedly.
Chara keeps flowey around and asks him to read the words for him. FLowey says it’s not important at all to anything they’re doing. It’s just monster history junk that means nothing if chara’s trying to leave. Chara’s like shut up cmon help me out maybe there's clues. FLowey reads some history stuff in waterfall treating it like shit they already know
F: why do you care about all this garbage anyway?
C: I dunno, I guess it just sounds familiar. Like a story I heard a long time ago.
Chara stops suddenly and checks their phone. Flowey asks what’s up
C: i thought it rang… you didn’t hear-
The phone starts ringing. Papyrus is cheerfully on the other end and they walk and talk.
He tells them about how he heard so many horrible things about humans and the surface but chara was much nicer than he ever expected. Chara asks where he heard that and he says a flower told him. Chara covers the receiver and looks around for flowey, suspicions of him raised.
Montage w monster kid and umbrella
Chara falls from undyne’s spear attack and wakes up in the trash with flowey over them.
F: hey, wake up. I can tell you’re not dead so hurry up and get moving.
Chara’s kind of bummed: she killed me four times back there. And it wasn’t even a fight. I couldn’t talk her down or… i couldn’t even talk to her, I could barely see her.
F: what, are you giving up or something? You know she can kill you as much as she wants and you aren’t gonna die.
C: I know that! I know this is just like a game where you can keep on going but… it hurts. And it’s exhausting.
F: what will you do then? Sit here in this trash and do nothing?
C: *sigh* no. I’m just feeling down in the dumps.
They smile and get up.
As they’re walking out, they hear a click and someone to tell them to “hold it”
Mad dummys behind them and she just has a gun. Pointed directly at chara. She starts on her thing about the cousin and then blook saves the day.
Chara meets up with blook again. They go to where the snail races used to be. It’s all busted and unused
C: what’s this supposed to be…?
B: oh…. this used to be a snail farm…. And this was a race course…. For snails…. But a long time ago people started to call the races “insensitive” so we had to close them…. Sorry you can’t have any fun racing snails…
C: why was it insensitive…?
B: ...i’d… rather not talk about it………..
Timeskip
C: hey flowey! What’s up with this place and snails?
F:...i wouldnt know.
montage
After waterfall where undyne says how many souls they have
C: flowey… if they have 6 human souls, that means 6 others fell down and died here, so…
F: what?
C: i just- i mean you were the first one i met-
F: no, no, no, ive never killed anyone. You’re the only human i’ve seen since i woke up
Chara relaxes: ok. So you dont know anything about them.
F: no. i heard some things from toriel, not much. It’s too late to try asking her, but she’s seen all of them. She was there at the beginning even.
C: the beginning?
F: you know…. When humans started falling down here and monsters started killing them.
Chara goes silent in thought: wait… how… long has this been going on? How old is toriel?
F: dunno
Chara after having a rough time: it’s hard, but no matter what happens i can just keep trying. I’ll make it out of this! You believe in me right, flowey?
F: no i think you should give up.
Page/chapter ends there. Next is chara going up to fight undyne.
Open on a riff on the “long ago” cutscene that chara cuts off by saying they already know this story
Undyne screams SHUT UP!!! I’m doing my HEROIC MONOLOGUE!! Whatever, I bet you haven’t heard the part about the King and Queen’s human child who died of illness and their other son who was killed by the humans when he tried to return their body to the surface?!
C: No I think I heard that one too? Why are you telling me all this anyways??
U: because this is an UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENE!! NYAAAGGGHHHH!!!!!
Chara’s getting their ass beat and on low hp: I’ll die in a hit or two. But that’s fine because I’ll just start this over. I’ll start from… where was the last save point…
A vision of them with flowey. Their eyes go red and the flashback cuts in between shots of them running from undyne
F: I think you should give up
Ch: what… give up?? I thought you were on my side with all the telling me to keep going and-and the hanging out with me?!
F: as if you had any other choice but to keep going! We both know you don’t.
C: so you’ve just been following this whole time waiting for me to give up and die, huh?! Why, are you trying to steal my soul just like everybody else?!?
F: it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’re going to die! And die and die and die! You can reset as much as you want, it won’t change that! So what if I am waiting for you to give up? You’re the last thing keeping monsters trapped down here. If you give up, you’ll give everyone what they want!
C: I thought you wanted to help me?! I thought you were my friend!
F: I would never be friends with a human! You’re all nothing but killing machines!
C: I haven’t killed anyone!
F: You killed Toriel! No number of resets can change what you did! You’re a horrible, disgusting human just like all the others and everyone would be happier if you were dead!
Flowey could say something about dying down here is better than their inevitable death on the surface. Their death would at least be worth something. Mean something
Chara escapes the fight, undyne collapses, and they walk away. they tell themselves they won’t give up. They don’t need help, especially not from that dumb flower. They’ll live to spite him and everyone else who tries to kill them
Chara goes in and meets alphys and overall is p meh abt it bc bad mood. Alphys helping them through the underground makes them talk to themselves about how they dont need flowey, they can do this themself. Friends are no good.
hotland is as normal. probably figure out some indication of things not right. make the game seem broken bc they arent supposed to get so far like this
Chara meets with sans at mtt resort for food reluctantly. Lets him say his piece. After he’s done threatening to kill them chara says to his face that they really don’t like him.
Need some hubbub about them having to kill asgore to get out. Theyll be like yeah I know that (somehow)... oh but I need a plan… how will i come up with a plan..
Flowey finally appears to chara again just before they get to new home and tries to talk them out of leaving. Disparaging the surface and telling them they could live happily down here. Chara says no, it’s too hard because people are constantly hunting them down and being the last soul, no ones going to stop that. He says that he’s sorry for the way he was before
Chara smiles back, and then looks away: What you said before… about.. My inevitable death on the surface…
F: that was… don’t worry about that.
C: are you afraid of it?
F: well- yeah, it’s a dangerous place. Everyone knows that.
C: I’ve died a lot more times down here than I ever did up there.
A beat
C: you go back and forth a lot between talking about how I should stay down here because it’s better… but also if I die down here… everyone gets to go free… to the horrible, awful surface.
F: uh,, did I say all that…? I may have contradicted myself a little… I guess… in the end I just wanted an excuse for you to stay around. I really don’t want you to die.
C: so you did see me as a friend after all?
F: well…you reminded me of someone who was my friend. I wish we could have been friends.
C: Do you think… If I reset back to the beginning and did this again, if I said the right things… we could have been?
F: No… You could be as nice to me or as mean to me as you want. No matter how many times you reset, some things never change.
C: ...Did you ever… have to reset because you killed someone?
F: ……….once… and then I never reset ever again. The power to reset… makes you do bad things. It’s wrong. I had to stop because i knew… I’d make someone really upset if I kept messing around.
C: well, in that case… I guess I’ll just have to get the rest of the way out of here without any resets!
Flowey smiles: I dunno, keep one or two under your belt. You’re a pretty big klutz.
C: Thanks for helping me out of here, flowey. Even if you just did it because you were begged.
Can you imagine a more paranoid flowey who is less interested in attacking you and regaining the reset ability, but is pleased af that you have the reset ability because that means you can't die, and instead he spends the entire game trying to convince you that humanity is hopeless. That there is nothing on the surface world returning to. That it's safer, down here.
he's part of the reason why things are so much harder
he's the one that starts the rumors about the dangers of teh surface world
there's a definite sense of paranoia all across the board
When they approach new home, flowey appears one last time and grabs chara by the hand, telling them not to go. They can live in the underground, they’ve made a lot of friends here. Chara says that they have to go, they’ll find a way to get out without killing asgore. Flowey says that he tried to stop them, this is as far as he’ll go. This is goodbye. They bid their farewells and chara goes along, but flowey secretly follows them, much less detectable than ever before. It’s revealed when he’s hiding with the flowers.
Chara walks up to new home, regarding it as a vaguely familiar sight. They walk down the many halls knowing exactly where to go. The monsters speak as they go through the motions. They find a cookbook in the kitchen with a page for snail pie missing. Chara mumbles about already knowing the story and that they should all shut up. They walk more quickly to stay ahead of them. Then one mentions the snail pie and chara stops dead in their tracks. No that’s not how it happened- they stop, and take back off.
They are stopped by sans in the judgement hall, glaring at him.
S: well I had a whole speech to give ya, but you look like you’re in a hurry. You’re a weird kid, but you’re fine. The king’s up ahead.
OTHER alternative: chara realizes something’s wrong and runs back to get everyone, probably threatening to kill asgore to convince them to come quickly. Sans is avoided due to the mob approaching behind them “I heard the word that you’re on your way to kill the king.” c: are you here to stop me? “Nah. But you’d better have a good plan to back yourself up, kid. King’s up ahead”
They run up to asgore, no nonsense. Some time is taken to progress things. As they leave the throne room, flowey watches from the flowers, chara looks back to confirm he’s there.
Asgore draws up the souls, the fight is about to engage, before he can smash “MERCY” chara yells: ASRIEL. Get the souls.
Everything stops. Flowey is behind them, stunned and confused. Chara turns and asks him what he’s waiting for. Hurry up and take the souls before everyone else gets here. Nearly every last monster is coming, if he can become godlike and absorb them, it will be enough strength to break the barrier.
Flowey is confused, how do they know that? Chara tells him he did it before. Doesn’t he remember? Doesn’t he remember them?
Either flowey does it and something happens, or flowey waits too long and chaos erupts which gets them killed, and then chara and flowey have to meet up and workshop.
Final fight:
He probably says some shit about frisk and how he cant lose frisk again, chara must insist that theyre not frisk. When they say their name is chara, he hesitates for only a moment. Finally, when chara’s pinned and about to seriously die…
C: you remember it now too, don’t you? It took me a while, I couldn’t remember a thing until i started hearing your name around. You’re an all powerful god now, you should be able to remember it all better than me
A: shut up.
C: would frisk want us to fight like this?! Would frisk want you to kill your own sibling?!
A: c-.... You’re… you’re really chara?
He lets them go
They reach the conclusion that frisk messed with everything and put them here with no memories so they could do something frisk could never do. Frisk thinks they deserve to live, no matter how much the two may disagree. They have to play along. Asriel is a god and can use his powers to break the barrier and bring EVERYONE back to life so they can live together happily.
go to final fight and everyones already there, things are very confused, flowey takes the souls and things glitch out (screen phases between bosses) and chara realizes this isnt how things are supposed to be, tells asriel theyre sorry for their baggage but he doesnt understand bc he isnt theirs, and then they gotta find frisk somehow
OR... they realize things in the speech and don't go to fight asgore bc theyre finding flowey... they feign fighting asgore and then suddenly tell flowey to take the souls("Asriel! get the souls!" and thats the first time they call him by name)...? i like that a bit better. they start going on about crazy shit that makes roided out flowey kind of lose it at them which leads to them apologizing to their own asriel but then realizing they need to find frisk
but HOW do they find frisk
The end shows chara asriel and frisk hugging eachother, all alive and well. Then the two are “processing…” and remember that oh, theyve done some dark messed up stuff.
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chellestrash · 3 years
Text
Warmth
Ives x reader 
summary: On a cold night spent in a tent, Ives gets an idea about how to keep you warm.
warnings: swearing and some smut, not very explicit but still smut :)
authors note: Wow the tittle is so original I did so well pfff. Only the gods know how long ago did I promise this little thing to our wonderful @vaneilla​ but I can finally say it. HERE IT IS! Is it great? I don’t think so but what’s new? Im happy I actually managed to write something and I hope you'll enjoy it even a little bit. Ives’s beautiful and lovely and amazing and I think he deserves more attention so...here I am!
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„Remind me who’s fucking idea was this again?”
 You mumbled, curling up inside your sleeping bag as your body trembled from the overwhelming cold.
„…was Neil’s idea, last time I checked,” Ives answered in a sleepy voice after a moment.
„Course it was.”
You rolled your eyes and looked over to face him, he was laying behind you on the other side of the tent, yawing.
„Remind me to fight him in the morning.”
The words sounded a bit more aggressive than you intended but as you looked up at Ives you realized he probably didn't even fully register what you’ve just said. You couldn’t believe he was able to fall asleep out here in this shitty old tent. The cold air from the forest easily found its way inside the thin, fabric walls and the portable heater in the corner wasn’t really doing that much. In conclusion, you were freezing your ass off.
„How did you manage to fall asleep here?”
You brought your legs up to your chest as close as the sleeping bag would allow you to. Yes, you could probably zip it open and use it more as a cover, which would give you more room but there was no way you were going to expose yourself to the cold air like that.
„Barely.” Ives propped himself up on his arm and watched your struggles with a confused expression.
„...you cold?” he finally asked.
You replied with a frustrated groan as you reached out for another blanket that was definitely a bit too far away for you to be able to grab it.
„I'm not cold Ives.” You answered, now attempting to use a part of the sleeping bag as something resembling a hood as you gave up on the blanket.
„I'm fucking freezing.”
You poked your face out from your makeshift anti-freeze barrier and he huffed out a little laugh at your expression.
„Oh, it can’t be that bad now can it?”
He scooted over to you so you were now in arms reach. You struggled for a moment trying to pull your hand out from under the fabric before pressing the back of your palm against his neck.
„Ah shit!” He jerked back and rubbed the place you just touched. „Jesus dove, you’re fucking freezing.”
„I am! I told you.” You waved your arm around theatrically and quickly buried yourself back into the sleeping back, only your face poking out now. You were already wearing your clothes on top of your pj’s, so there wasn’t much more you could put on top of that. The walls of the tent bent slightly at the sudden gust of fingers and you grunted frustrated.
„If I freeze to death tonight, I'm gonna kill all three of you.”
Ives shook his head and laughed slightly.
„Right, easy now dove, come here.”
He gestured for you to move as he unzipped his sleeping bag slightly.
You stared at him unimpressed for a moment.
„There's no way we can both fit in there.”
You mumbled and proceeded to bury yourself back into your not very cold-proof nest.
“Course there is a dove! Look, I’ll just suck my stomach in.”
You didn’t move.
“Well, I guess it’s your choice, freezing to death or being a little uncomfortable for a bit except that option is better because you’ll have me right next to you, so you wouldn't really be that uncomfortable now would you?”
You rolled your eyes at him and started wiggling out of your bedding.
“Okay just... move a little bit. I need to be quick.”
You quickly slipped inside next to him before he zipped the sleeping bag close as much as it was possible. The cold didn't magically go away but you felt a little better, even with all the layers on you could feel how warm he was, you were only inches apart. He wrapped his arms around you and by pulling you close, he left almost no space at all between your bodies. Your back pressed firmly against his chest, your legs intertwined together and his arms wrapped tightly but tenderly around you.
„Better now?” 
He asked quietly, rubbing your shoulder with his palm for additional heat. You snuggled even closer to him and although it felt better than trying to fall asleep alone in the corner of the tent, your body was still tense and you couldn’t force it to relax.
„A little.” 
You answered and as if to mock you, your body shiver.
„Liar.” 
You heard Ives behind you and his grip tightened. He slipped his thigh between your legs. 
„Body heat is good you know?”
 He started.
 “You should…you should maybe take some of these clothes off you know?”
„Jesus Ives.” You dug your elbow into his stomach.
„Hey!”
„Sorry, my arm slipped.” 
You looked back at him over your shoulder and smiled innocently.
„Bullshit.” 
He teased you back and shook his head.
 „I'm just trying to make sure you don't freeze out here that's all.”
„Oh yes yes sure.” 
You chuckled.
That was the truth of course…well at least at the beginning, Ives really just wanted to make sure you were okay, at first. But as you joined him in one sleeping bag (which size he totally underestimated) as he felt you right here in front of him, your body so close to his, the pressure as you moved closer and closer to him. Despite how much he tried to fight it, he could feel his trousers tighten in the crotch.
He cleared his throat and slowly started moving his hand from your chest down to your waist.
“I’m sorry, what do you think you're doing?”
You asked. You knew, you knew what he was doing and you’ve known for a good moment, despite him trying to make sure you didn't feel it, you did, you could feel him behind you.
“I know how we can keep you warm dove.”
He whispered into your ear, his warm breath on the back of your neck send a shiver down your spine. His hand move lower under the fabric of your trousers. And you shifted slightly to make it easier for him, spreading your legs open just a little bit. A quiet gasp when he quickly moved his hand lower again and into your underwear. His palm now directly between your legs. Your head jerked back slightly at the touch and you backed your ass up to press it against his bulge. He let out a deep grunt and the grip between your legs tightened suddenly. Your lips parted and a quiet gasp left your mouth but you bite down on your lip quickly.
“Ives we shouldn’t.”
You started but made absolutely no effort to stop what has clearly already started. The pulse between your legs slowly growing stronger with his every move. 
“Oh don’t-“ 
He started to work his fingers around you. 
“Don’t try to tell you wouldn’t like this right now.”
You relaxed into his palm and your toes curled up at his touch. He was right.
„Ives-��
 You tried to steady your breathing, 
 „we’re in a tent, they’re going to hear everything.”
„Ah bulshit, they're not going to hear anything.”
He barged with you, pressing a warm kiss at the back of your neck. You turned around to face his, your palms cupping his face as your lips crashed together into a passionate kiss. He broke the kiss to prop himself up so he was on top of you. 
„Besides, we can just keep it quiet right?”
His hand run up and down your side under your clothes, brushing over your ribs and waist, his lips on your neck. He pulled your shirt off and tossed it to the corner of the tent. Your body shivered when the cold air brushed over your now exposed skin. The heat between your legs slowly spreading throughout your entire body the pleasant sensation allowed you to relax to forget about the temperature, the wind, the cold. You squirmed under him desperate for more, more touch, more pleasure, more of him.
„Ives-„ 
You gaped softly when his hand was back between your legs again, your gripped the fabric of his shirt when he slipped one finger inside of you. Your  hips bucked up and a loud moan escaped your mouth. You bit your lip trying to stop it from happening but it was too late. One of Ives’ hands was now covering your mouth as the other worked it’s way inside of you.
„I thought we said quiet?” 
He teased and you nodded quickly. 
„You think you can do that dove?”
You nodded again, this time calmer, reaching down to his trousers. You pulled them down slightly and rubber the hard bulge through the fabric of his boxers. Another loud grunt and he let his head rest on your shoulder. Moving your hand up to his hair you pulled at them, your lips close to his ear, you whispered „Can you?” You groped his length in your hand and immediately climbed on top of him.
Realizing your intentions he pulled the sleeping back down allowing you to moved around freely. `The excited expression on his face made you feel some type of way. Ives was big and strong like everything about him and feeling this control over him was one of your favorite little dirty pleasures.
„If I have to be quiet, you’re on the bottom sir.”
You could feel him testing up at the nickname and as he watched you get comfortable on top of him he nodded slowly.
„Yes, Ma’am.”
You slid your trousers off and began to move your hips back and forth on his hard cock. His hands on your hips as he guided you, he helped you set your  moves your pace your pressure. You could feel how wet you were, your could feel yourself soaking through both your and his underwear, you could feel the bolts of pleasure traveling through your body every time he pulled you down lower onto himself. His hand moved to your thing his fingers digging into the flesh when he felt himself getting there.
„Quit the teasing dove.”
 He ordered and looked up at you, his hands moved the fabric between your legs off to the side as you pulled down his boxers at the same time.
„Look how fucking ready you are.” He pointed out and you glanced down at the mess you’ve made. His grip on your thing tightened. 
„Don't even think about stoping right now.
„I wasn’t planning to.” You smirked.
He held your hand as you moved up to position yourself on top of him. Guiding his cock he teased your entrance for a moment, before finally sliding into you all at once. You jerked your head back and bit your lips hard, resting your hand on his chest, you tried to catch your breath.
„There you go.” 
He mumbled as he helped you move up and down his length.
 „There...you feel so good dove you know that?” 
You shut your eyes as your walls tightened around him and you could feel yourself getting close. Your heart beating fast and your legs shaking as he thrust into you over and over again. The overwhelming sense of pleasure slowly consuming your entire body. His pace was less precise, his moves deeper but sloppier and you knew he was almost there. Your bodies moved together for another moment before you finally came undone around him. The feeling pleasure filling your entire body again as he came inside you shortly after, the site of you letting yourself go for him was enough. You both groaned satisfied and you fell on top of him exhausted. 
“Fuck.”
 Was the only thing you managed to get out after that.
He wrapped his arms around you and pressed a kiss on top of your neck.
“Not cold anymore?”
Still breathing heavily he asked before throwing the nearest blanket on top of you. You moved back slightly to make sure his entire length was still inside you, the sudden movement caused him to grunt quietly and you smirked before resting your head down on his chest.
You looked up at him with an innocent expression.
„Might need another round, just to make sure I'm warmed up properly.”
He shook his head with a smirk.
„Right well, who am I to disagree?”
He drew small circles on your back but his hands slowly moved lower ad lower down to your ass, he gripped it tightly but before you could do anything, you heard Neil from the other tent.
„You know we can hear literally everything right?”
You glanced over at Ives terrified but he only shrugged his shoulders.
“I fucking told you!”
„Well…at least we don't have to be quiet anymore.”
_____________
Feedback is really appreciated, like always!
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mde1011 · 3 years
Text
when i got into the dsmp i started a note and wrote down any quotes or moments i thought were funny, and im bored at 3 am so enjoy some of them
how is being arrested real? just walk away!!!”
⁃ “once an american always an american. go...go protests masks...or something”
⁃ “...yEAH BUT DID YOU HAVE WAP” “what’s...whats wap?” “...WORSHIP AND PRAYER”
⁃ “HOW DO YOU LIKE POLITICS MOTHERFUCKER”
⁃ “i’m naked” “...no you’re not” “i can be...”
⁃ “uhhhh i’m in a high stress situation....i deal with these poorly”
⁃ “i should go first i’m naked”
⁃ “yEAHHHH WE KILLED AN OLD MAN WITH HEART PROBLEMS”
⁃ “what are you going to do?” “i...have no idea i think i’m gonna start out by punching a tree”
⁃ “tOmmy...did i just hear you say shit ass looking mofo?”
⁃ “i aM gOinG to gEt nAkeD to iNtiMidAtE HiM”
- “...i want freedom !” “you want BALLS.”
⁃ “...down the line. yeah that’s where we discover the art of cannibalism” “oh it’s an art?” “it’s an art”
⁃ “oh there’s some logs here. wonder what they’re saying to me. uh huh. uh huh. oh yeah that’s very racist” “tommy you gotta burn those logs.” “burn ‘em before they spread their racism to other logs”
⁃ “are you pooing?” “*whisper* i’m charging up-““ “he’s ejaculating on the tent.” “he’s WHAT?”
⁃ “he’s sPEEDING. LOOK HOW FAST HES GOING” “i’ve taken so many drugs. someone tell badboyhalo”
⁃ “we should make a pact. and that pact is, uh, we make a book...and in that book...we declare that saying ‘muffin’ is a, is a slur”
⁃ “i was thinking what if one day your bladder just,,,,stopped working.....AGGGFFFFF i was tHINKING ABOUT THAT THE OTHER DAY IVE GOT TO PREPARE IVE GOT YO PREPARE thisiswhydiapersaintthatbad”
⁃ <sapnap> i think i was ordered to um
<tommyinnit> boobed
<sapnap> kill you
<tommyinnit> boobs
<sapnap> if this happens
<tommyinnit> think about boobs man
<sapnap> tsk tsk tommy
<tommyinnit> iM DISGRUNTLED
⁃ “why is this deadman so good at making drugs”
⁃ “i just learnt that a girl hero is called a heroine and it freaked me out”
⁃ “memento memento me-“ “that’s actually the worst word i know so you can’t keep saying that” “oh, really.....? have you ever heard the term ‘racist’?”
⁃ “the person who invented the phrase ‘be yourself’ hadn’t met you!”
⁃ “you seem like the type of guy whose dad would throw him overboard as a joke but he would just drown”
⁃ “shout out to dream for twerking!”
⁃ “let’s talk......let’s talk about sex” “wonderful. what do you think about sex, lazarbeam?” “i ain’t saying SHIT in front of a sixteen year old”
⁃ “what the- i think i’m seeing things” “....tommy i told you not to drink the sea water” “well i DID drink the sea water because it TOLD ME TO”
⁃ “it’s like the movie when that guy gets stranded on an island and has sex with a coconut” “whAT?? dream- dream, you vastly misinterpreted this” “it one hundred percent does”
⁃ “oh mastICATE.....isn’t that when a fish turns inside out?”
⁃ “what are some bad words YOU know, clay?” “i don’t-“ “what about ‘terrorist’?”
⁃ “my mind has to be on the same frequency as jesus when he walked on water”
⁃ “you wanna know why i was late?” “no i really do-“ “i was having a MASSIVE poo. really just a HUGE poo”
⁃ “jUST CUZ YOU TALK ABOUT POO ONCE AND THEN YOU SEE A BIG GREEN BASTARD AMD YOUR LIFE IS FLASHING BEFORE YOUR EYES AND THEN YOU CANT REMEMBER- YOU CANT REMEMBER IF IT WAS YESTERDAY OR TOMORROW YOU HURT THAT WOMAN”
⁃ “i love america. mmmmm patriotism
⁃ “LIFE IS NOT A HAPPY SONG KERMIT THE FROG”
⁃ “please stop taking the cock”
⁃ “two four six eight who do we appreciate? not the government let’s gooooooo”
⁃ “oooo look at the dogs😍” “wHAAAAAT. WHAT. THERES ACTUALLY LIKE. A MILLION DOGS HERE. WHAT THE HELL.”
⁃ “yeahhhhh bitch i stab- i don’t stab women-“ “woooooooah tommy you stab women?” “heyyyy sapnap”
⁃ “do you know what happens whne you reach the top of the ladder? there’s only one place to go.” “.....side to side😨” “down.” “...i really thought you were gonna say side to side🥺”
⁃ “one last time.” “just like in hamilton😓”
⁃ “you don’t know how many times i’ve mistaken trees for hot women”
⁃ “ i don’t feel better i just destroyed penis”
⁃ “i’ve never seen a snail with bad morals”
⁃ “awwwwwwww😢 i’m doin’ drugs🤧 just like the good ol’ days😓” “.....define the ‘good old days’” “back when i did drugs”
⁃ “have you ever fought a baby? i have and it was trivially easy to defeat, phil.”
⁃ “the only other i egg i know about was the one i learnt about in school....not allowed to say which one....”
⁃ “did you know one of my new years resolutions is to be more like 2010 justin bieber?”
⁃ “apparently cats don’t lay eggs”
⁃ “thinking about trees- if i saw a tree with a beard mmmmmm...holy shit id hit it”
⁃ “we’re in hell dude. science doesn’t matter here”
⁃ “i cant die i cant die i’m GOD”
⁃ “hey pig your letter is the same as pussy, hmm?”
⁃ “are we cool are we COOL guys? CRYSTAL COOL like CRYSTAL METH”
⁃ “he- he’s crying because - because i killed his mother isn’t that right? mother dearest mother deadest mother gonest”
⁃ “bro ive been drinking since i was six and let me tell you...it’s not good to be drinking that young. led to some poor life decisions when i was 8” “what did you do” “i cant say” “...who did you hurt” “....only myself”
⁃ “je suis” “ay i know what that mean you prick” “what does it mean” “it means you’re racist dickhead”
⁃ “i’d never poo in the presence of a women- which is why i’m scared to get a girlfriend i think i’d just explode”
⁃ “biff tannen is one of my idols”
⁃ “black widow died and i thought ‘wow it should’ve been the man’ because he’s a man”
⁃ “there’s a character called captain america and i think he’s stupid”
⁃ “i’m a GOOD LAD i’ve got GOOD MORALS and if i’ve DONE SOMETHING WRONG it WASNT MY FAULT I JUST GOT A LITTLE EXCITED”
⁃ “sam....what’s the longest you’ve ever wiped your arse? for me it’s 48 minutes”
⁃ “why are you standing in the shitter?” “....that’s a SINK” “uhhh welllll” “hAVE YOU SHAT IN THE SINK?????”
⁃ “you’re like a living ghost” “...i think that’s called a human, tubbo”
⁃ “maybe i accidentally kill ranboo and we just never see him again *laughs* ay? and then i go ‘april foooools!!!’ and then i kill their child. i kill him”
⁃ “you built a penis” “it’s a PENIS OF SAFETY”
⁃ “i saw the penis of safety and i pressed mouse button four my friend”
⁃ “the penis on the other side of the river is larger” “ive heard that before....”
⁃ “you’ve turned the penis into a wall” “a wall of safety is better than a penis of safety” “i think the penis was better”
⁃ “if you wanna make a penis i know where we can make a penis and i know how big we can make it”
⁃ “i don’t conceptualize death but i think i just saw it!”
⁃ “yeah i- yeah i know i’m- my first impression on eret was making him read a shrek fan fiction so- i’m not one for first impressions”
⁃ “i-i’m scared for him- i’m scared OF him. yknow the first thing he did when he saw me was imMEDIATELY strip down then jump off then immediately die?”
⁃ “where are you?” “getting stabbed, one second”
⁃ “you’ve seen the joker?” “yea-“ “i resonate a lot with that man” “...oH. oh. that’s- that’s not-“
⁃ “he bURNT DOWN MY HOUSE” “out of LOVE”
⁃ “ohhhh my god stop making me play with the neighbor kid” “o-okay if you don’t go play with him i’m kicking you out of the house-“ “wHAT THE FUCK???”
⁃ “there’s a STRIP CLUB” “oh yeah for wood!” “are you into strippers?” “i mean all it does is make the wood look different so....yeah it doesn’t really do much”
⁃ “no no we have categories, we have the poo-saster- you might have to take a shower after-“ “no, no i’m gonna stop you right there”
⁃ “as i was saying you can have a 1-to-3 wiper, that’s an A-tier poo, my friend”
⁃ “i want you to eat your sock”
⁃ “you know i’m a child- i’m a minor” “sO AM I DICKHEAD”
⁃ “everyone is calling you dresus” “yeah i am”
⁃ “ayyyy ayyyy los DROGAS LOS DROGAS” “no no big q- she’s thirteen- how does this happen with every 13 year old girl you meet?”
⁃ “my poo has muscles like i do”
⁃ “i cant hear the words among us without crying they’ll say there are aliens among us and in the back youll just hear me *choking noises*”
⁃ “tubbo...tubbo is like...tubbo is like mary” “.....did you just call me the Virgin Mary?”
⁃ “i’m just saying, have you ever seen me and jesus in the same room?”
⁃ “do you smoke sam” “all the time”
⁃ “i thought you were talking about the- the speeeeed drug”
⁃ “have you ever sold drugs to kids sam?” “......no”
⁃ “we can’t let the girlboss rule because she will gatekeepe my feelings” “that would not be good”
⁃ “THEY DIDNT INVITE ME TO KILL ME???? NOW I HAVE FOMO”
⁃ “you have obviously taken part in scientology-“ “i have not-“ “you’ve donated to tom cruises cult shit”
⁃ “....am i worse than david dobrik?” “are- are we worse than david dobrik?” “oh- oh god”
⁃ “he has broke one of the rules of the hit best seller ‘the bible’- this kind of looks like a cock”
⁃ “well i’ve moved now, KING”
⁃ “what is an angsty teen and am i one? because when i USED to hang out with my friends they use the word angst a lot”
⁃ “yeah yeah yeah i bench”
⁃ “sam i think i’m angsty i think i’m an angsty tik tok teen looking for a community to help me out”
⁃ “i don’t think you’ve followed the train of logic all the way-“ “there’s a TRAIN INVOLVED????????”
⁃ “i’m like the orange fucker from that animated rom com”
⁃ “i’m under the influence of big cock”
⁃ “it’s meeee big cock man”
⁃ “i cant look away” “sam please use your twitter alt for this” “he’s horny on maaaainnnnn” “and what’s wrong with that?” “.......”
⁃ “you’re a FUCKING IDIOT” “IM NOT A FUCKING IDIOT, BIG COCK”
⁃ “i’m gonna call you ‘cockity’ big cock” “sHUT THE FUCK UP SHUT THE FUCK UP-“
⁃ “STOP LOOKING AT IT” “ITS SO VIBRANT”
⁃ “at least this guy doesn’t have a cock-“ “itS NOT A COCK” “horny on main jesus-“
⁃ “is that a cock” “SHUT THE FUCK UP”
⁃ “.....i wanna see the inside of it again do a split”
⁃ “okay sam-“ “tommy that guy wants your cock-“ “no- no he doesn’t sam”
⁃ “sam, sam and i need you to hear this....dont. act. up.” “i don’t act up-“ “you were acting up-“ “i-“ “you were caught in 8k.” “but- but we both agree it’s not a tie-“
⁃ “please don’t tell me to kill cockity i am overwhelmed”
⁃ “why is there an anus in my tie?”
⁃ “what are the legal implications of this?” “...i mean besides hell you’re good”
⁃ “whatre the legal implications?” “i mean usually that’s a no-no but today, today it’s fine” “yeahhh lets go murder his family”
⁃ “i’d be an antivax landlord”
⁃ “jesus never does drugs” “well- well you turned water into wine king and wine is alcohol”
⁃ “can you put on pants i can’t- i cant stop looking at it- sorry tommy i know you said-“ “yeah sam i know you tried-“
⁃ “you know i fuck with satan”
⁃ “i’m sorry jesus lucifer is just such a good man-“ “oh you- hold me BACK FROM THIS FUCKER HOLD ME BACK ILL SEND HIM TO HELL YOU LIKE HELL-“
⁃ “are you jesus or just a man who grew a beard and put on a suit?”
⁃ “even the guy with his cock out is telling you to stop-“ “oh jesus, and i mean jesus-“ “shUT THE FUCK UP MAN”
⁃ “the best best way to slander him is to stop his offspring; we need to kick him the balls.....no? not a good....? alright us four each take a ball-“
⁃ “......why did jesus give him four scrotums man🙁🙁”
55 notes · View notes
mandoalorian · 3 years
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I Believe In Love [Maxwell Lord x F!Reader] — Four: Lies
Summary: When you find your calling to leave Themyscira, you venture out to the World of Man with intentions of helping and healing a very specific person's relationship with his son. You've heard his voice before, but only in dreams. You've felt his pain and anguish and you've never been able to relate to anything more. But things don't come easy for you, and they certainly don't come easy for him either. [This series contains spoilers for WW84 and is my interpretation of what happens after the movie ends].
Warnings: brief mention of blood, allusions to an abusive household/family, mention of child custody battle, 80s typical misogyny, cursing.
Word count: 5,200>
Masterlist
I Believe In Love Masterlist
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-—-—-—-
He'd lied. You read the name over and over again, the crumpled letter shaking in your hands. Lorenzano. Lorenzano. Lorenzano. He wasn't Max Lord, he was Maxwell Lorenzano and you had no idea how he could lie to you - or better yet, why he would lie to you? There was a reason for everything. You might’ve been new to the world of man, and you might not yet understand their conditions and way of life, but it didn’t change the fact that this hurt. He was your first friend - your first real friend who wasn’t a child. He accepted you into his home, and he even believed you when you told him who you are. You had opened up about being a literal goddess from the secret haven Themyscira, and he hadn’t even told you his real name.
And then, your visions of him… memories and dreams… they hit you one by one. Now you could finally put a face to the voice that had been haunting you. He was the child you saw when you had fallen asleep in Black Gold Cooperative, the child who was getting bullied for the clothes he wore, and his shoes. You felt foolish not realising it sooner. The image of ‘Little Lorenzano’ getting tormented perfectly paralleled the way Alistair had gotten cornered in the park earlier today. Your heart ached for them both.
Max Lord was clearly putting on a brave face in front of you. But now that you knew who he really was, you knew that he was deeply hurting, and he needed your help. He might not realise it, but this is why you were here. You’d come to the world of man to fulfil your duty as the Goddess of Home and Hearth for a reason and Zeus had deliberately connected you with Alistair and Maxwell. This was your purpose. They were your purpose.
You smoothed out the letter to the best of your ability, deciding that if you were to help him, you should probably read it. You had hope that it would help you understand things and allow you to piece together the puzzle. You glanced back at the speckles of his blood in the sink, and the smashed vase on the floor. Whatever was in this letter had clearly angered him.
I, Theodore Thomas IV, share a bond with Miss Grey and recognise that she is a caring and devoted mother. We are in full belief that Alistair Lorenzano would be better off, in the care of his biological mother.
A bond. You were quickly able to identify that Julianna Grey was the mother of Alistiar, although the bond between she and Theodore Thomas IV had not yet become clear to you. Your heart would usually find warmth in the revelation that Julianna was, in fact a ‘caring and devoted’ mother, but instead it grew cold. As the goddess of home and hearth, you could sense the lie in his words. You wanted to believe that Julianna was a good mother, but your intuition said otherwise. These were your powers - and there was no way you were wrong about this. Despite the immediate concern you had for Allistair, you pushed the feeling to the back of your brain and forced yourself to continue reading the letter.
Mr Maxwell Lorenzano and Miss Julianna Grey divorced on the seventh month of 1980 after being married for two years. Miss Grey notes that their relationship was strained since the beginning, with Mr Lorenzano too preoccupied with his career to focus on his family.
Marriage - Max and Julianna were married. It was something you had read about back on Themyscira when you had spent time educating yourself on the ‘way of man’. Marriage was, supposedly, a sacred ritual that joined together the spirits of two people in the name of love. And love was the fundamental principle that would create a family. At the core of a family, was love, and that was the most important thing. Your eyes flicked back up the final sentence of the first paragraph; “We are in full belief that Alistair Lorenzano would be better off, in the care of his biological mother.” You couldn’t help but shake your head profusely. These people wanted to take Alistair away from Max? There was no way. Theodore may think that Julianna deserves Alisitair, but it was never going to be about ‘deserve’. It could only be about love. And you knew for certain that Maxwell loved Alistair with his whole heart.
I have known Miss Grey since 1980, after working on her and Mr Lorenzano’s divorce case. As not only her partner, but also a trusted lawyer of our capitol’s legal enforcement, I can whole-heartedly ensure that sole custody of Alistair Lorenzano must be granted to Miss Julianna Grey.
Divorce was something you weren’t so familiar with, and you figured it should be something you ask Maxwell about at a later date. It was at this moment you learned that Theodore was Julianna’s partner, lover, even. No wonder he thought so highly of her. There was no question about it. You knew you had to pay Julianna and Theodore a visit to see for yourself. You had to see the truth.
Please find us at the District Columbia Court, D.C., in one week from the date stated on the letter. If you make no effort to show and fight your case, you will be banished from seeing Alistair until he turns eighteen years of age.
Banishment? The thought of splitting up Max and Alistair filled you with the most excruciating pain. You couldn’t let this happen. You wouldn’t let this happen.
Sincerely,
Ted
So Theodore was Ted and Maxwell was Max. If you had known that names in the world of man could fluctuate so much, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten mad so mad at Max for lying about his name. After catching the address on the envelope, you engrained it in your memory and carefully folded up the letter and placed it in the pocket of the Maxwell’s pinstripe shirt that he had given you to wear. Now you just had to figure out a way to get to the address on the letter.
You spent some time sweeping up the shattered glass on the floor, and cleaned up the sink before padding back into the living room and sliding your feet back into your gladiator sandals, buckling them up. You even picked up the lasso of truth and tied it around your waist so it acted like a makeshift belt on you. There was no way you were going to leave it behind. You took another look at the photo frame that was on the small table next to the couch and picked it up. You smiled as you felt the exact same love that Maxwell felt when he was in the photo, holding baby Alistair. Just looking at the family portrait filled you with so much joy. You knew that Max’s love for his son was genuine.
Turning the frame over, you opened it up and took the glossy polaroid out, placing it in the same pocket of your shirt. You loved the photo and you wanted to take it wherever you went. 
It was cold outside, and the sky was a deep shade of blue. There was definitely a draft, and you wondered if you should’ve changed back into your Amazonian warrior gear. The oversized shirt that Maxwell had given you, as well as the gladiator sandals, didn’t really provide you with the greatest amount of warmth. You weren’t even wearing anything on your legs.
A small old lady with a zimmer frame was walking down the street. “Oh wow!” she exclaimed, looking you up and down, presumably judging your outfit of choice. “You have very nice legs, but aren’t you cold?”
You looked down at your legs, noticing the goose pimples, and nodded in confirmation. “Yes, but I’ll be okay. Do you think you could help me with something?” you asked curiously, watching as she raised her eyebrows.
“Me? Help you? What could little old me-”
You took the letter out of your pocket and pointed to the address. “How do I get here?”
She adjusted her glasses and squinted. “Thomas Family Lawyers,” she read out loud, before turning back to you. “Honey, this law firm is on the other side of Georgetown. You best call a cabbie, especially this late in the evening.”
“A cabbie?” you asked, shivering in the cold. “I’m sorry… I’m not from round here.” you shrugged helplessly.
“Let me help you.” the old lady said, reaching into her purse and bringing out an enormous 1984 brick-like cell phone. The contraption shocked you, and you even wondered how she had fit it in her bag. She pulled out the antenna and began to dial a number. “Hi, could I get a pre-paid taxi to Thomas Family Law Firm, Georgetown? Thank you,” She put the phone back in her purse and offered you a smile. “A cab won’t be long. I’m Mrs Stagg, by the way. Might I enquire… why are you going to a family law firm when you’re not even from the area?”
“To help a friend.” you returned the smile.
“Does your friend live in this neighbourhood?” 
“He does. Um… his name is Max Lord?” you explained but the way it left your lips made it sound more like a question. Lord? Lorenzano? What difference did it make?
“Ah,” was the small sound that emitted from Mrs Stagg’s throat. “Max Lord, the oil guy. My son Simon is- was an investor for Maxwell’s company. From what I heard, the company is bust. A joke. Max Lord has been scamming the entire nation for years.”
“Scamming?” you asked, confused. “I don’t understand.”
“Black Gold Cooperative have shares in oil fields all around the world, only, the oil fields have completely dried up, you know - with the Cold War and all. But he kept going… kept making those silly infomercials and selling his dream. ‘Anything you want, you can have it.’ or something like that.” Mrs Stagg scoffed, shaking her head incredulously. You recognised the quote from when you had seen him all suited up on the television. 
“I don’t… I don’t understand. Why would he lie to the whole country?” you beckoned further, despite the conversation bringing you some uncomfort. Max had seemed like a genuinely good guy and a loving father up until this point. 
“For money, I suppose. That’s all it’s ever about with folk like him. Money. I chastise my son for it too. He’s the CEO of Stagg Industries and the only reason I could live in such a beautiful neighbourhood like this one. He bought my home here,” she beamed proudly. “But, I don’t know much about Max Lord. Don’t really see him around on the streets either. He must be cooped up in his office most of the time. Hey, you’re his friend. Maybe you should ask him why he’s nothing but a low-life conman.” 
Her words stung, and they weren’t even about you. You were completely lost for words, and surprised that she had so much hate in her heart for Max. Granted, if he was rivals with her son, it would make sense, but she did raise many questions that concerned you greatly. When the taxi pulled up, she paid the driver and helped you into the passenger seat. “I don’t know Max Lord,” she whispered from the other side of the car door. “But please darling, be careful.” She warned you before the cabbie whisked you away.
Your concept of time was slightly askew, but you figured the journey to the law firm lasted twice as long as the journey from Black Gold to Max’s home. You looked out the window taking in the stunning city at night. The buildings were all lit up and reflected against the windows, creating a glitter in your eye. There was nothing like this on Themyscira. No tall skyscrapers, no enormous shopping malls or company buildings. D.C. was booming, and it was beautiful. The journey allowed you to process Mrs Stagg’s words and think even more about Max. Clearly, both Julianna and Theodore had their reasons not to like Maxwell, and now, so did Mrs Stagg and her son Simon. You had to speak to Max and confront him. You knew there was more to him than what meets the eye.
Thomas Family Lawyer’s was a big building, not as big as Black Gold Cooperative, but it was still big. Just as you went through the revolving doors (which you had now grown accustomed to, due to your time spent and Max’s office) a group of girls began to file out. Whilst Raquel had been somewhat confused by your presence, these girls shot you the most evil of stares.
“Do you know what time it is? Office hours are closed. Why are you here?” One girl with sleek black hair spat coldly. You practically winced at the malice in her voice.
“Oh, I’m here to see Theodore Thomas?” you said slowly, nervously biting your lip.
“Who are you?” quizzed the same ebony haired girl.
“I’m a friend of Max Lord.” was the only thing you could come out with. Maxwell had warned you to refrain from identifying yourself as the ‘goddess of home and hearth’ in front of the public. He told you that people won’t believe him like he does, and that they’ll think you’re crazy. You had no choice but to believe him.
“Max Lord!” a red haired girl gasped, and a shorter blonde girl slapped her hand over the redhead’s mouth. “Sorry,” the redhead muffled as the blonde girl removed her hand. “He’s just so sexy.”
“But you know we’re not supposed to like him.” The blonde girl hissed.
“Huh?” you asked, knotting your eyebrows together. “Not supposed to?”
The ebony haired girl let out a longing groan. “Will the both of you just shut up?” she grimaced, glaring at the other two girls before looking back at you with that same mean stare. “Turn left, his office is the big one at the bottom of the corridor. You’re lucky he’s working late tonight.” 
“Yeah, on his girlfriend’s case.” The redhead said weakly.
“Can you not keep your mouth shut?” Snapped the black haired girl. “Why would you say that in front of this hobo stranger when she’s just said she’s Max Lord’s friend. She doesn’t need to know that Mr Thomas is working on the custody case! It’s a wonder he hasn’t fired you yet for being so stupid.”
You had zoned out of the pointless conversation about mid-way through anyway. Those girls were nothing but rude to each other anyway. You slipped past them and down the corridor until you reached two double doors, not hesitating for a second to open them up.
There, with his head buried down into a pile of papers, was a dark haired man in a tight fitted suit. He abruptly looked up when you had entered his office, his mustache wavering in bewilderment as he took in the appearance of a girl who was wearing nothing but an oversized button up shirt and brown strapped gladiator sandals. “C-can I help you?” he gulped, relishing the sight of his body like it was the sweetest view he’d ever come across. You crossed your bare legs together awkwardly, feeling slightly vulnerable by the way he was staring at you. 
“Are you Theodore Thomas IV?” you asked.
“I am.” the dark haired man confirmed, shuffling around in his leather seat.
You nodded, turning around to close the double doors behind you and walking over to his desk. You took out the crumpled up letter that had been addressed to Maxwell Lorenzano and slid it over the expensive oak wood. “What is this?” you questioned. Theodore took out his reading glasses before analysing it.
“Where did you get this letter?”
“Max Lord is my friend.” you gulped, folding your arms over your chest. “And this letter…”
“You mean Maxwell Lorenzano?” Theodore scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Listen, I’m not here to discuss that low-life loser, okay? I have more pressing matters to deal with.”
“So do I.” you persisted. “This letter…”
“Unless you’re his lawyer, and I doubt you are,” he snarled, looking at you up and down with the utmost disdain. “I will not be discussing the letter with you. Friend or not, it’s confidential.”
“I’m here to help him.” you gritted out, unable to believe the anger that dripped from your own tongue. It was true, you were angry. You were angry at the way everyone was so against Maxwell Lord, and you were angry at the fact the reason remained so unclear. Every new person you met didn’t like him, and you just wanted to know why.
Your words did pique the curiosity of Theodore, however. He raised an eyebrow and leaned over his desk, his gaze not breaking from you once. “Help him? You mean, you’ll be representing him in court?” You weren’t sure what that meant, but you nodded your head. If this was the only way you could get information out of Theodore Thomas IV, then so be it. “Do you even have any legal experience?”
“What? No. I told you, I’m just his friend.”
Theodore let out a boisterous laugh, the level of volume making you flinch. “Shit, he can’t even afford his own lawyer. I didn’t realise it was that bad,” he assumed. “Excuse me for one second.” he pointed a finger and dialled a number on the telephone.
Meanwhile, Maxwell was Julianna’s home. When Alistair heard his dad’s voice, he came running downstairs to greet him. “Daddy!” he called excitedly, running into his father’s arms. “You came back!” Maxwell picked up Alistair and spun him around, pressing a loving kiss to his son’s forehead.
“What do you want Maxwell?” Julianna sighed, tapping her foot impatiently against the marble floor of the lobby.
“To talk,” Max answered, placing Alistair back down on the floor. “Just us two. Uh- is Ted here?”
“Lucky for you he’s working late at the firm. Working on our damn case,” Julianna shook her head before turning to face her son. “Alistair, go to your room.” she commanded.
“But I want to see daddy!” Alistair cried, tears pricking his dark brown eyes.
“He can stay.” Maxwell negotiated but the comment was completely lost on Julianna.
“Go. To. Your. Room.” Julianna barked angrily, which sent a frightened Alistair running back to his bedroom.
“Shit Julianna, he’s just a kid. No need to talk to him like that.” Maxwell frowned, his ex-wife’s tone reminding him of his own father’s.
“Now Maxwell, I know you’re not giving me parenting advice, are you?” she asked sarcastically. Maxwell noted how bitter she had become, or perhaps, how bitter she always was. “I’m assuming you’re here to talk about the case. Try and change my mind. Well, you can’t.”
“Julianna, I know things have been rough between us since the divorce but I just want what’s best for Alistair. I love him so much.” Maxwell revealed.
“Bullshit!” Julianna scowled. “All you do, Max, is speak bullshit. You want what’s best for him? You’ll allow me and Ted to have full custody of Alistair. You’re a shit father and you know it.”
“I know- I know I’m messed up. I mean, I’ve messed up in the past but, something happened. Something inside me woke up and I’m ready to step up Julianna. I’ve changed, please just believe me. I love Ali-”
“You don’t deserve him,” Julianna growled. “You know what Maxwell? You’re nothing but a deadbeat. Just like your father was.”
Maxwell felt his face turn red with rage at his ex-wife's comment. He clenched his fists so hard his knuckles had even turned white. “I am nothing like my father!” Maxwell yelled defensively as the anger bubbled within him. He wanted to cry. Every time a memory of his own abusive father came up, it made Max want to curl up into a whole and cry. It broke him.
Before Julianna could reply, the phone on the wall began to ring. Julianna answered it.
“Hey, Julie?” Theodore was on the line, still laughing from his talk with you. “Baby, you won’t believe this.”
“What is it?” Julianna asked hesitantly, twirling the wire of the phone around her finger.
“Some girl- some half naked girl is here- in my office claiming to be a friend of Maxwell,” Theodore spluttered. You frowned at his tone of voice as he talked about you, right in front of you. Julianna turned to Maxwell in bewilderment, who was just standing there and had no idea what was going on. “She’s saying she’s going to represent him during the custody trial.”
“What?” Julianna spat. “Who the fuck is she?”
“I don’t know! Never seen her in my life. Pretty little thing though, I guessed maybe he’s fucking her? Not sure. She says she’s living with him.”
“Living-” Julianna couldn’t help but repeat her boyfriend’s words. “Teddy, Maxwell is here. Right now. Can you come home and… bring her with you? I want to have words with her.”
“Got it. See you soon sweetie.” Theodore finished before hanging up the phone.
Julianna turned to Max. “That was Theodore. He says some half naked girl has shown up to his office claiming to be a friend of yours.”
Maxwell’s eyes went comically wide as his greatest fears became realised. “What? No, no- there’s no way. That’s impossible. I told her to stay at home- how the hell did she get to Thomas Family Lawyer’s?”
“You’re asking me?” Julianna gasped in disbelief. “Who the hell is she, Max?”
Max was so confused and shocked, he couldn’t even find words. If you had found your way to Theodore’s office, that meant you had read the letter. It also meant that you knew his name. And finally, it meant that you had completely invaded your privacy. Part of Maxwell was mad, but an even bigger part of him was confused as to how you ended up on the other side of Georgetown in the office of his ex-wife’s current boyfriend. You weren’t even from round here, hell, you’d only gotten into a car for the first time today. Julianna and Theodore weren’t the only ones who had a thousand questions. Maxwell did too.
When you arrived at the Thomas family home, you looked at it with complete adoration, just like how you looked at Maxwell’s home. It was extensive in size, with beautiful pillars and adorned with flowers on every corner. Maxwell and Julianna were waiting for you and Ted in the dining room. Ted hung up his suit jacket on the coat peg in the lobby and you slowly followed him into the dining room. Unlike Maxwell’s home, which was covered with photographs of Alistair, you couldn’t spot a single picture of the bright eyed child in any of the rooms you passed. You wondered why.
When you entered the room, Julianna’s and Maxwell’s jaws both dropped in unison. “She’s wearing your shirt!” Julianna screeched, pointing her finger accusingly at you. 
“Yeah? So fucking what?” Maxwell shot back. “I didn’t realise you can police my wardrobe now!”
Your gaze flicked between Maxwell and Julianna who were already arguing with each other. "Can we settle down?" Theodore intervened, placing his briefcase down on the table.
Maxwell turned to you and took a deep breath. "Why- why didn't you put on some clothes before you left the house?" he sighed, closing his eyes as he tried to keep his composure.
"I- I didn't have any clothes and. I didn't know if it was normal to dress like this in the world of man." you admitted sheepishly, feeling embarrassed that you'd made a fool of yourself and seemingly Maxwell too.
"The world of what?" Julianna scrunched up her nose. "She has no clothes? Maxwell, where did you pick this whore up?"
You stiffened up at her harsh words and Maxwell's dark eyes snapped open. "Don't call her that," he warned. "She's… different. Look, I can't explain now but-"
Julianna turned to Theodore. "I want her out of my house. She's a fucking prostitute."
"She's not a prostitute," Maxwell sighed, running his fingers through his dark blonde hair as the stress engulfed him. "She's just a friend."
"I want her out." Julianna reiterated, her voice like venom.
"I- I can wait by the car," you told Maxwell timidly. He didn't reply, instead just putting his head in his hands. You turned to Julianna and Theodore. "I apologise for any intrusion I may have brought upon you both." you said before walking away.
Even before you got to the front door, you'd heard them start fighting again. Maxwell wasn't yelling, but Julianna was so loud and accusing. You couldn't help but feel like she brought around such a toxic environment.
As you leaned against Maxwell's car, you looked up at the upstairs window. It was illuminated, signifying that the light was on. It was so cold and you couldn't help but sigh as you waited for your friend to return and take you home— if he still liked you, that is. After everything that had gone on, you wouldn't be surprised if he just left you on a street corner to fend for yourself. 
You were delighted when you saw Alistair in the illuminated window. He poked his head around the curtains, smiling and waving immediately when he saw you. You grinned back, thankful to see the sweet boy and to know that he was okay. The smile on his face dropped and although you couldn't hear what was going on back in the house, you could tell by his expression that there was something wrong. Alistair disappeared from the curtains and you began to untie the lasso of Hestia from your waist. Swinging the rope around in the air, you attached it to Alistair's balcony and swung yourself up to the third storey of the Thomas family home. You quietly tapped on his window. After only a few seconds Alistair returned and let you in.
You clambered back into the house, finding yourself in the little boys bedroom. "Hey Alistair, how you doing?" you smiled, kneeling down and giving your friend a hug.
"I'm good, I'm so glad to see you again!" Alistair confessed with a toothy grin. "How did you get up here?" Alistair asked curiously, stepping out onto the balcony and looking at the long way down from where you had been standing by his father's car.
You gulped. "Can you keep a secret?" you whispered. Alistair nodded enthusiastically. "Okay." you showed Alistair your lasso, and he watched it with bright eyes as it glowed gold. If you could trust Max, you knew for a fact you could certainly trust Alistair. After all, they were your purpose. They were the reason you had found yourself in the world of man.
"Whoa, what is it?" Alistair asked, pointing his finger hesitantly, as if he wanted to touch it but not sure if it would hurt him.
"It's magical," you revealed. "My mother Hestia gave me it. It lets people see the truth, and speak the truth. It knows when you're lying."
"...And it helps you climb up really tall buildings? Like Spiderman?" Alistair asked with wide eyes.
You giggled. "Yes."
"Can I try?" Alistair beckoned further.
"Maybe one day," you promised him. "It can be difficult to learn, but I'd love to teach you." 
You and Alistair both gasped as you listened in on what was going downstairs. You heard footsteps, and it sounded like Max was leaving. You rose to your feet and approached the window again, unravelling your lasso. "Hey, I have to go now. Listen, you can't tell Julianna or Ted that I was up here, okay? I don't think they like me."
"Oh, they don't like anyone who's associated with daddy." Alistair frowned, but nodded understandingly. "Are you going home with daddy?"
"I hope so." you replied, because there was really no way of telling where you stood with Maxwell at this point in time.
"Good," Alistair beamed, and in that moment, you recognised his smile to be the spitting double of his father's. "Because I like it when you're around daddy. He's not as miserable."
You tilted your head but had no time to question Alistair because you heard the front door open. Swinging back on your lasso, you attached it to the branch of a tree and dropped back down to the front of the porch where Maxwell's car was parked. Wrapping your lasso back around your waist, you pretended like you hadn't moved from the car— like you had been waiting for him this entire time.
"Good night!" Maxwell called but earned no response, only the slam of the front door. He sighed deeply and slumped his shoulders in defeat before turning to face you. His lips were curled into a frown and he shook his head as he approached you, sliding past you and unlocking the car door. "Get in." he told you, to which you obliged and slipped into the passenger seat.
Maxwell dropped his head to the wheel of the car in frustration. He wanted to scream. Cry. Yell. Curse. He hated this. He hated having to fight for what was already his. He needed Alistair— his life would be empty without his son. There was no question about it. And unfortunately for Max, he was beginning to lose all hope.
"Are you okay?" You asked, feeling as though the question was a stupid one considering the disheveled look on Maxwell's face. You placed a hand on his back with full intention to be comforting. He didn't reply. After a few seconds of silence, you heard his sobs. You heard his whimpers and chokes. "Oh Max." you whispered quietly, rubbing his back.
"I can't— I can't fucking do this," Maxwell cried, tears dripping down his cheeks and falling onto the steering wheel. "They're right— what they say about me— they're all right. I'm a monster."
You winced, shaking your head at his comment. "You are not a monster." you assured him.
"You don't even know me," Maxwell huffed before glaring at you, the tears still falling. "You're just— you're just some random girl who came into my life at the wrong fucking time and— I don't even know why you're here. Why are you here?" He said your name like it was poison and the desperation in his voice was enough to make your heart ache.
You swallowed. "When I found out your name, your real name, I knew for certain… Zeus brought me to you and Alistair for a reason. Everything is so clear now. Max, I'm here to help you."
"I'm screwed— we’re screwed. It's pointless. There's nothing we can do. We can't go up against them. Julianna is a fucking psycho and Ted is one of the best family lawyers in the state—"
"And I'm the daughter of Zeus and Hestia. I'm the Goddess of Home and Hearth and I will not let them rip you away from Alistair." you promised with pure determination in your voice. The change of your tone was enough to make Maxwell stop crying and look up to you like you were his saviour. His angel. And despite everything that happened, despite the feeling of complete hopelessness, he believed you.
The war began now.
-—-—-—-
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i need a plot for this
yall so ive been trying really hard to get back into writing and i went to a writing camp this summer. im going to post a poem that i wrote there later bc im super proud of it but right now i have something else i need help with. SO basically there was a prompt about someone finding a letter or a note. that’s the prompt. so i wrote something, really liked it BUT I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE TO TAKE IT FROM HERE. my basic ideas involve the two characters meeting each other again to do SOMETHING WHICH I DONT KNOW and slowly arcane (youll see when you read the story below) thaws and falls in love with kalon and kalon has always been in love with her and its like best friends to enemies to friends to lovers ya know? ANYWAY if you dont hate me for being inactive and needy, please read this and help me. 
Dear Arcane,
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? 10 years. Wow. I don’t even know if you’ll ever get this, you could’ve moved. You could be dead. Oh god, that’s dark. You’re not dead, someone would’ve told me, I’m sure. So that must mean that there’s a good chance you have this, but I’m not even sure if you’ll read it.
He was right, as he most often was. Arcane had not planned to read the letter from the moment she read her name on the envelope, written in a neat sort of messy handwriting that could only come from one person. The letter had been sitting at her desk for a week before memories began to drown her and she knew she had to open it.
That’s not the point though, I’m sure you’ll read this. You’ve always been a sucker for the intimacy of written letters. Maybe that’s why I wrote to you instead of calling.
Arcane closed her eyes, the pounding of the memories at the door slowly consuming her. She took a deep breath and let them in. The whispers started to fill the room, every word echoing off the walls, like her past had become a living, breathing thing in her room. How could he write her now? After all these years. Anger reared it's small head in the back of her mind. How could he be so casual as if he wasn't the boy who ripped her heart out and tore it to pieces. 
Maybe it’s because I did read all the letters you wrote to me. Even after the voicemails stopped filling my phone and the emails ran dry, your letters kept coming.
She remembers writing those letters, the pen shaking in her hand as it hit the paper. She remembers wondering what you said to someone like him, a friend who left you behind. The squeeze in her chest that tightened each time he didn’t reply. The break in her heart when the last letter she ever wrote was returned to her doorstep.
If you’ve read this far without tearing my letter to pieces, then I would say this is a good start to our reunion. I’ve missed you. Your stubborn ways, always trying to keep me safe. But you always came with me wherever I went anyway. I miss your secret smile, the one you saved just for me. The treehouse we built in your yard. Do you miss that? I wonder if you wonder about me. I wonder if I can even ask that of you.
She did miss them. But, those things that she missed were long gone. The treehouse was overgrown with vines, Arcane was sure you couldn’t even get into it anymore. She went with him on his stupid adventures because what would she do if he left and met new people? He would leave her and she would be alone. So she desperately followed him blindly, hoping it would keep him close. Arcane missed her secret smile, the genuine one she had always saved for him. He missed it. How could he miss something that he destroyed. With his one and only letter to her, he demolished any leftover love for him that hid in her heart. He couldn’t ask if Arcane wondered about him. That wasn’t fair. That night, ten years ago, was still a raw wound in her soul that she was pretty sure would never heal.
~
The rain was relentless that night, banging against every edge of the house, but a little girl was waiting by the door, not even flinching as the lightning and thunder clapped furiously. Arcane peeked her head above the window frame to find the mailman running through the storm, his frantic steps pounding through the floor of the house. Her eyes lit up with a hope that was slowly fading with each mail drop. She opened the door and hid the small smile that started to spread up her face with a cough.
“Hi, Dan!” Arcane’s voice gave away the excitement that was flooding her system.
“Hey, Arcane.” Dan couldn’t help the pitiful grin that he gave her. She waited by the door for him every day and each day there was no letter for her. It must be soul-crushing, he thought, waiting for a letter that never comes.
“Is there…?” Arcane was practically on her tiptoes at this point. Dan rifled through the letters, dread settling as her name wasn’t there. Again. And then there was a squeal. “Oh, Dan! I found it! I knew- I knew it- I told them!” Her sentences didn’t even come out fully as she beamed, her smile brighter than any ray of the sun.
Arcane had run into the house, a breeze following in her wake. Plopping down into the soft plush couch, she ripped open the envelope, not caring about the paper that flew everywhere in the room. A paper fluttered out, floating toward the ground. Arcane grabbed it, hands shaking, she could practically feel the sweat dripping down her face. Words were the easiest way to break someone. The letter only contained eleven words, yet they would stick with her for the rest of her life.
Stop writing me. None of it was real. You were nothing.
Eleven words. And they shattered her. Crumbling, shattering, a million pieces breaking. Sobs racked through her whole body, her chest shaking and trembling with each broken breath. She caught her face in the mirror hanging off the pale wall and didn’t recognize the girl that stared back. You were nothing. A scream tore through her, the ache of her heart so raw that even the sun seemed to cry, rain dripping onto the panes of the windows. And slowly, so very slowly, Arcane buried the ache and gathered the shattered pieces of her heart and encased them in an impenetrable cage, never to opened again.
~
The ache was still present now, ten years after the letter had arrived. The dullness of her buried hurt made her clench her fists around the letter that sat in her hand now, the same lopsided handwriting adorning it.
But, that’s not why I’m writing this letter. I’m writing this with an actual purpose, if you can imagine that. I didn't just write to rehash our friendship. 
Arcane could feel her eyes narrowing, fighting the urge to roll her eyes at the inanimate piece of paper. An actual purpose? To break her heart all over again? This time she did roll her eyes, even though no one was there to see it. But, it wasn’t the fact that he wrote her after all these years or that his tone was friendly throughout that made her body freeze. It was the last line that had the hairs on the back of her neck standing to attention.
In all the years that Arcane had known him, he'd never been very dependent. He often just struggled in silence and figured them out on his own. Not once, not ever, had has asked for help. But, there the sentence was inked in his slanted, loopy writing. 
I need your help.
Love,
Kalon
  ~~everything below here is stuff that doesnt have to be a part of the story but i still liked it and where it was going (idk please give me ideas)~~
The quiet, shock of the room seemed to weigh on Arcane. She flopped back onto her bed, the soft pillows cushioning her landing. I need your help. Those few, simple words, tugged at the strings that bound her heart. He needed her. The thought was fleeting as just as quickly as it came, it left. In its spot was anger. Now he needed her? After all those years when she needed him? What did he do then? Nothing. And that’s what she was going to do now. She huffed in satisfaction, tossing the envelope to the side. Her fingers reached into her hair, massaging her head. There were too many things to think about right now. Arcane squeezed her eyes shut as memories stung her eyes in the form of tears. 
~
“Please, don’t leave me.” Arcane had whispered, her small breaths filling the one room of the treehouse. 
“I don’t have a choice. You know I don’t want to go.” Kalon’s voice broke and he looked away so Arcane couldn’t see the tears in his eyes. It was silent. 
“We’ll still be best friends right?” 
“Yeah.” Kalon’s reply didn’t hold much conviction, causing Arcane to look over at him, confused, glossy eyes narrowing. 
“To the moon and back, Kal, remember?” She said, her tone desperate. It was a promise they made one night as they were watching some cheesy movie on the old television set. The boy had told the girl that he loved her too ‘the moon and back’. Kalon had then explained that the two characters said that so that they would never be apart. They could meet at the same moon, always and then they could go back. And then, they would never be fully apart. Arcane had liked that. So naturally,  she had grabbed Kal’s face and made him promise that they would go ‘to the moon and back’ if they were ever apart. It became a goodbye for them, a way of saying ‘I’ll see you soon’. 
“Yeah,” Kal had replied, a smile barely curling through his lips, “I’ll race ya there.”
~
She wasn’t sure how long she lay there, letting her memories flow down her cheeks and into the bedsheets, but eventually she had to get up. She pulled herself up and off the bed, limbs protesting at the use. She just needed a few days is all, then she wouldn’t even remember what she was crying for.  Kalon didn’t mean anything to her anymore.
thank you for reading this far, i love all of you. just throw out ideas please. or give me some advice, i would love that. whether its about my writing or the plot i would love to have tips and constructive criticism on how to get better! tagging some moots who i hope dont hate me after this below the cut:
@natashxromanovf @pad-foots @griffxnnage @voidmalfoy @flxss-bxbblxs @alwaysreading @herondalesunsetcurve THANKS YALL I LOVE YOU MORE THEN I EXPRESS AND I DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT DESERVE ALL OF YOU AND YOUR LOVE
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orionwhispers · 4 years
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Tear In My Heart // Alfie Solomons
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(A/N - hehe im back. im working on a bucky oneshot and a tommy series but both of them are super long and i wanted to take a little breather. this was supposed to be a drabble but you know me... ive got a few more ideas for shorter imagines like this with tommy and alf, requests are open! hope you enjoy. pls reblog and comment. love u see u soon xoxxo - also this is like the smuttiest thing ive written even though its not explicit but wow who am i)
warnings: violence, mention of fights and blood, protective alfie, heavily implied smut, lots of terrible language.
You knew something was wrong when Ollie practically crashed through the door. He took off part of the frame and made the hinges tear from the wood, nails and screws clattering onto the ground. The afternoon had been wonderful, perhaps too wonderful, and as always, real life found a way to shatter your rose tinted glasses.
It was starting to fall into autumn, the air chilly but comfortable, the streets slick with rain and the leaves turning into a sweet, buttery caramel all around you. The house was silent save for the birds singing in the trees and the rattling whip of the wind against your windows. The quiet was a perk of having house out in the country, far away from anything and anyone. Just the way he liked it.
Because to him, all he needed was his girl.
Well, and his dog.
The sun had barely risen when you got up - much to your husbands protests. You felt him stirring from beside you, a solid wall of warmth as he snaked his arms around your waist and pressed sleepy, half drunk kisses onto your spine. You laughed tiredly as his hands curled over everything they could reach, long calloused fingers roaming against your bare skin. He grumbled as you swung your legs from under the duvet and onto the floor, throwing on his white cotton shirt and letting it fall to your knees, trying to ignore the threats he was mumbling about what he was going to do to your boss for making you come in so early.
He made one last feeble attempt to grab you, exhaustion clouding his brain so he could do no more than swipe at the top of your thigh, making you laugh at his wandering hands.
“Stay.” He said, voice raspy and muffled by his pillow.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“Alf.” You sighed playfully, grabbing your strawberry slip dress and beaded heels and fur coat, darting into the bathroom to wash up and change. Through the noise of the running water you could hear the bed springs creak as he shifted, the entire frame groaning almost as much as him. Cyril watched you with his big chestnut eyes from the doorway as you fluffed up your hair and patted on coffee coloured lipstick, pinching the apples of your cheeks for a little flush.
You rummaged through your handbag as you made your way to the bedroom door, lost in your thoughts until you heard him speak, all low and gravelly and sending shivers up your spine.
“Oi. C’mere you.”
You rolled your eyes but walked into his outstretched arms, his body completely slumped and covered in thick duvets and pillows, just his tattooed skin and coarse, tousled hair poking out from underneath. He pulled you close into him, smelling like green apples and rum and sex and sea salt, like home. He mumbled something that you couldn’t quite make out, the sun starting to shine through the cracks in the curtains and as you started to get up he tugged you in tighter, placing messy, sloppy kisses down your throat and onto your collarbones.
You smacked his shoulder, grabbing his jaw and holding it still, placing a kiss on his lips, feeling him smile against your mouth.
“Bye, my love.”
“Hmph.”
You made it halfway down the hall before you heard: “Fred is driving you. Don’t even bloody think about walking alone at this time.” Followed by grunts and groans and finally deep, throaty snores.
———————————————————-
You accompanied your boss to a few meetings, taking notes and helping him check stock. After a few hours filled with cinnamon lattes and finger cramps and ink stains, he took you aside at the office and gave you the rest of the day off. You were a little suspicious, and had a feeling his good deed might have had something to do with your slightly intimidating husband, but you accepted it nonetheless and headed to Camden after lunch.
The air was brisk and you pulled your scarf tighter around your throat, dodging puddles and fat droplets of rain as they dropped from the trees. You stopped off at a little cafe on your side of town, buying turkey sandwiches, a garden salad and a platter of seasonal fruit, ignoring the fried sugar donuts and sausage rolls and thick, crispy cuts of bacon. A routine check up to the doctor had lead to Alfie being told that perhaps a healthier lifestyle would benefit some of his ailments, so despite his grumbling and childish ways you were doing your best to make sure he was eating his five a day - no matter how much he protested.
But at the last second you grabbed a cherry jam donut. His favourite.
The rain had become torrential by the time you left, the clouds morphing into a block of ashen, sooty grey, teetering on black. Once upon a time the impending storm would have made you feel nervous, the rattling trees and flashes of lightning had been the reason for many sleepless nights when you were a child, but now you looked forward to it.
Because now it meant something different. You, Alfie and Cyril curled up in bed, the fire roaring and flickering a brilliant orange gold. Your husbands arms tight around you, squeezing softly every time there was a clap of thunder, his kisses warm and protective across your throat, knowing that he’d never let anything hurt you. Drinking tea spiked with rum and playing cards, listening to the rain against the windows, feeling the white burst of lighting every time it struck the sky. Falling asleep next to each other, Alfie always waiting for you to doze off first, unable to sleep unless he knew you were alright.
You had once hated storms, and now you wished for them.
Your umbrella was totally battered by the time you got to the bakery. The bottom of your dress was damp from puddles and your shoes were on their last legs, the satin ruined and black with mud, but you didn’t care, walking through the side entrance with a smile bigger than the moon. A few of the old boys saw you instantly, straightening up and grinning at you, welcoming you with whisky soaked aprons and calloused hands. Back when you and Alfie started dating he had all but forbidden his staff from looking, talking, or even thinking about you, but over the years you had formed a close relationship with his workers - something about your warmth and light easing up the darkness. At first Alfie huffed and puffed about it a little, but he couldn’t exactly blame his men for loving you - he was a perfect example of how you brought a strong man to his knees after all.
“Is he upstairs?” You asked George, one of the distillers. As soon as he nodded you left, your heels clicking against the cool basement flooring. You didn’t bother knocking as you approached the big, intimidating door to his office, instead just grabbing the brass lion head knob and twisting it, hearing the hinges whine in protest.
“What the fuck?” His voice was as deep and rumbling as a low tide, his tone so dark and sharp that it might have scared you, if you didn’t know him as the man who fed the ducks fresh bread at the park and cuddled Cyril when the vets had to give him an injection. “How many fucking times do I have to ask you lot to fucking knock. I mean it’s a - ”
He stopped short when he saw you, eyes going wide and lips twitching upwards just a little. He slipped into business mode whenever he sat at the leather chair behind his desk, but you always managed to chip away at his foundation.
“What the bloody hell are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too.” You laughed, walking around his desk to see him, his legs naturally opening to let you stand in between them, his eyes following every curve and line of your face, settling on the natural rosebud flush of your lips.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes.” He mused, ring clad fingers darting around your waist and pulling you in. He toyed with the buttons on your dress and the jewellery around your neck, his fingers rough and large and as hot as a fire. His day had been shitty so far, but seeing the sparkle in your eyes and the loose curl of your hair had made everything much, much better.
“Hmm.” You said, leaning into his touch, batting away his hand as it slipped somewhere a little too low. “Marcus gave me the afternoon of so I thought I would come and surprise you.”
He blinked up at you, all wistful and love drunk and making your knees turn into blackcurrant jelly. “Did you now?”
“Yep.” You smiled, brushing your nose against his before pulling back and teasingly shaking the paper bag of baked goods in your hand. “And I bought gifts.”
“Yeah. Yeah. In a minute.” He barely registered them, instead dragging you into him, pressing kisses to your lips and letting you wash away any thoughts from his brain, not stopping until he was totally, completely drowning in you.
——————————————————-
That was how you ended up cross legged on the sofa, devouring your new novel and sipping on the rose and oolong tea Alfie kept in the cupboard for when you visited the factory. You could hear the rain pattering down the windows around you, mixed with the scratch of Alfie’s fountain pen and the sound of him rifling through his papers. It was fun to watch him as well as listen to him, the way his eyebrows raised when he read something he didn’t like, the twitch of his nose and the way that he ran his fingers through the coarse hair of his beard, moulding it to a peak at the bottom of his chin.
He watched you as well. When you got so into your book that your brows furrowed and your nose wrinkled. The way your hair was loose and wild, your stockings a soft pink under the stormy sky, your eyes wide and frantic, desperate to read as much as you could. He smiled at the way your leg bounced, how you tried to pick the stems from your strawberries with one hand but then accidentally squished them, the juice running down your wrist. He especially liked the way you were using his winter coat as a blanket, drowning in the fabric like a child, the collar snug around your chin.
Everything was perfect.
Until it wasn’t.
You heard Ollie before you saw him, the crash of his laced black boots thundering up the stairs, the way that he collided with the door rather than opening it first. You and Alfie stood up at the same time, his eyes immediately darting to you, gesturing for you to get behind him.
“Eric’s here.” Was all the boy said, and you watched the colour drain from Alfie’s face.
“Eric?” You said, “Eric Martin?”
Your question lingered in the air as the two men walked around one another, gesturing wildly and talking under their breath; Alfie completely frantic and flustered. You had only heard of Alfie’s new business partner in passing, the two of them had spent the better part of a year talking through agreements and shipments and trying to manoeuvre a deal where the two of them could co exist happily - Alfie’s rum and Eric’s stolen goods sharing a boat so that the city checks would be easier. Alfie had never been particularly quite when it came to business. He liked to include you and get your opinion on things, he trusted you most of all anyway, but he had been secretive when it came to Eric.
You had heard through Ollie and rumours at the club and whispers in the factory that this “Eric” was a man not to be trifled with. Apparently he was unpredictable and violent, and he belonged to one of the major crime gangs in Cambridge. None of this scared you though, many people thought the exact same of the man you shared your bed with, and you knew a side of him that nobody else saw. The gossip was barbed and cruel though. They said he was conniving and underhanded, and that his last two wives had been admitted to hospital with broken and fractured bones.
So Alfie tried cutting him out as much as he could, never wanting to say his name or talk about him in the safety of his home, not with you around. Your home was his solace, and he wouldn’t taint his life with you in blood red - you were too important. You never thought much of it, but watching his reaction, his sudden overprotectiveness and stern frown and rattled demeanour, made you just a little bit frightened.
“What the fuck does he want?” Alfie snapped, pulling your coat over your shoulders frantically and starting to button it up, then helping you tug on your boots and lace them.
“He’s pissed about the Brighton shipment, he says his liquor didn’t get there on time.”
“Stupid fucking...” Alfie’s voice trailed off like smoke, something downstairs on the factory floor clattering loudly followed by distinct, angry shouts. “We told him it was too risky with the police there, he should have fucking listened. We were due a meeting next week, tell him to fuck off and come back then.”
“He won’t listen.”
“Make him.”
“I...” He started, but Alfie cut him off again, standing next to you and taking your face in his large, calloused hands.
“Right, pet. Stay here for a little bit, and when it clears up, Ollie will take you out the back, alright?”
“Alfie...” You started to protest, before exhaling and sighing as he turned to his protégée.
“You got that, Ol? Nothing is to happen to her.”
You were getting a little hot with being ordered around, but the visible anxiety swimming across their faces like the midnight sea was enough for you to close your mouth. Instead of agreeing with his boss, Ollie shook his head, sucking on his lower lip as he tried to think of a way to convey the sincerity of the situation.
“He’s really angry, Alfie. You need to go down, now. Before he decides to come up.”
“Yeah, alright.”
Your fingers clenched, and you darted out to tug on the edge of his sleeve before he left.“Alfie. Please be careful.”
There was a smog of anxiety in your stomach and warning signs ringing like alarms in your mind as he pressed a tender kiss to the top of your head, his lips brushing your hairline. You chewed on the edge of your lip as he left, and you wondered how your blissful afternoon had turned into this: your body shaking with nerves as your husband descended down the stairs and into the belly of the beast.
Ollie reached out and touched your shoulder, trying to help you feel calm but his face was the colour of tepid dishwater, paling by the second.
“He’ll be fine.”
You crossed all of your fingers and toes.
———————————————————————
About twenty minutes passed, and the shouting had gone from ear piercingly loud to a low hum, which you found oddly comforting despite everything. You watched as Ollie fiddled with his pocket watch, the two of you waiting until it was safe to head downstairs.After a moment you heard the sound of the giant metal door opening, the one right at the front where the workers came in and the bakery goods were delivered, a clear indication from Alfie that Eric was leaving.
Ollie leapt up and smiled faintly at you, edging you towards the door as you swung your handbag across your chest. You scoffed a little as you walked, turning to face him.
“If Eric is gone, why can’t I stay?”
Ollie merely rolled his eyes, his hand migrating to your lower back as he all but pushed you forward. You might have been able to get away with ignoring Alfie’s orders, but he certainly wouldn’t. “You know Alfie won’t want you here after that. There’s no use fighting him about it, he’ll want you back at home.”
You sighed but conceded, allowing yourself to be guided down the staircase. At least at home you could distract yourself and have Cyril with you, his big treacle eyes were the perfect remedy to a bad day.
You were right beside the back door and ready to leave when you heard a voice cracking like thunder from behind you, something as sharp as a knife and as loud as a church bell. You both froze instantly, every nerve in your body feathering, your heart aching to know that Alfie was alright.
“You little fucking liar.” Cut around the room like barbed wire. “How long were you planning on hiding this shipment from me?” There was another crash, and you could hear liquid trickling and dribbling into a puddle, followed by the sweet, sour smell of alcohol.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re on about mate.” It was Alfie speaking now, his voice lowered to a dangerous octave, and you could picture the lightning like anger on his face. “Calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down? You’ve been sending things off without my knowledge!”
“I said. Fucking calm down.” The sound of a hand slamming down on wood, as fierce as a slap on the face. “You don’t want to make an enemy of me.”
There was another scuffle: rapid footsteps on the floor, the crack of knuckles and the smell of ash. A couple of the boys darted in from the other room, their shirts untucked and hands turning red. You watched them curiously, stepping forward on unsteady heels to try and pinpoint the commotion. You felt Ollie's hand reach for you but you leapt out of his grasp, at the same time a body flew from the next room and landed in a heap next to barrels of aged rum and whisky, the wood heaving from the strain.
You glanced at the man on the floor, his body oddly contorted, his bald head glistening with sweat and his body reeking of putrid alcohol and cigarettes. This was obviously Eric. Your eyes widened in disgust at the drunk, violent man taking swings at whoever he could, wanting nothing more than to get away from him. You saw Alfie emerge from the shadows, his gaze flitting straight to you, his hands swollen and his face flushed with visible anger at the man sprawled on the ground.
Before you could retreat, Eric’s wide, black eyes landed on you, practically bulging out of his head with adrenaline and anger and excitement. “ You know, Alfie.” He asked through bubbles of saliva, scrambling to his feet as best he could, lunging for you. You saw Alfie and a few of his best men move forward, hands ready like cocked guns to strike if they needed to. Eric ignored them, wanting to pack as many fatal blows in whilst he had the chance. “Everybody at the club talks about your little whore of a wife, Solomon’s.”
The room fell deadly silent. His words didn’t affect you at all, but you felt a pool of dread settle in your gut and you stepped backwards, warning him with your eyes. He was at the back of the room, but you could still feel the anger vibrating from your husband, and you heard him smack his lips as he tried to calm himself down.
Eric ignored your alarmed glare, spitting onto the concrete and looking you up and down with pure disgust and shameless lust. “You know that people only do business with you to get to her?”
“Don’t. You. Fuck - ” Alfie’s boots thundered like a stampede, his voice as dark and raspy as midnight, his words sharpened like butchers knives.
“Maybe I’ll have a go at her. Maybe it’ll teach you a little respect. If I have a go at that smug little whore and slap her around a little and....”
He didn’t finish his sentence, Alfie’s cane smashing against the side of Eric’s head with enough momentum to send his teeth flying, small milky white canines lying a few feet in front of you in a pool of sticky blood. He made some kind of noise from on the floor, his hands coming up to protect what was left of his face, his polished shoes desperately trying to grip onto something to help him up. There was a second hit. And then a third. Each accompanied by ear splitting cries, and the sound of flesh against stone.
“Don’t you ever, ever, speak about my wife like that again.” You could just about make out Alfie from the darkness, his silhouette mighty and terrifying, leaning over the shattered body on the floor, filled with a hatred that seemed to overpower him.
“I - ” Eric tried to speak but only blood pooled from his mouth, his body weakened and damaged from the attack. He tried to cover himself with his hands but failed, another ear piercing crack echoing around the room.
You lunged forward, wanting to stop your husband before he went too far. “Alfie! Stop! You’re going to kill him!”
He blinked up at you, his pupils swallowed by black. His gaze lowered from you onto the wailing man on the ground, his words playing on a loop in his brain, digging their nails in every time the record restarted.
He had said those evil things about you.
He glanced at Ollie, finally opening his mouth to speak. “Take her home.”
You struggled in Ollie’s grip, desperate to see your husband and knock some sense into him. Your heart hung heavy in your chest, equal parts terrified that he would either end up hurt or in a more dangerous situation than the one he was already in. You fought hard but Ollie’s hold was tighter, his fingers squeezing you tightly. He tried to be kind but forceful as he pulled you out into the alley, your heard turned back to face your husband, watching as him and the shadow on the floor faded to a dull, awful, obsidian.
—————————————-
You were certain you were going to make holes in the wood. You had been pacing back and forth the living room floor for almost an hour, and Cyril had abandoned his mission of trying to cheer you up, and instead watched you protectively and cautiously from his wicker basket beside the sofa.
You had chewed your sunshine yellow nails down to the wick, and your heart hadn’t stop thumping since you had left the warehouse. Ollie had left you to your thoughts, keeping watch outside to make sure nothing harmed you, and also that you didn’t harm somebody else.
Dealing with hysterical women wasn’t really his forte.
There had been no word from Alfie since you had left, and so you watched the teal wall phone endlessly, hoping that it would ring and you would know he was alright. You were greeted with nothing but ice cold silence, and so you resumed your pacing, biting down on the skin of your thumb until you could taste blood.
Right before you were about to lose all control and demand Ollie take you to see him, you heard the crunch of the gravel outside, and saw lemon headlights flash against the wall. Cyril’s head lifted quickly, and his tail began to thump, but your feet turned to concerted and you were unable to do anything other than wait.
You were as still as a spectre as you stood facing the door, your body prickling with anxiety and adrenaline. A car - you assumed Ollie’s - coughed and spluttered over the rocks and into the road, leaving you alone with Alfie. You heard the key in the lock, practically felt the metal ridges running over your spine as he pulled and twisted and finally came inside, the sky a gloomy, smoky grey, rain falling so harshly it was almost hail.
He was shaped so strongly, his figure so barbed and brawny and beautiful. You felt totally mortal beside a man like him, and he looked even more so like a God when you saw him under the icy white lamp light in the hall.
He was covered in blood. Soaked in it, really. It was matted in his hair and in ugly brown splotches across his once pristine shirt and under his fingernails and smeared across his boots in a shade of red you had never seen before. It was obvious he had tried to clean himself up judging from the uneven patches and water marks, but he had given up, deciding to risk everything and drive through the streets like an abattoir worker, just so he could see you as quickly as he could.
You let out some kind of noise and stepped forward, he caught you effortlessly, the way that he always would.
“Alfie.” You said, wide eyed and innocent and good, and he felt like a sinner holding something so angelic in his arms.
“I’m alright. I’m alright.”
There was blood in his beard, and a plum sided bruise turning nightshade on his upper arm. “Oh God, Alf.”
He shook his head, pulling you in and smelling the orange and cinnamon of your shampoo and the vanilla perfume on your neck and felt the softness of your hair and the curves of your body. The day had been bad. It had started so wonderfully and ended up shattered and splintered into something so awful and malevolent, and now there was nothing he wanted except you, his home.
“We need to - ” You started, but he frowned, his arms engulfing you and tugging you in. He pressed his lips to whatever flesh he could find, open mouthed and desperate, sucking and biting and aching for you.
“No. No.” He whispered into your neck, his voice so small and desperate that your heart throbbed. “I need you, my love.”
You knew what he wanted. How we got when he was like this. Touch starved. Greedy. Insatiable. How he wanted nothing else but the feel of you under him, the weight of your ribs and the feel of your body and love consuming him until nothing was left. Fuck his back and his cane, he needed to claim you and mark you and show you just how badly he needed you. He needed to find religion at the alter of your pliant, yearning body. Show you how much he loved you on the cold kitchen tiles with the rain casting grey shadows and his lips biting your own as the thunder clapped above.
————————-
The tap was still leaking.
Alfie had promised to fix it weeks ago and yet it still dribbled lukewarm water continuously, you didn’t mind for once though, the soft noise it made as it bounced into the water was somewhat calming.
His legs around you were as thick as tree trunks and covered in curly, coarse hair. His arms were tight around you, and you played with the jewels on his fingers as you both relaxed, letting the hot steam cover you both. You were cradled in front of him despite your instance that his back would hurt and it would cause more harm than good. He simply got in the water and dragged you on top of him, letting the pink bath salts do their job.
You hadn’t really spoken since you’d made love like teenagers on the kitchen floor. Afterwards, he tugged you on top of him and held you close, the two of you skin to skin, letting your pulses synch and breathing calm all whilst he stayed warm and throbbing inside of you. Needing to be joined with you for as long as he could.
Then you ran a bath and filled it with all of the expensive lotions and potions you had stockpiled. Cherry and rose and sweet mint and chocolate and lime, things that might have clashed but would easily cover the smell of sweat and sex and thick, coppery blood. The two of you sat in the water, not speaking but filled with love, despite all of the unspoken tension in the air.
You felt him shift behind you. His huge body sent water and bubbles lapping wildly over the tub edge, coating the floor in marshmallow pink. You giggled softly, and the sweet, angelic noise gave Alfie the final push to tell you everything.
“I know what you want to ask me.”
“Hmm?” You murmured, letting round, iridescent bubbles fall through the cracks in your fingers, knowing exactly what he was about to say but feigning innocence anyway.
“You want to know if I killed him.”
You didn’t say anything, but you didn’t need to, he continued anyway.
“I did.”
The bathroom fell silent again and Alfie could feel you stiffen under him. You knew from the moment he swung his cane across Eric’s head that he would be buried six feet by the end of the day, but it still hit you like a punch to the windpipe to hear the words aloud.
“Does that bother you?” He asked after a moment, the words thick and raspy, as though they had been stuck in his throat like congealed honey.
“I’m not sure.” You said finally.
It was the truth. You weren’t sure.
You knew he had killed people before. You knew what the war had made him do, what it had turned him into. You weren’t stupid, either. You knew that he often came home with dirt under his nails and blood splattered on his boots and that glazed look in his eyes that made your stomach tie itself in knots. You knew because you had been there through it all, cleaning him up and disinfecting his wounds, talking him down when the memories of gunshots and trenches got too loud, listening to him tell you all of the secrets that lingered in his mind like flies around a carcass.
But if you were being honest, you didn’t care that he had killed. You never judged Alfie or his choices, you understood the way his brain worked and how he made his decisions. Most of the men had been awful. Abusers and violent thieves and con men with dirty intentions. This was the business you had signed up for when you fell for the six foot man with questionable morals but a heart of solid gold. There was no way you were turning your back on him now.
It wasn’t murder that scared you, it was the possible repercussions that led you to sleepless nights and bloody, bitten lips. You were terrified that one day everything would catch up to him, and it would be your husband that ended up in a coffin. He was so powerful and dangerous and magnificent, but he wasn’t invincible.
You were about to say as much but he continued, the water sloshing around the two of you. “Don’t let it bother you. I’d do it again. Kill a fucking million men if I had to. If anyone talks about you like that - if they even think it. They’re gone. Bloody scum. The lot of ‘em.”
You sighed, shifting up and grabbing his hand under the water. You rubbed circles across his palm, conveying your love through actions. “I don’t want to be the reason you have blood on your hands.”
“I’m a big lad right, I can make my own decisions.”
“I know you are Alf, but you know how I worry.”
“Listen to me, right.” He muttered, the candles flickering clementine, his fingertips pressing gently onto the bare flesh of your hip. He cleared his throat, feeling the rise and fall of your chest against his belly. “After the war I had nothing - and then I met you and fuck me you changed everything.”
He paused, reminiscing internally about how you met and your early dates, thinking of toffee kisses and giddy, pure love and fucking in back alleys and winter walks and finally feeling something after the war had shot everything right out of him. “And you are my wife. I’ll never let anything happen to you.”
You tugged on his big toe, making him wince and playfully hit you, the air lightened just a little bit, but enough so that the two of you could breathe. “I don’t care that you killed them, Alf. I never have. But God, if something were to happen to you! What if the police start looking? What if...”
A million fucked up scenarios of your beloved in silver cuffs and a bullet in his head made you feel completely nauseous, but he held you tight, grounding you back to reality.
“I’m not going anywhere. And for the cops - they should be thanking me. Got rid of a lot of nasty criminals without them getting their hands dirty.” He pressed kisses to the back of your neck, the tip of your spine, the crook of your ear. “I promise you, my love, everything will be alright.”
The future was uncertain, but you knew that when you married him. Some days were just bad.
Clouded in darkness and tinged with blood and rust. Your relationship had always been a little unconventional, a little rough around the edges and at times, like a small wooden boat on a rough sea. But despite everything your love had been unwavering, as solid as a steel, the kind of dreamy infatuation that people longed for. For every bad day and every fight and every knot that wound itself in your belly - there was also so much good. Sleepy kisses and pillow talk and sharing the parts of yourself that no one else saw. A language without words, the safety of his arms, the home in your hips, domestic mornings and a love that could last through anything.And in that moment, with the storm starting to ease and the sky starting to lighten and his arms around you and Cyril starting to whine for his dinner downstairs...
It was enough.
Because you weren’t just the girl he would kill for. You were the girl he would live for.
293 notes · View notes
moonlit-imagines · 4 years
Text
Headcanons for being Tony Stark’s Daughter (The Aftermath)
Tony Stark x daughter!reader
warnings:
a/n: y/n is about 17 or 18; i cried while writing this. sorry this is really long!!! pls forgive me 🥺
prompt: takes place from a3 to smffh
The Early Years (1) The Teenage Years (2) The Intense Years (3) Continued (5)
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let’s start on a happy note! ahahah
so for a while, earth was calm
you, pepper, and tony got to be a family for a while
wedding planning!
of course you got to try the ben&jerry’s ice cream named after your dad: Stark Raving Hazelnuts
“it’s not fair that you got ice cream named after you and i didn’t”
“well, when you grow up to be as awesome as me, maybe you’ll get your own ice cream flavor”
developing nanotech suits together for a Bonding Experience(tm)
speechless after the first test
“dad, this is...”
“the coolest thing to ever exist?”
“yes!!”
yall ready for some shit?
the day that ebony maw invaded was pretty—what’s the word? interesting? no. well, yes, but...HORRIBLE.
it all started when you got the call from your dad
“y/n, incoming call from ‘big fat meanie’”
“god, i really have to change that. okay, JOSHIE, answer it. hey, dad? what’s up?”
“hey, kid! you know that weird ass building on bleecker street? how fast can you get here?”
“JOSH can you track FRIDAY really quick? lets see how far dad is...uh, okay, be there in five, see ya”
taking your suit for a spin and realizing how GREAT it was to be able to basically fold up your suit and put it in your back pocket
knocking on the door and it opened on its own, it was kinda cool
“is this a museum? cool.”
bruce turning around to see you after about three years and giving you an awkward smile and a wave while you stood frozen around the wizard-guys
“y/n, god, you’ve grown up!”
charging into him for a long overdue hug
“you don’t know how much i missed you. it’s been chaotic without you”
“i can...i can only imagine”
a debriefing on the situation you were about to face, and bonus! having to play the catch-up game with bruce
“just call him, dad. we need as much help as we can. steve will understand”
rushing outside to face off with some ugly-ass aliens
“oh nooo, it’s roger smith from american dad”
bruce: 👀, stephen: 👀, wong: 👀, tony: 👏👏🥰 that’s my girl
simultaneous nanosuit unveiling
“you ready for this one, pops?”
“of course! ive waited years to kick some more alien ass”
montage of you and tony getting your asses beat together (as a family <3)
peter showing up
“give me one good reason why i shouldn’t send you back to that school bus”
“because i’m good company?”
“whatever, just listen to whatever dad has to say, i forfeit my responsibilities over you”
pew pew, repulsors, pew, tiny rockets! fun! action! destroying new york again and again. good times...
until JOSHUA gave you notice that your dad was flying high
“call him. now.”
“hey! how’s it going down there?”
“dad, you know how i feel about you and space”
“i know, i know. i just...i gotta take care of this. keep pepper safe for your old man, okay?”
“i lo—l—ve y—”
“y/n? y/n?! i love you! shit!”
“we lost connection with her, sir”
trying to call peter
“call failed, y/n. should i try again?”
“i’m gonna kill them...”
walking through the rubble to find bruce, the only sensible man you know
taking him to the avengers compound asap to get to rhodey and figure out what comes next
meanwhile, tony was dealing with space and another teenager
and worrying a lot about leaving you on earth
“i mean, mr. stark, y/n’s one of the most capable people i know. she’s probably trying to fix this whole mess as we speak”
“i didn’t get to tell her i love her”
“oh...”
having a lovely meeting with thaddeus ross with rhodey, having a lovely time watching them passive-aggresively argue until your former teammates arrived
having to patiently (and professionally) wait for ross to hang up before running into them for a hug
“holy shit, you guys have no idea how bad i’ve wanted to see you. it sucks not being all together anymore”
“i know, y/n. we’ve all missed you.” -cap
“a lot” -nat added
bruce’s little entrance that was sure to bring some awkwardness
you, secretly freaking out about your dad
sam was the one that found you crying after you “stepped out” for a few minutes too long
“oh, y/n,” he was contemplating grabbing someone else to step in, but decided to sit next to you in the hallway, “i’m sorry, kiddo. i can’t promise you anything, but your dad is a fighter. a big pain in the ass. i think your odds are good”
laughing through your tears
“yeah, you’re right. thanks, sammy”
he gave you a little hug while you calmed down
getting to business, the ass-kicking kind
as the wise natasha romanoff once said to your father, you were being “uncharacteristically non-hyper verbal”
your mind did this funny thing...wandered into places it really should not go
the talk about sacrificing vision led to wakanda, where you had a swell time patrolling
“guys! we’ve got incoming. a lot of incoming”
well-deserved uncle/niece team up. who wouldve thought?
you would have nightmares about these aliens for years to come
“you get to die, and you get to die! everybody gets to die!”
“y/n, what did we talk about?” -rhodey
“using humor as a defense mechanism makes the team uncomfortable...”
covering the girls 😌 because we gotta have those all-girl teamups, uh-huh?
some more blasting
thor made his comeback and you just could not miss it
“hi, thor!”
you landed next to him and your helmet receded
“well, hello, miss y/n! good to see you again! my, you got taller...oh! meet my friends: rabbit and tree”
having a “what the actual fuck” moment upon seeing thanos for the first time
and flying at him from behind with a massive nanotech blade ready to kill this purple bastard
but he grabbed your arm and flung you into the dirt, that was gonna leave a mark
“i just had to make a suit when i was ten...no one stopped me, huh? i couldn’t be elon’s kid, he was a nice guy”
watching thanos snap his fingers and looking around to see dust floating through the air and thanos retreat
“rhodey? uncle rhodey?!”
“i’m right here, kid, don’t worry”
he grabbed your hand while you were dusting
“tell my dad i love him, promise?”
fading away and leaving rhodey with your last words
he was mad before anything else
all he could think about was a promise your dad made him take years back
“rhodey, you keep my daughter safe no matter what, promise?”
the avengers recooperating at the compound, waiting to figure out whether any of the space-crew survived
they had to let pepper know that you didn’t make it, she was a mess upon hearing that news
tony finally making his way back to earth
and stumbling out of that ship
“where’s y/n? where is she?!”
“tony, tony, calm down”
“dont tell me to calm down! where is my daughter?!”
“she made me promise to tell you thay she loves you”
tony knew the answer by now, he lost his mind over your death
it didn’t feel right not having you by his side, for the past 18 years you’ve been with him
after a long period of recovery, tony and pepper moved on, got married, built a home, had a new daughter...
tony made sure there was a spare room for you
he put all the things you left behind in it
there were so many photos of you in the house
and he’d show your sister, morgan, all of them. he wanted morgan to know her sister
“that’s y/n when she built her first robot. it snuck up on me a few times. it went ‘boo!’”
morgan loved the stories about you, but she didn’t understand why she couldn’t see you
“when do i get to meet her?”
“uh...maybe someday, sweetie”
after being unbothered for almost 5 years, the remaining avengers came back with a plan that was so tempting, he just wanted his little girl back
cracking under pressure and telling pepper that he couldn’t ignore this mission because it was his chance to get you back
“get her back, tony”
“you think so?”
“i miss her, too.”
and so it began, he made it his mission to get you back
peeking at the wallet picture of you on his shoulders when you were so little
tony travelling to 2012; loki’s invasion
and there you were, the sassy genius 12 year old that he missed so much
“we’ve got this, tony, we’ll bring her home” -scott
and then things went badly and also 2012 tony went into cardiac arrest and 2012 y/n dove onto the floor to tend to him
“dad? give us some room, would you?!”
2023 tony smiling at how much he missed you worrying about him and how reckless he was
but also...the mission kinda went bad so that sucked
push it a bit farther back and now tony was with grandpa stark! asking how to be a dad and all that!
he could barely stand still waiting for you to come back to him, god he missed you more than he thought
and after a bit of hard work, it was time to snap
just like that, you were back in wakanda, puzzled by the gap in time before one of dr. strange’s portals opened in front of you
and then you were in the ruins of the avengers compound
“JOSHUA, can you locate my dad?”
“i think you’ll be able to see him”
“wow, i cant believe i programmed your cocky artificial ass”
“i think you can”
seeing your dad flying high and patching into the comms
“miss me, old man?”
and then he hit the gas to get to you and when this man hugged you, you almost couldn’t let go
“i’m so sorry, y/n. god, i’m sorry. these last five years...i was so lost without you”
“it’s okay, dad, i’m here now”
getting shot at during your reunion
“son of a bitch...we’re having a family moment here, asshole!”
yes, im gonna say it again. of course i am! and.........father/daugher team-up
the last one
“peter, is that you? you asshole! i cant believe you went to space without me!”
“missed you too!”
rhodey!! cant forget about uncle rhodey!!
“you gave my dad the message, right?”
“it was your dying wish, of course i did!”
“great. don’t forget i love you, too, rhodey!”
“couldn’t let me forget it”
lest we forget that pepper joined the fight?
plot twist: (step)mother/daughter team-up
mother/father/daugher team up!!!! ultimate stark machine!!!!!!!
and then you left him alone for 5 minutes and he’s got the infinity stones and you know it’s the last time you’re going to see him and you cant decide what your next move is and you’re just frozen and you cant catch your breath and he snaps and your heart plummets
you have to rush to his side, the last time you can sit beside his tired body and let him know that its going to be okay
“hey dad, it’s okay, we’re gonna be fine. thank you for everything”
peter grabbing your hand as you both sobbed next to your dad, feeling robbed of your time with him
pepper brought you home where she told you all about the five years you missed
both of you just cried harder than you’ve ever cried before
“so i have a sister?”
morgan was so happy to meet you, she couldn’t contain herself, practically latched onto you
and she didn’t fully understand what happened to tony
you saw your new room for the first time and didn’t leave it for a while, occasionally pepper or morgan would pop in
morgan actually crawled into bed with you a few times
the funeral was one of the worst days of your life
the remnants of your young life pulled back together for one day
then you hid back in your room before you heard a knock
“who is it?”
“it’s happy”
“come in”
“hey, kiddo. me and morgan are gonna get some cheeseburgers, you wanna come?”
she really was a stark
after a long hibernation, you started to get back into the groove of your old life
but the press was brutal and harsh, you were bombarded with questions regarding your dad
it took everything not to explode on camera
you stayed in contact with the rest of the avengers, mourning your dead, keeping the support system, staying a family
it was all you could get...for now
500 notes · View notes
what-the--curtains · 3 years
Text
Alliance
Chapter 2 – The Decision
(Mando x f!reader)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Summary: The child taken, his ship destroyed the only one who can help him? A woman he sold into slavery several months earlier.
Notes: Wow wow wow! Thank all for the likes im glad ive gained some interest lets hope I can keep it! Comment or message to be added to the tagged list!
Tw: mentions of dubcon/sex, depictions of violence and coarse language
Tagged list: @crazycookiecrumbles
Word count: 3.7k
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
7 months later
Mandos POV
Using all his wits and a touch of charm the Mandalorian had managed to make his way to a nearby town. Once there he’d likely be able to hitch a ride or win some kind of ship in a game of cards. He didn’t need a good one, just something to get him to Navarro. He makes his way to a more upscale bar, hoping its clients would be more lucrative with their belongings. Scanning the gambling hall he chooses his target carefully, opting for a rich looking idiot who had been trying to impress the man next to him since the Mandalorian had walked in. He takes his seat at the round wooden table amongst a variety of lavishly dressed characters. He had to find the child as soon as possible. If he wasn’t with the empire yet there’s no doubt he would be soon.
“Deal me in” He says, taking a seat between an Iktotchi and an Ortolan.
“Not so fast, what's your buy in?” the dealer asks.
“How about that helmet?” The Ortolan pipes up.
“No.”
“The creature then?” the Falleen across the table ponders reaching out to touch Anya, who had been at his side when Grogu was taken and has refused to leave it since.
“No” he says, batting her hand away and tapping on his shoulder piece “Will this do?” The dealer nods and they begin. In the second hand he ends up winning a ship from his target who was seemingly unbothered by the loss as he nonchalantly tosses Mando the keys, before leaving the table.
Twirling the key on his index finger he makes his way to the bar, hoping to gain some insight on how to go about finding Grogu.
“Quite a game, didn’t know Mandalorians played cards.” The older humanoid bartender stated, shining off a glass. With no response he speaks up again. “Can I help you with something , give me something to tell the kids if I helped out a Mandalorian.”
“If someone was looking to find something lost where would he go?”
“You have any idea what this thing is?”
“Yes.”
“Any idea where it is?”
“No.”
“Tell you what, there was a woman, from a forest planet somewhere on the outer rim. Hair as white as snow, an old language on her body, a face that’s hard to forget. She helped me find my youngest after she was taken by smugglers.”
“Vryssa?” The Mandalorian says slowly, causing Anya to perk up.
“Aye that’s the place. You’ve been?” the barkeep ponders.
“Thank you, here” he says handing over a portion of the credits won in his game of cards to the speechless keeper.
Exiting the bar shaking his head in disbelief, of course the one person who could help him track the kid was someone with a personal vendetta against him. At least he knew who he had to find and where to start looking. Opening the doors to his new ship he gives it a quick once over. It was roomier than the razor crest, but not by much, too fancy for his liking in all honesty. Nicer amenities though and a decent sized bed which Anya had made her way onto, it would be a better place for when he gets the kid back. It had an armoury, but nothing in it, at least not yet. He closes it and makes his way up to the ship's cockpit. Decent enough system, more of a flashy ride than a functional one, made for a decently skilled pilot by the looks of it. Locking in the coordinates for Coruscant he begins his search.
For two weeks he attends black markets around the galaxy until one day he sees him, the man who had bought you. He follows him cornering him in a nearby alleyway.
“What do you want Mando?” The Kel Dor responds.
“I’m looking for a woman.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“She was bought by you a few months ago. Not jogging your memory? White hair, eternal blood.”
“Oh. Her difficult one, had to break her in a bit.” The choice of words was less than favourable to the Mandalorian, but in favor of time he brushed by it.
“What happened to her?”
“ Sold her.”
“ To who?” He says getting impatient
“Gladiatorial ring on Geonosis , she was a big hit, sold her for twice what I had paid, moved into the big arenas quickly. I’ll take you if you want.”
“No, give me the coordinates.” Mando says
“Should be easy enough for you to get her. She's been broken in well, nice and obedient if you know…” He knocks the guy out before he can finish the sentence.
R-16, Geonosis, Outer Rim Territories
Stepping out of the ship it doesn’t take long for him to figure out where you are. Large projections of posters with you line the street, apparently you were fighting today. The sounds of the arena increase as he gets closer, as does the crowd of people awaiting the show.
“A Mandalorian, you here to see the fight? Gonna be a good one. Fan favourite tonight the huntress.” A native geonosian exclaims.
“Is she the girl in the picture? The white haired one?”
“ Yes, and if you like what you see I’m sure a piece of that armour will get you a night with her, I’ve heard the trainer sells her off after fights.” The Mandalorian nods and heads off “How much for a ticket” he ask the seller,
“100 credits”
“For a fight?”
“For today’s fight? Yes.” Begrudgingly he pays the fee and enters into the dome. It is enormous, the revenue it brings in must be astronomical he thinks as he takes his seat.
Your POV
It hadn’t been an easy few months, but you were still alive. The handlers knew if they bled you all at once the value would decrease, and after having you fight and win over the fans, keeping you alive became more economically sound than killing you. Your most recent trainer, an older Duras named San Korliks, had gotten you into a slightly more dubious but very lucrative business. Turns out the rich love nothing more than spending the night with a victor. Between the fights and the suitors you’d have enough saved to live comfortably once you were out. Yes you were close to buying your freedom, 12 fights and a few more rich idiots and you’d be out of here. You’d find a planet with plenty of sand and water and settle down living out the rest of your days in peace. You could hear the crowd cheering from your cell, San would be here for you shortly. You stand up smoothing out the red tunic that had seen better days. It was shorter than you’d like and impractical for fighting, but your handler was right sex sells and it had kept you alive thus far. You move to the drawer of the cell, though tightly watched it was decently large and relatively comfortable. More wins meant better quarters. You pull out the gold plated armour clipping the chest plate, arm bands and shin guards into place before lacing up your worn down brown leather boots. Moving over to the small mirror you dip your hand into a bowl of burgundy paint smearing it down your face and onto your neck then around your well defined biceps. You're admiring your work when you hear a knock on your cell door.
“C’mon darling let’s give them a show” San says, he was nicer than your previous trainers, probably as you were bringing in the big bucks. You walk over to the cell door, he opens it and guides you to the enormous door that would soon open up to the arena.
“Try to let a little blood get spilled tonight, we need to sell some.” You nod, cracking your neck and stretching out your arms. “I also have some suitors lined up, high payers.”
“How many more till I’m out?” you question.
“ Just a few more darling, promise.” He says squeezing your shoulder. You hear the crowd chanting in the background as San leaves. You grab the spear left out for you, tossing it from hand to hand to gage its weight. You bounce up and down on your toes shaking out your body and calming your mind and preparing for whatever they were planning on throwing at you tonight. You repeat the number of days until you're free in your head. You could do this, you’d done it a hundred times now. Not that the killing gets any easier, but in order to survive you had to forgo morality. The doors open and the crowd erupts in applause as you enter waving to the adoring fans.
Mando’s POV
The loud speaker blares out over the crowd “ Tonight a special event, the huntress will take on not one, not two, but four opponents! Now to make it a fair fight, only one will be allowed to challenge at a time, but we have a lovely admixture of beasts and an extra special surprise for you all. The return of another fan favorite. Hang onto your seats folks, this is going to be a night you won’t soon forget” Four versus one, Mando thinks, as he watches you enter the arena, the odds definitely weren’t in your favour. He was prepared to jump in and get you out himself if he had too, you were his only chance at finding the kid after all. He hears a rumble of applause as a door across from you opens revealing a Rancor. He watches you closely, noticing how unphased you seemed by it. In no less than a minute he sees the spear fly from your hand hitting the creature right in its jugular killing it instantly. Not bad, he thinks, but it was just a Rangor, yes they were big, but they weren’t known for being strategic fighters. You pull the spear out of its neck, the crowd cheers seemingly alerting you to the presence of the Nexu that had appeared from the door behind you. It leaps towards you and he watches intently as you tuck and roll out of the way, spear still in hand, thrilling the crowd even more.
He wonders how much of the fight is a performance and how much of it was real. You and the Nexu circle each other, seeing you plant your feet he finds himself curious as to what your next move will be. You kick the dirt up causing the creature to charge again, as it leaps you take a knee lifting the top of the spear up, slicing the creature open causing its guts to fall down on you earning more zealous applause from the arena. He sees you stand up lifting your arms to get the crowd chanting, more showmanship. “What can you tell me about her?” he asks the couple sitting next to him. “Never lost a fight, and she’s beautiful, you need anything else?” They reply. He sees you wiping the creature's guts off your face when a door opens and a Terentatek appears, where the hell did they find one of those things the Mandalorian thinks. He sees your shoulders deflate, more so in annoyance, than fear based on the look on your face. It’s obvious you weren’t expecting a creature so large. After a few dodges and spear swipes the creature has you cornered, he sees you look side to side searching for an out, but there isn’t one, at least none he can see. Its mouth descends on you, seemingly engulfing you whole. The crowd is silent, it’s only then he notices he’s out of his seat. When had that happened? A glimmer suddenly appears from the creature's head as it gets brighter; he sees the spear had sliced through the Terentateks thick hide. The creature collapses and the skin on its head separates as you appear victorious. He sits back down observing you closely as you walk back towards the door from whence you came. The announcer's voice starts up again.
“Now for an extras special treat we’ve brought a fan favourite out of retirement, the demon slayer!” Just then the door opens and a Deveronian in head to toe black armour emerges wasting no time in launching his attack. He throws a dagger which catches you in the arm, the crowd erupts, the sight of your blood enticing them. He watches you intently as you bend over retrieving the knife off the floor and tossing it to the audience. Your opponent’s armour was thick, with very few openings in it. The crowd was getting excited, noticing that you had lost the spear to the Deveronian who had thrown it behind him.
You were the more skilled fighter, but the demon slayer was larger and stronger. He watches you try to make a pass. He thinks you’re in the clear but the opponent grabs you by the hair pulling you back into him as he brandishes another knife bringing it up to your throat. You bite down on his hand giving you just enough time to wrestle the knife from him no doubt slicing your hands open in the process. He doubts that this part of the fight was showmanship, both you and your competitor were evenly matched. It was anyone’s game. Your stunt had given you enough time to retrieve your spear. Just as he thinks you’ve gotten the upper hand he sees a mace extend out from one of the slayer’s sleeves, it sparks with electricity. If it so much as hit you, that would be it. The Mandalorian can feel his heart pounding finding himself wrapped up in the atmosphere of the arena as the creature approaches you swinging the mace. It wraps around your spear, the crowd is silent, they think it's all over, but looking at a nearby screen Mando makes out what appears to be a small smile on your face.
The mace wraps the spear and you pull back on it, hard, drawing the Deveronian in closer. As the electricity hits your arm you release the force from the pulling causing the spear to plunge up in-between the opening between the Devaronians chest plate and helmet killing him instantly. He sees you drop to your knees catching the falling opponent whispering something before laying him down on the floor. The crowd erupts in cheers, flowers and money are thrown to the ground, before picking it up he sees you circle back to each opponent kneeling on the ground for a few seconds before rising and moving on to the next.
“C’mon Mando” the people beside him say “blood auctions this way”. He follows them, but half the auditorium seemingly had the same idea and he was too far back to reach you. He sees you standing with your trainer as the blood spilled during the fight was sold to the highest bidder, the crowd intermittently grabbing at you. You’re quickly shuffled out the room. The Mandalorian exits through a back door, as he does he sees your trainer speaking to a Sephi. He hangs back, close enough to hear the conversation, but far enough away so as not to be noticed.
“Room 801. She’ll be ready for you in a half hour.”
“Perfect, makers, where will I go when she’s free? No one has ever compared to her” the client laughs.
“She’s not leaving, at least not for a while. Far too good for business at the moment. Hope’s what keeps her keen though. I oblige in her fantasies, so she can oblige yours ” The Duro gives the man the key and heads back into the arena. The man exits the alley bumping into the Mandalorian.
“Watch it Mando.” The Sephi says, pushing by him. As he pushes by, Mando snatches the key and makes his way up to room 801.
Your POV
“Hey San, how'd the rest of the auction go?” you ask, wiping off as much slime as you could in the small sink. “Good. I’ve put your cut in the bank for when you’re out. We have a client room 801, penthouse, he knows you apparently.”
“Half the galaxy knows me” you murmur “Do we have to tonight?” you ask, wanting to get out of your gear and go to sleep.
“C’mon he’s rich and not bad looking.”
“Fine” you sigh, not like you had a choice anyways. He chains your hands together and leads you up to the penthouse suite, at least you’d get to sleep in a large bed, maybe get a shower with decent water pressure. He unchains you and ushers you into the room, closing and locking the door behind you. You rub your wrists and crack you back stretching out your arms, you hear a cough. Weird, you think, clients were usually brought up after you’d had time to settle in. “I'm sorry I wasn’t expecting...” you say in your sweetest voice turning around. The tone is quickly dropped. The client was none other than the very person who had landed you in this situation.
“YOU” you shout, not thinking twice before charging at him, slipping a knife out from one of your arm bands and lunging for the Mandalorians neck. He grabs your wrists before they can make contact with him, bending them back causing you to drop the knife on the floor. He tries to restrain you causing you to panic accidentally using the force to throw him back against the wall. He crashed into the wall landing on the floor with a soft thud probably wondering what the hell’s just hit him. His hands quickly shoot up in the air, as you pick up the knife again pointing it at him.
“If you think for one second I’m going to sleep with you, you have another thing coming you stupid tin can, you’re lucky ...” you start but he cuts you off
“That’s not why I’m here.” He says quickly.
“ What?” you say, lowering your knife, but not your guard.
“ I’m here for your help.”
“ YOU want MY help? Makers you’re funny, you know I didn’t know Mandalorians could tell jokes.” you say sitting down on the bed across from him as he cautiously stands up, hands still in the air.
“I’m here to get you out” He offers.
“Why? what do you want from me?” you question
“Your help, the child he was taken I...” he pauses, you feel the sadness emanating off him, but you hold the knife true. “I need to find him before the others do, they’ll kill him.”
“Well should have thought about that before you lost him.” you say snarkily. Standing up you make your way to the door.
“Please, I can get you out of here.” He starts, you turn on your heel.
“Newsflash, I’m making my own way out of here just…”
“ ...a few more fights” he finishes for you. you look at him confused. “There never letting you out of here I heard your trainer he’s not letting you go. Something about being too good for business.” Was he telling you the truth? With the helmet covering his face it was hard to tell. From what your grandmother had told you, Mandalorians rarely lied, and deep down something was telling you to trust him.
“Bastard” you mutter moving away from the door. “Well i'll find my own way out.”
“Please” he says, taking a step towards you, causing you to lift the knife up again. “You wasted your money coming here, leave.”
“I didn’t pay”
“What?” you respond and he looks over to you . “You’re not the client?”
“No” he says dryly, as if the answer was obvious. The tension is cut by a sudden knock at the door.
“Shit, you have to hide” you say dropping the knife and pushing the Mandalorian in the direction of the bed.
“Where should I hide behind a curtain?” he deadpans
“I am not in the mood for jokes right now, get under the bed” you say lifting up the bed skirt.
“No”
“Yes” you say pointing ferociously under the bed.
“No”
“Fine, but you have to go somewhere or we're both screwed.” You say turning around to get the door. As you open it you start “look I can explain.”
“ Explain what?” The Sephi asks, pushing past you taking a seat on the bed. “You’re performance out there was almost as enticing as you” you turn back to close the door looking around the room in an attempt to locate the beskar clad man. “We’ve met before, remember?” he asked, as if you would.
“Hard to forget such a lovely night.” You lie, sitting down next to him realizing you were going to have to talk your way out of this one. “Listen, tonight’s been rough, and I want to be at my peak performance for you, we can reschedule for another night” you say stroking his cheek. The Sephi grabs your wrist, harshly. “ No, I paid for it now so I’ll get it now” . Just then you hear a blaster go off and the guy drops. The Mandalorian appears from behind the curtain
“Seriously.” you say, “I was going to deal with him”
“And I wasn’t going to sit and watch it happen,” he responds re-holstering the blaster.
“They’ll use this to keep me here forever” you say, more sad than angry.
“They were doing that anyway” the modulated voice says. “Come with me” he says reaching his arm out, “now or never”.
Standing up, you push past his hand and walk over to the dead client laying on the floor. Kneeling down you rummage around for his wallet before throwing it to the Mandalorian.
“Let’s get out of here” you say
“Here” he says, taking off his cape and offering it to you. You wrap it around yourself.
“I look like a goddamn Jawa” you say, making note of how long it looks on you.
“Come on before your handaler comes back” he says. The two of you make a swift exit, creeping through the back alleys until you reach his newly acquired ship.
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